U.S. agrees to debt-for-nature swap to preserve Peru rainforests.

In a bid to preserve some of Peru’s biologically diverse rainforests, the United States agreed this week to a $25 million debt-for-nature swap with the country, Peru’s second since 2002. Over the next seven years, in exchange for erasing millions of their debt, Peru will fund local non-governmental organizations dedicated to protecting tropical rain forests of the southwestern Amazon Basin and dry forests of the central Andes.

“This agreement will build on the success of previous U.S. government debt swaps with Peru and will further the cause of environmental conservation in a country with one of the highest levels of biodiversity on the planet,” said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Other debt-for-nature agreements have already been brokered with Bangladesh, Belize, Botswana, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, and the Philippines.

This week’s swap makes Peru the largest beneficiary of such deals with the U.S., with more than $35 million dedicated to environmental conservation in the country.

From:  ebulletin at mail.ipu.org March 20, 2008
Subject: IPU e-Bulletin no.11

The President of the United Nations General Assembly convened a high-level thematic debate on climate change on 11-12 February 2008, with the aim of building political momentum towards effective action in this crucial area. The Inter-Parliamentary Union, based on its own work in this field over the past year – particularly in follow-up to the 116th IPU Assembly in Bali - joined the discussion and highlighted its efforts to reinforce climate change policy and legislation with a view to achieving the ultimate objectives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol.

National parliaments have reported back to the IPU on their own initiatives in implementing the Bali parliamentary declaration on climate change. The parliament of Chile, for example, has started to look at ways to make the national budget more environment-friendly. The German Bundestag Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety has recently debated several motions on proposed climate protection measures tabled by the parliamentary groups. The Bundestag also sets an example for climate protection and energy efficiency in the operation of its own buildings. In Israel, the Knesset Committee for Internal Affairs and the Environment is currently preparing the second and third readings of the Clean Air Bill.

A recent session of the Japanese Diet has seen the enactment of a law relating to the promotion of government contracts that pay due consideration to environmental concerns, assessing the environmental load of each project rather than simply looking at price competitiveness. In the UK, the parliamentary Joint Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill, which aims to reduce the net UK carbon account by at least 60 per cent from the 1990 baseline by the year 2050, expressed its concerns recently about the legal enforceability of the targets and budgets, and proposed a system of annual milestones and a compliance mechanism to create a strong legal framework. In Belarus, the parliament is currently debating two bills designed to mitigate climate change, one to amend the environmental protection law on compensation for environmental damage, and the other concerning a draft code on earth resources. Many other examples can be quoted in this regard.

On 5 March, IPU was also invited to attend a parliamentary event hosted by the United States Congress, in the context of the Washington International Conference on Renewable Energy. Several legislators joined their national delegations to this important event, and shared views and experiences on good policies and practices to expand the use of clean and renewable energy solutions. Following a brief but productive exchange among legislators, it was agreed that there was scope for further work by the IPU and national parliaments in this important area.

President Casini went on an official mission to the Middle East at the end of January, when a freak snowstorm brought much of the region to a standstill.

On January 28, one day after the 63rd anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, he delivered a speech in the Knesset to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. During his stay in Jerusalem, he held talks with the Speaker of the Knesset, Ms. Dalia Itzik, and leaders of the political factions, before meeting President Perez, Prime Minister Olmert and Foreign Minister Livni. The talks centered on the political situation in the region and prospects for peace, the crisis in Gaza, and codes and standards for parliamentary elections. The mission also raised the question of the PLC parliamentarians who were detained in Israeli jails.

Wishing to gain first-hand information about the difficulties facing the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), Mr. Casini travelled to the PLC headquarters in Ramallah, where he held a lively exchange of views with a group of parliamentarians, focusing on the representation of Palestine in the IPU. Later in the day he met with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

The IPU Secretary General joined the President during his visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah after making a stop in Amman, where he met with the Speaker and other members of the Palestinian National Council for discussions about their membership status at the IPU. He also held several meetings in Ramallah with the PLC members and the Secretary General of the parliament.

{what we found interesting here is the IPU geography - the Midle East - when talking about the World’s Parliaments - amounts to Israel and the induced Israeli effect on the Palestinian authority that learned from israel the mechanics of aiming at a parliamentarian democracy. www.SustainabiliTank.info comment}

118th IPU Assembly and Related Meetings
CAPE TOWN (South Africa), 13-18 April 2008

Seminar on the role of parliaments in Central America in reconciliation and democratization processes, SAN SALVADOR (El Salvador),
5-7 May 2008

Annual session of the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO, GENEVA (Switzerland), 11-12 September 2008

Oceans Eyed as New Energy Source.
By Brian Skoloff, The Associated Press, Thursday February 14, 2008.

Dania Beach, Florida - Just 15 miles off Florida’s coast, the world’s most powerful sustained ocean current - the mighty Gulf Stream - rushes by at nearly 8.5 billion gallons per second. And it never stops.

To scientists, it represents a tantalizing possibility: a new, plentiful and uninterrupted source of clean energy.

Florida Atlantic University researchers say the current could someday be used to drive thousands of underwater turbines, produce as much energy as perhaps 10 nuclear plants and supply one-third of Florida’s electricity. A small test turbine is expected to be installed within months.

“We can produce power 24/7,” said Frederick Driscoll, director of the university’s Center of Excellence in Ocean Energy Technology. Using a $5 million research grant from the state, the university is working to develop the technology in hopes that big energy and engineering companies will eventually build huge underwater arrays of turbines.

From Oregon to Maine, Europe to Australia and beyond, researchers are looking to the sea - currents, tides and waves - for its infinite energy. So far, there are no commercial-scale projects in the U.S. delivering electricity to the grid.

Because the technology is still taking shape, it is too soon to say how much it might cost. But researchers hope to make it as cost-effective as fossil fuels. While the initial investment may be higher, the currents that drive the machinery are free.

There are still many unknowns and risks. One fear is the “Cuisinart effect”: The spinning underwater blades could chop up fish and other creatures.

Researchers said the underwater turbines would pose little risk to passing ships. The equipment would be moored to the ocean floor, with the tops of the blades spinning 30 to 40 feet below the surface, because that’s where the Gulf Stream flows fastest. But standard navigation equipment on ocean vessels could easily guide them around the turbine fields if their hulls reached that deep, researchers said.

And unlike offshore wind turbines, which have run into opposition from environmentalists worried that the technology would spoil the ocean view, the machinery would be invisible from the surface, with only a few buoys marking the fields.

David White of the Ocean Conservancy said much of the technology is largely untested in the outdoors, so it is too soon to say what the environmental effects might be.

“We understand that there are environmental trade-offs, and we need to start looking to alternative energy and everything should be on the table,” he said. “But what are the environmental consequences? We just don’t know that yet.”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has issued 47 preliminary permits for ocean, wave and tidal energy projects, said spokeswoman Celeste Miller. Most such permits grant rights just to study an area’s energy-producing potential, not to build anything.

The field has been dealt some setbacks. An ocean test last year ended in disaster when its $2 million buoy off Oregon’s coast sank to the sea floor. Similarly, a small test project using turbines powered by tidal currents in New York City’s East River ran into trouble last year after turbine blades broke.

The Gulf Stream is about 30 miles wide and shifts only slightly in its course, passing closer to Florida than to any other major land mass. “It’s the best location in the world to harness ocean current power,” Driscoll said.

Researchers on the West Coast, where the currents are not as powerful, are looking instead to waves to generate power. {but this is a technology that is already being tested in places as varied as Rio de Janeiro, New York City, and Tel Aviv}

Canada-based Finavera Renewables has received a FERC license to test a wave energy project in Washington state. It will eventually include four buoys in a bay and generate enough power for up to 700 homes. The 35-ton buoys rise above the water about 6 feet and extend some 60 feet down. Inside each buoy, a piston rises and falls with the waves.

The company hopes later to be the first in the U.S. to operate a commercial-scale “wave farm,” situated off Northern California. The project with Pacific Gas and Electric calls for Finavera to produce enough electricity to power up to 600 homes by 2012. Finavera eventually wants to supply 30,000 households.

Roger Bedard of the Electric Power Research Institute said an analysis by his organization found that wave- and tide-generated energy could supply only about 6.5 percent of today’s electricity needs.

Finavera spokesman Myke Clark acknowledged that wave energy is “definitely not the only answer” to the nation’s power needs and is never going to be as cheap as coal. But it could be “part of the energy mix,” and could be used to great advantage off the coasts of Third World countries, where entire towns have no connection to electrical grids, he said.

Nick Furman, executive director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission, said he fears the wave technology could crowd out his industry, which last year brought in 50 million pounds of crab and contributed $150 million to the state’s economy.

“We’ve got a limited amount of flat sandy bottom on the Oregon Coast where we can put out pots and where we can fish, and the wave energy folks are telling us they need the same flat, sandy bottom,” Furman said.

“It’s not the 10-buoy wave park that has the industry concerned. It’s that if it’s successful, then that park turns into a 200- or 400-buoy park and it just keeps growing.”

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On the Net:

Electric Power Research Institute: http://www.epri.com

Finavera Renewables: http://www.finavera.com

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission: http://www.ferc.gov

Center of Excellence in Ocean Energy Technology: http://coet.fau.edu