WIP on our website means WORK (WRITING) IN PROGRESS - or simply unfinished article. When finished the WIP will be taken off but the article will stay in place without the UPDATED designation. Nevertheless, theses introductory lines will remain as a reminder that the article had a long birth.

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The meeting, August 15, 2008 was chaired by the Ambassador For Palau. Present were also the Ambassadors from Nauru and from Fiji. Many other Missions were represented - some of these missions have representatives on the working committee. Involved are also some of the active NGOs.

At present the sponsors of a resolution to be brought before the UN General Assembly are 11 from among the 14 Pacific Small Island Developing States - Fiji, Marshall Islands, The Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu; the Maldives and Seychelles from non-Pacific SIDS; Canada, the Philippines from among larger States. But these 15 States will pick up many more co-sponsors. Mentioned were Turkey, the EU, Austria and Iceland that have expressed their eagerness to join. There is no opposition we were told - but only some hesitation because it is seen as a new approach to the problem of the humanitarian impact of climate change that goes on already - this while in major UN institutions the debate has not led yet to action. The inhabitants of the small islands of the Pacific are the first to lose their habitat - and what we see is the eradication of UN Member States by this predictable catastrophe.

On our website we announced this encounter between the proponents of the resolution and the NGOs:

Opinion: Polar Race.
Monday 28 July 2008
by: Guy Taillefer, Le Devoir

 http://www.truthout.org/article/polar-ra…

Guy Taillefer argues in Le Devoir that the US Geological Survey’s most recent evaluation of the polar depths - that they contain 412 billion barrels of oil, or a third of the planet’s proven reserves - will put additional strain on the already-fragile international understandings with respect to polar sovereignty and development.

The North Pole. Guy Taillefer writes, “Northern governments and oil companies have never salivated to quite the same extent over the Arctic, which becomes all the more hospitable to them as the ice melts … If one were a cynic, one would say that in this instance it is altogether to Ottawa’s advantage to drag its feet in the fight against greenhouse gases …”
Four hundred and twelve billion barrels of oil. A third of the planet’s proven reserves. That’s what the depths of the Arctic contain, according to the US Geological Survey’s most recent evaluation. One may count on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to take advantage of the opportunity to reassert Canada’s “unquestionable” sovereignty over the North - and to reduce the debate over the development of the circumpolar world to a war of flags and icebreakers.
Last Wednesday, after four years of research, the US Geological Survey, the American scientific agency specialized in hydrocarbons, delivered the first exhaustive estimate of potential oil and gas situated north of the polar circle: 90 billion barrels of crude, three times as much natural gas, 20 percent of the probable global reserves of liquefied natural gas…. The news is guaranteed to have a strong impact, given the present context of tightening energy supplies, surging prices at the pump, and the extraordinary growth of demand in developing countries. Northern governments and oil companies have never salivated to quite the same extent over the Arctic, which becomes all the more hospitable to them as the ice melts…. If one were a cynic, one would say that in this instance it is altogether to Ottawa’s advantage to drag its feet in the fight against greenhouse gases.
Moreover, quite by chance, the US Geological Survey estimates were made public one year, almost to the day, after two little Russian sailors dove to a depth of 4,000 meters in the beginning of August 2007 to plant a flag on the North Pole. This striking gesture - without any legal effect, however - relaunched the debate on the subject of sovereignty over the Arctic in great style.

Cut to the quick, then-Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay decreed that the region Russia coveted was “unquestionably” Canadian.
Unquestionably? That remains to be seen. Experts from the UN, guarantors of the Convention on the Law of the Sea, will say between now and 2013 which between Ottawa and Moscow has the better-founded pretensions from a scientific perspective. At the moment, however, it seems that Russia is better placed to prove geologically that the Lomonossov Dorsal, a chain of undersea mountains that cross the Arctic, is the prolongation of the Russian continental plateau, and not of the Canadian plateau.
Politicians, unfortunately, don’t bother much with such scientific details in their communications with the electorate, preferring to play a nationalistic rhetoric that is easily digested. So the bad scenario would be that, in this race for the summit of the world, the sharing of the Arctic will be less the result of a UN judgment and multinational dialogue than of power struggles between the five countries involved - Canada, Russia, the United States, Denmark, and Norway. That scenario is altogether plausible.
“The Canadian Arctic is at the heart of our national identity,” Stephen Harper declared last year. He has announced, among other military measures in the last year, an investment of $7 billion over 25 years for buying naval patrol boats. A depressing prospect: that Canada seeks to take on its northern identity is laudable, that it proposes to get there by emphasizing military defense to the detriment of social, ecological and diplomatic initiatives, is much less so. It is difficult in any case to imagine that pugnacious Prime Minister-President Vladimir Putin will allow himself to be intimidated.
Nonetheless, the Harper way remains very questionable, in that it is a thousand leagues from the Canadian Way - based on dialogue and cooperation. Still, the most recent decades have demonstrated that it’s by balancing its own interests with those of its circumpolar neighbors - and not by sticking out its chest - that Canada has succeeded in preserving its Arctic sovereignty.
Moreover, in order to calm tensions, the five held a big meeting last spring, which ended in the participants’ commitment to settle any litigious question “in an orderly way,” to “strengthen their cooperation based on mutual trust and transparency” and to “assure the protection and preservation of the fragile marine environment of the Arctic Ocean.” Empty phrases? The future will show how these beautiful promises that we’d like to see kept will withstand the lust for 412 billion barrels of oil.
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We posted several days ago: “Reuters Reports That China Is Planting its Flag in the Arctic and Antarctic Regions. Actually they started already at least in 2003, so this is not just a reaction to the Russian Flag-posting of August 2007.”

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 27th, 2008
by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com)

So, face up to it - China is also in this game. And why should not Nauru or Grenada also be entiled to some of the profits? if they cannot afford the expense of drilling - bet you Brazil or Japan, even Korea and India, and who knows who else - can!

OK - Now Let Us Sit Down And Talk. For Once We Are Behind China and Expect The Dragon To Stand Its Ground.

The North Pole. Guy Taillefer writes, “Northern governments and oil companies have never salivated to quite the same extent over the Arctic, which becomes all the more hospitable to them as the ice melts … If one were a cynic, one would say that in this instance it is altogether to Ottawa’s advantage to drag its feet in the fight against greenhouse gases …” (Photo: NASA GSFC Direct Readout Laboratory / Allen Lunsford).

 We feel the more countries get involved, the less possibility for a single country grab of the resources will be possible. According to the UN approved “The Law Of The Sea” - those resources belong to all humanity and are extraterritorial to country sovereignty. Multiplicity of contenders may thus pose the needed opposition to one country grab onto these resources, and avoidance of rules of the jungle.

BEIJING, Reuters, July 28, 2008 - China plans to install its first long-term deep-sea subsurface mooring system in the Arctic Ocean, to monitor long-term marine changes, the Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

The system will collect data on the temperature, salinity and speed of currents at various depths around 75 degrees north in the Chukchi Sea, where Atlantic and Pacific currents converge above the Bering Strait. That will allow studies of the impact on China’s climate of changes in the Arctic, Xinhua said.
A trap will catch marine life for scientific research, it said, citing Chen Hong Xia, a member of the 122-member expedition team aboard the Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, an ice-breaker which set off from Shanghai this month.

The mooring system will be retrieved in 2009.

China is increasing scientific research at both poles at a time when global warming and high resources prices are raising international interest in Arctic and Antarctic territories.

It deployed a 40-day mooring system in the Bering Sea in 2003, and is building a new station at Dome A, the highest point of Antarctica, to study ice cores.

A Russian submersible planted a flag on the seabed of the North Pole last August, setting off a race among northern nations to increase their presence in the polar regions.

Invasion of the jellyfish: Mediterranean on alert as hundreds suffer from stings.
By Matthew Kay in Paris, Elizabeth Nash in Madrid and Peter Popham in Rome
The Independent front-page, Thursday, 24 July 2008.

{ but this week amNY had similar report regarding swimmers that participated in a competition in the waters of the Hudson River. One athlete even died. }

Just as you thought it was safe to head for the Med, jellyfish have invaded beaches from Sardinia to Spain.

As thousands of tourists head to the Mediterranean, the spectre of jellyfish ruining holidays looms large after French emergency services received more than 500 calls for help in a single day along a 10-mile stretch of coast from Nice to Cannes.

Paddlers suffered painful stings and wanted something to treat the pain while swimmers reported that they had found themselves totally surrounded by a species commonly known as the mauve stinger.

It is a pattern being repeated along the shores of Mediterranean. As well as the Côte d’Azur, the coast of Liguria on the west coast of Italy, the Costa Smeralda in Sardinia, parts of the Adriatic on Italy’s east coast, and much of the southern – and even northern – coastlines of Spain have been hit.

Jellyfish have no autonomy of movement and are swept around the oceans by wind and tide. In the past they came billowing into the beaches once every 10 or 12 years. They stayed for three or four years then disappeared as mysteriously as they arrived. But not any more. This is the eighth year straight that they have stormed the smartest resorts in the Mediterranean.

Spaniards hoping to avoid the invasion by heading north have had to think again. The Portuguese Man o’ War (Physalia physalis), whose sting can be fatal, is marauding the coasts of Cantabria and Asturias, which until now have managed to escape the seasonal plague. Winds have blown the creatures ashore in recent days, prompting warning flags to be flown.

At Nice and Cannes, the jellyfish menace vanished as quickly as it arrived, but scientists are in no doubt that they will be back, perhaps before the end of the season. The species haunting this 10-mile stretch of coast is the Pelagia noctiluca, the mauve stinger. Its sting can cause severe burns, in some cases scarring their victims. Despite warnings to keep out of the water, many swimmers were caught out last week, prompting the flood of calls to the French emergency services.

Fearful of the effect on the tourist trade, Cannes and Monaco have installed booms and nets on several beaches. But hundreds slipped through and many more invaded unprotected beaches.

In Antibes a 30ft catamaran which has been described as a “jellyfish hoover” now patrols the coastline, ready to suck up any returning jellyfish.

“I can’t say that the jellyfish will definitely return,” said Jacqueline Goy, the leading jellyfish expert at the Institut d’Oceanographie in Paris. “At the moment the mistral has blown them offshore but a change in wind direction could well bring them back later this year.”

The phenomenon is by no means a new one said Mme Goy, known to colleagues as la Dame aux Méduses (”Jellyfish Lady”). The earliest report of a “jellyfish soup” in the region dates back to 1802. In recent years, however, the frequency and persistence of the swarms has increased.

Marine biologists believe that overfishing has killed off both the fish that hunt jellyfish, and their young which compete with jellyfish for plankton.

Fabrizio Bulgarini, biodiversity expert with WWF Italy, said there was also another theory. “The rate of reproductivity of the jellyfish appears to be related to the heat of the water,” he explained, and thanks to global warming the sea is getting hotter.

From:    mara at spadmin.usf.edu

COASTAL CITIES SUMMIT: VALUES & VULNERABILITIES.
REGISTRATION & ABSTRACT SUBMISSION OPEN!!

IMPORTANT DATES:
May 15, 2008: Deadline for Abstract Submission
•July 1, 2008: Authors will be informed on selection by e-mail
•October 15, 2008:  Deadline for Final Submissions
•July 31, 2008: Deadline for early registration

The International Ocean Institute-USA and the city of St. Petersburg, FL, USA, are hosting a Coastal Cities Summit on November 17-20, 2008, to address the complex challenges that coastal city leaders face as populations increase, resources are depleted, and the impacts of climate change are felt.  The Coastal Cities Summit intends to bring together 600-700 coastal city leaders, managers and academics to discuss environmental, social, economic, and public policy challenges and viable solutions.

Full details are available at www.coastalcities.org

The 3 ½ day conference will focus on three themes: Climate Change, Risk and Vulnerability, and Sustainable Development.  The planners are soliciting speakers on areas that are particularly relevant to coastal cities: freshwater, pollution, energy, infrastructure, and port security.  All sessions are intended to give a long-needed voice to those who are on the front lines taking leadership on climate change, providing implementation and response plans and continuing to focus on protecting citizens from possible extreme events and human-induced degradation.

SPEAKERS:
•Martin Parry - Co-Chair, IPCC 2nd Working Group
•Leon Panetta - Panetta Institute for Public Policy
•Jeremy Harris - former mayor of Honolulu
•Roberto Rosselli - Venice Water Authority
•John Ogden - Florida Institute of Oceanography
•Paul Holthus - World Ocean Council
•Richard Wainio - Tampa Port Director
•Saskia Sassen - Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, author of UN-Habitat report
•Victor Lu, Vice President, Hunt Power - alternative resources
•Wayne Joseph – Global Water Partnership
•Carlos Fernandez-Jauregui, Coordinator, United Nations Office to Support the International Decade for Action, “Water for Life, 2005-2015”

You may already be familiar with the International Ocean Institute (IOI) and its 26 operational centers around the world.  IOI-USA is the newest center, established in St. Petersburg, FL in 2006 by agreement between IOI headquarters in Malta and the University of South Florida (USF).

The mission of IOI-USA is to provide an international center of excellence in education, training, development, and capacity building, with particular interest in coastal and marine areas.

The University of South Florida (USF), established in 1956 as a public university, is a comprehensive multi-campus research university serving more than 42,000 students.  It is home to the Dr. Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions, a center dedicated to promoting sustainable healthy communities around the world, and one of the co-organizers of the event. The resources and expertise of USF allow IOI-USA to offer an outstanding conference program that will attract attendees from around the world. Further information on the conference can be found at its website: www.coastalcities.org.

Background:
Approximately 2.7 billion people–over 40% of the world’s total population–currently live in coastal cities. In 1995 alone, an estimated 50 million people migrated to the coastal zones of the United States. Combined with increasing birth rate and life expectancy, as well as future climate change, the escalating strain on public resources means that coastal city managers face unprecedented challenges.

Abstracts are invited for individual paper proposals, panel proposals, and round table proposals that address either I) Coastal City Challenges, II) Coastal City Practices, or III) Coastal City Solutions in one of the following broad thematic areas:

Climate change
Risk and Vulnerability
Sustainable Development

The results of the 4th Global Oceans Conference on the Internet:

From the 4th Global Conference on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands:  Advancing Ecosystem Management and Integrated Coastal and Ocean Management in the Context of Climate Change, April 7-11, 2008, Hanoi, Vietnam

The 4th Global Conference brought together 430 ocean and coastal leaders from 71 countries, representing all sectors, including governments, intergovernmental and international organizations, non-governmental organizations, the business community, ocean donors, and scientific institutions.  The conference assessed essential issues in the governance of the world’s oceans, with a focus on moving toward an ecosystem-based and integrated approach to oceans governance at national, regional, and global levels.  For the first time, a concerted effort was made to bring oceans policy together with climate change, which, as indicated in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will have profound effects on ecosystems and coastal populations around the world, especially among the poorest people on Earth and in small island developing States.

The conference focused especially on assessing the progress that has been achieved (or lack thereof) on the global oceans targets established by the world’s political leaders at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development:  Achieving ecosystem-based and integrated ocean and coastal management by 2010, reducing marine biodiversity loss and of establishing networks of marine protected areas by 2012, restoring fishery stocks by 2015, among others.

The conference underlined that ocean and coastal managers are at the front line of climate changes.  The climate issues that ocean and coastal leaders around the world will need to face will ineradicably change the nature of ocean and coastal management, introducing increased uncertainty, the need to incorporate climate change planning into all existing management processes, the need to develop and apply new tools related to vulnerability assessment, and the need to make difficult choices in what in many cases will be “no win” situations, involving adverse impacts to vulnerable ecosystems and communities.  Conference participants underlined that we must begin this process now, including altering coastal development that is already in the pipeline–we don’t have the luxury of waiting 10 years before we consider the implications and before we act.

You are kindly invited to view the proceedings of the conference through multiple media, including the following:

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The Global Forum, the World Ocean Network, and the World Ocean Observatory have created a special GOC2008 website and YouTube channel designed specifically to inform audiences across the world about the context and work of the Global Forum using rich media.

GOC2008 Website
 http://www.thew2o.net/goc2008<https:/…;

GOC2008 YouTube Channel
 http://www.youtube.com/globaloceans2008&…;

Here, you will be able to:
–Explore the proceedings of the Conference and each major ocean issue being addressed.
–View the reports, recommendations, and Policy Briefs of the Global Forum’s 12 Working Groups, involving about 250 experts from 68 countries, which have been mobilizing to provide recommendations on priority next steps that the international community should take on major ocean issues.
–See short video interviews and podcasts of ocean and coastal experts from various sectors around the globe as well as the presentations and movie clips illustrating major ocean issues.

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The International Institute for Sustainable Development – Reporting Services provided daily coverage of conference proceedings.  As the publisher of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, IISD Reporting Services (RS) is recognized for its objectivity and issue expertise in the field of international environment and sustainable development policy.  In past Global Ocean Conferences IISDRS has helped the Global Forum to disseminate conference reports containing recommendations on advancing the development of integrated oceans policies worldwide to their mail lists which include 45,000 subscribers.

To read more details about the work of the Conference please see the attached document.

For further information please contact Kateryna Wowk ( kmw at udel.edu<mailto:kmw@udel.edu&g…)

Attachment

–Detailed Conference Coverage

U.S. firm lays claim to ‘potentially vast’ Arctic oil resources - U.S. firm lays claim to nearly all of what it says will be 400 billion barrels - makes it known, Friday, March 21, 2008, Randy Boswell of the The Ottawa Citizen.
A U.S.-based company that has controversially laid claim to nearly all of the Arctic Ocean’s undersea oil said yesterday that new geological data suggest a “potentially vast” petroleum resource of 400 billion barrels. That figure is backed by a respected Canadian researcher who recently signed on as the firm’s chief scientific adviser.
Las Vegas-based Arctic Oil & Gas has raised eyebrows around the world with its roll-of-the-dice bid to lock up exclusive rights to extract oil and gas from rapidly melting areas of the central Arctic Ocean, currently beyond the territorial control of Canada, Russia and other polar nations.

The company, which counts retired B.C. (British Colombia, Canada) Senator Edward Lawson among its directors, has filed a claim with the United Nations to act as the sole “development agent” of Arctic seabed oil and gas.
The firm acknowledges that the Arctic’s petroleum deposits are the “common heritage of mankind,” but has argued that the polar region requires a private “lead manager” to organize a multinational consortium of oil companies to extract undersea resources responsibly and equitably.

The Canadian government has dismissed the company’s “alleged claim” over Arctic oil as having “no force in law,” but experts in polar issues have raised alarms about the firm’s actions, saying they could disrupt efforts to create an orderly regime for exploiting resources and protecting the Arctic environment under international law rather than a marketplace model.

In its latest statement about the polar seabed’s “enormous reserve potential” for petroleum deposits, Arctic Oil & Gas cites recent scientific evidence that huge, floating mats of azolla — a prehistoric fern believed to have covered much of the Arctic Ocean during a planetary hothouse era about 55 million years ago — decomposed soon after the age of the dinosaurs and exist today as “vast hydrocarbon resources” trapped in layers of rock below the polar ice cap.
Jonathan Bujak, a former geoscientist with the Geological Survey of Canada who now works as a private consultant in Canada and Britain, is described in the Arctic Oil & Gas statement as confirming the “highly probable validity” of recent research pointing to rock layers “extremely rich” in “hydrocarbon precursors” throughout the Arctic basin.
Mr. Bujak, who previously worked for PetroCanada as a petroleum geologist, co-authored a landmark 2006 study in the journal Nature that first detailed the ancient azolla explosion that shows up today in Arctic seabed core samples.
Neither Mr. Bujak nor Mr. Lawson could be reached for comment yesterday.
Scientists have predicted that global warming could leave the entire Arctic virtually ice-free for months at a time within 20 years. That prospect has hastened a scramble among nations with a polar coast — namely Canada, Russia, the U.S., Norway and Denmark, which controls Greenland — to try to strengthen their scientific claims under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to extended territorial sovereignty over the Arctic Ocean floor.
A report issued last week by the European Union’s top two foreign policy officials also highlighted the looming international struggle over Arctic oil deposits. Authored by Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Europe’s commissioner for external relations, the study pointed to “potential consequences for international stability and European security interests” as the retreat of Arctic ice makes shipping and oil and gas exploration a reality in the region.

Noting the “rapid melting of the polar ice caps,” the report noted that “the increased accessibility of the enormous hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic region is changing the geo-strategic dynamics of the region.”