Mislabelling drives skate to brink of extinction

Yahoo News 18 Nov 09;

PARIS (AFP) – Due to an 83-year-old error of classification, a species of European skate could become the first marine fish driven to extinction by commercial fishing, according to a study released on Wednesday.

In the 19th century, scientists identified two separate species of the once-widespread European skate, the flapper skate (Dipturus intermedia) and the blue skate (Dipturus flossada).

But an influential study in 1926 argued the two species were in fact one, which prompted a new name, Dipturus batis.

Since then, trawling has massively depleted all types of European skate stocks, with France accounting for more than 60 percent of landings.

New research, led by Samuel Inglesias of France's Museum of Natural History and using molecular analysis of DNA, proves once and for all that the initial classification was correct.

As a result of the overfishing, the flapper skate is on the fast track to being wiped out, the paper says.

"[Without] immediate and incisive action, the species may be in an irreversible decline towards extinction," Inglesias said in a statement.

The blue skate is in sharp decline but is still a viable species, the study says.

Iglesias said the discovery highlights the need "for a huge reassessment of population for the different Dipturus species in European waters."

The study was published in the journal Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems.

Skate may be fished to extinction
Victoria Gill, BBC News 18 Nov 09;

A species of skate could become the first marine fish driven to extinction by commercial fishing, say scientists.

A study reveals that an error in the classification of the species has meant researchers have failed to see just how close to the brink it is.

The French team reports its findings in the journal Aquatic Conservation.

Marine biologist Nicholas Dulvy from Simon Fraser University in Canada says the skate is now "the most precarious marine species on Earth".

The team's genetic studies have revealed that what is referred to as the common skate is actually two clearly distinct species - the flapper skate (Dipturus intermedia) and the blue skate (Dipturus flossada).

The fish were originally categorised separately, but an influential study in 1926 recognised only one valid species - Dipturus batis . This classification has been unchallenged since.

The 80-year error has ensured that fisheries have not been catching what they thought, explained Dr Dulvy, who is also co-chair of the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) shark specialist group.

The result has been that catches of the smaller, more resilient blue skate has entirely masked the decline of the flapper skate.

Disappearing fast

The research team, led by Samuel Iglesias from the Marine Biology Station in Concarneau on the west coast of France, paints a very bleak picture for the future of the flapper skate.

Dr Iglesias and his team spent over a year working with French fisheries and taking DNA samples from the skate that was caught.

His findings finally revealed that the larger D. intermedia species was indeed in serious decline.

Dr Iglesias said: "The threat of extinction for European Dipturus together with mislabelling in fishery statistics highlight the need for a huge reassessment of population for the different Dipturus species in European waters.

"Without revision and recognition of its distinct status the world's largest skate, D. intermedia , could soon be rendered extinct."

Dr Dulvy added: "As far as we can tell, [humans have] not yet driven anything fully to extinction by over-fishing."

He and many other marine scientists are now very concerned that this skate species will be the first.

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Paying More for Flights Eases Guilt, Not Emissions

Elisabeth Rosenthal, The New York Times 17 Nov 09;

In 2002 Responsible Travel became one of the first travel companies to offer customers the option of buying so-called carbon offsets to counter the planet-warming emissions generated by their airline flights.

But last month Responsible Travel canceled the program, saying that while it might help travelers feel virtuous, it was not helping to reduce global emissions. In fact, company officials said, it might even encourage some people to travel or consume more.

“The carbon offset has become this magic pill, a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card,” Justin Francis, the managing director of Responsible Travel, one of the world’s largest green travel companies to embrace environmental sustainability, said in an interview. “It’s seductive to the consumer who says, ‘It’s $4 and I’m carbon-neutral, so I can fly all I want.’ ”

Offsets, he argues, are distracting people from making more significant behavioral changes, like flying less.

In theory, the purchase of carbon offsets is supposed to cancel out the emissions generated by activities like flying or heating office buildings by directing money to programs that reduce emissions elsewhere, like tree-planting in Africa or a hydropower project in Brazil. An airline passenger might volunteer to pay $5 to $40 to offset his flight, with the price linked to distance.

Offsets have played a growing role in the greening of travel because carbon dioxide emissions from airplanes are growing so quickly and there is currently no technological fix that would drastically lower them.

In the United States, dozens of hotels and airlines have embraced such programs in the last year or two. United Airlines became the latest American airline to offer one this summer. Globally, offset programs have grown into a multimillion-dollar industry.

But it has proved difficult to monitor or quantify the emissions-reducing potential of the thousands of green projects financed by customers’ payments, and there are no industrywide standards.

Responsible Travel is not the only organization that has changed its mind about the usefulness of offsets: Yahoo and the United States House of Representatives both ended trial offset-purchase programs this year, concluding that the money was better spent on improving their buildings’ energy efficiency.

Some of the world’s leading experts on the emissions issue have reviewed and rejected purchasing offsets for air travel.

“We’re always looking at it, but so far I’ve decided not to do it,” said Paul Dickinson, chief executive of the Carbon Disclosure Project, a vast nonprofit consortium of companies that have pledged to report and reduce their emissions. For one thing, he said, offsetting the emissions of a flight from London to New York would probably require an extra fee of $200 to $300, far above what any airline is now charging.

And some experts say that emissions from airline travel are simply so large that it may be impossible to offset them.

“Buying offsets is a nice idea, just like giving money to a soup kitchen is a nice idea, but that doesn’t end world hunger,” said Anja Kollmuss, a staff scientist for the Stockholm Environment Institute who is based at a branch at Tufts University.

“Buying offsets won’t solve the problem because flying around the way we do is simply unsustainable,” said Ms. Kollmuss, who has researched airline offsets.

A recent study in Britain concluded that one flight from London to Los Angeles produced more carbon dioxide per person than the average British commuter produces in a year by traveling by train, subway or car.

Airlines defend offsets, even while acknowledging that some projects have not lived up to their promises. For example, mango trees that were planted in India to offset a concert tour by the band Coldplay were found to have died a few years later.

EasyJet, one of Europe’s largest low-cost airlines, did not offer offsets until 2007 — late for a European carrier — because it was trying to figure out how to ensure the money went to the right places, said Oliver Aust, a spokesman.

It now gives passengers the option of offsetting their flight emissions by investing directly in projects that have been approved by a United Nations certification program for reducing emissions.

EasyJet, which was founded in 1995 but has vastly expanded its fleet since 2003, also uses only the newest and most fuel-efficient jets, flies full planes and packs in extra rows of seats, making its estimated emissions per passenger 28 percent lower than more established carriers on the same routes. Some airlines are experimenting with innovations that may someday reduce emissions, like using fuels made with algae rather than crude oil.

Passenger offsets purport to cancel out carbon dioxide emissions ton for ton through investments in green projects. But critics say there is no transparency about how companies measure whether that happens.

For example, many airlines offer investments in tree-planting projects because trees absorb carbon dioxide. But experts say it takes decades for trees to start fully absorbing the gas, making them a questionable offset for airplanes, which emit carbon dioxide. Ms. Kollmuss said the quality of offsets depended on the project. “But if it’s very cheap, it does raise red flags,” she said.

For Mr. Francis of Responsible Travel, the final straw came when he noticed that carbon offsets were being offered by private jet companies and helicopter tour operators, which generate very high emissions per passenger. “The message was, ‘Don’t worry, you can offset the emissions,’ ” he said. “But you don’t really need to see Sydney from the air, do you? And you can travel in a commercial airliner.”

Mr. Francis said he was not advocating an end to flying — Responsible Travel offers tours to Jordan, the Galapagos Islands and China, among other far-flung destinations — but simply more reflection on the environmental impact of such journeys.

Responsible Travel had bought its offsets through one of the best-known offset companies, ClimateCare, which was purchased last year by JP Morgan.

While acknowledging that improved, universal standards for personal airline offsets are needed, Richard Folland, a climate change and energy adviser to JP Morgan, said the offset concept had played an important role in helping to direct money to otherwise unaffordable environmental projects in poorer countries.

“The primary goal is to reduce emissions, but offsets are helpful” in managing the costs, he said, adding, “There has to be a balance struck.”

Mr. Dickinson of the nonprofit Carbon Disclosure Project said that rather than buying offsets he had sharply scaled back on flying and was instead taking trains or conducting meetings by phone or teleconference. He said that if he owned an airline, he would now be diversifying into other modes of transport.

Referring to the recent purchase of a railroad by the investor Warren Buffett, he said, “What does it tell you that the world’s most successful investor is investing in trains?”

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U.S. residents fight for the right to hang laundry

Jon Hurdle, Yahoo News 18 Nov 09;

PERKASIE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Carin Froehlich pegs her laundry to three clotheslines strung between trees outside her 18th-century farmhouse, knowing that her actions annoy local officials who have asked her to stop.

Froehlich is among the growing number of people across America fighting for the right to dry their laundry outside against a rising tide of housing associations who oppose the practice despite its energy-saving green appeal.

Although there are no formal laws in this southeast Pennsylvania town against drying laundry outside, a town official called Froehlich to ask her to stop drying clothes in the sun. And she received two anonymous notes from neighbors saying they did not want to see her underwear flapping about.

"They said it made the place look like trailer trash," she said, in her yard across the street from a row of neat, suburban houses. "They said they didn't want to look at my 'unmentionables.'"

Froehlich says she hangs her underwear inside. The effervescent 54-year-old is one of a growing number of Americans demanding the right to dry laundry on clotheslines despite local rules and a culture that frowns on it.

Their interests are represented by Project Laundry List, a group that argues people can save money and reduce carbon emissions by not using their electric or gas dryers, according to the group's executive director, Alexander Lee.

Widespread adoption of clotheslines could significantly reduce U.S. energy consumption, argued Lee, who said dryer use accounts for about 6 percent of U.S. residential electricity use.

Florida, Utah, Maine, Vermont, Colorado, and Hawaii have passed laws restricting the rights of local authorities to stop residents using clotheslines. Another five states are considering similar measures, said Lee, 35, a former lawyer who quit to run the non-profit group.

'RIGHT TO HANG'

His principal opponents are the housing associations such as condominiums and townhouse communities that are home to an estimated 60 million Americans, or about 20 percent of the population. About half of those organizations have 'no hanging' rules, Lee said, and enforce them with fines.

Carl Weiner, a lawyer for about 50 homeowners associations in suburban Philadelphia, said the no-hanging rules are usually included by the communities' developers along with regulations such as a ban on sheds or commercial vehicles.

The no-hanging rules are an aesthetic issue, Weiner said.

"The consensus in most communities is that people don't want to see everybody else's laundry."

He said opposition to clotheslines may ease as more people understand it can save energy and reduce greenhouse gases.

"There is more awareness of impact on the environment," he said. "I would not be surprised to see people questioning these restrictions."

For Froehlich, the "right to hang" is the embodiment of the American tradition of freedom.

"If my husband has a right to have guns in the house, I have a right to hang laundry," said Froehlich, who is writing a book on the subject.

Besides, it saves money. Line-drying laundry for a family of five saves $83 a month in electric bills, she said.

Kevin Firth, who owns a two-bedroom condominium in a Dublin, Pennsylvania housing association, said he was fined $100 by the association for putting up a clothesline in a common area.

"It made me angry and upset," said Firth, a 27-year-old carpenter. "I like having the laundry drying in the sun. It's something I have always done since I was a little kid."

(Editing by Mark Egan and Paul Simao)

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South Sulawesi can be Malaysia's new rice bowl, says PM

New Straits Times 19 Nov 09;

MALAYSIA has identified South Sulawesi as the country's new rice bowl area where it hopes to tap this Indonesian province's resources and availability of land.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said the government was looking at ways to work with Indonesia on this to boost Malaysia's food security and as a response to the offer made by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during his visit recently.

He said South Sulawesi Governor Syahrul Yasin Limpo would visit Malaysia soon to discuss a possible collaboration.

Najib said the government was considering either of two ways to carry out the plan.

One would be through contract farming where Malaysia would use the output by padi farmers there.

The other, he said, would be for the country to develop a new area in South Sulawesi as a major padi-planting area.

Najib said South Sulawesi, which has 670,000 head of cattle, would be the likely place for Malaysia to advance its cattle-farming sector.

"It is our intention to advance our cooperation in the agriculture field as this is related to food security.

"South Sulawesi has a huge potential for this agriculture development plan," he said before departing for Kuala Lumpur at the end of his day-visit here to celebrate the 689th anniversary of the Gowa (ancient Bugis government) administration.

He was accompanied by his wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor and Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Seri Dr Maximus Ongkili.

During the visit, Najib witnessed the signing of three memoranda of understanding between three agencies under the ministry with Hasanuddin University.

The MoUs, for advancements in research and technology, were signed by Mimos, Sirim and Technology Park Malaysia.

During his visit in May, Najib had stressed the importance of Ma-laysia and Indonesia remaining "best friends" regardless the circumstances as their geo-political position made them key to the strength of Asean and east Asia.

Najib and his entourage were the guests of honour at the anniversary celebrations.

He is a celebrated figure in South Sulawesi because of his Ma-kassar-Bugis lineage which can be traced back to the 11th descendent of the local historical figure and hero, the late Sultan Hasanuddin of Gowa.


Addressing a crowd of 5,000 people, Najib described his third visit to Gowa as the return of the "Gowa son" to his ancestors' land.

During his visit in 2005, he was bestowed the title of Mappadulung Daeng Mattimung Karaeng Sanrobone.

Najib said: "This is my history and I am proud of it.

"History has separated us with vast oceans and land, but it cannot separate us in our blood ties, common culture, religion and spirit.

"These are commonalities that serve to make our relationship stronger."

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Farmers Face Challenges of Climate Change in Indonesia

Emmy Fitri Jakarta Globe 18 Nov 09;

Farmer Kamsari Turahim, from Santing, Indramayu in West Java, said he could no longer rely on the traditional patterns of rice cultivation because the rain was now much less predictable and the dry seasons lasted longer than ever.

For Kamsari, the old ways of working, where farmers planted their seedlings in mid-November and harvested the crop after about 115 days, are no longer the norm.

Over the last three years, Kamsari said, farmers in his village have seen crops fail because downpours occurred in the middle of the rice season and the rainwater soaked the young plants, devastating the farmers’ hope for a decent return on their seasonal Rp 3 million ($320) investment.

“For three seasons we’ve been forced to harvest earlier than normal, which means we’ve been getting a poor quality of rice. Our income has decreased by more than 50 percent,” he said.

In an effort to be better able to predict the changing weather, the farmers are combining their own knowledge and skills with modern technology.

The farmers came up with a simple method to measure rainwater volume. They took some used tin cans, each the size of an average bucket, nailed them to wooden rods and placed them in the middle of their paddy fields.

“The cans have to be placed in the open, with no trees or other structures nearby,” Kamsari said of his humble invention, which he affectionately calls “teknologi kaleng,” or “tin-can technology.”

By using the cans, farmers can more accurately keep track of rain patterns, which gives them early warning signs of possible flooding.

The Netherlands government has also chipped in, supplying the Indramayu farmers with sensors to measure soil humidity.

The farmers started using the sensors in early October, placing them in 50 locations around the paddy fields, covering a total area of 200 square meters.

“Getting the right measurements for the weather, soil humidity and the rainwater volume gives us a better idea of the best time to begin planting,” Kamsari said.

The World Bank, in a 2007 report titled “Indonesia and Climate Change: Current Status and Policies,” said that the country is vulnerable to climate change, which impacts mainly through prolonged droughts and unseasonal heavy downpours and floods.

The report said that global warming could increase temperatures and shorten yet intensify the rainy season.

These conditions, according to the report, could lead to changes in water supply and soil moisture, which would negatively impact agriculture and therefore food security. Climate change is also likely to reduce soil fertility by 2 percent to 8 percent, resulting in fluctuating rice yields, it said.

Global warming will also cause sea levels to rise, the report said, inundating productive coastal zones and reducing farming in these communities.

Be a Free-Range Chicken

The government, according to Gatot Irianto, the head of research and development at the Agriculture Ministry, has anticipated the impacts of climate change in the agricultural sector by, in the case of rice crops, preparing rice species better able to resist abnormal weather patterns.

The ministry has introduced at least three species of paddy that can survive at least a week of flooding. “Ideally the paddy should be able to tolerate more than a week as it sometimes takes weeks for the water to recede,” Gatot said.

But most important, he said, farmers must have a “healthy” attitude toward changes that are often beyond their control. He praised the efforts of the Indramayu farmers who are trying to cope with the shifting conditions by using their simple invention.

“Don’t be a broiler chicken, be an ayam kampung [free-range chicken],” he said, explaining that ayam kampung are fighters and survivors. “Broiler chickens, on the other hand, are handfed and find it hard to adjust to new environments.”

Gatot said that compared to farmers in Africa, Indonesian farmers were lucky. He cited the 900 millimeters of rain Indonesia received each year, “enough water to irrigate the rice fields, unlike Tunisia, which only gets 300 millimeters per year.”

He was speaking at a recent workshop on “people and adaptation to climate change,” which was jointly organized by the Civil Society Forum for Climate Justice and Oxfam.

One of the problems with climate change, Gatot said, is that it can’t be generalized because its impacts are unique in each region. Farmers in regions that get more rain than before need to plant rice that is resistant to floods, while in regions that experience longer dry spells than in the past, rainwater catchments have to be constructed.

“We can’t use the same theories on weather and planting that our ancestors used because things are changing,” he said. “It’s better to rely on technologies, if there are any, or other innovations, both big and small.”

Though farmers have been urged to leave behind farming traditions that date back centuries, Gatot said his office was trying to put together a database of best practices from “local geniuses,” which may be able to be replicated in other areas.

As an example, he cited the “subak,” or Balinese traditional irrigation system.

“The Balinese irrigation system is a good example,” Gatot said. “It is integrated with their social and cultural systems.”

Despite the challenges, Gatot remains optimistic, saying that if urbanites continue eating rice three times a day, “farmers can still work and still hope.”

“I have long believed that one thing is certain about climate change — everything becomes uncertain. And it is us who need to adjust to the new conditions.”

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25 years after Live Aid, Ethiopia tries to cover up a new famine

Francis Elliott, The Times 18 Nov 09;

It wasn’t famine that killed Jamal Ali’s mother. She died in a cholera outbreak that swept through their Ethiopian village when at last the rains came. Twenty-five years later Jamal, now a parent himself, is lining up for handouts in a food distribution centre in Harbu, Amhara, His prematurely aged face, hollow with hunger, creases further when asked about this unwelcome return. “It is a very bitter feeling. No one likes this begging. I am ashamed,” he said.

Up a steep, dusty track from Harbu to Chorisa village the tiny, duncoloured terraced fields bear witness to the third poor harvest in a row. This village is supposed to be an aid showpiece but even here fields of failed cereal crops are being turned over to lean-looking cattle.

A villager strips an ear of the cereal crop tef and cups the inedible seed in her hand for a moment before casting into a relentlessly sky. It’s not that the rains didn’t come, she said — they came just at the wrong time. The field was supposed to yield 500 kilograms of cash crop; now it might just save a few cows from starvation.

The UN warns that 6.2 million Ethiopians will need some sort of food aid in the coming months. The Government also seems highly sensitive to the idea that it needs help. Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister, would rather the world took notice of his position representing Africa in the climate change negotiations next month than his country’s never-ending dependency on food aid.

In Addis Ababa Ethiopian and Western officials voice disapproval of doom-laden reports that fail to acknowledge the progress being made, or the differences in scale between the famine of 1984, which killed a million people, and the situation today.

In private they acknowledge that Mr Meles and his Government are deliberately frustrating and delaying official assessments of the scale of the country’s humanitarian needs and blocking access to some areas where the situation is worst.

The latest UN estimate, to be released this Friday, is due to revise its figure upwards to nine million for those who will need help. Arguing that the definition of those in need is too broad — it includes those who are in a position to sell assets to buy food — the Government wants to change the way the figures are calculated to reduce that figure to 5 million.

Donor countries and the UN fear that counting only the truly desperate is a ploy that risks understating the true scale of the crisis. There are also allegations that food aid is being withheld from the regime’s opponents.

Criticism of Ethiopia has been muted by its success in improving local healthcare and expanding education, alongside its strategic importance in the fight against Islamic extremism in the Horn of Africa. Britain, which gives the country £200 million a year, and is Ethiopia’s second-largest bilateral donor, is stepping up the pressure on what was once regarded as its showpiece partner in Africa, amid growing concerns about what could happen in the coming months.

“The Government has just got to embrace the crisis and not be frightened of the statistics,” Gareth Thomas, a minister with the Department for International Development, said yesterday. “It is different from 1984 but there’s still huge need. There’s got to be a recognition that if we are going to stop children from being malnourished and keep people alive we have got to have accurate information and we’ve got to have it in a timely manner.”

Speaking before a meeting with Mr Meles, Mr Thomas said that he also intended to raise credible reports that aid was being withheld from opponents, but insisted he was satisfied that British aid was getting through. His main message, however, was that the Government had not yet grasped the urgent need for reform. The population, about 35 million in 1984, is now about 80 million and will have doubled again by 2050. At the same time, according to some estimates, most Ethiopian agriculture is still less productive than that of medieval England.

Mr Meles blames climate change for the erratic rainfall that has led to three successive poor harvests. The state’s ownership of land and its failure to provide seeds and fertiliser is at least as a big a factor, according to observers.

Similarly, the Government has overseen the building of an impressive road network — but in the absence of a thriving private sector and a more liberalised economy the traffic, other than convoys of aid vehicles, is light.

Two million Ethiopians a year are moving into cities as pressure on the land and education increase, a movement that threatens to overwhelm the state’s efforts to provide housing and jobs.

More than half of Britain’s annual aid budget of £117 million goes on helping to fund work schemes that keep 7.5 million Ethiopians out of the food distribution centres. With less than 5 per cent of the population becoming fully self-reliant in most areas each year, the dependency on foreign aid threatens to increase not diminish.

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Four ways to feed the world

Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist 18 Nov 09;

IT IS humanity's oldest enemy. Despite all our science, a sixth of people in the developing world are chronically hungry. At a summit in Rome this week, world leaders reaffirmed a pledge to end hunger "at the earliest possible date".

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) wanted them to promise to end hunger by 2025, but the delegates declined. They said instead that they would keep trying to meet their previous goal: to halve chronic hunger from 20 per cent of people in developing countries to 10 per cent by 2015 (see graph). But can they? Based on their performance so far, the FAO considers it "unlikely".

That, agricultural experts tell New Scientist, is because governments have broken their promises and slashed aid budgets for agriculture. The hungry poor fell to 16 per cent in 2007, mainly thanks to Asia's economic boom, but recession and soaring food prices pushed it back to 17 per cent in 2008.

"Ending hunger by 2025 is not realistic," says Joachim von Braun of IFPRI, a food-policy institute in Washington DC. "Halving it might be, but it requires sustained action."

It gets worse: global population is set to grow to 9.1 billion by 2050, while global warming will have a serious impact on farming. What can be done?

The FAO says feeding 9 billion people will require a near-doubling in food production. All nations will have to take part, but attention will be focused on poor countries, where there is most room for improvement and where better farming will give poor farmers income to buy food. The FAO says farming investment in poor countries must grow from $142 billion per year to $209 billion.

Agricultural research must also increase. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) - the international, mainly government-funded labs that perform farm research for poor countries - says agricultural R&D spending for developing countries needs to grow from $5.1 billion to $16.4 billion per year by 2025. Its researchers say that in theory, given funds, they can boost agriculture enough to double food production, although global warming may make this impossible. These are their top priorities.
1 Hold on to water

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says irrigated areas must expand by 11 per cent by 2025, yet the ancient aquifers that feed much of the world's food production are running dry.

Johan Rockström of the Swedish Resilience Centre in Stockholm says we need to rethink water. "Blue" water, which flows in streams, is the usual basis for farm planning yet accounts for just 5 to 15 per cent of the water flowing through farming systems. The rest, "green" water, is either lost through run-off or evaporation or passes usefully through crops. There are several ways to capture more of this green water in crops, including soil-covering mulches, terraces, and underground tanks filled by the run-off from tropical downpours. In parts of Kenya and China such tanks can get a crop through the dry spell that frequently follows a downpour.

Mapping the potential for combining all of these approaches shows that the largest untapped potential to improve water productivity is in the savannahs, says Rockström. This is sometimes counter-intuitive, he adds. "Dry Namibia and Botswana have more than enough green water to feed themselves."
2 Stop ploughing

For 1000 years, farmers have turned over the top layer of soil to bury and kill weed seeds. This is expensive, damages soils and releases greenhouse gases.

Most maize and soya growers in the Americas have abandoned the plough for "no-till" farming: they merely scratch furrows in the ground to plant their seed and handle weeds with herbicides and herbicide-resistant genetically modified crops.

But farmers do not need those if they smother weeds with organic residue such as straw, and rotate crops to frustrate pests, says Bram Govaerts of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) in Mexico, a CGIAR lab. This is known as conservation agriculture, and besides conserving soil, nutrients and energy, it cuts water loss. Govaerts has been managing experimental plots in Mexico using these methods, and finds that conservation agriculture can yield as much as traditional agriculture in good years, and even more during drought.
3 Go back to basics

Creating high-yielding seeds is only worthwhile if farmers have access to them, and can sell their produce for a profit. "There are varieties of maize that resist climate stress or disease, but how do you get them to farmers?" asks Prabhu Pingali, deputy head of agriculture at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Nerica rice is a case in point. This dryland variety was bred in the 1990s by CGIAR scientists who crossed Asian rice with an African species. Nerica competes better with weeds than other varieties, yields more and contains more protein. But few African farmers have heard of it.

Government services that taught farmers new techniques were dismantled during the debt crisis of the 1980s, says Papa Seck, head of the CGIAR's African Rice Center in Cotonou, Benin. "We need them back."

Even if they have access to better seed varieties, African farmers often don't invest in boosting production because they don't have access to markets and therefore cannot sell their extra crops for a profit. And sold or not, crops are often poorly stored and lost to rot: half the bananas grown in Kenya are lost each year, says Peter Hartmann of IITA, CGIAR's tropical agriculture lab in Ibadan, Nigeria. He says Africa would not need imported food aid if it could use all the crops it produces.

You have to look at the whole food system to boost production, says Hartmann. For instance, IITA bred higher-yielding, disease-resistant cassava and helped set up factories to grind the crop into flour; but then discovered uptake was limited because there was limited transport: cassava grows in southern Nigeria, the trucking industry is in the north. After publicity brought truckers in, production grew from 35 million to 45 million tonnes, on less land, from 2004 to 2007.
4 Boost yields

Mark Rosegrant of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) calculates that crops that will yield 25 per cent more food would boost African food production more than doubling irrigation would. It might also be easier. "We have tremendous options to enhance yields," says Hans Braun, head of wheat at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

Last week the world's wheat scientists launched a consortium to raise wheat yield by genetically re-engineering the crop's photosynthesis, no less. "It is inefficient compared with some plants," says Braun. "Improvements are feasible, and will dramatically increase water efficiency, heat tolerance and yield." They plan to equip wheat with more efficient variants of the key photosynthetic enzyme rubisco, and with suites of genes to convert it from the C3 photosynthetic system to the C4 system found in maize, which fixes more carbon per unit of light. Meanwhile, CGIAR's International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines is developing C4 rice.

Braun says the key is money. The yields of new varieties of maize are climbing twice as fast as yields of rice and wheat. This is because maize is bred mainly by private companies, which invest $1.5 billion a year in it. Wheat and rice breeding, by contrast, is done mostly in government labs. Wheat gets only about $350 million a year. Apart from Chinese hybrid rice varieties, rice yields have been stagnant for years.

Read more!

60% of Philippines population vulnerable to tsunamis

Estrella Torres, Business Mirror 18 Nov 09;

THE Philippines needs to relocate more than half of the people living in coastal areas as they face tsunamis and disasters linked to climate change, according to a marine biologist.

Former environment secretary Angel Alcala, a marine biologist, who delivered the keynote address of the launching of the United Nations State of World Population on Wednesday said the Philippines has four tsunami areas where the “Earth’s lithospheric plates are [constantly] interacting.”

He said the tsunami-prone areas include south Negros Island; the Cotabato Trench, where 7,000 people were killed in the tsunami in 1976; the Philippine Deep; and the Manila Trench, which starts from the west side of Mindoro Island.

“At least 60 percent of the country’s population live in coastal areas, and they are the most vulnerable to storm surges, strong winds, heavy rainfall and tsunamis,” Alcala said in a press briefing at the launch of the UN State of World Population Report, titled “Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate.”

He said strong typhoons similar to Ketsana and Parma (local names Ondoy and Pepeng) could again hit the country, and a larger part of the population would be affected if the people living in coastal areas were not relocated.

Alcala said the Philippines is also the most vulnerable to facing disasters among the countries in the coral triangle, particularly because more than half of the nation’s population live on the coasts.

The coral triangle refers to the waters off Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, the Philippines and Timor Leste.

He also said the impact of disasters related to climate change will also be more destructive as many subdivisions and housing projects are sitting in unstable reclaimed lands.

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Slower population growth to help environment: UN study

Richard Ingham Yahoo News 18 Nov 09;

PARIS (AFP) – Braking the rise in Earth's population would be a major help in the fight against global warming, according to an unprecedented UN report published on Wednesday that draws a link between demographic pressure and climate change.

"Slower population growth... would help build social resilience to climate change's impacts and would contribute to a reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions in the future," the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) says.

Its 104-page document emphasises that population policies be driven by support for women, access to family planning, reproductive health and other voluntary measures.

"It really is the first time that a United Nations agency has looked hard at the connections between population and climate change," lead researcher Bob Engelman, vice president for programmes at the green group Worldwatch Institute, told AFP.

"People are at the root of the problem and at the solution of it, and empowerment of women is the key."

The report, the 2009 State of World Population, paints a grim tableau of the peril of climate change and the likely impact on humans, in terms of floods, drought, storms and homelessness.

But it notably puts distance between a decades-long tradition in the UN arena whereby population growth and its part in environmental destruction were rarely -- if ever -- evoked.

"Fear of appearing supportive of population control has until recently held back any mention of 'population' in the climate debate," the document admits.

Things, though, are starting to change. More than three dozen developing countries have already included population issues in national plans on climate, it says.

Negotiators, including the European Union (EU), have tentatively suggested that the question be considered in talks, designed to culminate in Copenhagen next month, for a 192-nation post-2012 global climate pact.

Today, the world's population stands at around 6.8 billion. By mid-century, it will range between 7.959 billion to 10.461 billion, with a mid-estimate of 9.15 billion, according to UN calculations.

The difference between eight billion and nine billion is between one and two billion tonnes of carbon per year, according to research cited in the report.

That would be comparable to savings in emissions by 2050 if all new buildings were constructed to the highest energy-efficiency standards and if two million one-gigawatt wind turbines were built to replace today's coal-fired power plants.

"[P]opulation growth is among the factors influencing total emissions in industrialised as well as developing countries," it says.

"Each person in a population will consume food and require housing, and ideally most will take advantage of transportation, which consumes energy, and may use fuel to heat homes and have access to electricity."

Mitigating population rise would have a double benefit, it says.

It firstly reduces greenhouse-gas output, especially if the decline occurs in developed countries, whose per-capita emissions are up to 10 times those of poor countries.

And it also helps countries -- especially poor nations with high population growth -- adapt to the impacts of climate change.

"The growth of population can contribute to freshwater scarcity or degradation of cropland, which may in turn exacerbate the impacts of climate change," says the report. "So too can climate change make it more difficult for governments to alleviate poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals."

The report says taking demographics into account can help national policies and the quest for a UN climate agreement.

Women are not only more vulnerable than men to the effects of climate change but also hold the key to helping resolve it through fertility control and involvement in the economy, it adds.

Thus helping women will entail access to reproductive health care, education and gender equality.

UN: Fight climate change with free condoms
Maria Cheng, Associated Press Yahoo News 18 Nov 09;

LONDON – The battle against global warming could be helped if the world slowed population growth by making free condoms and family planning advice more widely available, the U.N. Population Fund said Wednesday.

The agency did not recommend countries set limits on how many children people should have, but said: "Women with access to reproductive health services ... have lower fertility rates that contribute to slower growth in greenhouse gas emissions."

"As the growth of population, economies and consumption outpaces the Earth's capacity to adjust, climate change could become much more extreme and conceivably catastrophic," the report said.

The world's population will likely rise from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050, with most of the growth in less developed regions, according to a 2006 report by the United Nations.

The U.N. Population Fund acknowledged it had no proof of the effect that population control would have on climate change. "The linkages between population and climate change are in most cases complex and indirect," the report said.

It also said that while there is no doubt that "people cause climate change," the developing world has been responsible for a much smaller share of world's greenhouse gas emissions than developed countries.

Still, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, the U.N. Population Fund's executive director, told a news conference in London on Wednesday that global warming could be catastrophic for people in poor countries, particularly women.

"We have now reached a point where humanity is approaching the brink of disaster," she said.

In three weeks, a global conference will be held in Copenhagen aimed at reaching a deal to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which required 37 industrial countries to cut heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.

On Wednesday, one analyst criticized the U.N. Population Fund's pronouncements as alarmist and unhelpful.

"It requires a major leap of imagination to believe that free condoms will cool down the climate," said Caroline Boin, a policy analyst at International Policy Network, a London-based think tank.

She also questioned earlier efforts by the agency to control the world's population.

In its 1987 report, the U.N. Population Fund warned that once the global population hit 5 billion, the world "could degenerate into disaster." At the time, the agency said "more vigorous attempts to slow undue population growth" were needed in many countries.

According to Boin, "Numerous environmental indicators show that with development and economic growth we are able to preserve more natural habitats. There is no causal relationship between population density and poverty."

In this month's Bulletin, the World Health Organization's journal, two experts also warned about the dangers of linking fertility to climate change.

"Using the need to reduce climate change as a justification for curbing the fertility of individual women at best provokes controversy and at worst provides a mandate to suppress individual freedoms," wrote WHO's Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum and Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan.

____

On the Net:

http://www.unfpa.org/

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Dutch approve project to store CO2 underground

Yahoo News 18 Nov 09;

THE HAGUE (AFP) – The Dutch government said Wednesday it had approved the experimental below-ground storage of excess CO2 to curb damaging emissions, dismissing concerns of residents who live on top of the project.

The test project would kick off from 2012 with CO2 stored in a spent natural gas field with a capacity of 0.8 megatonnes underneath the eastern town of Barendrecht, a government statement said.

"After the CO2 has been stored there for several years, an evaluation will be done," it said.

"Only if no problems have arisen by then will authorisation be given for storage at a second, larger field... with a capacity of nine megatonnes."

Shell plans to capture and store at Barendrecht CO2 emitted from its refinery at the Port of Rotterdam. The project, the total cost of which was not revealed, will be subsidised by the Dutch state to the tune of 30 million euros.

The municipality of Barendrecht, provincial authorities and inhabitants, concerned about the risk of explosion and earth movement, are opposed to the project and vowed Wednesday to resist it.

"The municipality does not accept the decision," said a statement from Barendrecht, saying it hoped the move would be overturned by parliament, failing which the town would go to court.

"We will not cooperate with the issuing of plans and permits," said the statement, accusing the government of "being blind to the concerns of inhabitants of Barendrecht", thousands of whom live on top of the gas fields.

The government said "the capture and storage of CO2 is essential as a transitional technology to limit climate damage."

The Netherlands, it said, had a storage capacity of some 800 megatonnes under land and another 800 megatonnes under sea.

"This will allow us to store 40 megatonnes per year for 40 years, the equivalent of 20 percent of our current annual CO2 emissions."

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Seas Grow Less Effective at Absorbing Emissions

Sindya N. Bhanoo, The New York Times 18 Nov 09;

The Earth’s oceans, which have absorbed carbon dioxide from fuel emissions since the dawn of the industrial era, have recently grown less efficient at sopping it up, new research suggests.

Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels began soaring in the 1950s, and oceans largely kept up, scientists say. But the growth in the intake rate has slowed since the 1980s, and markedly so since 2000, the authors of a study write in a report in Thursday’s issue of Nature.

The research suggests that the seas cannot indefinitely be considered a reliable “carbon sink” as humans generate heat-trapping gases linked to global warming.

The slowdown in the rise of the absorption rate resulted from a gradual change in the oceans’ chemistry, the study found. “The more carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs, the more acidic it becomes and the less carbon dioxide it can absorb,” said the study’s lead author, Samar Khatiwala, a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

“It’s a small change in absolute terms,” Dr. Khatiwala said. “What I think is fairly clear and important in the long term is the trend toward lower values, which implies that more of the emissions will remain in the atmosphere.”

To calculate the slowdown, Dr. Khatiwala and his collaborators created a mathematical model using tens of thousands of measurements of seawater collected over the past 20 years, including temperature, salinity and the presence of manufactured chlorofluorocarbons as a reflection of industrial activity.

They then worked backward with the data to create a formula that estimated the accumulation of human-generated carbon dioxide in the oceans from 1765, the opening of the industrial era, to 2008.

Even as human-generated emissions of carbon dioxide increase, the oceans’ uptake rate growth appears to have dropped by 10 percent from 2000 to 2007, Dr. Khatiwala said.

The last major research effort to measure industrial carbon uptake in the oceans was published in a 2004 Science study led by Christopher Sabine.

His methodology was different but arrived at similar conclusions.

Dr. Sabine used carbon dioxide measurements taken by more than 100 cruise ships to come up with a single figure: the oceans’ total industrial carbon uptake until 1994.

Dr. Khatiwala’s approach provides estimates of ocean carbon storage for every year from 1765 to 2008.

“Sabine’s estimate was like a single fuzzy snapshot,” Dr. Khatiwala said. “We’ve gone from that to having a relatively short movie of what happened from the start of the industrial era.”

Dr. Sabine said he agreed with the analogy, pointing out that his estimate for uptake up to 1994 was very close to Dr. Khatiwala’s for that period.

“Even though the techniques are completely different, they are in consensus at the one point that we can compare them,” Dr. Sabine said.

Yet much work remains to be done to confirm the results and to expand upon them, Dr. Khatiwala said.

Ocean Losing Its Appetite for Carbon
Christine Dell'Amore, National Geographic News 18 Nov 09;

The world's oceans, which normally gobble up carbon dioxide, are getting stuffed to the gills, according to the most thorough study to date of human-made carbon in the seas.

Between 2000 and 2007, as emissions of the potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide skyrocketed, the amount of human-made carbon absorbed by the oceans fell from 27 to 24 percent.

In terms of ocean processes, "that's a pretty large drop, and the trend is pretty clear: The ocean can't keep up with [human-made carbon]," said study leader Samar Khatiwala, an oceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Khatiwala is careful to point out that the total uptake of carbon is not declining—the rate is just not growing as fast as it used to.

But if the oceans continue to be overwhelmed by carbon, more of the gas will remain in the already warming atmosphere, the authors say.

"Ultimately the ocean is what's controlling what's going on here," said Chris Sabine, a supervisory oceanographer at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, who was not involved in the research.

"It's a big deal that it's becoming less efficient in taking up CO2."

Working Backward

Carbon dioxide easily dissolves in seawater, so the oceans act as gigantic carbon sinks.

The blue part of our planet currently stockpiles about 150 billion tons of carbon. In 2008 the oceans sucked up 2.3 billion tons of carbon—about six years' worth of U.S. gasoline consumption, Khatiwala said.

For their study, Khatiwala and colleagues collected data on seawater temperature and salinity recorded from 1765 to 2008.

The team also gathered data on amounts of ocean pollutants called chlorofluorocarbons. These chemicals act as "tracers," allowing the scientists to figure out the time it takes for a substance to go from the surface of the ocean to the interior.

Based on this data, the team created a mathematical technique that allowed them to "work backward" to determine how much human-made carbon has entered the ocean over the years.

The researchers found that when human-made carbon dioxide began increasing dramatically in the 1950s, the oceans began absorbing more of that carbon.

But in recent decades the rate of absorbtion has declined, and the reasons for the slowdown are still unclear.

It might have something to do with increased carbon dioxide emissions making seawater more acidic, the authors say. That's because more acidic waters are less able to dissolve carbon dioxide.

Likewise, carbon dioxide can't dissolve as easily in warmer water—which is why about 40 percent of past carbon emissions were absorbed into the chilly oceans off Antarctica, according to the study, published tomorrow in the journal Nature.

Tremendous Service

The new results complement earlier observational studies of carbon dioxide in the oceans, including a 2004 Science paper by NOAA's Sabine and colleagues.

But Sabine cautioned that the new study doesn't take into account biological processes.

For instance, tiny algae called phytoplankton take up carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. When phytoplankton die, their remains drift to the depths and decompose—a natural cycle that keeps carbon trapped on the seafloor for centuries.

So far, scientists have assumed that this process hasn't really changed due to global warming, said study-co author Timothy Hall, a senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

But it's possible that warming seawater could set off a chain of effects that might damage the natural cycle, Hall said.

The oceans circulate water globally via a series of "pumps" that cause cold, dense waters to sink and nutrient-rich waters to rise.

Some of the pumps have not been functioning as well in recent years, leading scientists to speculate that warming surface temperatures may be to blame.

Less ocean mixing could means that fewer nutrients from the deep ocean are rising up to sustain phytoplankton, Hall said. Fewer phytoplankton mean less photosynthesis, which could lead to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

"The oceans are performing a tremendous service for humankind," NOAA's Sabine said.

"If we throw [the oceans' carbon uptake] out of whack … the potential is there to completely overwhelm what we're trying to do with limiting our fossil fuel emissions."

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Copenhagen prep talks wrap up ahead of summit

Slim Allagui Yahoo News 18 Nov 09;

COPENHAGEN (AFP) – Environment ministers from 44 key countries on Tuesday wrapped up closed-door talks aimed at laying the groundwork for a political agreement at next month's UN conference on global warming.

Danish Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard described the meeting as "very constructive."

Delegations included major greenhouse gas emitters, including China, the United States, India and Brazil, as well as several island nations and African states that are among the poorest in the world and most vulnerable to climate change.

The two-day talks were held ahead of the December 7-18 summit which aims to reach a post-2012 deal for slashing greenhouse gas emissions and easing the impact of likely droughts, floods, storms and rising seas unleashed by disrupted weather systems.

But the 192 members of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change remain deadlocked after two years of negotiations.

"This was not a decision-making forum, but the ministers realise that we have come very close to the deadline. We have to come to an agreement that will not be partial, but total," Hedegaard said.

"The (discussion) process doesn't continue forever," she added.

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, also present at the talks, said the United States would play a key role in clinching a successful agreement in Copenhagen in December, but stressed that it was not all up to Washington.

"The United States is an important key to success, but it is not the only key," he said. Hopes pinned on US emissions offer

"We need more ambition from industrialised countries in order to achieve the scientific recommendation" to slash greenhouse gas emissions, he told reporters.

French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo meanwhile slammed the lack of US progress on emission reductions.

"We have a clear problem with our American friends," he told AFP on the sidelines of the meeting.

"The world's greatest power, which pollutes the most per capita, has to commit more" to reducing its emissions, he added.

Developing nations have called for wealthy economies to cut their emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels and to provide around one percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) per year, or around 400 billion dollars (270 billion euros), in finance.

So far, no rich country has come anywhere close to meeting such a demand.

They, in turn, are pressing emerging giants such as China, India and Brazil to strengthen promises to tackle their own greenhouse gas output.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, speaking on the sidelines of the meeting, lauded Chinese and US support for his country's push to reach a politically binding agreement at the UN conference.

"I am glad that the Danish strategy was supported today in Beijing at the Chinese-American summit ... it confirms that we have taken the right stance," Rasmussen told reporters.

US President Barack Obama said Tuesday China and the US wanted the Copenhagen conference to culminate in a global accord that had "immediate operational effect."

We "agreed to work toward a successful outcome in Copenhagen," Obama said after talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing.

Rasmussen said the agreement reached in the Danish capital should be "substantial and concrete, covering all fields," adding it should become legally binding "as soon as possible."

China and the United States together account for 37.5 percent of global emissions of the six main greenhouse gases, according to the World Resources Institute.

Their positions are seen as key to the outcome of the Copenhagen conference, a two-year process that aims at building a post-2012 global treaty on tackling climate change.

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