Information From:  jeh1 at columbia.edu

This Sunday evening (June 1, 2008) 7:30 pm - at Cary Hall in Lexington, Massachusetts - a few hundred yards from where the first shots of the American Revolution were fired , the Lexington Global Warming Action Coalition (info at www.lexgwac.org) will hold an appeal to the governor om matters of climate change.

The speakers will be: Mark Bowen, author of “Censoring Science” and James (Jim) Hansen who knows a thing or two about how climate science was censored.

Perhaps there is an analogy between the gap that developed between the best interests of the American people and policies of despotic King George and the gap that has developed between the best interests of the public (and nature) and the policies (mainly those related to energy) that we now live under.

A different sort of revolution, within the democratic framework, is needed, but it won’t be easy. What makes it a hair-raising drama, with an outcome far from assured, is the combination of climate system inertia and resulting planetary energy imbalance, energy system inertia, and climate system tipping points.

There is a $5 admission.

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.

From:  jamesdavidford at hotmail.com

CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS: CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION.

Title: Climate change adaptation in developed nations.
Editors: Dr James D. Ford and Dr Lea Berrang Ford, Dept. of Geography, McGill University, Montreal
Publisher: Springer, Netherlands.

Introduction

Recent experience from Hurricane Katrina to the European Heatwave has challenged the notion that developed nations have limited vulnerability to climatic risks. Climate change is expected to change the magnitude, frequency and spatial distribution of climatic risks affecting developed nations, with potential wide ranging implications. In many regions climate change is already having an impact. Finding ways to reduce or moderate the negative effects of current and projected climate change (i.e. adaptation) is emerging as key area of climate policy. Governments, business, municipalities, industry, and NGOs are among those seeking to identify adaptation needs and policy entry points. As many commentators have noted, however, there is an ‘adaptation deficit’ between the policies and research that are needed to promote and support adaptation and what is currently available. This book will profile the latest research in climate change adaptation and policy analysis in developed nations, identifying adaptation strategies which can reduce climate change vulnerability in different sectors, highlighting examples of best practice for managing climate risks, evaluating cases where adaptation plans have been developed, and outlining challenges to effective adaptation. The book will be targeted at the scientific community and policy makers involved in climate change adaptation planning.

Call for chapters

Chapters are being sought from researchers, policy makers, and others involved in climate change adaptation planning in the following areas:

1.Public health and climate change adaptation
2.Adaptation to climate change in the urban environment
3.Climate change adaptation in industry
4.Adapting to climate change in the agricultural sector
5.Climate change adaptation in resource dependent communities

Chapters should focus on developed nations, defined here as those nations comprising annex II to the UNFCCC. Each chapter will be limited to a maximum of 3500 words, reflecting the objective of the book to introduce readers to a range of key issues on climate change adaptation in a number of sectors. All articles will be subject to peer review. Preference will be given to articles focusing on practical case-studies and examples of adaptation initiatives. Submissions related to municipal, industrial, and government adaptation approaches are particularly encouraged.

Authors are invited to submit a short proposal (250 words maximum), describing the topic and scope of the proposed chapter.

Important Dates

Important dates include:

1.Deadline for submission of short proposals: June 25th 2008
2.Proposals selected/ approved for full article submission: July 2008
3.Deadline for submission of full articles: November 30th 2008
4.Expected publication: May 2009.

Contact information

For more information, or to submit a proposal, contact the book editors, James Ford or Lea Berrang Ford at  climatechangebook.geog at mcgill.ca

It has been over 12 months since the launch of the first version of the CERSPA – Certified Emission Reduction Sale and Purchase Agreement. The CERSPA initiative aims at elaborating and maintaining (through regular updates) a simple and balanced carbon contract template (and an comprehensive explanatory Guidance Document) to assist CDM project developers in fully understanding the terms and conditions under which they sell their CERs.

The CERSPA Carbon Contract Template has received substantial positive feedback and it is now widely used throughout Latin America and Asia. As the CERSPA and Guidance Document are meant to be living documents, we are now initiating a complete review process of the existing documents in order to prepare a second version of the CERSPA (“CERSPA V.2”).

If you would like to contribute to the CERSPA review process, please send your comments, suggestions and ideas to  t.chagas at climatefocus.com.

You may also provide your input and comments on the CERSPA through our online Forum for discussion available at http://www.cerspa.org/. The Forum is open to the participation of all!

Looking forward to receiving your comments and contributions!

Thiago Chagas    tb.chagas at gmail.com

Climate Focus B.V.
Minervahuis III
Rodezand 34
3011 AN Rotterdam
The Netherlannds

www.climatefocus .com

Scientist Shifts View on Global Warming

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP
Posted: 2008-05-18 15:55:50
Filed Under: Science News
WASHINGTON (May 18) - Global warming isn’t to blame for the recent jump in hurricanes in the Atlantic, concludes a study by a prominent federal scientist whose position has shifted on the subject.

Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study released Sunday.

Vincent Laforet, Pool / Getty Images

Are There Benefits
To Global Warming?
1 of 10

Ever since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, hurricanes have often been seen as a symbol of global warming’s wrath. However, a new study shows that warmer temperatures may actually reduce the number of Atlantic hurricanes. Click through the photos to see other positive effects of global warming.

In the past, Knutson has raised concerns about the effects of climate change on storms. His new paper has the potential to heat up a simmering debate among meteorologists about current and future effects of global warming in the Atlantic.

Ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, hurricanes have often been seen as a symbol of global warming’s wrath. Many climate change experts have tied the rise of hurricanes in recent years to global warming and hotter waters that fuel them.

Another group of experts, those who study hurricanes and who are more often skeptical about global warming, say there is no link. They attribute the recent increase to a natural multi-decade cycle.

What makes this study different is Knutson, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fluid dynamics lab in Princeton, N.J.

He has warned about the harmful effects of climate change and has even complained in the past about being censored by the Bush administration on past studies on the dangers of global warming.

He said his new study, based on a computer model, argues “against the notion that we’ve already seen a really dramatic increase in Atlantic hurricane activity resulting from greenhouse warming.”

John McConnico, AP

Effects of
Global Warming
1 of 18

A record amount of Greenland’s ice sheet melted this summer — 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark. And for the first time on record, the Northwest Passage was open to navigation.

The study, published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, predicts that by the end of the century the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic will fall by 18 percent.

The number of hurricanes making landfall in the United States and its neighbors - anywhere east of Puerto Rico - will drop by 30 percent because of wind factors.

The biggest storms - those with winds of more than 110 mph - would only decrease in frequency by 8 percent. Tropical storms, those with winds between 39 and 73 mph, would decrease by 27 percent.

It’s not all good news from Knutson’s study, however. His computer model also forecasts that hurricanes and tropical storms will be wetter and fiercer. Rainfall within 30 miles of a hurricane should jump by 37 percent and wind strength should increase by about 2 percent, Knutson’s study says.

And Knutson said this study significantly underestimates the increase in wind strength. Some other scientists criticized his computer model.

MIT hurricane meteorologist Kerry Emanuel, while praising Knutson as a scientist, called his conclusion “demonstrably wrong” based on a computer model that doesn’t look properly at storms.

NASA

Historic Hurricanes
1 of 12

Hurricane Wilma in 2005 was the most intense hurricane ever. It measured 882 millibars, the lowest pressure on record. There were 27 named Atlantic storms that year, also a record.

Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist, said Knutson’s computer model is poor at assessing tropical weather and “fail to replicate storms with any kind of fidelity.”

Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said it is not just the number of hurricanes “that matter, it is also the intensity, duration and size, and this study falls short on these issues.”

Knutson acknowledges weaknesses in his computer model and said it primarily gives a coarse overview, not an accurate picture on individual storms and storm strength. He said the latest model doesn’t produce storms surpassing 112 mph.

But NOAA hurricane meteorologist Chris Landsea, who wasn’t part of this study, praised Knutson’s work as “very consistent with what’s being said all along.”

“I think global warming is a big concern, but when it comes to hurricanes the evidence for changes is pretty darn tiny,” Landsea said.

Hurricane season starts June 1 in the Atlantic and a Colorado State University forecast predicts about a 50 percent more active than normal storm season this year. NOAA puts out its own seasonal forecast on May 22.

In a normal year about 10 named storms form. Six become hurricanes and two become major hurricanes. On average, about five hurricanes hit the United States every three years.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2008-05-18 14:33:13

It Isn’t Morning in America Anymore — It’s Dusk on Planet Earth - If we want to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed, we’ve got to cut CO2 emissions.

By Bill McKibben, Tomdispatch.com. Posted May 12, 2008.

Even for Americans, constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start — even for us, the world looks a little Terminal right now.

It’s not just the economy. We’ve gone through swoons before. It’s that gas at $4 a gallon means we’re running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It’s that when we try to turn corn into gas, it sends the price of a loaf of bread shooting upwards and starts food riots on three continents. It’s that everything is so inextricably tied together. It’s that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the “limits to growth” suddenly seem  - how best to put it - right. All of a sudden it isn’t morning in America, it’s dusk on planet Earth.

There’s a number — a new number — that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA’s Jim Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The abstract attached to it argued — and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper — “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.” Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points — massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them — that we’ll pass if we don’t get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer’s insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.

So it’s a tough diagnosis. It’s like the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high and, if you don’t bring it down right away, you’re going to have a stroke. So you take the pill, you swear off the cheese, and, if you’re lucky, you get back into the safety zone before the coronary. It’s like watching the tachometer edge into the red zone and knowing that you need to take your foot off the gas before you hear that clunk up front.

In this case, though, it’s worse than that because we’re not taking the pill and we are stomping on the gas — hard. Instead of slowing down, we’re pouring on the coal, quite literally. Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year — two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast.

And suddenly, the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas, accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. Apparently, we’ve managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth.

And don’t forget: China is building more power plants; India is pioneering the $2,500 car.
Here’s the thing. Hansen didn’t just say that, if we didn’t act, there was trouble coming; or, if we didn’t yet know what was best for us, we’d certainly be better off below 350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. His phrase was:           “if we wish to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed.”

A planet with billions of people living near those oh-so-floodable coastlines. A planet with ever more vulnerable forests. (A beetle, encouraged by warmer temperatures, has already managed to kill 10 times more trees than in any previous infestation across the northern reaches of Canada this year. This means far more carbon heading for the atmosphere and apparently dooms Canada’s efforts to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, already in doubt because of its decision to start producing oil for the U.S. from Alberta’s tar sands.)

We’re the ones who kicked the warming off; now, the planet is starting to take over the job. Melt all that Arctic ice, for instance, and suddenly the nice white shield that reflected 80% of incoming solar radiation back into space has turned to blue water that absorbs 80% of the sun’s heat. Such feedbacks are beyond history, though not in the sense that Francis Fukuyama had in mind.

And we have, at best, a few years to short-circuit them — to reverse course. Here’s the Indian scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year (and, by the way, got his job when the Bush administration, at the behest of Exxon Mobil, forced out his predecessor): “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”

In the next two or three years, the nations of the world are supposed to be negotiating a successor treaty to the Kyoto Accord. When December 2009 rolls around, heads of state are supposed to converge on Copenhagen to sign a treaty — a treaty that would go into effect at the last plausible moment to heed the most basic and crucial of limits on atmospheric CO2.

If we did everything right, says Hansen, we could see carbon emissions start to fall fairly rapidly and the oceans begin to pull some of that CO2 out of the atmosphere. Before the century was out we might even be on track back to 350. We might stop just short of some of those tipping points, like the Road Runner screeching to a halt at the very edge of the cliff.

More likely, though, we’re the Coyote — because “doing everything right” means that political systems around the world would have to take enormous and painful steps right away. It means no more new coal-fired power plants anywhere, and plans to quickly close the ones already in operation. (Coal-fired power plants operating the way they’re supposed to are, in global warming terms, as dangerous as nuclear plants melting down.)

It means making car factories turn out efficient hybrids next year, just the way we made them turn out tanks in six months at the start of World War II. It means making trains an absolute priority and planes a taboo.

It means making every decision wisely because we have so little time and so little money, at least relative to the task at hand. And hardest of all, it means the rich countries of the world sharing resources and technology freely with the poorest ones, so that they can develop dignified lives without burning their cheap coal.

That’s possible – we launched a Marshall Plan once, and we could do it again, this time in relation to carbon – But in a month when the President has, once more, urged us to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, that seems unlikely. In a month when the alluring phrase “gas tax holiday” has danced into our vocabulary, it’s hard to see (though it was encouraging to see that Clinton’s gambit didn’t sway many voters). And if it’s hard to imagine sacrifice here, imagine China, where people produce a quarter as much carbon apiece as we do.

Still, as long as it’s not impossible, we’ve got a duty to try. In fact, it’s about the most obvious duty humans have ever faced.

A few of us have just launched a new campaign, 350.org. Its only goal is to spread this number around the world in the next 18 months, via art and music and ruckuses of all kinds, in the hope that it will push those post-Kyoto negotiations in the direction of reality.

After all, those talks are our last chance; you just can’t do this one light bulb at a time. And if this 350.org campaign is a Hail Mary pass, well, sometimes those passes get caught.

We do have one thing going for us: This new tool, the Web which, at least, allows you to imagine something like a grassroots global effort. If the Internet was built for anything, it was built for sharing this number, for making people understand that “350″ stands for a kind of safety, a kind of possibility, a kind of future.

Hansen’s words were well-chosen: “a planet similar to that on which civilization developed.” People will doubtless survive on a non-350 planet, but those who do will be so preoccupied, coping with the endless unintended consequences of an overheated planet, that civilization may not.

Civilization is what grows up in the margins of leisure and security provided by a workable relationship with the natural world. That margin won’t exist, at least not for long, this side of 350. That’s the limit we face.

Bill McKibben is a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org.  His most recent book is The Bill McKibben Reader.

From:  gdeville at envirosecurity.org
“The Bali climate talks have failed to deliver the tangible results so many craved. However, even the weariest pessimist would have to acknowledge the significant step that the Bali talks made, demonstrated by the agreement to hold global negotiations over the next two years leading to Copenhagen in 2009.

In this context, Europe can show how change can be achieved. While it is currently not a major player, Europe still has a vital role to play as a torch-bearer, if not yet a consolidated political leader. Such vision is required now more than ever as Europe is hosting two COPs in succession, providing Europe with a special opportunity to demonstrate leadership”.

{Above talks about the Poznan (2008) and Copenhagen (2009) COPs of the UNFCCC.

Above Forgets to note that the US can also make a terrific contribution in the 2008 elections for US Presidency. This if next US President will be ready to participate in the leadership on climate change. The problem is nevertheless that the US does not change Presidents before January 20, 2009 - so - at Poznan the US willl still be outside the leadership circle and foreseably still considered a wall-flower.

We bring this up as it increases the onus on the EU to become central player, have contact with the US President-elect and make sure that his people take into consideration the EU proposed route when forging a new US aproach to climate change policy.}
The findings (of the ideas presented in this posting) are among the key recommendations in the newly issued Report of the Conference ‘From Bali to Poznan – New Issues, New Challenges’ organised in December 2007 by the Institute for Environmental Security in cooperation with Globe Europe, Globe EU and e-Parliament. The Report is now available for download at gdeville at envirosecurity.org

—–
Institute for Environmental Security
The Hague - Brussels - London - California - New York - Washington DC
International Secretariat
Anna Paulownastraat 103
2518 BC The Hague, The Netherlands
Tel: + 31 70 365 2299
Fax: + 31 70 365 1948
Email:  info at envirosecurity.org
Url: www.envirosecurity.org

Are Myanmar’s Storm Victims Suffering Needlessly? Asks The Washington DC based World Watch Institute.

by Ben Block on May 9, 2008

But the posted article did not mention the effect of climate change that seemingly can make it predictable that similar large scale disasters will become more frequent. also, though pointing out the effects of uncontrolled - so called development - and the lack of interest by the Myanmar government in the wellbeing of its citizens, does not follow up with any reference to the US experience with the recent Hurricanes that hit Louisiana. Eerily, we find similarities here even though we would not go as far as equating the government systems of the US and Myanmar, but we will nevertheless fare to equate the lack of fore-sight when watching, and sometimes even sponsoring, unsound development and removal of natural barriers against furious storms from the sea. Also the post disaster reaction may allow for some comparison.

We mention the above because we hope the Irrawaddy lesson will not be only that Burma is run by a junta, but that the world must think of how to act now so that the scale of future disasters will be less biting then it was in these two recent examples.

Photo courtesy of NASA
Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta is shown before (top) and after (bottom) Cyclone Nargis inundated the coast, killing thousands. The storm further destroyed mangroves that may serve as protective buffers against waves.

As the floodwaters of Cyclone Nargis began to recede from Myanmar’s low-lying Irrawaddy Delta this week, at least one regional leader was quick to note that this devastating disaster could have been partially prevented through better coastal management.

Surin Pitsuwan, secretary-general of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), mentioned in an address in Singapore that expanding coastal populations and widespread mangrove degradation played key roles in worsening the cyclone’s impact. Much of the damage from the cyclone was caused by storm surge, powerful waves whipped up by the high winds.

“The mangrove forests, which used to serve as buffer between the rising tide, between big waves and storms and the residential area… all those lands have been destroyed,” Agence France-Presse reported him saying. “Human beings are now direct victims of such natural forces.”

Mangrove forests, salt-tolerant trees and shrubs found mainly in intertidal areas of the tropics, provide critical breeding grounds and habitat for many plants and animals, including several high-value fish species. Ever since the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated parts of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Thailand, mangroves have received greater attention for their potential role in protecting coastlines against storm surges. But their role as coastal guardians - including in places like the Irrawaddy Delta - is still disputed within the scientific community.

Of the 100,000 people who Myanmar officials say have perished or face imminent death if they do not receive humanitarian aid in the wake of the May 2 cyclone, many had lived in areas once covered with mangrove forests. Myanmar is home to some of the largest remaining forested areas in Southeast Asia. However, the government junta often encourages citizens to convert mangrove forests into shrimp aquaculture facilities or rice fields. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that Myanmar lost about 9 percent of its mangrove forests - 48,500 hectares - between 1980 and 2005.

Mangrove roots hold together the shifting silt and other debris that flows down a delta and shapes coastal landscapes. By deterring erosion, mangroves prevent the debris from washing inland and damaging agricultural land. “It’s pretty…clear, looking around the world, that it is generally accepted that mangroves help stop erosion and protect coastland,” said Mark Spalding, a senior marine scientist with The Nature Conservancy.

Mangrove branches and roots may also reduce the surging energy of a massive storm wave as it approaches inland. “There are lots of structures that add friction to the movement of water through this fringing mangrove forest,” said Ivan Valiela, a marine biologist with Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts.

But to effectively study the role of mangroves in slowing wave action, researchers need to compare a severely damaged mangrove coast with a similar mangrove coast that was not heavily affected.