Tackling the electronic waste menace 

A new report by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, supported by Unep, and The Climate Group estimates that ICT could cut greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent globally by 2020. 

Firstly by contributing to energy efficiency in buildings up to the automobile industry, and also by what is known as dematerialisation (or substitution) of existing physical goods and processes. 

But the rapid growth and also rapid redundancy of ICT equipment also represents a major challenge to the international community in terms of human health and the environment. 

An estimated 20 to 50 million tonnes of electronics waste is generated annually which, according to one estimate, if loaded on railway trucks would produce a train that would stretch once around the world. The growth in electronics is unlikely to abate any time soon, especially as disposable incomes rise in the rapidly developing economies. 

Thus, it represents a major challenge to the work of Unep. There are reasons for optimism, however. Many developed countries have established take-back; refurbishment and recycling schemes and in turn are generating profits and new kinds of green jobs. 

Similar developments are also occurring in many developing countries. We must take forward the Nairobi declaration on the environmentally sound management of electronic and electrical wastes via the Partnership for Action on Computing Equipment. 

Long distance dumping

The detailed work plan is expected to include developing guidelines and orchestrating activities in the areas of environmentally-sound refurbishment and repair of electronic equipment including criteria for testing, certification and labelling. 

Indeed, the focus on e-waste at the Basel Convention in Nairobi in 2006 generated a great deal of interest. I am happy that the parties to the convention sent a clear and unequivocal message that the international community will no longer tolerate the kind of toxic waste dumping that occurred in Cote D’Ivoire and which also captured our attention in 2006. In 2006 the spotlight fell on shipments of e-waste in Lagos, Nigeria. 

Shortly afterwards evidence emerged of similar shipments coming into East Africa through the port of Mombasa with some ending up in the Dandora dump site in Nairobi. Some of the shipments contain usable electronics but often they can be mixed with a great deal of dud and even obsolete equipment including items such as old Commodore games consuls. This is effectively long distance dumping. It must be stopped.

Achim Steiner is Unep’s executive director. 

Source: Business Daily, July 03, 2008
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G8: 'Make Or Break on Climate Change'
Ramesh Jaura

Japan is preparing to test its leadership role at the summit meeting of seven western industrial democracies and Russia (G8) Jul. 7-9 in Toyako on the northern island of Hokkaido. Japan considers the summit meeting "historic", a senior foreign ministry official said. 

For the first time in the course of G8 meetings and their predecessors since 1975, the G8 countries (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan, Canada and the United States) will hold discussions with as many as 14 heads of state and government from Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America in three 'outreach' groups. 

The official said he hoped the meeting would prove historic in sending a "strong message" to the international community in addressing major issues of concern to the world: development, global food, energy, financial stability, nuclear non-proliferation and climate change. 

The first round of discussions spread over four hours on the first day of the summit will include seven African leaders -- three more than at last year's G8 -- from Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania -- as well as the chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission. 

The meeting, to be attended also by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and World Bank president Robert Zoellick will focus on African development by achieving the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 and addressing global food security. 

Another workshop -- on the last day of the summit -- with the leaders of Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Korea and South Africa, described as major economies -- will be devoted to environment and climate change. 

These meetings follow those last year at the Heiligendamm summit in Germany with the Outreach Five (O5) comprising the leaders of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. 

A background paper by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) says that Prime Minister Yasuo Fakuda wants the G8 to send "a strong message to the world for development of a post-2012 framework on climate change (after the commitment period of Kyoto Protocol) to be advanced through the UN process. 

"Japan will demonstrate leadership in discussions on climate change, aiming to attain understanding and agreement of each country for Japan's proposals," the background paper says. 

In line with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's statement Jun. 1 at the Japan-Germany summit, Japan wishes to advance further the Heiligendamm agreement of last year. The G8 agreed last year to "seriously consider cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by at least half by 2050 from the current levels." 

The paper quotes Prime Minister Fakuda as saying: "It is essential to have a 'total participation' framework that includes all the major economies, not just the EU and Japan." He adds: "Japan will negotiate tenaciously in order to build international agreement on fair and equitable rules which are approved by all." 

The MOFA paper says that the Kyoto Protocol, agreed in December 1997, is an "epoch-making first step in reducing emissions." But "the total amount of emissions from ratifiers that are obligated to reduce is still about 30 percent of the world." In view of this, Prime Minister Fakuda is proposing: 

- Japan, along with other major emitters, will establish quantified national targets for emissions reduction. 

- The target could be based on a bottom-up approach by compiling energy efficiency on a sectoral basis and tallying up the reduction volume. 

- The base year should be reviewed. 

Concretely, in the post-Kyoto framework, Japan wants to move away from 1990 as the base for carbon dioxide (CO2) reductions, agreed in Kyoto. 

This is expected to make Japan's leadership at the summit an extremely challenging task. This is admitted by Japanese officials involved in the G8 Hokkaido summit preparations. "We know it is a make or break issue," an official told IPS. 

Japan's long-term goal is to achieve a 60-80 percent reduction in emissions from the current level by 2050. The medium-term goal is a 14 percent reduction by 2020 compared to 2005 levels by 2020. 

Japan is, in any case, determined to contribute up to 1.2 billion dollars to a new multilateral fund which it is establishing with Britain and the U.S. The fund will assist developing countries in addressing climate change. 

Japan is expected to propose an International Partnership for Environment and Energy "to share a global roadmap for innovative technological development looking 30-40 years ahead by having the international community work in unison, to advance technological development." 

The achievement of this partnership is also to be shared with developing countries, says the MOFA background document. (END/2008) 

Source: IPS, July 04, 2008
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Climate change may cut South Africa corn crop sharply
Lucy Hornby

SAPPORO, Japan (Reuters) - Climate change could cut South Africa's maize crop by 20 percent within 15 to 20 years as the west of the country dries out while the east is afflicted with increasingly severe storms, its environment minister said on Sunday.

"For a developing country that's major, and major bad news," Marthinus van Schalkwyk told reporters after arriving in northern Japan, where the Group of Eight rich nations' leaders are gathering for a summit this week. "For us it's not something far in the future, it's already happening."

Climate change and rising global food prices are at the top of the G8's agenda this year. Van Schalkwyk called on developed countries to slash emissions by 80 to 95 percent by 2050 compared with 1990, to achieve meaningful progress in fighting climate change.

Developing countries like South Africa, which holds most of the continent's coal reserves and is expanding output, will need technology transfers to slow their growth in emissions, he said.

Otherwise, increasing dryness in the west would be matched by cyclones and heavy rain in the east, fanning the spread of malaria and destroying infrastructure that wasn't built to withstand strong winds and heavy rains.

As its western regions dry out, South Africa would have to turn to more drought-resistant strains of maize, or corn, giving a greater role to genetically modified strains, he said. GMO corn is already legal in South Africa.

South Africa consumes about 8 million tonnes a year of corn. It produced 7.125 million tonnes in the 2007 harvest, but this year's harvest topped 11 million tonnes following better rains.

In December, the country specifically excluded maize from the materials that could be used to make biofuels, despite protests from a grain-growing lobby that fears drops in prices when output is high.

Van Schalkwyk called for an international framework to set policy on biofuels, which by diverting excess grain supply helped push corn futures in Chicago to an all-time high last month.

"We believe that is the responsible approach. We were criticized then, but now we are proven right," he said.

(Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Source: Reuters, July 06, 2008
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EU moves to cut back target on biofuel use
James Kanter

Signaling a major retrenchment, European Union legislators on Monday proposed ratcheting back an ambitious target to raise Europe's use of biofuels.

At the same time, a new report for the British government cast fresh doubt on using fuels from crops in the fight against climate change.

Until recently, European governments had sought to lead the rest of the world, setting a target for 10 percent of transportation fuels to be derived from biofuels by 2020. But the allure has dimmed amid growing evidence that the kind of targets proposed by the EU are contributing to deforestation and helping force up food prices.

"I think when we will look back we will say this was the beginning of a turning point for Europe on biofuels," said Juan Delgado, a research fellow specializing in energy and climate change expert at Breugel, a research organization in Brussels. "It will be very difficult now for Europe to stick by its targets."

In the United States, an energy bill passed last year required that 36 billion gallons of biofuels be produced annually by 2022. But criticism is gaining ground there, too, with calls to end tax breaks for corn ethanol and other measures to stop so much American corn - about one-fourth of the crop - being used for biofuels.

Over the past 18 months, studies have shown that the current generation of biofuels reliant on crops like canola, corn and soybeans helps drive up food prices by using agricultural land, aggravates deforestation and may be worse for the climate than conventional oil once the cost of production and transport are taken into account. The majority of biofuels produced in the world today are extracted from corn in the United States, sugar in Brazil, and both grain and oil-seed crops in Europe.

Those findings now are pushing Europe into an about-face on biofuels that has gained momentum in recent days.

"The political tide in Europe is now turning against biofuels, said Adrian Bebb, an agrofuels coordinator with Friends of the Earth Europe.

Over the weekend, energy ministers gave one of their strongest signs that EU governments were prepared to back away from the 10 percent target. "We have to decide if the quota can be kept," the Jochen Homann, secretary of state at the Economics Ministry, said Saturday in Paris. "It might be changed," he said.

Britain also signaled a new course Monday. Ruth Kelly, the British transport minister, said the introduction of biofuels should be slowed down, citing a newly released report warning that current targets for biofuel production could cause a global rise in greenhouse gas emissions and an increase in poverty in the poorest countries.

"Given uncertainty and potential concerns, the government will adopt a more cautious approach until the evidence is clearer on environmental and social effects of biofuels," Kelly told the British Parliament.

The Environment Committee of the European Parliament voted Monday to approve the measure, suggesting it be sent to the full Parliament.

Members of each major political block on the committee called for a much lower target - 4 percent - and said the measures should be reviewed 2015 before any decision to ratchet up that target to between 8 percent and 10 percent.

Although the environment committee's vote is not binding, it still will add to pressure on the European Commission to issue revised proposal, said Delgado, the Breugel expert.

Under the alternative proposals that the committee voted on, 20 percent of renewable transport fuels would have to come from feed stocks, like algae, that do not compete with food for cropland. EU nations also could meet the target by expanding use vehicles powered by biogas, electricity or hydrogen by 2015. That figure would rise to as much as 50 percent by 2020. Nations also would have to abide by rules on environmental and social sustainability.

The European Commission has been seeking to promote policies allowing it to proclaim global standards for tackling climate-change emissions. The fading luster of biofuels is one of the factors that threatens its goal of generating 20 percent of energy from renewable sources by 2020, up from current levels of 8.5 percent now.

Despite the uproar over biofuels, the European Commission has denied that biofuels are helping push up world food prices by displacing other agriculture and has vowed to stick by its 10 percent target.

Michael Mann, a spokesman, said Monday that higher food prices had been caused by increased demand for meat and dairy products, particularly in China and India, two years of bad harvests around the world, speculation, and by restrictions on exports of food commodities by some nations.

Mann said that a largely voluntary EU target for using 5.8 percent biofuels in transport had done little to promote their use, and that binding targets were needed to improve on the current generation of fuels.

"If you don't have targets, you don't make progress in combating climate change," Mann said. "You have to start on first-generation biofuels to get your productive capacity going but move as soon as possible to biofuels that are not in direct competition with food."

There is disagreement about the role in rising food prices, and some analysts say that the backlash against biofuels now is going too far. New Energy Finance, a research group in London, said in May that prices had risen 8 percent for grains and 17 percent for oils as a result of biofuels policies. It found effects on the price of sugars had been negligible.

Source: International Herald Tribune, July 07, 2008
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African 'wall of trees' gets underway
Esther Tola and Christina Scott

Three years after it was first proposed, preparations for an African 'wall of trees' to slow down the southwards spread of the Sahara desert are finally getting underway.

The 'Great Green Wall' will involve several stretches of trees from Mauritania in the west to Djibouti in the east, to protect the semi-arid savannah region of the Sahel — and its agricultural land — from desertification.

A plan for the proposed US$3 million, two-year initial phase of the project — involving a belt of trees 7,000 kilometres long and 15 kilometres wide — was formally adopted at the Community of Sahel–Saharan States (Cen-Sad) summit on rural development and food security in Cotonou, Benin, last month (17–18 June).

North African nations have been promoting the idea of a Green Belt since 2005 (see African nations agree to boost desert research). The project has been scaled down to reinforce and then expand on existing efforts, and will not be a continent-wide wall of trees, despite the name of the project. The Green Wall will involve two planting projects on the east and west sides of Africa.

The Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel region (CILSS) is working with scientific consultants and representatives from the arid nations of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal to launch pilot planting projects planned for September. 

Another planting programme, including Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan, should be finalised within two months under the auspices of six states in the Horn of Africa, linked through the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). 

Mariam Aladji Boni Diallo, the Benin-based president of the Cen-Sad summit organising committee, says she hopes the Green Wall will consist of more than just trees. 

Diallo told SciDev.Net that "reforestation, restoration of natural resources and the eventual development of fishing and livestock breeding" were priorities for the project. However, she said that funding for the project was still tentative.

The UNESCO-linked non-profit Observatory of the Sahara and the Sahel has prepared a report on the project, saying the labour-intensive project should be used to create employment but advising that payments be partly withheld for two years until the trees were established, and that payment be based on plant growth.

The project will be monitored from Tripoli by Cen-Sad, and Senegal will provide 'close technical cooperation' because of its success in fighting desertification. 

Joséa Dossou Bodjrènou, head of the Nature Tropicale environmental education organisation at the Museum of Natural Science in Benin, warned that the project can only be assessed once it stops being words on paper and becomes action.

"The population needs to be sensitised to the importance of planting trees and taking care of them. Otherwise, they would destroy them without knowing it's dangerous for the ecosystem. All this work would lead to nothing," Bodjrènou, told SciDev.Net. 

"It's really important for the work to be done with local experts in each country because they know which species can grow on their soil. And we have to use local species, not imported ones."

Source: SciDevNet, July 07, 2008
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SOUTH ASIA: Eight Nations Unite to Combat Climate Change
Farid Ahmed

DHAKA, Jul 8 (IPS) - As rising seas, melting glaciers, floods and cyclones are increasingly putting millions of people at risk in South Asia, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) met here last week to find ways to mitigate the impacts of changing climate. 

Experts and ministers from SAARC member countries discussed the impact of changing climate and adopted an action plan for three years. 

Atiq Rahman, a leading Bangladeshi environmental scientist, told IPS that it was important for the region to unite, as environmentalists have long warned that SAARC’s member countries -- Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka -- are among the worst affected by climate change. 

"The latest [Inter-governmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC)] report says the sea-level rise will be rapid… a vast swathe of land will go underwater… food security will be threatened and the millennium development goal on poverty will not be reached," said Rahman, lead author of the report and executive director of the Dhaka-based research organisation, Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies. 

For the first time South Asian environment ministers issued a joint plan to fight the effects of global warming. They also pushed for the developed countries to establish a special fund dedicated to saving the affected countries from the effects of climate change. 

The action plan adopted in Dhaka seeks to identify and create opportunity for activities achievable through regional cooperation and South-South support in terms of technology and knowledge transfer. It also establishes common regional understanding of the various concerns of SAARC member states around the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 

This new beginning of cooperation and exchange of technology and information will benefit the entire region, according to Rahman. "Everybody will be serious as everybody is affected by the external threat," he said. 

The action plan, covering 2009-2011, puts forth action plans for climate change mitigation, technology transfer, financing and investment mechanisms, education, training and awareness, monitoring, plus assessment and management strategies of impact and risks. 

Fakhruddin Ahmed, head of the interim government of Bangladesh, called for putting collective pressure by SAARC on the developed nations to make an unconditional commitment to reduce their greenhouse gas emission levels to save the vulnerable regions of the world from the perils of climate change. 

Ahmed said that the SAARC countries should speak in one voice to ensure that the developed countries commit new and additional resources to support regional adaptation efforts. "We should also remain vigilant against any attempt to make adaptation support contingent upon our commitment in mitigation," he said. The industrialised economies must provide adaptation funds and facilitate technology transfers without any conditionality, he stressed. 

The IPCC forecasts that global warming would result in sea-level rise, with a resultant increase in coastal flooding and salinity. "In 2007, two successive floods ravaged Bangladesh as well as parts of India. The rise in frequency and intensity of cyclones are ominous testimonies of climatic shifts in our region," Ahmed explained. 

The ferocity of Cyclone ‘Sidr’ in November last year took us all -- even the experts and forecasters -- by surprise. Another killer Cyclone ‘Nargis’, which originated in the Bay of Bengal in April 2008, devastated the Irrawaddy delta of Myanmar, Ahmed said. 

Climate change will disproportionately hurt the poor and its irreversible impacts will steal the livelihood options of millions of our citizens already living below the poverty line, said Ahmed.

Quoting the IPCC report, Ahmed said that Bangladesh could lose as much as one-third of its landmass due to the rise in sea level and the Maldives could disappear entirely. The floodplains of India and Pakistan could face permanent inundation, he added. "Millions of our citizens could be permanently displaced. These are not scientific conjectures. They are cautious predictions -- often the best case scenarios -- based on rigorous data analysis and simulations," he said. 

The adverse effects of global warming will derail all our efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. "It’ll unleash the tragedy in human history, far graver than the ‘Black Death’ or the atrocities of World War II. We cannot, and must not, sit idle and let this happen to us," Ahmed asserted. 

Following the meeting, New Age -- a major Bangladesh daily -- said, "We believe that the cooperation that the member states have promised each other in sharing meteorological data and building capacity in the area of expertise on climate change issues can lead to a more holistic approach to understanding and combating the adverse impacts of climate change in the South Asian region." 

"Given our vulnerabilities, inadequate means and limited capacities, we need to ensure rapid social and economic development in our region to make SAARC climate change-resilient," said SAARC Secretary-General Sheel Kant Sharma. "Development provides the best form of adaptation," he stressed. 

Bangladeshi deputy environment minister Raja Devashish Roy said Bangladesh had dedicated 437,000 dollars to fight climate change, but that alone could not fight the effects on his country. 

Plans to fight climate change need to be integrated into all sectors, he said. "Thirty million taka is just the beginning. We’re engaging at an international level of negotiating. We are going to push for more funds to come into Bangladesh," he said. 

Roy reported that more discussion would take place on the modalities of setting up a South Asian fund on climate change at the July SAARC summit in Colombo. 

(END/2008) 

Source: IPS, July 08, 2008
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World ports tackle greenhouse gas emissions

ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands (AFP) — Ports authorities from around the world gathered in Rotterdam Wednesday to adopt a plan to cut CO2 emissions from the activities of some 100,000 large ships sailing global waters.

Alongside scientists, lawmakers and businessmen, officials from more than 50 ports in 35 countries started a three-day meeting at the home of Europe's largest harbour. They are looking at regulatory and technological ways of shrinking their contribution to global warming.

But the setting of measurable common targets appeared to be a long way off as speakers differed on the maritime transport industry's contribution to global greenhouse gas emission -- put at anything from 1.4 percent to 4.5 percent.

Delegates did agree, though, that the shipping sector would grow by leaps and bounds, and that alternatives had to be found in order to save the planet.

"The climate is changing every minute, even as we sit here," said Ogunlade Davidson, co-chairman of the United Nations' Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change.

"Human beings have to solve it (global warming), because we created it. The marine environment has to take its own responsibility, as do all of us."

Davidson told the gathering that technical alterations, including the use of hydrodynamics in propellers, could reduce CO2 emissions by up to 30 percent on new ships and 20 percent on older ones. Renewable fuels, speed reduction and fleet maintenance also had a role to play.

The potential existed to reduce the global fleet's CO2 emissions by 17.6 percent by 2010 and 28.2 percent by 2020, "but this will not be enough to offset the projected fleet growth," he said.

Efthimios Mitropoulos, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organisation, told delegates his organisation was working hard on setting greenhouse gas emission targets for the shipping industry to come into effect by February 2010.

But this could never work if developing countries were excluded from obligation, he argued. The developed world accounted for only 25 percent of the world's merchant fleet, he said.

"In my view, if reductions in CO2 emissions from ships are to benefit the environment as a whole, they must apply globally to all ships in the world fleet, regardless of their flag.

"It seems completely incongruous that two ships, carrying similar cargo, loaded in the same port, sailing at the same speed and having the same destination, should be treated differently because they are registered under two different flags."

China, a developing nation with one of the world's largest ports in Shanghai, did not attend the conference, having sent an apology and explaining that its recent killer earthquake and hosting of the Olympic games required all hands on deck back home.

Rotterdam mayor Ivo Opstelten told the gathering that port cities had a unique responsibility to combat climate change. The port of Rotterdam planned to reduce its CO2 output by half of 1990 levels by 2025.

Dutch scientists were examining better ways of capturing and storing CO2 emissions, developing a new ship coating with lower algae growth to reduce drag, and testing new collapsable containers enabling ships to transport more empty containers to cut trips.

"For a long time, it (CO2 emissions) was something we did not pay much attention to," said Opstelten. "Now is the time for action." About 80 ports have been invited to sign the World Ports Climate Declaration once completed. A draft document circulated Wednesday supported CO2 reduction measures, but mentioned no caps. 

Source: AFP, July 09, 2008
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Study finds arsenic threats in SE Asia

Myanmar's cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta and Indonesia's Sumatra Island face high risks of arsenic contamination in groundwater that could cause cancer and other diseases in residents, according to a new study.

Using a digitalized model that examines geological features and soil chemistry in Southeast Asia, researchers writing in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience mapped several likely hot spots that had never been assessed for arsenic risks.

"Obviously, there is concern," said Michael Berg, one of the five authors, who is a senior scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology in Dubendor, Switzerland. "If you look at our data, there is risk of arsenic in the ground water."

Arsenic, especially in drinking water, is a global threat to health, affecting more than 70 countries and 137 million people. The country worst affected is Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of people are in danger of dying from cancers of the lung, bladder and skin.

Odorless and tasteless, arsenic enters water supplies from natural deposits in the ground or from agricultural and industrial practices. Arsenic is poisonous when consumed in high doses, but even smaller amounts can cause cancer, skin problems and abnormal heart rhythms.

Berg and the other authors determined a high risk of arsenic contamination exceeding World Health Organization guidelines in Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta, a low-lying area hit by a May cyclone that killed at least 84,537 people.

Their models also found that 38,610 square miles of Sumatra's east coast was at risk as well as the Chao Phraya river basin in central Thailand - although the dangers in the Chao Phraya were lower because residents in the area tap deeper aquifers.

Researchers said regions with organic-rich sediment containing silt and clay have a higher likelihood of arsenic contamination.

"These are very young sediments. Only in young formation do we find that arsenic can be released from the sediment," Berg said Friday, adding that arsenic in soil that is much older has been mostly washed away.

Berg said he hopes the maps they developed could serve as "a red flag" for authorities to take precautions before building wells or other water facilities in areas deemed at high risk of arsenic contamination. Until now, testing for arsenic has been rare in many regions because it is costly and time consuming, he said.

Lex van Geen, a geochemist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who has studied arsenic contamination in Bangladesh and did not participate in the study, said it should be lauded for drawing attention to areas where little research has been done on the arsenic threat, such as Myanmar. But he said the digital models do not identify areas well below the surface where water quality is good.

"Using the mapping based on surface geology will identify settings where arsenic could be high in shallow groundwater," van Geen said. "What it can't tell you is how deep you might have to go to reach the low arsenic water, which is really what matters from a mitigation point of view." 

Source: The New Nation, July 12, 2008 
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ENVIRONMENT: Cutting CO2 Could Save Dying Corals
Stephen Leahy

FORT LAUDERDALE, U.S., Jul 12 (IPS) - The rapid decline of coral reefs around the world offers a potent warning that entire ecosystems can collapse due to human activities, although there is hope for reefs if immediate action is taken, coral experts agreed at the conclusion of a five-day international meeting Friday.

"Reefs are in serious trouble, but don't write them off," Terry Hughes, a marine ecologist at Australia's James Cook University told 3,000 scientists, conservationists and policy makers attending at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. "We can save reefs if we take immediate action," Hughes said. 

More than 20 percent of the world's reefs have died, and large areas are failing due to a combination of climate change, overfishing, pollution and sea level rise. Most of the fabulous corals that attract tourists to the Caribbean are gone and half of remaining reefs in the U.S. are in serious decline. 

In 1998, a massive coral bleaching due to warm ocean temperatures linked to global warming killed 95 percent of reefs in large parts of the Indian ocean, in 2002 60 percent of the Australia's Great Barrier Reef bleached, in 2005 it was the Caribbean that suffered a 50 to 90 percent loss because water temperatures were too high for too long, reported David Souter, coordinator of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network located at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. 

And those corals that don't die outright are often afflicted by disease in the following years, Souter told the symposium. 

"Corals in American Samoa are bleaching every summer and are very close to death," says Douglas Fenner, a biologist at Marine and Wildlife Resources, American Samoa. 

The reefs he is studying are in small isolated pools where the water warms 2 degrees C more than the average. "This is our window into the future 30 to 100 years from now," Fenner told IPS. 

Climate change will warm the oceans by at least 1.5 degrees C and possibly far more in the coming decades and based on Fenner's studies of these warm pools, corals will grow much more slowly, reproduce poorly and are unlikely to survive in the long term. It gets worse when ocean acidification, another product of climate change, is factored in. 

Lab experiments where seawater acidity is increased to the levels expected in 2020 and 2060 uniformly show several important species of algae that helps glue reefs together do not grow well and their death rate increased under those high acid scenarios, said Guillermo Dias- Pulido of Australia's University of Queensland. 

"We may be facing ocean deserts in the future," Dias-Pulido said in an interview, adding that he has only studied a few species and there are at least 650 species on the Great Barrier Reef, and some may prove to be resilient. 

Researchers have found another window into the perilous future in the form of an undersea vent that releases high levels of carbon dioxide in the Mediterranean Sea. Carbon dioxide makes seawater acidic in direct proportion -- more CO2, the more acidic. Maoz Fine of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel said he could easily see the rapid decline and then complete absence of coral near the vent as the acidity levels increased, corroborating Dias-Pulido's lab research. 

Fine cautioned that the levels of acidity near the vent are higher than what is expected in the oceans, but the combination of higher water temperatures and acidity is likely to be lethal well before the end of this century, he told IPS. 

Increasingly warm and sour seawater is now inevitable, but how warm and how sour the oceans become is up humanity, said Simon Donner, an ecologist and climatologist at University of British Columbia. If emissions of fossil fuels can slow and eventually reverse, there is hope for corals. 

The world's fossil fuel economy is like the Titanic -- we know its going to hit an iceberg but it takes a very long time to stop a really big ship Donner told IPS. "If we can reduce other threats to reefs and keep them healthy, that's like reducing the size of the iceberg," he said. 

Souter of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network says there is very good evidence to support Donner. Reefs that suffered bleaching but are remote and do not have other stress factors like pollution or overfishing show a good rate of recovery. 

Two years ago, one-third of the 2,000-km Great Barrier Reef was closed to all fishing. In just that short time, a key species called coral trout has increased 30 to 75 percent, an example of reef's ability to bounce back when properly protected, Souter said. 

Astonishingly, fishing is allowed in almost all marine protected areas, parks and sanctuaries in the world. The opposite is true for parks on land, where hunting is rarely allowed. 

Reefs around remote pacific atolls where there is no fishing are doing remarkably well despite warmer sea temperatures, said Nancy Knowlton of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington. "There are lots of huge fish, lots of corals and little signs of disease," Knowlton told IPS.

That abundance what once the normal state on all reefs, and it shows that healthy reefs can better withstand the impact of climate change. There are other places in the world where reefs are doing well, such as islands of Palau in the Pacific and Bonaire in the Caribbean, but that's because local people take pride in their reefs and protect them, she said. 

While the global threat of climate change to oceans appears overwhelming, reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere will automatically reduce ocean acidity, said Joan Kleypas of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder Colorado. 

"It's like a volume slider -- dial down the CO2 level and the volume of ocean acidity follows," Kleypas said in an interview. 

Change is in the air and people, especially the younger generation, recognise the crisis we are facing and they are willing to step and do what it takes to solve these problems, she said. 

That change will have to come quickly, over the next eight years, reckons Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a scientist at the Centre for Marine Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. 

"We can't exceed 450 ppm (parts per million) of atmospheric CO2," Hoegh-Guldberg. Current CO2 levels are 384 ppm, compared to the pre- industrial norm of 280. 

Reducing emissions to save corals will likely prevent the collapse of other important ecosystems which sustain life on the planet and pull humanity back from the brink, he said. "The coral reef crisis is really a crisis of governance," Hughes concluded. 

"The planet will never be like it was in the year 2000, or 1900 for that matter," he said. "We need to look forward and see where we want to go and start moving in that direction." 

(END/2008) 

Source: IPS, July 12, 2008
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How to achieve goals of green revolution 
Angela Cropper 

We are living in a time of multiple crises. These are grabbing the headlines and requiring the international community to find solutions on so many fronts. What will it be next — a new wave of natural disasters in another vulnerable area of the globe: or will it be a global water crisis?

It may seem right to seek solutions in the tried and tested systems of the past. But perhaps we need to find a new set of answers for a new century; answers that balance the realities with new approaches that echo to a diversity of responses that recognise the differing circumstances of countries and communities. And ones that do not simply attempt to solve one crisis independently of the links with others. 

One choice is to simply ratchet up the agricultural production systems of the 20th century — a model one might call reductionist. 

It is reductionist in the sense that we are coming to depend on an ever smaller suite of crops. Reductionist too if we ignore the wealth of agricultural biodiversity that has nourished humanity for millennia. And reductionist because farming is being reduced to a simple process of intensification – centring on the notion that ever more chemical inputs from pesticides to artificial fertilisers, will solve our difficulties.

If the goal is to simply maximise yields at the cost of all else then perhaps we are on the right course. But we are convinced that this is not a model that will ultimately serve the interests of either the developed or developing world. We must assist the millions currently priced out of the food markets. But we might also seize the opportunity to plan a new Green Revolution: one with a capital G. 

Take water. It is about using more or is it about using less but using it more intelligently? And what about small scale solutions? What about rainwater harvesting on truly transformational scales? 

Africa has enough rain falling on it to supply the needs of 13 billion people if only it were collected. Look at soil fertility. In some areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa we may need more fertiliser use. But this has to be approached with more discrimination than in the past. 

I am talking about the health and diversity of the microbes, beetles, worms whose presence is at the very root of productive agricultural systems.

In my view, the current food situation is a symptom of a wider set of interacting forces relating to sustainability, from the degradation of our ecosystems to the climate change that is underway, from fairer trade to gender equity, from ignoring the concept of One World and the reality of One Earth. Cropper is the deputy executive director of UNEP.

Source: Business Daily, July 15, 2008
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