2011 - Free Chek Jawa Boardwalk trips on the 2nd Saturday of each month
from Adventures with the Naked Hermit Crabs
Nesting Grey Herons: 2. Nest building and maintenance
from Bird Ecology Study Group
A healthy argument for biodiversity
from BBC NEWS blog by Richard Black
NASA images reveal disappearing mangroves worldwide
from Mongabay.com news
Bernama 1 Dec 10;
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 1 (Bernama) -- Marine parks will be reopened after they have recovered from coral bleaching, said Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Tan Sri Joseph Kurup.
He said the closure of marine parks including that at Pulau Redang and Pulau Perhentian on July 2 was to allow the coral recovery process.
"Coral bleaching occurs when the sea temperature increases by 1-2 degree celcius from normal (28-29 degrees) for four weeks," he said in reply to Datuk Dr Marcus Majigoh (BN-Putatan) in Dewan Rakyat on Wednesday.
Kurup said factors that cause coral bleaching include acidity of seawater, lack of zooplanktons (food source for corals) and increased sedimentation that prevent light penetration needed for food production.
The Marine Parks Department had prepared an action plan comprising guidleline to mitigate the problem including forming a coral bleaching task force.
He said efforts to repair the habitat would be stepped up via zoning of marine parks for research and monitoring.
Marine Parks Department director-general Abd Jamal Mydin had said nine areas in islands gazetted as marine parks and three islands had been closed to recreational activities due to coral bleaching.
-- BERNAMA
University of Florida EurekAlert 1 Dec 10;
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Habitat destruction and species extinction may lead to an increase in diseases that infect humans and other species, according to a paper in the journal Nature co-authored by a University of Florida ecologist.
In the paper to be published Thursday, UF biology professor Robert D. Holt and his colleagues reported that by reviewing studies from a wide range of systems, including data from plants, animals and bacteria, they were able to relate dimensions of environmental loss, and in particular species loss, with incidence of infectious disease. The study –- which was led by biologist Felicia Keesing of Bard College –- focused on diseases on the rise, such as West Nile virus, Lyme disease and Hantavirus.
"The general degradation of biodiversity because of land use transformation, combined with climate change, overharvesting, and so forth, is likely to have many perverse consequences for emerging pathogens," said Holt, a UF Eminent Scholar associated with the Emerging Pathogens Institute. "You have to think both as an ecologist and an infectious disease specialist to grapple with questions like this."
Some pathogens can flourish under less biologically diverse conditions, such as in areas where top predators or other key species become extinct.
To illustrate this point, the researchers use an example study of how a dwindling population of opossums in Virginia forests contributes to the spread of Lyme disease. Opossums are able to effectively kill disease-carrying ticks when the ticks attach to them, helping to limit the population of the parasite. When opossum populations decline, tick populations flourish and feed off the Virginia white-footed mouse, which is less able to defend itself from the blood-feeding ticks. In addition, the mouse's ability to reproduce quickly and in great numbers means there are more vulnerable hosts available. Species that are resilient to human impacts may often have correlated biological traits that permit them to be effective hosts of pathogens.
The area and spatial arrangement of natural spaces also can influence the likelihood for diseases to jump from animals to humans. Experts have linked the recent rapid rise of Avian influenza in Asia to bird habitat loss. Holt said Avian influenza is a worry for people in the United States, but in contrast to Asia, many U.S. national wildlife reserves provide refuges for migratory birds that helps to keep the illness at bay, whereas wetland degradation in other parts of the world may force migrating waterfowl into sites where they have contact with domestic fowl.
Global biodiversity has declined rapidly in the last 60 years and extinction rates are projected to rise dramatically in the next five decades. The patterns described in the paper suggest that there will be correlated, complex effects on disease incidence and emergence, Holt said.
Biodiversity also occurs within individual hosts, such as with humans. Environmental changes, including the overuse of antibiotics, can result in a less bacteria-rich environment within the human body. In the Nature article, the experts suggest that a decline in overall biodiversity will affect the bacterial richness and composition of the human community of microbial symbionts, making the body less able ward off disease.
"When a clinical trial of a drug shows that it works," said Keesing, the paper's lead author, "the trial is halted so the drug can be made available. In a similar way, the protective effect of biodiversity is clear enough that we need to begin implementing policies to preserve it now."
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The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health Ecology of Infectious Diseases Program funded this research.
Other co-authors of the paper are Samuel Myers of Harvard Medical School; Charles Mitchell of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Kate Jones of the Zoological Society of London; Anna Jolles at Oregon State University; Peter Hudson of Penn State University; Drew Harvell of Cornell University; Peter Daszak and Tiffany Bogich of the Wildlife Trust in New York City; and Lisa Belden of Virginia Tech.
ScienceDaily 1 Dec 10;
Many coastal wetlands worldwide -- including several on the U.S. Atlantic coast -- may be more sensitive than previously thought to climate change and sea-level rise projections for the 21st century.
U.S. Geological Survey scientists made this conclusion from an international research modeling effort published December 1 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Scientists identified conditions under which coastal wetlands could survive rising sea level.
Using a rapid sea-level rise scenario, most coastal wetlands worldwide will disappear near the end of the 21st century. In contrast, under the slow sea-level rise projection, wetlands with low sediment availability and low tidal ranges are vulnerable and may drown. However, in the slow sea-level rise projection, wetlands with higher sediment availability would be more likely to survive.
Several coastal marshes along the east coast of the United States, for example, have limited sediment supplies and are likely to disappear this century. Vulnerable east coast marshes include the Plum Island Estuary (the largest estuary in New England) and coastal wetlands in North Carolina's Albemarle-Pamlico Sound (the second-largest estuary in the United States).
"Accurate information about the adaptability of coastal wetlands to accelerations in sea-level rise, such as that reported in this study, helps narrow the uncertainties associated with their disappearance," said USGS scientist Glenn Guntenspergen, an author of this report. "This research is essential for allowing decision makers to best manage local tradeoffs between economic and conservation concerns."
"Previous assessments of coastal wetland responses to sea-level rise have been constrained because they did not consider the ability of wetlands to naturally modify their physical environment for adaptation," said USGS scientist Matt Kirwan, an author of this report. "Failure to incorporate the interactions of inundation, vegetation and sedimentation in wetlands limits the usefulness of past assessments."
USGS scientists specifically identified the sediment levels and tidal ranges (difference between high and low tide) necessary for marshes to survive sea-level rise. As water floods a wetland and flows through its vegetation, sediment is carried from upstream and deposited on the wetland's surface, allowing it to gain elevation. High tidal ranges allow for better sediment delivery, and the higher sediment concentrations in the water allow wetlands to build more elevation.
Coastal wetlands provide critical services such as absorbing energy from coastal storms, preserving shorelines, protecting human populations and infrastructure, supporting commercial seafood harvests, absorbing pollutants and serving as critical habitat for migratory bird populations. These resources and services will be threatened as sea-level rise inundates wetlands.
The rapid sea-level rise scenario used as the basis for this study is accredited to Stefan Rahmstorf at Potsdam University, one of the contributing authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. The slow sea-level rise projection is from the A1B scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report.
ScienceDaily 1 Dec 10;
Unseasonal warm temperatures caused by El Niño have a profound effect on the fish populations of coral reefs in the South Pacific, scientists have found. An international team of biologists studied the arrival of young fish to the atoll of Rangiroa in French Polynesia for four years and compared their results with satellite and oceanographic data. They found that the El Niño event caused a sudden collapse in the plankton community and this led to a near absence of the young fish that are required to replenish adult stocks.
Coral reef fishes are bad parents. Rather than caring for their young, they disperse them into the open waters off the reef where they drift with the currents while they grow and develop into small juveniles, at which point they make their way back again to the reef. This process allows these baby fish to feed on plankton and escape the predators that would consume them if they had to grow up on the reef with adults. But in a changing climate, this dispersal into the haven of open water could now become an Achilles' heel for coral reef fishes.
Using a crest net -- which looks like a football goalmouth facing out to sea on the edge of a barrier reef -- the scientists were able to monitor the numbers of fish as they returned to reefs from open water.
Under the supervision of Professor René Galzin, Dr Alain Lo-Yat and assistants from Service de la pêche set and emptied the net on the atoll of Rangiroa for four years, a period that included the intense 13-month El Niño event of 1997-8.
Climate scientist Elodie Martinez from France and marine biologists Dr Steve Simpson and Dr Mark Meekan then analysed the data, the longest time-series of its kind, to detect and explain the worrying trends. The paper is published in the journal Global Change Biology.
Dr Steve Simpson from the University of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences said: "Near to the equator, fish arrive throughout the year to replenish adult populations. In contrast, during the El Niño event at Rangiroa, when temperatures climbed up to 3.5°C above the seasonal average, we found that the young fish virtually disappeared.
"Analysis of satellite images around Rangiroa suggested that plankton, the food supply for many baby and adult reef fishes, declined dramatically during the warm waters of El Niño. As a consequence, adults struggled to produce offspring and young fishes were likely to starve when in open waters off reefs. Just 1-2 months after the onset of the warm conditions, the next generation of young fish stopped arriving so that adult stocks were no longer being re-supplied."
Dr Meekan said: "The events we witnessed during El Niño are a worrying sign for the future when climate change is predicted to warm ocean temperatures and may even increase the frequency of the El Niño phenomenon."
Warns Dr Simpson: "Coral reef fisheries provide food and livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people throughout the world and underpin a multi-billion dollar tourism industry. Our study shows that warmer waters may leave fish stocks on reefs in serious trouble, which will have far-reaching consequences for the people around the globe who are dependent upon them."
Ed Stoddard Reuters AlertNet 1 Dec 10;
DALLAS, Dec 1 (Reuters Life!) - Staring down the barrel of extinction, the planet's tigers may have won a reprieve last week when Russia and China agreed with other Asian nations to double the world's population of the big cats by 2022.
Just 3,200 tigers now live in the wild, down from 100,000 a century ago, and those that remain face a losing battle with poachers who supply traders in India and China with tiger parts for traditional medicines and purported aphrodisiacs.
In a remote corner of South Africa and far from their natural Asian range, a unique project is underway to save one subspecies of the iconic predator, the south China tiger.
This "rewilding" project -- the brainchild of Chinese conservationist Li Quan -- began in 2003 with a pair of cubs, brought to South Africa from Chinese zoos, which learned how to hunt and fend for themselves.
The initial pair bred and others have been brought in, with the idea that rewilded "South African" tigers may eventually be released into their natural Asian habitat.
A new photo documentary book, "Rewilded," chronicles the project. Author Li Quan spoke to Reuters by phone about the project from her "tiger ranch" in South Africa.
Q: Why tigers? What prompted you to work for their conservation?
A: "The tiger itself is the most beautiful animal I believe in the world and it has a significant role in the ecosystem at the top of the food chain. And the tiger has played a big culture role in Chinese history. So we are not only saving the tiger itself but the entire ecosystem and also a Chinese cultural symbol."
Q: Some experts claim the south China tiger, as a subspecies, is extinct. Your reaction?
A: "Some people do believe it is functionally extinct meaning that it cannot be found in the wild. However, the IUCN (World Conservation Union) cat specialty group, which makes extinction declarations, has so far not made such an announcement. And there have been no conclusive studies done to prove that it is extinct and we still have captive south China tigers left."
Q: How many tigers do you have now and how are they doing?
A: "We have nine south China tigers on the reserve in South Africa and five are second generation born in South Africa that grew up here. They have all learned to hunt."
Q: Do you think rewilding can be applied to other species?
A: "I certainly believe that what we have done here has great implications for other predators, particularly other big cats and this has also been stated by some of the top wild cat biologists in the world."
Q: Do you have any other book projects in the pipeline?
A: "I anticipate that we will write another book that will chronicle the experiment and be more like a written narrative than a photo documentary."
New FAO book celebrating traditional food production in the Southern Caucasus
FAO 1 Dec 10;
1 December 2010, Rome - As part of its contribution to the International Year of Biodiversity, FAO has published a book celebrating the richness of biodiversity for food and agriculture in the Southern Caucasus, birthplace of many common foods found on plates all over the world.
Comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, the Southern Caucasus was one of the places where human beings first practised agriculture around 10 000 years ago and food crops such as wheat and grapes have their ancestral home in the region.
The Southern Caucasus has also been listed as the centre of origin of apples, apricots, pomegranates, pears and peas.
Small farms and gardens
Today, the area is still one of the world’s hotspots of biodiversity for food and agriculture. And the reason for this is largely thanks to the attachment to traditional food production systems by small farmers and local people who grow food in their gardens.
This diversity in food crops is mainly due to the climate – hot summers and cold winters – and to the mountains that provide differing degrees of shade and rainfall patterns. Entitled Gardens of Biodiversity, the FAO book contains hundreds of beautiful photographs documenting genetic resources, rural life and traditional food practices.
It also provides over 400 bibliographic references in seven different languages that have been used by the book’s contributors, including farmers, specialists in national research institutions and FAO staff in both the regional offices and headquarters.
Rich collections
The Southern Caucasus is well known for its diversity of endemic species and subspecies of cultivated and wild wheat. All three countries maintain rich collections in their national seed banks and scientists are constantly working on wheat selections of varieties with a good productive potential and pest resistance.
“We have to store germplasm in seed banks, but we also need farmers to preserve and use this genetic material in their day-to-day activities.
This book pays homage to that, and we hope it will help focus on the role of farmers in the Southern Caucasus and elsewhere in this important task,” said Caterina Batello, Senior FAO Officer and one of the book's authors.
The culinary ingenuity of the people has added to this rich mix with, for example, an extraordinary range of breads, which play an essential role in local food culture.
Livestock and bees
As well as plants, the Southern Caucasus are also home to important local breeds of cattle and sheep, such as Georgian mountain cattle, Megruli red cattle and Balbas, Mazekh and Bozakh sheep.
The region even has its own indigenous bee, the Caucasian honeybee, which because of its productivity is popular all over the world.
"The Southern Caucasus is a treasure trove of biodiversity that must not be lost. Only concrete action will ensure that present and future generations can continue to improve their food security and livelihoods. Today we must "wake-up" and engage in identifying, maintaining and using our genetic resources to meet the challenges of the future to feed a growing world population," said Batello.
Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press Yahoo News 2 Dec 10;
CANCUN, Mexico – Even if we stopped spewing global warming gases today, the world would face a steady rise in food prices this century. But on our current emissions path, climate change becomes the "threat multiplier" that could double grain prices by 2050 and leave millions more children malnourished, global food experts reported Wednesday.
Beyond 2050, when climate scientists project temperatures might rise to as much as 6.4 degrees C (11.5 degrees F) over 20th century levels, the planet grows "gloomy" for agriculture, said senior research fellow Gerald Nelson of the International Food Policy Research Institute.
The specialists of the authoritative, Washington-based IFPRI said they fed 15 scenarios of population and income growth into supercomputer models of climate and found that "climate change worsens future human well-being, especially among the world's poorest people."
The study, issued here at the annual U.N. climate conference, said prices will be driven up by a combination of factors: a slowdown in productivity in some places caused by warming and shifting rain patterns, and an increase in demand because of population and income growth.
Change apparently already is under way. Returning from northern India, agricultural scientist Andrew Jarvis said wheat farmers there were finding warming was maturing their crops too quickly.
"The temperatures are high and they're getting reduced yields," Jarvis, of the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture, told reporters last month.
For most farmers around the world, trying to adapt to these changes "will pose major challenges," Wednesday's IFPRI report said.
Research points to future climate disruption for agricultural zones in much of sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia and parts of Latin America, including Mexico. In one combination of climate models and scenarios, "the corn belt in the United States could actually see a significant reduction in productivity potential," Nelson told reporters here.
"Unlike the 20th century, when real agricultural prices declined, the first half of the 21st century is likely to see increases in real agricultural prices," the IFPRI report said.
Even with "perfect mitigation," the implausible complete elimination immediately of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, it said real prices for grain would rise because of growing demand and other factors — by 18 percent for rice by 2050 under the most optimistic scenario, to up to 34 percent for corn in the most pessimistic, a scenario envisioning high population growth.
But climate change "acts as a threat multiplier," making feeding billions more mouths even more challenging, IFPRI said.
With climate change factored in, the increases in real prices by 2050 could range from 31 percent for rice in the most optimistic scenario, to 100 percent for corn in the most pessimistic. And IFPRI has estimated that such skyrocketing prices could boost the global population of undernourished children by 20 percent, by an additional 25 million children.
Up until 2050, endpoint of the experts' projections, some of the impact could be offset by research development of higher-yielding varieties of corn, wheat and other crops, and by freer, more flexible global trade in food commodities, IFPRI said.
But beyond 2050, if temperatures rise sharply, "the world is a much more gloomy place for agriculture," Nelson said.
Only deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and billions spent to help farmers adapt to a changing climate can head off serious food shortages, Nelson said. IFPRI, which is supported by world governments, estimates that at least $7 billion additional spending a year is needed for crop research and improved irrigation, roads and other upgrades of agricultural infrastructure.
Needed just as much, it said, are better satellite data on how the world's farming zones are changing crops, land use and practices, and on-the-ground information from "citizen data-gatherers equipped with GPS-enabled camera phones and other measuring devices.
"Such data would yield huge payoffs in illuminating the state of the world as it unfolds," it said.
Climate change to worsen food security, UN talks told
Richard Ingham Yahoo News 1 Dec 10;
CANCUN (AFP) – Surging prices for staple foods in 2008 and 2010 may be just a foretaste of the future as the impacts of climate change and population growth combine, a report issued at the UN talks in Cancun said Wednesday.
Between 2010 and 2050, the price of corn, also called maize, could rise by 42-131 percent, that of rice by 11-78 percent, and that of wheat by 17-67 percent, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) said.
These prices are dependent on a range of 15 scenarios whose factors are the state of the global economy, population growth and changes in rainfall and global temperatures, the think-tank said.
"Climate change will cause lower rice yields all over the world in 2050, compared to a future without climate change," IFPRI warned.
"One of the climate change scenarios results in substantial declines in maize exports in developed countries, but small increases in yields in developing nations. Wheat yields will fall in all regions, with the largest losses in developing countries."
The report said that investing in agriculture in poor countries now was a key to easing the problem. Farmers that have more income have a better chance of coping with droughts, floods and other climate shocks.
"Many have made the case that we have to address climate change to fight poverty. We are saying you must address poverty as a key part of climate change adaptation, and you must do it now," said Gerald Nelson, who co-authored the report.
"Once the most serious effects of climate change kick in, it will already be too late to respond effectively," he said.
Beyond 2050, predicting the temperature rise is more difficult but even so the challenge to food security is "likely to increase," the report said.
"All scenarios now show average temperature increases by 2050 to be on the order of one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). After that, they diverge dramatically, ranging from 2C to 4C (3.6-7.2F) by 2100. Yields of many more crops will be severely threatened."
The report adds to a series of warnings by researchers and watchdogs about the impact of climate change on food supplies as the world's population continues to grow fast.
The current global population of around 6.9 billion will rise to between 7.959 billion and 10.461 billion by 2050, with a mid-estimate of 9.15 billion, according to UN calculations.
The increase will be determined mainly by economic factors. Rising prosperity in poorer countries prompts many families to have few children.
The talks in Cancun are taking place under the flag of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), gathering 193 countries plus the institution of the European Union (EU).
Negotiators, meeting until December 10, are seeking to find agreement on how to curb heat-trapping carbon emissions and devise ways of channelling hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to climate-vulnerable countries.
On Monday, as the talks opened, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schuetter declared in Geneva that as many as 600 million more people could be put at risk of hunger by 2020 because of climate change.
On November 5, Tang Huajun, deputy dean of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, warned production of rice, wheat and corn could fall by five to 10 percent by 2030, and by 37 percent in the second half of the century.
"Agriculture has been the worst hit by climate change and some negative effects have become more obvious due to rising temperatures and water shortages over the past 10 years," Tang told the official China Daily.
IFPRI, a Washington-based think-tank on food problems, is financed by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), gathering 64 governments, private foundations, and international and regional organizations.
Raymond Colitt PlanetArk 2 Dec 10;
Deforestation in the Amazon forest fell to its lowest level on record, the Brazilian government said on Wednesday, marking what could be a watershed in the conservation of the world's largest rain forest.
The figures coincide with a United Nations global climate conference in Mexico. There, Brazil wants to showcase it is one of the few major economies significantly slashing its greenhouse gas emissions, which for it come mostly from burning or rotting trees.
"We will honor the pledge we made and we don't need any favors. We do it because it's our obligation," said President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, adding that the developed world was failing to agree to ambitious cuts in greenhouse gases and was not transparent about financial aid to developing nations.
Deforestation fell to around 2,509 square miles (6,500 sq km) in the 12 months through July 2010, down 14 percent from the year before and a peak of 11,235 square miles (29,100 sq km) in the mid-1990s. It is the lowest rate since the series began in 1988.
Lula criticized industrial nations for lacking commitment to cut greenhouse gases, saying it was disappointing that almost no heads of state would attend the Cancun summit.
"It won't lead to anything," he said during a ceremony in Brasilia.
Increased policing and pressure from consumer groups were instrumental in bringing down deforestation. The government's environmental watchdog has in recent years fined illegal cattle ranchers and loggers, confiscated their products, and cut off bank loans to them. Beef and soy industries have declared voluntary bans on products from illegally deforested areas.
The latest reduction in deforestation occurred despite high commodity prices, which usually drive more loggers and cattle ranchers into the forest seeking cheap land.
"There's been a decoupling, this is a big step forward," said Paulo Barreto, senior researcher at the Imazon think tank in Belem. "Of course, it's still an unacceptable rate and the government needs to do more to support the small guy in the forest," said Barreto, citing growing financial and public opinion pressure on ranchers as a reason for progress.
CHALLENGES
The area destroyed is still as large as a small country and was higher than the 1,930 square miles (5,000 sq km) that Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira had hoped for.
Experts say progress will be more difficult as logging now takes place on a smaller scale and is more difficult to spot.
"This will require more investment by the federal government," said Gilberto Camara, head of the National Institute for Space Studies, which monitors deforestation.
Officials also agree more must be done to promote alternative economic activities to the impoverished region.
"We won't keep the trees standing unless we develop forest-based economies," said Roberto Vizentin, a director at the ministry of environment, citing pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies that were developing products from plants.
"These need to create added value and jobs in the forest, not in the big cities," he said during a ceremony where Lula handed property titles to communities of forest-dwellers.
By 2020 Brazil wants to reduce its annual deforestation target to 1,351 square miles (3,500 sq km).
Amazon deforestation on decrease says Brazil government
BBC News 1 Dec 10;
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen to its lowest rate for 22 years, the government says.
Satellite monitoring showed about 6,450 sq km of (2,490 sq miles) of rainforest were cleared between August 2009 and July 2010, a drop of 14% compared with the previous 12 months.
Brazilian officials said the reduction was due to better monitoring and police control.
Environment minister Izabella Teixeira said the figures were "fantastic".
She said she would be "proud" to present the results at the UN Climate Change Conference currently taking place in Cancun, Mexico.
She added that Brazil was well on course to reduce deforestation to its target of 5,000 sq km of by 2017.
The latest figure still represents an area more than half the size of Lebanon or Jamaica.
But it is far lower than the peak of 27,772 sq km in 2004.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the reduction showed Brazil was "keeping its promises" on tackling global warming.
In 2005 President Lula pledged to reduce deforestation by 80% by 2020.
Global importance
Deforestation is thought to be responsible for about 20% of CO2 emissions worldwide.
The cutting and burning of trees in the Amazon has made Brazil a major contributor of the greenhouse gases that fuel global warming.
The latest data was published by the Brazilian space research institute (Inpe) which uses satellites to monitor deforestation in the Amazon.
The head of Inpe, Gilberto Camara, said the reduction was the result of "co-ordinated action", including greater control of illegal logging by Brazil's environment ministry and the federal police.
He also praised "responsible businesses" who had stopped buying beef and soya produced in deforested areas.
Mr Camara added that a programme that had given legal titles to about 300,000 landholders had also helped reduce the rate of forest clearance.
President Lula's government has also been promoting "extractive reserves" where local people can make a living from the forest without destroying it.
Environmental groups have warned that Brazil's soaring economic growth, as well as growing global demand for agricultural produce, could increase pressure on the Amazon rainforest in the coming years.
Penn State EurekAlert 1 Dec 10;
Conservation and international aid groups may be on the wrong course to address the havoc wreaked by climate change on tropical rainforests, according to a commentary appearing in the journal Nature on 2 December 2010.
"Most of the world's terrestrial biodiversity is contained in tropical rainforests, and climate change is looming ever larger as one of the major threats to these ecosystems, but how humans deal with climate change may be even more important," said Penn State University professor of biology Eric Post, one of the letter's authors. Post explained that rising temperatures and altered precipitation are important concerns; however, how humans respond to these altered conditions may be exacerbating an already bad situation.
Post's co-author, University of Montana ecologist Jedediah Brodie, formerly a Smith Conservation fellow at Penn State, commented that many tropical trees are reasonably resistant to temperature increases and even drought, but if the warming up and drying out of forests causes people to set more fires, trees could be completely unprepared. "If climate change leads to people starting more fires or doing more logging, those activities could be much more harmful to tropical biodiversity than just the simple rise in temperature," Brodie said.
The authors also explained that warming and drying conditions in parts of South America and Southeast Asia make it much easier for people to use fires to clear forests for agriculture. Unfortunately, small fires sometimes burn out of control, inadvertently destroying large areas. In addition, some tropical forests remain unlogged simply because they are inaccessible. For instance, intense rainy seasons wash out roads or make dirt tracks seasonally unusable. "The problem is that reduced precipitation could make it easier for people to access these areas," Post explained. "That increased access could lead to more logging, hunting, and burning -- a potentially destructive cycle."
In their Nature commentary, Post and Brodie argue that preventing deforestation and controlling fires are critical steps for reducing climate-change impacts on tropical biodiversity, but these steps must be deployed strategically. This caution also applies to popular new projects based on the REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) protocols. REDD projects are intended to set aside patches of forest to protect the carbon stored in the trees, but the placement of REDD projects is not coordinated at regional or international scales.
"The REDD concept has a huge potential that would be realized much better through some strategic planning," said Brodie. "Rather than using REDD to protect more-or-less random patches of forest, we could use it to link existing national parks into larger protected areas, or to span gradients in elevation or moisture." Brodie explained that preserving forest corridors along such gradients is critical to allowing tropical species to migrate or shift their ranges in response to the changing climatic conditions.
In their commentary, the authors also suggest that REDD projects or new national parks are especially important for particular areas. "One example is the Southeastern Amazon, where forests are threatened both by rapid deforestation and a drying climate," Brodie said. "Other areas that need REDD projects or parks are Southeast Asia's central Borneo region, the mountains along the Thailand-Myanmar border, and the Annamite Mountains in Vietnam and Laos."
The authors also said that while small, isolated national parks may offer some protection from climate change, large, connected landscapes would give different species the opportunity to migrate to new areas as environmental conditions change.
Fires: hidden threat to forests
James Cook University Science Alert 3 Dec 10;
Climate change is poised to wreak havoc on tropical rainforests, but conservation groups and international aid donors may be on the wrong course to reduce these threats, according to a group of leading ecological scientists.
The latest edition of the prestigious journal Nature publishes a letter from the scientists arguing that the world needs to rethink the application of conservation tools if it is to improve the resilience of tropical forests against climate change.
Tropical rainforests sustain most of the world's terrestrial biodiversity and among the host of threats to these ecosystems, climate change is looming ever larger. Scientists are currently trying to understand how rising temperature and altered rainfall will affect forests.
But Dr Jedediah Brodie from the University of Montana, Professor Eric Post of Pennsylvania State University, and James Cook University’s Distinguished Professor William Laurance say that this misses a critical point.
A far greater threat, they say, is that climate change could increase destructive forest fires or pressures from industrial logging.
"Many tropical trees are resistant to modest temperature increases and even drought. But if these changes lead people to set more fires, rainforests could be devastated," says the study's lead author, ecologist Dr Brodie.
"This effect may be vastly more harmful than the impacts of climate change alone.”
Professor Laurance said that in places like the Amazon and Southeast Asia, drying conditions made it far easier for people to burn forests for farming.
“Even small fires can escape and inadvertently destroy far larger areas,” he said.
“Intense rainy seasons wash out roads or make dirt tracks unusable. But when rainfall declines, people can get into even remote areas, increasing pressure on the forests through logging, hunting, and burning.”
The authors argue that slowing deforestation and controlling fires are critical for reducing the impacts of climate change. This can best be achieved by using international carbon trading to protect large, intact expanses of tropical forest.
But at present, such efforts are not being coordinated at the regional or international scales needed to achieve these aims.
Professor Post said that billions of dollars were available to slow deforestation and thereby reduce carbon emissions.
“But we need to focus on creating really big protected areas, especially those that span large gradients in elevation or moisture, so that species can migrate as climates change in the future,” he said.
Dr Brodie said that on its own, climate change could stress tropical forests.
“But when you add in human-lit fires and increased logging, it’s like hitting them with a sledgehammer,” he said.
“Small, isolated parks won’t be big enough to withstand these pressures. If we’re going to protect tropical biodiversity in the long term, we need to think really, really big.”
Yahoo News 1 Dec 10;
CANCUN, Mexico (AFP) – World leaders pondering the conundrum of climate change should think of bamboo, a group promoting the versatile grass said at the UN talks in Cancun on Wednesday.
Cheap, fast-growing and immensely strong, bamboo provides an answer to surging carbon emissions, generates income for the rural poor and helps tackle housing shortages, the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) said.
"Bamboo is a remarkable resource for driving economic development, and is readily available in many of the world's poorest countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America," said Coosje Hoogendoorn, INBAR's director general.
"It helps support the livelihoods of more than 1.5 billion people, generates more than five billion dollars in annual trade and can grow up to one meter (3.25 feet) a day."
"Bamboo housing has been around for centuries, but many people don't understand its full potential and still see it as the poor man's timber," said Alvaro Cabrera, INBAR's regional coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean.
"In fact, bamboo is stronger for its weight than steel, it's cheaper than timber, uses far less energy in processing than concrete and can dance in earthquakes... Bamboo should be referred to as the wise man's timber."
INBAR, a 13-year-old organisation based in China, is an inter-government organisation, gathering 36 countries under a treaty, that also fosters fair-trade and development schemes involving bamboo and rattan.
It made its pitch on the sidelines of the November 29-December 10 UN talks in Cancun, where countries are wrestling for solutions to climate change.
In addition to providing livelihoods for people, bamboo forests would be an invaluable weapon against carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas, through photosynthesis, INBAR said.
Some species of bamboo can suck up CO2 at least as fast as Chinese fir and eucalyptus, among the swiftest-growing commercial species of trees, according to a scientific report presented last month.
In addition, bamboo roots reduce soil erosion, preventing hillsides and riverbanks from washing away in floods and landslides.
Hoogendoorn told AFP that the group was working on a certification scheme whereby bamboo would be sold with a label proving that it came from a sustainable plantation and allowed other species to thrive.
Even so, certification "is complex and very difficult," she admitted.
One of the biggest destroyers of biodiversity is monoculture crops grown on huge spaces on soil treated with pesticides and fertilizers.
Natural bamboo forests, as opposed to plantations, are a haven for many species of wildlife, including the giant panda.
World trade in bamboo and rattan is more than five billion dollars a year, with China, Indonesia and Vietnam the three biggest sources, INBAR said.
Fidelis E Satriastanti Jakarta Globe 1 Dec 10;
Jakarta. Indonesia’s delegates in Cancun were less than pleased with a report from the European Union on Tuesday that said it had in 2010 provided 2.2 billion euros ($2.87 billion) in fast-start funding to support developing countries’ efforts to adapt to and mitigate climate change.
Based on the EU report, 1.06 billion euros, or 48.1 percent, was allocated for greenhouse gas mitigation efforts.
Of the rest, 735 million euros went to adaptation efforts, and 362 million euros to deforestation reduction schemes, through which developing countries were paid to preserve their forests.
More than half of the funding, 1.265 billion euros, came through multilateral channels.
Indonesia is one of the countries that benefited from the fast-start funding this year, including from a 22-million-euro microhydroelectric power project to be built in cooperation with the Netherlands.
Under the program, 300 small hydroelectric plants are planned for Sumatra, Sulawesi and Papua by 2012 to provide renewable energy to 170,000 people.
However, the Indonesian delegation in Cancun said the funding was being recycled from past promises.
Tazwin Hanif, head of the Indonesian delegation, said the bilateral agreement for the hydroelectric plants had been made a long time ago but was only now being claimed as a new climate change mitigation program.
“We don’t want any double counting, we want new funding,” he said.
Suzanty Sitorus, the Indonesian delegation’s finance representative, said the main question about funding was the implementation.
“It’s still vague — as in how much money we’re getting, how it’s being distributed, what kinds of programs it will go toward,” she said.
“We want to see and verify how much of it is new, as a requirement for fast-start funding.”
She added only funding that was issued in 2010 could be considered fast-start funding.
The fast-start funding was announced at last year’s Copenhagen climate change talks in Denmark, where developed countries committed to provide $30 billion in funding from 2010 to 2012 as an initial step to help speed up developing countries’ effectiveness in addressing climate change.
Peter Wittoeck, head of the Belgian delegation to the Cancun talks, said climate change issues had always been integrated into the EU’s development strategy, even before Copenhagen.
“The amount has increased significantly,” he said. “The EU was the largest donor of ODA [official development assistance] in 2008, with $5.1 billion, or 60 percent from the total contribution.”
Saleemul Huq, from the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development, said the EU’s contribution toward the $30 billion fast-start fund was welcome and a good start, but called for greater transparency.
“Monitoring both the level of contributions as well as the actual channels through which the funds flow is essential, and still unclear,” said Huq , who is also part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“There should be a mechanism under the UNFCCC [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change], not just by the contributors, to monitor these funds.”
He also said loans were useful for supporting mitigation efforts, but were not appropriate for supporting adaptation in the poorest and most vulnerable countries.
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