The UNU on Arid Aquaculture.
11 November, 2008

The UNU researchers issued a report “Arid Aquaculture Among Alternative Livelihoods Promoted to Relieve Worsening Pressure on World’s Drylands” as a result of the four-year study in cooperation with the International Centre on Agricultural Research in Dryland Areas (ICARDA), and UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Program.

“Arid aquaculture” using ponds filled with salty, undrinkable water for fish production is one of several options experts have proven to be an effective potential alternative livelihood for people living in desertified parts of the world’s expanding drylands.

While it may sound far-fetched, researchers say using briny water to establish aquaculture in a dry, degraded part of Pakistan not only introduced a new source of income, it helped improve nutrition through diet diversification. The researchers also showed it possible to cultivate some varieties of vegetables with the same type of brackish water.

The project based on the results of the research will be launched by the project partners in Istanbul, Turkey, at 1:00 pm local time Nov. 12 at meetings of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.

A policy brief based on the Sustainable Management of Marginal Drylands (SUMAMAD) project and News Release on “Arid Aquaculture Report” are available on-line.

People in Marginal Drylands. Managing Natural Resources to Improve Human Well-being. A policy brief based on the Sustainable Management of Marginal Drylands (SUMAMAD) project Drylands_policy_brief.pdf

Arid Aquaculture Among Alternative Livelihoods Promoted to Relieve Worsening Pressure on World’s Drylands. Four-year Study Calls for Urgent Reforms to Avert Further Desertification That Threatens Millions of “the Poorest of the Poor” Worldwide.

Dryland policy brie new release.doc

Poland rejects French CO2 compromise as summit looms.
RENATA GOLDIROVA, November 20, 2008

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Poland has given the cold shoulder to concessions offered by the French EU presidency on how the union’s power sector should reduce CO2 emissions.

“It does not solve the problem of electricity prices in a satisfactory way,” one Polish diplomat said on Wednesday (19 November) in response to the French proposal.

What will happen if the 11 December EU summit, the post-Poznan summit - fails to see agreement?

The concessions paper is aimed at addressing Warsaw’s key objection - against the buying of 100 percent of pollution permits under the union’s reformed emissions trading scheme (ETS), the cornerstone of the EU’s strategy against climate change.

Under the reform, EU governments would no longer give away permits to pollute to the power sector. Instead, the industry would be forced to buy the right to emit carbon dioxide by auction, with full auctioning expected to kick in from 2013.

To get Poland on board, the French EU presidency has offered a three-year long exemption from the regime to those countries that produce at least 60 percent of their electricity from coal and are poorly connected to the grids of other EU states.

Their plants could receive half of their pollution permits for free until 2016, France has suggested.

Poland - the chief opponent of the ETS reform - swiftly rejected the French ideas, however. It claims the changes would harm its economy, as almost 95 percent of the country’s energy production is based on coal.

***
Alternative suggestion:

Instead, Warsaw has tabled its own alternative to full auctioning - a so-called “benchmarking-auctioning approach” that suggests granting free allocations on the basis of actual production.

In practice, separate benchmarks would be set for each type of electricity production - hard coal, brown coal, natural gas and fuel oil - while free allowances would be granted “ex-post” based on actual emissions.

The system would reward best performers, a Polish diplomat said.

Starting from 2013, the base benchmark would be reduced by one percent each year - something that should put additional pressure on the power sector to modernise technologies.

Warsaw argues that its proposal helps address concerns about the level of electricity prices, while full auctioning is likely to see producers passing on the entire market price of allowances to consumers in the electricity price.

“In countries where coal is the main fuel for electricity production, the electricity price increases will be particularly visible due to a need to purchase a proportionately larger quantity of allowances at auctions,” the Polish paper says.

In addition, Poland suggests to promote development of clean coal technologies rather than to eliminate coal from electricity production. “The EU should treat coal as an energy source, which improves its energy security,” it says.

***

Another EU summit?

The 27-nation bloc has been in a race against time, trying to reach a deal on the ambitious package of green legislation in mid-December (11-12 December) when EU leaders are set to meet in Brussels .

“For the time being, we hope for an agreement on the 11th and the 12th. If there is no agreement, then we will see,” a French presidency spokeswoman told EUobserver.

 DLDD = Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought.

The high-level policy dialogue (the “Dialogue”) on the theme “Coping with today’s global challenges in the context of the Strategy of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification” (UNCCD), took place on Tuesday, 27 May 2008, in Bonn, Germany. The Dialogue was intended to facilitate a targeted exchange from a number of stakeholders on the ten-year strategic plan (“the Strategy”) and to foster awareness of and buy-in among relevant policy and decision makers. There were over 120 participants, including ambassadors, ministers, country representatives, intergovernmental organizations, UN agencies, NGOs and the private sector. The Dialogue consisted of three segments, each of which comprised presentations and discussion among participants.

Above as reported by IISD from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) -                UNCCD HIGH-LEVEL POLICY DIALOGUE in Linkages:  www.iisd.ca/vol04/enb04208e.html

Now We have a new PRESS RELEASE FROM A UNCCD Conference:
UN Desertification conference, Istanbul: “Without proper action, both in developing and developed countries, some 50 million people could be displaced by desertification and land degradation within the next ten years,” warns the Executive Secretary of the UNCCD.

Istanbul, Turkey, 14 November 2008 - A major United Nations conference ended today with significant steps taken to combat desertification and land degradation as well as to mitigate the effects of drought, known as DLDD. Delegates from the 193 countries who are the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) took significant actions to resolve  difficult scientific problems within the Convention process. By drawing in the scientific and technological community more intensively to create indicators that can be used at national levels and beyond, the Convention will win more confidence of the stakeholders. In addition, the reporting process from the Parties is to be mainstreamed so that both affected countries and development partners can see where the Convention reaps large benefits and retain them, while eliminating less effective ones.

“The delegates here in Istanbul took a big stride to guide the next year’s ninth Conference of the Parties (COP9) [the decision making body of the Convention]. We are all on the same page. But it has to be remembered that without proper action by stakeholders, both in developing and developed countries, some 50 million people could be displaced by desertification and land degradation within the next ten years,” said Mr. Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD.

The Seventh Session of the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC 7) and the first special session of the Committee on Science and Technology (CST-S1) were held in Istanbul from 3 to 14 November.

At the first special session of the Committee for Science and Technology (CST-S1), the scientific advisory body of the Convention, delegates confirmed that promoting the participation of the national science and technology correspondents (STC) in the activities of the committee would enhance its work. The Committee, in consultation with STCs, is now moving forward to select a minimum set of indicators to measure the impact of the implementation of the Convention.

Mr. Gnacadja said that these indicators would be applicable to all countries so that a common standard can make analysis at the national, sub-regional, regional, and the global level feasible. It will also increase the effectiveness of the implementation of the Convention. The set of indicators will be finalized during regional scientific meetings next year towards the submission to COP9.

The ninth session of the CST (CST9) scientific conference will be held next year to ensure peer scientific review with which a Scientific Policy Dialogue is planned.

***

At the seventh session of the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC 7), which followed the CST-S1, the delegates agreed on reporting principles which measures the Convention’s implementation progress. Through the reporting process, affected countries and development partners would understand “what works, what doesn’t” in implementing the Convention. Assessment of national capacity to implement the Convention will be conducted in all regions in order to design a comprehensive capacity building approach.

The new reporting format will provide opportunities for affected country Parties to address their success and constraints in implementing the Convention in its 10-year strategic plan. For developed country Parties, future reporting should focus on providing information about how the Convention has been mainstreamed into their development cooperation strategies.

Another significant step was the concrete proposal to strengthen the involvement of integration civil society organizations in the review process.

“Recommendations made at the conference have several significant implications. First, the reporting guidelines will increase credibility of the Convention. Secondly, by Parties agreeing to the establishment of the workprogramme, taking a result-based management approach, the Convention will increase accountability. Further, the cooperation among the Convention institutions will increase efficiency of the implementation process of the Convention.” commented Mr. Gnacadja.  “This is a certain step-forward for making the Convention a systemic and worldwide response to global environmental issues affecting land and its ecosystems.”
The 10-year strategic plan, adopted at the eighth Conference of the Parties (COP8) in Madrid last year, is the response of the member Parties to change in the Convention’s environment. In response to the change, there is a need to restructure the UNCCD institutions for their institutional coherence; to strengthen the Committee on Science and Technology (CST); and to improve the review process of the implementation of the Convention with new and standardized reporting guidelines. Mr. Gnacadja hopes that, by taking these actions, Parties could agree and monitor qualitative and quantitative targets to be achieved towards the goals set out in the 10-year strategic plan. “Setting, achieving and monitoring targets on land improvement with incentive mechanisms could redefine the concept and the content of international development cooperation,” Mr. Gnacadja said, “that could be achieved from strong partnerships of all the stakeholders involved.”

The new recommendations would entail a wider use of the information generated by countries and would achieve a higher level of accountability as desired by the Parties, according to the UNCCD Executive Secretary. These will be addressed at the next Conference of the Parties in autumn 2009.

“The pieces have fallen together here in Istanbul to fight DLDD. Now is the time to act,” concluded Mr. Gnacadja.

Media interested in more information about the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification can call Marcos Montoiro at +49-228-815-2806 or send an e-mail to  press at unccd.int

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Developed as a result of the Rio Summit, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is a unique instrument that has brought attention to land degradation to some of the most vulnerable ecosystems and people in the world. Twelve years after coming into force, the UNCCD benefits from the largest membership of the three Rio Conventions and is increasingly recognized as an instrument that can make an important contribution to the achievement of sustainable development and poverty reduction.

Subject 1: Re: Nuclear Reactors are going micro.

This is a radically new reactor design with a lot of interesting properties.

I found the patent application with Google patent search.  It’s not that big, so I attach a copy.

To answer Charles’s questions:

You get the heat out with pipes carrying a heat transfer fluid to and from the surface.  No ground water needed.

I believe it’s intrinsically extremely difficult to use this technology to make weapons grade material.

You make electricity with a steam turbine and cooling arrangements at the surface.

The patent application points out that the fact that the hydride fuel is its own moderator whose moderating effect is controlled by the same mechanism that controls the reactor, namely the temperature difference between the fissile hydride core and a  non-fissile hydride hydrogen store, means that the core can be made twice as big as required for criticality. This means that fuel burnup could be as much as 50%. This is a huge increase over current burnup rates of 1 to 3 %, and could dramatically extend refueling intervals.  (Apparently not proposed for the Hyperion product.)

The fuel cycle permits extremely easy separation of low life-time fission products from long-life actinides. All of the actinides can be kept in the purified fuel where they will eventually be burned up in a reactor.  This means that both the volume and half-life of waste can be reduced enormously.

Although proposed for small reactors, this technology could be used for big ones too. It’s a pity it was not invented long ago. It would have changed the whole trajectory of nuclear power.

Too late now, of course.

David

Subject: Nuclear Reactors are going micro; Ok, so what’s the catch?

Steve

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20…

How do you get rid of the heat? Just let it diffuse into the ground? Do you need groundwater flow? No weapons grade is interesting, but it might be partially enriched making it easy to make WG. No moving parts: how do you make electricity with no moving parts? Some kind of fuel cell?

Still, interesting.

———————————————————————–

Subject 2: Wind Farms:

Lets see, we just took our class to a wind farm.  You get 1.5 GW machine working 30% of the time for 1 million, so that is $2 million per GW effective.
If this nuclear thing does 20,000 homes that implies (if US) it is 10 GW. for what did they say, 25 million?  That is $2.5 million per GW.
Wind might be marginally cheaper (if I did my math right), a lot less scary, but would need backup.

Charlie

********************************************************

Subject 3: Interesting conversation between one of ours and a Shell oilman:

There is some data available, but it’s held by groups such as CERA and is only available to subscribers of their various data services.  In one such study “The Cost of Oil”, they analyze lifecycle costs for new oil in a number of countries and environments around the world, looking also at unconventional oil sources (oil sands and shale).

[ph] maybe the friend’s research institution can subscribe.   Do you know if that’s possible?

I can’t share the report or data with you, but in my reading of it and thinking about industry activities in the last few years as oil prices have spiked and then fallen, I’m not sure I know where we are on your curve.

[ph] the energy cost curve and the dollar cost curve follow ‘different masters’ as it were.  What seems to happen is that people coast along not paying attention and then a snag in providing increasing supplies gets the attention of the speculators.  When increased prices do not stimulate increasing supply a price war occurs, breaking all the set relationships and then it collapses in disarray for things to resettle at some semi stable level.    I note that the oil prices plummeted this month, but the food prices did not, for example.    The physical cost of resources follows different learning curves, and that’s what I’m trying to help gather data on.

It’s also not clear whether we can realize we are at a point of diminishing returns until we have moved well past.  Another complexity in oil is that 80% of supply comes from National Oil Companies and they will have very different definitions of diminishing returns than will commercial companies.  What does diminishing returns mean when the “return” is political stability or local employment, or staying in power?

[ph] To me it means that whatever you measure you then study the learning curve *for that measure*.   I think the effort of physical economists to measure some ‘scientific’ value judgment for resources (in place of money denominated market judgments) can work better if putting the scientific judgments down stream of the hard measures.   The better alternative seems to be to look at empirical learning curves using physical measures, and make a value judgments about the implied feedbacks in the systems producing them, as well as use them to read signals of environmental responses.

Some general numbers from my own study and thinking that might bear on this.  In conventional (easy) oil fields, the energy return on investment is very large.  I would say typically in the range of 20-100:1.  This can include some very challenging environments such as arctic or deepwater, but the resources have not been exploited so there are high returns to be had on the energy invested.  As we move down the resource pyramid, these numbers change significantly.  For oil sands developments, such as in Canada, or oil shale developments in the US (not being done yet) utilizing new technologies, the range is more like 3-10:1.  Numbers I’ve heard quoted for ethanol are something like 8:1 for sugarcane, and a range of 0.6-1.3:1 for corn.  The CERA study by the way looks at financial returns that tell a very different story.

[ph] I guess the one I’d be interested in is the curve of changing net energy return rates for new fields and for new  methods to increase extraction.  I understand that some proposals for going back to old fields with new technology are now becoming economic, but that surely must also involve spending more energy to get it done too.  It’s the curvature of the mean change over time that shows the environmental response to efforts for maximizing the resource.

I had an interesting debate in the mid-1980’s with an economist.  At the time, I was Exploration Economics Manager for Shell.  The question was if it takes more than a barrel to make a barrel, but the barrel made is worth more than the barrels used (rising prices and futures markets), is that good business?

Does this help at all?

[ph] Sure, it helps a good bit.   What I’m trying to do is help pin more of this down.   I think the point of vanishing returns is not close to 100% energy extraction cost, though that question does help point to how economists have no model for connecting reality to what they say we can do with it…. :-)     I think the greater concern I have is that when resource supply snags for necessities are hit (whether permanent or temporary), the scarcity drives up the price and encourages investment.     If the system has guessed wrong, and the supply snag is terminal diminishing returns, all the investment really drives is accelerating price increases and wasteful depletion of a critical resource.    It’s that positively negative feedback loop that concerns me.    Do you know of anyone else who has thought about that?

Subject 4: AND THIS IS WHAT GETS PUBLISHED! Stick to the oil drum folks!

 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200…

Scientific Community Called Upon To Resolve Debate On ‘Net Energy’ Once And For All

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2008) — “Net energy is a (mostly) irrelevant, misleading and dangerous metric,” says Professor Bruce Dale, editor-in-chief of Biofuels, Bioresources and Biorefining (Biofpr) in the latest issue of the journal published November 7.

Net energy is a metric by which some scientists attempt to assess the sustainability and ability of alternative fuels to displace fossil fuel but recent debate in Biofpr shows that scientists are undecided on its merits as a tool.

Instead, in a series of corresponding articles clearly stating the case for and against net energy, Professor Dale calls for a more holistic approach which takes into consideration issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, petroleum displacement and economic growth, particularly in the developing world. He is calling on the scientific community to come together to help establish, once and for all, parameters by which to calculate fuel efficiency by using not just one, but several metrics that can be used in conjunction to give a fuller picture.

The articles – Net energy: still a (mostly) irrelevant, misleading and dangerous metric, Bruce E. Dale; Net energy and strategic decision making: response to Professor Dale, Franzi Poldy; and Response to Dr. Poldy’s questions in this issue, Bruce E. Dale – are the culmination of the ongoing heated exchange, which has already attracted a huge response, between those in favor and those against the use of ‘net energy’ as a metric.

Professor Dale says: “The election of the new USA president, Barack Obama, who is an open supporter of biofuels will put them very much on the agenda. We need to resolve this issue of appropriate metrics once and for all so we can concentrate on the real task at hand – to deliver viable alternative fuels and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.”

He adds: “Net energy is misleading because it does not give us the whole story of a fuel but instead asks us to make a judgement using a very small component of the decision making process, albeit an important piece of a large jigsaw. When trying to determine whether a fuel is viable or not, we not only need to consider energy in versus energy out but also the overall context such as petrol displacement, land usage and economic growth – this requires a balanced approach with several metrics.”

However, in a corresponding article, Dr. Franzi Poldy, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Australia, disagrees, arguing that in order for policymakers and governments to make decisions about which fuels are best, they need to have numbers to work with to establish a way of calculating the benefits of potential fuels – net energy is the best way to do this.

He says: “Although net energy is not the whole story about any fuel, it is an important part of the story for those concerned with long-term energy supply at the whole-economy level.”

ENVIRONMENT-CHINA: Coal Far Costlier Than Thought - Study
By Antoaneta Bezlova from Beijing, for IPS (The Frontline of Environment).

BEIJING, Oct 29 (IPS) - Often criticised for its massive coal-based industries that jeopardise international efforts to combat global warming, China is undoubtedly the biggest victim of its voracious coal consumption.

Even more significantly, they calculate the hidden cost of environmental and social damage caused by China’s coal mining industry to be seven percent of the country’s 2007 gross domestic product.

***

If the so-called external, or hidden costs, were added to current coal tariffs, prices would rise by 23 percent, ‘The True Cost of Coal’ predicted.

***

Commissioned by Greenpeace, the U.S.-based Energy Foundation and WWF, the study was researched by Chinese economists for over two years. They sought help from experts in the country’s biggest coal producing region — Shanxi province — and from the national Centre for Disease Control.

“It is far too complicated to calculate those costs accurately,” said Mao, adding that if the costs of the impact of climate change resulting from coal combustion were factored in, China’s coal bill would be significantly higher.

***

China maintains that richer, developed nations should take the lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions while helping poor nations with money and technology to fight climate change.

But even if China wants the developed world to shoulder the historic burden of reducing carbon dioxide emissions responsible for climate change, the uncomfortable truth remains that its people are most exposed to the effects of what Mao termed an “excessive use of coal”.

***

Inhaling soot particles from coal-fired power plants is causing an epidemic of chronic respiratory diseases among Chinese. Without providing exact figures, the study estimated that the death rate per one million tonnes of coal produced and consumed in China was 70 times higher than in the U.S., and seven times higher than in Russia and India.

The report suggests the introduction of coal tax by 2009, which is expected to raise prices by nearly a quarter but reduce consumption only by seven percent. This means that coal would continue to dominate the country’s energy mix.

Yang Ailun, Greenpeace climate and energy campaign manager who helped coordinate the study, saw the bright side.

“Recognising the true cost of coal would create incentives to develop cleaner and more sustainable energy sources,” she said. “This would reduce China’s environmental pollution and show its leadership in fighting climate change.”

`We blew it’ on global food, says Bill Clinton.
By CHARLES J. HANLEY (AP) –  October 23, 2008.

UNITED NATIONS Headquarters, New York City  — Former President Clinton told a U.N. gathering Thursday that the global food crisis shows “we all blew it, including me,” by treating food crops “like color TVs” instead of as a vital commodity for the world’s poor.

Addressing a high-level event marking Oct. 16’s World Food Day, Clinton also saluted President Bush — “one thing he got right” — for pushing to change U.S. food aid policy. He scolded the bipartisan coalition in Congress that killed the idea of making some aid donations in cash rather than in food.
Clinton criticized decades of policymaking by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others, encouraged by the U.S., that pressured Africans in particular into dropping government subsidies for fertilizer, improved seed and other farm inputs as a requirement to get aid. Africa’s food self-sufficiency declined and food imports rose.

Now skyrocketing prices in the international grain trade — on average more than doubling between 2006 and early 2008 — have pushed many in poor countries deeper into poverty.

***

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the gathering that prices on some food items are “500 percent higher than normal” in Haiti and Ethiopia, for example. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the number of undernourished people worldwide rose to 923 million last year.

***

“Food is not a commodity like others,” Clinton said. “We should go back to a policy of maximum food self-sufficiency. It is crazy for us to think we can develop countries around the world without increasing their ability to feed themselves.” He noted that food aid from wealthy nations could itself be a tool for bolstering agriculture in poor countries.

Canada, for example, requires that 50 percent of its aid go as cash — not as Canadian grain — to buy crops grown locally in Africa and other recipient countries.

U.S. law, however, requires that almost all U.S. aid be American-grown food, which benefits U.S. farmers but undercuts local food crops. Bush proposed earlier this year that 25 percent of future U.S. aid be given in cash.

“A bipartisan coalition (in Congress) defeated him (that is G.W. Bush),” Clinton said. “He was right and both parties that defeated him were wrong.”

Clinton also criticized the heavy U.S. reliance on corn to produce ethanol, which increased demand for the crop and helped drive up grain prices worldwide.

“If we’re going to do biofuels, we ought to look at the more efficient kind,” he said, referring, for example, to the jatropha shrub, a nonfood source that grows on land not suitable for grain.

The U.N. General Assembly president, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua, agreed, speaking of the “madness of converting crops into fuel” for cars.

D’Escoto also expressed disappointment that of $22 billion pledged by wealthy nations to help poor nations’ agriculture in this year of food crisis, only $2.2 billion has been made available.

***

In opening the meeting, Ban expressed dismay at the potential impact of the global financial crisis on world hunger.
“While the international community is focused on turmoil in the global economy, I am extremely concerned that not enough is being done to help those who are suffering most: the poorest of the poor,” he said.

Window of Opportunity Closing Rapidly.
Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Oct 22 (IPS) - The global financial crisis has pushed climate change off the front pages despite new evidence that it is happening faster and with stronger impacts than previous projections, a new report warns. Meanwhile, some political leaders in Europe, Canada and elsewhere are saying that now is not the time to make sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions because the global economy is heading into a recession.

“It is clear that climate change is already having a greater impact than most scientists had anticipated, so it’s vital that international mitigation and adaptation responses become swifter and more ambitious,” said Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, professor of Climatology and Environmental Sciences at the Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.

The new data is so compelling that van Ypersele, the newly elected vice chair of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has urged the European Union to aim for a lower temperature target than the 2 degrees C they adopted in 1996.

That will require emission reductions beyond the 20 percent lower than the 1990 baseline by the year 2020 that the EU has as a target but is struggling to meet.

The new climate data since the 2007 IPCC report includes the astonishingly rapid meltdown of the Arctic sea ice over the last two years. Arctic Ocean water temperatures are 5 degrees C warmer than normal this October, ensuring that winter ice will form later and be thinner, setting the stage for more melting next summer.

Experts are now predicting a summer with no permanent ice in the Arctic in as soon as five years — for the first time in a million years, according to WWF’s new report, “Climate change: faster, stronger, sooner”. That is 30 to 60 years in advance of the IPCC projections.

The Canadian government, among many others, does not take the risks of climate change seriously, he said. Weaver recently published a book on climate change — “Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World” — to help the public understand the climate crisis and what needs to be done.

While many think the impacts of climate change are far off in the future, the WWF report cites studies reporting that yields of import food crops like wheat, maize and barley have been in decline since 1980, largely due to rising temperatures. That will worsen, especially in South Asia and southern Africa, where there will be sharp declines in yields in local food crops.

Warming oceans have already also increased the number and size of “dead zones” affecting global fisheries. Sea levels are also rising faster as Greenland and Antarctic glaciers melt far faster than predictions, putting coastal communities under greater threat from storm surges and salt-water intrusion into coastal fresh-water aquifers, the report notes.

“It was time to remind policy-makers of the heavy consequences of inaction on climate,” said Delia Villagrasa, senior advisor at the WWF European Policy Office in Brussels.

This week’s release of the WWF report was also in response to the media’s preoccupation with the global financial crisis, Villagrasa told IPS.

That view is mirrored by Wednesday’s launch of the “Green Economy Initiative” to mobilise the global economy towards investments in clean technologies and “natural” infrastructure, such as forests and soils, as the best bet for real growth.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and leading economists said at the launch in London that there are enormous economic, social and environmental benefits in combating climate change and re-investing in natural infrastructure. These benefits range from new green jobs in clean tech and clean energy businesses up to ones in sustainable agriculture and conservation-based enterprises.

“Transformative ideas need to be discussed and transformative decisions taken,” Achim Steiner, UNEP’s executive director, said in a statement.

Transformative decisions are particularly needed at the next round of U.N. climate convention negotiations in Poznan, Poland in December, Steiner said.

The climate meetings in Poznan will lay the groundwork for a final global climate deal to be negotiated in Copenhagen in 2009. This new climate treaty will be the successor to the Kyoto Protocol and is likely to be the most important international agreement in human history.

Even though Europe has taken the lead on climate, it is now having trouble reaching agreement amongst its members, largely due to heavy lobbying from the same old suspects — the oil, coal and heavy industry sectors, said Villagrasa.

Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic, among other coal-powered countries, are fighting European emission reduction targets even though the vast majority of Europe’s citizens want strong action on climate, she said.

Without strong European leadership, it is not clear how the global community will reach a new international agreement to reduce emissions at a level and timetable that reflects what the world’s best scientists say are needed to stabilise the climate.

Meanwhile, in recent years annual emissions of climate-altering gases have already exceeded the IPCC worst-case scenarios, said Weaver. That means Earth’s atmosphere is trapping more of the sun’s heat sooner than expected, inevitably accelerating climate impacts.

“Copenhagen is the last chance for humanity to solve this,” said Weaver.