Seeds of discontent: the 'miracle' crop that has failed to deliver

A new 'ethical' biofuel is damaging the impoverished people it was supposed to help
Cahal Milmo and Andrew Wasley, The Independent 15 Feb 10;

A "miracle" plant, once thought to be as the answer to producing renewable biofuels on a vast scale, is driving thousands of farmers in the developing world into food poverty, a damning report concludes today.

Five years ago jatropha was hailed by investors and scientists as a breakthrough in the battle to find a biofuel alternative to fossil fuels that would not further impoverish developing countries by diverting resources away from food production.

Jatropha was said to be resistant to drought and pests and able could grow on land that was unsuitable for food production. But researchers have found that it has increased poverty in countries including India and Tanzania.

Millions of the plants have been grown in anticipation of rich returns, only for growers to be hit by poor yields, conflict over land and a lack of infrastructure to process the oil-rich seeds.

Oil giant BP, which planned to spend almost £32m on a joint venture to set up jatropha plantations, has now pulled out and the charity ActionAid today warns that jatropha needs to be cultivated on prime food-growing land to produce significant yields.

According to one estimate, up to one million hectares of jatropha – an area equivalent to Devon and Cornwall combined – are being cultivated around the globe, despite little evidence that it can produce enough oil to make the crop commercially sustainable.

Meredith Alexander, head of trade at Actionaid and co-author of its "Meals per Gallon" report, said: "Jatropha is a real gold-rush crop, and the same amount of common sense that applies in a gold rush has been applied to the jatropha rush.

"Jatropha was the subject of an explosion of fabulous propaganda. But this was an untried crop at commercial levels and the many thousands of marginal farmers who have gone into production have been experimented on with disastrous results. They are simply not getting the income they were promised and now cannot afford food for their families," she said.

A native of central America, Jatropha curcus was brought to Europe in the 16th century and subsequently spread across Africa and Asia. Until recently, its few uses included a malaria treatment and an indigestion remedy.

But despite jatropha's much-lauded ability to grow where food crops cannot flourish, campaigners say there is evidence that commercially viable yields can only be obtained in fertile soil.

In India, forecasted annual yields of three to five tonnes of seeds per hectare have been scaled back to 1.8 to two tonnes. The Overseas Development Institute, a leading international development think-tank, has stated that "as the mainstay of people's livelihoods, jatropha looks distinctly marginal".

ActionAid said its researchers found repeated cases of farmers being left with jatropha crops they could not sell and land previously used to grow food crops being taken over by sub-contractors who then employed locals on wages that could not compete with rises in the price of foodstuffs partially caused by biofuel production.

Raju Sona, a farmer in north-east India who gave up land that usually produces vegetables to grow jatropha, said: "No one will buy jatropha. People said if you have a plantation then surely you have a good market. But we didn't see such a market. I threw the seeds away."

A number of British companies are continuing to market jatropha as a "highly ethical and green" investment. One fund offers investors three packages for prices ranging from £7,500 to £15,600 in a brochure entitled "Money really does grow on trees". That company says it has funded the planting of 32 million jatropha shrubs worldwide through a London-based provider called Carbon Credited Farming (CCF) Plc.

Jeff Reeves, head of global operations for CCF, which estimates it will have 300 million jatropha shrubs planted on 120,000 acres worldwide by the end of 2010, admitted that there had been problems establishing the crop.

He told The Ecologist magazine: "In many cases it is government policy and people that are to blame, rather than jatropha itself. Well-managed, jatropha ... can work. But there have been countries where poor management has meant this is not the case."

D1 Oils, a London-based biofuels company which has invested heavily in jatropha, said insisted it was too early to write off the crop as a long-term biofuel source. But its former co-investor, BP, disagreed. A spokesman said: "As other [renewable fuel] technologies came up, we looked again at whether jatropha was going to be the best biofuel source that could be scaled up. There were problems with it. We have decided to look elsewhere."

* Some of this research appeared in the Ecologist

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Cold snap killing Florida's coral reefs

Yahoo News 16 Feb 10;

MIAMI (AFP) – The polar snap enveloping much of the United States in record cold has been killing off coral reefs in the normally balmy warm waters off the Florida Keys, experts said Monday.

The unusually chilly weather so far this year has seen sea temperatures plummet in southern Florida -- a fatal development for the coral, which dies when exposed for an extended time to temperatures below 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit).

Especially in the lower Keys, "temperatures have been lower... there is higher mortality," Diego Lirman, a University of Miami expert on coral, told AFP.

Florida's usually mild and sunny winter weather has given way to record low temperatures during the historic cold snap in recent weeks.

In Miami, the thermometer in January and February regularly dropped below 35 degrees Fahrenheit (1.6 Celsius), the coldest temperatures since 1970.

The cold snap also has led to "bleaching," in which the coral loses pigmentation and ultimately dies.

Destruction of coral having a negative effect on delicate tropical eco-systems in the region, Lirman added, with micro-algae living within the coral forced to leave their habitat for lack of a food source.

Some of the worst affected species are the large brain and star coral, which can take several hundreds of years to grow into the vibrant underwater colonies.

"The Keys have not seen a cold-water bleaching event like this since the winter of 1977-78, when acres of staghorn coral perished," said Billy Causey, southeast regional director of NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

Florida's coral reefs are considered a unique natural heritage area in the United States for their proximity to the coast and their expansiveness, running from north of Miami in the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

The state's myriad of tropical animals also have been impacted by the cold snap so far this year, with iguanas dropping from trees and manatees huddling around waters warmed by power plants.

The cold-blooded iguanas' comfort level begins at 73 degrees Fahrenheit (23 Celsius) and they positively thrive at 95 degree Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius).

But when temperatures drop below about 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius), they become immobile, and below about 40 degrees Fahrenheit (five degrees Celsius), they become completely immobile due to a lack of blood flow.

Unable to hold on, the helpless mohawked lizards that shelter in tree branches have been seen falling to the ground, and wildlife officials have offered guidelines to revive them.

Cold weather kills off Florida wildlife
Iguanas, pythons and other non-native species are freezing to death as temperatures plummet in the Sunshine State
Suzanne Goldenberg, guardian.co.uk 15 Feb 10;

Comatose iguanas have been dropping from the trees and pythons have frozen to death in their tracks in Florida's unusually harsh winter, wildlife officials said today.

Parts of the Sunshine State saw their second snowfall of the season this weekend, with the extended cold spells killing off a host of tropical intruders, including iguanas, Burmese and African pythons and invasive fish.

State wildlife officials said more than half of the green iguanas, which are native to South America, could have been killed off. "The iguanas up in the trees just got so cold, they kind of went very, very sluggish, and just fell down," said Jenny Tinnell, a biologist with Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Residents of south Florida, who have discovered the animals on their patios, have tried to warm them back to life.

Local newspapers, meanwhile, have been warning homeowners not to let their dogs gnaw on iguana corpses, which may be poisonous.

In the Everglades, trackers licensed by the state have discovered the decaying corpses of three African rock pythons, which can reach over 20ft and can kill people. State officials believe up to half of the Burmese pythons have also died, along with large numbers of invasive fish.

The python die-off could be helpful to wildlife officials. The alien constrictors, many of them abandoned pets, have been taking over portions of the Everglades, threatening native species.

Last month, the Obama administration said it was considering a ban on nine species of giant snake.

"The fish and wildlife commission has no problem with nature naturally knocking back those populations," said Tinnell.

But the harsh winter is also harming natives such as the manatee, which is an endangered species. Long periods of cold weaken their immune systems. Officials said about 200 manatee carcasses have washed up on shore since the beginning of the year. Dozens of crocodiles have also died.

The extreme temperatures also prompted a rescue effort last month for endangered sea turtles. Officials plucked more than 4,000 from chilly waters, bathing them in warm salt water to revive them.

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Decrease in fog threatens California's sequoias: study

Yahoo News 16 Feb 10;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – California's coastal fog has decreased significantly over the past 100 years, potentially endangering coast redwood trees dependent on cool, humid summers, according to a new study made public Monday.

The study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists said it was unclear whether this phenomenon was part of a natural cycle or the result of human activity.

But it warned the change could affect not only the redwoods, but the entire redwood ecosystem.

"Since 1901, the average number of hours of fog along the coast in summer has dropped from 56 percent to 42 percent, which is a loss of about three hours per day," said study leader James Johnstone, who worked at the University of California's Department of Geography before becoming a post-doctoral scholar in the campus's Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management.

"A cool coast and warm interior is one of the defining characteristics of California's coastal climate, but the temperature difference between the coast and interior has declined substantially in the last century, in step with the decline in summer fog," Johnstone continued.

The loss of fog and increased temperature mean that "coast redwood and other ecosystems along the US West Coast may be increasingly drought-stressed, with a summer climate of reduced fog frequency and greater evaporative demand," said co-author Todd Dawson, a Berkeley professor of integrative biology.

"Fog prevents water loss from redwoods in summer, and is really important for both the tree and the forest. If the fog is gone, we might not have the redwood forests we do now."

The report will be published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Less Fog in California Could Stress Redwoods
Andrea Thompson, livescience.com Yahoo News 16 Feb 10;

Significantly less fog is drifting in along the Pacific Coast these days, a new study finds. The shift force a decline in redwood trees, which rely on the fog to keep them supplied with water during the arid summer months.

Climate models have predicted that with the warming caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere, California's coastal fog would increase as a result of changing atmosphere and ocean circulation patterns.

But weather records that just recently became available have shown the opposite trend of a significant decrease in fog over the past 100 years.

"Since 1901, the average number of hours of fog along the coast in summer has dropped from 56 percent to 42 percent, which is a loss of about three hours per day," said study leader James A. Johnstone, who conducted the research while working on his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, and is now at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Warmer, too

And the decline in fog isn't the only change to affect the coastal area where redwoods reside.

"A cool coast and warm interior is one of the defining characteristics of California's coastal climate, but the temperature difference between the coast and interior has declined substantially in the last century, in step with the decline in summer fog," Johnstone said.

Both of these changes could impact the health of the iconic coast redwood (Sequoia semperviren), one of the tallest and longest-lived tree species in the world, with some individual trees passing the 2,000-year mark.

Elsewhere, global warming is causing some trees to grow faster. But a warmer world is bad news for redwood trees.

Redwoods aren't very good at regulating their water use. At night, they leave open their stomata - the pores on leaves that plants use to exchange gases such as water vapor and carbon dioxide with the air - which allows water to leave, but doesn't give them any of the benefits of photosynthesis, since there is no light shining on them.

Fog helps the redwoods conserve water, because it increases the humidity of the air around the trees, so less water escapes from their leaves.

A decrease in fog cover and an increase in coastal temperature could combine to make the trees lose more water and become drought-stressed.

"Fog prevents water loss from redwoods in summer, and is really important for both the tree and the forest," said Todd Dawson, also of UC Berkeley, who co-authored the study that describes the fog changes. "If the fog is gone, we might not have the redwood forests we do now."

Broader impacts

And any change in the redwood forests, could have broader impacts on the regional ecosystem.

"As fog decreases, the mature redwoods along the coast are not likely to die outright, but there may be less recruitment of new trees; they will look elsewhere for water, high humidity and cooler temperatures," Dawson said. "What does that mean for the current redwood range and that of the plants and animals with them?"

The study, detailed this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to show that fog is not as ephemeral a phenomenon as it may seem and that it in fact is a systematic process connected to the larger Pacific Coast climate, Johnstone told LiveScience.

The work was supported by the Save the Redwoods League and the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center.

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Bangladesh PM seeks early climate fund disbursement

Nizam Ahmed, Reuters 15 Feb 10;

DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday urged donors countries to come up quickly with promised funds to help her country limit the effects of climate change.

World leaders pledged an initial $10 billion fund at the December climate summit in Copenhagen to help least developed countries (LDCs) most vulnerable to climate change, particularly low-lying costal states like Bangladesh.

"Bangladesh needs quick disbursement of the fund promised in Copenhagen ... as we have already started mitigation programs," she told a donors' conference.

"We have built 100 new cyclone shelters and more are on the way, under 134 climate change action plans."

Opening the two-day meeting called Bangladesh Development Forum, she urged participants to increase the pledged climate fund. Bangladesh, she said, had earmarked a $100 million Climate Change Fund in its 2009-10 (July-June) fiscal budget in addition to a $150 million fund raised with assistance from donors.

The environment ministry has said Bangladesh is entitled to ask for at least 15 percent of the climate adaptation fund pledged at the Copenhagen summit.

Climate experts say at least 20 million of Bangladesh's more than 150 million people will be displaced, and one-fifth of the country's 140,800 sq. km (55,000 sqm) land surface will be inundated if sea levels rise by one meter by 2050.

Donors in attendance included the United States, European Union, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. The meeting is to review Bangladesh's development programs, including plans to reduce poverty and help donors select areas of cooperation.

Disaster management officials said Bangladesh has more than 2,500 shelters for some 2.5 million people. But these are insufficient for more than 20 million coastline residents.

The meeting is the first of its kind since Hasina returned to power following a December 2008 parliamentary election that ended a two-year period of rule by an army-backed interim government.

Bangladesh annually receives some $1.5 billion in assistance from donors.

(Editing by Anis Ahmed and Ron Popeski)

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UN Panel Approves 32 China Wind Farms, Blocks Six

Nina Chestney and Michael Szabo, PlanetArk 16 Feb 10;

LONDON - A United Nations climate panel approved 32 Chinese wind farms for carbon financing under the Kyoto Protocol late last week, but blocked another six after rejecting eight similar projects in December.

The approved wind farms will cut greenhouse gas emissions by some 11.3 million metric tones by the end of 2012, the year the current Kyoto pact expires, according to UN data.

Under Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), companies can invest in clean energy projects in emerging economies, and in return receive offset credits, only if they can show the projects would not have gone ahead without the prospect of revenues from selling those credits.

After noting a drop in financial support from Beijing in the form of tariffs, the CDM's executive board rejected 10 wind farms in December, saying they were profitable and capable of cutting emissions without receiving the offsets, called Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs).

The board on Friday said two of those were rejected by mistake, bringing the total rejected in December to eight.

At its latest meeting, the board fully registered 13 Chinese wind farms while conditionally approving another 19 subject to minor corrections in their applications.

The latest six rejected Chinese wind farms, five of which were in the province of Heilongjiang, would have generated 2.1 million metric tones of CERs by 2012. The panel also rejected six other clean energy projects, four of which were in China.

According to UN data, the 12 rejected projects would have generated around 3.8 million CERs before 2012, worth 44 million euros ($59.91 million) based on Friday's closing spot CER price of 11.58 euros a tonne.

The projects' investors included U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs, Japanese government agency NEDO, Dutch firm Essent Energy Trading and UK-based Climate Change Capital.

Companies participating in the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme rely on a steady flow of offsets to help them meet emissions cut targets, and disruptions to the CER supply can cause carbon prices to rise.

The board also fully registered 17 hydro projects including 15 from China, which will generate 8.2 million CERs by 2012.

Experts had said the projects faced similar registration risks to those plaguing the Chinese wind projects.

DEFERS REGISTRATION FEES

In an effort to extend the reach of the CDM, the board agreed to defer registration fees for projects in countries that are home to less than 10 registered projects. Registration fees are due only after the projects have been issued their first CERs, the board said.

Of the 80 developing countries participating in the CDM, 53 nations, or two thirds, fall into this category, UN data showed.

The CDM's board also said it is waiving registration fees for projects in the world's least developed countries (LDCs).

The UN made $56.6 million in CDM revenues in 2009 including $17.1 million in registration fees, the board said in its meeting report.

At its last meeting in December, the board said it would conduct spot checks on emissions auditors TUV-Sud and TUV-Nord.

On Friday it said it would review the outcome of these spot checks at its next meeting in Bonn, Germany on March 22-26.

(Editing by Michael Urquhart)

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Best of our wild blogs: 15 Feb 10

Chek Jawa check up with Dr Dan
from wild shores of singapore

Green HDB corridors
from Urban Forest

Unexpected Encounters Part 1
from Black Dillenia

Monday Morgue: 15th February 2009
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales

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New Conservation Initiatives Meant to Help Save Last of Indonesia’s Tigers

Ismira Lutfia, Jakarta Globe 14 Feb 10;

As the Chinese zodiac ticks over to the Year of the Tiger, renewed global efforts are aiming to wrest the animal itself back from the brink of extinction by doubling their population.

In Indonesia, the conservation drive has come about in a series of new initiatives to save the only remaining subspecies in the country, the Sumatran tiger, after having lost the Balinese and Javan tigers to extinction in the 1930s and 1980s, respectively.

Darori, the Ministry of Forestry’s director general of forest protection and nature conservation, told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday that nine Sumatran tigers had been released back into the wild as part of its latest push. They included two tigers that were released at the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in Lampung last month.

In January the ministry also revealed its controversial initiative to allow rich people to “adopt” captive tigers to help curb illegal hunting and trade. Under the plan, a pair of tigers could be rented for Rp 1 billion ($107,000).

Darori said the adoption scheme would pair male and female tigers to increase their chances of breeding. The adopted tigers, he said, would be classified as “on loan from the government,” and any cubs bred from the pair would belong to the state.

Enclosures of a minimum 10 meters wide by 6 meters long and 5 meters high would be required for the adopted tigers, which would also receive regular checkups by vets and ministry officials.

“We are just being realistic,” Darori said. “If they can be released back into the wild, we will do that — if they cannot, we’ll conserve them in captivity.”

The government’s efforts in tiger conservation were internationally recognized, Darori said, and has led to Indonesia being proposed as the host of the second Asia Ministerial Conference on Tiger Conservation in July ahead of a Heads of State Tiger Summit in Vladivostok, Russia, in September.

The first ministerial meeting for the 13 countries home to the endangered species was held in January in Thailand.

“They see Indonesia is serious about this and we have shown concrete action,” Darori said.

At a news conference on Friday to launch the World Wildlife Fund’s own Tiger conservation campaign, Darori said he appreciated the cooperation by a number of stakeholders to conserve the Sumatran tiger.

Kurnia Rauf, head of the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, told the Globe that lessons should be learned from the extinction of the Balinese and Javan tigers, and that much more still needed to be done to save the Sumatran tiger.

He said tiger conservation played an important role in safeguarding the rich biodiversity of Sumatra’s rainforests.

“If there are no tigers preying on wild boars, their population could explode and in turn become pests for humans,” Kurnia said.

Nazir Foead, WWF Indonesia’s director for policy and empowerment, said saving the tigers would also mean preserving their habitat, which would prevent them from encroaching on human settlements.

WWF Indonesia has said the ministries of forestry, home affairs, public works and environment, along with governors from across Sumatra, have committed to an ecosystem-based spatial planning initiative, which has identified areas throughout the island to become possible wildlife corridors.

Nazir said palm oil plantations, human settlements and land concessions had divided Sumatra’s rainforests into small clusters, isolating wild tigers from other breeding groups.

“We will restore the forests as the tigers’ natural habitat by establishing wildlife corridors to connect these clusters,” he said.

He added that programs were in place to reduce the chance of tigers coming into conflict with people living near the corridors.

“This is avoidable by learning the tigers’ living patterns and determining which areas they roam the most,” Nazir said. “We know which areas are the ‘red alert’ ones to avoid.”

The WWF has identified a number of areas across Sumatra in which to establish wildlife corridors, some encompassing multiple provinces, and has been facilitating meetings between local administration officials to coordinate their establishment.

Corridors that connect three of the island’s biggest national parks — Gunung Leuser National Park in the north, Kerinci Seblat National Park in the west and Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in the south — are priority areas for the spatial planning program.

Kurnia said the wildlife corridors would help boost the Sumatran tiger’s dwindling population and increase their chances of finding a suitable mate from groups living in other forests.

There are an estimated 47 tigers remaining in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, Kurnia said.

“They would have a better chance to grow in population by mating with tigers from Gunung Leuser and Kerinci Seblat if the corridors are established to connect the three national parks.”

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Indonesian villagers chase away crop destroying monkeys

Antara 14 Feb 10;

Sukabumi (ANTARA News) - Some 100 residents of Cijurey village in Sukabumi district, West Java, on Sunday hunted wild monkeys for destroying their crops in an apparent revenge for the destruction of their habitat by people.

According to Cujurey village chief, Roni Mamahit, the monkeys that live in Curug Cisayang hills came down and destroyed the people`s crops in revenge.

"State-owned forest management company PT Perhutani is running a production forests in these hills, and frequent cutting of trees destroys the monkey`s habitat," he said.
As a result, hundreds of wild and upset monkeys destroyed people`s crops and plantations, Mamahit said.

The Cijurey villagers had been chasing away the monkeys to the Cisayang Curug hills since 9 am Sunday with rifles and other weapons.

The hunt was conducted after many villagers were upset that 20 hectares of rice and other crops were destroyed by the monkeys, Mamahit said.

Until Sunday afternoon, the hunt was not very successful because the monkeys always managed to escape to the hills, which are difficult to reach by the villagers.

He said destruction by the monkeys in the residential areas had been going on for the last three years, although the villagers have tried to chase them away.

"The villagers also managed to catch 30 monkeys roaming in their villages. And some of the villagers even pointed the monkeys by giving them poisoned banana," he said. Nevertheless, the monkeys kept coming back for their destruction spree.(*)

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Tiger Farms in China Feed Thirst for Parts

Andrew Jacobs, The New York Times 12 Feb 10;

GUILIN, China — The crowd-pleasing Year of the Tiger, which begins Sunday, could be a lousy year for the estimated 3,200 tigers that still roam the world’s diminishing forests.

With as few as 20 in the wild in China, the country’s tigers are a few gun blasts away from extinction, and in India poachers are making quick work of the tiger population, the world’s largest. The number there, around 1,400, is about half that of a decade ago and a fraction of the 100,000 that roamed the subcontinent in the early 20th century.

Shrinking habitat remains a daunting challenge, but conservationists say the biggest threat to Asia’s largest predator is the Chinese appetite for tiger parts. Despite a government ban on the trade since 1993, there is a robust market for tiger bones, traditionally prized for their healing and aphrodisiac qualities, and tiger skins, which have become cherished trophies among China’s nouveau riche.

With pelts selling for $20,000 and a single paw worth as much as $1,000, the value of a dead tiger has never been higher, say those who investigate the trade. Last month the Indian government announced a surge in killings of tigers by poachers, with 88 found dead in 2009, double the previous year. Because figures are based on carcasses found on reserves or tiger parts seized at border crossings, conservationists say the true number is far higher.

“All of the demand for tiger parts is coming from China,” said Belinda Wright, executive director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India. “Unless the Chinese change their attitude, the tiger has no future on this earth.”

Although conservationists say India must do a better job of policing its 37 tiger reserves, they insist that the Chinese government has not done all it can to quell the domestic market for illicit tiger parts. Anti-trafficking efforts are haphazard, experts say; China bans the use of tiger parts in traditional Chinese medicine but overlooks the sale of alcohol-based health tonics steeped in tiger bone.

It is a gray area that has been exploited by Chinese tiger farms, which raise thousands of animals with assembly-line efficiency.

If there is any mystery about what happens to the big cats at Xiongsen Tiger and Bear Mountain Village in Guilin, it is partly explained in the gift shop, where fuzz-coated bottles in the shape of a tiger are filled with “bone strengthening” wine. The liquor, which costs $132 for a six-year-old brew, is sold openly across the surrounding Guangxi region and beyond.

“This stuff works wonders,” said Zhang Hanchu, the owner of a spirits shop in Guilin. A daily shot glass of the rice-based alcohol, he said, can reduce joint stiffness, treat rheumatism and increase sexual vigor. With the Year of the Tiger nearing, demand has been soaring, he said.

Opened in 1993 with financing from the State Forestry Administration, Xiongsen is China’s largest tiger-breeding operation. Some of its 1,500 tigers roam treeless, fenced-in areas, while many others are packed in small cages where they pace agitatedly.

The park is a fairly dispiriting place. In addition to the tigers, there are hundreds of capuchin monkeys rattling in cages, awaiting their fate as fodder for medicinal elixirs or medical experiments. There are also about 300 Asiatic brown bears which are tapped for their bile, the main ingredient of a lucrative supplement said to improve eyesight.

Those who pay the park’s $12 entry fee are treated to an extravaganza of tigers jumping through rings of fire or balancing on balls; if the crowds are large enough, workers will place a cow and a tiger in an enclosure with predictably gruesome results.

Until a spate of negative press two years ago, Xiongsen proudly sold tiger steaks at its restaurant as “big king meat.” These days, the park takes a more low-key approach. The word “tiger” no longer appears on the wine packaging — “rare animal bones” is used instead — although those who sell the wine say the key ingredient remains tiger bone.

On a recent visit, a regular stream of cars, some with government license plates, pulled up to a building at the center of the park and drove away with their trunks full of Xiongsen’s wine tonic. A large sign in the building’s interior declares “Protecting Wild Animals is the Bounden Duty of Every Citizen.”

A woman who answered the phone at Xiongsen’s winery said the owner, Zhou Weisen, was not available to comment, but she insisted that tigers were not an ingredient in the 200,000 bottles a liquor produced each year.

In addition to overlooking the sale of tiger wine, the Chinese government has fueled the market in tiger parts by letting such farms exist, critics say. Although the State Forestry Administration reiterated its support for the ban on the trade of tigers last December, it reconsiders the restrictions each year, giving hope to the politically powerful owners of China’s 20 tiger farms.

If the ban were lifted, critics say, trade in farm-bred tigers would simply provide cover for poached tigers, which are far cheaper to harvest and bring in far higher prices because most Chinese believe the healing properties of wild tigers are greater than those raised in cages.

An employee at the forestry administration said the entire staff was away on a retreat and could not be reached.

Debbie Banks, who runs the tiger campaign at the Environmental Investigation Agency in London, said China’s stated resolve to help end the international trade in tigers was diluted by its ambivalent stand on domestic sales. “The government is stimulating and perpetuating demand, which is the real problem we’re facing,” she said.

Despite the grim news, conservationists say the coming year also presents an opportunity to raise awareness about the problem. All the hoopla surrounding the Year of the Tiger has captured the attention of many nations, especially China, whose government is sensitive to criticisms that it is encouraging the tiger’s extinction. In September, Russia and the World Bank will host a summit meeting on tigers that conservationists hope will yield a solid plan to restore plummeting tiger populations.

James Compton, Asia program director for TRAFFIC, which monitors the global wildlife trade, thinks the most important step would be for China and other nations to elevate the interdiction of tiger parts to that of illicit drugs. “It’s not rocket science to knock out the big traders,” he said, adding that bodies like Interpol and the World Customs Organization should take on the fight.

Guarded optimism aside, Mr. Compton cannot help but recall the last time the Year of the Tiger came around, in 1998. There was similar talk then of using the occasion to marshal the international community. He also has a vivid memory of the poster produced for the occasion. Its pitch: “Save the Last 5,000 Tigers.”

Xiyun Yang contributed reporting.

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War at home: The local eco-warriors making a big noise

The Independent 14 Feb 10;

Shivering atop a power-station chimney certainly makes a dramatic eco statement. But is direct action the best way to combat global warming? Robin Barton meets the climate-change campaigners who like 'big and bold' and the green communities who prefer 'slow and steady'

Most of us enjoyed a good night's sleep last night. A warm bed, soft pillow, that sort of thing. But for the past six months, during the harshest winter in decades, protesters against the proposed Mainshill opencast mine in South Lanarkshire have been sleeping in treehouses and tunnels on the site, risking their wellbeing, or at least frostbitten fingers. Last week the eviction process began. Somewhat reassuringly, after the recent cold spell, the activists were given a medical once-over to check they were well enough to be arrested.

From Scotland to the village of Sipson, the site of BAA's planned third runway at Heathrow, environmental activists are fired up. Frustration over December's COP15 cop-out has led many to abandon hope in state-led solutions on climate change and renewable energy. In a poll conducted by treehugger.com, the leading green blog, 48 per cent of respondents, by far the largest group, described the Copenhagen summit as "a big expensive waste of time that failed to deal with an urgent problem". So how best to get that view across?

"Direct action is a form of political engagement that's far more effective than other forms of protest I've tried," argues Ben Stewart. He was one of six Greenpeace protesters arrested after occupying the chimney of Kingsnorth power station in Kent in 2007 (see panel, right). But, heroic though abseiling down a chimney may be, is it the best way forward to a greener, cleaner environment? Or is the greatest progress being achieved in tiny steps that we can all take: cutting down on household waste, using less energy, reducing journeys. These are the seemingly mundane actions being taken by the Transition Town movement.

"The conclusion from Copenhagen is that we can't wait for governments to act," says Rob Hopkins, the Devon-based Transition Towns guru, "so communities need to make these things happen." What Hopkins has in mind are transition towns: communities that have become sustainable not only in energy but in areas including transport, public services, and economics. Some, such as Lewes (see panel, page 20) and the London neighbourhood of Brixton, have their own currencies, which encourage locals to support local enterprises. Since 2005, when the movement germinated in Totnes, it has spread across the world.

"The end of cheap energy is inevitable, and you can choose to look at that as a disastrous crisis, or as an extraordinary opportunity," explains Hopkins. "Transition Towns is a grass-roots movement that goes beyond self-sufficiency. It's a much deeper process than looking at carbon footprints. It's a chance for communities to become their own masters: to be their own banks, their own builders."

Chris Smedley of Transition Town Lewes agrees: "Activism doesn't change the fundamental model of society, whereas what Transition attempts to do is create a new model. Politicans and business leaders live within a set of rules that force a short-term view. Transition Towns can look long-term. The energy crisis won't hit for years. The urgency lies in starting to do something about it now."

Yet that urgency is shared by seasoned activists such as Greenpeace's Stewart (see page 19) and Tim Cowen of ' Conch (see page 21), a group campaigning against a proposed coal-fired powerstation in Ayrshire. "We can debate for years but direct action gets to the end point a lot quicker," says Stewart. "It speeds up the process of change. Direct action provides the crucible in which to have it out." The Kingsnorth protest may have lasted just one night but, after the six activists were charged with criminal damage, it played out in front of a jury in Maidstone Crown Court in 2008. After arguing that by preventing 20,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions they were protecting lives and property (the "lawful excuse"), the Kingsnorth Six were acquitted (the story is told in the Nick Broomfield film A Time Comes).

It wasn't the first time the daring defence had been attempted. "You can go all the way back to the Greenpeace GM crops case in 2000, which sent shockwaves at a political level," says Debbie Tripley, for six years head of legal at Greenpeace and now chief executive of the Environmental Law Foundation (see panel, below right). ELF works at a local level, contesting unglamorous cases involving pesticides, bypasses and waterways; it's a village-green preservation society, staffed by quick-thinking lawyers. "We're not a campaigning organisation; we don't take up causes," says Tripley. "Our aim is simply to improve access to environmental justice." One way ELF is doing that is by offering seminars and workshops in under-represented areas as part of its Sustainable Communities project.

Down in Lewes, "Transition Townies" visit schools and hold energy fairs. Ovesco, an Industrial and Provident Society for community benefit spun out of the town's energy group, has dispensed 200 grants for biomass-fuelled boilers, photo-voltaic panels and insulation. It sounds mundane but in the climate war's battle for hearts and minds, perhaps that's what matters.

It's something that Cowen, a leader of Conch, has considered: "A successful campaign has to be inclusive. Although I come from a campaigning background, most people didn't. They are farmers, beekeepers, businessmen, not stereotypical activists; we hosted free film screenings in Glasgow to engage with people who wouldn't normally be interested."

But all agree that there is a time and place for direct action. "Direct action is a mechanism for people to exercise their freedom of speech on issues that concern them," says Tripley. According to Stewart, peaceful, creative direct action exposes the hypocrisy at the highest level. And Cowen agrees: "The Scottish Government said nice things about their Climate Change Act in Copenhagen, but on the ground, nothing has happened to meet those targets. And they've changed planning rules to make it more difficult for people to object."

Both strands meet in the form of 19-year-old Joe Ryle and his six fellow Plane Stupid activists, who recently launched Transition Heathrow, and are bringing direct-action training to Sipson in preparation for a planning application due to be lodged by BAA later this year. "I have given up on governments taking the action which we need to see. I feel that empowering communities to create their own solutions to tackling climate change, directly controlled by those impacted on the ground, is much more important than trying to lobby the Government."

The protesters: The Kingsnorth Six

For someone without a head for heights, spending more than 24 hours on top of a chimney almost the height of Canary Wharf is an extreme way of making a point. But for Ben Stewart, far left, with three of his six fellow Greenpeace protesters who occupied the chimney of Kingsnorth power station in October 2007, it was worth every minute

"From the top of the chimney – a place you know you're not really allowed to be – we looked over a patchwork of green fields and saw a line of flashing blue lights of police van after police van. There was the sense of having quite an odd day.

"Kingsnorth was to be the first new coal-fired power station, under plans proposed by its owner E-ON. The idea of making Kingsnorth famous was proposed to us in a pub. I'm from the local area so I volunteered as a spokesperson. Our plan was to shut it down for as long as possible.

"It turned out to be much more difficult to get up there than we expected. We thought there'd be a staircase but it was a ladder up the inside of a tower as high as Canary Wharf. We had 50kg kitbags and instead of taking an hour, as I thought it would, it took nine.

"When it was all over, the charges were more serious than we expected: we were charged with causing £30,000 of damage and there was a danger of going to prison. Back in the pub afterwards, I thought something was up when Sarah North, Greenpeace's campaign director, bought me a drink. She broached the subject of pleading not guilty and outlined the idea of running a creative defence and putting the Government's energy policy on trial.

"I thought, why not? We had Keir Starmer QC on our defence team – until he was made director of public prosecutions three weeks before the case and had to pull out. So we were urgently casting around London for a defence lawyer and came up with Michael Wolkind. His previous clients included the nail bomber David Copeland and the Norfolk farmer Tony Martin. They had both lost – but he assured us he had a good feeling about this.

"The Nasa climatologist James Hansen electrified the courtroom with remarkable evidence in our trial; even we learnt a lot. We stopped 20,000 tonnes of emissions during the action and used the "lawful excuse" defence to argue that we were acting to protect property and lives around the world. It was my first time in front of a jury. A court room has a life of its own, there's an atmosphere. I went into court thinking I'd go to jail. But in the process of presenting our evidence, I felt we would get a hung jury and by the end, when the jury had been out for a long time, I thought we'd be acquitted. As Lord Devlin said, every jury is a little Parliament. At times, society has an audit and asks, 'Where are we on this issue?' That little Parliament spoke up.

"I'm 35 and felt that you can sit and wait forever for a government to do the obvious. All of us who take direct action have to face hostile reaction, not only from the police and talk-radio commentators but also friends and relatives. You're always having to answer for what you do. In response, it is gratifying to be able to say 'I haven't broken the law.'"

The community: Transition Town Lewes

The Transition Town movement aims to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and prepare for a low-carbon future. Chris Smedley, Chris Rowland and Oliver Dudok van Heel, speaking below, are three of the people behind the transformation of a whole town. Transition Town Lewes now has its own currency, the Lewes Pound, and about 20 working groups on transport, education, health and food

"We started with a few people who took up the Transition idea six months after Totnes in 2005. We work back from a date when fossil fuels will be unavailable – 2025, 2050 – to develop a community that has been weaned off its dependency. The first year was primarily spent raising awareness and explaining the issues behind fossil fuels.

"The working groups system puts people in touch with others who have a common interest. It's very good on a local, community level and reduces reliance on the local council. There's a can-do attitude about that attracts doers.

"The reason Transition Towns have been successful is that they haven't been militant. They're all-encompassing. Where the environmental movement tends to be 'against' things. Transition Towns are all about being 'for' something. To people of all political backgrounds, that's very appealing."

In Lewes, the Waste Group, led by Julia Waterlow, has, in alliance with the local council, trialled £100 Green Johanna home composters from Sweden. Both parties have subsidised the composters so they're free to local households. An industrial-scale composter, for commercial food waste, is also being trialled at County Hall. Waterlow is also in charge of the Evelyn Eco House on a Lewes estate, which highlights cheap, effective upgrades. The Transport Group, meanwhile, has introduced the car-sharing Silver Bean Car Club, which the district council is looking at introducing town-wide.

The lawyers: Environmental Law Foundation

Deborah Tripley is chief executive of the Environmental Law Foundation, a charity that helps people use the law to protect their local environment. She is a trained barrister and was head of legal at Greenpeace

"When ELF started in 1992, before the UN Convention on Climate Change had been passed, it was a pioneer. Back in those days we had to explain what environmental law was. A unique feature of ELF was establishing a national network of lawyers who pledged to provide a certain amount of time pro bono. Our Sustainable Communities project is a new way of working. We're going to marginalised, under-represented local communities and asking them about their concerns, then bringing in people to provide solutions. We get about 700 enquiries a year – about 80 per cent are planning-related and concerned with things going on in the locality. About 30 per cent become High Court challenges.

"Things haven't changed much over the past 20 years. People are still concerned with the same three issues: noise, habitat destruction and pollution. But more people are aware of their environmental rights then find they can't do anything. According to Lord Justice Jackson's Review of Civil Litigation Costs, litigation costs have increased; that's an issue for us and all environmental organisations.

"Is law the best mechanism for protecting the environment? Sometimes I feel people's expectations are too high. We advised the local community when Donald Trump wanted to build a vast golf course; they felt the development would destroy local coastline. The proposal was refused at a planning inquiry but Alec Salmond overruled them and granted it. Work securing the sand dunes began last October, but is still mired in legal challenges

"Campaigners want to change minds at a government level, but we work in a different context: we represent people on a local level. Sometimes you can get a change at a policy level but find it has no impact at all locally, or is not being enforced. You need ordinary people to protect the environment and environmental laws need to be enforced on the ground. We're just trying to get the best for their area. It's about small wins but important wins."

The campaigners: Conch (Communities Opposed to New Coal at Hunterston)

Formed in July 2009 to fight plans to build a new coal-fired power station at Hunterston, Conch is led by Tim Cowen (below, far right). Hunterston is a small coal terminal on the North Ayrshire coast. The no-new-coal campaign is one of the latest since the Kingsnorth protest

"We started in July, with a mix of people, and have had an awful lot of good news since then. Ayrshire Power's partner, Dong (Danish Oil and Natural Gas), pulled its funding in October, saying it needed to make cutbacks in its international portfolio. Conch would have been a factor in that decision. We have run a very vociferous local campaign and launched a legal challenge in September. There still has not been a planning application lodged.

"One critical lesson has been that campaigns don't usually start before plans are lodged; but as soon as we heard about the Hunterston proposal we got 120 people along to a public meeting on a wet and windy night. Because we succeeded in getting started early, we haven't had to resort to direct action yet. But we were boosted by news of the Kingsnorth acquittal. If the plan goes ahead, we will organise larger public meetings. We've done well to get information out to counter PR from Ayrshire Power. Another thing we've done is highlight what we believe are problems with technological issues surrounding carbon capture [using a filter to hinder emissions], which was part of Ayrshire Power's proposal.

"Networking with other campaign groups is vital. It's really important to build networks and share information. There's quite an active campaign against opencast mining in Scotland and they've shared health studies and fired off Freedom of Information requests. My advice to would-be activists: give it a go. You'll be surprised at the support you get. And have fun, keep people motivated. We had a fundraising gig in a barn."

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Greenland ice loss driven by warming seas: study

Yahoo News 14 Feb 10;

PARIS (AFP) – Greenland's continent-sized icesheet is being significantly eroded by winds and currents that drive warmer water into fjords, where it carves out the base of coastal glaciers, according to studies released Sunday.

The icy mass sitting atop Greenland holds enough water to boost global sea levels by seven metres (23 feet), potentially drowning low-lying coastal cities and deltas around the world.

At present, the ocean watermark is rising at around three millimetres (0.12 inches) per year, a figure that compares with 1.8mm (0.07 inches) annually in the early 1960s.

But Greenland's contribution has more than doubled in the past decade, and scientists suspect climate change is largely to blame, although exactly how this is occurring is fiercely debated.

Some theories point to air temperatures, which are rising faster in far northern latitudes than the global average.

A rival idea is that shifting currents and subtropical ocean waters moving north are eroding the foundation of coastal glaciers, accelerating their slide into the sea, especially those inside Greenland's many fjords.

Until now, however, these studies have been mainly based on mathematical models rather than observation.

A team of scientists led by Fiammetta Straneo of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts set out to help fill that data void.

Working off of a ship in July and September 2008, the researchers took detailed measurements of the water properties in the Sermilik Fjord connecting Helheim Glacier in eastern Greenland with the ocean.

They found deep water streaming into the fjord was 3.0-4.0 degrees Celsius (37.4-39.2 degrees Fahrenheit), warm enough to cut into the base of the glaciers and hasten their plunge into the sea.

Moored instruments left in the fjord for eight months showed that winds aligned with the coastline played a crucial role in the influx of these warmer waters.

"Our findings support increased submarine melting as a trigger for the glacier acceleration, but indicated a combination of atmospheric and oceanic changes as the likely driver," the researchers say.

In a separate field study, Eric Rignot of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and colleagues tried to calculate the relative share of the causes of glacier loss.

Investigating the western side of Greenland, they took ocean measurements in August 2008 in three fjords at the base of four glaciers breaking off into the sea, a process known as calving.

Ocean melting, they found, accounted for between 20 and 75 percent of ice loss from the glacier face, with calving from the part of the iceberg exposed to air accounting for the rest.

Meanwhile, a study also published in the journal Nature Geoscience warned that oceans could become more acidic faster than at any time over the last 65 million years.

Andy Ridgwell and Daniella Schmidt of the University of Bristol, western England compared past and future changes in ocean acidity using computer simulations.

They found that the surface of the ocean is set to acidify even faster than it did during a well-documented episode of greenhouse warming 55.5 million years ago.

Accelerating acidification has already begun to take a toll on numerous marine animals that play a vital role in ocean food chain and help draw off huge quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere.

The calcium carapace of microscopic animals called foraminifera living in the Southern Ocean, for example, have fallen in weight by a third.

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Climate: Is the Copenhagen Accord already dead?

Marlowe Hood and Richard Ingham Yahoo News 14 Feb 10;

PARIS (AFP) – Less than two months after it was hastily drafted to stave off a fiasco, the Copenhagen Accord on climate change is in a bad way, and some are already saying it has no future.

The deal was crafted amid chaos by a small group of countries, led by the United States and China, to avert an implosion of the UN's December 7-18 climate summit.

Savaged at the time by green activists and poverty campaigners as disappointing, gutless or a betrayal, the Accord is now facing its first test in the political arena -- and many views are caustic.

Veterans say the document has little traction and cannot pull the 194-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) towards a new global pact by year's end.

Political momentum is so weak that so far only two negotiating rounds have been rostered in 2010, one among officials in Bonn in mid-year, the other in Mexico at ministerial level in December.

Worse, the Accord itself already seems to have been quietly disowned by China, India and other emerging economies just weeks after they helped write it, say these sources.

"Publicly, they are being bubbly and supportive about the Copenhagen Accord. In private, they are urinating all over it," one observer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

The Accord's supporters say it is the first wide-ranging deal to peg global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) and gather rich and poor countries in specific pledges for curbing carbon emissions.

And it promises money: 30 billion dollars for climate-vulnerable poor countries by 2012, with as much as 100 billion dollars annually by 2020.

Critics say there is no roadmap for reaching the warming target and point out the pledges are voluntary, whereas the Kyoto Protocol -- which took effect five years ago next Tuesday -- has tough compliance provisions for rich polluters.

Anger among small countries sidelined from the crazed huddle in Copenhagen was so fierce that the paper failed to get approval at a plenary session.

That meant the Accord's credibility rating is based on what happened on January 31, a self-described "soft" deadline set by the UNFCCC.

Under it, countries would register their intended actions for tackling carbon emissions and say if they wish to be "associated" with the agreement.

The roster on actions is nicely filled, but there are glaring gaps in the "association" side.

China (the world's No. 1 polluter), India, Brazil and South Africa, as well as Russia among the developed countries, have all failed to make this endorsement.

The US sees this as backsliding which could return negotiations to the finger-pointing and textual nitpicking that brought Copenhagen so close to disaster.

Its climate pointman, Todd Stern, said last Tuesday that he believed the big four developing countries "will sign on."

"The consequences of not doing so are so serious -- in a word, leaving the accord stillborn, contrary to the clear assent their leaders gave to the accord in Copenhagen."

The Chinese and Indian governments, questioned by AFP, declined to comment on specifics of their positions.

Michael Zammit Cutajar, former chairman of a UNFCCC negotiating group, said the Copenhagen Accord was flawed by "incoherence" as to how it should dovetail with the overall UNFCCC forum and parallel talks on extending Kyoto.

"Beyond the lack of clarity in its drafting, its main weakness is the lack of ambition and identifying responsibilities," he said in an interview.

"Who should do what, and when, in order to limit warming to 2C (3.6 F)?"

Saleemul Huq with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London, said the developing majors, by refusing to endorse the Accord, "are clearly signalling their view that the UNFCCC process is still the only game in town."

"This means that any impressions that anyone might have had that the Accord had succeeded in hiving off the 'main players' into a separate process to the UNFCCC are just a delusion."

So does the Copenhagen Accord have any real future? Or is it doomed to be consigned to a desk drawer?

"It's still too early to know," said Elliot Diringer of US thinktank, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Seeking to breathe life into its provisions, the United States and others may launch a "friends of the Accord" process, running in parallel to the UN negotiations.

But in the likelihood that China and India will snub this move, the document may end up as "a political reference point" within the UN process, said Diringer, who summarised: "It's a messy situation."

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