The 12th African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) June 7-12, 2008 Johannesburgh, South Africa.

 http://www.unep.org/roa/Amcen/Amcen_Even…

Africa Atlas of our Changing Environment from Global Resource Information Database - Sioux Falls

 http://www.na.unep.net/AfricaAtlas/

Global Resource Information Database - Sioux Falls

Tejaswi Giri (Ms.)
UNEP/GRID Sioux Falls
USGS/EROS Data Center
47914 252nd Street
Sioux Falls, SD, 57198, USA
Tel: 1 (605) 594-2782
Fax: 1 (605) 594-6119
Email:  tgiri at usgs.gov

Climate Destruction Will Produce Millions of ‘Envirogees’
By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted May 27, 2008.

The rise of environmental disasters from climate change and destruction of ecosystems will create a surge of refugees across the planet. Chew on this word, jargon lovers. Envirogee.

It carries more 21st century buzz than its semi-official designation climate refugee, which is a displaced individual who has been forced to migrate because of environmental devastation. Maybe the buzzword will catch on faster and shed some much-needed light on what will become a serious problem, probably by the end of this or the next decade. That light is crucial, because so far envirogees haven’t been fully recognized by those who certify the civil liberties of Earth’s various populations, whether that is the United Nations or local and national governments whose people are increasingly on the move for a whole new set of devastating reasons.

In short, immigration is about to enter a new phase, which resembles an old one with a 21st century twist. For thousands of years, humanity has fled across Earth’s surface fearing instability and in search of sustainability. But that resource war has kicked into overdrive thanks to our current climate crisis — a manufactured war with its own clock. And the clock is ticking.

From earthquakes in China to cyclones in Myanmar to water rationing in Los Angeles, societies are shifting like their borders. And all the outcry over so-called illegal immigration neglects to answer one time-honored question: If the borders aren’t standing still, why should the people who live in their outlines do so? Especially when they’re under attack from catastrophic floods, fires, droughts and any number of other environmental dangers?

Right now, the 1951 Geneva Convention does not recognize the envirogee phenomenon, instead focusing on immigration as a result of political persecution. But then again, it was established over five decades ago when Earth’s climate was anything but a terrorist. But the Geneva Convention, like everything that must adapt or die, needs to mutate in time with the rest of the world and its hyperconsuming inhabitants in order to remain relevant in our still-new millennium.

Here are some startling envirogee numbers to crunch: According to the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Earth’s fracturing communities will have 150 million envirogees by 2050. According to Australian climatologist Dr. Graeme Pearman, coastal flooding resulting from a mere two-degree rise in temperature would kick 100 million people out of their danger-zone homes by 2100.

Here’s more scary data. Desertification is claiming land from China to Morocco to Tunisia and beyond at an increasing rate. New Orleans and parts of Alaska are slowly sliding into the sea, while the former, as Hurricane Katrina ably illustrated, is becoming a reliable target for intensifying weather events, human corruption and half-assed infrastructure. Aquifers around the world are shrinking, while acidification is claiming cropland in Egypt and beyond. Hypoxia has claimed portions of the ocean itself with alarming speed, as stretches of the Atlantic and Pacific lose oxygen and, by extension, the marine life that not only feeds millions but establishes the continuity of the food chain.

No food chain, no food. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

But numbers are fallible, which is another way of saying the above figures are most likely best-case scenarios. In other words, the future is now. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the IPCC might have taken home a Nobel for their statistics and bleeding hearts, but their math was significantly off. Worse, the rate at which these things happen is rising exponentially.

“The rate of increase in carbon dioxide concentrations accelerated over recent decades along with fossil fuel emissions,” explained a report on methane and CO2 rises by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Organization for Atmospheric Administration. “Since 2000, annual increases of two ppm or more have been common, compared with 1.5 ppm per year in the 1980s and less than one ppm per year during the 1960s.” As for methane, in 2007 it exploded by 27 million tons after a decade with relatively no rise at all. Think about that next time you eat that Happy Meal.

So what’s an envirogee to do, other than opt out of wasted fantasies like Happy Meals, factory farming, bottled water and Hummers? What else? Move.

Which is what envirogees worldwide are already doing right now, by choice or by gunpoint, and will do more often than not as situations on the ground and in the air deteriorate.

The conflict raging in Darfur is a sobering example of the complexity of the situation. It has so far displaced 2-3 million people, and for all the talk of political or religious persecution, the fact remains that it is at its root an environmental crisis. An arid desert whose water is drying up by the day, Darfur is one of the first flashpoints of our new phase of climate conflict, a conflict that U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon explained in the Washington Post as one “that grew at least in part from desertification, ecological degradation and a scarcity of resources, foremost among them water.” But this too should have been foreseen: According to remote sensing, Darfur sits atop of an underground lake that once used to hold over 600 cubic miles of water and dried up thousands of years ago.

And like Darfur, we are numbly sitting atop our climatological past while it races to catch up with us. Parched by thirst and hungry for fossil fuels which, in turn, only exacerbate that thirst and the wars it engenders, envirogees are streaming out of these hot zones into less murderous ones, whose inhabitants are circling their wagons on the outsiders. Civil wars are breaking out. Outsiders, in turn, are becoming invaders. The irony is rich.

It gets richer, or poorer, depending on where you stand on peak oil. The planet’s shrinking petroleum reserves are now more valuable than ever, and the prices for its capture and capitalization show zero sign of returning to normal. That expense is also beginning to be measured in lives, as carbon concentration exponentially increases and weather events become more extreme.

And you all know what they say about extreme times calling for extreme measures.

We’ve been here before, which is to say on the brink of extinction. In one instance, drought shrunk our numbers to about 2,000 scattered in a diaspora across Africa, a fearsome thought for a 21st century superpower that may be entering its own permanent drought. But the wrinkle is different this time around the tightrope: We built this coming dystopia with our own hands.

And that’s going to reshape not just immigration policy, but the concept of immigration altogether. And that’s where the envirogee comes in. The envirogee, you see, is on the run from himself.

In other words, and no matter how much blowhards like CNN’s Lou Dobbs bitch and whine, the inconvenient truth of climate change, and its rampant resource wars for what’s left of the planet’s stores, remains a reality. Beneath genocide in Darfur lies a desert that used to be a lake. There probably isn’t a better metaphor for our current hyperhighway to hell in existence, if one could argue that it was a metaphor to begin with. But one can’t, because it is reality, pure and simple. And so are envirogees, regardless of the outdated assertions of the Geneva Convention or the staid refusals of the insurance industry to wake up and smell the hurricanes.

“If we keep going down this path,” French prime minister Nicholas Sarkozy argued to the superpowers gathered at the Major Economics Meeting in Paris last month, “climate change will encourage the immigration of people with nothing towards areas where the population do have something, and the Darfur crisis will be only one crisis among dozens of others,” he stressed.

That is, we won’t be worried about Mexicans coming to the U.S. for economic reasons, or Africans doing the same in France and England. We will be worried about hyperviolent cyclones, floods and droughts destroying what’s left of our jobs and the people who want them, as we all pack our crap and move northward, where temperate weather and more bountiful supplies of water, gas and food lie. We will be the ones enduring the hard stares and perhaps bullets fired from locals who are circling their wagons against victims of their own consumption and apathy.

Whether or not we can settle, literally, with that solution, time will tell. But according to the continually underperforming science of climate crisis, we won’t settle for long. Barring any meaningful sociopolitical or economic engagement, to say nothing of much-needed technological revolution, on the issue, we’ll have turned from territorial citizens into climate nomads, all in a cosmological eyeblink.

Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.

Women and environment experts have raised concern over the absence of women in the discourse and debate on climate change, a global mainstream issue that is currently impacting the entire world. The involvement of women in areas of environmental management and governance should not be perceived as an afterthought. Women’s roles are of considerable importance in the promotion of environmental ethics.
The current imperative is for women to understand the phenomenon of climate change and its impacts and implications at the individual, household, community and national levels. Studies show that women have a definite information deficit on climate politics and climate protection. Only with this information can women take their proper, significant and strategic role in the issue of climate change.

Invited to this congress are women parliamentarians, women in decision - making and governance, environment organizations, youth Leaders and Media Practitioners.

The Congress will have the following objectives:
Overall Purpose: To provide a forum for women legislators, and women in decision making and environment organizations at all levels, in formulating gender-responsive legislation and policies.

Specific Objectives:
a) To understand the phenomenon of climate change, its impacts and implications;
b). to review and examine the gender aspects of climate change and formulate appropriate actions to address such;
c). to define the roles women can play in addressing the issues of climate change at the global, national and sub-national levels; and
d). to identify and define the action agenda for parliamentarians, policy advocates and women leaders to support global and national actions to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Congress Proceedings:
The discussion on gender and climate change will be organized around identifying the challenges to action as well as defining the appropriate responses to effectively address the impacts of climate change. Inputs to the discussion will be collected and organized around: 1) geographic location and 2) types of actions: i.e. preparedness, risk reduction: building community resilience; adaptation; and mitigation. Cross cutting these discussions will be the identification of technologies in aid of responding to climate change.
The focus of the discussions will revolve around defining and elaborating actions (i.e. preparedness, disaster risk reduction, adaptation, and mitigation) to cope with climate change and its impacts.
Preparedness and disaster risk reduction is about building individual and community capacities to position themselves and their communities so that the likelihood of climate change-induced disasters is reduced; the intensity or adverse impacts of disasters are cushioned and that inhabitants are able to respond promptly, expeditiously and effectively. Adaptation entails actions that moderate harm, or exploit benefits, of climate change. Mitigation entails actions that minimizes or cushions the adverse impacts of climate change.
In all of these actions, special attention will be given to defining how women and gender could be mainstreamed. In other words, the Congress should define how women can be given the social space to participate, influence, and benefit from global and local responses to climate change.
The registration fee for the four day congress is one hundred eight thousand Philippine Pesos (P108, 000). per person for single room accommodations and Eighty eight thousand Philippine Pesos (P88, 000). per person for twin room sharing accommodations (two persons in one room).
The training will be held on Oct 19-22, 2008. However, the participants will be requested to be in Manila the day before, October 18, 2008 and leave Manila only on October 23, 2008. The overnight hotel accommodation on October 18, 2008 is already included in the fee. Participants will be billeted in the Dusit Hotel, the venue of the congress and hotels near the Dusit Hotel, accessible within walking distance. Room accommodations in the Dusit Hotel, the venue of the Congress will be on a first come - first served basis.

You can also download the full information sheet and registration form for this Third Global Congress of Women in Politics and Governance from our website, <http://www.capwip.org>
Importance of the Congress:

Today, on the average, 1 person out of 19 in a developing country will be hit by a climate disaster, compared to 1 out of 1,500 in an OECD country.

Climate change creates life time traps: in Niger, a child born during a drought is 72 percent more likely to be stunted than a child born during a normal season.

The Theme of “Gender and Climate Change” is the first time this will be discussed in a forum whose objective is to formulate gender responsive legislation and policies for national governments and parliaments.

We hope that environment organizations will find this forum a good opportunity to advocate gender and climate change policies and programs through gender responsive legislation to the women parliamentarians, decision makers, the youth leaders, media and the funding agencies/organizations.

Dr. Jung Sook Kim, President
The theme of the congress is “Gender and Climate Change”.
Center for Asia Pacific Women in Politics (CAPWIP)
YSTAPHIL Building, 4227-4229 Tomas Claudio Street, Baclaran,
Parañaque City, Metro Manila, Philippines
Tel. (632) 8516934 (632) 8516954; Tele Fax: mobile phone +639184596603
E-mail:  globalcongress2008 at gmail.com;  globalcongress2008 at capwip.org <mailto:globalcongress2008@gmail.com;  globalcongress2008 at capwip.org>;  capwip at capwip.org <mailto:capwip@capwip.org> Web: www.capwip.org <http://www.capwip.org>; www.onlinewomeninpolitics.org <http://www.onlinewomeninpolitics.org>

The Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS) and the IPCC Technical Support Unit are jointly organising a regional outreach workshop on the findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. The workshop, which is aimed at African researchers, will take place on 29-30 April 2008 in Marrakech, Morocco. To be considered for participation, please submit your application no later than 5 April 2008.The objective of the workshop is to disseminate the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report findings to African researchers and scientists, in particular those of the circum-Saharan region.

The various presentations and discussions will cover the following topics:

·   The research needs for Africa.

To apply please visit the OSS website (link provided below) and download the workshop’s flyer. Only successful applicants will be contacted by 10 April 2008.

 http://www.oss-online.org/index.php?opti…

Jihed Ghannem
Communications Officer
The Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS)
Boulevard du Leader Yasser Arafat
BP 31, 1080 Tunis, Tunisia
T: +216 71 20 66 33    F: +216 71 20 66 36
Visit our new website at www.oss-online.org

Sunday, March 9, 2008, Kyodo News on Japan Times online.

Yellow sand forecasts get longer.

The Meteorological Agency is increasing its forecasts for yellow sand to three days instead of one, agency officials said Saturday.

The agency will also supplement the forecasts by posting details about sand density on a map on the agency’s home page, they said.

The sand, which has stirred concerns about health and the environment, was observed in Japan for 34 days last year. It originates from the deserts of East Asia.

Forecasts for the sand began in 2004 by analyzing wind conditions, temperature and humidity in the desert areas.

The highlighted part in the title is ours - but the policy implications are their! The problem is real and the EU knows it!

Climate change, because of future water shortage, a security risk for EU, say bloc’s foreign policy chiefs.

03.03.2008 Climate change is not merely an environmental concern, it could also present “serious security risks”, according to the European Union’s foreign policy chiefs as reported by Leigh Phillips for Euobserver.

Tackling climate change is central to Europe’s preventive security policy, says Ms Ferrero-Waldner (Photo: © European Community, 2007 ) 

Tackling climate change is central to Europe’s preventive security policy, says a paper drafted by the bloc’s High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana and external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

Battles over water supplies and instability arising from diminished
harvests, particularly in the Middle East, are likely to cause “serious
security risks” for Europe, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and
external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner have warned.

http://euobserver.com/9/25762/?rk=1

UK business daily the Financial Times and its German sister paper, FT Deutschland obtained a copy of the paper’s contents in advance of an EU leaders summit later this month where the issue is to be discussed.

The paper highlights seven key concerns: diminishing water supplies, falling harvests, increased migration, expanding energy resource competition, tussles over newly opened up opportunities in the Arctic as the ice there melts, disappearing coastlines and islands that sink beneath the waves as sea levels rise.

Of particular concern is the growing threat of so-called water wars in the Middle East.

“Water supply in Israel might fall by 60 per cent over this century,” reads the paper, which argues that battles over access to water in the region in turn affect the EU’s energy security.

The paper also points to concerns that reduced harvests in the Middle East and Turkey will also add to the region’s instability.

Climate Change Driving Mongolians From Steppe to Cities.

Stefan Lövgren in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia for National Geographic News.
February 21, 2008
Photo: Lifelong herder Namdag lives in a traditional felt tent home—or “ger”—among some half dozen cars in various states of disrepair, an informal junkyard against the towering, snow-capped mountains that surround the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar (Ulan Bator). “I miss my old life,” said the 71-year-old, now a world removed from the sweeping steppes he once called home. “But life out there is too difficult.”

Namdag, who like many Mongolians uses only one name, is one of the hundreds of thousands who in recent years have abandoned their nomadic herding lives for an urban existence.

The former herders crowd into sprawling townships on the periphery of Ulaanbaatar, which has doubled its population in the past two decades. (See a video of Mongolian nomads and their fading lifestyles.)

While there are many reasons for the migration, observers say climate change is increasingly a driving force behind Mongolians’ move toward the cities.

Landlocked between Siberia (Russia) and China, Mongolia is feeling the impact of global warming more than most regions in the world.

Over the past 60 years the average temperature in Mongolia has risen by 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1.9 degrees Celsius). In contrast, the average temperature around the world has climbed only about 1 degree Fahrenheit (about 0.6 degree Celsius) in the past century.

The warmer temperatures are drying up Mongolia’s grasslands, which provide food for the country’s livestock.

“The Mongolian herding way of life is under threat from global warming,” said Azzaya, director of the Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology in Ulaanbaatar.

Soil Moisture - With its hot summers and cold winters, Mongolia has one of the most extreme climates anywhere on Earth. It also ranks as the world’s least densely populated nation. On the vast steppes that stretch across northern Mongolia, miles often separate individual gers, which are moved by their nomadic inhabitants up to four times a year according to the seasons.

Geneva – Addressing the Impact on Human Security of Environment and Migration Issues – Ensuring human security in a world challenged by the three pressing issues of the day - climate change, environmental degradation and migration – will be the focus of an international conference in Geneva on 19 February.

Jointly organized by Greece under its chairmanship of the Human Security Network and IOM, the conference will examine both the impact of environmental degradation and climate change on human security and migration as well as the impact of migration on the environment and how interaction on these two phenomena can lead to potential conflict.

While there has been increasing international focus on climate change, environmental degradation and migration as separate subjects, the impact of both on human security and the potential for conflict, has not received the same level of attention from policy makers and researchers.

Although data on the number of existing environmental migrants – those “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” - and projections on future numbers are unclear with the latter varying enormously from an estimated 25 million to one billion by 2050, people across the world are having to leave their homes or countries because of rising sea levels, scarcity of water, inability to farm sustainably as well as vulnerability to an increasing number of weather phenomena that destroy lives and livelihoods.

Human displacement caused by natural disasters both sudden and slow on-set, in addition to political conflicts, also play a critical role in environmental degradation and tensions over decreasing resources especially water and land.

The conference, which will have keynote presentations by Theodoros Skylakakis, Secretary General for International Economic Relations and Development Cooperation at the Greek Foreign Ministry, IOM Director General Brunson McKinley, the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Michel Jarraud and Kyung-wha Kang, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights will not only identify key issues surrounding climate, environmental degradation, migration and human security, but will also explore ways of mitigating the impact of migration on the environment as well as using migration strategies to help limit environmental damage and potential human crises.

Panellists include E.Angus Friday, Grenada’s Ambassador to the UN in New York with Grenada chairing the Alliance of Small Island States, as well as prominent representatives of the academic and NGO community.

“Early planning and action on this complex and multi-dimensional issue can go a long way in lessening the impact of climate change, environmental degradation and migration on human security. We have an opportunity here of taking a step forward in addressing this issue,” says Brunson McKinley.

“Greece, presiding now the Human Security Network felt that people’s migration due to worsening climate and environment constitutes a challenge for human security. Geneva, where many of those who understand this serious and complex issue work and live, seems the right place to tackle this issue,” says Greece’s Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Franciscos Verros.

The Human Security Network is a group of 13 countries from various regions of the world which maintains dialogue at Foreign Ministers level on questions pertaining to human security and as an informal, flexible mechanism, identifies concrete areas for collective action.

The conference, which is being held at the headquarters of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in Geneva, is open to the media.

For background papers and the agenda, please go to www.iom.int and http://www.greeceun.org.

The Commission on Sustainable Development Is It A Moribund UN Body Or Will It Be Revived Because It Is Needed After The Re-Engagement Hoopla That Happens Now At Bali?

Our Website was established in order to help create the awareness that there is no other development possible - not in the developing countries and not in the developed countries - that is not SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT.

We had experience starting from before the Brundtland Commission of 1987, we were engaged at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, and we wrote the “Promptbook on Sustainable Development for The World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg 2002. In short we are strong believers that if the UN CSD were not created in 1994, we would have had to create it now.

Why that? Simply, because as it is crystal clear now that the development of tomorrow cannot go on by rules of the development of yesterday - and this was given, right today, full global recognition in Oslo, when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the scientists of the IPCC, and to Al Gore - whatever will come out from the Bali-Poznan-Copenhagen process will be clearly a final global landing on the runway that was built in Rio for Agenda 21. And as we keep saying - this will be a joint Sustainable Development for North and South, East and West. It will be a world were those that have the needed technologies will share them with those that are only trying out for their own National development. This will not be done because of altruism - it will be rather because of self interest that comes from the simple fact that we are all residents of planet earth, and we understand that we have caused the planet to be on a path of destruction that harms the continuation of life as nature or god created.

After UNCED, The UN created a Department for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development and Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Gali appointed Mr. Nitin Desai, at the Under-Secretary-General level to head the Department. 1994-1998 Joke Waller-Hunter from the Netherlands was the first Director of the Division for Sustainable Development and the head of the Commission on Sustainable Development - so the Commission itself dates back, for all practical purpose, to 1994 - even though it officially was started in 1992. In May 2007 we witnessed the CSD 15 (that is counting back to 1992!).

In 1997, Secretary-General Kofi, in an effort to reduce the number of UN Under-Secretary-Generals, consolidated three economic and social departments and created UN DESA (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and eventually put Mr. Desai as head of DESA where he was until he was replaced in 2003 with Mr. Jose Antonio Ocampo, the former Finance Minister of Colombia; the new Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-moon, brought in, July 2007, Mr. Sha Zukang, the previous China Ambassador in Geneva. In 1998 Ms. JoAnne DiSano, with a background of having worked for the Canadian Government, and then for 11 years with the Australian Government, became the Director of the new Division of Sustainable Development within DESA. She held this position until September of 2007 and since then the position is VACANT, and it looks as if the UN does not care.

Ms. Joke Waller-Hunter, left her position with the CSD in 1998 in order to become the Executive Secretary of the of Bonn based  UN Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) where she remained untill her death in 2006. She was replaced there in 2007, by Mr. Yvo de Boer, appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Mr. Yvo de Boer is also from the Netherlands, where he was Director for International Affairs of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment. He was in the Past Vice-Chair of the Commision on SD and Vice-Chair of the COP of the UNFCCC. Both, the CSD and the UNFCCC are outcomes of the 1992 UNCED. Ms. Joke Waller-Hunter’s departure from New York may have had something to do with the 1997 UN reorganization that replaced the Department of SD with a Division of SD within DESA. She may have sensed that her presence at UNFCCC will further SD goals easier then  at the new Division of SD - that its creation caused in effect a demotion in her position.

The present vacancy at the nerve-center of the CSD, at a time the CSD is needed indeed, following the latest push at the UNFCCC, on matters of climate change, that causes our renewed interest in the UN CSD and in the UN Division that was established specifically in order to run the CSD. We are afraid that it will be difficult to see progress on the UN level, in matters of climate change, without a functioning office that deals with sustainable development.

Now to be honest, our interest is not just because of curiosity - but rather because of the worry that we understand very well the reasons for the slow demise