Climate ministers are making little headway against powerful forces

UN climate talks open in Germany on Monday, with the EU struggling to keep its position of a global leader.

Small developing countries that linked up with the EU in a new coalition last year say the bloc must commit to tougher emission cuts and more finance.

Existing pledges on “climate aid” run out at the end of this year, and the EU has yet to clarify what happens then.

Most EU nations want to increase carbon cuts but they have not worked out how to negotiate around Poland’s blocking.

Attempts to toughen the EU’s target from 20% to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020 have stumbled on Polish government fears about its economic impact on the major coal-producing and coal-burning nation.

Last December’s annual UN climate summit, in South Africa, saw the EU team up alongside at least 80 nations, primarily small island states and Least Developed Countries (LDCs), in a new “rainbow coalition” pressing for a new global deal that would eventually restrict all nations’ emissions.

At a small informal meeting in Brussels last week, just over 30 nations from the coalition took stock of the situation, with members of the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) urging the EU to adopt the 30% target as soon as possible.

“There was agreement that it’s got to go up to 30%,” Tony de Brum, Minister in Assistance of the Marshall Islands, told BBC News.

“We don’t want to be intrusive or over-reaching, but we said ‘we don’t think the disagreement in your group is so overwhelming – when 26 say yes and one says no, we think you could probably bring along the dissident, so please don’t come to us with this kind of excuse’.”

However, EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said moving to a 30% target this year would be “very, very challenging”.

Some from Aosis and the LDCs are wondering why the EU cannot simply find a way of moving forward on climate change without one of its member states, given that it recently agreed a new fiscal compact that excludes two.

Meanwhile, the Ecofin group of EU finance ministers is also meeting this week to discuss financial contributions for developing countries.

The EU has pledged – and according to its own analysis, largely committed – 7.2bn euros ($9.3bn) over the period 2010-12 as its share of the “fast-start finance” package agreed at the UN summit in Copenhagen in 2009.

The expectation had been that the developed world, including the EU, would begin to ramp up contributions from public and private sources in order to meet the long-term target, also agreed at Copenhagen, of providing $100bn per year by 2020.

However, a leaked draft of the Ecofin agreement seen by BBC News shows that EU ministers have not agreed what they will provide in the way of finance after 2012, nor how they will provide it.

The draft talks in terms of developed nations “needing to identify” a pathway to the $100bn target. Some money could be raised through the recently introduced charge on aviation emissions, but this is not certain.

“At a critical moment in the fight against climate change, Europe looks to be sitting back rather than stepping up,” said Lies Craeynest of Oxfam.

“To build a partnership for climate action with poor countries, the EU must finally move to its promised 30% emissions reductions target, and outline new milestones for scaling up its climate finance.”

The coming two weeks of talks at UN climate convention (UNFCCC) headquarters in Bonn – an annual event – will see negotiators beginning work on the pathway towards agreeing a new global deal in 2015, known as the Durban Platform.

Discussions will also focus on developed countries’ commitments to cut emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, whose current targets expire at the end of this year.

In December, the EU promised to put its existing 20% target under the protocol – a key demand of developing countries that appreciate its legal nature.

Among other developed countries, Japan and Russia have indicated they will not take the Kyoto path, while Canada said it would leave the protocol at the end of the year. The US left about a decade ago.

That means that the EU and its coalition partners are keen to bring remaining developed countries into the fold.

Along with the EU, Norway, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand have submitted plans to the UNFCCC detailing how they might turn their existing unilateral voluntary commitments into the legal form required by the Kyoto Protocol.

But the language of the Australian and New Zealand submissions suggests they have not formally decided to take this step, with New Zealand especially linking its decision to progress on the Durban Platform.

However, a number of major developing countries including China and India are lukewarm about the new process.

And with China and the US seeking changes of leadership over the next 12 months, many observers are not expecting much progress to be made either in Bonn or at the annual end-of-year UN climate summit, to be hosted by Qatar.—BBC

The recent special issue on ‘Forests and Gender’ (International Forestry Review) is a breath of fresh air. While the scientific forestry community has been receptive to studies of women’s forest-related work, they have found some of our more theoretical and qualitative studies a hard slog. The use of terms such as ‘hegemony’, ‘symbolic representation’, ‘alterity’, and ‘habitus’ render such studies inaccessible to foresters.

Although we all recognise that difficult issues remain, this special issue suggests that at last some significant progress is being made.

ARTICLE BY: BY CAROL COLFER, SENIOR ASSOCIATE, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL FORESTRY RESEARCH

The German and Italian scientists said they used an atomic force microscope to examine tissue sections from a wound caused by an arrow that killed the Copper Age man, who was found frozen in a glacier, and from a laceration on his right hand.

“They really looked similar to modern-day blood samples,” said Professor Albert Zink, 46, the German head of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman at the European Academy in Bolzano, the capital of Italy’s German-speaking Alto-Adige region.

“So far, this is the clearest evidence of the oldest blood cells,” he said by telephone, adding that the new technique might now be used to examine mummies from Egypt.

The studies were carried out in conjunction with the Center for Smart Interfaces at Darmstadt Technical University in Germany and the Center for Nano Sciences in Munich.

Over the last two decades, scientists have collected data from the stomach, bowels and teeth of the well-preserved man, who was found protruding out of a glacier by German climbers in 1991 in the Tyrolean Alps on the Austrian-Italian border.

Otzi, whose nickname derives from the German word for the area where he was found, had brown hair and type-O blood and was believed to be 45 when he was felled by an arrow while climbing the high mountains some 5,300 years ago.

The nanotechnology instrument used by Zink and his team scans the surface of the tissue sections using a very fine probe, the scientists said in a summary of their report.

As the probe moves over the surface, sensors measure every tiny deflection of the probe, line by line and point by point, building up a three-dimensional image.

Zink, an anthropologist, said the red blood cells his team found had a classic doughnut shape seen in healthy people today.

“It is very interesting to see that the red blood cells can last for such a long time,” he said.

“This will also open up possibilities for forensic science and may help lead to a more precise determination of the age of blood spots in crime investigations,” he added.

Earlier this year, the scientists made the first complete genome-sequencing on Otzi, determining that the man had a predisposition for cardiovascular diseases and brown eyes that betrayed possible near-Eastern origins.

Otzi had lactose intolerance that was common among Neolithic agrarian societies and was also the first-known carrier of Lyme disease, a bacterial infection spread by ticks.

Examination of the wound where the arrow entered Otzi’s back identified fibrin, a protein involved in the clotting of blood, a summary of the report said.

Because fibrin is present in fresh wounds and then decays, this appears to show that the hunter died quickly rather than after a few days as had been previously thought, it said.

Zink carried out his research with Marek Janko and Robert Stark, professors of material sciences at the Center for Nano Sciences in Munich and Italian colleagues in Bolzano.

To be certain that the specimens they were examining were blood and not pollen, the scientists used a second analytical method known as the Raman spectroscopy method.

In that method, a laser beam illuminates a tissue sample and analysis of the spectrum of the scattered light permits the identification of various molecules.

Zink said he and his colleagues hope to carry out further analysis on Otzi’s enzymes, proteins and immune system.

“We hope we can make good progress in this area too,” he said.

The complete results will be published by Britain’s Journal of the Royal Society Interface.—uk.reuters.com

Global warming is having a significant impact on hundreds of plant and animal species around the world, changing some breeding, migration and feeding patterns, scientists say. Increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels can affect how plants produce oxygen, while higher temperatures and variable rainfall patterns can change their behavior.

“Predicting species’ response to climate change is a major challenge in ecology,” said researchers at the University of California San Diego and several other U.S. institutions.

They said plants had been the focus of study because their response to climate change could affect food chains and ecosystem services such as pollination, nutrient cycles and water supply.

The study, published on the Nature website, draws on evidence from plant life cycle studies and experiments across four continents and 1,634 species. It found that some experiments had underestimated the speed of flowering by 8.5 times and growing leaves by 4 times.

“Across all species, the experiments under-predicted the magnitude of the advance – for both leafing and flowering – that results from temperature increases,” the study said.

The design of future experiments may need to be improved to better predict how plants will react to climate change, it said.

Plants are essential to life on Earth. They are the base of the food chain, using photosynthesis to produce sugar from carbon dioxide and water. They expel oxygen which is needed by nearly every organism which inhabits the planet.

Scientists estimate the world’s average temperature has risen by about 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1900, and nearly 0.2 degrees per decade since 1979.

So far, efforts to cut emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases are not seen as sufficient to prevent the Earth heating up beyond 2 degrees C this century – a threshold scientists say risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes are common, leading to drought, floods, crop failures and rising sea levels.—Uk.reuters.com

More than 1,000 birds, mostly pelicans, have washed up dead along the northern Pacific coast in recent weeks, after many dolphins died in the same area.

The health ministry stopped short of closing beaches.

But it advised people to stay away until the health alert was lifted.

The area affected includes popular beaches near the capital, Lima.

Peru’s main holiday season is over, but the Pacific coast is still popular with surfers.

Thousands of Peruvians also depend on the sea for their livelihoods.

The health ministry alert warned local officials to wear gloves, masks and other protective equipment while handling dead birds and animals.

Preliminary investigations have found the dolphin deaths may have been caused by a virus.

A viral epidemic outbreak was linked to similar deaths of marine wildlife in Peru in the past, as well as in Mexico and the United States.

But there has been no explanation for the deaths of pelicans.

One theory is that a shift in ocean currents may have moved rich shoals of anchovy away from the coastline, leaving the birds without enough food.—BBC

The phenomenon, known as a perigee full moon, means the Moon appears up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than when it is furthest from the planet.

The optimum effect was seen – cloud permitting – at 04:30 BST (03:30 GMT).

The Royal Astronomical Society’s Dr Robert Massey said the Moon’s size may be more obvious than its brightness.

“The eye is so good at compensating for changes in brightness that you simply don’t notice (that element) so much,” he said.

When the Moon appears at its biggest it will be just 356,400km (221,457 miles) away, compared to its usual distance from Earth of 384,000km (238,606 miles). Dr Massey said: “When the Moon is closest to the Earth and full or new, you get an increase in the tidal pull in the ocean because the gravity of the moon and the sun line up.”

He added: “The Moon is always beautiful and a full moon is always dramatic.”

Scientists have dismissed the idea the perigee could cause strange behaviour – like lycanthropy – or natural disasters.

The Moon’s distance from Earth varies because it follows an elliptical orbit instead of a circular one.—BBC

Ransford Tetteh, GJA President

Journalists in the country have been urged to give some time to environmental issues, especially that which is related to afforestation, to reduce the pace at which the nation’s forest reserves are being depleted.

They are also to report on timber and logging firms in the country who are obliged by the constitutional conditions of replacing whatever trees they cut and also help in the forest certification policy to ensure that all timber products were supplied from legal sources.

The General Manager in charge of Monitoring and Implementation of the Kumasi Wood Cluster, Mrs Esi Banful, who made the call, also expressed strong misgivings about the rampant depletion of the country’s forest resources.

She was speaking at a day’s sensitisation workshop on forest management for some selected journalists from Eastern, Western and Ashanti Regions in Kumasi.

The workshop sought to sharpen the knowledge of the media personnel on how to create awareness through the dissemination of information about the rapid depletion of the country’s forests.

The sensitization workshop which was organised by the Kumasi Wood Cluster (KWC) in collaboration with some other environmental non-governmental organisations took the journalists through topics like ‘certification for small and medium forest enterprises; voluntary partnership agreement and SRA.

Other topics covered included Introduction to High Conservation Value Forests in Ghana; Rights of workers in the forest industry in Ghana and the media and forest certification

Mrs Banful who expressed worry at the current situation regarding the nation’s forest resources called on the media to partner her outfit to wage an unceasing and effective campaign not only to expose people who arbitrarily destroy the forests but also inform and educate people in the fringe communities.

“Even though our media has received international attention for the role they are playing in socio-economic development, their expected role in the Natural Resources and Environmental sector has not been fully realized,” she stated.

The KWC monitoring and evaluation manager said the activities of timber companies have resulted in many worrying environmental conditions such as deforestation, soil erosion, loss of crop-land, pollution, eco-system degradation and extinction of special species in the forests.

The situation, according to her, has been most disturbing since the timber companies have blatantly ignored the direction to replace every tree they cut down, and have been doing this for several years.

She noted that Forest certification has become very necessary in order to deal with firms which would be engaging in the menacing destruction of the forests.

The project leader of the KWC and a resource person, Mr. Gustav Adu, revealed that Ghana signed the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union ‘to create an environment that promotes sustainable forest management.’

He was of the view that this would also help improve rural livelihoods and equity as well as enable industrial efficiency in a good governance environment.

The KWC project leader revealed that key considerations that informed the signing of the pact were to establish a sustainable forest-management and promote poverty reduction among forest communities.

Calling on the media to join in the education and information, Mr Adu noted that the partnership would also ‘enhance value addition to forest resource, sustain forestry industry, build-capacity in forestry and institute good forestry governance.

STORY: RUTH ANDY, INTERN, KUMASI

An earthquake with a magnitude of 8.7 has struck under the sea off Indonesia’s northern Aceh province.

The quake triggered a tsunami watch alert across the Indian Ocean region.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) said it was not yet known whether a tsunami had been generated, but advised authorities to “take appropriate action”.

The region is regularly hit by earthquakes. The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 killed 170,000 people in Aceh.

The US Geological Survey (USGS), which documents quakes worldwide, said the Aceh quake was centred 33km (20 miles) under the sea about 495km from Banda Aceh, the provincial capital.

It was initially reported as 8.9 magnitude but was later revised down to 8.7 by the USGS. Strong aftershocks were also reported.

The PTWC alert said quakes of such a magnitude “have the potential to generate a widespread destructive tsunami that can affect coastlines across the entire Indian Ocean basin”.

But Bruce Presgrave of the USGS later told the BBC that the nature of this quake made it less likely a tsunami would be generated, as the earth had moved horizontally, rather than vertically, therefore had not displaced large volumes of water.

“We can’t rule out the possibility, but horizontal motion is less likely to produce a destructive tsunami,” he said.

Sutopo, a spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, said the quake had been felt “very strongly.”

“Electricity is down, there’s traffic jams to access higher ground. Sirens and Koran recitals from mosques are everywhere,” he told Reuters.

The earthquake monitoring agency in Indonesia said the tsunami warning would remain in place for another few hours, but that there had been no reports so far of a low tide, which would indicate the water was receding before building into a tsunami.

The tremor was felt as far away as Singapore, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India.

“There was a tremor felt by all of us working in the building,” a man called Vincent in Calcutta, India, told the BBC.

“All just ran out of the building and people were asked not to use the elevator. There was a minute of chaos where all started ringing up to their family and asking about their well-being.”

The Thai office of disaster management said people along the coasts of Phuket, Phang Na and Andaman province should heed warnings and evacuate.

Tsunami warning sirens, set up in many vulnerable areas after the 2004 disaster, were heard in Phuket, where correspondents said people were calmly following evacuation routes to safe zones.

Indonesia straddles the Pacific Ring of Fire, a zone of major seismic activity.

The BBC’s Karishma Vaswani in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, says there were reports of the ground shaking for up to five minutes. Contact with people in the immediate area around the quake has not been possible so far, says our correspondent.—BBC

Countries of the Far North are set to be the new players in the emerging Arctic frontier. The polar ice cap is melting at much faster rates than previously predicted, and may be completely ice free by the summer of 2040 or sooner.

There are vast untapped resources in the Arctic Ocean such as new shipping lanes, fishing grounds, tourism, and it is believed to contain the largest of the world’s remaining energy reserves. This year has brought about a frenzy of oil and gas exploration which will only increase as the ice recedes. The coming summer will bring an even more intense search for resources. Cooperation will be required among the northern nations to avert territorial disputes and conflicts at the top of the world.

Laurence C. Smith, Geology Professor at the University of California LA has written about what is occurring now in his book, The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future. The Arctic nations, which he refers to as NORCs include Russia, Canada, United States, Norway, Denmark (Greenland), and Iceland. In comparison to much of the world, these nations are demographically on the rise and are economically healthy for the most part. Their power is set to expand due to the four forces described in the book: demographic trends, natural resource demand, globalization, and climate change.

Smith explains that the instrument to ensure peaceful exploration and development in the Artic is already established in the form of a treaty. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is currently used to resolve maritime disputes and can be readily applied to the newly accessible Arctic waters. Most countries have ratified this treaty with the exception of the United States.

Russia, with its massive Arctic coastline is the big dog in this new geopolitical arena. It operates the most icebreakers in the world, is the most involved in exploration, and has symbolically planted a Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole. The other NORCs, not to be overwhelmed by the Russian presence, are scrambling to reassess and implement their Arctic strategies.

Canada, the Arctic power with the second largest coastline, is expanding its forces along its northern periphery at military and research bases.

The United States, having withdrawn much of its forces from Alaska after the Cold War, is replacing them as it rediscovers the region’s significance.

Norway, perhaps the most developed Arctic power thanks to its favorable climate, is also positioning more forces to the north and further developing its northern ports.

Greenland, long a territory of Denmark, is seriously contemplating independence as it realizes its strategic significance and potential boom in resources as the ice melts.

Iceland, located in a strategic position in the mid-Atlantic near the Arctic Circle, does not have much territorial claim to the Arctic, but is fiercely defending its sovereignty from foreign investment.

Territorial disputes do exist, such as Norway and Russia’s awkward relations over the Svalbard Islands. On paper, they belong to Norway but contain a growing population of Russian immigrants. However, the advanced nations of the Far North are not likely going to be warring with each other in the Arctic.

There will likely be much more cooperation than conflict, considering the limitations within the region. There is still a lot of sea ice and will be for some time to come. There are icebergs to navigate around and vast distances to cover with few ports.

The greatest concern is for an environmental accident such as an oil spill to occur in the region, and there are no ships around to help contain it. Also, illegal activities are concern because there will be few ships in the region to monitor suspicious activity like illegal fishing or whaling. Unfortunately, as the human presence grows, so do the chances of these types of incidents to occur.—Enn

The Earth at risk

One of the world’s most widely known and respected senior scientists tells ABC News that current denial about the basic daunting realities of manmade global warming is “just foolishness.”
He also reports that the rest of the world has now “pretty well given up” on its hope for U.S. leadership in dealing with global climate change.

His assessment reinforces findings at the recent global climate summit in Durban, South Africa, that the vigorous anti-climate science movement in the United States has significantly damaged American prestige among European leaders who are struggling to deal with the daunting impacts of global warming.
Peter Raven, co-inventor in 1964, along with biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, of the bedrock concept of co-evolution, has long been a trusted adviser of American presidents, many other heads of state and government, religious leaders including popes, and countless congressional, academic and scientific leaders in the United States and around the world.

A frequent world traveler for his work, Raven reconfirmed in an email from the international Planet Under Pressure conference in London what he first told Natures’ Edge in 2010 in St. Louis.

When we asked, in the course of an interview on the occasion of his retirement after four decades as head of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, what he thought about the increasing claims of some parties in the United States that the science and alarm about manmade global warming was “a hoax” or greatly overblown, he responded patiently, “Oh, it’s just foolishness.”
“It’s not a matter of conjecture anymore,” he said. “Climate change is the most serious challenge probably that the human race has ever confronted.”

Raven quickly summarized the virtually unanimous understanding of the world’s climate scientists and other responsible experts about the great upheavals manmade global warming is now producing.

He talked to us outdoors, in the now world-famous, immense and exquisite gardens that, as the brief introduction to this video excerpt of his remarks shows, he had turned into an expansive vision of what a peaceful and balanced world could look like — a sort of international botanical metaphor.

“There is virtually unanimous consensus among the world’s scientists who work in the area that human beings are the major reason that this is so (the world’s average temperature rising),” writes Raven from London. “Because, just as first noted by the Swedish chemist Arrhenius in 1895, when you add more carbon dioxide or other co-called greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, you make it warmer.”
Academic and scientific surveys have repeatedly confirmed this view among the world’s climate scientists.
One detailed study, “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” published in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, July 6, 2010, focused on “an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers.”
It found that “97-98 percent of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field … supported the basic tenets of ACC (manmade global warming) established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

It also determined that the minute number of detractors had significantly less standing in the field of climate science among their scientist peers.

It reported that “the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of (those tenets of climate change) are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.”—ABCnews