By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
Demand for land to grow food, fuel crops and wood is set to outstrip supply, leading to the probable destruction of forests, a report warns.
The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) says only half of the extra land needed by 2030 is available without eating into tropical forested areas.
A companion report documents poor progress in reforming land ownership and governance in developing countries.
Both reports were launched on Monday in UK government offices in London.
Supporters of RRI include the UK's Department of International Development (DfID) and its equivalents in Sweden and Switzerland.
"Arguably, we are on the verge of a last great global land grab," said RRI's Andy White, co-author of the major report, Seeing People through the Trees.
"It will mean more deforestation, more conflict, more carbon emissions, more climate change and less prosperity for everyone."
Rising demand for food, biofuels and wood for paper, building and industry means that 515 million hectares of extra land will be needed for growing crops and trees by 2030, RRI calculates.
But only 200 million hectares will be available without dipping into tropical forests.
Forest focus
The report foresees demand increasing further into the century.
It cites studies suggesting that "...if the current plateau in productivity continues, the amount of additional agricultural land required just to meet the world's projected food demand in 2050 would be about three billion hectares, nearly all of which would be required in developing countries."
According to UN figures, the world currently has about 1.4 billion hectares of arable land and about 3.4 billion hectares of pasture.
Some academics place their hopes in agricultural technologies including genetic engineering to boost crop yields.
But since the spectacular successes of the Green Revolution, advances have been slow. In some areas, yields are falling - a trend which is likely to be exacerbated by climate change.
However, eating into tropical forests to create extra agricultural land would, in turn, exacerbate climate change, with deforestation currently accounting for about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Reform call
One of RRI's main conclusions is that reform of land ownership is crucial, if large-scale pillage of tropical forests is to be avoided.
The conclusion have been supported by DfID, whose minister Gareth Thomas was one of the speakers at the launch event.
"These new studies should strengthen global resolve to protect the property rights of indigenous and local communities who play a vital role in protecting one the most outstanding natural wonders of the world," he said.
DfID runs programmes in West Africa aimed at helping forest dwellers acquire the legal right to manage their land.
"It is clear that the dual crises of fuel and food are attracting significant new investments and great land speculation," said Andy White.
"Only by protecting the rights of the people who live in and around the world's most vulnerable forests can we prevent the devastation these forces will wreak on the poor."
But the second RRI report - From Exclusion to Ownership? - says progress in reforming ownership has been slow, with only a few countries such as Brazil, Cameroon and Tanzania handing over significant tracts to local communities.
Moves to curb climate change by preserving forests in developing countries could help, RRI concludes. But it also raises the question of who owns rights to the trees - the rich Western countries that want to fund carbon sequestration, or the people who live in the forest areas?
Sorting out ownership could not only help on the environmental front, but also remove reasons for conflict. RRI calculates that about two-thirds of the world's current violent conflicts are driven by land tenure issues.
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
martes, 15 de julio de 2008
martes, 8 de julio de 2008
G8 fails to set climate world alight
ANALYSIS
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
At first sight, the G8 agreement on climate change promises much.
Leaders are "committed to avoiding the most serious consequences of climate change", and determined to stabilise greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at levels that would avoid "dangerous climate change".
In fact, this is exactly what leaders of nearly 200 countries signed up to in the original UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), agreed at the 1992 Earth Summit. So if re-stating a 16-year-old commitment is progress, then this is clearly a success.
The question ever since Rio has been what to do about it. But the reality of negotiations within groups such as the G8 is that every party needs to emerge with bits of language that they can point to and say "I won".
So here is the key sentence in all its diplomatic finery: "We seek to share with all parties to the UNFCCC the vision of, and together with them to consider and adopt in the UNFCCC negotiations, the goal of achieving at least 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050, recognising that this global challenge can only be met by a global response, in particular, by the contributions from all major economies, consistent with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities."
So the EU emerges with an apparent commitment to cut emissions by at least 50%.
The US and Canadian administrations can say that it is only a commitment if the major developing countries play ball, and that the 50% figure concerns global emissions, not necessarily their own.
And the major developing countries, involved on the sidelines of the G8 summit, can point to inclusion of the UNFCCC phrase "common but differentiated responsibilities" as continued acknowledgement that far less would be required of them than of developed economies.
Off base
The host nation Japan appears to have won two key concessions.
One is that different industrial sectors could be set different targets with the aim of preserving competitiveness.
The second, which is more important, concerns the baseline year against which carbon savings would be measured.
With very few exceptions, the UN process has always used 1990 as the baseline.
But Japan argues this is unfair. The significant gains in energy efficiency it made before 1990 are effectively penalised, it says, while the gains made in Europe after 1990 through the clean-up of Soviet-era industry and the switch to natural gas are rewarded.
The G8 document does not specify a baseline year, but asked by reporters, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said it was "current levels".
This would be significant in at least three ways.
From a practical standpoint, emissions have risen by more than a quarter since 1990; so a 50% cut from now is worth far less than a 50% cut from 1990 levels.
On the diplomatic front, it would raise a big question for the EU, which has taken 1990 as the baseline for its own target of cutting emissions by 20% by 2020. The UK's domestic targets also use 1990.
And from a philosophical point of view, it would again amount to turning the clock back 16 years, and saying "we're going to ignore what we said then and start again from here".
The EU will continue to insist that 1990 stays as the baseline in UN talks; and as the G8 document does not specify any date, any party can select whatever it feels is more politically acceptable when reporting back to its electorate.
But just by raising the issue, Mr Fukuda has thrown up yet another thing for parties to argue about.
Leadership question
So it is perhaps not surprising that campaign groups have lined up to criticise the deal.
WWF said it confirmed the recent trend of industrialised countries showing less, rather than more, of the leadership required.
"The G8 are responsible for 62% of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the Earth's atmosphere, which makes them the main culprit of climate change and the biggest part of the problem", said the director of the group's global climate initiative, Kim Carstensen.
"WWF finds it pathetic that they still duck their historic responsibility, and refuse to turn from the main driver of the problem into the main driver of the solution."
Tearfund, which campaigns on issues of developing world poverty rather than the environment per se, added that using a 1990 baseline was crucial.
"Concrete commitments on climate change are the acid test of success at this summit," said international director Peter Grant.
"The G8 are crawling forward on emissions cuts at a time when giant leaps and bounds are needed."
The other main gripe of these organisations is that 2050 is too distant. They have been urging parties to commit to shorter timescales for achieving cuts, as the EU has done with its own 2020 target, arguing that this removes the option of delaying action until it is too late.
Instead, the statement merely acknowledges that "a long-term global goal will require mid-term goals and national plans to achieve them" - without specifying what these goals should look like.
Elsewhere, there is acknowledgement that the poorest countries are going to need help to adapt to climate impacts, and that clean energy technologies need to be developed and rolled out rapidly.
There is support for the rapid development of "clean coal" demonstration plants, in particular, and recognition that some countries will seek to lower carbon emissions through investing in nuclear.
Place in the world
It is important to recognise what the G8 could not achieve.
The UNFCCC is the sovereign body for making global agreements, and the two-year road leading from last December's UN climate summit in Bali to next year's in Copenhagen is still the most important route to a low-carbon future.
Nothing that the G8 or G8+5 or G20 or any other expansion of the core group could agree would change that.
What this week's gathering could have done was to point the way and ease the path, by agreeing a common front to take into the UN process.
On Wednesday, G8 countries meet the large group of "big emitters" or "major economies", the latest stage in a process formulated by the Bush administration.
The group includes major developing countries such as China, India and Mexico. And they have already set out their stall, responding to the G8 declaration with a statement calling on rich countries to go further and faster, committing to cuts of 25-40% by 2020 and 80-90% by 2050.
So far, then, this G8 summit has confused the issue rather than clarifying it.
Governments are as divided as ever on what they are prepared to pledge and what they want to achieve; and re-opening the baseline year question is potentially hugely destructive.
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
At first sight, the G8 agreement on climate change promises much.
Leaders are "committed to avoiding the most serious consequences of climate change", and determined to stabilise greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at levels that would avoid "dangerous climate change".
In fact, this is exactly what leaders of nearly 200 countries signed up to in the original UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), agreed at the 1992 Earth Summit. So if re-stating a 16-year-old commitment is progress, then this is clearly a success.
The question ever since Rio has been what to do about it. But the reality of negotiations within groups such as the G8 is that every party needs to emerge with bits of language that they can point to and say "I won".
So here is the key sentence in all its diplomatic finery: "We seek to share with all parties to the UNFCCC the vision of, and together with them to consider and adopt in the UNFCCC negotiations, the goal of achieving at least 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050, recognising that this global challenge can only be met by a global response, in particular, by the contributions from all major economies, consistent with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities."
So the EU emerges with an apparent commitment to cut emissions by at least 50%.
The US and Canadian administrations can say that it is only a commitment if the major developing countries play ball, and that the 50% figure concerns global emissions, not necessarily their own.
And the major developing countries, involved on the sidelines of the G8 summit, can point to inclusion of the UNFCCC phrase "common but differentiated responsibilities" as continued acknowledgement that far less would be required of them than of developed economies.
Off base
The host nation Japan appears to have won two key concessions.
One is that different industrial sectors could be set different targets with the aim of preserving competitiveness.
The second, which is more important, concerns the baseline year against which carbon savings would be measured.
With very few exceptions, the UN process has always used 1990 as the baseline.
But Japan argues this is unfair. The significant gains in energy efficiency it made before 1990 are effectively penalised, it says, while the gains made in Europe after 1990 through the clean-up of Soviet-era industry and the switch to natural gas are rewarded.
The G8 document does not specify a baseline year, but asked by reporters, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said it was "current levels".
This would be significant in at least three ways.
From a practical standpoint, emissions have risen by more than a quarter since 1990; so a 50% cut from now is worth far less than a 50% cut from 1990 levels.
On the diplomatic front, it would raise a big question for the EU, which has taken 1990 as the baseline for its own target of cutting emissions by 20% by 2020. The UK's domestic targets also use 1990.
And from a philosophical point of view, it would again amount to turning the clock back 16 years, and saying "we're going to ignore what we said then and start again from here".
The EU will continue to insist that 1990 stays as the baseline in UN talks; and as the G8 document does not specify any date, any party can select whatever it feels is more politically acceptable when reporting back to its electorate.
But just by raising the issue, Mr Fukuda has thrown up yet another thing for parties to argue about.
Leadership question
So it is perhaps not surprising that campaign groups have lined up to criticise the deal.
WWF said it confirmed the recent trend of industrialised countries showing less, rather than more, of the leadership required.
"The G8 are responsible for 62% of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the Earth's atmosphere, which makes them the main culprit of climate change and the biggest part of the problem", said the director of the group's global climate initiative, Kim Carstensen.
"WWF finds it pathetic that they still duck their historic responsibility, and refuse to turn from the main driver of the problem into the main driver of the solution."
Tearfund, which campaigns on issues of developing world poverty rather than the environment per se, added that using a 1990 baseline was crucial.
"Concrete commitments on climate change are the acid test of success at this summit," said international director Peter Grant.
"The G8 are crawling forward on emissions cuts at a time when giant leaps and bounds are needed."
The other main gripe of these organisations is that 2050 is too distant. They have been urging parties to commit to shorter timescales for achieving cuts, as the EU has done with its own 2020 target, arguing that this removes the option of delaying action until it is too late.
Instead, the statement merely acknowledges that "a long-term global goal will require mid-term goals and national plans to achieve them" - without specifying what these goals should look like.
Elsewhere, there is acknowledgement that the poorest countries are going to need help to adapt to climate impacts, and that clean energy technologies need to be developed and rolled out rapidly.
There is support for the rapid development of "clean coal" demonstration plants, in particular, and recognition that some countries will seek to lower carbon emissions through investing in nuclear.
Place in the world
It is important to recognise what the G8 could not achieve.
The UNFCCC is the sovereign body for making global agreements, and the two-year road leading from last December's UN climate summit in Bali to next year's in Copenhagen is still the most important route to a low-carbon future.
Nothing that the G8 or G8+5 or G20 or any other expansion of the core group could agree would change that.
What this week's gathering could have done was to point the way and ease the path, by agreeing a common front to take into the UN process.
On Wednesday, G8 countries meet the large group of "big emitters" or "major economies", the latest stage in a process formulated by the Bush administration.
The group includes major developing countries such as China, India and Mexico. And they have already set out their stall, responding to the G8 declaration with a statement calling on rich countries to go further and faster, committing to cuts of 25-40% by 2020 and 80-90% by 2050.
So far, then, this G8 summit has confused the issue rather than clarifying it.
Governments are as divided as ever on what they are prepared to pledge and what they want to achieve; and re-opening the baseline year question is potentially hugely destructive.
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
EU includes aviation in CO2 curbs
The European Parliament has backed a law to include aviation in Europe's CO2 Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for cutting greenhouse gases.
MEPs voted 640 to 30 for aviation to be included in the scheme from 2012. It includes both EU and non-EU airlines.
Under the UN's Kyoto Protocol, the EU is required to cut its CO2 emissions by 8% from 1990 levels by 2012.
Airlines will have to cut emissions by 3% in the first year, compared to 2005, and by 5% from 2013 onwards.
The measures will now be ratified by the 27 EU member states, which agreed the deal in June.
Industries included in the ETS have to buy and sell permits that allow them to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Airlines will have to pay for permits covering 15% of their pollution quotas, the remainder being issued free.
Aviation currently only accounts for about 3% of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions, but the sector has seen an 87% increase in CO2 since 1990.
The new legislation says the revenues generated from the auctioning of emissions permits should be used to fund: measures to combat climate change, research on clean aircraft, anti-deforestation measures in developing countries and low-emission transport. Within that framework, the member states will decide how to allocate the revenues.
US opposition
US officials and US-based airlines have criticised the extension of the ETS to aviation, arguing that the EU has no right to force airlines using its airspace to abide by the ETS rules. They say the EU must wait for a global agreement to be reached.
Peter Liese, a German MEP who helped negotiate the aviation package, said that "of course, a global agreement is our final goal, but the inclusion of third country flights starting and landing in Europe is a major step for the global fight against climate change".
"Other industries like steel would very much like to be in such a situation," he added.
The ETS began operating in 2005. It applies to major energy and industrial concerns which collectively account for about 40% of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions.
The aviation deal backed by the MEPs excludes: light planes with a take-off weight under 5.7 tons, UN-approved humanitarian flights, firefighting or other emergency flights, flights by police, customs or military forces, research flights and flights by small, low-emission airlines.
The deal was criticised by the German carrier Lufthansa on Tuesday. A spokesman quoted by Reuters news agency said the ETS was "ecologically counter-productive and economically harmful".
The aviation scheme will include official flights by EU heads of state and ministers.
The European Commission reckons that the scheme could increase return air ticket prices by 4.6 to 39.6 euros (£3.6 to £31) by 2020, depending on the journey length.
MEPs voted 640 to 30 for aviation to be included in the scheme from 2012. It includes both EU and non-EU airlines.
Under the UN's Kyoto Protocol, the EU is required to cut its CO2 emissions by 8% from 1990 levels by 2012.
Airlines will have to cut emissions by 3% in the first year, compared to 2005, and by 5% from 2013 onwards.
The measures will now be ratified by the 27 EU member states, which agreed the deal in June.
Industries included in the ETS have to buy and sell permits that allow them to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Airlines will have to pay for permits covering 15% of their pollution quotas, the remainder being issued free.
Aviation currently only accounts for about 3% of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions, but the sector has seen an 87% increase in CO2 since 1990.
The new legislation says the revenues generated from the auctioning of emissions permits should be used to fund: measures to combat climate change, research on clean aircraft, anti-deforestation measures in developing countries and low-emission transport. Within that framework, the member states will decide how to allocate the revenues.
US opposition
US officials and US-based airlines have criticised the extension of the ETS to aviation, arguing that the EU has no right to force airlines using its airspace to abide by the ETS rules. They say the EU must wait for a global agreement to be reached.
Peter Liese, a German MEP who helped negotiate the aviation package, said that "of course, a global agreement is our final goal, but the inclusion of third country flights starting and landing in Europe is a major step for the global fight against climate change".
"Other industries like steel would very much like to be in such a situation," he added.
The ETS began operating in 2005. It applies to major energy and industrial concerns which collectively account for about 40% of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions.
The aviation deal backed by the MEPs excludes: light planes with a take-off weight under 5.7 tons, UN-approved humanitarian flights, firefighting or other emergency flights, flights by police, customs or military forces, research flights and flights by small, low-emission airlines.
The deal was criticised by the German carrier Lufthansa on Tuesday. A spokesman quoted by Reuters news agency said the ETS was "ecologically counter-productive and economically harmful".
The aviation scheme will include official flights by EU heads of state and ministers.
The European Commission reckons that the scheme could increase return air ticket prices by 4.6 to 39.6 euros (£3.6 to £31) by 2020, depending on the journey length.
jueves, 29 de mayo de 2008
Nature loss 'to hurt global poor'
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
Damage to forests, rivers, marine life and other aspects of nature could halve living standards for the world's poor, a major report has concluded.
Current rates of natural decline might reduce global GDP by about 7% by 2050.
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) review is modelled on the Stern Review of climate change.
It will be released at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Bonn, where 60 leaders have pledged to halt deforestation by 2020.
"You come up with answers like 6% or 8% of global GDP when you think about the benefits of intact ecosystems, for example in controlling water, controlling floods and droughts, the flow of nutrients from forest to field," said the project's leader Pavan Sukhdev.
"But then you realise that the major beneficiaries [of nature] are the billion and a half of the world's poor; these natural systems account for as much as 40%-50% of what we define as the 'GDP of the poor'," he told BBC News.
Globalised decline
The TEEB review was set up by the German government and the European Commission during the German G8 presidency.
The two institutions selected Mr Sukhdev, a managing director in the global markets division at Deutsche Bank, to lead it.
At the time, in an article for the BBC News website, Germany's environment minister Sigmar Gabriel wrote: "Biological diversity constitutes the indispensable foundation for our lives and for global economic development.
"[But] two-thirds of these ecosystem services are already in decline, some dramatically. We need a greening of globalisation."
The document to be released at the CBD is an interim report into what the team acknowledges are complex, difficult and under-researched issues.
The 7% figure is largely based on loss of forests. The report will acknowledge that the costs of losing some ecosystems have barely been quantified.
The trends are understood well enough - a 50% shrinkage of wetlands over the past 100 years, a rate of species loss between 100 and 1,000 times the rate that would occur without 6.5 billion humans on the planet, a sharp decline in ocean fish stocks and one third of coral reefs damaged.
However, putting a monetary value on them is probably much more difficult, the team acknowledges, than putting a cost on climate change.
The report highlights some of the planet's ecologically damaged zones such as Haiti, where heavy deforestation - largely caused by the poor as they cut wood to sell for cash - means soil is washed away and the ground much less productive.
'Too little, too late'
There are some indications that biodiversity and ecosystem issues are now being heard at the top tables of politics.
G8 environment ministers meeting in Japan last weekend agreed a document noting that "biodiversity is the basis of human security and... the loss of biodiversity exacerbates inequality and instability in human society".
It also emphasised the importance of protected areas and of curbing deforestation.
At the CBD on Wednesday, 60 countries signed pledges to halt net deforestation by 2020.
But the main CBD target agreed by all signatories at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 - to "halt and begin to reverse" biodiversity loss by 2010 - is very unlikely to be met.
An early draft of the TEEB review, seen by BBC News, concluded: "Lessons from the last 100 years demonstrate that mankind has usually acted too little and too late in the face of similar threats - asbestos, CFCs, acid rain, declining fisheries, BSE and - most recently - climate change".
The Stern Review talked to governments in a way that earlier climate reports could not, because it was written by and for economists; and the architects of TEEB hope it will eventually do the same thing for biodiversity.
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
Damage to forests, rivers, marine life and other aspects of nature could halve living standards for the world's poor, a major report has concluded.
Current rates of natural decline might reduce global GDP by about 7% by 2050.
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) review is modelled on the Stern Review of climate change.
It will be released at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Bonn, where 60 leaders have pledged to halt deforestation by 2020.
"You come up with answers like 6% or 8% of global GDP when you think about the benefits of intact ecosystems, for example in controlling water, controlling floods and droughts, the flow of nutrients from forest to field," said the project's leader Pavan Sukhdev.
"But then you realise that the major beneficiaries [of nature] are the billion and a half of the world's poor; these natural systems account for as much as 40%-50% of what we define as the 'GDP of the poor'," he told BBC News.
Globalised decline
The TEEB review was set up by the German government and the European Commission during the German G8 presidency.
The two institutions selected Mr Sukhdev, a managing director in the global markets division at Deutsche Bank, to lead it.
At the time, in an article for the BBC News website, Germany's environment minister Sigmar Gabriel wrote: "Biological diversity constitutes the indispensable foundation for our lives and for global economic development.
"[But] two-thirds of these ecosystem services are already in decline, some dramatically. We need a greening of globalisation."
The document to be released at the CBD is an interim report into what the team acknowledges are complex, difficult and under-researched issues.
The 7% figure is largely based on loss of forests. The report will acknowledge that the costs of losing some ecosystems have barely been quantified.
The trends are understood well enough - a 50% shrinkage of wetlands over the past 100 years, a rate of species loss between 100 and 1,000 times the rate that would occur without 6.5 billion humans on the planet, a sharp decline in ocean fish stocks and one third of coral reefs damaged.
However, putting a monetary value on them is probably much more difficult, the team acknowledges, than putting a cost on climate change.
The report highlights some of the planet's ecologically damaged zones such as Haiti, where heavy deforestation - largely caused by the poor as they cut wood to sell for cash - means soil is washed away and the ground much less productive.
'Too little, too late'
There are some indications that biodiversity and ecosystem issues are now being heard at the top tables of politics.
G8 environment ministers meeting in Japan last weekend agreed a document noting that "biodiversity is the basis of human security and... the loss of biodiversity exacerbates inequality and instability in human society".
It also emphasised the importance of protected areas and of curbing deforestation.
At the CBD on Wednesday, 60 countries signed pledges to halt net deforestation by 2020.
But the main CBD target agreed by all signatories at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 - to "halt and begin to reverse" biodiversity loss by 2010 - is very unlikely to be met.
An early draft of the TEEB review, seen by BBC News, concluded: "Lessons from the last 100 years demonstrate that mankind has usually acted too little and too late in the face of similar threats - asbestos, CFCs, acid rain, declining fisheries, BSE and - most recently - climate change".
The Stern Review talked to governments in a way that earlier climate reports could not, because it was written by and for economists; and the architects of TEEB hope it will eventually do the same thing for biodiversity.
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
martes, 8 de abril de 2008
Publisher creates 'green' books
Publisher Dorling Kindersley claims to have printed the most environmentally conscious series of books in the world.
It has done so, it declares, by using vegetable inks, 100% recycled card and "environmentally friendly" glues.
Chief executive Gary June said its Made with Care series represented "a best practice example of how green and clean books can be produced in the future".
The first four titles include a guide to organic gardening and a children's encyclopaedia on the environment.
The company, a division of Penguin Books, has called their launch "a global publishing first".
'Fantastic'
By removing the book's jackets and an energy efficient binding process, the company said it had saved both paper and energy.
It has also printed the books on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), ensuring a tree is planted for each one used.
Travel has been minimised by printing the titles locally in Europe, using a German firm with a strong track record of environmental work.
Julia Young, manager of the WWF-UK Forest and Trade network, called the Made with Care series "a fantastic initiative".
It has done so, it declares, by using vegetable inks, 100% recycled card and "environmentally friendly" glues.
Chief executive Gary June said its Made with Care series represented "a best practice example of how green and clean books can be produced in the future".
The first four titles include a guide to organic gardening and a children's encyclopaedia on the environment.
The company, a division of Penguin Books, has called their launch "a global publishing first".
'Fantastic'
By removing the book's jackets and an energy efficient binding process, the company said it had saved both paper and energy.
It has also printed the books on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), ensuring a tree is planted for each one used.
Travel has been minimised by printing the titles locally in Europe, using a German firm with a strong track record of environmental work.
Julia Young, manager of the WWF-UK Forest and Trade network, called the Made with Care series "a fantastic initiative".
martes, 4 de marzo de 2008
US to set 'binding' climate goals
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
The US is ready to accept "binding international obligations" on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, officials say, if other nations do the same.
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
The US is ready to accept "binding international obligations" on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, officials say, if other nations do the same.
The comments came in a news conference in Paris given by James Connaughton and Daniel Price, environmental and economics advisers to President Bush.
The US hopes the world's major economies will conclude a "leaders' declaration" before the July G8 summit.
There was no indication of how much the US might be prepared to cut emissions.
But the Bush administration is clearly looking for some kind of binding commitment from major developing countries such as China, India and Brazil.
"The US is prepared to enter into binding international obligations to reduce greenhouse gases as part of a global agreement in which all major economies similarly undertake binding international obligations," said Mr Price, the president's deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs.
The United Nations climate process emphasises that different countries have "common but differentiated responsibilities" for climate change, which in practice has meant industrialised nations promising to cut emissions while developing countries do not.
But the US officials suggested the phrase should mean something different - supporting the poorest nations, while expecting those that are developing successfully to take on some kind of obligation to cut emissions.
"An effective framework requires the participation of all major economies, developed and developing alike," said Mr Price.
"Europe and the US could turn out the lights today, and come 2030 or 2050 we would not have addressed the problem of climate change."
Some countries might commit to firm emissions targets while others promised energy efficiency gains, he suggested. Commitments could cover a country's entire economy, or just certain sectors.
Shuffling the decks
The notion that major developing countries might take on binding targets might prove politically difficult, suggested Philip Clapp, deputy managing director of the Pew Environment Group
"The White House knows that taking a binding target of comparable size [to that taken by the US or EU] is neither a negotiating option nor a physical possibility for the Chinese government," he told BBC News.
He also suggested that an acid test of a leaders' declaration would be the timescale for making cuts.
At the last G8 summit, Japan proposed setting the goal of reducing emissions globally by 50% by 2050, a target which Daniel Price said could potentially form part of the declaration.
"It's become increasingly apparent that the Bush administration is willing to agree to a target that would take effect 40 years from now, and wants to portray that as a major accomplishment," said Mr Clapp.
"A key question is whether the administration is willing to accept binding targets that take effect before 2020, because a binding commitment that doesn't take effect for 40 years is really just shuffling the problem off one more time."
Trading plans
The US comments stem largely from a process initiated by President Bush last year, a series of talks involving 17 nations that together account for about 80% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
The "major economies" or "big emitters" group had its second meeting in Hawaii last month, and the next is scheduled for Paris in April.
Environmental groups have criticised the process as a distraction from the UN negotiations, and because the developing countries involved have much lower per capita emissions than the US.
But European delegates involved in the Hawaii meeting described the mood as frank and engaging.
The EU and US are working together within the World Trade Organization (WTO) on a proposal that all countries should slash tarriffs on trade in clean energy equipment.
"Some countries, in particular the major developing countries, have tarriff schedules as high as 70%," said Mr Connaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
"We're trying to get the world to eliminate tarriffs, and that could increase global trade in clean energy technologies and services by up to 14% per year.
"This is the single largest step we could take immediately to transfer available technologies to the developing world at very low cost."
Mr Price suggested the style of dialogue between the EU and US, which he categorised as "the EU berating the US to do more", needed to change, with both blocs working together to ensure the participation of major developing countries.
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
viernes, 8 de febrero de 2008
Biocombustibles empeoran el cambio climático, concluye estudio científico
Sería uno de los mayores fraudes ambientales de la historia, advierten auditores
Por: Steve Connor (The Independent)
Por: Steve Connor (The Independent)
La expansión de cultivos para producir biocombustibles conduce al envío de enormes cantidades de dióxido de carbono a la atmósfera y en nada contribuye a detener el cambio climático o el calentamiento global, según la primera auditoría integral de un presupuesto para ese rubro.
Los científicos han producido evidencia condenatoria, la cual sugiere que los biocombustibles podrían ser uno de los mayores fraudes ambientales, porque en realidad empeoran el calentamiento global al contribuir a las emisiones de dióxido de carbono producido por humanos que supuestamente deben reducirse.
Dos estudios separados, publicados en la revista Science, muestran que los cultivos que hoy se desarrollan para producir alternativas “verdes” a los combustibles basados en el petróleo emiten mucho más dióxido de carbono a la atmósfera del que puede ser absorbido por las plantas.
Los científicos descubrieron que en el caso de algunos cultivos se requerirían varios siglos para pagar la “deuda de carbono” que se genera. Estos costos ambientales no toman en cuenta la destrucción adicional del medio ambiente, por ejemplo la pérdida de biodiversidad causada al desmontar áreas de selva.
“Todos los biocombustibles que usamos hoy destruyen los hábitat, ya sea en forma directa o indirecta. La agricultura global ya produce alimentos para 6 mil millones de personas; producir biocombustible basado en plantas también implicará convertir más tierra a uso agrícola”, advierte Joe Fargione, de la organización privada estadunidense The Nature Conservancy, quien encabezó uno de los estudios.
Los científicos llevaron a cabo un análisis que se había omitido ante la precipitación por cultivar biocombustibles, estimulada por las políticas de Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea, cuyos proponentes han estado ansiosos por exaltar las virtudes de los biocombustibles como alternativa verde a los combustibles fósiles para el transporte.
Ambos estudios observaron la cantidad de dióxido de carbono que se libera cuando una porción de tierra se convierte al cultivo de biocombustibles. Descubrieron que cuando las tierras de turba de Indonesia se convierten en plantaciones de palmera para producir aceite de coco, por ejemplo, se requieren 423 años para pagar la deuda de carbono.
Otro caso nocivo es cuando la selva amazónica se desmonta para convertirla en parcelas para soya. Los científicos descubrieron que se requerirían 319 años de producción de biodiesel a partir de la soya para pagar la deuda de carbono causada por el derribamiento de los árboles.
Tales conversiones de tierra para cultivar maíz y caña de azúcar para biodiesel, o aceite de coco y soya para bioetanol, emiten entre 17 y 420 veces más carbono que el que se ahorra al año por el remplazo de combustibles fósiles, calculan los científicos.
“La pregunta es: ¿vale la pena? El carbono que se pierde al convertir bosques, pastizales y turba, ¿supera al que se ‘ahorra’ al usar biocombustibles en vez de combustibles fósiles?”, expresa el doctor Fargione. “La respuesta es no. Estas áreas naturales almacenan gran cantidad de carbono, así que convertirlas en tierras de cultivo conduce a que se emitan toneladas de carbón a la atmósfera”.
“Al encontrar soluciones al cambio climático, debemos asegurarnos de que el remedio no resulte peor que la enfermedad”, señala Jimmie Powell, integrante del equipo científico de The Nature Conservancy. “No podemos darnos el lujo de desdeñar las consecuencias de convertir tierra para biocombustibles. Hacerlo significa que sin proponérnoslo podríamos promover alternativas peores que los combustibles fósiles. Los hallazgos de estos estudios deben incorporarse en las políticas de emisión de carbono de aquí en adelante”, consideró.
© The Independent
Traducción: Jorge Anaya
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