The 'bycatch' of birds downed by industrial fishing

Michael McCarthy, The Independent 27 Nov 09;

Concern is growing about the huge number of seabirds being killed by fisheries in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said yesterday.

Although conservationists' fears have so far focused on seabirds in the Southern Ocean, especially albatrosses, there is mounting alarm over the numbers of northern species, such as shearwaters and petrels, falling victim to large-scale industrialised fishing methods.

The most deadly of these is longlining, which involves hooks set with bait on lines which stream out for great distances behind fishing vessels. Seabirds swoop on the bait when it is on the surface, before being hooked themselves as a so-called "bycatch".

It is estimated that 200,000 seabirds are being killed in fisheries in European waters every year, the RSPB said, with one species, the great shearwater, suffering an exceptionally high annual bycatch rate of 50,000 birds in the Spanish longline hake fishery to the west of Ireland.

Europe's rarest seabird, the Balearic shearwater, which is critically endangered with a population of just 2,000 pairs, is predicted to become extinct within 40 years if losses continue. Up to 50 individuals have been caught on hooks on a single longline.

The Cory's shearwater may suffer an annual bycatch rate of up to 10 per cent of the population in longline fisheries off Malta, according to Maltese fishermen.

The RSPB and BirdLife International are calling on the European Commission to implement an EU Community Plan of Action for reducing the incidental catch of seabirds in fisheries.

"Europe is incredibly important for seabirds, with some species occurring nowhere else, and this is a situation that Europe must tackle urgently," said RSPB spokesman Grahame Madge.

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Invading camels to be shot in Australian town

Yahoo News 26 Nov 09;

ALICE SPRINGS, Australia – Australian authorities plan to corral about 6,000 wild camels with helicopters and gun them down after they overran a small Outback town in search of water, trampling fences, smashing tanks and contaminating supplies.

The Northern Territory government announced its plan Wednesday for Docker River, a town of 350 residents where thirsty camels have been arriving daily for weeks because of drought conditions in the region.

"The community of Docker River is under siege by 6,000 marauding, wild camels," local government minister Rob Knight said in Alice Springs, 310 miles (500 kilometers) northeast of Docker. "This is a very critical situation out there, it's very unusual and it needs urgent action."

The camels, which are not native to Australia but were introduced in the 1840s, have smashed water tanks, approached houses to try to take water from air conditioning units, and knocked down fencing at the small airport runway, Knight said.

The carcasses of camels killed in stampedes at water storage areas are contaminating the water supply, he added.

The government plans to use helicopters to herd the camels about nine miles (15 kilometers) outside of town next week, where they will be shot and their carcasses left to decay in the desert. The state government will give a 49,000 Australian dollar ($45,000) grant for the cull and to repair damaged infrastructure in the town.

"We don't have the luxury of time because the herd is getting bigger," Knight said.

It is common to see some camels in the remote community, but a continuing drought and an early heat wave have dried up other water sources and forced great numbers of them into town. Much of Australia is gripped by some of the worst drought conditions on record.

In August, the federal government set aside 19 million Australian dollars for a program to slash the wild camel population, including a possible mass slaughter.

Glenys Oogjes, executive director of national advocacy group Animals Australia, said the plan to kill camels by helicopter was barbaric, and that the community could instead focus on setting up barriers to keep out the camels.

"It's a terrible thing that people react to these events by shooting," she said. "The real concern is the terrible distress and wounding when shot by helicopter. ... There will be terrible suffering."

Camels were first brought to Australia to help explorers travel through the desert, and now an estimated 1 million roam wild across the country.

They compete with sheep and cattle for food, trample vegetation and invade remote settlements in search of water, scaring residents as they tear apart bathrooms and rip up water pipes.

Docker River residents were not especially concerned when about 30 camels came into the town looking for water a few weeks ago, said Graham Taylor, head of the local council. But their fears grew as more animals arrived day by day.

He said many people were too frightened to leave their homes because of the big, strong animals, which can grow up to 7 feet (2.1 meters) tall and weigh 2,000 pounds (900 kilograms).

"We need to get the risk and that threat away from the people," Taylor said.

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Sierra Leone elephants 'wiped out' by poachers: official

Yahoo News 26 Nov 09;

FREETOWN (AFP) – Poachers "wiped out" the entire elephant herd in Sierra Leone's only wildlife park, wildlife managers said Thursday after police said they had arrested a gang of 10 poachers.

"It is likely that the elephant population is wiped out," Ibrahim Bangura, senior superintendent of the agriculture ministry's Conservation and Wildlife Management Unit.

The six elephants were shot and "crudely butchered, their bodies slashed with sword marks and their tusks virtually wrenched from their skins," said Bangura.

Police said 10 poachers were arrested after the discovery of the elephant carcasses and those of four buffaloes in Outamba Kilimni national park, near the border with Guinea.

The men, from Sierra Leone and Guinea, are being held in the northern town of Koinadugu.

"We believe the killing was done between September and October and this is a great blow to all of us," said Bangura.

"We had treasured the elephant population in the park as they are very important to the development of ecotourism in the country."

Tourism Ministry officials said a crack military unit has been stationed near the park after frequent incursions by poachers from Guinea and Mali hunting wild animals.

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Protest stops cranes at Indonesia's APP paper port

Reuters 26 Nov 09;

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Environmental activists shut down four cranes at port run by one of Asia's biggest pulp and paper groups on Indonesia's Sumatra island, but overall operations were not hit, the company said on Thursday.

Greenpeace activists have targeted logging and paper firms in Indonesia in recent months to draw attention to the role that deforestation plays in global warming in the lead up to global climate talks in Copenhagen in early December.

Twelve Greenpeace protesters on Wednesday climbed four cranes at a port in Riau province, Sumatra, that is used to export paper produced by PT Indah Kiat Pulp & Paper, a unit of industry giant Asia Pulp & Paper (APP).

The activists unfurled a banner that read "Forest Destruction: You can stop this." The last activist was taken down by police at around 9am on Thursday morning.

"Deforestation is one of the roots of the climate crisis. We are shutting down the exports of one of the world's largest pulp mills at the frontline of forest destruction to tell our elected leaders that they can - and must - pull us back from the brink of catastrophic climate change," Greenpeace campaigner Shailandra Yashwan said in a statement.

At least 18 activists, including 12 foreigners, were detained by Riau police, said a Greenpeace spokesman, Martin Baker.

Aida Greenbury, Asia Pulp & Paper's director of sustainability, said that exports were not disrupted.

"People had to stop work on the cranes that were affected because of potential danger to our staff, so yes, they were disrupting those cranes but we have so many working there it wasn't really affecting operations at all," she told Reuters.

Greenbury said about 1 million tonnes of paper made from trees drawn from Riau and Jambi provinces are exported every year from the port. She said that APP was setting aside parts of its logging concessions in Sumatra for conservation and potential future carbon offset programs.

Greenpeace said purchasers of APP's paper products include Vogue, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Marc Jacobs. Greenbury declined to confirm this.

APP is part of the Sinar Mas group, a conglomerate owned by Indonesia's Widjaja family.

Greenpeace's protest follows a demonstration in Riau's Kampar Peninsula, where activists chained themselves to heavy machinery operated by another industry giant, Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Ltd (APRIL).

(Editing by Sara Webb and Sanjeev Miglani)

Indonesia to deport Greenpeace demonstrators: leader
Yahoo News 26 Nov 09;

JAKARTA (AFP) – Indonesia plans to deport seven foreign Greenpeace activists involved in a protest against deforestation, seen as a contributor to global warming, the group said Thursday.

The seven were among a group of 14 activists detained on Wednesday after some of them chained themselves to a crane at port facilities used by Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), in Riau province on Sumatra island.

"Seven foreign Greenpeace activists who were directly involved in climbing the crane yesterday will be deported," Greenpeace Southeast Asia forest campaigner Bustar Maitar told AFP.

Rampant deforestation has made Indonesia the world's third-largest greenhouse gas emitter, according to some estimates.

Maitar said Indonesian authorities had no basis for expelling the activists, who are from Belgium, Germany, the Philippines and the United States, because they had valid business visas.

"We can't accept them saying that we violated the visas. They should know that Greenpeace's core business is campaigning," said Maitar.

Another five foreign activists had been sent to the capital Jakarta but would not be deported, he said.

Indonesia deported 13 foreign Greenpeace activists and two foreign journalists, an Italian and an Indian, earlier this month after a similar protest in Riau.

Greenpeace is calling on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to take strong action on deforestation in Indonesia in the run-up to global climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.

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Indonesia's loggers scrutinized ahead of climate summit

Sunanda Creagh, Reuters 25 Nov 09;

TELUK MERANTI, Indonesia (Reuters) - Logging in Indonesia can be a murky business involving navigating government bureaucracy to get permits and land concessions in one of the world's most corrupt countries, to winning the hearts and minds of villagers living near the rainforests.

As the issue of deforestation gets set to take center-stage at a global climate change conference in Copenhagen next month, the rapid decline of Indonesia's rainforests has come into the spotlight following heated protests by Greenpeace at the site of a carbon-rich rainforest in Sumatra that is slated for logging.

Indonesia's government has pledged to slow down deforestation, but the process of granting concessions is far from transparent in a country where bribe-taking by officials is common and local governments actively seek investment by logging firms, as well as palm oil plantations on cleared forests.

"There's a long legacy of concerns about the integrity of decision-making in the zoning process and the concession-granting process," said Frances Seymour, director general of the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research.

Home to about 10 percent of the world's rainforests, deforestation in Indonesia occurred at an average rate of 1.08 million hectares a year between 2000 and 2005, according to the Ministry of Forestry. A 2007 World Bank report found Indonesia to be the world's third largest emitter of greenhouse gases behind the United States and China, largely due to massive fires to clear peatland forests. The government rejected the report.

Aside from the risk of corruption tainting the permit granting process, conservationists say that a lack of a coherent government policy on logging rights has led to the granting of concessions in some of the country's most fragile forests.

The Forestry Ministry last week temporarily suspended operations by Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited (APRIL) in Kampar Peninsula, a stretch of rainforest with a rich and rare flora and fauna, including the endangered Sumatran tiger.

The ministry issued the three-month permit review to "see whether it was appropriate to grant this permit," according to Wandojo Siswanto, a senior adviser to the Forestry Minister.

"We in the Ministry of Forestry have a program to examine permits being given on peatland areas to determine optimal management of these areas," he said.

Given that APRIL's logging camps were set up months ago, some conservationists wonder why this process was not done before APRIL was awarded the 56,000 hectare government peatland concession. Peatlands are 50 to 60 percent carbon and when they are exposed from logging or dredging, they release massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The permit review followed a high profile campaign by Greenpeace activists who camped outside APRIL's concession in dengue-infested rainforest. Protestors chained themselves to APRIL's bulldozers, leading to the arrest and deportation of several activists and foreign journalists.

The process in which logging permits are granted in Indonesia is far from transparent. To obtain a permit, a company must have its application documents, including recommendations from local government officials and environmental reports, processed by the Ministry of Forestry.

"Corruption can happen at any stage of the process. You can pay for any report or letter you need and there often is falsification of documents," said Bambang Setiono, director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Economic Institute and one Indonesia's foremost experts on money laundering in the forestry sector.

"It would be very easy for the Minister or the department to check that the documents match conditions on the ground but often they do not."

Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Commission has launched several probes relating to the Forestry Ministry which processes permit applications, but, so far, no major heads have rolled.

STAKEHOLDERS

After the permits are obtained, the logging companies all too frequently turn their sights on winning the hearts and minds of villagers living near their concession, offering them gifts and assistance for their support.

"I don't think these activities are just for the sake of the local people. If they don't do this, the local people will not cooperate. They are buying the support of the local people," said Setiono.

Often the logging companies bring services and infrastructure to sorely neglected villages such as Teluk Meranti, an 800-family fishing hamlet on the fringe of APRIL's Kampar concession, which suffers daily power cuts and has just a mudslick of a main road.

"Really, the government should be fixing our road and mosque, not APRIL," said Hendrizal, a 23-year-old unemployed villager. "Of course APRIL wants something from us! That's why they are helping us. But if they don't help us, who will?"

He was among thousands of locals who were courted by APRIL after it received its Riau concession.

The company sent social workers to Hendrizal's village to woo the locals with promises of jobs, scholarships, free circumcisions for boys in keeping with Islamic law, and a renovation of the local mosque -- all in exchange for co-operation and permission to log their forest.

"If a paper company wants to give us money and compensation, they can take our forest, as far as I am concerned. Global warming is not our business. The most important thing for us is having enough to get by," said Hendrizal.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

There are over 500 logging companies operating in Indonesia. APRIL and Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) are the biggest. Other firms include Kiani Lestari, Kiani Kertas, Tanjung Enim Lestari Pulp and Paper and Sumalindo Lestari Jaya.

In the wake of the Greenpeace protests at APRIL's Riau concession, Finland's UPM-Kymmene, the world's third largest paper manufacturer, ended its pulp purchase contract with APRIL in November. It cited better access to pulp thanks to its raised stake in a mill in Uruguay.

The Finnish firm stressed in a press release its commitment to "forest management and forest harvesting practices based on the principles of sustainable development," and said this also applied to its use of external pulp suppliers, but declined to comment on whether its decision to drop APRIL was also triggered by the firm's forest management practices.

APRIL says it always acts within the law and takes a sustainable approach to logging, including by declaring part of its concession a protected area.

"APRIL is committed to ethical business practices and does not condone any action that is against this principle," the company said in an official statement to Reuters.

Meanwhile, APRIL's efforts to win support by Teluk Meranti villagers for its operation have caused a split in the community, with half the village tempted to support the logging and the other half fighting to protect their trees.

"This forest belongs to the people. What would happen to our grandchildren if there was no forest? Where would they get wood for the houses?" said Muhamad Nasir, 54, a farmer who makes about 34.8 million rupiah ($3,696) a year from his 13 hectares of farmland, where he grows corn and palm oil.

Nasir said he fears that if APRIL gets access to the forest, the wild pigs and monkeys driven out by the logging will eat his crops. His neighbor, Hariyono, 38, worries that if the peatbogs are drained to make way for acacia trees, the water that leaks into the river will kill the fish stocks.

For its part, faced with vocal and unwanted publicity from Greenpeace's protest, APRIL is ready with its own campaign.

"We have spent more than a million euro ($1.49 million) on research on how we manage the peatland concession to reduce carbon emissions," said APRIL's Sustainability Director, Neil Franklin, who added that 15,000 hectares of the firm's concession will be protected and another 5,300 hectares set aside for community use.

"We want to maintain, to manage Kampar properly."

Franklin also said that the peatbogs would not be drained and that the firm would actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 55 percent by repairing peatlands damaged by previous farming practices.

Bustar Maitar, a Greenpeace forest campaigner involved in the protests at Kampar, is skeptical of APRIL's efforts to present its logging plan as environmentally friendly.

"It's clearly green-washing," he said. "What they really must do is to stop their expansion right now, which will destroy natural forest and peat."

($1 = 9,415 Rupiah)

(Additional reporting by Aloysius Bhui in Jakarta; Editing by Sara Webb and Megan Goldin)

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Billion hectares of forests with potential for restoration, study shows

IUCN 23 Nov 09;

Land areas around the world, bigger than Canada, have been identified as having potential to be restored to good quality, healthy forests, a new study has found.

As the global effort to help tackle climate change by reversing the earth’s alarming loss of forests steps up, scientists using sophisticated satellite mapping have produced a world map identifying areas in which more than a billion hectares of former forest land and degraded forest land has restoration potential.

That’s about six per cent of the planet’s total land area. Restoring forests to some of these lands could be achieved without prejudicing other vital land uses, such as food production. The Global Partnership on Forest Restoration (GPFLR) says that the needs and rights of indigenous peoples and others who are dependent on forests must be respected when considering restoration projects. GPFLR will now work with individual countries and local communities to deliver restoration where communities benefit.

“With a global population already approaching seven billion, and forecast to increase to more than eight billion by 2025, the pressure on all of our natural resources is immense,” says Tim Rollinson, Chairman of the GPFLR and Director-General of the British Forestry Commission. “At the same time, the Earth’s forests continue to shrink, and what’s left is increasingly being degraded. We know how to restore forests and make them sustainable. We now also know where we should do it, so we should be getting on with it.”

The findings were announced today in London at an international meeting of the GPFLR, of which IUCN and the Forestry Commission of Great Britain are founding members. The assessment has revealed that the potential to restore the world’s lost forests is much greater than the previous estimate of 850 million hectares.

The GPFLR partners say that forest restoration can have a significant impact on climate change as well as improving lives, and that urgent action on restoration should be taken hand in hand with efforts to stop the continuing global loss and degradation of forests. Preliminary analysis indicates that by 2030 the restoration of degraded forest lands will make the same contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases as that which could be expected from avoided deforestation (70 Gt of CO² emissions) and perhaps as much as twice that amount. The GPFLR will work with countries over the next year to clarify and refine these figures on a country by country basis.

“Forest restoration experiences around the world provide evidence that, while it is impossible to replace a pristine forest once it’s gone, many of the functions it originally provided can be restored,” says Stewart Maginnis, Director of IUCN Environment and Development Group. “Forests provide such vital services, like clean water and fresh air, that we can win on all fronts by bringing them back to life. We need to protect the forests we have left, and restore what we’ve lost.”

Forest Area Bigger Than Canada Can Be Restored
Nina Chestney, PlanetArk 27 Nov 09;

LONDON - Only one fifth of the world's forests remain but an area bigger than Canada could be restored without harming food production, a global alliance dedicated to restoring forests said on Thursday.

A study by the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR), which includes the WWF, Britain's Forestry Commission and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), said a billion hectares of former forests, equivalent to six percent of the world's total land area, could be restored.

Previous assessments estimated 850 million hectares had restoration potential.

"This is a first go at identifying the total scale of this opportunity. The next stage is to work at a country level to identify what we would restore in the real world," Tim Rollinson, GPFLR chairman and director general of the British Forestry Commission told Reuters in an interview.

Marginal agricultural land, where productivity was low, had the most potential for restoration, the study found.

"There are opportunities in almost every continent. The most potential is in Africa; there are substantial areas in China and India, as well as parts of Brazil," William Jackson, IUCN's deputy director general.

Britain could also do its part. Planting 30,000 football pitches' worth of trees per year could cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent by 2050, a British Forestry Commission report said on Wednesday.

NO TIME TO WASTE

It is estimated that 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation and agriculture.

World leaders are meeting at a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen in less than two weeks and there are fears that deforestation and agriculture issues will be at the bottom of a long list of responses to climate change to be discussed.

"There is a danger deforestation will get pushed down the agenda in Copenhagen," Jackson said.

By 2030, the restoration of degraded forest land could make a 70 gigatonne cut in greenhouse gases -- the same as from avoided deforestation -- or even twice that amount, based on preliminary estimates in the report.

Investment in mangrove and woodland restoration is worthwhile, achieving rates of return up to 40 percent, a United Nations Environment Programme report said this month.

Forests once covered more than 50 percent of the world's land area. That has declined to less than 30 percent due to unsustainable logging and conversion to other land uses such as grazing, industry, towns and cities, the GPFLR report said.

The rate of deforestation outstrips restoration. The world lost 7 million hectares a year of forests between 2000 and 2005.

"The rate of deforestation has been slowing, but hasn't been going down. Rising agicultural commodity prices and biofuels could drive a new wave. Do you squeeze more productivity out of a hectare of land or do you need more land? That's the dilemma," Jackson said.

(Editing by James Jukwey)

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The little island and its big, green victory

The Independent 26 Nov 09;

The Danish haven of Samso is one of the world's first industrialised places to become energy self-sufficient – a great boost for a country about to host a summit on climate change. Tony Paterson visits the windy isle

Aferocious force-nine gale whipped across the low grass and pine-dotted hummocks. The sky was all deep grey scudding cloud, the rain horizontal and hard. But in a sodden field, three so-called "harmonious" wind turbines were working flat out and pouring cash into the islanders' bank accounts. The huge blades of the 70ft windmills sliced through the rain like giant revolving scythes, their whooshing sound audible as you stood beneath, even through the howling gale. That the island of Samso is an ideal place to harness the power of the wind seemed blindingly obvious in the midst of this wild storm.

The inhabitants of this Danish isle seized upon wind's potential as a source of energy and money more than a decade ago. Since then the Baltic island has become one of the first industrialised places on the planet to qualify as being totally energy self-sufficient.

It is a major propaganda victory for a country that will shortly be hosting the world summit on climate change – in fact, Copenhagen delegates will be flown or ferried out here next month to see Samso for themselves. The island's inhabitants are proud of what they have achieved. "Being part of a project like this gives you a wonderful feeling of being in harmony with nature," resident Erik Andersen explained.

The 64-year-old cattle farmer has shares in a wind turbine, solar panels on his roof and runs his tractor on home-grown rape-seed oil. He feeds the mush that's left over to his cows. When all of his alternative energy sources are working, he delights in looking at the electricity meter that offsets his own power against what he has to import. "On a good day the meter runs backwards," he said.

One could be forgiven for thinking that Samso's inhabitants are all dyed-in-the-wool muesli-munching Green Party voters, willing to make big personal sacrifices to further the environmental cause. Yet most of the islanders are ordinary Danish farmers, who started out with a sceptical attitude to green power.

It took one of their own kind to convince them otherwise. Soren Hermansen, a one-time vegetable farmer is the man behind the island's energy revolution. Nowadays he flits between places as diverse as the United States, the Scilly Isles and Tasmania in his new role as global green-energy guru. The lavatory walls at Samso's Energy Academy, where Mr Hermansen has his office, are covered with cartoons portraying him as a green superman. One has him mouthing the slogan: "Wife, make me a cape".

But back in 1997, Mr Hermansen was a frustrated small farmer trying to earn a few kroner in a market that was becoming dominated by large farming concerns. Samso was in crisis at the time because one of the island's main businesses – a slaughterhouse employing 100 workers – had been forced to close down. "With hindsight, it was the ideal time to start a new project," Mr Hermansen, 50, recalled. "A crisis makes people much more open to new ideas."

That year, the energy ministry, run by Denmark's then green-minded socialist government, announced a competition to find out how much renewable energy could be produced in a single district. The aim was to create an area that was energy self-sufficient. Boroughs and municipalities were invited to put forward proposals and compete against each other.

An engineer called Ole Johnsson from the mainland town of Aarhus became fascinated by the competition. He saw Samso as the ideal place to realise the energy self-sufficiency dream. After studying the island's annual wind-speed and sunshine-hour records, he calculated how much energy the island could produce from wind turbines and other alternative sources and concluded it was possible to beat conventional sources. He sent the plan to Copenhagen and it won.

Mr Johnsson persuaded the Samso islanders to form an energy association to start implementing the plan. Fifty people came to the first meeting, including Mr Hermansen who saw the potential and grabbed it. Within days, he was out and about on the island, canvassing for people's support. "I'd do things like rent a fruit press and announce plans to press apples in a particular village," he said. "We'd get all the fruit done and then start talking about the project and I had to convince them that it was our future."

But there were three elements without which the project would probably never have got off the ground. Firstly, Danish laws oblige the country's energy suppliers to buy wind energy at prices that are higher than it costs to produce. Secondly, back in the late 1990s, Samso just happened to be in the parliamentary constituency of Svend Auken, Denmark's late and hugely popular green-minded Social Democrat energy minister, who made sure that the island got the project.

Thirdly, his government pledged to underwrite bank loans to any Samso resident who opted to take a share in a wind turbine. "Effectively the banks were giving the islanders loans that were completely watertight," Mr Hermansen said. "They knew they couldn't lose."

With half the battle already won by the state, Mr Hermansen then had to persuade people to switch from traditional energy sources. "It only worked because we got people to swap the usual 'Nimby' (not in my back yard) attitude to wind turbines for an 'Imby' attitude," Mr Sorensen said. "People began to realise that they were doing something unique in the very place where they live. It was not something that was imposed from above. It belongs to them."

The island's farmers began to realise that they could make money from the straw that was left over after the harvest because it could be baled up and burned in the island's straw-fired heating plant. Likewise foresters, working in the island's woodlands, began using dead trees to manufacture woodchips for furnaces. "We have just managed to reach our goal of self-sufficiency," said Mr Hermansen. "But it would have been difficult to achieve without generous government funding."

A decade ago, Samso relied heavily on oil imports for heat and power, but now – thanks to its windmills and alternative energy plants – it manages to produce more green-generated power than the amount of "dirty" energy it still has to bring in to run its cars and some of its homes. Three-quarters of the island's heating needs are currently met by alternative energy sources such as wind.

The island – 30 miles long and 15 wide – is reputed to be one of the most successful green-energy projects to have got off the ground since environmentalists started raising the alarm about climate change three decades ago.

Samso has 21 wind turbines – 10 on a sandbank off the island's south coast, half of which are owned by the local council. The other 11 are dotted all over the island and owned by more than 450 residents-cum-shareholders. To make their presence as inoffensive to the eye as possible, the turbines are of the "harmonious" – as opposed to the more offensive "gorilla" – type, which means they are all painted the same colour and have a standard height and blade length.

But wind turbines are just the most visible part of the energy revolution. Samso heats the homes of its 22 villages with power plants that rely on furnaces fired by woodchips and straw. Banks of man-sized solar panels lie in fields, kept trim by herds of bleating sheep. One farmer has even developed a special pump to use the warmth supplied by cow's milk to heat his home.

Another effect of the green-energy boom is that the island's plumbers and carpenters have now all become experts in energy-saving home conversion and insulation techniques. Most of Samso's houses are carefully insulated and equipped with double-glazed windows to minimise heat loss. One of them belongs to Uffe and Else Marie Bach. Their painstakingly restored 150-year-old former school house in the Samso village of Torup is heated by a so-called Maas oven, a white-washed brick construction on the ground floor, which Mr Bach, a retired plumber, fires up for two hours every morning with logs he cuts from the woods with a chainsaw.

The heat generated is so intense that the bricks surrounding the oven stay warm for 24 hours and help to heat most of the house. Hot water is supplied by a pump, powered by electricity from the wind turbine, which sucks in the earth's natural warmth collected from 1,300ft of pipe buried underground in a field next to the house.

A decade ago, the Bachs bought €25,000 worth of shares in one of the island's wind turbines. The upshot has been dramatically reduced electricity bills and a €3,000 dividend payment last year – the profit resulting from the sale of their turbine's electricity. "Finally, we are beginning to make a bit of money," said Mr Bach.

Despite its egalitarian principles, it is the big financial investors in Samso's energy revolution who have come out on top. One of them is Jörgen Tranberg, who owns a 250-acre dairy farm. With help from the bank, the 55-year-old farmer invested €2.5m in wind turbines. He paid €1.2m for the one on his farm he owns outright and he is half-owner of one of the offshore turbines, too. He claims that on a good day the windmills alone can earn him €3,000.

With figures like that, it's not surprising that the project has aroused interest from far beyond Denmark's borders. Mr Hermansen likes to recount the story of the Egyptian ambassador's visit. After taking a tour of the island and examining all its green-energy projects in great detail, his excellency asked how many people lived on Samso. About 4,000 he was told. "That's three city blocks in Cairo!" he exclaimed. "Maybe that's where you should start," came Mr Hermansen's sanguine reply. "Not with the whole of Egypt but by taking one block at a time."

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Americans Toss Out 40 Percent of All Food

Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience.com 26 Nov 09;

U.S. residents are wasting food like never before.

While many Americans feast on turkey and all the fixings today, a new study finds food waste per person has shot up 50 percent since 1974. Some 1,400 calories worth of food is discarded per person each day, which adds up to 150 trillion calories a year.

The study finds that about 40 percent of all the food produced in the United States is tossed out.

Meanwhile, while some have plenty of food to spare, a recent report by the Department of Agriculture finds the number of U.S. homes lacking "food security," meaning their eating habits were disrupted for lack of money, rose from 4.7 million in 2007 to 6.7 million last year.

About 1 billion people worldwide don't have enough to eat, according to the World Food Program.

Growing problem

The new estimate of food waste, published in the journal PLoS ONE, is a relatively straightforward calculation: It's the difference between the U.S. food supply and what's actually eaten, which was estimated by using a model of human metabolism and known body weights.

The result, from Kevin Hall and colleagues at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, is about 25 percent higher than similar estimates made in recent years.

Last year, an international group estimated that up to 30 percent of food - worth about $48.3 billion - is wasted each year in the United States. That report concluded that despite food shortages in many countries, plenty of food is available to feed the world, it just doesn't get where it needs to go.

Previous calculations were typically based on interviews with people and inspections of garbage, which Hall's team figures underestimates the waste.

Related problems

ScienceNOW, an online publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, reports that food waste occurs at the manufacturing level and in distribution, but more than half is wasted by consumers, according to a separate study earlier this year by Jeffery Sobal, a sociologist at Cornell University.

Meanwhile, Hall and colleagues say a related and growing problem, obesity, may be fueled by the increased availability of food in this country and the incessant marketing of it. All that extra food is bad for the environment, too.

Addressing the oversupply of food in the United States "could help curb to the obesity epidemic as well as reduce food waste, which would have profound consequences for the environment and natural resources," the scientists write. "For example, food waste is now estimated to account for more than one quarter of the total freshwater consumption and more than 300 million barrels of oil per year representing about 4 percent of the total U.S. oil consumption."

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Organic Farming May Help UK Meet Climate Goals: Report

Nigel Hunt, PlanetArk 27 Nov 09;

LONDON (Reuters) - The conversion of all UK farmland to organic farming would achieve the equivalent carbon savings to taking nearly one million cars off the road, the Soil Association said on Thursday.

Britain's largest organic certification body, issuing results of a research project, said on average organic farming produces 28 percent higher levels of soil carbon compared with non-organic farming in northern Europe.

"The widespread adoption of organic farming practices in the UK would offset 23 percent of UK agricultural emissions through soil carbon sequestration alone, more than doubling the UK government's pathetically low target of a 6-11 percent reduction by 2020," the Soil Association said.

"A worldwide switch to organic farming could offset 11 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions," the organic group added.

Professor of Soils and Global Change at Aberdeen University Pete Smith said organic farming had many practices which increased soil carbon.

He said the main challenge, however, was whether a switch to organic farming would maintain the productivity of the land, adding it would be fairer to compare farming methods on a "per unit of product" basis.

"If you accept there could be lower production, you may need to spread agriculture to other areas of land," he said.

"Any benefit on carbon you get could be more than wiped out by plowing up land elsewhere. The difference between organic and conventional is not so striking when you look at it on a per unit of product basis," he said.

(Editing by Sue Thomas)

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Australia's oceans under pressure: report

Nicky Phillips ABC 27 Nov 09;

Scientists have given the state of Australia's marine environment a low grade in the country's first Marine Climate Change report card released today.

The report, compiled by CSIRO and the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, details how Australia's marine environment has already changed as a result of a warming planet, and how it is expected to change in the future.

Marine biologist and contributing author Dr Alistair Hobday of CSIRO says "our marine environment is vulnerable of dropping out of school."

But he says the report does offer strategies to help marine environments adapt to the projected impacts of climate change.

The report card will be a valuable tool for scientists, policy makers and anyone with an interest or investment in Australia's marine systems, says Hobday.

"It's like a mini-marine IPCC report for Australia ... it's all you need to know about the impact climate change is having on Australia's marine environment in one place."

Hobday says the report, which took over a year to prepare, demonstrates that climate change is already having an impact.

The temperature is going to rise by 2°C to 4°C even if greenhouse gas emissions were regulated from today, he says.

"Over the next 30 years the kind of changes we're expecting to see are already locked in now because of the amount of greenhouse gases we've put into the atmosphere," says Hobday. "Nothing we do today can change that."

He says mitigating greenhouse gases will only slow down, or possibly reverse, the effects of climate change in the long term - between 30 and 70 years.
More to be done

He says, climate change impacts on the marine environment and the projections are rated on a confidence scale, which is based on current literature and the consensus of leading scientists in the field.

Hobday hopes the report's adaptation strategies will be used in the short-term while more drastic longer term solutions are negotiated.

"These strategies [are what] scientists feel will help these marine systems adapt to climate change [in the short term]."

He admits there will need to be more studies undertaken to assess the efficacy of these adaptations before they are reproduced on a large scale.

Hobday says the report is presented in various formats to ensure the information is accessible to everyone.

"The first level of information is a very simple summary that we hope is accessible to everyone from students to politicians," he says. More detailed technical reports are aimed at scientists.

Hobday hopes the report, which will be reviewed every two years, will convince everyone that the effects of climate change are already happening and that "we need immediate action on today".

Ocean 'report card' released
CSIRO, Science Alert 27 Nov 09;

The first-ever Australian benchmark of climate change impacts on marine ecosystems and options for adaptation was released in Brisbane on 27 November 2009.

The Marine Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Report Card for Australia, and an accompanying website, will provide a biennial guide for scientists, government and the community on observed and projected impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems.

"The objective of compiling this information is to consider options available to environmental and resource managers in their response to changes in ecosystem balance," says project leader, CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship scientist Dr Elvira Poloczanska.

"On both sides of the continent there is clear evidence of ocean warming and this is already bringing sub-tropical species south into temperate waters, and in the case of the giant kelp forests in Tasmania, appears to be having a severe impact in just a few years.

"This research is relevant for anyone with a recreational interest or financial investment in our coasts and oceans," Dr Poloczanska says.

The Report Card highlights observations over the past decade, projects forward to 2030 and 2100 with assessments of likely status and confidence ratings, and offers adaptation responses that can also inform policy makers.

Key concerns include; waters around Australia becoming warmer and more acidic, increases in strengths of major warm-water currents such as the East Australian Current, changes in the productivity of marine ecosystems and shifts in the distribution and abundance of species. The Report Card identifies where change is already occurring, likely trends and confidence levels in those trends depending on the state of knowledge.

The research team comprises scientists from CSIRO, Australian universities, State and territory environmental agencies, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Bureau of Meteorology.

The Director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF), Professor Jean Palutikof, says the Report Card reflects both the increased bank of knowledge about impacts, and the responses of government, industry and the community.

"Australia needs a guide to likely changes in the marine environment and we feel well-positioned now to bring together the science and the latest climate projections to consider options for adaptation,” Professor Palutikof says.

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Top scientist says Great Barrier Reef climate change threat exaggerated

Brad Ryan, The Cairns Post 25 Nov 09;

ONE of North Queensland's top marine physicists has accused fellow scientists of exaggerating the threat that climate change poses to the Great Barrier Reef.

Speaking to The Cairns Post ahead of a talk on the topic in Townsville last night, James Cook University’s Prof Peter Ridd said global warming could actually be good for the Reef.

And he accused scientists of "pushing particular lines" in a bid to save their jobs and keep their funding flowing.

"There’s a lot of money at stake here," Prof Ridd said.

"Jobs depend on global warming."

Prof Ridd, who teaches oceanography courses at the university, said the health of coral in the northern, warmer parts of the Reef was better than in the southern, cooler parts.

"A moderate rise in temperature of one or two degrees is highly unlikely to have a detrimental impact on the reef," Prof Ridd said.

"Coral, by and large, grows better when it's warmer.

"There's large organisations in science who are pushing particular lines and ... the other side of the argument is not being heard."

Prof Ridd's comments contradict growing evidence pointing to grave climate threats to the reef, and have provoked condemnation from other experts.

"The professor's views are very contrary to the unanimous views in the peer-reviewed literature,'' Janice Lough, a senior Australian Institute of Marine Science climate change researcher, said.

She said major coral bleaching in 1998 and 2002 were caused by heat stress, following water temperatures rises of half a degree in the previous century.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority's Paul Marshall said Prof Ridd's claims did not stack up.

He said coral in warmer waters, such as that in the northern part of the reef, had adapted through thousands of years of evolution, but had not experienced the rapid temperature changes threatened by global warming.

"It gets really frustrating when people come out with these cynical views when there's such a major catastrophe facing us," Dr Marshall said.

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Climate Change To Hit Pacific Islands Food Security

Svetlana Kovalyova, PlanetArk 27 Nov 09;

MILAN - Rising sea levels, ocean warming, cyclones and droughts caused by climate change is set to hit hard food security in the Pacific islands, the United Nations' food agency said, urging governments to take immediate actions.

Climate change is expected to act as a "threat multiplier" in the Pacific region, home to 14 Pacific island countries and five territories (PICT), the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in a special report issued ahead of U.N. climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.

"Despite the fact that PICTs make negligible contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions rates (0.03 percent), they find themselves -- unfairly -- facing the frontline of climate change impacts," the reports said.

The region which relies on imported fuel and food and is susceptible to natural disasters, faces more frequent tropical cyclones and droughts, degradation of land and marine ecosystems and rising risks to local food production, the FAO said.

The region's vital fishing industry was under pressure from climate-triggered changes, it said.

Forests which provide important staple crops in the region, such as breadfruit, mangoes, citrus fruits and coconuts, were also threatened by climate change and overexploitation, it said.

"Farmers should not be left alone when it comes to climate change," FAO's Assistant Director-General Alexander Muller said.

"International climate change negotiations should consider the close linkages between food security and global warming," Muller said, adding Pacific islands should be supported in implementing their National Adaptation Programmes of Action.

(Editing by James Jukwey)

FAO publishes policy brief for Copenhagen
FAO 26 Nov 09;

26 November 2009, Rome - Climate change is projected to impact heavily on agriculture, forestry and fisheries in the Pacific islands, leading to increased food insecurity and malnutrition, FAO warned today ahead of the UN summit on climate change in Copenhagen. The agency urged governments and donors to immediately start implementing robust and action-oriented climate change adaptation plans for all Pacific islands.

Climate change is expected to act as a "threat multiplier" in a region that is already under severe ecological and economic stress, according to the FAO policy brief Climate Change and Food Security in the Pacific prepared for Copenhagen.

Pacific islands will have to face sea levels rise, ocean warming and acidification, changing rainfall patterns, changing sunshine hours and cloud cover, altered ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns and an increased frequency of extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones and droughts.

Many of these impacts could lead to cumulative and adverse effects on agricultural and fishery yields and food security. Land and marine ecosystem degradation, heat stress, soil erosion, salinization and nutrient depletion, the spread of plant pests and diseases, more frequent forest fires, droughts and flooding pose an acute and serious risk to food production.

Adapt and diversify

"Farmers should not be left alone when it comes to climate change," said FAO Assistant Director-General Alexander Müller. "Countries and their development partners need to ensure that farmers receive the best available information on the choice of crop varieties as well as soil and water management options to adapt to climate change," he added.

Those Pacific islands with monoculture crop production will need to assess their food security potential closely, as diversified agricultural systems will fare better under all climate change scenarios. "Integrated systems of crops, trees and possibly livestock offer opportunities for sustainable intensification of food production while creating a more resilient ecosystem," Müller said.

Fisheries

Climate change also seriously threatens the sustainability of the fishing industry and has the potential to undermine food security in a region strongly reliant on fish as a source of protein and income derived from renting the sea to foreign fleets. Subsistence and commercial fishing, particularly of tuna species, are mainstays of many Pacific island economies. Changes in the distribution and abundance of tuna have serious implications for the long-term viability of industrial fisheries and canneries in the western Pacific. Subsistence and commercial fishing will have to diversify production, fish industry infrastructure and distribution patterns in order to adapt to abrupt environmental and industry change.

Forestry

"Climate change impacts, coupled with ongoing overexploitation of forest resources in the region, will place immense pressures on remaining forests," FAO said. Forests and trees provide important staple crops in the Pacific such as breadfruit, mangos, citrus fruits and coconuts. Mangrove forests prevent from coastal erosion, provide protection from storm surges and tsunamis, and offer important habitats for numerous fish species. Governments in the region should be supported in managing forests sustainably and in promoting integrated agro-forestry systems. The potential of forests to contribute to carbon sequestration should be recognised.

Robust adaptation

"International climate change negotiations should consider the close linkages between food security and global warming," Müller said. "All Pacific islands should be supported in implementing their ‘National Adaptation Programmes of Action', also including food security issues."

Research and development should be intensified in agriculture, fisheries and forestry to identify and promote the use of salt- and drought-resistant crop varieties, the rehabilitation of coastal forests and infrastructure development in vulnerable coastal areas.

"Failure to act is likely to lead to increased poverty, political instability and conflict," he stressed

The policy brief was written together with the Pacific Expert Group on Climate Change and Food Security. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/012/i1262e/i1262e00.pdf

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