Cities lead effort to curb climate change as nations lag

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is leading an effort by 58 of the world’s largest cities to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions while federal governments struggle to meet global targets following two decades of discussions.

The member-cities of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group produce about 14 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Their actions to improve energy efficiency and invest in renewable power will reduce emissions by 248 million metric tons in 2020, Bloomberg said on a conference call. The cities can cut emissions by more than 1 billion tons by 2030, or the equivalent annual output from Mexico and Canada.
Mayors, who have oversight of agencies responsible for more than three quarters of urban emissions, may be able to implement policies faster than federal governments, former U.S. President Bill Clinton said on the call. Cities that enact new rules and regulations and share their findings may help nations meet global environmental targets, such as reducing methane emissions from landfills, one of the most potent greenhouse gases.
“We can buy the world another 10 to 20 years from the worst effects of global warming if we go after methane,” Clinton said on the call. “It will improve the quality of life for everyone.”
The C40 group’s effort to reduce methane emissions will start in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Dhaka, Bangladesh, and the suburbs of Jakarta, Rachel Kyte, vice president for sustainable development at the World Bank, said today at a C40 press conference in Rio de Janeiro.

Garbage Doubling
“The volume of garbage is going to double over the next 15 years,” she said. Taking steps to address emissions from that waste will be a “triple win,” by improving health, curbing climate change and making cities more livable. “Cities are the crucibles of innovation and it’s all going to start here.”

Opposing biotech is crime against humanity - Greenpeace co-founder

Moore

A co-founder of Greenpeace speaks in favor of one of the things the organization has most vehemently opposed over the years. Dr. Patrick Moore was the keynote speaker at this week’s Manitoba Special Crops Symposium in Winnipeg.
Moore served for nine years as President of Greenpeace Canada, and seven years as a Director of Greenpeace International. As the leader of many campaigns Dr. Moore was a driving force shaping policy and direction while Greenpeace became the world’s largest environmental activist organization. You could say since that time his perspective on sustainability and environmental responsibility has changed somewhat.
He was asked about genetically modified crops, something he describes as one of the most important scientific advancements society has made. That’s why he is particularly concerned about Greenpeace’s success in blocking the introduction of Golden Rice, a GM crop.

“Other GM rice varieties are able to eliminate micronutrient deficiency in the rice eating countries, which afflicts hundreds of million people, and actually causes between a quarter and half a million children to go blind and die young each year because of vitamin A deficiency because there is no beta carotene in rice,” says Moore. “We can put beta carotene in rice through genetic modification, but Greenpeace has blocked this.”

Moore says this is a crime against humanity because they are preventing the curing of people who are dying by the hundreds of thousands a year due to vitamin A deficiency.
He says another example of the positives genetically modified crops provide is they’ve allowed agriculture to do things it couldn’t do otherwise, for example growing soybeans that produce omega-3 fatty acids. He says this will be a boon for the aquaculture industry, vastly increasing its feedstock.

“One of the limitations on aquaculture is that fish and shellfish need omega-3 fats, and the best place to get them is from fishmeal, but fishmeal is a limited supply,” says Moore. “But if we can grow soybeans and other terrestrial crops that have the foods necessary for fish production, we can vastly increase aquaculture.”

Science not politics must drive Durban climate talks

This is a message from Rajendra Pachauri - Indian scientist and Nobel laureate - someone who knows the real challenge that confronts the world as another climate summit begins in Durban, South Africa. I couldn't have agreed less. (As reported by Reuters)

Global climate talks need to focus on the growing threat from extreme weather and shift away from political squabbles that hobble progress towards a tougher pact to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, the head of the U.N. climate panel said.

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries meet in Durban, South Africa, on Monday for two-week talks, with minimal expectations of major progress towards an agreement that will eventually bind all major economies to emissions caps.

Rajendra Pachauri warned the latest round of talks risked being bogged down by "short-term and narrow political considerations".

"It is absolutely essential that the negotiators get a continuous and repeated exposure to the science of climate change," Pachauri told Reuters in an interview late on Tuesday.

"If we were to do that it will definitely have an impact on the quality and outcome of the negotiations, after all these are human beings, they have families, they are people also worried about what is going to happen to the next generations."

Pachauri heads the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which issued a report for policymakers on Friday saying an increase in heat waves is almost certain, while heavier rain, more floods, stronger cyclones, landslides and more intense droughts are likely across the globe this century.

"I am afraid the way the whole thing is structured loses sight of these realities," Pachauri said of the talks.

The report comes after a year of costly weather disasters, from floods in Thailand to a string of multi-billion dollar disasters in the United States that have killed hundreds.

At best Durban is expected to result in modest steps towards a deal to lower emissions from factories, power stations and transport that scientists say are heating up the planet.

The negotiations have become a battleground between rich and poor nations on the question of how much cuts in greenhouse gases each should take, with developing countries insisting they should be allowed to emit more to grow out of poverty.

"When you have 400 million people who have no access to electricity, can you in the 21st century deny them the very basis of what the rest of the world has been living on for the last 150 years?," Pachauri said of India.

Pachauri is an Indian scientist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. He has since become a target for climate change sceptics who question the panel's data.

The IPCC issues major reports every 5 to 6 years for policymakers that involves the work of thousands of scientists. The next major report will be released in 2013-14.

CLEAR LINKS

Talking in his cluttered Delhi office, Pachauri said climate change was already triggering more extreme weather and the world needed to prepare for more to come.

The IPCC report gave differing probabilities for weather events based on greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. He said the conclusions were clear.

"Two things come out very clearly from this, the link between climate change and heatwaves and the link between climate change and extreme precipitation and sea level rises, Pachauri said.

"Given the fact that you are not going to bring about a turn-around immediately, then you really have to adapt to them in the short run."

Limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius -- a threshold scientists say risks dangerous climate change -- will be difficult but not impossible, Pachauri, 71, said.

Global carbon emissions rose by a record amount last year, rebounding on the heels of recession.

The United Nations, the International Energy Agency and others say global pledges to curb emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are not enough to prevent the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees.

"If we want to do that on a low-cost trajectory, then we will have to ensure that CO2 emissions peak no later than 2015, and that's just 4 years away. In other words, beyond 2015 they will have to start declining."

However, he was hopeful action at a national and grassroots level would kick in as people came face to face with the consequences of climate change.

"Irrespective of any treaty, if human society understands that something will have to be done, action will take place anyway."

Feeding Africa’s one billion

Talks about climate change and food security in Africa have for long been dominated by politicians and activitists। Now African scientists look poised to take the lead in the quest for solutions, reports Godwin Nnanna from Nairobi.

In the bubbling city of Nairobi, Kenya’s nerve centre of commerce and politics, the question of who is poor is often best answered by where you live, and for the likes of 38-year old Cikawa and his family of five, there is no asking which group they belong.

He works as a security guard in one of the big hotels in Nairobi’s main business district and lives in Kibera, the popular slum in the city, reputed as the biggest of its kind in East Africa . Kibera is a multi-ethnic settlement that serves as home to Kenyans from all parts of the country as well as migrants from neighbouring countries.

Cikawa migrated to Kibera from Marsabit, a district in northern Kenya after a long spell of drought resulted in the death of his three cattles. “The cattles were my inherittance from my late father but the most painful loss I suffered was my millet farm. I borowed consistently for three years to cultivate the farm and in those three years the yield wasn’t up to 50 per cent the money I invested. I had to eventually sell the farmland to pay my creditors,” he said.

Cikawa recalls with nostalgia his childhood rearing cattle with his father in a village near Lake Turkana, a lake in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya. Turkana is the world's largest permanent desert lake and the world's largest alkaline lake. High evaporation rates of over 1,800mm against low annual rains of 250 – 750 mm have rendered many lakes in the Rift Valley including Turkana salty. Cikawa saw the Turkana shrunk in size over the years.

“Lake Turkana is disappearing. Cattles need fresh river water for drinking but even the humans that rear them don’t have enough to drink.” He blames the drought in his homeland for the present misfortune of his family. “Long before my father died, our stock of cattle had began to dwindle, and with that our financial fortune,” he recalls. Cikawa knew the environment in Marsabit has changed a great deal, but he knows nothing about the science of climate change.

There are many people like Cikawa scattered across Nairobi’s informal settlements. The average density of such informal settlements is 250 dwelling units (or 750 persons) per hectare compared to 10-30 dwelling units (or 50-180 persons) per hectare in middle and upper-income areas. On aggregate, informal settlements occupy 5.84 per cent of all the land area of Nairobi that is used for residential purposes, but they house 55 per cent of the city’s population.

Settlements like Kibera remain the natural destination for many like Cikawa who the International Migration Organisation (IOM) describes as ‘environmental migrants’. In recent times, they have come to be known by such other nomenclatures as climate change refugees, environmentally displaced people, climate refugees, and eco-refugees. The UN says there more climate refugees across Africa today than those displaced by war and political repression combined.

According to the IOM, environmental migrants are “persons or groups of persons who, for compelling reasons of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad."

The UN-Habitat’ State of African Cities Report 2010 predicts that Africa will cease to be predominantly rural by 2030 as more people more migrate from the rural areas to city centres for reasons key among which is climate change. The continent’s overall population is projected to reach 1.9 billion by 2050. This massive growth in population will put pressure on basic infrastructure which at present are grossly in short supply in many African cities.

The report warns that climate change is equally causing a serious problem for cities in Africa. Many of these cities like Nairobi in Africa’s east, Lagos in the west, Cape Town in the south and Cairo in the north, will have millions of new inhabitants – yet little or no internal food production capacity. Besides, with a number of these cities built by the sea, millions of people risk losing their homes in the coming decades because of coastal flooding.

According to Prof. Josephine Ngaira, director, School of Environmental and Earth Sciences, Maseno University, Kenya, slum dwellers in cities in East Africa pay five to seven times more for a litre of water than the average North American. “Water scarcity will increase for both urban and rural populations in Africa over the next century. Climate change is expected to bring more frequent and longer droughts to the region.”

Ngaira, who was one of the speakers at the Africa Academy of Sciences (AAS) conference in Nairobi this month, stressed that prolonged drought in East and Central Africa is the immediate cause of the severe food crisis already affecting around 10 million people in parts of Kenya and Ethopia. “40 billion hours are spent on water search annually in Africa. This is huge loss of man-hour which otherwise would be put in productive activities,” Ngaira noted.

The Kenyan environmental scientist who reeled out compelling statistics at the conference to show the challenge that changing climate poses to Africa, noted that to keep up with the growth in its population, Africa will have to produce more food. “Ironically, in many countries across the continent, a combination poor farming practices and deforestation will be exacerbated by climate change to steadily degrade soil fertility, leaving vast areas unsuitable for crops or grazing.”

The challenge of ensuring food security for Africa’s growing population in the face of such real challenges was the focus of the three-day AAS conference which drew leading scientists from across the various regions of Africa. Figures made available at the conference indicate that climate change is expected to reduce agricultural yields in Africa by 20-30 percent by 2050. To stop this, one thing the participants were unanimous about was that the continent’s food insecurity problem can only be solved by science-based solutions.

“Agricultural growth has been, and will remain, key to reducing poverty and hunger in Africa,” said Dr. Yemi Akinbamijo of the Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture, African Union Commission.

“To significantly reduce poverty,” he noted, “Africa needs to sustain, broaden, and accelerate its recent growth performance and boost its investments in agriculture.”

Agriculture in Africa is predominantly rain-fed and hence highly susceptible to climate variability. To this end, policy makers, he said, should drive intervention programmes that would make local farmers mitigate and adapt to climate variabilities. In doing so, African countries should recognize: the critical nature of climate change adaptation and mitigation, the need for regional and trans-boundary cooperation and co-ordination, capacity building needs, and the need for ecosystem preservation, protection and rehabilitation.

“While mitigating climate change is the key long-term issue, adaptation is arguably the more pressing concern for African farmers,” he noted. Climate smart agriculture, the AU scientist insists, is the only way to improved agricultural productivity in Africa। “Climate-smart agriculture is that which sustainably increases productivity, resilience (adaptation), reduces greenhouse gases (mitigation) while enhancing the achievement of national/regional food security and development goals,” he explains.

http://www.eftnews.net/opal/news/1-latest-news/450-feeding-africas-one-billion.html

Climate deal loopholes 'make farce' of rich nations' pledges

Rich countries have been put on the back foot after new research showed that current pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions could be wiped out by gaping loopholes in the UN climate change treaty put forward in Copenhagen last year.
Developing countries have argued strongly for minimum 40% emission cuts from industrialised nations by 2020. But new analysis from the Stockholm Environment Institute and Third World Network (TWN), released at the latest UN climate talks in Bonn, showed that current pledges amounted to only 12-18% reductions below 1990 levels without loopholes. When all loopholes were taken into account, emissions could be allowed to rise by 9%.
The research factored in four separate loopholes that are known to exist, but which countries have so far failed to address in the negotiations. These include land use and forestry credits, carbon offset credits gained from UN Clean Development Mechanism schemes, surplus carbon allowances accumulated by former Soviet countries and international aviation and shipping emissions, which are not currently included in emission reduction schemes proposed by countries.

The World Cup’s 2,7 MT carbon footprint and what's being done about it

With an estimated carbon footprint of 2 753 250 t of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e), the 2010 FIFA World Cup will have the largest carbon footprint of any major international sporting event, and will need major interventions to achieve the ambition of making it an event with a positive environmental legacy.
The massive footprint is largely due to the significant distance that many international spectators will need to travel to get to South Africa. Because of its location, almost all international visitors will need to fly to the country.




http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/the-world-cups-27-million-ton-carbon-footprint-2010-01-22