The Fight Over The Future Of Food

Claudia Parsons, Russell Blinch and Svetlana Kovalyova
PlanetArk 11 Nov 09;

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON/MILAN - At first glance, Giuseppe Oglio's farm near Milan looks like it's suffering from neglect. Weeds run rampant amid the rice fields and clover grows unchecked around his millet crop.

Oglio, a third generation farmer eschews modern farming techniques -- chemicals, fertilizers, heavy machinery -- in favor of a purely natural approach. It is not just ecological, he says, but profitable, and he believes his system can be replicated in starving regions of the globe.

Nearly 5,000 miles away, in laboratories in St. Louis, Missouri, hundreds of scientists at the world's biggest seed company, Monsanto, also want to feed the world, only their tools of choice are laser beams and petri dishes.

Monsanto, a leader in agricultural biotechnology, spends about $2 million a day on scientific research that aims to improve on Mother Nature, and is positioning itself as a key player in the fight against hunger.

The Italian farmer and the U.S. multinational represent the two extremes in an increasingly acrimonious debate over the future of food.

Everybody wants to end hunger, but just how to do so is a divisive question that pits environmentalists against anti-poverty campaigners, big business against consumers and rich countries against poor.

The food fight takes place at a time when experts on both sides agree on one thing -- the number of empty bellies around the world will only grow unless there is major intervention now.

A combination of the food crisis and the global economic downturn has catapulted the number of hungry people in the world to more than 1 billion. The United Nations says world food output must grow by 70 percent over the next four decades to feed a projected extra 2.3 billion people by 2050.

International leaders are gathering in Rome next week for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's World Summit on Food Security and will hear competing arguments over how best to tackle the problem. One of the fiercest disputes will be over the relative importance of science versus social and economic reforms to empower small farmers to grow more with existing technology.

"LISTEN TO NATURE"

Much of Europe has moved away from an agricultural system of small farms to mass commercial farming, but Italy still retains a base of family farmers who produce everything from olives to mozzarella cheese.

Oglio is one of them. A charismatic 40-year-old, he dropped out of an agricultural school after growing disillusioned with the farming methods being taught there. Today, he lets nature run its course as he grows cereals and legumes on his small family farm in Belcreda di Gambolo, about 20 miles southwest of Milan.

He does not use any chemical, or even natural fertilizers or pesticides. He does not weed his fields. "All you need to do is observe nature, listen to it, do what nature suggests and it will take care of everything," he said.

His fields, in a low-lying plain that has a long history of growing rice used for risotto, replicate patterns found in nature. For example, clover and millet grow together, feeding each other with necessary minerals.

Oglio said his farm is eco-sustainable. He has slashed operating costs by eliminating expensive commercial products like herbicides and by reducing the use of agricultural machinery to a minimum. Such cheap and low-maintenance farming could be adopted in Africa and other regions hit by poverty and hunger, he said.

"Natural farming will not save the world. But it can feed poor families," he said.

But it's unlikely it can do so on the scale that most experts believe is necessary. And therein lies the rub. Affluent consumers may prefer the Oglios of the world to the Monsantos, but their skittishness about high-tech agriculture is making it more difficult to grapple with the mounting crisis over the lack of food.

LEARNING FROM THE PAST

The last time the world faced such dire predictions of famine was before the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when countries like India and China transformed their agricultural systems to become self-sufficient in food. They did so by harnessing plant-breeding technology to raise yields on rice, wheat and other staple crops.

Through massive state investment in hybrid rice, China, the world's most populous country, raised its yields from two tons per hectare in the 1960s to more than 10 tons per hectare by 2004. Chinese scientists seek further gains -- 13.5 tons per hectare by 2015, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which cites China's rice program as one of the true success stories in agricultural development in a study out this week (November 12) called "Millions Fed."

To be sure, the Green Revolution had its downsides -- environmental damage, to name one. In India, for example, water tables are drying up and the soil has been degraded by pesticide and fertilizers. The movement also contributed to the rise of big commercial farms at the expense of small holders, fueling resentment from its early days at what critics see as the "corporatization" of food.

But millions of people were saved from starvation, and the movement's architect, Norman Borlaug, received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize.

With their populations soaring, however, India and China -- not to mention most of Africa -- still face challenges, especially as climate change exacerbates environmental problems that have already slowed growth in food production.

IFPRI, part of a global network of agricultural research centers, said last month lower yields due to climate change would cut "calorie availability" for the average consumer in a developing country in 2050 by 7 percent, compared with 2000.

Higher temperatures reduce crop yields while encouraging pests and plant diseases. For almost all crops, South Asia would experience the largest declines in yields. IFPRI said rice output in the region would be 14 percent lower than if there were no climate change.

"India sorely needs another Green Revolution," said Kushagra Nayan Bajaj, joint managing director of Bajaj Hinduthan, India's top sugar producer, which is importing raw sugar after a drought hit the domestic cane crop.

But a second green revolution would face a strong counterinsurgency, even in a place like India that benefited so profoundly from the first one.

"The point is that chemicals destroy the sustainability of productivity in the long run ... Yes, a second green revolution is indeed very essential -- the very need of the hour. But it should not be the same kind of green revolution that the first was," said P.C. Kesavan, a fellow at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, set up by the father of India's Green Revolution.

Economists and scientists in India are demanding a raft of policy initiatives, including allowing genetic engineering, which its proponents argue does the same job as traditional plant hybridization, only quicker and more efficiently.

India has so far allowed GM seeds only for cotton, which has boosted productivity, but suggestions of allowing such seeds for edible crops have always evoked strong protests.

CRADLE OF CORN

It's a similar story in Mexico, where Borlaug started his pioneering research in the 1940s at the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program. Mexico issued permits last month for the first time for farmers to grow genetically modified corn.

Considered by many the cradle of corn, Mexico is home to more than 10,000 varieties, used to make the classic tortilla, a staple of the Mexican diet. Corn was first planted in Mexico as many as 9,000 years ago and the grain was adapted by Spanish conquerors in the early 1500s and eventually spread to the rest of the world.

Mexico faces the same dilemmas over GM corn as do many developing countries -- balancing consumer fears with the need to grow more food.

"We see corn as our cultural heritage, our legacy. For us it's not just a question of food, but about conserving our traditions," said Celerino Tlacotempa, who works for an organization of native Nahuatl farmers in the southern mountains of Guerrero state.

"With genetically modified seeds we will lose our varieties of colored corn. There will be no more purple corn, black corn, white corn," Tlacotempa said. "Above all, we will be condemned to buy seeds from companies like Monsanto. It's not sustainable. It's a real risk for the wellbeing of these communities."

At the same time, other Mexican farmers in the north of the country have been cultivating GM seeds smuggled over the border from the United States for some time, attracted by the crops' greater resilience to drought and pests and higher yields.

Tomas Lumpkin, director of CIMMYT, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center that Borlaug started in Mexico, said the country now imports about half of the corn it consumes. With climate change and other pressures, he said, it was vital to raise production using all tools available.

"It is a much more complex and difficult world than Borlaug faced, but we have much more powerful tools than he had, and we need to start testing those and deploying those," he said.

"GMOs are just another set of tools in the toolbox, but we need to be able to use those tools," Lumpkin said. "If we could deploy those varieties so that the farmer in the developing world has the same powerful seed as the farmer in Iowa, why should they be handicapped?"

RICH CONSUMERS RESIST GM

Monsanto launched the world's first genetically modified crop in 1996 and GM crops are now grown in countries ranging from Australia to South Africa, the Philippines and Brazil.

Up to 85 percent of the massive U.S. corn crop is genetically engineered, as well as up 91 percent of soybeans and 88 percent of cotton, according to U.S. data.

As ingrained as GM crops may seem, a backlash against the technology appears to be growing.

Opposition to genetic modification of seeds has long been strongest in Europe. The European Union severely restricts use of GM seeds on its territory, as well as imports of products containing GM-derived food. Individual countries including Germany ban even GM seeds that are authorized, such as an insect-resistant maize type, MON 810, developed by Monsanto.

Now consumer resistance to what British tabloids long ago dubbed "Frankenfood" is taking root in the United States too.

With North America's industrial farming system, consumers who buy packaged goods from grocery stores are likely eating GM products without even knowing it, according to environmental group the Center for Food Safety. The group, which was involved in a successful court battle to stop introduction of Monsanto's genetically engineered alfalfa seed, also contends that up to 70 percent of soda, soup, crackers and other processed goods sold under major household brands are GM derived.

"There really is no human health analysis of GM crops," said William Freese, science policy analyst for the center. "It's a real result of the policy that our government has put in place, which is basically a presumption of innocence."

A banner issue for U.S. anti-GM crusaders is genetically engineered growth hormones for dairy cows, known as rBGH. Introduced in the United States in 1994, rBGH is a drug to extend milk production after a cow gives birth. It was developed by Monsanto but recently sold to Eli Lilly and Co.

Health Care Without Harm, a global coalition of hospitals and other health groups, believes the drug is dangerous because it increases the likelihood of infection in the cow's udder, which leads to greater antibiotic use in the animals. That contributes to antibiotic-resistance in humans, they argue.

Other critics say it may be linked to cancer in humans, despite U.S. Food and Drug Administration approvals.

Proponents have won over a string of big names to reject the drug, including the big yogurt makers Yoplait and Dannon, and have also lobbied coffee chain Starbucks to oppose rBGH.

A Starbucks spokesman said the firm's entire core dairy supply comes from suppliers that do not use the hormone.

"Our core products, coffee and tea, are not genetically modified," the spokesman said in a statement. "We have no plans to purchase coffee or tea that is derived from GM sources, now or in the future."

The industry notes that GM research is supported by a number of august groups, including the Royal Society of Britain and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Keywords: FOOD/

"IDEOLOGICAL WEDGE"

For those seeking to end global hunger, rather than just satisfy rich consumers' craving for cappuccino, Africa presents the greatest challenges.

Monsanto, together with corporate rivals, is working with poor countries and charitable groups such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, set up by Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates and his wife.

At the annual World Food Prize forum last month, Gates warned that the fight to end hunger was being hurt by environmentalists who insist that genetically modified crops should not be used in Africa. He said it was vital to help small farmers there boost production by all means, including GM crops, fertilizer and chemicals.

"This global effort to help small farmers is endangered by an ideological wedge that threatens to split the movement in two," Gates said at the forum for the prize, which was created by Borlaug, who died in September at the age of 95.

"Some people insist on an ideal vision of the environment," Gates said. "They have tried to restrict the spread of biotechnology into sub-Saharan Africa without regard to how much hunger and poverty might be reduced by it."

Rajul Pandya-Lorch, who has worked for the IFPRI thinktank on food for 22 years, summed it up like this: "I'm a Kenyan. I resent very much people telling us in Africa 'OK, this biotechnology is not good for you.' Well, we have different problems than you do, and if it helps us to solve a problem, we should try it."

Yet, even in Africa, there is suspicion of GM technology. Many countries there, such as Uganda, Zambia and Tanzania, do not allow GM seeds.

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a Kenya-based group set up in 2006 with support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Gates Foundation, targets its programs specifically at small-scale farmers.

Three-quarters of the world's poorest billion people live in rural areas, dependent on farming for their livelihoods.

AGRA's Program for Africa's Seed Systems uses conventional breeding to develop new varieties of maize, cassava, beans, rice, sorghum, and other crops resistant to diseases and pests. The goal is to develop and release more than 1,000 improved crop varieties over the next 10 years.

"We've adopted a small grant mechanism that gets money out to plant breeders on the ground, so that they can, over a period of years, and selections and lots of consultations with local farmers, and access to the world's gene banks, come up with something that's truly novel, much higher yielding and resistant to local diseases and with the taste and texture that local people want," said Joseph DeVries, director of PASS.

"To leap to the GM model at this stage, just seems like it's ignoring a lot of the things that make sense locally, that people can do locally without it," he said.

Kostas Stamoulis, director of the FAO's Agricultural Development Economics Division, said only a few food crops are in wide use in genetically modified forms, and most are not well adapted to the varied and often extreme environmental conditions in sub-Saharan Africa.

Africa has eight or more staple crops that are grown in a wide variety of climates and conditions, making it far more of a challenge than in Asia, where single staple crops, such as rice, are grown in relatively homogenous conditions over wide areas. Stamoulis emphasized the need for all kinds of technology, including traditional plant breeding.

He said there should be a balance between "people that, in my view, make the extraordinarily dangerous proposition that you can feed the world with organics, which is absolutely crazy, and those who are fanatic about GMOs without looking at the full balance of options."

WHERE'S THE MONEY?

The FAO said last month the world needs to invest $83 billion a year in agriculture in developing countries to feed a predicted population of 9.1 billion people in 2050.

To achieve that, both public and private investment on a grand scale is needed, but the trend on the public side has been discouraging. Official development assistance to agriculture plunged 58 percent in real terms from 1980 to 2005, dropping from 17 percent of total aid to 3.8 percent over that period. It now stands at about 5 percent, the FAO said.

Yet, the payoff from agricultural investment, particularly by governments, can be seen in Brazil, a case study in how the Green Revolution transformed a developing country.

Within a few decades it developed from a producer of a handful of cash crops into one of the world's largest producers of food stuffs, with an agriculture business worth nearly 300 billion reais ($172 billion) in annual sales.

Brazil began its Green Revolution in the mid-1970s, with the creation of the government farm research firm Embrapa, which resulted in increased diversification and productivity of crops as well as the expansion of cropland.

Each year Embrapa measures the return to society from research in agriculture. Latest figures show that each dollar spent on agriculture research generates a return of $13.50.

Last year's food crisis, when fears of food shortages gripped grain markets -- sending wheat and rice prices soaring to record highs and sparking hoarding and riots -- was a wake-up call, one that experts hope will translate into sustained investment.

The unrest was a powerful reminder of the risks of food insecurity and helped spur the world's richest nations to promise to spend $20 billion over three years to help small, subsistence farmers improve their productivity.

U.S. President Barack Obama has launched a $3.5 billion hunger and food security initiative focused on agriculture.

Back on the farm in Italy, Oglio said an operation like his can be run on a shoe-string budget, without the sort of subsidies that prop up agriculture, even in the wealthy European Union.

The 87-acre (35-hectare) farm that his parents used to run in a conventional way was on the edge of bankruptcy 20 years ago, burdened by high operating costs and competition in the changing economy of Europe.

With his back-to-nature methods, Oglio turned the farm around and now makes profits.

But that is a very European story. His customers, he admits, are willing to pay more for his healthful products because many of them are environmentalists.

The world's poorest people -- 1 billion of them -- may not have the luxury of making that choice.

Ground-Breaking Moments In Global Agriculture

Date: 11-Nov-09
Country: US
Author: K.T. Arasu

CHICAGO - Organized cultivation of food crops like wheat and barley began about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, what is now the Middle East.

Great strides in agriculture have been made since through innovation, technology and genetics to help feed the world's growing population. Despite this, however, more than 1 billion people went hungry in 2009, 100 million more than last year.

The increase is not a result of poor harvests, but due to high food prices, particularly in developing nations, and lower incomes and lost jobs due to the economic downturn.

Here are some landmark moments in world agriculture:
PlanetArk 11 Nov 09;

* 1701 - Briton Jethro Tull invented the seed drill, an improved plough that was drawn by a horse.

* 1798 - Thomas Malthus predicts impending famine as population growth outstrips food production.

* 1831 - American Cyrus McCormick introduced his mechanical reaper, which was mass produced by 1847 in a Chicago factory.

* 1863 - The U.S. Agriculture Department, which forecasts crop production for major countries across the globe, publishes its first monthly crop report.

* 1866 - Austrian Gregor Mendel laid the foundation of modern genetics by showing traits pass from parents to offspring.

* 1873 - American John Deere designed the first cast steel plough.

* 1881 - First generation of hybrid corn to increase production created.

* 1892 - First successful gasoline engine farm tractor built by American inventor John Froelich.

* 1923 - Commercial hybrid seed corn developed by Henry Wallace, who in 1926 founded the Hi-Bred Corn Co (now Pioneer Hi-Bred International).

* 1934 - Worst drought in U.S. history swept through the Great Plains and covered more than 75 percent of the country.

* 1944 - Normal Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution to increase food production, joins Rockefeller Foundation.

* 1945 - Beginning of the Green Revolution to increase food production through new cultivars, irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides and mechanization.

* 1956 - Mexico becomes self-sufficient in wheat as a result of the Green Revolution.

* 1960 - Philippines government, Ford and Rockefeller foundations establish the International Rice Research Institute in Manila.

* 1968 - William Gaud, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, coins the term Green Revolution. "These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution."

* 1970 - Borlaug is awarded Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.

(Editing by Walter Bagley)

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Cinderella fruit: Wild delicacies become cash crops

Charlie Pye-Smith, New Scientist 10 Nov 09;

IF YOU had come here 10 years ago, says Thaddeus Salah as he shows us round his tree nursery in north-west Cameroon, you would have seen real hunger and poverty. "In those times," he says, "we didn't have enough chop to eat." It wasn't just food - "chop" in the local dialect - that his family lacked. They couldn't afford school fees, healthcare or even chairs for their dilapidated grass-thatch house.

Salah's fortunes changed in 2000 when he and his neighbours learned how to identify the best wild fruit trees and propagate them in a nursery. "Domesticating wild fruit like bush mango has changed our lives," he says. His family now has "plenty chop", as he puts it. He is also earning enough from the sale of indigenous fruit trees to pay school fees for four of his children. He has been able to re-roof his house with zinc sheets and buy goods he could only dream of owning before. He even has a mobile phone.

From Salah's farm we gaze across the intensively cultivated hills which roll away towards the Nigerian border. "Ten years ago, you'd hardly see any safou [African plum, Dacryodes edulis] in this area," says Zachary Tchoundjeu, a botanist at the World Agroforestry Centre's regional office in the Cameroonian capital Yaoundé. "Now you see them growing everywhere."

The spread of African plum through these hills is one small part of a bigger movement that could change the lives of millions of Africans. The continent is home to some 3000 species of wild fruit tree, many of which are ripe for domestication. Chocolate berries, gingerbread plums, monkey oranges, gumvines, tree grapes and a host of others could soon play a role in ensuring dependable food supplies in areas now plagued by malnutrition (see "Future fruits of the forest").

One of the architects of the programme is Roger Leakey, a former director of research at the World Agroforestry Centre. He calls these fruit trees "Cinderella species": their attributes may have gone unrecognised by science and big business, but the time has come for them to step into the limelight.

"The last great round of crop domestication took place during the green revolution [in the mid-20th century], which developed high-yielding varieties of starchy staples such as rice, maize and wheat," says Leakey. "This new round could scarcely be more different." Sparsely funded and largely ignored by agribusiness, high-tech labs and policy-makers, it is a peasant revolution taking place in the fields of Africa's smallholders.

The revolution has its roots in the mid-1990s, when researchers from the World Agroforestry Centre conducted a series of surveys in west Africa, southern Africa and the Sahel to establish which indigenous trees were most valued by local people. "We were startled by the results," says Tchoundjeu. "We were expecting people to point to commercially important timber species, but what they valued most were indigenous fruit trees."

In response to this unexpected finding, the World Agroforestry Centre launched a fruit tree domestication programme in 1998. It began by focusing on a handful of species, including bush mango (Irvingia gabonensis), an indigenous African species unrelated to the Indian mango, African plum - not actually a plum but a savoury, avocado-like fruit sometimes called an afrocado - and a nut tree known locally as njansan (Ricinodendron heudelotii). Though common in the forests and as wild trees on farms, they were almost unknown to science. "We knew their biological names, but that was about all," says Ebenezar Asaah, a tree specialist at the World Agroforestry Centre. "We had no idea how long it took for them to reach maturity and produce fruit, and we knew nothing about their reproductive behaviour." Local people, in contrast, knew a good deal about them, as the trees' fruits have long been part of their diet.

Rural Africans consume an enormous variety of wild foodstuffs. In Cameroon, fruits and seeds from around 300 indigenous trees are eaten, according to a study by researchers at Cameroon's University of Dschang. A similar survey in Malawi and Zambia found that up to 40 per cent of rural households rely on indigenous fruits to sustain them during the "hungry months", particularly January and February, when supplies in their granaries are exhausted and they are waiting for their next harvest (Acta Horticulturae, vol 632, p 15).

Some of these so called "famine foods" have already been domesticated by accident, says ethnoecologist Anthony Cunningham of People and Plants International, an NGO based in Essex Junction, Vermont. He cites the example of marula (Sclerocarya birrea), a southern African tree in the cashew family with edible nutty seeds encased in a tart, turpentine-flavoured fruit. "Long before the development of agricultural crops, hunter-gatherers were eating marula fruit," he says. "They'd pick the best fruit, then scatter the seeds around their camps." These would eventually germinate and mature into fruit-bearing trees, ensuring, in evolutionary terms, the survival of the tastiest. Marula is now fully domesticated and the fruit is used to make juice, a liqueur called Amarula Cream and cosmetic oils.

Hard graft

Likewise, generations of farmers in west Africa have selected and eaten the tastiest varieties of African plum and bush mango, planted their seeds and traded the seedlings - to such an extent that these trees are now widely grown. However, this is a haphazard and unscientific way to domesticate plants.

The planned domestication programme in Cameroon, initially led by Leakey and Kate Schreckenberg of the Overseas Development Institute in London, began with an analysis of the traits most appreciated in the villages. Unsurprisingly, farmers wanted trees that produce lots of large, sweet fruit as quickly as possible. So the researchers asked the farmers to show them their favourite wild trees, and took samples so they could propagate their own. Farmers also received training in horticultural techniques, such as grafting, used to propagate superior varieties.

Initially, many villagers viewed the techniques with suspicion. "People said this was white man's witchcraft, and at first they didn't want anything to do with it," says Florence Ayire, a member of a women's group in Widikum, Northwest Province. They changed their tune, however, once they saw how her grafted fruit trees - created by splicing material from a superior tree onto one which lacks the desired traits - flourished. Now they all want to learn, she says.

This isn't the only technique farmers are learning. They are also being trained how to clone superior trees by taking cuttings - one of the best ways of producing large numbers of genetically identical plants - and how to do marcotting, which involves peeling away bark from a branch and tricking it into producing roots while it is still attached to the parent plant. Once the roots appear, the branch can be cut down and planted in the soil.

Marcotting overcomes an important barrier to domestication for many species: the time it takes a tree to reach maturity and bear fruit. "There's a saying round here that if you plant the nut of a kola tree, you'll die before the first harvest," says Kuh Emmanuel, who helped to establish the centre where Salah was trained. It is still not known how long it takes for a wild kola tree to reach maturity - probably 20 years or more. Using marcots, however, farmers can raise kola trees that fruit after just four years. What's more, says Emmanuel, it results in a dwarf tree, which is important when you consider how many people fall to their death when harvesting fruit.

There's nothing new about the horticultural techniques being used to develop superior varieties of fruit tree in Africa. "What distinguishes this from most crop development programmes is the way it's being implemented," says Leakey. The traditional model involves the development by agribusiness companies of new varieties which can be grown as monocultures in vast plantations. "What's happening with the domestication programme in Cameroon is completely different," he says. "Local farmers play a key role in developing and testing new varieties, and they're the ones who stand to benefit most."

The programme has been a huge success: in 1998, there were just two farmer-run nurseries in Cameroon; now there are several hundred. Many are independent businesses, making significant profits and providing enough trees to transform the lives of tens of thousands of rural families.

Many farmers have increased their income by a factor of three or more, and their spending priorities are nearly always the same: more and better-quality food, school fees, decent healthcare, and zinc sheets to replace leaking thatch. Many also use their new-found wealth to buy land or livestock. One of the most exciting things about the domestication programme, says Tchoundjeu, is the way it is encouraging young people to stay in their villages rather than head to the cities to look for work.

Some projects are evolving into big business. Leakey is particularly impressed by Project Novella, a public-private partnership involving, among others, Unilever, the World Agroforestry Centre and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The project is promoting the domestication of Allanblackia, a group of trees whose seeds contain oil perfect for making margarine. Some 10,000 farmers in Ghana and Tanzania already grow the trees. If all goes to plan, this will rise to 200,000 farmers growing 25 million Allanblackia trees in a decade's time, earning them a total of $2 billion a year - half the annual value of west Africa's most important agricultural export, cocoa.

All of this chimes well with the findings of a recent analysis of the problems facing agriculture worldwide. The latest report by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development suggests that business as usual is not an option. Instead, it argues, agriculture must do far more than simply produce food: it should focus on issues of social, economic and environmental sustainability, concentrating on the needs of the world's smallholders. The report also suggests that more attention should be paid to utilise wild species.

Better than cocoa

A glimpse of how such a future could look can be seen at Christophe Misse's smallholding, an hour's drive north of Yaoundé. In the 1990s, his main crop, cocoa, yielded an income for just three months a year; even with the extra cash he earned as a part-time teacher he struggled to make ends meet. Then, in 1999, he attended a training session held by the World Agroforestry Centre.

Two years later he set up a fruit tree nursery with three neighbours, and they now sell over 7000 trees a year. Their own farms are also much more profitable since they began growing indigenous trees. Some of Misse's most fruitful African plum trees earn 10,000 CFA francs (about $20) a year each, five times as much as his individual cocoa bushes. "I've built a new house," he says proudly, "and I'm making enough money to pay for two of my children to go to private school."

Misse still has some old timber trees shading his cocoa, but these are gradually being replaced by fruit trees, which will provide not just shade but a significant income and a habitat for wildlife. There is another benefit, too. Trees are much more capable of resisting droughts and other climatic shifts than annual crops such as cassava and maize. By planting a range of different tree species, farmers like Misse are taking out an insurance policy for the future.

As he sips a glass of Misse's home-made palm wine, Tchoundjeu muses on the changing landscape. "If you come back here in 10 years' time, I hope - I'm sure - you'll see improved varieties of indigenous fruit tree on every smallholding," he says. "I think you'll see a great diversity of different tree crops and a much more complex, more sustainable environment. And the people will be healthier and better off." It's a story, he believes, that could be repeated across Africa.


Future fruits of the forest

Last year, the US National Research Council published an exhaustive study of the wild fruits of Africa. Drawing on the knowledge of hundreds of scientists, the authors selected 24 species that could improve nutrition and food supplies.

Ten of these species have undergone a degree of domestication, including African plum, tamarind and marula. Of the 14 completely wild species - "essentially untouched by the almost magic hand of modern horticulture" - they identified seven with outstanding potential for domestication.

Given how many tropical fruits have already made their way into western supermarkets, here are some African staples that shoppers may soon find in their shopping cart.

Chocolate berries (Vitex spp)

Scattered across tropical Africa, these trees produce an abundance of blackish fruit with a chocolate flavour.

Aizen (Boscia senegalensis)

A scrawny scrub in the hottest and driest regions, its fruits, seeds, roots and leaves are eaten by desert-dwellers. The yellow, cherry-sized berries are sweet and pulpy when ripe, and harden into a sweet caramel-like substance when dried.

Ebony fruit (Diospyros spp)

Best known for their valuable, jet-black wood, ebony trees also produce large, succulent persimmon-like fruit with a delicate sweet taste.

Gingerbread plums (several genera of the family Chrysobalanaceae)

Distributed throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the plums this tree produces have the crunch of an apple and the flavour of a strawberry.

Medlars (Vangueria spp)

These trees grow well in arid areas and produce fruits that, when dried, have the flavour and smell of dried apples.

Sugar plums (Uapaca spp)

Found in woodlands, this tree bears juicy fruit with a honey-like taste.

Sweet detar (Detarium senegalense)

A leguminous tree of savannahs, its pods contain a sweet-and-sour pulp which can be eaten fresh or dried.

Charlie Pye-Smith is a freelance writer

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Plant experts unveil DNA barcode

Mark Kinver, BBC News 11 Nov 09;

Hundreds of experts from 50 nations are set to agree on a "DNA barcode" system that gives every plant on Earth a unique genetic fingerprint.

The technology will be used in a number of ways, including identifying the illegal trade in endangered species.

The data will be stored on a global database that will be available to scientists around the world.

The agreement will be signed at the third International Barcode of Life conference in Mexico City on Tuesday.

"Barcoding is a tool to identify species faster, more cheaply and more precisely than traditional methods, " explained Patricia Escalante, head of the zoology department at Mexico's National University (UNAM), which is hosting the gathering.

In an effort to limit the impact on the planet's biodiversity, Dr Escalante said it was vital to establish a reliable monitoring system.

"We need an accurate inventory," she observed, "to recognize parasites of medical, economic or ecological importance."

Mexican researchers, she added, were involved in a network to produce barcodes in key taxonomic groups , such as trees, fungi, bees and aquatic insects.

Cracking the code

"Biodiversity scientists are using DNA technology to unravel mysteries, much like detectives use it to solve crimes," said David Schindel, executive secretary for the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (COBL).



"You start with a specimen that has been identified by a specialist, so you have a known species," he explained.

"You then take a tiny piece of tissue; let's say we are dealing with a mosquito, we'd take half of one leg, put it in a little tube and grind it up. You'd then extract the DNA.

"We are only looking at a tiny, tiny part of the whole genome - just 650 base pairs. In comparison, the human genome has three billion base pairs.

"So the next stage is finding that tiny little region, cutting it out and making millions of copies - which is known as magnifying - in order to analyse the region.

"What you get out of that process is a string of 650 letters - and if the process is working then you will get identical sequences or very, very similar sequences for the same species."

The information is then added to a global database, which can be accessed by scientists around the globe.

DNA breakthrough

Researchers have been able to use this technique to identify animal species since 2003. But, until now, the system has not worked for plant species.

It has been necessary to identify a different region of DNA that also provided a number of important characteristics. These characteristics included:

• technologically easy to process

• readily obtainable from degraded material

• variable between species, but not too variable

A team of researchers had been assessing seven potential barcodes. This was then narrowed down to just two possibilities.

The announcement in Mexico will mark the end of the process, with the international biodiversity scientific community reaching an agreement on the best way to identify plants.

Dr Schindel said one of the benefits of the technology was the speed and ease of identifying species.

"Now - within just a few hours - you can get an answer," he told BBC News.

This would lead to much more effective use of resources when it came to tackling problems such as crop pests or the spread of diseases, he explained.

It would no longer be necessary to wait for a specialist botanist to examine the sample in order to get an accurate identification of the species.

The technology would also allow species to be identified from a fragment of material.

Illegally harvested timber is often processed into furniture before being shipped overseas, making it very difficult to assess the origin of the wood.

However, identifying the timber's "DNA barcode" would quickly reveal whether the wood was sourced from a legitimate source.

As part of the International Barcode of Life Project, scientists hope that five million specimens from 500,000 species will be catalogued in the next five years.

Read more!

Global warming won't affect all deltas

Rising sea levels could submerge Mississippi Delta but leave other systems intact.
Richard A. Lovett, nature.com 10 Nov 09;

Whether river deltas become swamped by rising sea levels will depend on a multitude of factors, including the type of soil and the tectonic action of any nearby plates, say researchers.

"In coastal systems we have to think about combined impacts," said oceanographer Richard Feely of the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, at this year's meeting of the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation in Portland, Oregon on 3 November. Every system is different, he says.

In the Mississippi Delta, for example, not only is the sea level rising, but the soils are subsiding, causing the land to submerge more rapidly than the river can deliver new sediment. "It's quite clear that if we try to focus on conserving the outer areas, it's going to be almost impossible" to save the delta, says Carles Ibáñez Martí, director of the Institute for Food and Agricultural Research and Technology's Aquatic Ecosystems unit in Sant Carles de la Ràpita in Spain.

The battle to preserve the delta need not be fought at all, Ibáñez Martí says. The last time that seas were rising rapidly, at the end of the ice age, the Mississippi Delta simply retreated upriver, he explains. One option would be to let the same happen again. That, however, might prove politically unfeasible as people are likely to be unwilling to relocate. If efforts focus on protecting existing buildings from flooding, though, the delta might be squeezed between the rising sea and inland development.
Race against time

A very different combination of factors threatens California's Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, east of San Francisco.

There, the region's natural wetlands were long ago drained and dyked to create intensively farmed islands. Unfortunately, the soils consist mostly of peat, which has slowly oxidized — releasing carbon dioxide — or blown away so the islands are now as much as 8 metres below sea level.

"The system is in a crisis," says Laura Doyle, a graduate student at the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis. "Fortress levees" have to hold back rising seas and protect lands that continue to subside, she says. "The levees are up against time. There are a number of factors making [them] really fragile."

Even if rising sea levels don't eventually overcome the levees, an earthquake might breach many of them at once. One solution might be to deliberately flood some of the islands to restore habitat, particularly for phytoplankton that might rebuild the natural food web.

"The delta is headed toward an inevitable change," Doyle says, "but flooded islands have the potential to be a source of primary [ecological] production."

One delta that seems set to survive is the Danube Delta in the Black Sea. Because it is in a region of tectonic uplift creating central Europe's Carpathian Mountains, says Liviu Giosan, a sedimentologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, the sea level has remained stable for several thousand years. Furthermore, he says, even though upstream dams have cut down its supply, the delta seems to be receiving enough sediment to remain stable.

Read more!

Climate change study shows Earth is still absorbing carbon dioxide

The Earth has developed stores to absorb excessive levels of carbon dioxide, according to a study that challenges the conventional thinking on climate change.
Louise Gray, The Telegraph 11 Nov 09;

The research, by Bristol University, suggests that despite rising emissions, the world is is still able to store a significant amount of greenhouse gases in oceans and forests.

According to the study, the Earth has continued to absorb more than half of the carbon dioxide pumped out by humans over the last 160 years.

This is despite emissions of CO2 increasing from two billion tonnes per year in 1850 to current levels of 35 billion tonnes per year.

Previously it was thought that the Earth's capability to absorb CO2 would decrease as production booms, leading to an accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

But Wolfgang Knorr, author of the new study, found that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has remained just over 50 per cent, with only tiny fluctuations being recorded despite the massive hike in output.

He pointed out that his study relied entirely on empirical data, including historical records extracted from ice samples in the Antarctic, rather than speculative climate change models.

"Previous studies suggested that in the next ten years the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will accelerate because there is a lot less uptake by the Earth, there is no indication of this," he said.

However scientists cautioned that the ability of the oceans and rainforests to absorb carbon dioxide in the future may collapse, leading to a massive increase in temperatures.

Another study released this week found the amount of CO2 released as a result of cutting down the rainforests could have been overestimated. The research by VU University in Amsterdam found emissions from deforestation could be as low as 12 per cent, rather than 20 per cent.

Also, research has found that marine plants in the Antarctic are fighting climate change by absorbing carbon from the atmosphere as the ice melts. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) found that blooms of phytoplankton are thriving in swathes of water left open by the melting of ice shelves and glaciers.

But Dr Wolfgang Knorr cautioned that the world should still be trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as part of any climate change deal decided in Copenhagen next month.

He pointed out that the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is still increasing, even though half is absorbed by the Earth. Also there are fears that the oceans and soil become saturated and are unable to absorb any more CO2 in the future.

"Like all studies of this kind, there are uncertainties in the data, so rather than relying on Nature to provide a free service, soaking up our waste carbon, we need to ascertain why the proportion being absorbed has not changed," he said.

Read more!

From the space race to human race

John Manoochehri, BBC Green Room 10 Nov 09;

Forty years on from humans reaching the Moon, it is time for another epochal moment in history, says John Manoochehri. In this week's Green Room, he calls for us to recapture the spirit that took us into space and use that energy to save the planet.

In July, the UK government launched its Low Carbon Transition Plan, which it described as the best carbon plan of any developed country.

Unnoticed, it was unveiled 40 years to the day after the launch go-ahead was given for Apollo 11, the mission that put a human on the moon, and ended the space race in improbable, epochal success.

Enthusiasm for sustainability is everywhere. But is enough actually being done?

The day following the launch of the low carbon plan, operators managing the switchboards of the three departments responsible for the scheme said the same thing when I asked to speak to someone responsible for "sustainable technologies".

They asked: "Um, what do you mean specifically?" They then went on to tell me that there wasn't anyone particular.

Back to the future

In 2010, the future was set to arrive in style, in the form of the Dongtan eco-city, for at least 50,000 people as part of Shanghai World Expo.

They'll need to hurry up, or phone to tell the world's architects who still swoon over the artistic renderings, since not a single brick has been laid, and planning permission has been revoked.

Same for Europe's most spectacular eco-homes project, Mata De Sesimbra in Portugal. Five years after it becomes a rallying cry? Nothing.

Vision and feel-good are big parts of making change happen. But a great idea did not put men on the Moon 40 years ago; a vast, risky, people-driven and hugely uneconomic undertaking did.

Right now, the sustainability movement is heading for a monumental reality check, within the decade, as governments, businesses and people realise that the contemporary hullaballoo is built on no such undertaking. In fact, sustainability as currently proposed is unsustainable.

Back when the modern environmental movement was making waves for the first time in the 60s and 70s, the driving forces of change were big science, big government and big personalities. The Moon landings was no small part in such confidence at solving big problems.

Nowadays, sustainability is awash with fey compromisers, unburdened by brilliance. And the debate is not about grand governmental stances, or a world led by deep science, still less by ethics.

Rather the technical basis, and the whole worldview, of "planet saving", is essentially economics: if we can sell it (to industry, to a populace, to consumers), or if we can tax it, we'll have a go.

Sure, there's some science here - but it's pretty much limited to counting: enumerating environmental impact - such as the "eco-footprint" - and then trying to work out the "cost".

Specialist "environmental experts" now extol something calling sustainable development, which supposedly knits together environmental, social and economic development in one grand sandwich of wholesomeness.

Unsound foundations

Nothing is meaningless in this context, everything is possible. Leaders in this domain have perfected the art of saying everything and yet nothing.

But as it turns out, conventional economics and sustainable development are two of the most unsound foundations for grand societal change - the type required for sustainability - that have been devised.

Sure, investment, markets, and the consumer economy are possible that don't trash resources and people - in the way that fat, carbohydrate, and sugar don't have to have to make people obese.

Ideologies of social renewal are possible that are modern and inclusive; ie. not very ideological, and rather pragmatic.

Yet to build a sufficient sustainability movement requires much more truly scientific framework of economics, and much more rigourous formulation of sustainable development.

Today's economics is like Ptolemy's model of the solar system: devilishly clever, but oh so wrong.

Sustainable development currently is like a kaleidoscope: all you can do is keep going and enjoy the pretty patterns because there is no conceptual framework, still less a map or timetable that might tell you what it all means.

Both must be redesigned, and both injected with a huge new dose of basic, universal ethics.

It's time to relaunch the movement. The recent report from the Sustainable Development Commission - Prosperity Without Growth - ought to be a bomb under both economics' and sustainable development's easy chairs, with its tough message that growth economics is incompatible this particular planet.

But for the bomb to go off, a new generation of thinkers, agents, designers, and communicators needs to push the current "leaders" aside and set out a new, clear vision and build a truly grand project on truly robust foundations.

That would involve, as a start, colossal investment in a material economy that cycles everything, and compels industry (more than consumers) to design and produce things as part of that cycle.

Regions need to manage all their own energy and resources starting yesterday, through efficiency and building-integrated production.

Cities need to be designed for conviviality and convenience, without so much useless infrastructure - transport, waste, parking - clogging everything up.

Citizens need to take a break from worrying about recycling and climate change (which they have been unfairly dumped with solving) by taking time away from soulless work for unsatisfying consumption.

These are all the biggest, riskiest, most urgent projects the world has ever known. Rock on: who said history was over?

So near, yet so far

Enthusiasts - such as government ministers, hot-flushed with flabby economics and sustainable development rhetoric - will say they are taking steps in the right direction. The Low Carbon Transition Plan guarantees 1.2 million "green jobs" by 2020 - which leaves only 30 million "non-green" jobs. Sustainability isn't exactly rocket science, but if this plan is a step towards it, cobbling together a big firework is a step towards building a Moon rocket.

Right now, the euphoria of the summer has died down anyway.

The pre-Copenhagen climate talks in Barcelona have made it clear just how far governments are from really taking climate change seriously, let alone sustainability in any more systematic sense.

By all means, blame environmentalists and "sustainability experts" for their poor formulation of conception of change, but we must blame politicians for their disgraceful clinging to failed and outmoded concepts of perpetual, materialised, economic growth - and thus their inability to put any more substantial framework on the dynamics and direction of change.

The outcome from Barcelona, and raw data from so many sources, shows that things are not getting better at the scale that counts, despite the green enthusiasm buzzing in our ears.

The real deal of sustainability - truly massive reconfigurations of material culture - has sunk in a quicksand of ultimately unscientific economic mythology, and wilfully incoherent sustainable development generalities.

It's time, once again, to evoke an epochal response to an epochal challenge.

Four decades after the West won the space race with crazy bravery, why can't we do something similar for the human race?

John Manoochehri is guest researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and leads the sustainable design project studio, Resource Vision

He also wrote Consumption Opportunities, the policy on sustainable lifestyles for the UN Environment Programme, and the philosophical basis of the Green Party's manifesto

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

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Antarctica's ice loss helps offset global warming: study

Yahoo News 10 Nov 09;

PARIS (AFP) – Global warming has been blamed for the alarming loss of ice shelves in Antarctica, but a new study says newly-exposed areas of sea are now soaking up some of the carbon gas that causes the problem.

Scientists led by Lloyd Peck of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said that atmospheric and ocean carbon is being gobbled up by microscopic marine plants called phytoplankton, which float near the surface.

After absorbing the carbon through the natural process of photosynthesis, the phytoplankton are eaten, or otherwise die and sink to the ocean floor.

The phenomenon, known as a carbon sink, has been spotted in areas of open water exposed by the recent, rapid melting of several ice shelves -- vast floating plaques of ice attached to the shore of the Antarctic peninsula.

Over the last 50 years, around 24,000 square kilometres (9,200 square miles) of new open water have been created this way, and swathes of it are now colonised by phytoplankton, Peck's team reports in a specialist journal, Global Change Biology.

Their estimate, based on images of green algal blooms, is that the phytoplankton absorbs 3.5 million tonnes of carbon, equivalent to 12.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas.

To put it in perspective, this is equivalent to the CO2-storing capacity of between 6,000 and 17,000 hectares (15,000 and 42,500 acres) of tropical rainforest, according to the paper.

The tally is minute compared to the quantities of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and deforestation, which amounted to 8.7 billion tonnes of carbon in 2007.

But, said Peck, "it is nevertheless an important discovery. It shows nature's ability to thrive in the face of adversity.

"We need to factor this natural carbon absorption into our calculations and models to predict future climate change," he said in a BAS press release.

"So far, we don't know if we will see more events like this around the rest of Antarctica's coast, but it's something we'll be keeping an eye on."

The Antarctic peninsula -- the tongue of land that juts up towards South America -- has been hit by greater warming than almost any other region on Earth.

In the past 50 years, temperatures there have risen by 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit), around six times the global average.

Ice shelves are ledges of thick ice that float on the sea and are attached to the land. They are formed when ice is exuded from glaciers on the land.

In the past 20 years, Antarctica has lost seven ice shelves.

The process is marked by shrinkage and the breakaway of increasingly bigger chunks before the remainder of the shelf snaps away from the coast.

It then disintegrates into debris or into icebergs that eventually melt as they drift northwards.

The Antarctic ice shelves do not add to sea levels when they melt. Like the Arctic ice cap, they float on the sea and thus displace their own volume.

Ice that runs from land into the sea does add, though, to the ocean's volume, which is why some scientists are concerned for the future of the massive icesheets covering Antarctica and Greenland.

Read more!

Maldives fails to convince peers to go "carbon neutral"

Maryam Omidi, Reuters 10 Nov 09;

MALE (Reuters) - A group of developing countries agreed Tuesday to "green" their economies but stopped short of promising to become "carbon neutral" as a way to spur big polluters into action at climate talks next month.

The president of the Maldives had hoped a summit he was hosting would result in a promise by all present to commit themselves to become carbon neutral within a decade.

Instead, the summit's final declaration said: "We will commence greening our economies as our contribution toward achieving carbon neutrality."

"In short, we have been able to agree that development and green technology or less-carbon development is possible," President Mohamed Nasheed said.

The summit was attended by Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, Kiribati, Barbados, Bhutan, Ghana, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania -- countries which are among the lowest emitters of greenhouse gas but are vulnerable to the worst impacts of climate change including desertification, drought, floods and storm surges.

In March, Nasheed outlined plans to make the Maldives the world's first carbon-neutral nation within a decade -- meaning it would not emit a net amount of the gases blamed for causing climate change.

Last month he and his cabinet donned diving gear to hold the world's first underwater cabinet meeting, in a symbolic cry for help over rising sea levels that threaten the Indian Ocean archipelago's existence.

The Copenhagen talks are supposed to find a successor to the 1997 Kyoto climate treaty, but negotiations have stalled as rich and poor nations remain divided on how to share the burden of emissions cuts and how to fund the deal. [nLA713064]

"It's a moral issue, it's a financial issue, it's a social issue and it's a human rights issue," Ghana's environment minister, Sherry Ayittey, told Reuters, insisting developed countries do more. "We expect them to be committed to a reduction in emissions. This is non-negotiable."

The Maldives' battle against extinction
BBC News 11 Nov 09;

Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed hopes nations most vulnerable to climate change will set an example to richer countries. Charles Haviland reports on plans to make the Maldives "carbon-neutral" by 2020.

On a cloudy day in the Baa atoll of the northern Maldives, I took a speedboat ride across a choppy sea.

No part of the Maldives lies more than about 2m (6.5 ft) above sea level. And at least 50 of the 200 inhabited islands already suffer from the problem of coastal erosion. I was heading for one of them.

Thulhadhoo is quite a bleak place, not like the islands given over to luxury resorts. A few thousand families here earn a living from fishing or from selling lacquerwork crafts.

The sandy soil was getting looser, threatening buildings, Mohamed Usman, the island's chief official, told me. Rising sea levels were eroding the coast. Because of this, some jetties had had to be extended - not out into the sea, but extended inland.

At a football pitch a few hundred metres in from the dazzlingly turquoise sea, there are lots of unfinished homes with breezeblocks and graffitti on the walls - messages like "Ronaldo Rox". Beyond the pastel-coloured houses sits the sparkling mosque, Thulhadhoo's most impressive building.

Land eroding

Heavy rains descend on us and we take refuge in a house where children watch television in the front room. A woman in her 80s, Khadija Abdurrahman, welcomes us in.

The land is eroding, eroding, eroding, she laments.

"I can't explain natural things," she says. "But it's getting worse and worse all the time."

She hopes for solutions including land reclamation. But, we are told, land has already been reclaimed in the past and that, too, is eroding.

The Maldives' charismatic young president is adept at highlighting their problem. Last month he staged an underwater cabinet meeting, making world headlines.

In the capital, Malé, the housing and environment minister, Mohamed Aslam, tells a group of visiting journalists that by the year 2100, the Maldives as he knows it may no longer exist.

"Just the sea level rise itself is going to drown most of our islands," he warns.

"We might have some land above water. But the effects of rising sea levels itself is going to cause salinisation of groundwater, which will affect vegetation on land, the livelihood of the people. It's a number of things."

As its own gesture the Maldives now aims to go "carbon-neutral" by 2020. That means switching to renewable energy sources where it can, and balancing the carbon it does emit through measures like planting forests elsewhere.

There is a major problem - the islands' main earner, top-end tourism, cannot be environmentally friendly. All the clients, and all manner of extraordinary luxury foods from Europe and elsewhere, are flown in.

But President Mohamed Nasheed says practices can still change.

"I'm not trying to defend decadence and the good life," he says, laughing. "Of course that's going to harm the environment."

But, he says, rather than changing people's behaviour, better to change the way energy is produced or water is used.

"We can't ask you to stop driving, however much we may want to do that. But we are trying to achieve a balance where it is less harmful."

Green luxury

While critical of rich countries for not doing more about climate change, he also thinks it is useless to expect them to bear the whole burden of curbing carbon emissions.

In Malé, youths make a monotonous city circuit on their motorbikes. Mr Aslam says he wants to wean people away from them, to walking, cycling or clean-energy vehicles. But it will take time.

The water around Malé is dirty with petroleum. The government wants the ferry boats to use cleaner power. It is also setting up a wind farm which it hopes will cut the country's carbon emissions by a quarter - even though it is not a windy place.

Some luxury resorts are also going green. At one, Soneva Fushi - reached by not-very-green sea plane - solar panels are being installed.

Its environmental manager, Anke Hofmeister, shows the BBC a special oven in which waste wood is heated and made into charcoal or into biochar, a fine charcoal they use in gardening as it is said to improve soil productivity.

"The biochar contains the carbon which is not taken up again. So this carbon can be locked in the soil for a few thousand years," she says, explaining that this practice may earn the status of a "carbon sink" to be used in carbon trading.

The resort is also experimenting in using cold sea water, from 300 metres down, to cool the rooms. The water is pumped up and distributed around the resort island, then channelled into fan-coil units, says Ms Hofmeister.

Danger

"So you use the cooling capacity of the sea water which is always readily available, and we use this for air conditioning."

Back on Thulhadhoo, a radio in the street announces prayer time.

These islanders face an immediate danger. With seven surviving children and their descendants, Khadija Abdurrahman would like to see a brighter future.

Initiatives like cleaner technology, the whole carbon-neutral plan, cannot eliminate that peril. The government is already taking other measures, like building artificial and higher islands.

It even has contingency plans to evacuate the entire population somewhere else. But it sees this as an extreme scenario, one it hopes will not be necessary.

In the meantime this tiny country hopes other vulnerable states will follow its lead on carbon emissions, thereby setting an example to richer nations.

Vulnerable countries urge world to cut emissions
Bharatha Mallawarachi Associated Press Google News 11 Nov 09;

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A group of 11 countries vulnerable to adverse effects of global warming urged world leaders Tuesday to reach a binding agreement at the next month's global conference on the issue.

The countries called President Barack Obama and the leaders of emerging economies such as India and China, to personally attend the talks in Copenhagen.

Officials from Bangladesh, Barbados, Bhutan, Ghana, Kenya, Kiribati, the Maldives, Nepal, Rwanda, Tanzania and Vietnam — calling themselves the V11 — pledged at the Climate Vulnerable Forum in the Maldives to committing to greening their economies as their contribution toward cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

On Monday, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives asked fellow developing nations to become "carbon neutral" and lead a drive to reduce global warming.

The group issued a statement called upon all countries to follow the "redouble their efforts at reaching a binding, ambitious, fair and effective agreement" in Copenhagen.

The low-lying Maldives has become an outspoken voice on global warming, even staging an underwater Cabinet meeting last month to promote awareness about rising sea levels. It is feared that rising seas could swamp the Indian Ocean archipelago within a century. Its islands average 7 feet (2.1 meters) above sea level.

Maldives has already pledged to become the world's first carbon-neutral nation and last month announced plans to build a wind farm that can supply 40 percent of its electricity. Carbon neutrality refers to achieving an equal balance of the amount of carbon dioxide — the leading greenhouse gas — emitted and the amount sequestered or offset.

U.N. scientists say rich countries must cut carbon emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 to prevent Earth's temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius (4 degrees Fahrenheit) above its average temperature before the industrial era began 150 years ago. Any rise beyond that could trigger climate catastrophe, they say.

So far, reduction pledges total 11 percent to 15 percent, but those could be seen as negotiable.

Maldives and Other Climate-Vulnerable Countries Call for Action Ahead of Copenhagen Summit
UNEP 13 Nov 09;

Nairobi, 13 November 2009 - Some of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world called for help this week at a meeting organized by the Maldives, a member of the Climate Neutral Network.

Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, Kiribati, Barbados, Bhutan, Ghana, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania, popularly known as the V11, are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, but they are also among the lowest greenhouse gas emitters. Some of them, like the Maldives, could disappear with a century.

The two-day meeting, which ended on 11 November, highlighted their concerns and determination to "green" their economies. The outcome did not quite live up to the expectations the chief organizer President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, who had hoped that the countries attending the forum would commit to become carbon neutral within a decade.

In March, President Nasheed announced plans to make his own country the world's first carbon-neutral nation by 2019 and last month he announced the construction of a wind farm that can supply 40 per cent of the country's electricity.

The President has been an active spokesperson for the island states, many of which are now threatened by rising sea levels. Earlier this year, President Nasheed took part in a public service announcement (PSA) organized by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) which called for world leaders to seal the deal in the climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month.

Shot in six locations and across four continents, the videos launched this September feature President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives; Hollywood actor, Don Cheadle; Nobel Laureate, Professor Wangari Maathai; UN Messenger of Peace, Midori Goto; Animal Planet presenter and environmentalist, Phillipe Cousteau and wildlife film maker, Saba Douglas-Hamilton.

In May, the Maldives became the seventh country to join the Climate Neutral Network (CN Net), a UNEP initiative launched in February 2008 to promote global transition to low-carbon economies and societies. The Climate Neutral Network also includes cities, regions, companies and organizations. Last month President Nasheed staged the world's first underwater cabinet meeting to promote awareness about rising sea levels.

The V11 says that achieving carbon neutrality for developing countries will be very difficulty given their lack of resources. The group is calling upon developed countries to provide money "amounting to at least 1.5 percent of their gross domestic product to assist developing countries to make their transition to a climate resilient low-carbon economy".

The question will be on the table in just three weeks at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

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Cost of extra year's climate inaction $500 billion: IEA

Gerard Wynn, Reuters 11 Nov 09;

LONDON (Reuters) - The world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a major assault on global warming, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.

At United Nations climate talks in Barcelona last week negotiators from developed countries said the world would need an extra six to 12 months to agree a legally binding, global deal to cut carbon emissions beyond a planned December deadline.

The IEA, energy adviser to 28 industrialized countries, said the world must act urgently to put greenhouse gases on a track to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.

Every year's delay beyond 2010 would add another $500 billion to the extra investment of $10,500 billion needed from 2010-2030 to curb carbon emissions, for example to improve energy efficiency and boost low-carbon renewable energy.

"Much more needs to be done to get anywhere near an emissions path consistent with ... limiting the rise in global temperature to 2 degrees," said the IEA's 2009 World Energy Outlook. "Countries attending the U.N. climate conference must not lose sight of this."

U.N. talks meant to agree a deal in Copenhagen in December to extend or replace the existing Kyoto Protocol have struggled to overcome a rich-poor rift on how to split the cost of curbing carbon emissions, for example from burning fossil fuels.

Developed countries accept that they have to take the burden of cutting carbon emissions, but want developing nations to accept binding actions too under a new treaty.

Poor countries want financial help to implement carbon emissions cuts and prepare for unavoidable global warming, including droughts, floods and rising seas.

The IEA report estimated that the world needed to invest an extra $197 billion annually by 2020 to make the necessary emissions cuts in developing countries, compared with a global total of $430 billion by then.

"The Copenhagen conference will provide important pointers to the kind of energy future that awaits us," it said.

To continue present trends of energy demand and burning of fossil fuels "would lead almost certainly to massive climatic change and irreparable damage to the planet," it said.

To implement swinging carbon cuts, on the other hand, would require a huge shift in the world's energy system.

That would raise, for example, the share of non-fossil fuels to 32 percent of total primary energy in 2030, from 19 percent in 2007. The share of the internal combustion engine in new car sales would fall to 40 percent by 2030 from more than 90 percent under current trends.

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Energy demand to rise rapidly if no CO2 deal: IEA

Reuters 10 Nov 09;

LONDON (Reuters) - World energy consumption will rise rapidly over the next 20 years, pushing up costs and increasing greenhouse gases, unless a deal is reached to curb carbon dioxide emissions, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Tuesday.

In its annual World Energy Outlook, the IEA said global energy demand would increase by an average of 2.5 percent per year over the next five years if governments made no changes to their existing policies and measures.

Under these circumstances, which the IEA called its reference scenario, world primary energy demand would rise by an average of 1.5 percent per year over the next two decades.

Oil demand, excluding biofuels, would increase by 1 percent per year to 105 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2030 from 85 million bpd in 2008.

The IEA argues strongly for a global deal at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December to limit greenhouse gases and spells out how sharply use of fossil fuels will increase if policies remain unchanged.

"Fossil fuels remain the dominant sources of primary energy worldwide in the reference scenario, accounting for more than three-quarters of the overall increase in energy use between 2007 and 2030," the IEA said.

Natural gas demand would increase 1.5 percent per year to 4.3 trillion cubic meters (tcm) in 2030, under this scenario.

The main driver of demand for coal and gas would be inexorable growth in energy needs for power generation, it said, forecasting in its reference scenario that world electricity demand would grow by 2.5 percent per year to 2030.

The developing world will see some of the fastest rates of growth with the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) seeing an average annual increase of 2.5 percent in their primary energy demand until 2030.

(Reporting by Christopher Johnson and Barbara Lewis; editing by William Hardy)

Agency Reduces Forecast for Oil Consumption
Jad Mouawad, The New York Times 10 Nov 09;

The International Energy Agency has reduced its long-term forecast for global oil consumption as countries increase the use of alternative energy sources and as the economic crisis slows demand.

The revised forecast, released Tuesday, comes as the energy agency, which acts as an adviser to industrial countries, warned that governments must soon tackle the challenge of climate change by curbing energy demand or risk a catastrophic rise in global temperatures over the next decades.

The revised forecast and the policy prescriptions are contained in the agency’s annual World Energy Outlook. This year, the 698-page publication outlines policies needed to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide that are blamed for global warming.

“Continuing on today’s energy path, without any change in government policy, would mean rapidly increasing dependence on fossil fuels, with alarming consequences for climate change and energy security,” the forecast said.

The agency now expects global oil consumption to grow 1 percent a year in the next two decades, reaching 105 million barrels a day by 2030, from 85 million barrels a day in 2008. That estimate is lower than last year’s forecast for 2030 of 106 million barrels a day. It is also well below the 120 million barrels a day that the energy agency had anticipated a few years ago.

Oil demand could reach only 89 million barrels a day by 2030, the agency said, if the world agrees on stringent limits on their emissions of carbon dioxide.

Part of the report was released last month and was meant to provide a map for policy makers considering how to make significant reductions in the emissions of carbon dioxide.

The agency’s forecasts are based on a reference scenario that assumes no changes in energy policy from governments.

The report also outlines a “450 scenario,” which sets out what collective policies are needed to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million. That is a level that would probably limit the projected rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Government officials from about 190 nations will meet next month in Copenhagen to try to hammer out an international deal to reduce global carbon emissions, and replace the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012. But international negotiators have signaled that an agreement was unlikely to be reached this year in the absence of a broad consensus on how to share the costs of switching to lower-carbon technologies and fuels.

The current energy system is unsustainable. Electricity demand, for example, is expected to rise by 76 percent from 2007 to 2030, and will require almost five times the existing producing capacity currently found in the United States. Much of that new capacity will come from burning coal, whose share in the global energy mix is expected to grow by 2 percentage points to reach 44 percent in 2030.

The economic crisis, the agency said, offers an opportunity to make big strides. As a result of lower economic activity this year, global emissions are expected to fall as much as 3 percent, the steepest decline in 40 years.

The financial crisis has reduced energy demand this year, but it has also curbed investments in new supplies.

In the oil and gas sector, most companies have announced cutbacks in capital spending, as well as project delays and cancellations, the agency said. It estimated that investment budgets for 2009 have been cut by around 19 percent compared with last year, a drop of over $90 billion.

Since October 2008, more than 20 planned large-scale oil and gas projects, involving around 2 million barrels a day of oil production capacity, have been deferred indefinitely or canceled, most of them oil sands projects in Canada. Another 29 projects, totaling 3.8 million barrels a day of capacity, have been delayed by at least 18 months.

The agency’s new forecast for long-term oil demand is also bound to stoke the anxiety of oil producing countries, which have voiced concerns about a global climate deal. Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Counties, who rely on petroleum exports as their main source of revenue, have warned against setting limits on the usage of petroleum based fuels.

Despite the lower forecast, oil is still expected to remain the main fuel in the next decades. Even with a major agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, oil will account for about 30 percent of the total fuel mix by 2030, down from 34 percent today, the agency said.

The cost of reducing carbon emissions — by boosting the investments in renewable power, developing electric vehicle, growing nuclear power, and building carbon capture and storage technology for coal-burning power plants — is high.

But the world will have to spend an additional $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year of delay in an agreement, the agency said.

In its “450 scenario,” energy demand would still grow 20 percent from 2007 to 2030, an average annual growth rate of 0.8 percent, compared with 1.5 percent in the reference case.

The savings would come from more efficient energy usage, increased energy efficiency in buildings, and lower energy demand from industry. In the lower-carbon world, the average emissions intensity of new cars will have to be cut by more than half.

“With a new international climate policy agreement, a comprehensive and rapid transformation in the way we produce, transport and use energy — a veritable low-carbon revolution — could put the world onto this 450-p.p.m. trajectory,” the agency said.

International Energy Agency fails to light the way to a safe climate future
WWF 10 Nov 09;

London: The keenly awaited 2009 World Energy Outlook contains some remarkable analysis but does not light the way to a safe carbon future, WWF said today.

Emissions cuts canvassed in the outlook, the flagship annual publication of the International Energy Agency (IEA), are too small and too slow to keep the world out of the danger zone of unacceptable risks of catastrophic climate change, said Dr Stephan Singer, WWFs Director of Global Energy Policy.

Scientists, the UN and many governments including the G8 group have accordingly endorsed an objective of keeping average global warming less than two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times - an objective WWF maintains would require developed nations cutting their emissions 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.

But IEAs low emissions scenario sees OECD fossil fuel CO2 emissions down just 4.5 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

“The proposed CO2 emissions reductions by the IEA for the energy sector of the rich nations are dismal,” Dr Singer said. “The reductions seen as low carbon by the IEA are less even than the inadequate reductions so far on the table from developed nations for the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen next month.”
Also according to the IEA, global energy emissions would be one quarter more in 2030 than in the 1990 reference year.

"World-wide fossil fuel emissions in twenty years must be on a pathway to be reduced to more than 80% below 1990 levels by mid-century to curtail the climate crisis. The IEA's scenarios violate this trajectory," Dr Singer said.

For WWF, with about two thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions, the energy sector has to lead the way to a low carbon future.

And although its alternative lower emissions scenario is clearly inadequate, WWF is pleased that the IEA identifies energy conservation as the measure with the best potential to bring it about.

“The IEA also finds most of the emissions savings mechanisms it identifies will be cost effective through the saving of fuel costs and this is a useful rebuff to those urging slow action or no action on climate on the basis of costs,” Dr Singer said.

“It is a pity that the IEA couldn’t stay up to date with the science on the level of emissions the atmosphere can safely digest and use this to point the way to a fully renewable power sector by mid-century.”

“What they are suggesting is not only dangerous, but it is much below what is technically possible.”

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What Would Failure at Copenhagen Mean for Climate Change?

The planet's quickening pace toward irreversible climate change grows far more dire if world leaders fail to find a way to stem emissions this December, experts warn.

Douglas Fischer, Scientific American 10 Nov 09;

This is the consequence of failure at Copenhagen: A marked shift in scientific effort from solving global warming to adapting to its consequences, a hodge-podge of uncoordinated local efforts to trim emissions - none of which deliver the necessary cuts - and an altered climate.

Climate experts, scientists and negotiators say that, absent international agreement, the children and grandchildren of those living today will negotiate a world where planetary geo-engineering is a part of daily life, sea-walls defend coastal cities, the world's poor are hammered by drought, floods and famine and our planet is heading toward conditions unseen for the last 100 million years.

The December talks are, in other words, the last, best chance to change course before chaos descends.

"The choice facing the present generation is an awesome one," said former Vice President Al Gore during a speech before the Society of Environmental Journalists last month. "Never before has a single generation been asked to make such difficult and consequential decisions that will have implications for all succeeding generations."

Failure, Gore added, would be "catastrophic" - not only given the urgency of changes already underway, but because it challenges the efficacy of the rule of law as "an instrument of redemption."

Collapse in Copenhagen could not just become an obstacle to further progress, however. It also might force society to confront choices and decisions few in the scientific and policy world want to face.

"Copenhagen is mitigation," said Guy Brasseur, director of the Climate Service Center in Hamburg, Germany. "If that fails, we move to adaptation and geo-engineering."

Adaptation will require hundreds of billions of dollars on the low end. It will force a vast transfer of wealth, technology and aid from industrialized counties to developing ones. That buys no more than a Band-aid for those most at risk, said Saleemul Huq, head of the climate change group at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development.

"We've failed our primary task of preventing harm," said Huq, lead author of the adaptation and mitigation chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fourth assessment report. "Now we are going to be tasked with protecting those most vulnerable to harm. And soon we are going to be confronted with globally catastrophic harm."

"There really is nothing to do but adapt today."

That's where Copenhagen comes in.

The diplomatic gathering, from Dec. 7 to 18, has one goal: create an "ambitious global agreement incorporating all the countries of the world" to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

It will be the 16th in a line of negotiations extending back 20 years, some more successful than others, all aimed at curbing humanity's appetite for fossil fuel.

There is deep pessimism that it will succeed. Deep divides on how best to tackle the problem exist between developed countries. Even deeper divides separate developed from developing worlds.

But there have been surprises before.

At the 2007 talks in Bali, all signs pointed to failure until delegates awoke the day after the talks were to end and discovered key players had worked through the night to reach an agreement.

"You don't know the answer before you actually get there, and very often you don't know the answer before the last couple of days," said Doug Boucher, a climate expert for the Union of Concerned Scientists who has participated at several international talks.

"It's really the extreme pressure of the final deadline that gets countries to make the compromises, make the bargains necessary to get to the final agreement."

And there will be pressure.

Previous negotiations all pointed to 2009 as the year to draw a line in the sand, but it's more than just a diplomatic deadline. By virtually every metric - emissions, deforestation, fuel use, land development, economic growth - business-as-usual projections point to catastrophe.

"Civilization will experience the greatest disruption in its history," said Jeffrey Kiehl, a senior scientist at NCAR's climate change research program. "We're applying a forcing to the planet that it hasn't seen for tens to hundreds of millions of years, ... when there was no ice at either pole."

"I don't think we want to go down that path."

The effect of those forcings is a matter of much speculation and study. What has become increasingly clear is that many of the most sophisticated climate models have underestimated the earth's capacity for abrupt and radical shifts - swings that make many of the worst-case economic and climate forecasts from just a few years ago look almost rosy.

A recent report by the United Nation Environment Programme found many upper-range predictions deemed probable over the long term by its climate change panel two years ago are already occurring.

Author and reporter Dianne Dumanoski noted in her recent book, "The End of the Long Summer," that the only thing certain about the coming century is "its immense uncertainty."

"It will take conscious effort to resist taking refuge either in despair - in the conviction that 'it's too late' - or in the alternative, to bask in groundless, sunny optimism that 'we'll figure out something, because science always does.' "

Addressing this planetary emergency will require a new map, Dumanoski said - a rethinking, in effect, of civilization itself. Social systems must be retooled to withstand severe disruption. Climate change must be seen as far more than just an "environmental" dilemma or even an energy issue. Indeed, she added, humanity must come to see that seemingly small, inconsequential choices in every aspect of modern society can have - and are having - a profound and deleterious impact on the planetary system.

"There is no hope for accommodation in the current path," she said.

****

Efforts to change all this are already falling far short of what many analysts consider necessary, said David Victor, a professor at the University of California, San Diego's Laboratory on International Law and Regulation who studies climate policy. These failings, he wrote in an essay published in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, arise from "a political logic that will soon be difficult to rectify." Deep cuts are costly. They are difficult to sustain, require radical change, and will, for many countries, be hard to administer.

Hence the need, many experts agree, for the pressure of a global agreement.

The status quo isn't working, they add: Countries and companies are eyeing each other warily, floating proposals for tepid cuts with the promise of steeper reductions if the rest of the world antes up as well. Australia in August tried to commit to the globe's most aggressive reduction scheme: a modest 5 percent cut in emissions from 2000 levels by 2020 with a promise of a 25 percent cut if other developed nations went along. It never got out of the country's Senate.

In Washington, D.C., climate legislation has been eclipsed by the health care debate, and key Democratic lawmakers say a far-reaching House bill should be sharply scaled back. California's progressive efforts to reduce emissions have been swamped by budget crisis.

"Countries need to have a sense that other main contributors to the problem ... are moving together toward a solution," said Jennifer Morgan, director of climate and energy policy for the World Resources Institute. "Countries will likely not go to the outer edges of what's possible."

But what's possible? The list of chores is daunting.

Scientists say greenhouse gas emissions must be cut 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 to avoid the worst disruption. By comparison, the maligned Kyoto Protocol called for the industrialized world to trim emissions between 6 and 8 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

Emissions from the 40 industrialized nations agreeing to binding cuts are down five percent - on target to meet Kyoto. But that's only because the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent economic decline of much of the Eastern Europe that has sent emissions in those countries plummeting.

Take out those countries and add developing nations, and global emissions have jumped 10 percent since 1990, according to the United Nations.

What's more, by 2050 the world population is expected to near 9 billion. That's the equivalent of adding 10 more United States to the globe - along with all the roads, fast food joints, sewage treatment plants, factories and power plants, homes and stores that accompany growth.

Indeed, it's the growth that's the problem, most climate experts argue. America's average per-capita carbon footprint is about 20 tons of planet-warming emissions a year. A typical European's is 10 or 12 tons. In China, 4 tons and growing. But some three billion people worldwide emit less than a ton a year. (A sustainable global per-capita footprint - one that avoids the worst warming - is about 4 tons per person, scientists figure.)

Those three billion are the poorest of the poor: they heat with wood, cook with dung, have little or no access to electricity or clean water.

How to let them partake in a First World economy without cooking the planet is another major stumbling block awaiting delegates in Copenhagen.

****

For the scientists, their job in some ways is done. Climate disruption is now a political question, an economics issue, a security threat.

"Clearly it's hard to think how we could better present the case," said Brasseur, the Climate Service Center director. "The science has been very clear."

"It is now up for society to decide."

And signs do suggest society is starting to decide: China is talking with the U.S. on emissions reductions and has launched a Green Revolution with the goal of catching Europe by 2020. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden, who assumed the EU presidency in July, has called on European nations to tax carbon emissions regardless of global negotiations.

There is time, Brasseur said, but not much: If delegates cannot seal the deal in Copenhagen but can make sufficient progress to deliver an agreement within five years, the talks can be considered successful.

WRI's Morgan, who has spent a decade playing key roles at UN climate talks, takes a harder line. After December, there is not enough time to get a treaty ratified and in place by 2012, when Kyoto expires, she said. Countries and industries need to know what market mechanisms and signals will be in place post-Kyoto.

Amid the contention, there is one bright spot: Industrialized countries have realized they have an obligation to help the world's poor, said Huq, the London-based adaptation expert.

Of the many pieces to the climate treaty puzzle, this is the area closest to agreement, Huq said. He is confident Copenhagen will produce some consensus on this point.

"There is simply no way (delegates) can look themselves in the mirror and not do anything about it," he said. "This now is no longer disputed territory."

In some ways, that's the great irony of climate change. So many of the initial impacts from a carbon-intensive lifestyle are first hitting those who use the least amount of carbon: Drought in the Sahel, floods in Bangladesh, changing agriculture patterns in India, parts of Asia and Africa, increased water stress for millions living downslope of the Andes and Himalaya.

That will change, scientists predict, and discussion over how to adapt will move quickly from the Third World to the First.

Soon - absent steep cuts and the pressure of a global treaty - politicians across the United States will confront questions that make budget woes and health care costs seem downright quaint, said Brasseur.

"Where will I get my water? What is my strategy (for adaptation)? .... How am I going to have enough food to feed all of California?" he said, rattling off a hypothetical list.

By then the solutions may carry a frightful cost.

"The later we take action, the more we have (climate) impact," Brasseur said.

"And that impact is going to be irreversible."

This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.

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