From sick sea lions to cash-cars, science meet has it covered

Karin Zeitvogel Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;

SAN DIEGO, California (AFP) – Sea lions with epilepsy, a car that earns money for its driver, dolphins and climate change: all are on the agenda Thursday as scientists kick off a major meeting that aims to take science to the people.

"The conference is like the science Olympics," said Peter Agre, head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which is hosting the meeting in California as the Winter Olympics were in full swing in Vancouver, Canada.

"We've got the science equivalent of luge, of paired ice skating, of ski jumping. San Diego is a mecca for hot science," he said.

Scientists from around the world were expected to attend the meeting in California, which is the 176th annual conference of the AAAS. But they won't be locked in scientific debate among themselves.

"I feel that science owes the public an explanation about what it has done with public funds, and this conference gives that explanation," Agre, a Nobel chemistry laureate, told AFP before the conference.

"This conference is not about dumbing-down science but neither is it a place for subspecialists to talk only to other subspecialists in a niche," he said.

On Thursday, the first day of the five-day science talkfest, which has the theme "bridging science and society," marine scientists will share the speaker's dais with mechanical engineers, a high seas policy advisor, university professors and nuclear safety experts.

While details of the discussions will remain under wraps until the symposia begin, just looking at the range of speakers is an indication that they cover a broad array of topics.

One of the symposia will deal with sea lions who are developing epilepsy.

Another will cover a new make of car that can be a source of income, rather than the usual financial drain.

Yet another will ponder the worrisome question of nuclear verification, and one will offer a sneak peek at the final report of a 10-year census of marine life, which has discovered "unusual creatures" in the ocean, including a tubeworm that drills for oil and a crab with hairy legs.

Later in the week, symposia will cover eclectic subjects -- such as how dust in the atmosphere could counteract climate change -- and touch on current topics of hot conversation, such as countries striving to develop their nuclear capability or the debate over whether global warming really exists.

Medicine will be center-stage at many of the symposia, including the one on chemicals that affect the risk of developing breast cancer or another on the projected benefits of testing everyone for HIV/AIDS and immediately treating those found to be infected with the virus.

"The conference is science from soup to nuts," said Agre, using an American expression that originally referred to a multi-course meal and means "from beginning to end."

Most of the symposia-leaders will be from US universities, although professors and scientists from Australian, Austrian, Belgian, British, Canadian, German, Italian, Polish, South African and Swiss institutions will be among international presenters at the conference, which runs until Monday.

According to Agre, around a fifth of people who registered to attend the conference are from outside the United States.

At the weekend, part of the San Diego conference center will be turned into a giant, hands-on science fair for families, and, separately, the head of the World Federation of Science Journalists will officially launch a three-year mentoring program for science reporters in Africa and the Arab world.

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Dolphin Cognitive Abilities Raise Ethical Questions

ScienceDaily 18 Feb 10;

"Dolphins are sophisticated, self-aware, highly intelligent beings with individual personalities, autonomy and an inner life. They are vulnerable to tremendous suffering and psychological trauma." The growing industry of capturing and confining dolphins to perform in marine parks or to swim with tourists at resorts needs to be reconsidered.

Emory University neuroscientist Lori Marino will speak on the anatomical basis of dolphin intelligence at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference (AAAS) in San Diego, on Feb. 21, 2010.

"Many modern dolphin brains are significantly larger than our own and second in mass to the human brain when corrected for body size," Marino says.

A leading expert in the neuroanatomy of dolphins and whales, Marino will appear as part of a panel discussing these findings and their ethical and policy implications.

Some dolphin brains exhibit features correlated with complex intelligence, she says, including a large expanse of neocortical volume that is more convoluted than our own, extensive insular and cingulated regions, and highly differentiated cellular regions.

"Dolphins are sophisticated, self-aware, highly intelligent beings with individual personalities, autonomy and an inner life. They are vulnerable to tremendous suffering and psychological trauma," Marino says.

The growing industry of capturing and confining dolphins to perform in marine parks or to swim with tourists at resorts needs to be reconsidered, she says.

"Our current knowledge of dolphin brain complexity and intelligence suggests that these practices are potentially psychologically harmful to dolphins and present a misinformed picture of their natural intellectual capacities," Marino says.

Marino worked on a 2001 study that showed that dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror -- a finding that indicates self-awareness similar to that seen in higher primates and elephants.

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Australia's cane toads face death by cat food

Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia's vile and poisonous plague of cane toads may finally have met its match -- and it comes in a tin of cat food.

After years spent trying to batter, gas, run over and even freeze the toxic toads out of existence, scientists say just a dollop of Whiskas could stop the warty horde.

The cat food attracts Australia's carnivorous meat ants, which swarm over and munch on baby toads killing 70 percent of them.

"It's not exactly rocket science. We went out and put out a little bit of cat food right beside the area where the baby toads were coming out of the ponds," University of Sydney professor Rick Shine told public broadcaster ABC.

"The ants rapidly discovered the cat food and thought it tasted great.

"The worker ants then leave trails back to the nest encouraging other ants to come out there and forage in that area, and within a very short period of time we got lots of ants in the same area as the toads are."

Australia is beset by millions of cane toads after they were introduced from Hawaii in 1935 to control scarab beetles.

The toads, which are prolific maters, eat anything and are incredibly tough, secrete poison that kills pets and wildlife and injure humans, prompting several -- unsuccessful -- campaigns to wipe them out.

"Even the ones that don't die immediately, die within a day or so of being attacked," Shine said, adding that native frogs were able to dodge the hungry ants.

"It's a simple, low-risk way of reducing the number of baby toads coming out of those ponds."

Meat ants devour cane toads
University of Sydney, Science Alert 19 Feb 10;

With cat food as bait, scientists from The University of Sydney's School of Biological Sciences have succeeded in showing that native meat ants can assist in controlling the spread of cane toads.

In March last year Professor Rick Shine and colleagues Georgia Ward-Fear and Greg Brown found encouraging evidence of the deadly effect of native meat ants on young cane toads.

Now they have further proven their thesis by luring ants to cane toads with cat food.

Professor Shine and his colleagues observed ant-toad interactions on the Adelaide River floodplain 60km east of Darwin, Northern Territory, in the Australian wet-dry tropics during last year's dry season.

Ant densities and toad mortalities increased "more than fourfold" with the addition of cat food baits.

"We can look at an interaction that's already happening, meat ants are already killing millions of cane toads," Professor Shine explains. "We're just looking to make it a bit easier for them."

The research, funded by the Australian Research Council and published in the February edition of the Journal of Applied Ecology, reveals that meat ants can be used with low risk of collateral damage to native wildlife. The approach is also logistically feasible, low technology and inexpensive.

Unlike many previous efforts at pest control in Australia, like the cane toad itself, the use of meat ants promises to be "a useful component of a broadly-based ecological approach," says Professor Shine.

"If we understand the vulnerability of the cane toad we can develop a number of combined tactics to combat this deadly invader," he says.

The team observed the effect of native meat ants on cane toad metamorphs (the first stage of the toad's terrestrial development) near bodies of water, and explored the cane toad's vulnerability to the native predator as a potential means of controlling cane toad numbers.

When cat food was introduced as bait, ant numbers grew and cane toad numbers declined more quickly.

"The end result," the study explains, "is that higher ant densities kill more toads, and kill toads of a wider range of body sizes."

The research continues from a study published by the team last year, which revealed an ecological and behavioural 'mismatch' between cane toads and meat ants. While meat ants posed little enduring threat to native frog and toad species, cane toads were found to be poorly-equipped to escape them.

Cane toads are easy targets for meat ants because unlike their native counterparts they do not try to avoid them at great speed. In addition, cane toads are likely to use the ineffective tactic of crypsis, or immobility, instead of more active escape tactics.

The study found 98 per cent of metamorph toads were encountered by meat ants and 84 per cent were attacked within a very brief (two minute) period. Over 50 per cent of attacks were immediately fatal, while 88 per cent of 'escapee' toads died within 24 hours.

It is hoped the technology will form part of a multi-pronged attack on cane toads.

"No single control will be a silver bullet to eradicate the cane toad from the Australian landscape," says Professor Shine.

However, "if we understand the biology of cane toads and their interactions with Australian fauna we'll be in a much better position to control them."

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Australia sets Japan Nov deadline to halt whaling

Rob Taylor, Reuters 19 Feb 10;

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has set Japan a November deadline to stop Southern Ocean whaling or face an international legal challenge to its yearly cull, launched by his government.

Australia preferred to find a diplomatic solution to its standoff with Tokyo over the annual whale cull near Antarctica, Rudd said, but was serious about a threat made two years ago to challenge the hunt in an international court.

"If that fails, then we will initiate court action before the commencement of the whaling season in November 2010. That's the bottom line and we're very clear to the Japanese, that's what we intend to do," he told Australian television Friday.

Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada arrives in Australia this weekend for talks with his Australian counterpart, Stephen Smith, on whaling, security and stalled free trade pact negotiations with Canberra.

Environmentalists have accused Rudd of backpedalling on threats of an International Court of Justice whaling challenge to avoid damaging Australia's $58 billion trade relationship with Japan and so-far glacial progress on the free trade deal.

Some legal experts believe the cull is in breach of international laws including the Antarctic Treaty System and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. A court challenge would lead to so-called provisional orders for Japan to immediately halt whaling ahead of a full hearing.

Japan is reportedly considering a compromise which would allow it to drastically scale back or abandon its yearly Antarctic hunt provided it is allowed to whale commercially in Japanese coastal waters.

Tokyo will present the proposal before the 85-nation International Whaling Commission at its annual meeting in Morocco in June, despite a similar plan being rejected last year, a Japanese fisheries official said this week.

Japan's government-backed whaling fleet aims to harpoon up to 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales, classified as endangered, in the Southern Ocean during the current Southern Hemisphere summer.

Commercial whaling was banned under a 1986 moratorium, but Japan still culls whales saying it is for research purposes.

Tokyo has lodged a protest with New Zealand's government over a collision last month between an anti-whaling protest boat and a Japanese whaler which caused the activist vessel to sink.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society skipper is being held on board a whaling ship and may face charges in Japan after boarding it at sea to lodge a protest on February 15.

Japan's government-backed Institute of Cetacean Research posted a video on its website this week showing more clashes between activists and the Japanese fleet, with paint and butyric acid bombs seen being thrown at the whaling ship Nisshin Maru.

(Editing by Sugita Katyal)

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Indian wild cats caught on film

Joanna Jolly BBC News 18 Feb 10;

One of the world's highest number of wild cat species has been recorded in India's Eastern Himalayan rainforest.

The cats were spotted in a remote area of rainforest in north-east India.

Seven species of wild cats were photographed by remote cameras equipped with motion sensors - one of the highest in the world, officials say.

The study was conducted by wildlife biologist Kashmira Kakati over two years in more than 500 sq km (5,380 sq ft) of forestry in Assam state.

All the cats were photographed in the Jeypore-Dehing lowland forests.

'Encouraging sign'

They include the rare and elusive clouded leopard, four species of tiger, the marbled cat and the golden cat.

Wildlife experts say the discovery is an encouraging sign despite the ongoing threat to animal life in the Eastern Himalayas.

Deforestation, poaching and major engineering projects, such as hydro-electric dams, threaten the long-term survival of wildlife habitats.

Crude oil extraction and coal mining are also taking their toll.

Wildlife Conservation Society-India spokesman Ravi Chellam said that rainforests were important for preserving biodiversity and creating a livelihood for local communities.

"The entire forest here should be protected as a single conservation landscape, free of disturbance and connected by wildlife corridors," he said.

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The illegal camps that threaten to destroy Kenya's Masai Mara

Explosion of unlicensed accommodation edges park's black rhino population closer to brink
Daniel Howden The Independent 19 Feb 10;

The riverine forest on the banks of the Olkeju Ronkai, close to where it meets the waters of its sister river the Mara, has long been a sanctuary for critically endangered black rhinos. Two-thirds of Kenya's remaining population of these shy leviathans were until recently living among the fever trees in what was the largest intact forest of its kind in the Masai Mara wildlife reserve.

Today, the rhino sanctuary has been transformed into a building site, the tranquillity has been shattered and trucks deliver concrete into what is becoming one of the largest lodges in the Mara.

An alliance of conservationists, park wardens and eco-tourism experts are fighting stop the construction of the Olkeju Ronkai lodge which has already displaced the rhinos from their natural habitat. The development is being financed by a British family, the Sofats who trade in the UK as Somak Holidays, registered in Harrow, Middlesex.

"Black rhinos are extremely shy and sensitive, and they need the shade and seclusion of riverine forest to calve," said Samson Lenjirr, an experienced warden and former head of the Masai Mara's rhino programme. "Where this camp is situated is the single largest such forested area in the reserve. These rhinos can't put up with permanent human settlement there, with generators running all day, tourist vans coming and going."

The last-ditch battle to stop the new lodge is emblematic of the wider struggle to save Kenya's best-known tourist attraction which, scientists warn, is in danger of ecological collapse thanks to runaway development.

An unpublished Kenyan government audit, seen by The Independent, reveals that the Greater Mara ecosystem is now weighed down by 108 camps and lodges, with more than 4,000 beds. Most of these units are flouting the law, failing to compensate local communities and not paying tax, the confidential report concludes. Nearly eight out of 10 of the camps surveyed have not carried out the required Environmental Impact Assessment while only 29 per cent of the camps are operating legally.

The apparent free-for-all in the Mara has worried the influential International Federation of Tour Operators (IFTO) sufficiently that the UK office wrote to the Kenyan government two weeks ago demanding a list of the illegal camps.

"You will appreciate this matter has caused our members concern," Nikki White from the UK federation of tour operators wrote to Kenya's tourism ministry. "They need information to be able to anticipate any potential business implications."

So far there has been no response.

The exploitation of the Mara has already been felt by the spectacular mega-fauna. Populations of wild grazing animals – including giraffes, hartebeest, impala, and warthogs – have "decreased substantially" in only 15 years as they compete for survival with a growing concentration of human settlements, according to a study last year in the British Journal of Zoology.

Unlike many of Kenya's reserves, the Masai Mara is not a national park, the area has been divided between two regional councils – Narok and the Trans-Mara. In 2001, the Trans-Mara handed over the running of its section to a private management company, the Mara Conservancy. Since then, the reserve has developed a split personality with one side becoming a model for eco-system management while the Narok side has degenerated into a destructive race to cash in on tourism.

The Olkeju Ronkai development, which will become a fenced lodge covering 13.5 hectares of riverine forest, is set to accelerate this process dangerously, experts warn. Jonathan Scott, presenter of the BBC's Big Cat Diary has joined the campaign to stop the project: "A company of this standing should be prepared to play its part in halting the rash of development threatening the Masai Mara."

There are less than 40 surviving black rhinos in the Mara – down from 150 in the 1960s – and wardens estimate that as many as 22 have already been driven out of the area of the lodge, many over the border into Tanzania's Serengeti.

The lodge is leased to Ashnil Hotels Ltd, which is owned by two of Somak Holiday's directors, Suresh Sofat and his wife. No-one at the company was available for comment yesterday.

Construction of the lodge was approved in 2006 despite its location but serious questions have now been raised over the chief warden's report in favour of the building. The Environmental Impact Assessment Report was found to have been an exact copy of the report submitted by Ashnil Hotels for their Samburu property in Northern Kenya. The name of the reserve had been changed but the rest remained the same, including the names of animal species that do not even exist in the Mara.

"At the end of the day if you have enough money you can do what you want," said an experienced Mara warden, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Samson Lenjirr who as the longest serving rhino warden in the reserve had personally named and tagged many of the animals who have been driven away said "short term greed" was in danger of destroying the backbone of Kenya's tourism industry.

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The price of environmental destruction? There is none

Putting a price on nature becomes meaningless if we treat the ecosystems upon which we depend as mere commodities with a price for trading

Andrew Simms, guardian.co.uk 18 Feb 10;

The economy is no stranger to creating its own fantasy world with little or no relation to the real one. We witnessed the damage that can cause when the banks thought they had stumbled on financial alchemy and could transform bad debt into good – economic base metal into gold.

Now it's possible that a much bigger error is coming to light. The rise and rise of global corporations lifted on a wave of apparent productivity gains may have been little more than a mask for the reckless liquidation of natural capital. It's as if we've been so distracted by our impressive speed of economic travel that we forgot to look at the fuel gauge or the cloud of smog left in our wake.

A new UN report estimates that accounting for the environmental damage of the world's 3,000 biggest companies would wipe out one-third of their profits. Any precise figure, however, is a matter of how risk is quantified and of where you draw the line. In 2006, for example, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), of which I am the policy director, looked at the oil companies BP and Shell, who together had recently reported profits of £25bn. By applying the Treasury's own estimates of the social and environmental cost of carbon emissions, we calculated that the total bill for those costs would reach £46.5bn, massively outweighing profits and plunging the companies into the red.

Yet in exercises like this, we quickly hit the paradox of environmental economics. By putting a price on nature, hopefully it makes it less likely that we will treat the world, and its natural resources, as if it were a business in liquidation. Yet there is a point when it becomes meaningless to treat the ecosystems upon which we depend as mere commodities with a price for trading. For example, what price would you put on the additional tonne of carbon which, when burned, triggers irreversible, catastrophic climate change? Who would have the right to even consider selling off the climate upon which civilisation depends? The avoidance of such damage is literally priceless.

If that sounds dramatic, consider that last September a large, international group of scientists published a paper in the journal Nature which identified nine key planetary boundaries for key biological systems upon which we depend. They found that we had already transgressed three of those, and were on the cusp of several others. All are potential points of no return as such complex systems begin interacting.

The huge advantage of the UN work is that it attempts to improve the feedback system between the economy and its ultimate parent company, the biosphere. Better risk assessment and value measurement is essential to help prevent what happened to banks happening to the planet.

The concept of a balanced budget, so loved by conservatives in relation to finance and spending, seems to be an alien concept when the consumption of natural resources and the production of waste is concerned. Yet it is far more important to achieve a balanced environmental budget than an economic one. You can always print more money, but you can't print more planet. As John Ruskin put it, "There is no wealth but life."

• Andrew Simms is policy director of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and author of Ecological Debt

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World's top firms cause $2.2tn of environmental damage, report estimates

Report for the UN into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment
Juliette Jowit, guardian.co.uk 18 Feb 10;

The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world's biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.

The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.

Later this year, another huge UN study - dubbed the "Stern for nature" after the influential report on the economics of climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern - will attempt to put a price on such global environmental damage, and suggest ways to prevent it. The report, led by economist Pavan Sukhdev, is likely to argue for abolition of billions of dollars of subsidies to harmful industries like agriculture, energy and transport, tougher regulations and more taxes on companies that cause the damage.

Ahead of changes which would have a profound effect - not just on companies' profits but also their customers and pension funds and other investors - the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment initiative and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly ordered a report into the activities of the 3,000 biggest public companies in the world, which includes household names from the UK's FTSE 100 and other major stockmarkets.

The study, conducted by London-based consultancy Trucost and due to be published this summer, found the estimated combined damage was worth US$2.2 trillion (£1.4tn) in 2008 - a figure bigger than the national economies of all but seven countries in the world that year.

The figure equates to 6-7% of the companies' combined turnover, or an average of one-third of their profits, though some businesses would be much harder hit than others.

"What we're talking about is a completely new paradigm," said Richard Mattison, Trucost's chief operating officer and leader of the report team. "Externalities of this scale and nature pose a major risk to the global economy and markets are not fully aware of these risks, nor do they know how to deal with them."

The biggest single impact on the $2.2tn estimate, accounting for more than half of the total, was emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. Other major "costs" were local air pollution such as particulates, and the damage caused by the over-use and pollution of freshwater.

The true figure is likely to be even higher because the $2.2tn does not include damage caused by household and government consumption of goods and services, such as energy used to power appliances or waste; the "social impacts" such as the migration of people driven out of affected areas, or the long-term effects of any damage other than that from climate change. The final report will also include a higher total estimate which includes those long-term effects of problems such as toxic waste.

Trucost did not want to comment before the final report on which sectors incurred the highest "costs" of environmental damage, but they are likely to include power companies and heavy energy users like aluminium producers because of the greenhouse gases that result from burning fossil fuels. Heavy water users like food, drink and clothing companies are also likely to feature high up on the list.

Sukhdev said the heads of the major companies at this year's annual economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, were increasingly concerned about the impact on their business if they were stopped or forced to pay for the damage.

"It can make the difference between profit and loss," Sukhdev told the annual Earthwatch Oxford lecture last week. "That sense of foreboding is there with many, many [chief executives], and that potential is a good thing because it leads to solutions."

The aim of the study is to encourage and help investors lobby companies to reduce their environmental impact before concerned governments act to restrict them through taxes or regulations, said Mattison.

"It's going to be a significant proportion of a lot of companies' profit margins," Mattison told the Guardian. "Whether they actually have to pay for these costs will be determined by the appetite for policy makers to enforce the 'polluter pays' principle. We should be seeking ways to fix the system, rather than waiting for the economy to adapt. Continued inefficient use of natural resources will cause significant impacts on [national economies] overall, and a massive problem for governments to fix."

Another major concern is the risk that companies simply run out of resources they need to operate, said Andrea Moffat, of the US-based investor lobby group Ceres, whose members include more than 80 funds with assets worth more than US$8tn. An example was the estimated loss of 20,000 jobs and $1bn last year for agricultural companies because of water shortages in California, said Moffat.

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Small livestock farmers face 'marginalisation': FAO chief

Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;

ROME (AFP) – Small livestock farmers face "marginalisation" because they cannot compete with agribusiness, the head of the UN food agency said Thursday.

"The transformation of the (livestock) sector has led to a widening gap between small livestock keepers and large commercial enterprises," FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf told a news conference.

"Traditional pastoralists and smallholder producers risk marginalisation," he said, calling for "robust institutions and governance mechanisms that reflect the diversity within the sector."

Livestock represents 40 percent of agricultural production and supports the livelihood of more than one billion people, he said as the agency presented its annual report, the "State of Food and Agriculture."

The report said rising incomes are driving demand for meat to "record levels" in developing countries, with world production expected to double by 2050.

"To meet rising demand, global annual meat production is expected to expand from 228 million tonnes currently to 463 million tonnes by 2050," the FAO said.

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FAO Sees Demand, Biofuels, Oil Fuelling Food Prices

Svetlana Kovalyova, PlanetArk 19 Feb 10;

ROME - Resumed demand for agricultural commodities for food and energy use and higher input costs on the back of rising oil prices may fuel a new food price surge, the United Nations' food agency said on Thursday.

Food prices fell from 2008 highs due to the global economic downturn, but remained above pre-peak levels and were set to stay high at least in the medium term, the Food and Agriculture Organization said, confirming earlier forecasts.

"At the same time, various currently latent underlying factors may cause a return to even higher food prices," the Rome-based FAO said in its key report on the State of Food and Agriculture, stopping short of more precise forecasts.

Renewed income growth in developing countries would power demand recovery and drive commodities and food prices higher, threatening food security, especially for poor people, FAO said.

Growing biofuels demand spurred by mandatory targets and incentives in some countries "irrespective of market conditions" would boost prices of maize and vegetable oils used as feedstock for biodiesel and bioethanol and, in turn, of food commodities.

Higher oil prices would translate into increased production costs for farmers as input prices for chemicals and fertilizers as well as higher transport costs would rise.

FAO Food Price Index, which measures monthly price changes for a food basket composed of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar, stood at a 15-month high in January and December but about 20 percent below the peak in June 2008.

The FAO said agricultural output is expected to rise 12 percent in industrialized countries in the next 10 years compared with 2000, while Latin America, Asia and the former Soviet states would grow by 75, 53 and 58 percent respectively.

As agricultural productivity growth declines in many countries, boosting output would require higher costs per unit, the FAO said.

Protectionist measures, including export curbs introduced by some countries during the latest food crisis, would destabilize markets and drive international food prices higher and make them more volatile, the agency warned.

Even stock building by countries, companies and individual producers may trigger commodity price spikes, even though in the longer term higher stock levels would help cut prices, it said.

MORE INVESTMENTS NEEDED

As the global economic crisis pushed the number of hungry people in the world above one billion last year, governments and international organizations should boost efforts to create safety nets and social programs to protect the poor and hungry, FAO said.

But increased investments are needed to boost agricultural output to ensure food security, it said.

FAO has said the world needed to invest $83 billion a year in agriculture in developing world and raise overall output by 70 percent over the next 40 years to feed over 9 billion people in 2050.

With agriculture accounting for a lion's share of economies in poor countries, investments in farming would boost economy there and help eradicate poverty, the agency said.

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Ocean geoengineering scheme no easy fix for global warming

National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (UK) EurekAlert 18 Feb 10;

Pumping nutrient-rich water up from the deep ocean to boost algal growth in sunlit surface waters and draw carbon dioxide down from the atmosphere has been touted as a way of ameliorating global warming. However, a new study led by Professor Andreas Oschlies of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel, Germany, pours cold water on the idea.

"Computer simulations show that climatic benefits of the proposed geo-engineering scheme would be modest, with the potential to exacerbate global warming should it fail," said study co-author Dr Andrew Yool of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).

If international governmental policies fail to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to levels needed to keep the impacts of human-induced climate change within acceptable limits it may necessary to move to 'Plan B'. This could involve the implementation of one or more large-scale geo-engineering schemes proposed for reducing the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere.

One possible approach is to engineer the oceans to facilitate the long-term sequestration of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It has been suggested that this could be done by pumping of nutrient-rich water from a depth of several hundred metres to fertilize the growth of phytoplankton, the tiny marine algae that dominate biological production in surface waters.

The aim would be to mimic the effects of natural ocean upwelling and increase drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide by phytoplankton through the process of photosynthesis. Some of the sequestered carbon would be exported to the deep ocean when phytoplankton die and sink, effectively removing it from the system for hundreds or thousands of years.

A previous study, of which Yool was lead author, used an ocean general circulation model to conclude that literally hundreds of millions of pipes would be required to make a significant impact on global warming. But even if the technical and logistical difficulties of deploying the vast numbers of pipes could be overcome, exactly how much carbon dioxide could in principle be sequestered, and at what risk?

In the new study, the researchers address such questions using a more integrated model of the whole Earth system. The simulations show that, under most optimistic assumptions, three gigatons of carbon dioxide per year could be captured. This is under a tenth of the annual anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, which currently stand at 36 gigatons per year. A gigaton is a million million kilograms.

One surprising feature of the simulations was that the main effect occurred on land rather than the ocean. Cold water pumped to the surface cooled the atmosphere and the land surface, slowing the decomposition of organic material in soil, and ultimately resulting in about 80 per cent of the carbon dioxide sequestered being stored on land. "This remote and distributed carbon sequestration would make monitoring and verification particularly challenging," write the researchers.

More significantly, when the simulated pumps were turned off, the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and surface temperatures rose rapidly to levels even higher than in the control simulation without artificial pumps. This finding suggests that there would be extra environmental costs to the scheme should it ever need to be turned off for unanticipated reasons.

"All models make assumptions and there remain many uncertainties, but based on our findings it is hard to see the use of artificial pumps to boost surface production as being a viable way of tackling global warming," said Yool.

###

Original publication: Oschlies, A., Pahlow, M., Yool, A. & Matear, R. J. Climate engineering by artificial ocean upwelling – channelling the sorcerer's apprentice. Geophys. Res. Lett. 37, L04701 (2010).
DOI:10.1029/2009GL041961.

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Two months after summit, UN climate pointman to quit

Richard Ingham Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;

PARIS (AFP) – The head of the UN's climate convention said Thursday that he is resigning, in a surprise announcement barely two months after the fiercely-contested Copenhagen summit on tackling global warming.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), will resign as of July 1.

He will join the consultancy group KPMG as global advisor on climate and sustainability and work with a number of universities, the UNFCCC said in Bonn, Germany.

No regrets, says UN climate chief after resignation announcement

De Boer had come under fire for the outcome of the December 7-19 UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen, which ended in near-chaos as world leaders scrambled to find a face-saving deal.

But as recently as January 20, the UNFCCC had said de Boer would stay in the job and expected his term to be renewed later this year.

In a statement, de Boer said it had been a "difficult decision" to step down.

"I believe the time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge, working on climate and sustainability with the private sector and academia," he said.

"Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming.

"This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen."

In New York, a UN statement said de Boer informed UN chief Ban Ki-moon in advance of his decision to step down from July 1 and added that the secretary general "with regret, respected his decision."

Janos Pasztor, a senior UN official dealing with climate change, said de Boer gave his resignation "in a way that allows the secretary general to appoint a new executive secretary well in time to make sure that the negotiation process is not perturbed in any major way.

"We don't know how long this will take but it will certainly take a few months and the secretary general is prepared to get the recruitment process going as soon as possible and in fact he's already started today," he added.

De Boer, a quiet-spoken British-educated 55-year-old Dutch national, was appointed to lead the UNFCCC in September 2006 and immediately carved out a highly visible role.

He championed hopes for a new treaty on climate change that would take effect after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol's current pledges expire.

The drumbeat of expectations reached a peak in Copenhagen, which was attended by more than 120 heads of state and government, making it the biggest top-level meeting in the UN's history.

Despite two years' preparation, the summit yielded just a vague agreement, hastily put together by the world's major carbon emitters, and which failed even to get the backing of a plenary session.

Supporters of the accord admit it fell short of expectations, while its many critics describe it as a failure or betrayal.

Despite the controversy, De Boer had persistently said he would remain in the job.

His "contract runs out in September, but he certainly has no intention of leaving and expects it to be renewed," a member of the UNFCCC said in an email to AFP on January 20.

Climate change: UN process now in limbo

"His resignation is partly a sign that it's a very difficult job," Wendel Trio, head of Greenpeace International's political and business unit, told AFP.

"Everything that happened in Copenhagen, with 128 heads of state coming to the meeting, created high expectations on the executive secretary of the UNFCCC to get an outcome," said Trio.

After Thursday's announcement, some negotiators privately criticised de Boer for lacking the easy charm and diplomatic skills needed to soothe wounded national pride and building consensus.

Others, though, praised him for his hard work and belief in equity, in arguing that a climate deal could only be acceptable globally if it addressed the problems facing poor countries.

US special envoy for climate change Todd Stern praised de Boer as an "enormously dedicated leader in the fight against global climate change."

"We appreciate his commitment, his wisdom and his determination to move the world in the right direction," Stern said in a statement.

"Throughout the negotiation process, Mr. de Boer continuously worked to provide a platform for both rich and poor nations and tried to give them equal opportunities to express their views and speak out for their rights," said Kim Carstensen of WWF.

World leaders "could learn much from de Boer's perseverance, as well as his uncompromising commitment to do what's necessary -- not just what's easy," said Antonio Hill of Oxfam.

The UNFCCC, an offshoot of the 1992 Rio summit, gathers 194 nations in the search for combatting the causes of man-made climate change and easing its effects.

Its key achievement is the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty that requires curbs in heat-stoking greenhouse gases blamed for disrupting the climate system.

U.N. Cimate Chief De Boer To Quit In July
Gerard Wynn and Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 19 Feb 10;

LONDON/OSLO - U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said Thursday he will step down in July to join a consultancy group, saying a new era of diplomacy was starting after the Copenhagen summit fell short of agreeing a new treaty.

Analysts said the departure of the energetic and often sharp-tongued de Boer was unlikely to dent U.N.-led climate talks meant to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol but stalled over sharing the cost of cutting carbon emissions.

The Dutch former environment official, who has run the Secretariat since 2006, will join KPMG in London. He was also considering part-time work at universities -- Yale in the United States and Maatstricht and Utrecht in the Netherlands.

"I've found this job incredibly challenging," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. "It was a very exciting place to be but it also takes a huge toll on you personally."

"I feel that Copenhagen has put a new era of climate policy on the tracks and that offers me an opportunity to come at this from a new direction," he said of his shift to focus on business involvement in combating climate change.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would decide on a replacement in coming months to head the Bonn-based Secretariat of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). De Boer's two predecessors were from the Netherlands and Malta.

Janos Pasztor, Director of Ban's Climate Change Support Team, said: "There is no prescription about where the new executive secretary should come from, whether it should be from a developing or developed country."

COPENHAGEN

The Copenhagen meeting in December missed de Boer's own benchmarks for success, neither specifying exact emissions limits for developed nations nor a timeframe to agree a pact.

But it was applauded for harnessing pledges from both rich and poor to curb their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. And as part of a Copenhagen Accord, rich nations agreed to provide $10 billion a year from 2010-12, with a goal of $100 billion a year from 2020, to help poor nations deal with climate change.

De Boer said that meant the Secretariat would have to shift to help implement the national plans as part of efforts to help slow droughts, floods and rising sea levels.

A successor would have to be "someone sensitive to the concerns of developing countries," he said. The shift did not mean giving up on securing more ambitious pledges to cut greenhouse gases.

De Boer's departure "won't have any effect on the carbon market," said Seb Walhain, head of environmental markets at Fortis Netherlands. Carbon markets depend on the U.N. talks to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol from 2013.

U.N. rules require consensus among all 194 countries, partly hampering climate talks and leading some analysts to call for a new approach, for example through G20 world leaders.

"We must quickly find a suitable successor who can oversee the negotiations and reform the UNFCCC to ensure it is up to the massive task," said British Energy and Climate Change minister Ed Miliband.

De Boer said "it remains to be seen" if the next annual meeting in Mexico in November and December would agree a full treaty. He said there seemed to be support for an extra set of U.N. talks in April, perhaps in Germany or France.

"Yvo de Boer has been an enormously dedicated leader in the fight against climate change and has made a major contribution in advancing that effort," U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern said.

"I have always greatly appreciated Yvo de Boer; his engagement and his sharp tongue," EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said. She said he was "not always the perfect diplomat" but communicated the urgency of climate change.

De Boer, born in 1954, is known for his quips -- he compared his own large ears to those of Dr. Spock in the TV series "Star Trek" and compared the drawn-out process at the Copenhagen summit to cooking a Christmas turkey or baking a cake.

(Editing by Janet Lawrence)

UN climate chief quits, leaves talks hanging
Arthur Max, Associated Press Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;

AMSTERDAM – The sharp-tongued U.N. official who shepherded troubled climate talks for nearly four years announced his resignation Thursday, leaving an uncertain path to a new treaty on global warming.

Exhausted and frustrated by unrelenting bickering between rich and poor countries, Yvo de Boer said he will step down July 1 to work in business and academia.

With no obvious successor in sight, fears were voiced that whoever follows will be far less forceful than the skilled former civil servant from the Netherlands.

His departure takes effect five months before 193 nations reconvene in Cancun, Mexico, for another attempt to reach a worldwide legal agreement on controlling greenhouse gas emissions, blamed for the gradual heating of the Earth that scientists predict will worsen weather-related disasters.

The resignation "comes at the worst time in the climate change negotiations," said Agus Purnomo, Indonesia's special presidential assistant on climate change. "His decision will ultimately add to the difficulties we already have in reaching a successful outcome in Mexico."

Others believed the talks would move ahead unhindered, and could even be a window for shifting course.

"There's certainly no reason his resignation should slow progress," said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. "The key to progress remains with the major countries."

"A change of leadership ... provides a fresh opportunity to re-energize international negotiations ahead of the U.N. climate summit in Mexico," said Steve Howard of British-based The Climate Group.

De Boer agreed. "I hope my successor will rebuild confidence in the process," he told The Associated Press.

De Boer made the announcement just two months after a disappointing summit in Copenhagen that ended with a nonbinding accord brokered by President Barack Obama promising emissions cuts and immediate financing for poor countries — but even that failed to win consensus agreement.

In an AP interview last month, de Boer acknowledged that the summit left him deeply disheartened. "After Copenhagen I was very depressed. I was depressed for a few weeks," he said.

But within days he was holding private talks to patch over bitter accusations between Britain and China, and was publicly calling on all sides to stop slinging mud about responsibility for Copenhagen's breakdown.

De Boer's successor will be named by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has put climate change on the top of his own and the U.N.'s priorities. He is likely to look for a candidate from the developing countries.

De Boer spoke to Ban on Wednesday. "I know he wants to move quickly on this," he said.

The U.N. chief accepted the resignation "with regret," U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said. Ban said de Boer "will be difficult to replace."

Okabe said Ban will consult with the 11-member "bureau," a rotating body of national delegates that deals with administrative issues and represents the major regions and negotiating blocs in the climate talks.

Among its members are several who are unlikely to want a strong-willed diplomat in de Boer's vacated chair.

They include the chief delegate from Sudan and spokesman for the developing countries, Lumumba Di-Aping, who rocked the Copenhagen conference when he accused wealthy countries of imposing a deal that would condemn the poor countries of Africa to a genocide comparable to the Holocaust. Another member of the bureau is Mohammad Salim al-Sabban, a counselor of Saudi Arabia's petroleum ministry.

Despite de Boer's frenetic diplomacy talks on a successor accord to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set emissions targets for industrial countries, have been bogged down in mutual recriminations and arguments over sharing the burden of fighting climate change.

De Boer told AP he believed climate talks should be conducted differently, relying less on formal negotiations among thousands of delegates from nearly 200 countries and instead seeking agreement among smaller groups to lay the groundwork of a deal.

"At the moment, it tends to be very much a stop-and-start affair with everything concentrated in the formal negotiations, where I think a much more continuous engagement ... is needed," he said.

Though he said Copenhagen "wasn't what I had hoped it would be," he said the frustration over the summit was not responsible for his decision to quit. Rather, it was time to seek new challenges. "I took this job to see the launch of negotiations on a global response to climate change," he said in an interview. "I feel that's happened. ... I think things are on track."

De Boer won wide praise Thursday for raising the profile of climate change on the international agenda.

"I have always greatly appreciated Yvo de Boer; his engagement and his sharp tongue. Not always a perfect diplomat," said Connie Hedegaard, the European Union's commissioner for climate action.

Todd Stern, Obama's special climate envoy, praised de Boer as "an enormously dedicated leader" who made a major contribution to fighting climate change.

De Boer's job was not supposed to involve him directly in the negotiations, yet he lobbied, prodded, formulated tasks and goals, and frequently chided governments for moving too slowly and being too obstinate. He described his role as "the conscience of the process."

Often accused of overstepping the bounds of his office, he didn't disagree.

"They are absolutely right. I did that because I felt the process needed that extra push," he told the AP on Thursday.

He recalled that when he was picked for the job by Kofi Annan in 2006, he told the then-U.N. Secretary General: "If you want someone to sit in Bonn and keep his mouth shut then I'm not the right person for the job."

Asked about his greatest satisfaction, he noted the plan adopted in 2007 in Bali, Indonesia, when developing countries agreed to join in efforts to contain global warming in return for financial and technical help from the wealthy nations.

The Bali meeting was so intense that during its final meeting, when he was accused of mishandling negotiating arrangements, he walked off the podium in tears. He came back later to an ovation from the thousands of delegates.

___

Associated Press Writers Robert Wielaard in Brussels, Seth Borenstein in Washington and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

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