From: Andrew Holland <Holland@iiss.org>
Date: Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 9:23 AM
Subject: May 5 Invitation: IISS Conference on the Global Security Implications of Climate Change

The IISS’ Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security presents:

Defining Global Security in the 21st Century:

A Conference on the Global Security Implications of Climate Change

Tuesday, 5 May 2009

8:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

The Ritz Carlton, Washington DC

1150 22nd St, NW

Participants will include distinguished government, military, business, media and academic leaders from the United States and Europe.

AGENDA:

Panel #1                     Can we have both Energy Security and Climate Security?   Are long term security from climate change and short-term energy security compatible?

Panel #2                     Managing Climate-Induced State-Threatening Crises:   How should militaries plan for massive humanitarian interventions into states stressed by climate-induced crises?

Panel #3                     The Strategic Consequences of the Copenhagen Meeting: How do we define ‘security’ in a world of climate instability? Is a global emissions-reduction treaty necessary for long-term global security?

Participants are required to register by April 30, 2009. There are no fees associated with this conference. A light breakfast and lunch will be provided. In your acceptance, please indicate if you will only attend select portions. Space is limited, and preference will be given to those who can stay through the entire day. You will receive personal correspondence confirming your registration for the event.

E-mail:  events-washington at iiss.org   Tel: 202.659.1490

—————————————————————————-

– The IISS would like to thank the European Commission for its generous support in financing this project –

_____________________________________________

Andrew Holland
Programme Manager and Research Associate
Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security

The International Institute for Strategic Studies – US
1850 K Street NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20006
Phone (direct): 202 659 1494
Phone (switchboard): 202 659 1490
Email:  holland at iiss.org
Website: http://www.iiss.org/programmes/transatla…
Blog: http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com

EU ministers shirk third-world climate finance.
by LEIGH PHILLIPS, EUobserver, Brussels, March 3, 2009.

Poorer countries have been left hanging by EU environment ministers, who at a meeting in Brussels failed to produce any clear funding commitments to help the developing world tackle climate change.

Ministers from the 27 member states were in the European capital on Monday (2 March) to discuss proposals published in January by the European Commission on what stance to take at the upcoming UN conference in Copenhagen in December.

The developing world will be hit much harder by climate change than the wealthy north.

It is too early to reveal what offers will be put on the table, the ministers argued, particularly as the US has yet to make public its negotiating stance.

“It makes no sense to say now how much the EU is willing to transfer,” German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel said at a press conference after the meeting.

“We were not quite able to reach consensus on the financing mechanism. This is an issue where the [European] Council will need more discussion time,” said EU environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, also in attendance at the ministers’ meeting.

Recognising that northern industrialised nations are responsible for 75 percent of global warming, these countries have committed to making the bulk of CO2 reductions.

But because the EU also wants developing countries, particularly emerging nations such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia, to also commit to reductions, climate finance for the third world has become the main focus of discussion in the lead-up to the Copenhagen meeting.

The expected grand bargain in Denmark would be that if the EU and US stump up significant chunks of cash for cutting emissions and climate adaptation, developing countries will commit to considerable CO2 reductions in return.

Specifically, the EU is hoping for a commitment from the global south – with the exception of the least developed countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa – of CO2 reductions of between 15 and 30 percent on 1990 levels.

However, despite the speed with which the EU and US found €2.6 trillion to bail out financial institutions over the course of 2008, coming up with funds for third-world climate measures is now proving much more elusive.

At their Monday meeting, the environment ministers kicked the topic up to the level of EU heads of state, due to meet in Brussels on 19 and 20 March, meaning any decision must be taken unanimously. Prior to that, on 10 March, EU finance ministers are also to discuss the issue.

Environment ministers did however endorse the sum that the commission had suggested in its January proposals would need to be spent by all countries around the world to combat climate change – roughly €175 billion annually by 2020, with half of that having to be invested in the developing world.

–=–=–=–

Paris vs. Warsaw

The two issues of how much of that half would come from the EU and, crucially, how much from each EU member state are at the heart of debate between the ministers.

According to the commission’s proposals, EU financing for the developing world would come either through an annual financial commitment on the basis of an agreed formula, or by a percentage of monies coming from revenues produced by the creation of a carbon market across all wealthy countries similar to Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

If the EU opts for the fixed commitments, the formula to share out the burden would involve a calculation based on a member state’s GDP, its emissions in comparison to GDP, and the size of its population.

Paris wants added to this formula a consideration of the amount of emissions per capita.

France likes this idea because it has the lowest emissions per capita in the EU. Poland, meanwhile, is not such a great fan because of its dependence on coal, an extremely dirty source of energy.

Green groups and development agencies said they were getting impatient with the EU on the question of climate finance.

“While billions of taxpayers’ money is being used to prop up failed banks and carmakers, not one eurocent is being pledged to help the developing world tackle a problem that Europeans helped create,” said Joris den Blanken, a campaigner with Greenpeace, which is calling for annual contributions by the EU of around €35 billion for climate adaptation measures in the developing world.

Oxfam meanwhile said that delaying commitments for climate finance in poor countries puts any “global climate deal at risk”.

“The EU needs to put money on the table now. Treating poor people’s lives as a bargaining tool in climate negotiations is both immoral and misguided as a negotiating strategy,” said Katia Maia, with Oxfam in Brazil.

—————

30 percent not enough:

The EU itself is committed to cutting its own carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020 on 1990 levels, or 30 percent if other developed nations agree to a similar cut, although the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 recommendations say wealthy nations must cut emissions by between 25 and 40 percent by 2020 if dangerous consequences for humanity and the environment are to be avoided.

Last month, Chris Field, a leading climate scientist with the IPCC, warned the 2007 predictions – upon which EU policy is based – are far too optimistic, meaning that CO2 reductions of 25-40 percent by 2020 are insufficient.

At the same time, many of those reductions committed to by the EU will not really be performed domestically, as a large chunk of the 20 or 30 percent will come from so-called carbon offsets – essentially where wealthy countries pay poorer ones to make their carbon cuts for them.

The Big Question: Officially, this is the first day of spring. So why does it feel like midwinter?
By Steve Connor, Science Editor

The Independent of London, Wednesday, 21 March 2007.

Why are we asking this question now?

As you may have noticed, it’s been cold outside. And the simple answer to the big question at the top of the page is that one swallow does not make a summer. In other words, the weather and the climate are not the same thing, although they are of course related. One is what you get on a day-to-day basis, the other is a long-term trend over many decades, centuries or even millennia.

The current cold spell is due to cold winds streaming down from the frozen Arctic, which is not an unusual event for Britain at this time of year. Global warming does not mean an end to spells of cold weather in winter, but it does make them less likely over time. The computer models of global warming predict that as average worldwide temperatures rise, there will be an increase in the chances of warmer, wetter weather in winter and hotter, drier spells in summer.

Where does ‘weather’ end and ‘climate’ begin?

There is no strict point when one becomes the other – it is purely a question of time. Climate is something that can be defined over hundreds or even thousands of years. As a spokesman for the Met Office said: “It would be fair to say the weather becomes climate when observations of the weather are long enough to glean a trend from those records.”

For the past 100,000 years or so the Earth has experienced fairly regular swings in climate from freezing ice ages to warmer periods of “interglacial” temperatures. We are currently living in a warm, interglacial period, which began at the end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago. It is no coincidence that this was the time when we invented agriculture, which led to the rise of civilisation.

We can expect another ice age in a few thousand years, all other things being equal, although current man-made global warming could affect the timing of that fairly inevitable event. Ice ages appear to be triggered by small changes to the angle of the Earth’s tilt in its orbit around the Sun.

On a shorter timescale, the weather patterns in any geographic region can be described in terms of that region’s local climate. Britain, for instance, has a maritime climate where the seasonal variations are not as extreme as in areas affected by continental air masses, such as central-southern Siberia which is on about the same latitude as Britain yet experiences far colder winters and hotter summers. Nevertheless, the mild maritime climate of north-west Europe can be interrupted occasionally by incursions of cold Arctic air in winter – which is happening now – and hot subtropical air in summer.

How do we know the climate is changing?

This is the key to our understanding of climate change. Being able to discern long-term trends in the apparently random “noise” of day-to-day variations lies at the heart of understanding the scale of global warming.

Essentially, scientists believe that the climate is changing for many reasons but one of the most important is the fact that long-term weather records suggest it is happening. Different countries have gathered records on many different phenomena related to the weather and these individual measurements can be collated and analysed to give a bigger picture of how the weather – and climate – have changed over time.

Good records of course depend on sound instruments and expert monitoring. The longest accurate series of monthly temperatures, for instance, is the Central England Temperature records. These cover a triangular area between Liverpool, Bristol and London with the monthly series of temperatures beginning in 1659 – the oldest continuous temperature record anywhere in the world.

This temperature record shows that the hottest years in the sequence were 1990 and 1999 – with an average annual temperature of 10.63C – and the hottest ever year was 2006, with an average annual temperature of 10.84C. The coldest year was 1740 and the hottest month was July 2006.

But aren’t we seeing more flowers in winter?

One of the most interesting ways of looking at the results of long-term climate is called “phenology”, which is the study of recurring natural phenomena such as the flowering of the first daffodils in a garden, the appearance of the first migratory bird or the times of ripening of autumn fruits.

According to the Woodland Trust, spring in Britain is coming about two weeks earlier than it would have been about 30 or 50 years ago and autumn is arriving about a week later. Many amateur naturalists can now observe the sort of changes that would be expected if the climate were altering as a result of global warming.

What about birds and animals?

There can be real problems for animals and birds that have been lured into breeding earlier than normal. A warmer-than-average winter, such as we have seen this year, may tempt birds and animals into having their young weeks earlier than they generally would. Then, if the cold returns, the nestlings and the young animals are suddenly very vulnerable, and may die. We have seen this happening recently in southern England, with baby squirrels, baby hedgehogs, even baby grass snakes being found in distress and taken to animal refuges like the St Tiggywinkles wildlife hospital near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.

Will it get worse?

It may do, if the weather and wildlife breeding patterns increasingly get out of sync. This year and indeed in previous years there have been warm spells followed by cold snaps which have hit wildlife hard locally and temporarily, but this has been a merely passing phenomenon. It is possible that it could become more systematic and more serious. For example, many woodland birds feed their young on caterpillars and time their nesting to coincide with the caterpillars’ appearance. If they appear earlier, resident birds will learn to adapt, but migratory species may arrive in Britain too late for the major food source for their chicks – and their populations may crash as a result.

Has too much been made of particular dramatic events?

Some people claim that, for example, the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was caused by global warming; but others say that such events, although rare, are not unknown in the Gulf of Mexico. Others warn that while no one event can be ascribed to global warming, it is the trend that is to be feared. Although it may well be that there are more frequent weather shocks than previously, we just cannot know which of them is caused by global warming and which would have happened anyway.

Should we be surprised by unexpected cold spells?

Yes…

* People have come to think that because global warming is a fact, it must always be warmer than we remember

* As the winters are becoming warmer, it goes against expectation that the early spring suddenly turn cold

* If the Arctic is warming up, one would not think that winds from this region would be so cold at this time of the year

No…

* Natural variability means that the temperature is always going to oscillate over the short term

* What we are seeing here is day-to-day weather, whereas climate change occurs over longer periods

* The turning point between winter and spring is usually a period of unsettled weather

Mountain Is Reflected In A Bay That Used To Be Covered By The Sheldon Glacier On The Antarctic Peninsula

Date: 20-Jan-09
Country: ANTARCTICA
Author: Alister Doyle

Photo: Staff Photographer

A mountain is reflected in a bay that used to be covered by the Sheldon glacier on the Antarctic peninsula, January 14, 2009.

The glacier has shrunk by about 2 km since 1989, probably because of global warming. Picture taken January 14, 2009.

ENVIRONMENT: Climate Change Forcing Penguins North?
By Adrianne Appel*

Magellan penguins in the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, in the South Atlantic.

Credit:Photo Stock

BOSTON, Dec 31 (Tierramérica) – Warm ocean currents may have confused some 2,500 penguins from Argentina’s Patagonia region that washed up — dead and alive — on Brazil’s northern coast.

About half the penguins that were found on Brazilian beaches in October were dead, and the others were starving and in very bad shape, said Valeria Ruoppolo, an emergency veterinarian with the International Federation for Animal Welfare (IFAW), in Sao Paulo, who coordinated the rescue of many of the penguins.

“Of the live ones, about 50 percent survived,” Ruoppolo told Tierramérica.

Magellan penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) live in relatively warmer climates than other penguin species, and breed and nest in burrows in the southern hemisphere spring and summer, from October to February, in southern Chile and Argentina, in a temperate and dry climate.

They travel out to sea during the winter, from March to September, to follow anchovies, their favourite food, in order to fatten up.

Juveniles also migrate north. This year, about 2,500 disoriented juvenile penguins traveled more than 2,500 kilometres beyond the normal point, coming ashore in Salvador, in Bahia state, 1,400 kilometres north of Sao Paulo, to the amazement of beachgoers. The penguins were rescued by IFAW and the Centre for Marine Animal Recovery, with help from other organisations and Brazilian environmental authorities.

After months of care and feeding, the 372 surviving penguins were banded and loaded onto a C-130 Hercules military plane and transported to Cassino Beach, in Pelotas, in southern Brazil.

After an overnight rest, they were released into the South Atlantic ocean, along with a few other rescued adult penguins, with the hope that they would guide the younger ones safely home to Patagonia.

About 200 people cheered them on as they waded into the surf. It was the largest penguin rescue on record, a success for animal welfare experts — but a terrible omen for the penguin population.

“We always have a few strandings here and there. In 1994 and 2000 we had big strandings. But not like this year. More than 2,000 penguins is unheard of,” Ruoppolo said.

Magellans are one of 17 species of penguins, which all live in the southern hemisphere, including the Antarctic. Magellans are among the largest, weighing just over four kilograms, with striking colouring: a white chest and a white band around a black back and black head.

The Magellan penguin population is fragile, as their numbers have plummeted by about 20 percent, with about one million breeding pairs today, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society. The penguins are at risk due to the effects of climate change, tourism, oil leaks from tankers and shrimp nets.

“We are going to try and understand what happened,” using the identification bands as a tool, Ruoppolo said.

Once the penguins reach their home colonies, volunteers and researchers there will notify Ruoppolo. She will aggregate data about the climate, ocean currents and food sources, to learn about the strandings.

“One thing that was different is that the surface of the Atlantic ocean was one degree Celsius warmer. The penguins follow the fish, especially their favourite, the anchovies. Probably what happened this year is the anchovies went deeper into the ocean for the cold water. And the penguins couldn’t reach their food and they stranded because they were starving,” she said.

However, Ruoppolo warned, “We don’t know yet if we can link the strandings to climate change. Soon we will be able to say.”

According to Sybille Klenzendorf, a scientist with the World Wildlife Federation (WWF), “It’s probably not going to be unusual for some of these things to happen,” given the rise in temperature of the ocean.

The ocean environment of the southern tip of Patagonia especially is undergoing alterations, Klenzendorf said. Due to glaciers melting, the salinity of the water there is changing.

“The salt content is becoming less. It’s not just the temperature that is changing,” she told Tierramérica.

WWF scientists recently warned that allowing the earth’s surface temperatures to rise an average 2 degrees Celsius further — which is expected within 50 years even with a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions — will severely endanger Emperor (Aptenodytes forsteri) and Adelie (Pygoscelis adeliae) penguins and other Antarctic wildlife.

The current targets for reducing greenhouse emissions “aim at stabilising the climate at 2 degrees higher than it is today. But what we’re saying is we need to be more conservative than 2 degrees,” Klenzendorf said.

Furthermore, stress from the ocean changes would exacerbate an already dwindling source of fish for the penguins, due to aggressive commercial fishing in the region, she said. During nesting season, male penguins are swimming further each day to feed, compared to their normal forays, according to P. Dee Boersma, a penguin expert at the University of Washington.

Boersma, who has a research station in Punta Tombo, home to the largest colony of Magellan penguins, on the coast of the southern Argentine province of Chubut, says the changing climate has included more rain in recent years.

Coastal Patagonia is normally very dry, and the increasing rains mean that wet penguin chicks die of exposure, Boersma says in research published recently in the journal BioScience.

“Penguins are sentinels of the marine environment, and by observing and studying them, researchers can learn about the rate and nature of changes occurring in the southern oceans,” she says.

Punta Tombo is a tiny peninsula near the city of Rawson. Its widest point is less than one kilometre, and it is teaming and crowded with penguins — and tourists — during breeding season. About 105,000 people visited the penguin colony in 2007. Local efforts are underway to protect the penguins from further encroachment.

In 1982, the Punta Tombo colony was saved from Japanese commercial interests, which wanted to slaughter the birds and use their pelts to make golf gloves. The area was turned into a penguin preserve and research centre, led by Boersma.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

From:      emma.barnes at earthscan.co.uk
Subject: Earthscan’s new journal Climate and Development
Date:       November 25, 2008

For more information on the journal “Climate and Development” – please visit http://www.earthscan.co.uk/Journals

Emma Barnes
Dunstan House,
14a St Cross Street
London EC1N 8XA
+44(0)20 7841 1930
www.earthscan.co.uk

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

From:      press at unccd.int
Subject: Africa must get on board the Bali Road Map or face greater potential threats in the face of climatic change
Date:       November 19, 2008

Africa must get on board the Bali Road Map or face greater potential
threats in the face of climatic change.

(Algiers, Algeria 19 November 2008) – Less than two weeks before a major
climate change conference in Poland, the Executive Secretary of the United
Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) raised a warning flag
that African nations faced the greatest threat to global warming.

Addressing high-level policy makers at the African Conference of Ministers
in Charge of Environment on Climate Change For Post 2012 in Algiers,
Algeria, UNCCD Executive Secretary Luc Gnacadja underscored the urgency of
incorporating land and soil into the broad-level dialogue of effectively
combating climate change. That, said Mr. Gnacadja, must start in Africa,
the continent that has been hardest hit by the consequences of climate
change.

The two-day Algiers conference, which concludes on Thursday, 20 November,
is of particular importance for Africa as the world continues deliberations
on the necessary actions against climate changes after the expiration of
the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. African ministers are now striving to build an
African platform on implementing the Bali Road Map, the plan that will lead
the world to climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in late 2009.

“The Bali Plan of Action explicitly provides to take into account the
future needs of African countries affected by desertification, drought and
floods.”,Mr. Gnacadja reminded conference delegates.

According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the desertification of
arid soils releases almost 300 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere
each year, resulting in almost four percent of total emissions from all
sources combined.

The UNCCD Executive Secretary said that Africa must mobilize to create tool
and platforms to take on the challenge.

One area of great potential is carbon sequestration, which can further
mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The productivity of terrestrial
ecosystems could also be improved. Indeed, carbon sequestration is a
win-win context to simultaneously address other global issues such as
biodiversity conservation, food security and poverty alleviation. So far,
though, no large-scale mechanisms have been implemented nor fully taken
into account in existing mechanisms, said Mr. Gnacadja.

Indeed in tackling climate change soil can make a difference. With the
science and technology now available, agreeing on measurable reportable and
verifiable concepts to sequester carbon into soils is possible, doable, and
should therefore not be delayed.

For further information, please contact Marcos Montoiro +49-228-815-2806 or
press(at)unccd.int. Also see http://www.unccd.int

The Drylands, Deserts, and Desertification – 2008 Conference. December 14-17, 2008, Sede Boqer Campus, The Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Israel.

www.desertification.co.il

THE PROGRAM As Available on November 18, 2008. There might be still Changes and Additions, as well –   further Poster Sessions.

Download this schedule: detailed_program_sessions_1611_publish.doc

December 14-17, 2008

Please note that the list of presentations is still not final.

Furthermore, the breakdown into sessions may change.

Abstracts for the Poster Sessions will be listed separately during the conference

Pre Registration will begin on the evening of December 13, 2008

Day 1, December 14, 2008: LIFE AND SOIL DEGRADATION IN THE DRYLANDS

8:00-9:00 Registration

9:00 – 9:30 Welcome

9:30 – 10:15 Plenary Address: Cutting through the Confusion: An Old Problem (Desertification) Viewed through the Lens of a New Framework (the DDP, Drylands Development Paradigm) – James Reynolds, Duke University (U.S.A)

10:15 – 10:30 Respondents: Thomas Schaaf,, Chief, Ecological Sciences & Biodiversity Section, UNESCO, Ingrid Hartman, Amoud University, Borama, Somaliland, Godfrey Olukoye Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Uriel Safriel, Hebrew University, Israel

Moderator: Alon Tal

10:30-11:00 Coffee Break

11:00-12:30 Parallel Sessions I

1. Soil Degradation and the Drylands

Chair: Professor Yonah Chen, Hebrew University Agricultural Faculty, HYPERLINK “mailto:yonachen@agri.huji.ac.il” yonachen@agri.huji.ac.il

Causes and Consequences of Soil Damages in Bosnia and Herzegovinia: Some Experiences in Soil Conservation, Markovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Soil Decomposition in a Tropical Semi-arid Region in Central Mexico, Maria Hernandez Cerda, Enrique Romero, Gonzalo Madero, (Mexico)

Soil Communities in the Arava Valley Desert System, Stanislav Pen-Mouratov, Tamir Mayblat, and Yosef Steinberger (Israel)

Effect of plant patchiness on soil microbial community structure

Ali Nejidat, Eric A. Ben-David, Yonatan Sher, Regina Golden, Eli Zaady (Israel)

2. Desert Ecology (A)

Chair: Professor Tamar Dayan, Tel Aviv University, HYPERLINK “mailto:DayanT@tauex.tau.ac.il” DayanT@tauex.tau.ac.il,

Water and Carbon Balances of Tamarix Desert Vegetation Under Variation in Precipitation and Groundwater Table,Hao Xu, Yan Li, (China)

Periodic and Scale-free Patterns: Reconciling the Dichotomy of Dryland Vegetation, Jost von Hardenberg, Assaf Kletter, Hezi Yizhaq, Ehud Meron (Israel)

Water Balance in Desert Mammals and in Flying Birds: Different Evolutionary Paths with Similar Physiological Outcomes, Berry Pinshow (Israel)

Desertification In the Grasslands Of Central Australia: Effects Of Fire And Climate Change, C. R. Dickman, G. M. Wardle, A. C. Greenville and B. Tamayo (Australia)

3. Benchmarks and Indicators of Desertification

Chair: Professor Moshe Shachak, Ben Gurion University, shachak@bgu.ac.il

Spatial Vegetation Patterns Indicating Imminent Desertification Max Rietkerk (Netherlands)

Do Vegetation Indices Reliably Assess Vegetation Degradation? A Case Study in the Mongolian Pastures, Arnon Karnieli Y. Bayarjargal, M. Bayasgalan, B. Mandakh, J. Burgheimer, S. Khudulmur, and P.D. Gunin (Israel)

Results On Changes Of Vegetation Structure And Composition In Semi-Desert Steppe,B.Mandakh Ph.D, Ganchimeg Wingard, (Mongolia)

Restoration of Pasture Vegetation and Assessment of Desertification in Kazakhstan Mirzadinov R.А., Baisartova А.Y., Bayazitova Z.Е., Torgaev А.А., Makhamedzhanov N.Т., Usen К., Karnieli A., Mirzadinov (Kazakhstan)

4. Pastoralism and the Drylands (A)

Chair: Dr. Eli Zaady, Gilat Research Station, Volcani Institute

HYPERLINK “mailto:zaadye@volcani.agri.gov.il” zaadye@volcani.agri.gov.il

Complex Interactions Between Climate and Pastoralists in Desert Grasslands, Curtin, charles (U.S.A)

Sustainable Grazing Strategies for Semi-arid Rangelands of Central Argentina, Roberto Distel (Argentina)

Trophic interactions and the ecology of habitat degradation in grasslands, Yoram Ayal(Israel)

12:30 – 14:30Short Field Trips and Lunch Break

14:30-16:00 Parallel Sessions II

5. Remote Sensing and Assessment of Desertification Processes (A)

Chair: Professor Danny Blumberg, Ben Gurion University, blumberg@bgu.ac.il

Progress in mapping global desertification, S. D. Prince (U.S.A)

Desertification Risk Assessment in Northeastern Nigeria Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques, Taiwo Qudus, S.O. Mohammed, (Nigeria)

Integrating Remotely-sensed Vegetation Phenology and Rainfall Metrics to Characterize Changes in Dryland Vegetation Cover: Example from Burkina Faso Stefanie Herrmann, Thomas Hopson, (U.S.A)

On the Definition of Desertification through the Case Study of the Egyptian-Israeli Borderline, Arnon Karnieli, Christine Hanisch, Zehava Siegal and Haim Tsoar (Israel)

Evaluation of optimal time-of-day for detecting water stress in olive trees by thermal remote sensing, Nurit Agam, Alon Ben-Gal, Yafit Cohen, Victor Alchanatis, Uri Yermiyahu, and Arnon Dag, (Israel)

6. Drought and Salt Resistant Plants for Sustainable Dryland Development (A)

Chair: Dr. Gozal Ben Hayyim, The Volcani Institute HYPERLINK “mailto:vhgozal@agri.gov.il” vhgozal@agri.gov.il

Potentials for Utilizing the Mulberry (Morus Alba) and the Neem (Azadirachta Indica) For Desertification Control In Northern Ghana: the Experience of the Sericulture Promotion And Development Association, Ghana. Paul Kwasi Ntaanu (Ghana)

Phenology, Floral and Reproductive Biolgy Studies of Genus Zizipus in Negev Desert Conditions, Manoj Kulkarni, Bert Schneider and Noemi Tel-Zur (Israel)

Dissecting the Molecular control of Stomatal Movement in CAM plant: A Potential Source for Genes Conferring Drought Tolerance in C3 Plants, Yaron Sitrit (Israel)

Comparison of Germination Strategies of Four Artemisia Species (Asteraceae) in Horqin Sandy Land, China, Li Xuehua, Liu Zhimin and Jiang Demning (China)

Role of Hydrophilins in Water-stressed and Salt-stressed Environments, Dudy Bar-Zvi, (Israel)

7. Water Management Strategies in the Drylands

Chair: Dr. Alfred Abed- Rabbo, Bethlehem University, abedrabo@gmail.com

Water Management in a Semi-arid Region: An Integrated Water Resources Allocation Modeling for Tanzania, Shija Kazumba (Tanzania/Israel)

Towards Sustainable Management of Wadis in Semi-Arid Environments- IWRM Approach, Walid Saleh, Amjad Aliewi, Anan Jayyousi (Dubai)

Is Desalination Right for Sydney? Phoenix Lawhon Isler(Australia)

16:00-16:15 Coffee Break

16:15-17:15 Parallel Sessions III

8. Remote Sensing and Assessment of Desertification Processes (B)

Chair: HYPERLINK “http://home.geoenv.biu.ac.il/lecturer_html.php?id=33” Prof. Hanoch Lavee, Bar Ilan University , HYPERLINK “mailto:laveeh@mail.biu.ac.il” laveeh@mail.biu.ac.il

Assessing Land Cover Change and Degradation in the Central Asian Deserts Using Satellite Image Processing and Geostatistical Methods, Arnon Karnieli, Tal Svoray, Uri Gilad, (Israel)

A Dynamic Model of Dryland Hydrology Using Remote Sensing, Elene Tarvansky, (United Kingdom)

The Effect of Wildfires on Vegetation Cover and Dune Activity in Australia’s Desert Dunes: A Multi-Sensor Analysis, Noam Levin, Simcha Levental, Hagar Morag (Israel)

9. Desert Ecology (B)

Chair: Dr. Yehoshua Shkedy, Chief Scientist, Israel Nature and Parks Authorit, HYPERLINK “mailto:y.shkedy@npa.org.il” y.shkedy@npa.org.il

Is Grass Scarcity in the Chihuahuan Desert A Result of Shrub-Grass Competition or Soil Moisture Limitation? Giora Kidron and Vincent Gutschick (Israel/U.S.A)

Short-term responses of small vertebrates to vegetation removal as a management tool in Nizzanim dunes, Boaz Shacham and Amos Bouskila (Israel)

Microbial diversity of Mediterranean and Arid soil ecosystem. Ami Bachar, Ashraf Ashhab, Roey Angel, M. Ines M. Soares and Osnat Gillor, (Israel)

Effects of woody vegetation and anthropogenic disturbances on herbaceous vegetation in the northern Negev, Moran Segoli, Eugene David Ungar, Moshe Shahack (Israel)

10. Land Restoration Strategies

Chair: Dr. Avi Gafni, Director of Research, Keren Kayemeth L’Yisrael, Avig@kkl.org.il

Role of Wetlands in Sustainable Drylands D. Mutekanga (Uganda)

Restoration of Abandoned Lands, Gabrielyan Bardukh, (Armenia)

Desertification in the Sahel: causes, prevention and reclamation Dov Pasternak (Israel)

11. Strategies for Living in the Drylands

Chair: Prof. Avigad Vonshak, Director Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, avigad@bgu.ac.il

Micro-Climatic Effect of a Manmade Oasis During Different Season in an Extremly Hot, Dry Climate, Oded Potchter (Israel)

Ecological sanitation (ECOSAN) as an alternative approach for sustainable dry-land development, Amit Gross (Israel)

Has dependence on runoff agriculture on the dryland environment of the central Negev mountains changed significantly in the last few thousand years? Testing the contribution of the geological substrate, Wieler Nimrod. Avni Y. Benjamini C. (Israel)

12. Pastoralism and the Drylands (B)

Chair: Mr. Shmulik Friedman Head of Israel Grazing Authority HYPERLINK “mailto:shmulikf@moag.gov.il” shmulikf@moag.gov.il

Normative Carrying Capacity of an Isralei Forest for Domesticated Grazers. David Evlagon, Samuel Komisarchik, Yehuda Nissan, No’am Seligman (Israel)

Herd No More: Livestock Husbandry Policies and the Environment in Israel: from 1900 Until Today, Liz Wachs, Alon Tal (U.S.A)

17:15-19:00 Poster Session (including contest) and Cocktail

19:00-20:00 Dinner

20:00 Evening Activities (optional)

Moonlit Hike in Nahal Haverim (Please come w/ walking shoes and warm clothes)

OR

Films from the Desert Nights Film Festival (sponsored by the Italian Embassy, Tel Aviv)

 —————————————

DAY 2,December 14, 2008: VEGETATION’S ROLE IN SUSTAINABLE DRYLAND LIVING

8:00-8:30 Registration

8:30 – 10:15Plenary Addresses

Professor Pinhas Alpert, Director, Porter School of the Environment, Tel Aviv University,

“Climate Change’s Impact on Desertification in the Mediterranean Region”

Rattan Lal,Director, Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, Ohio State University. “Carbon Sequestration in the Drylands: Where we Are? Where we might go?”

Dan Yakir, Head, Department of Environmental Sciences & Energy Research, Weitzman Institute, “Israel Forestry, Carbon and the Drylands: Recent Findings from Israel”

Moderator: Mark Windslow, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Germany

9:45-10:00 Coffee Break

10:00-11:30 Parallel Sessions IV

13. The Role Vegetation in Combating Desertification (A)

Chair: Dr. Elli Groner, Arava Institute for desert studies/BIDR, elli.groner@arava.org

Use of Indicator Species in Enhancing the Conservation of Drylands of Kenya J. Aucha, V. Palapala, and J. Shiundu (Kenya)

Green Spots as a Tool to Combat Desertification in the Aral Sea Region, Lilya Dimeyeva, (Kazakhstan)

Vegetation Change in Response to Grazing and Water Level Decline in the Enot Zukim Nature Reserve (en Fescha) Israel, Linda Whittaker, Margareta Walczak, Amos Sabach and Eli Dror (Israel)

Improving sustainability and productivity of rainfed field crops in the Negev regions

David J. Bonfil (Israel)

14. Drought and Salt Resistant Plants for Sustainable Dryland Development (B)

Chair: Professor Micha Guy, Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, HYPERLINK “mailto:michagu@bgu.ac.il” michagu@bgu.ac.il

The chemical induction of Polyploidy Mutan in Zizphus Mauritiana, Noemi Tel Zur and Mohmmad A.Taher (Israel / Jordan)

Using the Model Plant Arabidopsis Thaliana and Extremophile Arabidopsis Relatives to Identify Genes that Can Confer Plant Tolerance to Arid Conditions, Simon Barak (Israel)

Recently Domesticated Native Desert Herbs for Sustainable Planting in Arid and Saline Areas, Elaine Solowey (Israel)

Pattern Formation, State Changes and Catastrophic Shifts in Poa bulbosa Production as Responses to Simulated Grazing, Hadeel Majeed, Yaakov Garb, Moshe Shachak (Israel)

Germination and seedling survival in NaCl solutions after desiccation of some halophytes-used in pasture and fodder production in the solonchak salinities of the Kyzylkum desert, in Uzbekistan, Tanya Gendler, Japakova Ulbosun, Nicolai Orlovsky and Yitzchak Gutterman (Israel)

15. Afforestation in the Drylands

Chair: Dr. Gabriel Shiller, The Volcani Institute, HYPERLINK “mailto:vcgabi@volcani.agri.gov.il” vcgabi@volcani.agri.gov.il

Dryland Afforestation, Bill Hollingworth, (Australia)

Soil and Water Management along with Afforestation for Rehabilitation of Desertified Areas of the Israeli Negev, Yitzak Moshe (Israel)

Land Restoration in the Mediterranean, V. Ramon Vallejo, (Spain)

The Impact of Tree Shelters on Forest Survival of Eight Native Broadleaf Species in Forest Plantations in Israel, Omri Boneh (Israel)

16. Irrigation in the Drylands

Chair: Dr. Alon Ben-Gal, Gilat Research Station, Volcani Institute, bengal@volcani.agri.gov.il

Combating Land Degradation in Irrigated Agriculture Through Systematic Characterization of Saline-Sodic Soils for Improved Irrigation Efficiency in Kenya - E.M. Muya, (Kenya)

Adaption of Drip Irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa, Towards a Strategy for Technology Transfer, Lonia Friedlander (U.S.A)

Managing salt, nutrient and soil structure in reclaimed water irrigated vineyards of South Australia, Biswas and McCarthy (AU)

Future strategies for drainage problems in the desert area (IGNP) of Western Rajasthan in India, Kiran Soni Gupta (India)

Root zone salinity management strategy for the Australian drought, Schrale (AU)

17. Climate Change in the Drylands

Chair: Dr. Yeshayahu Bar-Or, Chief Scientist, Ministry of Environmntal Protection, HYPERLINK “mailto:Ybo@sviva.gov.il” Ybo@sviva.gov.il

Climate Change Trends in an Extreme Arid Zone, Southern Arava (Israel and Jordan) Hanan Ginat, Yanai Shlomi, Danny Blumberg (Israel)

Climate change and its effect on Mediterranean Basin ecosystems, Pua Bar (Kutiel) (Israel)

Climatic Change and Desertification Predictive Modeling In The Northeastern Nigeria.

Dr. Ojonigu Ati And Taiwo Qudus (Nigeria)

11:30-13:30 Open Campus Lunch Break

13:30-15:00 Parallel Sessions V

18. The Role of Vegetation in Combating Desertification (B)

Chair: Mr. Tauber Israel, KKL, HYPERLINK “javascript:addSender(%22IsraelT@kkl.org.il%22)” IsraelT@kkl.org.il

Desertification not at all costs – a matter of temporal and spatial scales and policies

Pua Bar (Kutiel) (Israel)

Cropping systems in the Indian arid zone and long-term effects of continuous cropping

N.L. Joshi (India)

Establishing the Relationships between Soils, Vegetation and Ecosystem Dynamics: A Strategy for Land Degradation Control in Nurunit Marsabit District, Kenya, E.M. Muya, (Kenya)

19. Indigenous Knowledge in the Combating of Desertification

Chair: Prof. Aref Abu Rabia, Ben Gurion University, HYPERLINK “mailto:aref@bgu.ac.il” aref@bgu.ac.il

Ethnobotanical Approach to the Conservation of Dryland Vegetation James Aucha (Kenya)

Environmental and Economic Potential of Bedouin Dryland Agriculture, Khalil Abu Rabia, Elaine Solowey and Stefan Leu (Israel)

Traditional Knowledge and Technologies: Administration of Common Goods from the Perspective of Goat Producers in the Lavalle Desert, Laura Maria Torres (Argentina)

 

20. Managing Drought in the Drylands

Chair, Mr. Yaakov Lomas, Israel Metereological Institute, HYPERLINK “mailto:lomasjakob@yahoo.com” lomasjakob@yahoo.com

Drought Risk Reduction in Rajasthan, India Madhukar Gupta (India)

Merits and Limitations in Assessing Droughts by Remote Sensing, Arnon Karnieli and Nurit Agam (Israel)

The Impact of Long Term Drought Periods in Northern Israel, Moshe Inbar (Israel)

Hydric Characterization of the Sinaloa State (Mexico), Through the Aridity and Aridity Régime Indices, Israel Velasco, (Mexico)

Economic Sustainable rainfed wheat production under Semi-Arid climatic conditions – Agrometeorological criteria for planning purposes, Lomas (Israel)

21. Carbon Sequestration

Chair: Dr. Noam Gressel, Assif Strategies, HYPERLINK “mailto:noam@assifstrategies.com” noam@assifstrategies.com

Semi-arid Afforestation and its Effect on Land-atmosphere Interactions,

Eyal Rotenberg et. al., (Israel)

Capacity of the forest ecosystems to sequester carbon (Case of the watershed basin of Rheraya- area of Marrakech) ) Rachid Ilmen (Morocco)

Halting Land Degradation and Desertification: A Win-Win Mitigation Strategy Neglected by the Climate Establishment, Stefan Leu (Israel)

Special Round Table discussion: Mid-east Regional Cooperation to Research Desertification with Arab and Israeli Desertification Experts

Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli experts meeting and discussing common concerns and solutions to address desertification in the Middle East region.

Moderator: Prof. Avigad Vonshak

Jeffrey Cook Workshop in Desert Architecture and Planning

Architecture and Urban Planning in the Drylands

Dryland Urban Expansion: Environmental Problems and Urban Planning, the Case of Urmuqi China S. Liu (UK)

Towards a Comprehensive Methodology for Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE): A Hot Dry Climate Case Study, Isaac Meir, Eduoardo Kruger, Lusi Morhayim, Shiri Fundaminsky, Liat Frenkel, (Israel)

Sick Building Syndrome in a University Building – an Educational Survey, Lusi Morhayim, Issac Meir (Israel)

Urban Sustainability in Desert and Dryland Areas – a First Exploration, Yodan Rofe and Gabriela Feierstein (Israel/Argentina)

Microclimatic Issues in the Planning of a Modern City in a Desert Environment, Evyatar Erell (Israel)

Sustainable Architecture in the Outback/Desert Regions of Australia: The Paradigm in Theory and Practice, Terence Williamson (Australia)

Arch. Suhasini Ayer-Guigan (India)

Arch. Mary Hancock (UK)

Arch. Laureano Pietro (Italy)

15:30 Bus Ride to Mitzpe-Ramon

16:00-17:00 Sunset Overlooking the Ramon Crater, Visit to Ramon Visitor’s Center

17:30 PLENARY LECTURE: Professor Uri Shani, Director, Israel Water Authority,

“Addressing Scarcity in the Drylands: Israel’s New Water Management Strategy”,

Moderator, Ms. Hila Ackerman, Director of Environmental Department, Ramat Negev Regional Council

19:00 Dinner

20:00 Evening Activity: Music & Dancing OR Astronomy Lecture

—————————————–

DAY 3, December 16, 2008: FIELD TRIPS

A detailed plan will be provided separately

—————————————

DAY 4, December 17, 2008: THE HUMAN DIMENSIONS- POLICIES AND PARTNERSHIPS TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION

8:00-8:30 Registration

8:30 – 10:15Plenary Addresses/ Panel – Reconsidering the Axiom of “Bottom Up” Desertification Programs: Lessons Learned about Partnerships and International Assistance

Chris Braeuel UNCCD Focal Point, Canada,

Christian Mersmann, Director, The Global Mechanism of the UNCCD, Rome

Alon Tal, Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research

DelphineOuedraogo, Ministry of Environment, Focal Point to UNCCD, Burkina Faso

Moderator: TBA

10:00-10:15 Coffee Break

10:15-11:50 Parallel Sessions VI

 

22. The Contradictions of “Gender Equality” in Development Discourses in Desert Regions (Panel A)

Chair: Prof. Rivka Carmi, President Ben Gurion University, president@bgu.ac.il

Rethinking modern education among indigenous Negev Bedouin, Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder (Israel)

Looking Ahead: Bedouin Women, Higher Education, Identity and Belonging,Ronnie Halevi (Israel/U.S.A.)

The nation and its natures: Depictions of women Environmental Educators in the Israeli Negev Desert, Miri Lavi-Neeman, (Israel/USA)

“My Life? What is there to tell?” : Interpreting the life stories of multiply marginalized women in an Israeli ‘Development Town” Sigal Ron (Israel)

23. Public Policy, Economics and Desertification

Chair: Dr. Moshe Schwartz, Ben Gurion University, moshesc@bgu.ac.il

Economic Instruments for Mitigation of Desertification Problems in Armenia Gevorgyan Suren, (Armenia)

Land Degradation, Subsidies Dependency and Market Vulnerability of Stock –breeding Households in Central Crete Hugues Lorent, et. al., (Belgium)

The Value of Israel’s Forests and Desertification, Tzipi Eshet, Dafna Disegni and Mordehcai Shechter (Israel)

Current Status and Issues for Combating Desertification In Western Rajasthan, Kiran Soni Gupta, (India)

How To Put Desertification and Water Management in The Political Agenda: The South Italy Development Policies, Carlo Donolo (Italy)

24. Food Security in the Drylands

Chair: TBA

Livelihood Strategies: Indigenous Practices and Knowledge Systems in the Attainment of Food Security in Botswana, Maitseo Bolaane (Botswana)

Drought and food insecurity: a rationale for national grain reserves, Hendrik Bruins (Israel)

Drought Management Planning in Water Supply System, Enrique Cabrera (Spain)

The Impact of Drought on Agriculture in Jordan, Sawsan Batarseh and Hendrik J. Bruins (Jordan)

25. Case Studies – Projects that Combat Desertification

Chair: Beth-Eden Kite, Deputy Director, Mashav, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, beth-eden.kite@mfa.gov.il

Combating Desertification: An Attempt at Wasteland Development in Rajasthan, India, Kusum Bhawani Shanker, (India)

Valuing the Successes of combating desertification – Experience of Burkina Faso in the rehabilitation of the productive capacity of the village territories, Ouedraogo Delphine (Burkina Faso)

Development of Drylands of Kenya Using the Jatropha Curcas Value Chain J.A. Aucha, V. Palapla, and J. Shinundu, (Kenya)

Production Diversification for Expanding the Economic Foundations of Argentinean Monte Desert Communities, Elena Maria Abraham, Giuseppe Enne (Argentina)

11:50-12:00 Coffee Break

12:00-13:00 Parallel Sessions VI

26. Bottom Up: Community Participation in Programs to Combat Desertification

Chair: Dr. Haim Divon, Deputy Director, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Man, Desert and Environment, Hanan Ginat, Noa Avriel-Avni (Israel)

People and institutional participation in forest management for sustainable development: options for drylands based on experiences from Sudan. Edinam K. Glover (Finland)

Dryland Gardening: A Sustainable Solution to Desertification? Southern Africa as a Case Study, Adam Abramson (U.S.A)

27. Culturing Desertification: Gender and the Politics of Development (Panel B)

Chair: Dr. Pnina Motzafi-Haller, Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, pninamh@gmail.com

Development and the Role of Women in Pakistan, Masooda Bano, (UK)

Domestic Water Provision and Gender Roles in Drylands, Anne Coles (UK)

Women’s Work: Gender and the Politics of Trash Labor in Dakar,Rosalind Fredericks, (USA)

28. The Negev Desert – Development and Conservation

Chair: Dr. Yodan Rofeh, Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, yrofe@bgu.ac.il

The Israeli Negev Desert: From Frontier to Periphery, Yehuda Gradus (Israel)

The National-Strategic Plan for Developing the Negev – Negev 2015: An Old Prospect or a New Future, Na’ama Theshner (Israel)

The potential of TOD for development of the Northern Negev, Prof. Dani Gat (Israel)

Sense of place and naming in Hura as an example of the changing spatial consciousness of Beduoin in the Negev, Arnon Ben Israel and Avinoam Meir (Israel)

29. The Political Ecology of Deserts and Desertification

Chair: Dr. Yaakov Garb, Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, ygarb@bgu.ac.il

Rebuilding the Land: Political Ecology of Land Degradation in Somaliland Ingrid Hartman (Germany)

Desertification Narratives (and Their Uses) in the Middle East and North Africa, Diana Davis (U.S.A)

Desertification or Greening in the Sahel? Case study of Inadvertent Greening in the Oued Kowb, Mauritania, Stefanie Herrmann, Mamadou Baro, Aminata Niang (U.S.A)

Political Ecology: Wind Erosion on the U.S. Southern High Plains

R. E Zartman and A.C. Correa (U.S.A)

30. Assessing International Efforts to Combat Desertification

Chair: Professor Uriel Safriel, Hebrew University, uriel36@gmail.com

Follow the Money: Navigating the International Aid Maze for Dryland Development Pamela Chasek (U.S.A)

The Global Mechanism – Lessons Learned C. Mersmann, (Italy)

Research Priorities of the UNESCO Chair on Eremology Gabriels (Belgium)

An Analytic Review for International Collaborations for Drylands Research and Sustainable Development, J. Scott Hauger (U.S.A)

A Conference to Improve the Flow of Science into the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, Mark Winslow (Germany)

13:00-14:30 Lunch and Concluding Session

e-mail:  desertification at bgu.ac.il
tel:   972-8-659-6997
fax: 972-8-659-6772

——————————————————

See also:

In The Run-Up To UN CSD 17, and Following Immediately After The UNFCCC Meeting In Poznan, The Ben Gurion University of The Negev, UNESCO, and Israel’s Foreign Ministry Are Organizing for December 14-17, 2008, at Sede Boqer a Conference on: DRYLANDS, DESERTS, and DESERTIFICATION.

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 17th, 2008

 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

**********************
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.

Carbon News and Info, Tuesday, 11 November 2008.
The new President of the Maldives says he will begin buying land in other nations as “an insurance policy” in case his nation needs to be evacuated due to rising sea levels from climate change.

The Maldives is a group of 1200 tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, 80 per cent of which are less than one metre above sea level. Much of the most inhabited parts of the country are just 1.5 metres above the water.

The first democratically elected leader, Mohamed Nasheed, and his Vice-President, Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik, wasted little time in declaring their plans to British newspapers saying a national fund would be established with royalties from the country’s tourist industry to fund land purchases.

Nasheed told the Guardian that Sri Lanka and India were obvious targets given their proximity, and the cultural similarities of their people to the 300,000 Maldivians. He also named Australia as a possible destination.

Manik said the “worst-case scenario due to sea level rise would be that some or even all of our islands would become uninhabitable and we would have to look for alternative places for Maldivians to live” in an interview with the Financial Times.

“We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere. It’s an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome,” Nasheed told the Guardian, comparing the concept to Israelis buying land in Palestine.

There is much contention among scientists over how much sea levels can be expected to rise this century. The IPCC landmark 2007 report published conservative estimates of a rise of 25 to 58cm by 2100, criticised as too low by some researchers.

In 2005, authorities announced plans to move the 1000-strong population of the Carteret Atolls, in Papua New Guinea, to Bougainville in what were said to be the first climate change evacuations. Their current homes are predicted to become completely submerged by 2015.

From:          cmariotte at theclimategroup.org
Subject:       “Breaking the Climate Deadlock” 5th Webinar: The Future of Clean Power Generation, with Vinod Khosla
Date:       November 11, 2008 8:30:41 AM EST

The Climate Group is pleased to invite you to its “Breaking the Climate Deadlock: The future of Clean Power Generation” webinar with   international technology guru, Sun Microsystems co-founder, and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla this Thursday, November 13th at 4pm GMT.

This is the 5th in a series of webinars The Climate Group has been holding on key issues influencing the current post-Kyoto negotiations. These webinars support the “Breaking the Climate Deadlock” initiative with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and build on the Briefing Papers produced by internationally-respected experts earlier this year (see www.breakingtheclimatedeadlock.com for more details).

A. Login details:

Topic: Breaking the Climate Deadlock: The Future of Clean Power Generation
Date: Thursday, November 13, 2008
Time: 4:00 pm, GMT Standard Time (GMT -00:00, London)
Meeting Number: 366 050 851
Meeting Password: green33

Please click the link below to see more information, or to join the meeting.
——————————————————-
To join the online meeting
——————————————————-
1. Go to https://theclimategroup.webex.com/thecli…
2. Enter your name and email address.
3. Enter the meeting password: green33
4. Click “Join Now”.
——————————————————-
To join the teleconference only
——————————————————-
Call-in toll number (UK/EMEA): (0)20 700 51000
Global call-in numbers: https://theclimategroup.webex.com/thecli…
——————————————————-
For assistance
——————————————————-
1. Go to https://theclimategroup.webex.com/thecli…
2. On the left navigation bar, click “Support”.

To add this meeting to your calendar program (for example Microsoft Outlook), click this link:
 https://theclimategroup.webex.com/thecli…

B. Background information:

Vinod Khosla’s Briefing Paper ‘Scalable Electric Power from Solar Energy’ can be downloaded there:
 http://theclimategroup.org/assets/resour…

The other Briefing Papers:
 http://www.theclimategroup.org/major_ini…

More information on the Briefing Papers Webinar series (watch previous webinars, find speakers’ information, download presentation materials):
 http://www.theclimategroup.org/major_ini…

General information on the “Breaking the Climate Deadlock” initiative:
 http://www.breakingtheclimatedeadlock.or…

We look forward to your participation to the webinar.

Kind regards,
Clément Mariotte and the Breaking the Climate Deadlock team at The Climate Group.

Clément Mariotte
Policy Researcher
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Science Proves Warming of Antarctica.

By Adrianne Appel*

BOSTON, Nov 12 (Tierramérica) – The Antarctic holds the world’s largest amount of fresh water in its icy grip, and it is most certainly warming as a result of greenhouse gases, say new scientific studies.

“We’re able for the first time to directly attribute warming in both the Arctic and the Antarctic to human influences,” said Nathan Gillett of the University of East Anglia, in Britain, who led the study.

Evidence of global warming, caused by the release of carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the air, has been found on almost every continent on Earth. The exception was the Antarctic, which holds 90 percent of the world’s ice and 70 percent of the world’s fresh water.

Antarctica, about 1.4 times as large as the United States, has just 20 weather stations from which to gather data, and for this and other reasons, less has been known about the icy continent.

Scientists can see that the warmer parts of Antarctica, including the Western Antarctic and Antarctic Peninsula, which juts north toward South America and is home to millions of seals and penguins and other birds, are seeing temperature increases.

But the frigid East Antarctic, with ice 2,226 metres thick, has seen no significant change in air temperature during the past 50 years — in fact it has shown evidence of cooling — and this has made overall conclusions about the greenhouse gas effect inconclusive.

The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that Antarctica was the only continent where human-caused temperature changes had not been detected, possibly due to insufficient data and observation.

Gillett’s work “demonstrates convincingly what previous studies have suggested: that humans have indeed contributed to warming in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions,” said Andrew Monaghan, of the U.S. National Centre for Atmospheric Research, a close colleague of the researchers.

The team used all data available from 1900 to 2000 from the 20 research stations, and complex computer predictions to reach its conclusions.

The scientists created four computer models, including one that included the impact of greenhouse gases and one that did not. The model with the greenhouse gases produced predictions that matched actual temperature observations up to this point in time, according to their report, “Attribution of polar warming to human influence”, in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.

Taking averages across all of Antarctica produced findings of “overall warming” of a few tenths of a percent, Gillett said.

But the team found temperature increases on the Antarctic Peninsula of up to 3 degrees Celsius since the 1950s, among the largest increases on Earth, Monaghan said. Still, the average monthly temperature is 1 degree to minus -15 degrees C.

Several large glaciers in the West Antarctic are melting and contributing to a rise in global sea levels, due to warmer ocean currents that are hitting the ice sheets. The average monthly temperature there is -12 C to -35 C.

“This melting of ice shelves has implications for sea level rise,” Gillett said. In 2002, a huge ice shelf on the Peninsula, called the Larsen B, broke apart and melted. It was 3,250 square kilometres in size, he pointed out.

In addition, the team noticed data pointing to a warming along the coasts of East Antarctica, and they expect this warming to accelerate.

Gillett hypothesised that the South Pole cooling may be due to a severe loss of ozone in the Pole’s atmosphere, due to pollution.

He believes that because of his research, scientists can draw a more accurate picture of what the future may look like for Antarctica. Calculations about the melting of ice can now include the impact of global warming.

“We won’t see anything catastrophic in the next century if things continue at the current rate. But the melt could accelerate,” Monaghan said.

The IPCC was unable to include complete and accurate predictions of global sea rise because it did not have adequate Antarctic data. It predicted an increase of between 18 and 59 cm, Gillett said.

In January, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri made a personal plea to scientists to step up their research on Antarctica and Greenland.

“My hope is the next [IPCC] report, if there is one, will be able to provide much better information on the possibility of these two large bodies of ice melting, in what seems like a frightening situation,” Pachauri said.

Research about warming in the Antarctic Peninsula has been building.

Earlier this year, Eric Rignot, of the University of California, reviewed satellite images from 1996 to 2000 and found that ice is definitely melting on the Antarctic Peninsula and in the West Antarctic.

West Antarctica lost about 132 billion metric tons of ice in 2006, compared with about 83 billion metric tons in 1996, Rignot said. The Antarctic Peninsula lost 60 billion metric tons in 2006.

The ice melt would have been enough to raise the world’s sea level by 0.5 mm, if not for a simultaneous ice accumulation in frigid East Antarctica, Rignot said.

Research that shows humans are causing global warming may help bolster efforts to slow the emission of greenhouse gases, primarily by the United States and China, said Meg Boyle, a climate change expert with the environmental watchdog group Greenpeace.

“In the United States, we have a small percentage of the world’s population but we produce 25 percent of the world’s global warming pollution. It is time for us to step up,” she said. She expressed hope that United States President-elect Barack Obama will be more willing to participate in global climate agreements.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Melting ice in the Arctic, but the lure of resources is just too strong. Europe’s Arctic adventure – The new cold rush for resources.
LEIGH PHILLIPS, the EUobserver, November 7, 2008. THIS ARTICLE FROM TROMSO, NORWAY.

EUOBSERVER / TROMSO – PART ONE – There’s this grizzled old guy in the hospital with worsening lung cancer. The doctors can’t tell him whether it’s fatal yet, but each new test shows a rapidly deteriorating condition.

He’s been a heavy smoker all his life, although he’s trying to quit, but one day, while he’s wandering the corridors, he comes across a long-abandoned storeroom and it’s rammed to the gills with cigarettes, cigars, roll-your-own tobacco of every brand and region. There are Cuban cigars, Moroccan apple-flavoured nargileh tobacco, Swedish snus and jars of aromatic pipe shag. It’s an Aladdin’s cave of tobacco left over from the days when hospital cafeterias still sold cigarettes, and the nurses and security staff are nowhere to be seen.

The man briefly thinks that he should just forget he ever opened the storeroom door and get back to the business of quitting, but he’s dazzled by the hoard and instead stuffs as much of it into his pyjamas as he can to take back to his bed and puffs his nicotine-addled brains out.

There’s no tobacco hoard in a cupboard somewhere in the Arctic, but there is however a quarter of the world’s remaining undiscovered oil and gas now within reach as a result of the far north rapidly melting.

Like the old man in the hospital, the European Union and countries on the shores of the Arctic sea have said to themselves: “There may be a chance that we can slow down and reverse global warming, so we really should give up our addiction to fossil fuels. But how can we turn our backs – and our wallets – on such a bonanza, even if it’s full of the very stuff that caused the problem in the first place?”

Or is such an environmentalist caricature unfair to the people of the northern regions, for the most part long shut out from the industrial development and the wealth of the more southerly parts of Europe, Canada, Russia and the United States?

Many of those living in the Arctic are aboriginal people, who have historically borne the double burden of underdevelopment in their regions and racial prejudice. And until recently very little has been available to anyone up north apart from far-from-bountiful farming and the occasional mine that inevitably closes down.

Can we really say “No” to improving the standard of living in the north through development, especially if it can be done sustainably?

With recent months in particular seeing both a cascade of truly alarming news on how fast the Arctic is changing and pronouncements from the European Union and other circumpolar powers on plans for exploitation of newly accessible resources, the EUobserver decided to visit Europe’s patch of the Arctic, the northernmost tip of mainland Norway – still outside the EU, but very much Brussels’ advance guard up in the high north – to find out the reality behind the headlines about the coming “scramble for the Arctic”, and look at all sides in the debate over the Arctic’s future.

***

Methane burps:

The situation at the top of the world has taken a sharp turn for the worse just in the last few weeks.

On 6 September, leading European and American ice specialists at the US National Ice Center reported that for the first time, a ring of navigable waters around the Arctic ice cap opened up the fabled Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic archipelago – the maritime Holy Grail of a faster trade route from Europe to Asia sought for centuries by explorers – and the Northern Sea Route, also known as the Northeast Passage, over Eurasia, at the same time.

Then, in late September, Swedish and Russian scientists found the first evidence that millions of tonnes of methane – a gas that is 20 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide – is bubbling up from beneath the Siberian Arctic seabed.

The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is greater than the world’s remaining global stores of coal and it is now rising up from the bottom of the ocean through “methane chimney” discovered by scientists aboard the research ship Jacob Smirnitskyi.

Days later, British scientists aboard the James Clark Ross found hundreds of plumes of methane burping up from the Arctic seabed to the west of the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.

NASA’s top climate scientist, James Hansen, says that the release of methane clathrates from permafrost regions and beneath the seabed will unleash powerful feedback forces that could produce runaway climate change that cannot be controlled – the so-called methane time bomb – a prediction of radical environmental transformation far worse than the worst-case scenarios theorised by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Then on Tuesday (28 October), the European Space Agency reported that Arctic sea ice was thinning at a record rate, with the thickness of sea ice in large parts of the Arctic having declined by as much as 19 percent last winter compared to the previous five winters.

***

Last days of the ‘ice bear:’

“The Arctic is warming at two times the rate of the rest of the world,” says Nalan Koc, a senior scientist with the polar climate programme at the Norwegian Polar Institute, in Tromso, explaining why all of this is happening.

Tromso, in the far north of Norway and home to the world’s northernmost university, at the same time is preparing itself for the economic bonanza that the melting will bring.

Nalan Koc, however, is not as excited as other Tromso inhabitants. In a Power Point presentation of this Arctic apocalypse, she starkly lists the myriad ways in which the environment is fundamentally altering. “Amplified by positive feedback, the Arctic is seeing increased precipitation, declining snow cover, rising river flows, thawing permafrost, melting glaciers, retreating summer sea ice, rising sea levels, and ocean salinity changes making the water less saline.”

The talk, despite its subject, is deceptively banal. Where are the four horsemen? A moon turned blood-red? Instead, the end of days is being announced not by skeletonous biblical heralds but in bullet points and embedded videos that take three minutes to load.

The permafrost is melting under tundra that previously was stable, she explains, buckling roads and highways as the ground beneath them gives way.

In the marine environment, sea temperatures are rising and the ice cover is melting. Ice-dependent species such as the polar bear, which the Norwegians more accurately call “isbjorn” or “ice bear,” as well as the walrus and the ringed seal all face an uncertain future. Some scientists believe the polar bear will be extinct by mid-century.

“When you’ve been around up here for as long as I have, you begin to see it with your own eyes from year to year,” she says. “You can feel it in your bones.”

Last year saw a record low extent of Arctic sea ice cover – 4.3 million square kilometres – more than 40 percent below averages in the 1980s and more than 20 percent below the previous record low in 2005. “But more important than the extent is the volume of the ice. Most of the older thicker ice is not surviving from one summer to the next. As of 2007, most of the ice was three or four-year-old ice. As of 2008, most ice is just one year old.”

The massive ice loss and thinning is forcing scientists to quickly ratchet lower even their worst expectations – the 2007 melting came some 30 years ahead of model predictions.

In 2004, it was predicted that the ice would have melted sufficiently to allow commercial traffic in the Arctic Ocean by 2090. In 2007, it was predicted that commercial traffic would be able to cross by 2040. As of 2008, the predictions are for some time in the next five years, with the first start-up possibly in 2009. Models now predict an ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summer some time between 2013 and 2040.

The last time the Arctic Ocean was ice-free in the summer was over a million years ago.

Her colleague, Kit Kovacs, the Biodiversity Research Programme leader at the institute says: “The changes are happening so rapidly that scientists are having trouble processing it all. From initial tests to publishing papers takes at a minimum months or a couple of years, but change is happening much faster than that.

“The biodiversity loss is just as profound as if there were a loss of the Amazon rainforest within the space of five years.”

***

Oil and gas bonanza:

What looks like the end for the polar bear, however, looks like Christmas for resource companies and European energy security concerns.

Johan Petter Barlindhaug, the chair of North Energy, a northern-Norway-based oil-and-gas start-up currently exploring energy sources on the Norwegian continental shelf, says the melting Arctic could offer northern peoples, who have historically lived in a very much underdeveloped region, a chance to have similar standards of living as those who live in the cities and towns further south.

“Climate change poses lots of threats, but it also opens up a range of possibilities,” he says.

Oil companies like North Energy and Norwegian energy giant Statoil Hydro believe the Arctic holds as much as 25 percent of the worlds undiscovered oil and gas deposits – as much as the combined reserves of Canada and Saudi Arabia.

Russia’s Gazprom already has approximately 34 trillion cubic metres (113 trillion cubic feet) of gas under development in the Barents Sea and Moscow is claiming territory in the Arctic that contains an estimated 586 billion barrels of oil.

Mineral resources may also abound, particularly coal, iron, lead, copper, nickel, zinc and sulphides, as well as precious minerals such as gold and diamonds. Recent diamond discoveries in the Canadian Arctic have made the country, which previously didn’t produce any of the stones, the third biggest exporter of diamonds in the world.

On maps that place the North Pole at the centre of the world, instead of the equator, Mr Barlindhaug shows how a melting Arctic also opens up three different shortcuts for shipping goods between Europe and Asia – routes that will save shipping firms, exporters and importers, and the world’s navies and smugglers – billions of euros.

The shipping industry is hoping for a 20 percent saving, he enthuses, with still greater savings for the megaships that cannot fit through the Suez or Panama canals and have to sail round the tips of Africa or South America.

Although Mr Barlindhaug believes that the third shortcut – straight across the pole – offers the most potential.

“The Northwest and Northeast Passages aren’t as important as building ports on Iceland and in Norway and Russia,” he says. “This is because the Canadians view the Northwest Passage as domestic, and there’s something of the same with the Northeast Passage, which is within Russian borders.

“In any case, international waters closer to the North Pole provide routes that are much shorter. But it’s also a matter of speed and cost. Between the Canadian or Russian islands, you can’t pick up much speed while you’re navigating through them. It’s too narrow.

“But at 20-25 knots across the pole, then you’re really saving some money. It would take just five days to cross from the Bering Sea to the Barent Sea. It doesn’t need to be completely ice free.”

He then moves on to the expanded fishing opportunities and potential for discoveries of new medicines derived from invertebrates living in extreme polar environments that round out the economic bounty becoming available as the climate warms up.

Some 10 percent of global white fish stocks swim through the waters of the Barents Sea, the Bering Sea, and near Iceland, offering catches worth billions of euros.

Nonetheless, “bio-prospecting” for new medicines is by far the greater catch, believes Mr Barlindhaug: “These invertebrates are chemical factories that will produce the next generation of medicines. They’re far more important than the fish that is up there.”

In a visit to brand-spanking new labs at the University of Tromso, Jeanette Andersen, of Mabcent-SFI, a public-private bio-prospecting outfit launched last year with €20.5 million (180m NOK) in funding, explains the potential for new treatments and cures coming from molluscs that poison passing fish or colourless mini-starfish that love the cold.

“The marine environment in the high Arctic is unparalleled with respect to combination of temperature and light regimes,” she says. “This implies evolution of organisms with unique physiological and biochemical adaptations.”

She says that the potential is enormous, from antibiotics, chemotherapy, and painkillers to anti-bacterials, anti-oxidents, anti-inflammatory medicines, but Mabcent also hopes to discover creatures that have cosmetic and industrial applications, and even better food and drink preservation.

“But all high-profit,” she enthuses, describing how her biologist and chemist colleagues dive off into the depths of the Arctic Ocean like a team of submariner Indiana Joneses, before they race back to the university to freeze the hundreds of different specimens. They then grind them into a pulp that is investigated by viking boffins at stupidly expensive machines who identify the wild new molecules produced by the exotic biochemistry of these nigh-on alien creatures.

“Living in environments that range from 1.8 to 8 degrees celsius, these organisms are adapted to cold temperatures. As you warm up the metabolism, you speed up the effectiveness of enzymes, so the thinking is that enzymes existing at these temperatures will work faster in warm humans.”

However, some of the different industries opening up as Arctic waters open up pose a threat to others.

Pooh-poohing the idea that oil and gas exploration threatens the environment, North Energy’s Mr Barlindhaug reckons it’s a massive expansion of unsustainable fishing practices and illegal fishing that pose the greatest threat, particularly to bio-prospecting.

“Bottom trawling is much more damaging than oil and gas exploration, as the you find oil all over the rocks and sand on the sea bed. These creatures are used to it – there’s nothing to worry about from oil and gas exploration.

“Bioprospectors should be more scared about increased fishing activity. That’ll damage these organisms much more,” he insists.

Jeanette back at Mabcent is not so sure: “We need to be worried about oil and gas exploration. What Mr Barlindhaug said is too easy an answer to the question of oil spills. Some organisms will adapt, yes, but others are very vulnerable.”

In the second part of the EUobserver’s look at the politics and business of the melting Arctic, appearing on Monday, we look at Kirkenes, a small harbour town sometimes called ‘Little Murmansk’ for its 10 percent Russian population, and how it is set to be transformed by the oil and gas bonanza opening up as the ice disappears.

 Subject: 2009 POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS   – IIASA

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) invites applications for two Postdoctoral Research Fellow positions.

IIASA is an international research organization located in Laxenburg, 16 km south of Vienna, Austria. Some 200 mathematicians, social scientists, natural scientists, economists and engineers from over 35 countries conduct inter-disciplinary research on environmental, economic, technological, and social issues in the context of human dimensions of global change, in particular climate change.
 http://www.iiasa.ac.at/docs/what-is-iias…

Candidates should have a doctoral degree for less than five years at the application deadline, with a proven record of research accomplishments.   Scholars will conduct their own research within one of IIASA’s research programs or special projects on topics closely related to IIASA’s agenda.
 http://www.iiasa.ac.at/docs/Research/

The IIASA programs of   past, research projects have included studies of:

global climate changes,

world agricultural potential,

energy resource requirements and implications,

regional patterns of acid emission and deposition,

risk analysis and management,

social and economic impacts of demographic changes,

and the theory and methods of systems analysis.
Many of those earlier research projects form the backbone of current activities.

Following the strategic and research goals set by its governing Council, since 2000, IIASA’s research is being carried out under three core themes:

Environment and Natural Resources
Population and Society
Energy and Technology.

The positions carry a competitive salary, exempt from taxation in Austria, but subject to the principle of income aggregation; an allowance for relocation expenses to and from Austria; and participation in either private or state health insurance plans.   Appointees are offered a fellowship for one or two years.

Closing date for applications is February 1, 2009.   Full details about the Program, including an on-line application form can be found at http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/YSP/pdoc/te…

Contact details
Barbara Hauser
Postdoctoral Coordinator
Schlossplatz 1
A-2361 Laxenburg
Austria
Tel: +43 2236 807 541
Email:  hauser at iiasa.ac.at

From:      e.polack at ids.ac.uk
Subject: New Climate and Disaster Governance Programme launched today!
Date: October 22, 2008

Climate and Disaster Governance: Understanding governance at the interface of climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development

The Climate and Disaster Governance programme is being launched today by the Institute of Development Studies and Christian Aid:

CDG will help policy-makers and civil society organisations understand how different national and sub-national governance arrangements can make development more resilient to climate change and disasters.

CDG research is currently investigating:
•how citizens can best engage in national and local climate and disaster policy-making;
•the role social protection can play in reducing risks for the most vulnerable people;
•the opportunities and barriers to reducing climate and disaster risk in fragile states;
•the impacts of international policies on national and local capacities for disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and poverty reduction.

CDG partners invite you to collaborate on or across CDG’s research themes, and to share resources and information through the programme’s website.

CDG is also offering research bursaries to support developing country researchers on topics that fall under or across the programme’s research themes.

To find out more visit www.climategovernance.org

Climate and Disaster Governance: Understanding governance at the interface of climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development

The Climate and Disaster Governance programme is being launched today by the Institute of Development Studies and Christian Aid:

CDG will help policy-makers and civil society organisations understand how different national and sub-national governance arrangements can make development more resilient to climate change and disasters.

CDG research is currently investigating:
•       how citizens can best engage in national and local climate and disaster policy-making;
•       the role social protection can play in reducing risks for the most vulnerable people;
•       the opportunities and barriers to reducing climate and disaster risk in fragile states;
•       the impacts of international policies on national and local capacities for disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and poverty reduction.

CDG partners invite you to collaborate on or across CDG’s research themes, and to share resources and information through the programme’s website.

CDG is also offering research bursaries to support developing country researchers on topics that fall under or across the programme’s research themes.

To find out more visit www.climategovernance.org

Scotland to build world’s first ‘wind farms under the sea.’
 http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Scotla…

By Jenny Haworth, Environment Correspondent, The New Scotsman, September 29, 2oo8.

SCOTLAND has taken a major step towards leading the way in marine renewable energy with the announcement that the world’s first tidal farms could be built within three years.

Two tidal projects, each with up to 20 turbines, could be installed on the seabed in the Pentland Firth and the Sound of Islay. A third is planned off the North Antrim coast in Northern Ireland. The aim is that all the underwater turbines would be constructed in Scotland, kickstarting the renewables industry in this country.

ScottishPower Renewables will apply for planning permission for the three tidal projects next summer. If permission is granted, they would be the first commercial underwater tidal turbine farms built anywhere in the world.

The structures stand 30 metres tall and can work as deep as 100 metres. The 20-metre blades would turn at least 10 metres below the surface to avoid shipping, developers said, and the zones would be off-limits to trawlers for safety reasons.

ScottishPower said tests in Norway proved the blades moved slowly enough for marine life to avoid them.

Scotland, which aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, has the best tidal resources in Europe and it has been calculated that at least a third of Scotland’s energy demand could be met by tidal renewables.

The tidal farm sites would have a combined output of 60 megawatts, enough to power 40,000 homes in Scotland and Northern Ireland. If planning approval is granted, ScottishPower Renewables says the projects could be operational by 2011.

The company is also hoping to build a factory in the north-east of Scotland where all the turbines will be constructed, and the projects would be expected to bring hundreds of jobs.

Keith Anderson, the director of ScottishPower Renewables, said this was Scotland’s chance to become the global leader in a new renewable energy industry.

He said Scotland has the best tidal resources in Europe, with the Pentland Firth alone containing enough energy to meet a third of Scotland’s power requirements. “The rapid technological advance of tidal power has been startling and is now allowing us to progress plans for substantial projects delivering major environmental and economic benefits,” he said.

“Tidal power is completely renewable, being driven by the gravity of the sun and moon, with no carbon dioxide emissions, plus the added benefit of being entirely predictable.”

First Minister Alex Salmond, who will visit Caithness, near the potential site of the tidal farms, described the announcement as “significant”. He said: “We have an estimated 25 per cent of Europe’s tidal resource and 10 per cent of its wave potential. That is why this announcement is so significant.”

Before it can be deployed, a £6 million prototype will have to be tested for about a year in Scottish waters, probably off Orkney.

Engineers rising to the challenge of harnessing tidal power:

THE tidal farms will use a machine known as the Lànstrøm device, which was invented in Norway and has already gone through four years of successful testing.

Even though the devices seem likely to be the first to be used in a large-scale commercial tidal farm, many other machines are in development in what is set to become a very competitive market.

Marine Current Turbines, based in Bristol, installed a 300kw tidal turbine called Seaflow off Lynmouth, Devon, in 2003.

It’s a two-bladed rotor connected to an electrical generator mounted on a single steel tower drilled into the seabed.

Irish firm OpenHydro Group has developed the Open-Centre Turbine, which has a single rotor. A single prototype turbine was installed at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney in 2006. In May 2008 it became the first tidal device to export power on to the UK grid.

The Engineering Business, based in Newcastle, is developing the Stingray tidal generator, which uses the flow of the tide over a hydroplane, similar to an aeroplane wing, to generate electricity. In 2002 the 180-tonne, 150kw machine was tested in the Yell Sound, Shetland.

SMD Hydrovision, based in Tyne and Wear, has developed the TidEL concept, which consists of a pair of contra-rotating 500kw turbines, mounted together on a single crossbeam.

The unit is buoyant and tethered to the seabed, allowing it freedom of movement. The turbines can automatically align themselves downstream of the tidal flow as it changes during the day.

***

IN NUMBERS:

40 – Turbines that could be built in Scottish waters by 2011.

40,000 – Homes that could be powered by the three turbine farms.

80 – The percentage of the UK’s potential tidal power in Scottish waters.

From:      cgay at servidor.unam.mx
Subject: Post doctoral positions
Date: September 24, 2008

The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)   announces:

POSTDOCTORAL POSITIONS AVAILABLE AT THE CENTRO DE CIENCIAS DE LA ATMOSFERA (Campus Mexico City)
CLOSING DATE FOR RECEPTION OF APPLICATIONS OCTOBER 24, 2008
www.atmosfera.unam.mx

The Centro de Ciencias de la Atmósfera (CCA) belonging to the   National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), in Mexico City, is offering a one year postdoctoral position, with the possibility of renewal,   for carrying out research in Mexico related to the main themes of Atmospheric Sciences.

Fellowships include a monthly stipend ($ 2,000   Dlls.) and a medical insurance.
Interested applicants should already have a Ph.D. degree or equivalent obtained within the last three years and to be 35 year old or younger by October 24, 2008. This position is open to Mexican citizens and foreigners living in and outside Mexico.

Knowledge of Spanish is an advantage although not indispensable.

The main research themes are:

1) Aerobiology
2) Atmospheric Aerosols
3) Atmospheric Chemistry
4) Atmospheric Physico-chemistry
5) Bioclimatology
6) Climatic Change
7) Climatic Models
8) Cloud Physics
9) Environmental Cytogenetics
10) Environmental Mutagenesis
11) Environmental pollution
12) Tropical   Meteorology
13) Mathematical Modeling of Atmospheric Processes
14) Micro and Mesoscale Interactions
15) Physical Climatology
16) Urban Meteorology

More detailed information on the current specific research themes can be found at www.atmosfera.unam.mx.

For information about fellowships you may contact:
Dr. Amparo Martínez-Arroyo
 seac at atmosfera.unam.mx
+52 55 5622-4059

Untapped energy source fuels a paradox.

By MICHAEL RICHARDSON, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008, The Japan Times.
SINGAPORE — Ice that burns? It sounds like a magician’s trick. So do some of the exotic names given to gas hydrate — “flammable sorbet,” “crystal gas” and “burning ice.” But recent scientific surveys and test drilling in Asia and elsewhere have proven that this substance exists in massive, potentially recoverable quantities and that it could be an important commercial energy source for the future.

Indeed, some of the world’s biggest economies and energy users, including the United States, Japan, China, India, South Korea and Canada, are racing to develop production techniques and equipment to tap gas hydrate and bring it to market within the next decade. For all of them, except energy self-sufficient Canada, the ability to tap new domestic sources of natural gas offers the prospect of substantially reducing dependence on expensive gas imports.

Hydrate deposits up to several hundred meters thick are generally found in two places: on or beneath the deep ocean floor, or underground close to the Arctic permafrost layer, where high pressure and cold temperatures turn natural gas (methane, ethane and propane) into semi-solid form.

Gas hydrate looks like ordinary ice, although it is sometimes discolored. But when brought to the surface and allowed to warm, it can be lit with a match. It then burns with a soft orange flame. One cubic meter of gas hydrate releases as much as 164 cubic meters of natural gas, in which methane is usually the chief constituent.

While global estimates vary considerably, the U.S. government’s energy department says that the energy content of methane in hydrate form is “immense, possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels,” meaning coal, oil and conventional gas.

The presence of hydrates has been inferred from seismic surveys and subsea sampling along most of the world’s continental shelf margins. Some of the biggest deposits so far found are on the ocean floor off Japan, South Korea, India and China, and on and off U.S. and Canadian Arctic land territory.

Japan’s economy, trade and energy ministry announced last year that there were over 1.1 trillion cubic meters of methane hydrates in a Pacific Ocean trench, called the Nankai Trough, some 50 kilometers from the coast of Honshu, the main Japanese island. This reserve is equivalent to 14 years of gas use by Japan, which imports nearly all the oil, gas and coal needed to run its vast economy, the world’s second-largest after the United States.

Three years ago, the Japanese government said it believed commercial exploitation of methane hydrate was economically viable when oil traded above $54 a barrel, less than half its present price. In November 2007, the government in Seoul said it had found enough gas hydrates in the sea between South Korea and Japan to meet 30 years of demand. Six months earlier, China announced that it had for the first time managed to tap into seabed sediment containing gas hydrates in the northern part of the South China Sea. It said initial estimates indicated that the find contained the equivalent of more than 100 million metric tons of oil — about one-third of China’s annual oil consumption.

In doing so, China became the fourth country after the U.S., Japan and India to achieve this technological breakthrough in the deep sea search for energy. India announced in 2006 that it had made several huge discoveries of gas hydrates off its east and west coasts.

Since last April, the U.S. has signed separate agreements with India, South Korea and Japan to cooperate in hydrate research, exploration and production. Japan, the U.S. and Canada, working in close collaboration, have achieved several days of continuous extraction of methane from underground hydrate reserves in the Arctic permafrost. Large-scale production tests are planned in the Canadian Arctic this winter and in the U.S. Arctic next year.

Test production from offshore Arctic finds is expected to lag by three to five years, because marine deposits are less well documented than those on land. Sea sampling and drilling are also much more expensive. Japan said recently it plans to start test drilling in the Nankai Trough in 2012, possibly leading to commercial production by 2016. Korea has a similar production timetable.

However, apart from the high costs and technical challenge, all the hydrate explorers face another possible danger — environmental disaster. While governments are attracted to an abundant clean fuel, scientists are concerned that drilling when combined with global warming risks disturbing the seabed and triggering an uncontrolled release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The British government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, warned recently that one big unknown about global warming is the stage at which dangerous tipping points may be reached that lead to runaway heating of the planet. He cited as an example the release of methane hydrate deposits in the Arctic.

Some evidence suggests that a catastrophic release of methane from the ocean 55 million years ago, possibly caused by undersea volcanic explosions and landslides, was responsible for making the earth much warmer.

The modern hydrate quest is built on a paradox. When released to the air, methane is a greenhouse gas that traps around 20 times more solar heat in the earth’s atmosphere than carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas. But when burned, methane releases up to 25 percent less carbon dioxide than combustion of the same amount of coal. It also emits no nitrogen and sulfur oxides, which poison the air and human health when coal is burned without effective filters.

The world’s abundant methane hydrate deposits have been safely stored for thousands of years in the ocean depths and Arctic permafrost. Those who now seek to exploit what is probably the world’s greatest reserve of new fossil fuel must therefore be sure that in doing so they improve, not harm, the global environment.

Michael Richardson, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is an energy and security specialist at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.

The Methane Time Bomb.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008, by Steve Conner, The Independent UK.

In the past few days, researchers released that the sub-sea layer of permafrost has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.

Arctic scientists discover new global warming threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide.

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The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.

The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.

Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia’s northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane – sometimes at up to 100 times background levels – over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf.

In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through “methane chimneys” rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a “lid” to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.

They have warned that this is likely to be linked with the rapid warming that the region has experienced in recent years.

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Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.

The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth.

Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University in Sweden, one of the leaders of the expedition, described the scale of the methane emissions in an email exchange sent from the Russian research ship Jacob Smirnitskyi.

“We had a hectic finishing of the sampling programme yesterday and this past night,” said Dr Gustafsson. “An extensive area of intense methane release was found. At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane. Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface. These ‘methane chimneys’ were documented on echo sounder and with seismic [instruments].”

At some locations, methane concentrations reached 100 times background levels. These anomalies have been seen in the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea, covering several tens of thousands of square kilometres, amounting to millions of tons of methane, said Dr Gustafsson. “This may be of the same magnitude as presently estimated from the global ocean,” he said. “Nobody knows how many more such areas exist on the extensive East Siberian continental shelves.

“The conventional thought has been that the permafrost ‘lid’ on the sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place. The growing evidence for release of methane in this inaccessible region may suggest that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus leak methane… The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed.”

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The preliminary findings of the International Siberian Shelf Study 2008, being prepared for publication by the American Geophysical Union, are being overseen by Igor Semiletov of the Far-Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1994, he has led about 10 expeditions in the Laptev Sea but during the 1990s he did not detect any elevated levels of methane. However, since 2003 he reported a rising number of methane “hotspots”, which have now been confirmed using more sensitive instruments on board the Jacob Smirnitskyi.

Dr Semiletov has suggested several possible reasons why methane is now being released from the Arctic, including the rising volume of relatively warmer water being discharged from Siberia’s rivers due to the melting of the permafrost on the land.

The Arctic region as a whole has seen a 4C rise in average temperatures over recent decades and a dramatic decline in the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by summer sea ice. Many scientists fear that the loss of sea ice could accelerate the warming trend because open ocean soaks up more heat from the sun than the reflective surface of an ice-covered sea.