Nayachar benefits all cock-and-bull: RSP

Anindita Chowdhury
The Statesman

KOLKATA, Oct. 26: Left Front partner RSP has found holes in the state government's arguments in favour of setting up a chemical hub for rapid industrialisation in the state. It has dismissed the latter's claim that the hub would generate large-scale employment as a “cock and bull story”.

Though, officially, all Left Front partners had given their nod for setting up a Petroleum Chemical and Petrochemical Investment Region at Nayachar, it is evident from what appears in a recent RSP publication that the party had been forced into a position it did not want to be in.

The CPI-M's junior partner has argued in its publication that in Haldia, only 4,000 people have found employment in various projects, including downstream industries. Hence, the state government's contention that the hub would provide “direct employment opportunities to 1 lakh people and another 10 lakh people will find employment in downstream industries is just a cock-and-bull story (ashade golpo).

Apprehensions have been expressed over developing infrastructure for the hub at government cost which, the Left Front ally believes, would draw real estate developers who are likely to "influence government policy” and indulge in land speculation. Apart from attacking the Central government, the RSP has rubbished claims that the project, once completed, would benefit local residents and improve their standard of living. According to the publication, the chemical industry is reliant on technology and isn't labour intensive. Hence, only people from the upper strata of society would find employment and improvement in the quality of life of the locals would remain a “daydream". But the project has been opposed on grounds of environmental hazards, keeping in mind violation of green laws in the country.
The RSP accused the CPI-M-led state government of following former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's policy which disregarded environmental impact for the sake of poverty eradication.

Despite the show of unity at the all-party meeting for the sake of coalition politics, the RSP has been critical of the CPI-M at various public meetings. Even during Cabinet discussions, RSP ministers reminded the chief minister of appointing an expert committee for the project as soon as possible.

Centre deals a blow

KOLKATA, Oct. 26: The Union ministry of environment and forestry (MoEF) may just have hammered the last nail into the coffin of the chief minister’s hopes of setting up a chemical hub in West Bengal. The MoEF has said that setting up of industries or expansion of existing industries is a prohibited activity in places such as Nayachar Island, that happen to be Coastal Regulation Zone areas. The ministry has also said that it had not, as of 5 October, received any proposal from West Bengal for setting up of any petrochemical or any other chemical industry in Nayachar Island. According to the ministry, Nayachar Island is classified as Coastal Regulation Zone I and Coastal Regulation Zone II.

‘Amazon jungle could be lost in 40 years’

Ian Sample

Campaigners say new development plans threaten to bring “a perfect storm of environmental destruction.”
The Amazonian wilderness is at risk of unprecedented damage from an ambitious plan to improve transport, communications, and power generation in the region, conservationists warned on Monday.

Development plans have been drawn up to boost trade links among 10 economic hubs on the continent, but threaten to bring “a perfect storm of environmental destruction” to the world’s oldest rainforest, according to a report from Conservation International.

Projects to upgrade road and river transport, combined with work to create dams and lay down extensive power and communications cabling, will open up previously inaccessible parts of the rainforest, raising the risk of widespread deforestation that could see the loss of the entire Amazon jungle within 40 years, the environmental group said.

Tim Killeen, a scientist with Conservation International, examined the projects funded under the multinational government-backed Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America (IIRSA). He found that the environmental impact of individual projects had often been well assessed, but there had been a failure to look at their collective impact on the region.

Part of the planned improvements will see motorway-style roads built from the Andes, across the Amazon to the Cerrado tropical savannah, linking the Pacific to the Atlantic.

“Failure to foresee the full impact of IIRSA investments, particularly in the context of climate change and global markets, will bring about a combination of forces that could lead to a perfect storm of environmental destruction,” Dr. Killeen said.

Damage to the ecosystem could have wide-ranging implications, according to the report. The Amazon river basin is the world’s largest reserve of fresh water, while the surrounding wilderness regulates the continental climate and rainfall that drives a multimillion pound agricultural industry. Improved transport networks throughout the Amazon will make it easier for inaccessible areas to be logged and burned, disrupting the ecosystems that support native species and indigenous populations, the report concludes.

The group urged the governments backing the IIRSA to take greater account of the ecological impact of the projects and encourage more sustainable use of the region’s resources. If Amazonian countries agreed to reduce deforestation rates by 5 per cent a year for 30 years, the saved forest would potentially qualify as a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and generate more than £3 billion a year over the lifetime of the agreement, Dr. Killeen said.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

Cleaning Up China

September 24
NYT Editorial

In 1991, Lawrence Summers — then the World Bank’s chief economist and later Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary — wrote a memo suggesting that the bank should encourage the world’s dirty industries to move to developing countries. The forgone earnings of workers sickened or killed by pollution would be lower in low-wage countries, he noted, while people in poor countries also cared less about a clean environment. “The economic logic of dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable,” he wrote.

Mr. Summers later apologized, saying his words were “sardonic counterpoint,” meant to spur new thinking about the environment and development. In any case, the World Bank’s encouragement wasn’t needed. In the 16 years since, a large share of the world’s polluting industries have migrated to the largest low-wage country of all, China, helping to turn big swaths of its landscape into an environmental disaster zone.

China makes more than a third of the world’s steel, half of its cement, about a third of its aluminum. It also consumes more coal than the United States, Europe and Japan combined. Its environmental degradation is a match for Dickens at his bleakest: airborne pollution causes more than 650,000 premature deaths a year.

The problem doesn’t stay there. China is about to surpass, or has already surpassed, the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

China’s government bears primary responsibility for failing to address the devastating environmental consequences of its breakneck growth. Industrialized countries, whose companies and consumers have benefited from China’s cheap labor and polluting industries, also bear responsibility and must work to fix this mess.

Beijing has begun to realize that its current path is not cost-free. A study commissioned by the government conservatively estimated that costs imposed by environmental degradation added up to 3 percent of G.D.P. in 2004. The government has since set targets to reduce energy use and cut emissions. China’s authoritarian leaders, however, are fearful of anything that might require slower growth and have strangled most domestic debate about the environmental disaster. After the first report they dropped the effort to measure pollution’s economic impact, and the targets are unlikely to be met.

Beijing could start investing some of the hundreds of billions of dollars China earns on exports in social and environmental programs at home. Foreign companies could help by requiring their suppliers in China to adopt best environmental practices. Western governments can also help by explaining how pollution could threaten both China’s growth and social stability — the two things its authoritarian leaders worry about most.

Perhaps the most important thing the United States could do is to set a strong international example, by dealing with its own environmental deficit. Instead, the Bush administration has been hiding behind China’s recalcitrance — allowing China to do the same.

How climate change will affect the world

David Adam

The effects of climate change will be felt sooner than scientists realised and the world must learn to live with the effects, experts said on Tuesday.

Martin Parry, a climate scientist with the United Kingdom’s Met Office, said destructive changes in temperature, rainfall and agriculture were now forecast to occur several decades earlier than thought. Vulnerable people, such as the old and po or, would be the worst affected, and, world leaders had not yet accepted that their countries would have to adapt to the likely consequences.

Speaking at a meeting to launch the full report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the impacts of global warming, Professor Parry, co-chairman of the IPCC working group that wrote the report, said: “We are all used to talking about these impacts coming in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. Now we know that it’s us.”

He added that politicians had wasted a decade by focussing only on ways to cut emissions, and had only recently woken up to the need to adapt. “Mitigation has got all the attention, but we cannot mitigate out of this problem. We now have a choice between a future with a damaged world or a severely damaged world.”

The international response to the problem has failed to grasp that serious consequences such as reduced crop yields and water shortages were now inevitable, he said. Countries such as Britain needed to focus on helping nations in the developing world cope with the predicted impacts, by helping them to introduce irrigation and water management technology, drought-resistant crops and new building techniques.

R.K. Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, said: “Wheat production in India is already in decline, for no other reason than climate change. Everyone thought we didn’t have to worry about Indian agriculture for several decades. Now we know it’s being affected now.”

The summary chapter of the report was published in April, after arguments between scientists and political officials over its contents. Professor Parry said: “Governments don’t like numbers, so some numbers were brushed out of it.”

The report warned that Africa and the Arctic would bear the brunt of climate impacts, along with small islands such as Fiji, and Asian river megadeltas, including the Mekong. It said extreme weather events were likely to become more intense and more frequent, and the effect on ecosystems could be severe.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

Bid to subvert Kyoto Protocol

S. Faizi
The Statesman, 29 August

The climate conference recently announced by President George W Bush is, obviously, another attempt by the US government to subvert the Kyoto Protocol and to undermine the legitimate multilateral processes to address the calamitous climate change.

In spite of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s infatuation with the US administration and that country having an extra full scale envoy to India in Washington at the cost of Indian tax payers, it would do well for the global environment and the people of India if the country stayed away from this mischievous meeting.

The global community is engaged in addressing the escalating climate change crisis through the multilateral treaty on climate change (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCC) and in particular its Kyoto Protocol that came into force in 2005. The US vehemently refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol that sets mandatory emission reduction targets for the industrialized countries. As for the UNFCCC, while the treaty asks to voluntarily reduce the emission level to that of 1990 by the year 2000, the US emission level in 2000 was actually 14 per cent more than in 1990. Intolerant of the Kyoto Protocol and the democratic multilateral mechanisms in place, the US is making a strategic attempt to belittle and delegitimise these mechanisms by unilaterally deciding to hold the meeting of what it describes as “major economies” on energy security and climate change.

The Conference of Parties to UNFCCC is set to discuss measures to be adopted beyond the 2012 period of the Kyoto Protocol, in December this year in Bali, and there are multiple multilateral meetings held as a run up to this event. One important event to galvanise support for agreement on meaningful carbon reduction initiatives beyond Kyoto Protocol is the meeting of the heads of governments on 24 September called by the UN Secretary General. The Bush meeting to be held on 27-28 September is to undercut these multilateral events in his determination not to compromise on the enormous carbon emissions in the country.

It is universally agreed that addressing the climate change is a common but differentiated responsibility of all countries. The differentiated responsibility is due to the high level of historical and contemporary pollution caused by the developed countries. It is for this reason that the climate treaty broadly divides countries into Annex I and non-Annex I, developed and developing countries respectively. One of the arguments for the US refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol has been the exclusion of countries like India and China from mandatory reductions, while in actual fact the per capita emissions in these countries are only a fraction of America’s. The concept of “major economies” is alien to the climate treaties, and this the US is introducing to remove the exemption of developing countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and Mexico, in addition to India and China. The guest list includes these countries as well as the Annex I countries. The developing countries should refuse to fall into this trap by keeping away from the Bush meeting.

The US, the climate culprit who has landed us in the climate mess must first ratify and implement the Kyoto Protocol before it seeks the world to discuss climate change solutions. And this they vehemently refuses to do, as they refuse to ratify the Biodiversity Convention and its Biosafety Protocol. As the US administration is steered by lobbyists of interests groups and the concerns of the military-industrial complex, as everybody knows, and as recently bared by Newsweek- normally an instrument of American foreign policy - in the case of climate change refusal, the US attempt is only meant to introduce sophisticated new impediments in reducing the use of fossil fuels. The desperation of this patriotic American weekly only shows the worrying extent to which the climate belligerence of US has grown, despite appeals by a large segment of the population, eminent climate scientists, some individual states and even a section of the industry (We can perhaps forgive this weekly now for alerting us to an impending spectre of ‘global cooling’ in a 1975 issue). Even the Hollywood that sells the world the most unsustainable form of life style has joined the climate chorus. And now the US wants to put the rest of the world, the developing countries on the guest list in particular, on a reactive gear, and that is what they are aiming through the conference.

The US meeting is to divert attention from the US refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol as well as to spoil the ongoing multilateral efforts. This is also contrary to the G-8 June 2007 Summit decision to “actively and constructively participate in the UN Climate Change Conference in December in Indonesia with a view to achieving a post-2012 agreement…”. It may be recalled that Bush had insisted at this meeting on incorporating India and China in the successor agreement to Kyoto Protocol.

While refusing to accept mandatory reduction targets India should embark on its own domestic programs to reduce the increasing pollution from fossil fuel use. The reckless expansion of the automobile and aviation industry in particular should be brought under environmental checks. On the other hand, India should reform itself to find genuine justification for not submitting to mandatory reductions. The argument that India’s development space should be expanded to remove poverty in the country is a travesty of the ground truth. The beneficiaries of India’s pollution estate, mirroring the global equation, is the elite minority, while the poor pay the cost as victims of floods, droughts, diseases and other forms of disasters. It is only fitting that India’s carbon exemption is linked to the achievement of the millennium development goals and beyond in the country. And since such a linkage will not come about voluntarily, given the structurally exclusionary nature of the country’s economic system, pressure from the international civil society on this count would be welcome.

Participation in the US conference would amount to denying the spirit of the Kyoto Protocol and complicity in undermining the democratic multilateral forums and processes, and therefore India and other developing countries should stay away from the conference and instead work towards consensus on mandatory enhanced emission reduction targets for all industrial economies to be adopted in the post-Kyoto Protocol period, making use of the meetings of the Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC. The US should be told that they cannot continue to undermine the multilateral forums. And they should be told to adopt immediate measures to reduce carbon emissions and pay reparations to the least developed countries and island states for causing the climate catastrophe, if necessary with the aid of selective economic boycott.

(The author is an ecologist specialising in international environmental policy)

Japan Nuclear-Site Damage Worse Than Reported

NYT, July 19
MARTIN FACKLER

KASHIWAZAKI, Japan, July 18 — The Japanese operator of a nuclear power plant stricken by an earthquake earlier this week said Wednesday that damage was worse than previously reported and that a leak of water was 50 percent more radioactive than initially announced.

For the third time in three days, Tokyo Electric Power apologized for delays and errors in announcing the extent of damage at the plant in this northwestern coastal city, which was struck Monday by a magnitude 6.8 earthquake. The company also said that tremors had tipped over “several hundred” barrels of radioactive waste, not 100 as it reported Tuesday, and that the lids had opened on “a few dozen” of those barrels.

Tokyo Electric said it had found some 50 problems at the plant caused by the earthquake, including loose exhaust ducts and damaged pipes. In a statement, the company said it had miscalculated the level of radioactivity of the leaked water, 317 gallons of which flowed into the Sea of Japan. However, it said the water’s level of radioactivity was still far too low to harm the environment.

Television scenes showed Tokyo Electric’s president, Tsunehisa Katsumata, bowing low in apology during a visit to the area on Wednesday. “We will start an investigation from the ground up,” he pledged.

The company’s slow pace in revealing the plant’s problems has brought criticism from Japanese all the way up to the prime minister and fed public fears about the safety of nuclear power. On Wednesday, the mayor of Kashiwazaki, Hiroshi Aida, chimed in, ordering the plant to stop operations until safety could be ensured.

The troubles at the plant raise questions about nuclear power at a time when resource-poor Japan must compete for oil and gas with hungry neighbors like China and India. Japan has embraced nuclear power as an alternative to energy imports from the Middle East, but revelations that Monday’s earthquake exceeded the Kashiwazaki plant’s design limits raised concerns about reactor safety in this earthquake-prone country.

Also on Wednesday, the death toll from the earthquake rose to 10 after the body of a 76-year-old man was found near a collapsed Buddhist temple. City officials said they did not expect the count to rise much higher, as most of the city’s 93,500 residents had been accounted for.

City officials said some 9,000 people remained in refugee shelters, though many are expected to return to their homes after the city fully restores electricity on Wednesday. Water and natural gas supplies remain severed.

On Wednesday, many of Kashiwazaki’s streets remained blocked by toppled houses, and major roads had buckled and cracked from the force of the earthquake.

In the city’s center, entire rows of shops had collapsed, and a large karaoke entertainment center leaned precariously over a street. The owner of a photography shop, Akio Yoshino, 53, said the earthquake had been strong enough to scatter heavy glass display shelves across his store like “pieces spilled from a chess board.”

“If I had not been outside having a cigarette just at that moment, I’d be dead now,” he joked dryly, as his hands visibly shook. “Smoking saved my life.”

The earthquake also made itself felt on Japan’s car industry. Toyota announced Wednesday that it would temporarily halt production at domestic plants later this week because the earthquake had destroyed the Kashiwazaki factory of Riken Corporation, a supplier of piston rings.

Earthquake Spills Water At Japanese Nuclear Plant

Steven Mufson

Washington Post
Tuesday, July 17

A small amount of water used to cool radioactive spent fuel rods at a Japanese nuclear reactor leaked into the Sea of Japan as a result of a massive earthquake that struck the country yesterday, though officials of Tokyo Electric Power insisted it posed no danger.

The leak took place at one of the seven units at the company's sprawling Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility, the largest nuclear-power-producing site in the world. The unit, one of the two newest at the site, was designed by General Electric and is similar to about half of the reactors in the United States.

About 1.5 liters of slightly radioactive water spilled out of the cooling pool for spent fuel rods, leaked into another supply of water, and 315 gallons of that water were pumped into the sea, said Hiro Hasegawa, the manager of corporate communications at Tokyo Electric Power, by telephone.

Separately, a fire broke out at an electrical transformer at the site.

"This was a very, very small amount of water," said Hasegawa. "Even if it has some radiation, it doesn't have any impact on the atmosphere or the environment."
[The Associated Press reported that Tokyo Electric did not reveal the accident for hours after a 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck Japan's northwest coast.

[At least nine people were killed, and about 900 were injured as the earthquake toppled hundreds of wooden homes and tore 3-foot-wide fissures in the ground. Highways and bridges buckled, leaving officials struggling to get emergency supplies into the region.

[Some 10,000 people fled to evacuation centers as aftershocks rattled the area.]
Although the spill of cooling water at the electrical-generating plant was small, nuclear experts in the United States said the incident raised safety questions. It remained unclear how the cooling-pool water leaked out of its building if it spilled over the edge of the pool.

"It doesn't sound like it's such a big deal, but it is a leak and it makes you wonder whether the cooling pool is damaged," said Allison M. Macfarlane, professor of environmental science and policy at George Mason University.

Though Japanese nuclear plants, like U.S. plants, are built to withstand powerful earthquakes, Bloomberg News reported the unit had two cracks. But Hasegawa said the pool was no longer leaking and there was no hazard to the fuel rods. The cooling pool is 33 feet deep, and about 23 feet of water lies over the spent fuel rods.
Experts were cautious about accepting Tokyo Electric Power's assurances. Japan's nuclear power industry has a history of covering up incidents. In March, Tokyo Electric Power, Asia's biggest utility, said it would delay completion of two nuclear reactors after admitting that it covered up an accident in 1978. In 2002, the company shut all 17 of its reactors after admitting that employees had falsified nuclear safety documents since the late 1980s.

Safety concerns are one reason the company's plants have operated at less than 70 percent of capacity. At the time the quake hit yesterday, three of the seven units at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa were shut down for inspection. The other four units shut down automatically after the quake, the company said.

"Obviously something broke," said Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "The utility has not been very forthcoming in this incident."

Japan relies heavily on its 55 nuclear power plants. The government has set a target of building enough nuclear plants to keep nuclear's share of total electricity in Japan between 30 and 40 percent.

'Green' Fuel May Damage The Bay - Ethanol Study Has Dire Prediction for The Chesapeake

David A. Fahrenthold

Washington Post
Tuesday, July 17

A surge in the demand for ethanol -- touted as a greener alternative to gasoline -- could have a serious environmental downside for the Chesapeake Bay, because more farmers growing corn could mean more pollution washing off farm fields, a new study warned yesterday.

The study, whose sponsors included the U.S. government and an environmental group, predicted that farmers in the bay watershed will plant 500,000 or more new acres of corn in the next five years. Because fields of corn generally produce more polluted runoff than those of other crops, that's a problem.

"It's going in the opposite direction from where we want to go," said Jim Pease, a professor at Virginia Tech and one of the study's authors.

Ethanol, a fuel made from processed and fermented plant matter, is an old invention with enormous new cachet. Proponents say that it offers an alternative to oil imported from overseas and that it emits fewer greenhouse gases than fossil fuels. In his State of the Union address in January, President Bush called for its use in motor fuels to be increased sevenfold by 2017. Already, 15 ethanol facilities are either planned or under construction in the mid-Atlantic, according to yesterday's report.

But ethanol's boom has also produced a variety of unintended, and unwanted, consequences. Because the primary ingredient at U.S. ethanol plants is corn, the price of that grain has shot up, making everything from tortillas to beef to chocolate more expensive.

In the Chesapeake area, according to the study, the drawback to ethanol's boom is that more farmers have planted cornfields to take advantage of the prices. Corn harvests are expected to increase 12 percent in Maryland this year and 8 percent in Virginia, according to a forecast in March from the U.S. Agriculture Department.

Although the spike is expected to be greater in Mississippi, where forecasters predict a 179 percent jump, across the vast Chesapeake watershed -- extending from southern Virginia to Cooperstown, N.Y. -- smaller shifts can add up. The authors of the study released yesterday forecast that over the next five years, the area of land newly planted with corn could be as much as 1 million acres, four times the size of Fairfax County.

Those shifting to corn production included Craig Giese, a farmer with 600 acres on Virginia's Northern Neck. Giese said in a telephone interview yesterday that he planted 50 new acres of corn after prices climbed from about $2.30 per 56-pound bushel last year to about $3.40 this year.

But Giese said he left many of his acres planted with soybeans to ensure against a disaster if corn prices drop or a drought makes the plants wither.

"If you put in all corn, you could hit a home run, with the prices we have now," said Giese, whose farm is near Lancaster, about 120 miles from Washington. "But . . . you could also go belly up."

More cornfields could be trouble, the study warned, because corn generally requires more fertilizer than such crops as soybeans or hay. When it rains, some of this fertilizer washes downstream, and it brings such pollutants as nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed unnatural algae blooms in the bay. These algae consume the oxygen that fish, crabs and other creatures need to breathe, creating the Chesapeake's infamous dead zones.

Governments around the bay have pledged to cut their output of nitrogen by 110 million pounds by 2010. But the study estimated that an ethanol-driven increase in cornfields could add 8 million to 16 million pounds of pollution.

"We've made it that much harder to meet our bay restoration goals," said Beth McGee, a senior water quality specialist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental group based in Annapolis. McGee helped compile the study released yesterday.

The impact could be lessened, McGee said, by measures that trap farm pollution before it can reach a stream. These include forested "buffers" along rivers, where plants can filter runoff, or "cover crops" that soak up fertilizer after the main harvest.

U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has pushed for such measures to get federal funding from the 2007 farm bill, which is scheduled for a markup in a House committee this week. McGee said yesterday's report was timed to show the need for those funds.

Ongoing dangers of cluster bomblets

Richard Norton-Taylor

Of the 440 million devices dropped since 1965, about 22 million-132 million remain unexploded in 20 countries.

MILLIONS OF people will be endangered by up to 132 million cluster bomblets that have not yet exploded, causing lasting economic and social harm to communities in more than 20 countries for decades to come, a leading charity warned on Wednesday.

Handicap International studied data from nine countries most heavily affected by the weapon and found that about 440 million cluster bomblets had been dropped there since 1965. Based on failure rates of 5-30 per cent, the group estimated that 22 million-132 million of the devices remain unexploded.

The vast majority of cluster bomb casualties occur while victims are carrying on their daily lives, says the report, "Circle of Impact: The Fatal Footprint of Cluster Munitions on People and Communities."

The huge numbers turn "homes and crucial social areas of the people living in affected countries into de facto minefields," says the Brussels-based charity. "As men and boys are the traditional earners and the majority of casualties, the economic loss for both the short term and the distant future cannot be underestimated."

In Afghanistan, boys between five and 14 who are tending animals are most likely to be casualties. In Laos, more than 1,000 people were killed by submunitions while weeding or sowing crops. In many cases people knowingly enter contaminated areas out of economic necessity, the report says.

In southern Lebanon, cluster munitions contaminate approximately 90 per cent of the land used for farming. The contamination of essential land is reflected in the rise of cluster bomb casualties from two a year prior to 2006 to two a day in the months following last summer's conflict with Israel.

In Iraq, the repeated use of cluster bombs has left a devastating legacy that continues to severely restrict the lives of its people, the charity reports.

More than 4,000 civilians have been killed or injured by failed cluster munitions since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Some 60 per cent of the casualties have been children.

Next week governments will meet in the Peruvian capital of Lima to discuss a draft treaty to ban the bombs.

Rae McGrath, of the Handicap International network, said: "It is an offence against all humanitarian norms to continue using these weapons with such evidence of their impact available." —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

CO2 sponge losing ability to soak up extra emissions

James Randerson

Climate change "feedback effect" in the Southern Ocean.

ONE OF the most important of the natural sponges that soak up carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is working 30 per cent less efficiently than a quarter of a century ago, researchers say.

The Southern Ocean is responsible for soaking up the annual CO2 contribution of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands combined, but the study shows that the ocean is absorbing the same quantity of the gas as it was 24 years ago. Scientists had expected that the amount of CO2 absorbed would increase in line with rising levels in the atmosphere. The change is due to increased winds over the ocean linked to climate change and the depleted ozone layer.

"This is serious. All climate models predict that this kind of `feedback' will continue and intensify during this century," said Corinne Le Quere, part of the team at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, which carried out the study. "This is the first time that we've been able to say that climate change itself is responsible for the saturation of the Southern Ocean sink."

So-called carbon sinks such as the oceans, vegetation, and soils soak up around half of the extra CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere each year — some 9.3 billion tonnes. The Southern Ocean alone is responsible for parcelling up 0.7 billion tonnes a year and storing it in the deep.

"Since the 1980s the Southern Ocean sink for carbon has not changed at all, although CO2 emissions over the same period have increased by 40 per cent," said Professor Le Quere. "We would expect that as the emissions and the CO2 in the atmosphere have increased, the Southern Ocean sink should also increase."

The team looked at measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere from 40 stations around the globe — 11 around the Southern Ocean itself. They calculate that the efficiency of the Southern Ocean as a carbon sink has dropped by 30 per cent compared with the amount it would be putting away if it had kept pace with levels of CO2.

The team used CO2 measurements in water collected during research cruises in the Southern Ocean in 1998, 2000, 2001, and 2002 to check their calculations.

The scientists believe the reason for the change is an increase in average wind speed across the ocean.

"The winds act to mix the oceans. So when you have strong winds you have more water circulation and more mixing," said Professor Le Quere. More mixing brings colder water up from the depths that is saturated with CO2, so that it cannot accept any more from the atmosphere. The increase in wind speed is partly a consequence of climate change itself — one of a handful of "positive feedback" effects that look likely to accelerate global warming. Because the world is warming unevenly, pressure differences between different regions are increasing. One consequence of this is increasing wind speed in the Southern Ocean. The depletion of the ozone layer has also contributed to higher winds.

"Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the world's oceans have absorbed about a quarter of the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere by humans. The possibility that in a warmer world the Southern Ocean — the strongest ocean sink — is weakening is a cause for concern," said Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Can Cities Save the Earth?

NYT, May 19, 2007
Editorial

The mayors of some of the world’s biggest cities have every reason to feel especially anxious about climate change. Their populations are the biggest polluters but also among the most vulnerable to weather-related catastrophes. And they are far ahead of their national governments in giving urgency to global warming. So, for the second time since 2005, the leaders of dozens of cities, representing 400 million people, have stepped up. Meeting in New York this week, they produced a plan that should shame G-8 leaders into at least saying something about the issue at their meeting next month.

Most significantly, 15 cities, including New York, Chicago, Karachi, Toronto and Tokyo, signed on to a $5 billion program to make older buildings more energy efficient. Energy-gluttonous cities account for three-fourths of greenhouse gas emissions the world over, and buildings are responsible for 40 percent of emissions and much more in older cities. The project could reduce global carbon emissions by 10 percent.

It may be that the mayors, aware their powers end at the city limits, are more willing than holders of higher offices to take to innovation. When Mayor Clover Moore of Sydney asks residents to turn off lights for an hour, the city goes dark. Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago is distributing rooftop rain barrels, and already pipes 55 million gallons of rainwater into Lake Michigan every year. Toronto discounts electricity for citizens who conserve.

Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London and organizer of the group, bucked public opinion when he imposed a hefty fee (now about $16) to drive on London’s busiest streets. The result was increased productivity for businesses, enhanced public transportation — paid for with fee revenues — and streets that flow so freely, buses sometimes pull over lest they run too far ahead of schedule. The congestion fee proposed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York — $8 for most cars in much of Manhattan — deserves swift approval from state lawmakers.

Sadly, the mayors’ project on energy-efficient buildings would represent the single most significant government response to date on climate change. If it were enough, we would thank the mayors and ride our bicycles into the sunset, but, of course, it isn’t. The job of containing climate-changing human actions — from individual to industrial — cannot occur in a vacuum. The heavy lifting still must be done by the governments of the industrial powers and their emerging counterparts in India, China and Brazil.

U.N. facing backlash on emissions action plan

Amelia Hill, Juliette Jowit and Robin McKie
The Hindu, 30 April

THE WORLD'S leading climate change experts will this week outline highly controversial plans to save the world from global warming. Their proposals — which include a major expansion in nuclear power, the use of GM crops to boost biofuel production, and reliance on unproven technologies, including the underground storage of carbon dioxide — will put the United Nations' climate group on a collision course with a host of environmental groups.

The proposals for saving the planet are outlined in a draft version of "Mitigation of Climate Change" by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is the third part of the panel's 2007 analysis of global warming. Previous reports have focused on the science of climate change and its likely impacts. The third and final report concentrates on measures that can be taken to save the Earth from the worst, most catastrophic effects of rising temperatures triggered by the pumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Crucially the IPCC panel insists that it is "technically and economically" feasible to stabilise greenhouse emissions — but only if countries are prepared to pay the extra costs of transforming everything from energy supply networks to agriculture to waste. By 2030, the report estimates that the cost of stabilising greenhouse gases at levels that are considered the maximum for avoiding catastrophic climate change would cost between 0.2 per cent and 0.6 per cent of global wealth.

As well as plans for more nuclear power, genetically modified biofuels, and carbon capture and storage, the report sets out a vision of the future that is a mixture of existing policies, such as energy efficiency and renewable energy from wind and wave farms, and more futuristic ideas for hydrogen car fleets and "intelligent" buildings which can control energy use.

On Saturday night, Tony Juniper, executive director of the environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth, said far more fundamental lifestyle changes were needed than had been considered by the U.N. group. Nuclear reactors are dangerous and land clearance and chemical pesticides and fertilizers used to grow fuel crops can cause huge environmental damage, he added. "Structural change to the economy, behaviour change and culture change — those have to be elements in a world of decarbonisation," said Mr. Juniper.

However, other groups criticised the IPCC for not being sufficiently robust in its support for technological fixes to the world's climate problems.

Bruno Comby, president of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy, said nuclear power should provide an even bigger proportion of energy than that envisaged by the U.N. scientists and politicians. "Nuclear is not the only solution, but it's the biggest solution," he said.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Impact of widening Panama canal

Matthew Parker

Fears surface of species migration and water shortages.

BUILDING THE Panama Canal, completed in 1914, was described at the time as the "greatest liberty ever taken with nature." Now, work is under way on a massive expansion of the canal, with giant new locks being built at either end of the waterway, as well as huge new channels and a widening of the canal where it cuts through the mountainous Continental Divide. Construction, scheduled to last seven years, is estimated to cost $5.2 billion.
But the fact that work has started without a comprehensive environmental impact study being carried out has worried Panamanians. They fear that although their country is among the wettest on the planet, the canal could mean that one day soon they will turn on their taps and out will come dirty, salty water — or even none at all.
At the same time, environmental groups such as Greenpeace have warned of the project's "potentially catastrophic consequences" for the world's oceans.
The original canal, completed after more than 20 years' struggle, did not so much impact on the environment as change it forever. Mountains were moved, the land bridge between the north and south American continents was severed, and more than 400 sq km of jungle was submerged under a new man-made lake. To defeat deadly mosquitoes, hundreds of sq km of what we would now call "vital wetlands" were drained and filled, and vast areas poisoned or smothered in thousands of gallons of crude oil.
Stanley Heckadon, a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, has been at the forefront of conservation in Panama for more than 20 years. Those efforts have focussed on preserving the jungles that make up the watershed for the rivers that supply the canal — some of the most species-rich forests in the world. Flora and fauna historically endemic to South and North America have mixed and evolved in Panama, resulting in tremendous biodiversity. The country has identified more than 900 species of birds, 1,500 species of trees, and 10,000 species of plants.
But deforestation threatens more than the tourist dollar or endangered species. Each time a ship passes through the canal, 236 million litres of fresh water — enough for a day's supply for a small city — is discharged from the locks into the ocean. This water comes from the canal's watershed, and if that is denuded of trees, it comes laden with silt and in unpredictable surges. The silt raises the bottom of the man-made lakes designed as storage for the canal, critically reducing their capacity.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007.