Coral Reefs Inspire Rare Consensus -- Just Save Them

ScienceDaily 5 Nov 09;

One of the first set of studies to examine what tourists and recreation enthusiasts actually think about coral reef ecosystems suggests they are a rare exception to controversies over human use versus environmental conservation -- their stunning beauty is so extraordinary that almost everyone wants them protected in perpetuity.

That core belief is often strong enough that if it means people have to be kept out, so be it.

The analysis, done in Hawaii by researchers from Oregon State University and the University of Hawaii, found that most people visiting the state's coral reef ecosystems care deeply about these areas and very much enjoy visiting them, but will generally endorse whatever amount of management is needed to protect them.

"It was really quite astonishing, almost shocking how much people wanted this resource protected for its own sake," said Mark Needham, an assistant professor of forest ecosystems and society at OSU. "We fish and hunt wildlife for food or sport, we cut trees for timber. In most natural resource issues, we find conflicts over management for economic value versus environmental preservation or protection, but we really didn't see that here.

"Our surveys found overwhelmingly that people visiting coral reef areas did not think that human use and access were the most important issues when it came to these areas," he said. "And if anything was to have a deleterious effect on reef ecosystems, they would want it stopped."

That attitude was also of interest, Needham said, because in Hawaii coral reef ecosystems are a major draw for the tourism industry -- seven million people a year who spend more than $11 billion, in part, to enjoy the glistening waters, multi-colored corals, and myriad tropical fish. They are a destination for everyone from snorkelers and scuba divers to tourists in glass-bottom boats and toddlers wading knee-deep, all who come to see the incredible diversity of marine life. More than 80 percent of Hawaii's visitors recreate in the state's coastal and marine areas, and a majority go snorkeling or diving.

Past research has been done in many places around the world to analyze physical damage or other pressures placed on coral reefs, which in some cases has resulted in steps to reduce human use or educate visitors on reef protection. But until now, resource managers had no real barometer on just how much public support there was for such measures, especially among hobbyists and tourists who use this resource.

These recent surveys obtained attitudes and opinions from more than 3,500 residents and tourists visiting seven coral reef sites in the Hawaiian Islands, including state marine protected areas, fisheries management areas, and a county beach park. The surveys also measured attitudes about overuse and crowding, and opinions about management needs.

Opinions about coral reefs varied, Needham said, but were mostly just variations on how much protection might be needed, with some people feeling more extreme than others. Virtually no one wanted expanded use of coral reefs to the extent it might degrade them for enjoyment by future generations, and many were willing to endorse any level of protection needed, even if it meant banning human use. These views toward coral reefs reflected peoples' core personal values and are unlikely to change much, scientists said.

The studies showed that acceptance of potential future management strategies would be driven largely by perceived health of coral reefs and changes to these ecosystems.

"Litter, facilities, and crowding were not as important as coral reef conditions in influencing support or opposition to management actions such as limiting human use and increasing public information," Needham said. "This is surprising because in many parks and protected areas on land, social issues such as crowding and litter heavily influence attitudes toward management.

"In a marine context," he added, "it appears that environmental conditions may be more important."

More education and interpretation was commonly sought to help address issues of concern, such as people damaging corals by standing on them, the report found. The studies were supported by the Hawaii Coral Reef Initiative and State of Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources. Some results of this work have been accepted for publication in professional journals.

This research should be considered good news for managers seeking support for their marine protection and conservation efforts, Needham said.

However, further studies are needed in other states and countries and with other segments of the public, he said, including some that have a much stronger orientation toward managed use instead of recreation or environmental protection. Needham is now working with Brian Szuster, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Hawaii, to examine this topic in other areas of Hawaii and in other countries.

Adapted from materials provided by Oregon State University.

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Caribbean, Gulf spared widespread coral damage

David Mcfadden, Associated Press Yahoo News 6 Nov 09;

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Lower-than-feared sea temperatures this summer gave a break to fragile coral reefs across the Caribbean and the central Gulf of Mexico that were damaged in recent years, scientists said Thursday.

Unusually warm water in recent years has caused the animals that make up coral to expel the colorful algae they live with, creating a bleached color. If the problem persists, the coral itself dies — killing the environment where many fish and other marine organisms live.

"We dodged a bullet this year. The good news is that temperatures didn't get quite warm enough for there to be a large-scale bleaching problem," said C. Mark Eakin, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch network. He was among scientists gathered in Puerto Rico's capital for a meeting of the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force.

The worst coral bleaching in the region's recorded history occurred in 2005, when hot seas caused bleaching of as much as 90 percent of corals in the eastern Caribbean, with more than half of that dying.

In July, the Coral Reef Watch network warned that high temperatures this year might lead to severe coral problems because sea surface temperatures in parts of the Caribbean were unusually hot.

Eakin said the threat had passed for 2009, since temperatures are now cooling, but the problem could return.

"We're seeing little signs of coral recovery in the Caribbean, where the damage has been like a ratchet wrench clicking down and staying there," Eakin said. "Temperatures could be severe enough next year."

Reef-building coral is a fragile organism, a tiny polyp-like animal that builds a calcium-carbonate shell around itself and survives in a symbiotic relationship with types of algae — each providing sustenance to the other. Even a 1-degree Celsius (1.7-degree Fahrenheit) rise in normal maximum sea temperatures can disrupt that relationship.

Bleaching can occur when sea temperatures rise just a few degrees above average in the warmest summer months. Bleaching that lasts more than a week can kill the organisms, since they rely on the algae for sustenance.

Some coral bleaching was recorded this year in the Cayman Islands, according to Eakin and scientists in the British Caribbean dependency.

Croy McCoy, a senior researcher with the islands' Department of Environment, told The Associated Press that officials are still calculating the damage to local reefs.

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On the Net:

NOAA's Coral Reef Watch home page: http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/index.html

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Canada to investigate disappearing Pacific salmon

Reuters 5 Nov 09;

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Canada will launch an investigation into why far fewer sockeye salmon than scientists had predicted returned to the Fraser River on the Pacific Coast this summer.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the judicial inquiry on Thursday, saying the federal government was concerned about the declining sockeye population.

Federal government scientists had predicted that as many as 13 million sockeye salmon would return to the river this year to breed, but it is now estimated that only about 1.4 million fish actually returned.

The collapse gutted the commercial Fraser sockeye fishing season, and prompted the government of the West Coast province of British Columbia and federal opposition parties to ask Ottawa to investigate whether federal officials have mismanaged salmon stocks.

Details of the inquiry were expected to be announced on Friday in Vancouver.

Salmon have long been at the center of diplomatic spats between Canada and the United States, with Canadian fishermen often accusing their U.S. rivals of taking too large a portion of the catch.

Division of the dwindling salmon catch is also the center of a bitter dispute within Canada involving aboriginal, recreational and non-aboriginal commercial fishermen.

Some environmentalists, who praised the announcement of the inquiry, have said that aquaculture farms along Canada's Pacific Coast endanger wild fish stocks -- a charge that the fish farm operators deny.

(Reporting by Allan Dowd, editing by Peter Galloway)

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Bluefin tuna on edge of extinction, environmentalists warn

Yahoo News 6 Nov 09;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – An international fisheries group set up to protect Atlantic tuna has done the opposite and driven one species of the fish, the bluefin, to the edge of extinction, environmentalists said Thursday.

On the eve of a 10-day meeting in Brazil of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), environmentalists accused the group of ignoring the advice of its own scientists and setting fishing quotas for bluefin tuna that have drastically depleted stocks.

"ICCAT has continually disregarded countless opportunities to do the right thing and secure the Atlantic bluefin tuna," Susan Lieberman, director of international policy at the Washington-based Pew Environment Group, told reporters.

Marine biologist Carl Safina, president of the Blue Ocean Institute, which studies how human behavior impacts the ocean, called ICCAT "the poster child for not only failure... but cynicism and a real unwillingness to get serious, be professional and listen to what the science has to say.

"The world's first fisheries management agency formed out of concern for this one species never followed their own science, never lived up to their mandate to manage for a sustainable yield," Safina said.

ICCAT was set up in the late 1960s to conserve "tuna and tuna-like species in the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas," according to its website.

Lieberman said ICCAT has for decades set quotas above what its own scientists have recommended for bluefin tuna.

Those quotas are systematically exceeded by industrial fleets, which over-fish the species.

Combined with illegal fishing, this has caused the population to decline by more than 85 percent in the eastern Atlantic and by more than 90 percent in the western Atlantic.

"The bluefin tuna will not be with us and certainly will be extinct if governments don't do the right thing... and unless ICCAT says, 'Enough is enough, it's time for a zero quota; we're going to put the brakes on this fishery,'" Lieberman said.

"If we had any terrestrial species that had declined this much, this quickly, we would have said we have to shut this down, we have to let them recover," Lieberman told AFP.

The environmentalists also called for stricter regulation of the trade in sharks, which are often caught up as "by-catch" in commercial tuna-fishing operations and are also being targeted directly by fishing fleets for their fins and meat.

Around 100 million sharks are caught in commercial and sports fishing every year, and several species have declined by more than 80 percent in the past decade alone, according the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

"ICCAT needs to set science-based sustainable catch limits on the number of sharks that can be killed and prohibit the retention of exceptionally vulnerable sharks species such as the big-eyed thresher," Lieberman said.

The environmentalists want the bluefin tuna to be included on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) list of animals and plants most threatened with extinction, and for some species of shark to be included on a CITES list which regulates trade.

"We want their trade regulated so they don't go the way of the bluefin," Lieberman told AFP.

Bluefin tuna is popular in upscale sushi restaurants around the world, particularly Japan, while shark-fin soup is a delicacy and status symbol in some Asian countries. Shark meat is also gaining popularity in Europe.

Forty-eight countries in every region of the world -- ranging from Algeria, Barbados, China and France, to Ivory Coast, Japan, the United States and Venezuela -- are contracting parties to ICCAT.

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Study suggests peat CO2 credits more valuable

Sunanda Creagh, Reuters 6 Nov 09;

JAKARTA (Reuters) - An Indonesia-based study is showing carbon-rich tropical peat lands trap more greenhouse gases than first thought, driving up their potential value on the carbon market and strengthening the case for their protection.

Huge amounts of greenhouse gases are released when peat lands are logged or drained for agriculture, and even more when the dried bogs catch fire and release toxic haze into the air.

But while most scientists agree preserving peat is key to slowing global warming, a team of 11 of the world's best peat scientists have found it might be more important than first thought.

"We are finding that the emissions from peat are very, very large, much larger than people expected," said John Raison, chair of the 11-member Peat and Greenhouse Gases Group, a joint project between the Indonesian and Australian governments formed late last year to develop a method to measure peat emissions.

"We are also finding that all of the assumptions to date have been too rough, far too rough for something that is to be sold on the (carbon) market."

Peat is created when layers of organic material break down over thousands of years and is particularly abundant in the Sumatra and Kalimantan, the Indonesian half of Borneo island, where huge tracts have been cleared for palm oil plantations.

Accurate calculations on carbon lost through deforestation or locked away by saving and replanting forests and peatlands is crucial to a fledgling U.N. forest carbon offset scheme called reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD).

REDD aims to reward developing nations for preserving and protecting forests via the use of an expanded carbon market. The United Nations hopes the scheme will become part of a broader climate pact from 2013 that might be agreed next month in Copenhagen or some time next year.

ESTIMATES

But Raison said there was still great uncertainty about how much carbon was stored in the peat lands, which would influence how much peat carbon credits should be worth.

Governments and companies in rich nations could buy the credits to help them meet mandatory emissions reduction targets.

"There have only ever been very gross estimates about that -- just guesses, really -- but the price is dictated by the certainty of the estimates. The more precise the estimate, the more valuable the product," he told Reuters in an interview.

To settle the debate, the team of peat experts will develop a method of estimating greenhouse gas emissions from tropical peat lands and create a way of forecasting more accurately how much greenhouse gases could be saved through REDD projects.

Initial research was presented to climate pact negotiators meeting in Barcelona this week and new field research would take place in Kalimantan later this year, said Raison.

About 5.5 percent of global carbon emissions are created by draining or burning peat, which stores twice as much carbon as all the trees in the world, according to new research presented at climate talks in Barcelona on Wednesday by one member of Raison's team, Hans Joosten.

Another study published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Geoscience found that draining peatland in Southeast Asia alone produced four times the greenhouse gases created by deforestation worldwide. This study found global deforestation created 12 percent of the world's total carbon emissions.

Raison said the team's research will inform the Copenhagen talks and Indonesia's development of its National Carbon Accounting System, a measurement and monitoring tool that helps a country set a carbon baseline and determine how much carbon is gained and lost.

However, Abdon Nabanan, secretary-general of the Indigenous People's Alliance of the Archipelago told an environmental forum on Wednesday that land titling problems -- not carbon accounting -- was the issue that would make or break REDD in Indonesia.

"Developed countries want to invest in mitigation efforts in Indonesia but I think they will fail because there is no investment certainty. There is conflict everywhere," he said.

(Editing by David Fogarty)

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KL slams ban on Malaysian palm oil advertisement

Stephen Then 6 Nov 09;

MIRI: The British Government’s ban on a Malaysian palm oil advertisement because of native land disputes and alleged victimisation of the Penans in Sarawak by logging and palm oil giants “is unfair”.

Deputy International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Jacob Sagan said the federal and state authorities had put in great effort to not only protect the environment, but also the natives’ welfare.

“Any move jeopardising the export of Malaysian palm oil will inevitably affect the livelihoods of those working in the plantations,” he said.

“It is not fair to link a business issue with a native rights issue because they can be dealt with separately.

“The palm oil industry in Malaysia helps to improve the livelihood of tens of thousands of people, especially smallholders living in rural areas,” he added.

According to Survival International, the UK Advertising Standards Agency banned the advertisement placed by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council in a British business magazine because the advertisement said Malaysian palm oil was sustainable and contributed to poverty-eradication and the development of rural people.

The London-based group deals with issues involving the rights of indigenous communities across the globe.

“The UK advertisement regulator ruled that the advertisement was misleading as the palm oil industry had infringed on the rights of the natives and their land,” said the group’s director Stephen Corry in an e-mail.

“The regulator ruled that Malaysia’s claim that palm oil is green and people-friendly is not credible because the industry’s expansion into the rural areas had caused disaster to the people’s lives,” he added.

Meanwhile, Sagan said the Plantation Industries and Commodities Ministry was in a better position to try to lift the ban by explaining the true situation in the country.

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Palm oil roundtable breaks emissions logjam

WWF 5 Nov 09;

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil this week agreed to consider implementing voluntary measures to encourage producers and buyers of palm oil to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The Roundtable’s 7th annual conference came to a close Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Titled “Moving Ahead in Challenging Times,” the three-day conference drew more than 800 people from inside and outside of the palm oil industry, including buyers and producers.

After several rounds of heated discussion this week, the Roundtable’s Executive Board reached a compromise in which some emissions reduction requirements will be directly incorporated in the Roundtable’s certification standards.

They agreed to further address the issue and hammer out emissions measures related to land use change before the next Roundtable conference in 2010. To this end, they will develop a voluntary framework within which companies will work together to reduce emissions.

This objective received considerable support by producers from outside Malaysia and Indonesia who said they will use this voluntary standard as soon as it becomes available, while committing to stop the expansion of plantations on peat lands.

“This is a move in the right direction,” said Adam Harrison, WWF’s representative on the RSPO Executive Board. “We encourage companies to embrace emissions reduction standards once they become available and do their part to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change.”

The conference also focused on the frustration by producers concerning the slow uptake of certified sustainable palm oil by buyers. The sluggish market prompted WWF to publish the Palm Oil Buyers’ Scorecard on Oct. 28, a project that assessed the performance of 59 European retailers and manufacturers buying palm oil.

The Scorecard showed that the majority of European palm oil buyers are failing to buy certified sustainable palm oil, despite its availability and the previous commitments by many companies to purchase it.

The Scorecard was presented and widely discussed at the conference. It was praised by producers and buyers alike as a positive vehicle for bringing much needed transparency to this growing market and showing companies buying palm oil that they are expected to do their part in transforming the palm oil market.

The growing demand for palm oil is adding to the already severe pressure on remaining rainforest areas of the world. The loss of forest in Indonesia is threatening the survival of species such as the orang-utan, the Sumatran tiger, rhino and elephant. Forest loss and the draining of peatlands for palm oil plantations is also contributing to climate change and displacing local people who rely on the forest for food and shelter. Palm oil is one of the world’s fastest expanding crops in Southeast Asia as well as West Africa and South America.

It is because of threats like this that WWF worked with other NGOs and the palm oil industry to set up the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2003. Since then WWF has worked with the industry to ensure that the RSPO standards contain robust social and environmental criteria, including a prohibition on the conversion of valuable forests. Certified Sustainable Palm Oil has been available since November 2008 and provides assurance that valuable tropical forests have not been cleared and that environmental and social safeguards have been met during the production of the palm oil.

WWF opted to grade palm oil buyers after releasing figures in May showing that only a small percentage of the sustainable palm oil available on the market had been bought. Since then, the situation is starting to improve. Over the last year, RSPO certified plantations have produced over 1,000,000 tonnes of certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO), and over 250,000 tonnes have been sold to date. While this still represents only 22 percent of the available supply on average, the RSPO has reported that CSPO sales have been growing in recent months.

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Cost builds up in Australia for wasted food

Australian Policy Online, Science Alert 6 Nov 09;

Australian households are throwing out more than $5 billion worth of food each year, more than Australians spend on digital equipment, and more than it costs to run the Australian Army. In addition to the direct financial costs of this waste, the environmental impact associated with excessive greenhouse gas emissions and water use is substantial. This paper examines who is wasting food and the motivations behind this behaviour. The research is based on an online survey of 1603 main grocery buyers across Australia.

The data reveal that the extent of food waste is related to both household income and the number of household occupants. The amount of food wasted increases with household income and decreases with larger household sizes. Households with four or more occupants waste the least food per person, while people living by themselves waste the most.

Most people are concerned about food waste and report feeling guilty when they throw away food. While respondents were able to identify how they could reduce food waste, they simultaneously reported behaviour that contradicted their own advice. For example, most people believe that planning their purchases in advance is the best way to avoid wasting food, but most of those same respondents admitted to making purchasing decisions on the spur of the moment.

Saving money is by far the greatest motivator for households to reduce food waste. Twice as many respondents said that financial considerations would be the main reason to avoid wasting food compared to those who cited the environmental benefits.

The data suggest that better planning by grocery shoppers is likely to play an important role in reducing food waste. However, such ‘conscious consumption’ tends to be inconsistent with the ‘convenience foods’ promoted by some food retailers. The free provision by some retailers of plastic shopping bags, for example, highlights the manner in which grocery outlets encourage customers to shop first and plan second.

In addition to the direct financial benefits to households, reducing food waste has the capacity to deliver significant environmental benefits at no cost to government. Food retailers represent a major barrier to implementing effective food waste policies, since their profits are contingent on the amount of food sold rather than the amount of food consumed. To overcome this, better public understanding of the problems associated with food waste needs to be a priority for governments at all levels. Without considerable policy change in this area, household waste is likely to grow as incomes rise and the number of occupants in each household shrinks.

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Liquid Granite and the hunt for a carbon-neutral cement

Cement is responsible for 5% of the world's carbon emissions, and the race is on to find an alternative
Alok Jha, guardian.co.uk 4 Nov 09;

What do you do with a problem like cement? Around 2bn tonnes are used every year, each tonne a source of 0.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide as it is made. The cement industry is responsible for 5% of the world's carbon emissions – more than the entire aviation industry.

Standard, or Portland, cement is made by heating limestone or clay to around 1,500C. This use of energy and the decomposition of the limestone as it cooks releases copious amounts of CO2. As the carbon reduction targets from global climate agreements begin to bite, sorting out cement will become a priority.

Engineers have been working hard on the problem in recent years, with a range of approaches to cutting the environmental impact of the construction industry: some have tried synthetic polymers that would remove the need for limestone; others have fiddled with how cement is used in buildings. The latest on the block is Liquid Granite, a binding material that, according to its inventor, could almost entirely replace cement with a powder made from recycled waste materials.

Liquid Granite replaces the need for more than two-thirds of this Portland cement when making concrete, thereby saving the associated carbon emissions. "One of the biggest culprits of carbon footprint is cement, which we use in making concrete – Liquid Granite does away with most of the use of cement. The amount used is pretty small," says Prof Pal Mangat of Sheffield Hallam University, who came up with the product. "Potentially, by the time we're finished with this developmental technology, it'll be close to zero."

Mangat is cagey about the exact formulation of Liquid Granite, and with good reason: by 2020, the French bank Credit Agricole estimates, demand for cement will be 50% greater than today, and a new carbon-free building material could reap huge rewards. All that Mangat will say is that Liquid Granite is made from an inorganic powder, 30-70% of which is recycled industrial waste materials. Using the same aggregates as normal concrete, it could be used anywhere cement is but with a fraction of the carbon footprint.

"In some applications it's more suitable than concrete. For example, one of the main areas we are currently exploiting it is fire-resistant building materials," he says. "It has good fire-resistant properties, unlike concrete, which explodes upon exposure to high temperatures."

There has already been interest from the building industry, with Liquid Granite has already been used in fire-rated lintels at the Olympic Village and Stratford Shopping Centre in east London.

Others are hot on Mangat's heels. Novacem, based in London, last year created a cement that has a negative carbon footprint over its lifetime. His invention uses magnesium silicates, which emit no CO2 when heated, and the processing is carried out at a much lower temperature than that required for Portland cement. In addition, the cement absorbs CO2 as it hardens – each tonne could remove around 0.6 tonnes of the greenhouse gas over its lifetime.

Transforming a global industry as established as construction was never going to be simple. But tackling the problem of cement seems a good place to start.

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Forests in the desert: the answer to climate change?

Climate change could be cancelled out in a staggeringly ambitious plan to plant the Sahara desert and Australian outback with trees
David Adam, guardian.co.uk 4 Nov 09;

Some talk of hoisting mirrors into space to reflect sunlight, while others want to cloud the high atmosphere with millions of tonnes of shiny sulphur dust. Now, scientists could have dreamed up the most ambitious geoengineering plan to deal with climate change yet: converting the parched Sahara desert to a lush forest. The scale of the ambition is matched only by the promised rewards – the scientists behind the plan say it could "end global warming".

The scheme has been thought up by Leonard Ornstein, a cell biologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, together with Igor Aleinov and David Rind, climate modellers at Nasa. The trio have outlined their plan in a new paper published in the Journal of Climatic Change, and they modestly conclude it "probably provides the best, near-term route to complete control of greenhouse gas induced global warming".

Under the scheme, planted fields of fast growing trees such as eucalyptus would cover the deserts of the Sahara and Australian outback, watered by seawater treated by a string of coastal desalination plants and channelled through a vast irrigation network. The new blanket of tree cover would bring its own weather system and rainfall, while soaking up carbon dioxide from the world's atmosphere. The team's calculations suggest the forested deserts could draw down around 8bn tonnes of carbon a year, about the same as emitted from fossil fuels and deforestation today. Sounds expensive? The researchers say it could be more economic than planned global investment in carbon capture and storage technology (CCS).

"The costs are enormous but the scale of the problem is enormous," says Ornstein, who is best known for pioneering a cell biology technique called polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in the 1950s. "It's a serious suggestion in that I believe it is the most promising and practical option in terms of current technology to solve the biggest parts of the problem."

The scheme could cost $1.9tn a year, he says. "When that's compared to figures like estimates of $800bn per year for CCS, our plan looks like a loser. But CCS can address only about 20% of the problem at the $800bn price. Mine addresses the whole thing. And CCS would involve a network of dangerous high-pressure pipelines coursing through the most developed neighbourhoods of our civilisations, compared to relatively benign water aqueducts in what are presently virtually uninhabited deserts."

Planting trees to combat rising carbon dioxide levels is controversial on a large scale, because most places where it has been suggested, such as Canada and Siberia, are in the northern hemisphere where the resulting change in surface colour, from predominantly light snow and rock to predominantly dark trees, could soak up more sunlight and cancel out the cooling benefit. Ornstein says subtropical regions, such as the Sahara and the Australian outback, do not have this problem. The areas have only minimal "human occupation, agricultural food and fibre resources and competing natural biomes" the team says. "We must bite the bullet, global warming will not go away by itself ... solar, geothermal and wind power can make modest contributions. All of these are other parts of a fix. But the quicker a forest can be grown, the more time will be available to choose among and to implement such adjustments, and perhaps to develop more attractive substitutes."

Ornstein says several desert-heavy countries are suitable, including large chunks of Saudi Arabia and a string of African nations west of Egypt. The scheme would provide jobs and investment, he says, as well as a long-term source of sustainable wood that could be used as a biofuel to replace fossil fuels. Other plans for the desert region, such as the installation of giant arrays of mirrors and solar panels to generate electricity would not be affected, he says. Tree-planters, and the resulting clouds, would stick to the flatter regions further south.

Since the paper was published a few weeks ago, Ornstein has attempted to seed serious discussions on specialist websites, with little success. Critics have pointed out that the deserts are not total wildernesses, but rich and diverse ecosystems in their own right, which would be destroyed. Ornstein says: "If sacrifices are required to stem global warming, the almost non-existent ecosystems of the central Sahara and the outback seem like reasonable candidates compared to the alternatives."

The scheme does have some support. "It is incredibly important and definitely worth taking seriously," says Rick Anthes, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. "While there are many practical and political difficulties of afforestation of regions this large, the benefits could be enormous and go well beyond carbon sequestration."

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Farmers, Experts Doubt Indonesia's Promise of Land For Rice

Arti Ekawati, The Jakarta Globe 5 Nov 09;

Farmers and agricultural experts have scoffed at the government’s latest promise to offer millions of hectares of land as part of the national goal of achieving self-sufficiency in rice production.

Shortly after his appointment last month, Agriculture Minister Suswono said he had instructed the National Land Agency (BPN) to seek ways to offer as much as six million hectares of land outside Java to rice farmers.

He said that reviving the transmigration scheme, first launched during the Suharto era, would be a priority for his ministry during its first 100 days.

But farmers have heard this before. The last government made the same promise. And nothing happened.

“[The government] didn’t implement the program during its last term, so why have they set the same target again?” said Henry Saragih, chairman of the Indonesian Farmers Federation (FSPI).

Bungaran Saragih, an agriculture analyst from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), said he doubted the program would be implemented.

“Where is the land for the program? Whose land will be given to farmers?” he said.

The country consumes more and more rice while the amount of farmland shrinks. According to BPN statistics, more than 140,000 hectares of farmland is being converted into commercial and industrial land every year, while only 40,000 hectares of land is converted to farmland.

Meanwhile, the population grows by 1.6 percent yearly, further straining food resources. While the country has regained rice self-sufficiency in 2008, many fear it could once again become a net importer of rice.

Henry said the government should proceed gradually rather than make big promises, beginning by declining to extend the land licenses of private plantation companies.

“Privately owned companies should return their land to the state as soon as their licenses expire,” he said, adding that this would leave the government more land to give to farmers.

Rice farmers struggle to wrest a living out of small farms — 75 percent of small-scale farmers own plots of just 0.2 hectares or less, according to data collected in 2003.

Bungaran said the government should create jobs for rice farmers outside of agriculture instead of promising them more land. He said reducing the number of farmers would increase the average size of farms, improving efficiency and returns for those still farming.

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Low-Carbon Farms Can Raise Food Output, Food Agency Says

PlanetArk 6 Nov 09;

BARCELONA - Low-carbon farming can both curb climate change and boost food output in developing nations and so must be rewarded under a global climate deal due in December, the U.N.'s food agency said on Thursday.

Steps to cut carbon emissions on farms in developing countries could also boost yields where food is shortest, the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report published on Thursday.

More than 1 billion people are undernourished now and the world will have to feed an additional 3 billion by 2050, many in areas expected to be worst afflicted by climate change, experts say.

Certain farm practices can tackle both problems, for example conserving over-grazed pastures and caring for soils, but they involve up-front costs.

"A key part of the problem is a lack of financing," said Leslie Lipper, FAO economist and co-author of its report "Food Security and Agricultural Mitigation in Developing Countries," published on the sidelines of U.N. climate talks in Barcelona.

"If adopted by farmers, many of these practices make them better off, but in the short run they may face reduced income," Lipper said, using the example of removing cattle to allow grasslands to recover.

Agriculture has barely been mentioned in the November 2-6 Barcelona talks -- the final preparatory session before a meeting in Copenhagen in December meant to agree a global climate deal to replace or extend the Kyoto Protocol.

Farms accounts for 10-12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions directly, not including their contribution to deforestation, according to a U.N. panel of climate scientists.

An FAO study this year put the extra farm investment needed to boost food yields at $210 billion between now and 2050.

Some of the funding for low-carbon practices could come from carbon markets, whereby rich nations pay for cuts in developing countries to offset against their own emissions.

Low-carbon farming in developing nations could raise up to $30 billion annually through such carbon finance, Thursday's study said.

One difficulty is the challenge of measuring the carbon cuts, such as the extra carbon locked in the soil as a result of practices such as tilling the soil less and applying more organic fertilizers such as manure and crop waste.

The cost of soil measurement means carbon markets may only work for the most effective carbon-cutting systems, and the rest need public finance. Finding adequate funds to cut carbon emissions in developing countries has been a long-running stumbling block at the two-year U.N. talks.

(Editing by Tim Pearce)

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