Jessica Aldred
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/01/endangeredhabitats.conservation

Friday February 1 2008
The decline of vast areas of mangroves is an environmental problem that must be urgently addressed, environmental experts say
Mangrove ecosystems should be better protected, the UN's food agency has warned as it published new figures showing that 20% of the world's mangrove area has been destroyed since 1980

A study by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said that the environmental and economic damages caused by the "alarming" loss of mangroves in many countries should be urgently addressed.

Countries must engage in more effective conservation and sustainable management of the world's mangroves and other wetland ecosystems, it warned, ahead of World Wetlands day tomorrow.

The world has lost around 3.6m hectares (20%) of mangroves since 1980, the report showed.

The total mangrove area has declined from 18.8m ha (46.4m acres) in 1980 to 15.2m ha (37.5m acres) in 2005. However the report did show that there has been a slowdown in the rate of mangrove loss: from some 187,000 ha destroyed annually in the 1980s to 102,000 ha a year between 2000 and 2005. This reflected an increased awareness of the value of mangrove ecosystems, the report said.

Mangroves are salt-tolerant evergreen forests that are found along coastlines, lagoons, rivers or deltas in 124 tropical and subtropical countries and areas around the world, providing protection against erosion, cyclones and wind.

Around 50% of the world's total mangrove area is found in Indonesia, Australia, Brazil, Nigeria and Mexico.

Their important ecosystems provide wood, food, fodder, medicine and honey for humans, and habitats for many animals like crocodiles and snakes, tigers, deer, otters, dolphins and birds. A wide range of fish and shellfish also depend on mangroves as the swamps help to filter sediment and pollution from water upstream and stop it disturbing the delicate balance of ecosystems like coral reefs.

The main causes of the destruction of mangrove swampland include population pressure, conversion for shrimp and fish farming, agriculture, infrastructure and tourism, as well as pollution and natural disasters, the FAO said.

...

The assessment of the world's mangroves from 1980-2005 was prepared in collaboration with mangrove specialists throughout the world and was co-funded by the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO).

The FAO and ITTO are currently working with the International Society for Mangrove Ecosystems and other partner organisations to produce a World Atlas of Mangroves to be published later this year.

by Robert D.Kaplan

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801/kaplan-bangladesh 

With rising Islamic fundamentalism, weak government, and not enough dry land for its 150 million people, Bangladesh could use a break. Instead, it must face the catastrophic threat of climate change.

The monsoon arrived while I was in a shallow-draft boat traveling over a village that was now underwater. In its place was a mile-wide channel, created by erosion over the years, separating the mainland of Bangladesh from a char---a temporary delta island that would someday dissolve just as easily as it had formed.

As ink-dark, vertical cloud formations slid in from the Bay of Bengal, waves began slapping hard against the rotting wood of our small boat. Breaking days of dense, soupy heat, rain fell like nails upon us. We started bailing. The boatman, my translator, and I made it to the char before the channel water that was splashing into the hull, heavy with silt, could threaten the boat's buoyancy. It was a lot of work just to see something that was no longer there.

On another day, in order to see a series of dam collapses that had forced the evacuation of more than a dozen villages, I rode on the back of a motorcycle along a maze of embankments framing a checkerwork of paddy fields that glinted in the steamy rain. Again, the sight that greeted me--a few crumbled earthen dams--was not dramatic, unless, that is, you were holding the "before" picture in front of you.

Yet from one end of Bangladesh to the other, I saw plenty of drama, encapsulated in this singular fact: remoteness and fragility of terrain never once corresponded with a paucity of humanity. Even on the chars, I could not get away from people cultivating every inch of alluvial soil. Human beings were everywhere on this dirty wet sponge of a landscape. Squeezed into an Iowa-sized territory--20 to 60 percent of which floods every year--is a population half the size of that in the United States and larger than the one in Russia. Indeed, Bangladesh's Muslim population alone (83 percent of the total) is nearly twice that of either Egypt or Iran. Considered small only because it is surrounded on three sides by India, Ban­gla­desh is actually a vast aquascape, where getting around by boat and vehicle, as I learned, can take many days.

I went through towns that had a formal reality as names on a map, but were little more than rashes of rusted-corrugated-iron and bamboo stalls under canopies of jackfruit trees, teeming with men wearing skirt-like lungis and baseball caps and women in burkas that concealed all but their eyes and noses. Between the towns were long lines of water-filled pits, topped with a green froth of hyacinths; the soil had been removed to raise the road a few feet above the unrelieved sea-level flatness. Soil is a commodity so precious in Bangladesh that people dredge riverbeds during the dry season to get more of it. When houses are dismantled, the ground on which they stand is transported through slurry pipes to the new location.

In every respect, people were squeezing the last bit of use out of the land. One day I saw a man carried by on a stretcher moments after he had been mauled by a Royal Bengal tiger. It is not an uncommon occurrence. As fishing communities crowd in on one of the tigers' last refuges in the mangrove swamps of the western Bangladeshi-Indian border area, and as salinity from rising sea levels reduces the deer population on which the tigers feed, man and tiger have nowhere else to go.

The Earth has always been unstable. Flooding and erosion, cyclones and tsunamis are the norm rather than the exception. But never have the planet's most environmentally frail areas been so crowded. The slowdown in the growth rate of the world's population has not changed the fact that the number of people living in the countries most vulnerable to natural disasters continues to increase. The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 was merely a curtain-raiser. Over the coming decades, Mother Nature is likely to kill or make homeless a staggering number of people.

American journalists sometimes joke that, in terms of news, thousands of people displaced by floods in Bangladesh equals a handful of people killed or displaced closer to home. But that formula is now as unimaginative and out-of-date as it is cruel.

With 150 million people packed together at sea level, Bangladesh is vulnerable to the slightest climatic variation, never mind the changes caused by global warming. The partial melting of Greenland ice over the course of the 21st century could inundate a substantial amount of Bangladesh with salt water. A 20-centimeter rise in the Bay of Bengal by 2030 could be devastating to more than 10 million people, says Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4146
By Jamais Cascio

Posted January 2008

Preventing global warming from becoming a planetary catastrophe may take something even more drastic than renewable energy, superefficient urban design, and global carbon taxes. Such innovations remain critical, and yet disruptions to the Earth's climate could overwhelm these relatively slow, incremental changes in how we live. As reports of faster-than-expected climate changes mount, a growing number of experts worry that we might ultimately be forced to try something quite radical: geoengineering.

Geoengineering involves humans making intentional, large-scale modifications to the Earth's geophysical systems in order to change the environment. These can include sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide in the oceans, changing the reflectivity of the Earth's surface, and pumping particles into the stratosphere to block a fraction of incoming sunlight. Many of these proposals mimic natural events, so we know that- in principle- they can work, although there is insufficient understanding of their potential side effects. Unsurprisingly, geoengineering is highly controversial, and even proponents view it as a "Hail Mary" pass, to be considered only after all other options have failed.

But geoengineering presents more than just an environmental question. It also presents a geopolitical dilemma. With processes of this magnitude and degree of uncertainty, countries would inevitably argue over control, costs, and liability for mistakes. More troubling, however, is the possibility that states may decide to use geoengineering efforts and technologies as weapons. Two factors make this a danger we dismiss at our peril: the unequal impact of climate changes, and the ability of small states and even nonstate actors to attempt geoengineering.

For a variety of political and natural reasons, global warming affects some countries differently than others. Fragile economies and weak infrastructures tend to worsen the results of climate disruptions, a problem exemplified by Bangladesh's vulnerability to monsoons, accelerating desertification in northern China, and, most visibly, Hurricane Katrina's devastation in New Orleans. At the same time, warming and altered rainfall patterns may, temporaily, improve conditions for countries in extreme latitudes, increasing harvests in Canada and Russia for a few years. Similarly, intentional changes meant to fight global warming would also have differential results.

At the same time, the resources required for geoengineering projects can vary dramatically. A start-up company called Climos and the government of India have each begun to prepare tests of "ocean iron fertilization" to boost oceanic phytoplankton blooms, in order to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, at a cost of just a few million dollars. At the other end of the spectrum, projects like the injection of megatons of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to simulate the effects of a volcano would easily cost in the tens of billions of dollars, still within the means of the most developed country. 

It's this combination of differential impact and relatively low cost that makes international disputes over geoengineering almost inevitable. Even if there is broad consensus that geoengineering is too risky, research into environmental modification will happen simply out of self-preservation---nobody wants to fall behind. Moreover, it's not hard to imagine some international actors seeing geoengineering as something other than solely a way of avoiding environmental disaster.

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46794/story.html

RUSSIA: February 6, 2008
From PlanetArk

MOSCOW - Poland hopes to convince Russia to abandon the Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea and back an alternative land route across its soil when their leaders meet this week, a Polish diplomat said on Tuesday.

The concept may be discussed at Friday talks between newly-installed Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Russian President Vladimir Putin, although the final agenda has yet to be confirmed, Polish diplomat Jerzy Rutkowski told Reuters.
"The land pipeline may cost about US$3 billion. So why pay US$12 billion if you can pay four times less?" said Rutkowski, the secretary for economic issues at the Polish embassy in Moscow.

The Baltic States and Poland, a major transit route for Russian gas, fear the direct seabed link from Russia to Germany would allow them to be cut off easily from Russian supplies.

From: , The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/30651

Published February 5, 2008 10:08 AM

Agriculture is possibly the most important sector of global activity. It is a source of foods, fibers and, increasingly, fuel. It provides livelihoods and subsistence for the largest number of people worldwide. It is vital to rural development and therefore critical to poverty alleviation. Up to 40% of the land's surface is used for agriculture, along with 70% of the world's fresh water supply. Today, agriculture accounts for 38.7% of total global employment.

Population growth and increasing affluence in some countries are increasing demand for food and changing the types of food in demand — from grain to meat, for example, a change that requires more farmland. More land is being used to grow fuel crops, and climate change and water scarcity are compromising the ability of agricultural lands to deliver quality produce.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=25527&Cr=water&Cr1=

6 February 2008 - Many of today's conflicts around the world are being fuelled or exacerbated by water shortages and climate change is only making the situation worse, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the General Assembly today.
Briefing an informal Assembly session on the crises in Kenya, Darfur and Chad, as well as his recent trip to Europe and Africa, Mr. Ban noted that he told the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month that "increasingly, fights are erupting over such basic human needs as water or arable land.

"I find this trend deeply worrying, especially because such shortages are only projected to grow in coming years," he said, adding that water also underpins many of the world's key development challenges - food, the environment, health and economic well-being.

"Water shortages are at the core of many of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), one of which is to reduce by half the number of people without safe access to water by 2015. When you consider the health and development challenges facing the poorest of the world's population - diseases like malaria or TB [tuberculosis], rising food prices, environmental degradation - the common denominator often seems to be water."

International cooperation is crucial to overcoming the problem, the Secretary-General said, calling for governments, business and civil society to form new and innovative partnerships. He also pointed out that the UN has declared 2008 to be the International Year of Sanitation and the UN Global Compact's CEO Water Mandate is also coordinating work on the issue.

"Water is a classic common property resource. No one really owns the problem. Therefore, no one really owns the solution."

Turning to the latest crises in Africa, Mr. Ban said he has dispatched Under-Secretary-General John Holmes to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, to assess how best to help the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have fled deadly ethnic violence across that country since disputed elections in December.

"I also met former Secretary-General Kofi Annan and reiterated my support for the mediation efforts of the Panel of Eminent African Personalities that he leads. Several UN staff members have been deployed to assist the Panel's work, while UNDP [the UN Development Programme] has established a Trust Fund to support the Panel. I appeal to all Member States and partners to contribute urgently to this Fund."

Voicing alarm at the past week's events in Chad, Mr. Ban welcomed the initiative of the African Union (AU) to use the heads of State of Libya and the Republic of Congo to try to mediate a solution to the conflict between the Government and armed rebels.

"Unfortunately, the situation has severely affected the work of MINURCAT [the new UN mission to Chad and the Central African Republic], as well as that of the United Nations agencies in Chad."

The situation across the border in the Sudanese region of Darfur remains troubling, he noted, urging Member States to speed up their deployments of troops to the hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping force to the region (known as UNAMID).

"There is a window of opportunity right now to really move forward in Darfur. We cannot afford to squander it through delay and dithering."

The Secretary-General added that he is in the process of setting up an independent panel to examine strategic issues relating to the delivery and enhancement of staff security for the UN around the world. The veteran diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi will chair the panel.

"The safety and security of UN staff is a paramount concern to UN operations. The dedicated men and women who carry out the Organization's work around the world deserve the best possible safety and security."

CUPID Conference

CUPID (Columbia University Partnership for International Development) is pleased to announce its annual conference, this year entitled: "Beyond Polar Bears: Looking Past the Environmental Impacts of Climate Change".

The focus is on the effects of climate change not often highlighted in the media and not often contemplated by the public, including effects on food security, public health, markets and business, and policy options. The conference will be held on Friday, February 15th.

It will feature two panels, a debate, and a keynote address by Professor Geoffrey Heal of Columbia Business School, each followed by an interactive discussion with the audience.

Confirmed participants include speakers from Ecosecurities, USAID, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Tufts University, Earth Institute and others.

12:00 - 12:15 - Welcome and Opening remarks from CUPID
12:20 - 1:20 - Keynote Speaker: Prof. Geoffrey Heal
1:20 - 1:40 - Coffee break
1:40 - 2:50 - Panel: Impact on Business and Markets
2:50 - 3:10 - Coffee break
3:10 - 4:20 - Panel: Health and Human Security
4:20 - 4:40 - Coffee break
4:40 - 5:50 - Debate: Where do we go from here?
6:00 - 8:00 - Wine and cheese reception

Attendees are free to come and go as they please throughout the day. The event is free and open to the public.

Register now at www.columbia.edu/cu/cupid
Speaker bios also available online

NOTE: Please note that the Earth Institute is not a sponsor of this event. The posting of events by the Earth Institute does not constitute an endorsement of the event.

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 12-2pm
International Affairs 1118

"Who Fights? Participation in African Civil Conflicts"
with Macartan Humphreys

Please join the Institute of African Studies in welcoming Macartan Humphreys for a Brown Bag discussion of African civil wars, and an analysis of their participants.

Macartan Humphreys (PhD (Government) Harvard 2003, MPhil (Economics)Oxford, 2000) works on the political economy of development and formal political theory. Ongoing research focuses on civil wars, post conflict development, ethnic politics, natural resource management, political authority and leadership and democratic development. He has conducted field research in Chad, Ghana, Haiti, Indonesia, Liberia, Mali, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Uganda and elsewhere. A new series of projects underway use field experiments to examine democratic decision making in post conflict and developing areas. He is a research scholar at the Center for lobalization and Sustainable Development at the Earth Institute.

Date
Thursday and Friday, March 27 and 28, 2008

Time
9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Conference
Thursday, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., The Economist Debate

Location
Columbia University, Alfred Lerner Hall, Roone Arledge Auditorium
2920 Broadway (between 114th and 115th Streets), New York, NY
Information
Doors will open at 8:30 a.m.
Lunch is on your own. There will be a 1 1/2 hour lunch break each day.
The conference is free and open to the registered public.

Note:
Session 2: Addressing Areas of Conflict in Our Changing World
Moderator: Jonathan Ledgard, The Economist
Keynote
Jan Egeland, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Panel
Jean-Marie Guéhenno, The United Nations
Jill Shankleman, J. Shankleman Limited
David Victor, Stanford University

Background:
State of the Planet Mission
The State of the Planet Conference, held every two years by the Earth Institute at Columbia University, assesses the state of global natural and human systems in order to identify those factors central to achieving sustainable development. The conference brings together insights from the world's most influential and innovative thinkers in a wide range of academic fields, including the earth sciences, engineering sciences, biological sciences, health sciences, and social sciences, with those from opinion leaders in the media, government and the policy community.

Participants explore and debate in depth, on a global scale, the current condition of natural and human systems from the perspectives of both the natural and social sciences. In fostering constructive relations between these scientific communities and government leaders, international organizations, individuals and others, the conference promotes policy designed to reach the goals of sustainable development.

To secure our future as a species we must first understand what impact we have on the planet we inhabit. Getting to that understanding - and framing viable solutions for our future - is what this conference is all about.

RAZIL: February 7, 2008

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46824/story.htm

BRASILIA - A senior Roman Catholic bishop criticized Brazil's government on Wednesday for energy and agriculture policies that he said were destroying the Amazon forest and threatening the livelihood of local populations.

"We cannot ignore deforestation by loggers who violate the country's laws and ... threaten tribal Indians and others who depend on (the Amazon)," said Bishop Guilherme Antonio Werlang in launching the church's annual Lent campaign to mobilize followers on issues of social concern.

The comments are likely to increase pressure on Brazil's government to rein in deforestation. Brazil is the world's largest Catholic country and the church remains highly influential despite falling membership.

Werlang's warning follows disagreement within the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva over increasing Amazon deforestation rates.

The environment ministry has blamed farmers and cattle ranchers for moving deeper into the forest in search of cheap land, while Lula and the agriculture ministry reject the charges. Between August and December an estimated 2,703 square miles (7,000 square km), or two-thirds the annual rate for the 12 months ending in July 2007, were chopped down.

Increased sugar cane production, the raw material for the country's much-touted ethanol program, also drives crops and cattle further north into the Amazon, environmentalists say.

"We have to question the energy programs that deteriorate our rivers and land with the construction of ever more hydroelectric plants and monoculture farm production," said Werlang, member of the Brazilian Bishops Conference CNBB. Part of its campaign this year in defense of life aims to raise environmental awareness.

The Lula government tendered in December the right to build a US$5 billion hydroelectric plant, the first of two along the Madeira river in the western Amazon.

Friends of the Earth, an environmental advocacy group, estimates that the project could attract as many as 100,000 settlers to the region, increasing pressure on land and natural resources.

(Reporting by Raymond Colitt; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Source: UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

7 February 2008
Posted to the web 7 February 2008

URL: http://allafrica.com/stories/200802070739.html 

Kedere

A few days after villagers in Kedere in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta region noticed oil seeping from the pipe that runs beside the village, a few boys from the village went out with shovels, dug pits a few feet deep, scooped the oil into the ground and burned it, finally covering it with sand.

"During the dry season, it looks nice," Anyakwee Nsirimovu, director of the Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Port Harcourt, told IRIN, describing the simple process which he said is a common spill clean-up tactic in the region.

The environmental damage caused by such poor clean-up methods could be disastrous, Emmanuel Emmanuel, an environmental scientist in Port Harcourt, said. "Oil does not burn at 800 degrees Celsius," he explained, "so when you burn it, you just flare off the volatiles and gas. The dense crude remains... One drop of rain and you see the black spots," he said.

Across Kedere and similar villages in the region, evidence of the damage is readily apparent in the oil sheen on the soil and water.

"The land is devastated. The drinking water and streams are polluted. As it rains, we use the rain water but cannot drink it, because even that is full of crude oil," youth leader Amstel Monday Ebarakpor told IRIN.

"At every groundwater intrusion, you see seepage. Sometimes you can see oil sheen on drinking water," he told IRIN. "Crude will be there for the next 50 years."

On 25 January the chairman of the government's National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, Bamidele Ajakaiye, told Nigeria's Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology that there are 1,150 abandoned oil spill sites in the Niger Delta region. Many, communities say, are cleaned like the one in Kedere - if at all.

Oil companies and communities disagree on why there are so many spills in the Niger Delta.

A joint investigation team from the federal, state, and local governments, as well as the community and oil companies, is supposed to decide whether a spill is caused by decaying facilities, human error, or vandalism. When third party interference is the case, oil companies are not required to compensate the community for damaged land.

Shell and Eni, the two companies with the most on-the-ground coverage attribute most of the spills to "bunkering" - the highly dangerous and illegal practice of people breaking into pipes to tap some of the oil which they can sell on the black market.

Activists say those figures are too high, and that aging oil facilities are more to blame. "The pipelines are as old as oil operations," environmental scientist Emmanuel said.

"[The companies] have only recently started doing replacements so the pipes are corroded. Many are on the surface and under pressure 24 hours a day carrying crude oil."

Irresponsible local contractors?

Regardless of the cause, companies are required to notify the Nigerian government within 24 hours, and oil spills are to be cleaned up immediately, an obligation oil companies say is often impossible.

"As in previous years, some communities denied [us] access to spill sites, restricting our ability to respond and clean up spills in good time," Shell said in its 2006 annual report.

You cannot deal with [oil spills] using illiterate people with nothing in their heads about pollution and [no knowledge of[ how to deal with an issue that is deeply scientific

Shell Media Relations Officer Caroline Wittgen explained that when clean-up does take place, Nigerian law requires that clean-up jobs be awarded to local contractors. "Contracts are awarded to Nigerian contractors provided they possess the technical capability to handle the jobs," she told IRIN.

Bari-Karap Moi, spokesman for the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, said local contractors often hire unqualified and ill-equipped youth to do the work. "You cannot deal with [oil spills] using illiterate people with nothing in their heads about pollution and [no knowledge of] how to deal with an issue that is deeply scientific," he told IRIN.

Most spills in Kedere are cleaned up by the basic practice of scooping oil into pits, burning it, and sealing the holes, he said. Community leaders from villages around Port Harcourt tell the same story.

Idris Musa, deputy director of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, said the ideal method to clean on-land spills is by using pits to contain the spill and vacuum trucks to later clean out the crude. "Burning is not encouraged," he told IRIN.

"Cleaning of an oil spill is not a low-tech thing. The community does not have the materials."

URL: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76661 

HEBRON, WEST BANK, 10 February 2008 (IRIN) - A recent cold snap with sub-zero temperatures has caused farmers in the West Bank to incur losses of nearly US$14.5 million, according to initial estimates by the Palestinian ministry of agriculture (MoA) set out in a 6 February joint "fact sheet" with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The winter cash crop is the most profitable and "[as] a direct result of the frost, thousands of farmers have lost their main source of income for the next [few] months," the "fact sheet", which was emailed to IRIN, said.

Between 70 and 100 percent of crops planted in the open - mainly zucchinis, aubergines, beans, tomatoes, peppers and fruit trees - have either been lost or damaged.

A Palestinian Authority (PA) document obtained by IRIN detailed the damage in the northern part of Hebron District during seven days of frost and sub-zero temperatures in January, and said about $1.5 million worth of damage had been incurred mainly in open fields, while beehive growers had suffered losses estimated at about $100,000.

The FAO and MoA have appealed for urgent funding to help affected farmers replant in the next inter-cropping season, at the end of February, noting that "most farmers will be unable to plant new crops without external assistance".

The PA has reportedly allocated nearly seven million dollars as cash compensation for the farmers, but IRIN was unable to confirm this or when the farmers might be paid.

"About every 7-10 years a major frost hits the region," an Israeli official with the national meteorological service (who preferred anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the press), told IRIN. "By frost we mean a relatively prolonged period of relatively exceptionally cold weather that is spread out over a large area," he explained.

In the crisis-plagued Gaza Strip, where farmers were already going bankrupt due to the ban on exports, losses caused by the prolonged frost were estimated at over $4.5 million.

Distraught bee-keeper

"They are all dead," said Amin al-Bayed, holding up a handful of lifeless honey-makers. He lost his bees in all 14 of his beehives during the frost. "We had very low temperatures at night, about seven below zero, and it went on for a week. The bees couldn't handle it," he said as his children played with the now empty hives.

He usually managed to make about a third of his overall income by selling hives and honey.

"I had a goal to reach 100 hives, I wanted to build it up," Amin, a registered Palestinian refugee, told IRIN. He had hoped to start a business marketing honey products as natural remedies.

"Now, I have to start all over [again], but I don't know where I will get the money," he said from his home in the Fawwar refugee camp.

Amin said that now, more than in the past, he was in need of assistance from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, but that he had not received food parcels in over six months.

"Since the events in Nahr al-Bared [troubled refugee camp in northern Lebanon] and the emergency in Gaza we get less aid," Amin said, adding that he works three months a year with UNWRA's job creation programme.

Frost adds to existing woes

For farmer Hassan Jaber, who grows radishes and cauliflowers in Beqaa village near Hebron, years of troubles with the nearby Israeli settlement have already cost him heavily. The recent cold weather had added to his financial woes.

"We had 30 dunams [30,000 square metres] of our agricultural land confiscated by the [nearby] settlement of Harsina in the late 1990s," he said, pointing towards the fence around the settlement which encroaches on his house.

"Farming is my only source of income. Most people in this area are like this," he told IRIN. He and his wife have 11 children and help support other members of the extended family.

"I lost 15,000-20,000 shekels [$4,000-5,500] because of the frost," he said.

Hassan can borrow money in order to replant next season but he was concerned about entering into a cycle of debt, especially as raw material costs were rising while his produce continued to fetch the same price.

"I can't export to Israel any more because of their restrictions. We can't export to Gaza, because of the closure there. I can't export to Jordan because I don't have [an Israeli-issued] permit," he said, adding that he could only sell within the West Bank, but even there some markets were hard to reach due to checkpoints.

URL: http://www.newsdaily.com/TopNews/UPI-1-20080211-08060300-bc-iraq-looting.xml 

BASRA, Iraq, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- The Iraqi government has accused neighboring Iran of taking over more than 15 oil wells on the Iraq-Iran border.

Inadequate security permit militia groups in the south -- allegedly backed by neighboring countries -- to loot the region's riches, particularly along the borders, the Alsumaria Iraqi satellite network reported Monday.

A U.S. report estimated oil smugglers pocketed yearly revenues of nearly $4 billion, equal to some developing states' budgets, the network reported.

Observers said recent clashes between security forces and al-Yamani groups in Basra and Nasiriyah were attempts to demonstrate that Iraqis weren't capable of taking over their country's security, among other things.

Evidence of Iran's involvement include Iranian-made grenades, explosives and anti-armor missiles, Alsumaria reported. Also, Tehran was accused of being behind the assassination of two southern governors last August.

ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2008) — Turning native ecosystems into "farms" for biofuel crops causes major carbon emissions that worsen the global warming that biofuels are meant to mitigate, according to a new study by the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy.

The carbon lost by converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands outweighs the carbon savings from biofuels. Such conversions for corn or sugarcane (ethanol), or palms or soybeans (biodiesel) release 17 to 420 times more carbon than the annual savings from replacing fossil fuels, the researchers said. The carbon, which is stored in the original plants and soil, is released as carbon dioxide, a process that may take decades. This "carbon debt" must be paid before the biofuels produced on the land can begin to lower greenhouse gas levels and ameliorate global warming.

The conversion of peatlands for palm oil plantations in Indonesia ran up the greatest carbon debt, one that would require 423 years to pay off. The next worst case was the production of soybeans in the Amazon, which would not "pay for itself" in renewable soy biodiesel for 319 years.

"We don't have proper incentives in place because landowners are rewarded for producing palm oil and other products but not rewarded for carbon management," said University of Minnesota Applied Economics professor Stephen Polasky, an author of the study. "This creates incentives for excessive land clearing and can result in large increases in carbon emissions.

"This research examines the conversion of land for biofuels and asks the question 'Is it worth it?'," said lead author Joe Fargione, a scientist for The Nature Conservancy. "And surprisingly, the answer is no."

For the full article, please visit: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207140809.htm \\

Date: February 10, 2008

URL: http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/30906 

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan and Russia have agreed to start talks on fighting globalwarming, including possible greenhouse gas emissions trading that would help Tokyo to meet its goals under the Kyoto Protocol, media said on Sunday.

Japan is the world's fifth-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, and while officials have pledged to meet its obligations under the international pact to fight global warming, critics say this may be difficult.

Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura and Russian First Deputy Premier Sergei Ivanov agreed in a meeting on the sidelines of a Munich conference that the first round of vice-ministerial talks on the issue would be held on February 27 in Tokyo, Japanese officials were quoted by Kyodo news agency as saying.

Separately, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily said the talks aimed at reaching a deal under which Japan would buy surplus emissions quotas from Russia, a key step towards helping Tokyo meet its Kyoto goals.

The trading could take place under several options possible under the Kyoto Protocol, including one in which Japan -- one of the world's most energy-efficient nations -- takes part in work to reduce Russian emissions and then is allowed to count that cut as its own, the Yomiuri added.

Officials at the Environment and Foreign Ministries were not available for comment.

Japan has pledged to cut emissions by 6 percent from 1990 levels over the 2008-2012 period.

A government panel said in December that Japan would be able to reach its goals if additional measures, such as extra voluntary agreements with industries, are carried out.

The United States, China, India and Russia all emit more greenhouse gases than Japan, but of the top five emitting nations, only Japan is under pressure to meet a Kyoto goal.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Alex Richardson)

URL: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76694 

SOUTH HEBRON HILLS, WEST BANK, 12 February 2008 (IRIN) - Herders in the southern West Bank are facing hardship due to a drought this winter, which comes on top of previous troubles, including rising fodder prices and land access restrictions by the Israeli military, a new UN document said.

"The 2007-08 winter has seen a drastic drop in rainfall for the entire West Bank. The average rainfall has been 26 percent of the expected amount," the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a report released at the end of January entitled Drought:The Latest Blow to Herding Livelihoods.

In the very affected south Hebron Hills, which received only 13 percent of expected rain, livestock nibbled at the barren land which normally in February would have stalks 10 cm high.

Meanwhile, the cost of fodder continues to rise, compounded by the need to buy water, which has become more expensive as tankers must travel longer distances to circumvent Israeli roadblocks.

Many herders have begun selling off their livestock to make ends meet, although the UN agencies and herders themselves are aware that this will ultimately mean no future income from herding.

Hadalin clan

According to OCHA and FAO the hardest hit are Bedouin farmers, like the Hadalin clan, made up mostly of refugees from the 1948 Israeli-Arab war. They now live in the southern West Bank.

"Last year I had 50 sheep, but this year I only have 30 and next year I'll only have 10 left," said Muhammed, a Hadalin shepherd in the south Hebron Hills. He had to sell sheep and goats to buy fodder and feed his family.

"In two years, I'll have nothing left at all, and then I don't know where food will come from. God is great," he told IRIN sitting on a dry hilltop.

Poverty is beginning to bite. OCHA said many herders now lived on bread and oil, only occasionally supplemented by vegetables, and without money to buy fuel for heating.

Looming dependency

"These people will be dependant on the international community and reliant on aid. They will go from independence to dependency," commented a UN aid worker who was not authorised to speak to the press.

The herders said their grandparents had coping methods no longer feasible due to the changed political situation.

"My grandfather would never have gone into debt," said Aiyish, a refugee who has sold off a quarter of his livestock this year.

"If there was a drought in the years before 1948 they would move and go to Gaza or other areas to find grazing land. But now we can't," he said.

"Blocked"

With the formation of Israel in 1948 Palestinians in the West Bank were no longer able to graze in the nascent Jewish state or travel through it to reach the Gaza Strip.

Between 1948 and 1967 the herders were able to enter Jordan, which annexed the West Bank. However, after the Israeli occupation in 1967, and the formation of a border between the eastern and western banks of the River Jordan, that route too was closed off.

"We just can't move any more," Aiyish said, with several other herders voicing their agreement.

One man said that now, even within the West Bank, grazing land is contracting.

"Israel declared grazing land nature reserves. We are blocked by [Israeli] settlements and military bases and checkpoints. We can't go north to the Jordan Valley because all the roads are blocked," the herder said, adding that some settlements sit on what was their farming land.

According to OCHA and FAO, 21 percent of West Bank grazing land was declared Israeli military zones and another 8 percent was deemed nature reserves.

Additionally, herders in many areas are in constant threat of house demolitions. In 2007, OCHA counted the demolition of 90 dwellings and 101 other buildings by the Israeli military, mainly on account of lacking permits.

"Now, the most important things in our lives are that we have fodder and a good education for our children," said Muhammed. As the family herding tradition may come to an end, only proper schooling will offer his offspring a viable future, he believed.

URL: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0207/p20s01-wogn.html

Whether gazing at a computer or into the eyes of a former dictator, numbers cruncher Patrick Ball is on the front lines of justice.

By Jina Moore | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
 
Palo Alto, Calif.
The tension started in the witness room. "You could feel the stress rolling off the walls in there," Patrick Ball remembers. "I can remember realizing that this is why lawyers wear sport coats - you can't see all the sweat on their arms and back." He was, you could say, a little nervous to be cross-examined by Slobodan Milosevic.

Mr. Ball was the first expert witness called in the case against the former Serbian president, who was representing himself against mass atrocity charges at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia. Ball had spent 10 months crunching numbers about migration patterns in the former Yugoslav province of Kosovo; his findings suggested that hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled to Albania were spurred by the violence of Mr. Milosevic's army. By the time Ball entered the tribunal chamber, in March 2002, the ousted leader had a reputation for grand orations rather than direct questions; when Milosevic veered off track, the judge would interrupt. "Milosevic would say, 'Dobro,' and go on...." Ball remembers. "It means, 'OK, very well,' but it was clearly a, 'Very well, we'll have you shot later.' I hear [that] in my dreams periodically."

Ball is a statistician - not exactly a profession usually associated with human rights defense. But the Human Rights Data Analysis Group that he heads at Benetech, a technology company with a social justice focus, is bringing the power of quantitative analysis to a field otherwise full of anecdote. [Editor's note: The name of the program at Benetech was incorrect in the original version.]

In juridical terms, Ball's work on Kosovo went nowhere: Milosevic died in 2006, the trial was suspended and the evidence sealed. But nearly 20 years working on some of the world's worst human rights crimes prompts him to take the long view. Even without a ruling, his science complements the efforts of dozens of other professionals - lawyers, forensic scientists, historians, political scientists - to tell a truth bigger than the story abruptly silenced in the courtroom.

"The thing about human rights violations is that they occur massively. They don't occur one at a time," he says. What turns out to be really important, he says, is whether it's thousands or tens of thousands. "Because ... we have very different political understandings of [numbers]."

Since 1988, Ball has been "hacking code" - writing software - to unlock secrets from numbers. He taught himself computer programming so he could get a job that would cover expenses not included in his undergraduate scholarship to Columbia University. Not much of a campus radical, he did earn four years of disciplinary probation for helping to chain shut the doors of a building, hoping to pressure the university to divest holdings in companies doing business in then-apartheid South Africa.

He wouldn't find himself on the front lines of human rights work until grad school at the University of Michigan in the late '80s, when the Central America crises were hot campus topics. All the talk felt empty to him: "When you're in a university in North America ... you're learning about all this stuff you can't do anything about.... You can have these stupid little campus demonstrations, but who are you talking to?"

He took a leave of absence and went to El Salvador with the Peace Brigades, an international group that offered foreign escorts to high-profile local leaders. He liked the idea that guerrilla fighters or government soldiers might be less inclined to commit atrocities in front of Western witnesses. But as the war wound down, he felt less useful. When a human rights commission asked him to do some computer work for them, he was relieved. "Accompaniment was boring," he says, "and programming was fun."

Ball wrote software that allowed the commission to aggregate and analyze the human rights records of officers in the El Salvadoran Army. The results forced a quarter of the military leadership to retire.

"We figured ... they were going to blow our office up," Ball says. Instead, the officers sued the commission - an unexpected recourse to the rule of law in a postconflict country. "We were tickled pink," Ball recalls.

Ball went back to Michigan, but word of his work got out and he spent the next years bouncing between truth and reconciliation projects - South Africa, Haiti, Guatemala, East Timor, and Peru - finding ways to uncover the scale and pattern of human rights violations.

The level of expertise and discipline his work requires puts Ball on par with Olympic runners or violin virtuosos. Lara J. Nettelfield, a Balkans scholar at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, says he's "one of the very small group of people in the world who could properly analyze and consult on [mass atrocities]."

Ball admits such a reputation carries a personal price. He has little time outside work, and no family.

But projects like the one he did in Kosovo make it worth it, he says. Kosovo attracted international concern when hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees fled to Albania. Amid what seemed little more than chaos, Ball saw dozens of data sources that, could point to the cause of the crisis: "Everything is data to us. A pile of scrungy paper from the border guards - 690 pages - that's data."

He combined those scrungy papers, one for nearly every family that crossed the border, with crossing records kept by several international organizations; later, he brought in data from 11 sources on civilian deaths in the province. He analyzed the two separately, using one method for patterns of migration and another for mortality. There were three plausible causes for civilian flight and death - violence by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) or the Yugoslav forces, or bombings of Serb targets by NATO - and he wanted to know which the numbers pointed to.

• • •

Like all statisticians, Ball began with the most basic hypothesis: In looking for a common cause, he is already wrong. Statistics begins with an original assumption - that everything is random - and discards it only when the data suggest otherwise. In Ball's case, they did: He found patterns in the mass movement of refugees strong enough to suggest that more than ordinary wartime chaos was at work. At the same time, the relationship between migration and NATO or KLA actions was so weak that he knew neither was the cause.

Statisticians have a language for description without interpretation. When the analysis showed the movements were neither random nor likely to follow NATO or KLA activities, Ball wrote: "The migration patterns of Kosovar Albanians are consistent with the hypothesis that there was a coordinated and organized effort to drive them from their homes." In layman's terms, the data suggested ethnic cleansing. In fact, the migration patterns matched killing patterns "so unbelievably perfectly" that he concluded that the two situations might be explained by the same external influence.

But this is where statistics, a science of elimination, cedes to lawyers, human rights practitioners, and historians. Observing a "consistent hypothesis" isn't the same as naming a cause. "When we're looking at data, it's what we're able to observe. That's not the same as what is true."

In the end, Ball can't say what did happen; he can only estimate what probably didn't. But even this reveals something bigger about the nature of truth: At a micro level, it seems to change, from town to town or person to person.

In Peru, Ball's team estimated the dead or disappeared in that nation's terrorist war in the 1980s to be twice as high as the estimate made by a human rights commission in Lima. "They said, 'How did we get it so wrong?' " he recalls. "Your risk of being killed ... up in the Andean highlands was 400 times greater than your risk of being killed in Lima ... [where] you feel like you're in the war, but ... a completely different war than the people up in the mountains."

That's why Ball finds all the painstaking work he puts into the macro picture of things worth it. In country after country, he has watched people "try to ... make their suffering have meaning in some bigger story," Ball says. He tries to ground that exercise in what he believes divides painful history from potentially destructive mythologies of violence: "Some kind of empirical truth."

But even so devoted a numbers guy knows graphs don't tell the whole story. "Statistics define the limits of what's plausible and what's not plausible," he says. "Statistics do not tell us how it felt to be there."

In 2000, just after a Kosovo newspaper published his conclusions about migration, Ball was on a radio show. "Someone called in and said, 'I'm in your graph,'" he recalls. "The peak, right there, that's where I was. I could feel that wave.' "

11 Feb 2008 20:59:09 GMT
Source: Reuters
URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N11640489.htm 
By Diane Bartz WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (Reuters) - There was a time, long ago, when a lover would buy diamonds, chocolate or roses for his beloved on Valentine's Day with a clear conscience.

But life has become more complicated.

For some, the romance is being overshadowed by concerns that the diamonds may have financed wars, that the cacao beans were harvested by children and that the roses were kept perfect with mists of pesticides.

Let's start with roses, especially the red roses traditionally used to show passion. "Most roses sold in the U.S. are grown in Latin America. And they are grown in a way that uses a lot of chemicals," said Rene Ebersole, a senior editor of the environmental Audubon Magazine.

"DDT is used," she added, saying that workers who applied the pesticides often complained of irritated eyes and other ailments that they blamed on the chemicals.

And what about soft melty bonbons, dusted with cocoa powder?

Ivory Coast, which grows 40 percent of the world's cocoa, has a persistent child labor problem, according to the 2006 State Department Human Rights report, which was released in March 2007.

"The controversy over child labor in the local cocoa sector continued," the report said, citing an earlier survey by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture. That group had found that perhaps 5,000 to 10,000 children were trafficked to or within the country to work in the cocoa sector, the State Department said. "The (institute's) research showed that approximately 109,000 child laborers worked in hazardous conditions on cocoa farms in the country in what the study described as the worst forms of child labor," the State Department said.

Then there's the problem of blood diamonds, which refers to gems mined under brutal conditions and sold to support a war effort.

The problem is apparently one of the few things that Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush agree on. Clinton issued an executive order in January 2001 barring Sierra Leone from exporting diamonds to the United States. When Liberia began to be used to get around the ban, Bush acted in 2001 to bar rough diamond imports from Liberia. A mechanism called the Kimberley Process was supposed to help buyers identify conflict-free diamonds, but there is criticism that it has fallen short.

By Brad Knickerbocker
from the February 14, 2008 edition

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0214/p12s01-wogi.html

Now that Sen. John McCain is the presumptive GOP nominee, all three of the leading presidential candidates seem likely to tackle climate change in a way that clearly will distinguish the next president from the George W. Bush administration.

Senator McCain was one of the first on Capitol Hill, and one of the few of his party, to acknowledge the reality of global warming and the need to act quickly. His position on the issue is one reason why hard-core conservatives have been suspicious of McCain.

As a result, Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are rushing to present themselves as greener than the Arizona Republican.

On the eve of this week's "Potomac primaries" in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, Senator Obama aligned himself with former vice president Al Gore's push to make the US take the lead on reducing greenhouse gases. The Washington Post reports:

"[Obama] said he would start developing the U.S. position on a pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol before the general election in November.... 'I think we need to start reaching out to other countries ahead of time, not because I'm presumptuous, but because there's such a sense of urgency about this.' "

All three candidates favor a "cap and trade" system that would issue oil companies, power plants, and other major big polluters permits to emit carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas thought to cause global warming.

 URL: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207140801.htm

ScienceDaily (Feb. 14, 2008) — If you are reading this, chances are that you live in a city -- one, perhaps, on its way to becoming a megacity with a population that exceeds 10 million or more. If not, you and most of the world's population soon will be, according to global population demographics projections. What shape could these future cities take and how will their populations meet environmental and resource challenges?

Ecologist Nancy Grimm of Arizona State University and her colleagues are addressing these questions. "When we think of global change, images of melting ice caps and pasture replacing tropic rainforest come to mind," Grimm says. "What drives these changes" In fact, much of the current environmental impact originates in cities, and with demographic transition to city life the urban footprint is likely to continue to grow."

Urban challenges face communities worldwide, with solutions lagging behind. Grimm and her colleagues promote a global perspective of urban development. Their analyses capture some of the commonalities that will face future city planners and societies, viewing cities as both drivers of and responders to environmental change. The authors chart the socio-ecological challenges and changes ahead for all cities, but particularly those in rapidly developing regions, like China and India.

These changes range from land use and cover, urban waste discharge and urban heat island effects to global climate change, hydrosystems, biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles. In all, the authors demonstrate that cities are substantive ecosystems in their own right, replete with complex human-environmental interactions and far-reaching impacts.

The article, "Global Change and the Ecology of Cities," was published in the journal Science on Feb. 8, 2008. Grimm's co-authors include ecologists John Briggs, Stan Faeth, and Jianguo (Jingle) Wu of ASU's School of Life Sciences; archaeologist Charles Redman, director of the ASU School of Sustainability; as well as researchers, Nancy Golubiewski from New Zealand Centre for Ecological Economics and Xuemei Bai of CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems in Australia.

"Cities, and the people in them, will ultimately determine the global biodiversity and ecosystem functioning," says Wu. "Sustainable urbanization is an unavoidable path to regional and global sustainability."

Cities as ecosystems

For a decade, Grimm, Redman and more than a dozen co-principal investigators have pioneered urban studies in one of the first long-term ecological research (LTER) projects designed about urban environments. One of two urban long-term projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) -- the other is the Baltimore Ecosystem Study in Maryland -- CAP LTER researchers have examined the living and non-living components of a city with participation from city planners, engineers, sociologists and other scientists, revealing the dynamic nature of this "ascendant ecosystem."

"Urban areas are hot spots that drive environmental change," says John Briggs. "They are complex, adaptive socioecological systems, centers of production and consumption, in which the delivery of the ecosystems services link society and ecosystems at multiple levels."

Phoenix's rapid growth provides a platform for CAP LTER researchers, as an evolving "before" and "after" laboratory. Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the U.S., with a metro area population or more than 4 million. Phoenix's growth is emblematic of the U.S. West in general, which is expected to experience the largest percentages of population increases in the next 20 years.

"Phoenix, and cities in general, are microcosms for the kinds of changes that are happening globally," notes Grimm. "In biogeochemical cycles, for example, they show symptoms of the imbalances in nitrogen, carbon dioxide, ozone and other chemicals that they help to create globally."

Life on the edge

Cities literally are proving to be a hotbed for environmental research. Studies by urban ecologists reveal that city centers are physically hotter. Known as the heat island effect, urban and suburban temperatures are "2 to 10 degree F (1 to 6 degree C) hotter than nearby rural areas," according to the Environmental Protection Agency. This rise in temperatures translates into "increases in peak energy demand, air conditioning costs, air pollution levels and heat-related illness and mortality."

Just a one-degree rise in temperature can bump up residential water use 290 gallons per month on average for a single-family unit. However, knowledge about heat island effects also has meant innovation and the rise of new and greener technologies, such as roofing materials with a high solar reflectance and recycled rubber/asphalt composites to pave roadways.

But not all the challenges that occur in the city stay in the city. Grimm says rural landscapes at a city's edge show changes in soils, built structures, human settlements, the diversity of plant and animal species and further impacts on fringe ecosystems. The authors invoke future thinking about cities and their effects as expressed by urban planner and policy expert Robert Lang, of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Lang believes that a city's "footprint" has ballooned so that "cities are no longer independent, but represent a limited number of dominant megapolitan regions across the globe, with coalitions of urban centers built up in the intervening areas."

"What we see is that landscapes, virtually anywhere in the world, will experience the impact of the growth and operation of nearby and long distance cities," Redman says. "We need to understand the complexity of impacts that rapid global urbanization has both within urban boundaries and across landscapes at increasing distance."

How can so many environmental challenges and changes be considered in any unified way? One recent approach has been to view urban systems as organic units: organisms that take up resources and produce wastes. Though controversial, such an integrated perspective can be useful for interpreting such things as biogeochemical cycles in cities and to analyze their regional or global effects. For example, cities are point sources for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and anthropogenic nutrient deposition. Fall out from cities can come in the form of urban aerosols, including atmospheric nitrogen, such as that wafted from fast-food joints or manicured lawns.

Studies by Sharon Hall, an ecologist with ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Grimm find that fertilized and irrigated lawns release more nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, than the native desert soils that preceded them. Also, lawns support a more sustained, year-round production of nitrogen oxide than desert soils, which contributes to tropospheric ozone production and regional increases in photochemical smog.

"Global emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitric oxide (NO) have increased dramatically during the last century, primarily due to human activity associated with agriculture and fossil fuel combustion," notes Hall. "We are just now discovering how urban centers figure into this equation, and how cities such as Phoenix impact surrounding landscapes, as well as contribute to larger regional or global climate."

Studies over the last 10 years by Wu and his students using geospatial analysis and computer modeling have shown that the Phoenix urban landscape has become geometrically more complex, but ecologically more fragmented. Also, urbanization-induced increases in temperature, CO₂, and nitrogen deposition will significantly affect the productivity, carbon and nitrogen cycling, and a suite of biogeochemical processes of the native ecosystems, resulting in altered ecosystem functioning and services.

Selection and the city

Biodiversity studies in cities are equally revealing. Urban environments alter species compositions, biomass, distributions and ecosystem function. Studies by CAP-LTER and other groups show that plant types and habitat patches are, somewhat counter intuitively, increased by human activity relative to wild areas and involve a socio-economic component. Wealthier neighborhoods plant more exotics and show increases in yard-to-yard heterogeneity.

Co-author, Faeth, has found that numbers of birds and arthropods like grass hoppers, jump within city boundaries -- though at the cost of a diversity of types. In addition, urban-dwelling species often flourish at the expense of indigenous species, the long-term effects of which may be reflected in altered life-history traits and, potentially, evolution. Thus, Faeth notes, cities are ecological and evolutionary arenas that create novel environments, with selective pressures that change flora and fauna, including human "fauna," and that these will become more prevalent worldwide. The article points out that, worldwide, cities alter the behaviors, physiologies, disease patterns, population densities, morphologies and genetics of city-dwelling organisms.

"Cities create novel biological communities and these communities, no matter how 'unnatural' they are, are the ones that most humans know, and in the future, will experience," Faeth says.

"Knowing how cities function, how the 'ecosystem services' they provide can be enhanced through planning and urban design, gives us a chance to improve the quality of life and the environment for animal, plant and human inhabitants of cities," Grimm says. "Although every city and its surrounding environment are different, ecological studies of those differences, and participation of ecologists in decision making, can create solutions that apply across many situations."

The NSF became an active partner in long-term urban study in 1997 with the launch of the central Arizona and Baltimore LTER programs. Since then, NSF has expanded support for urban systems research through a wide range of directorates, reflecting the complex questions at hand, encompassing biological sciences, geosciences, social, behavioral, and economic studies, and environmental research and education programs.

"Agglomerations of people in cities increasingly dominate environmental change globally, but are clearly understudied from an ecological standpoint," notes Henry Gholz, of NSF's Division of Environmental Biology. "This hampers our abilities to scale ecological information and make informed predictions of, or policies regarding, future global ecological states."

Grim future?

Urban ecological study may be multi-faceted and complex, yet it offers pivotal insight in how to navigate a sustainable urban future. As soon-to-be dominant ecosystems, cities, harbor a wealth of ideas and creative accomplishments, as they have over centuries of urban living, Grimm and her colleagues say. Moreover, increasing public understanding that cities are more than miles of roadways, steel and glass means that urban ecosystems can be managed and that costs to citizens and environments can be understood and balanced.

"The relatively young and highly interdisciplinary field of urban ecology has demonstrated how well-designed cities can actually have less overall impact on the environment than equivalent dispersed rural populations," says Jonathan Fink, director of ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability. "The kind of counter-intuitive research results described in Grimm's paper show how an ecological perspective can help urban planners and engineers find ways for society to live more harmoniously with nature."

URL: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76780

WONDERFONTEINSPRUIT , 15 February 2008 (IRIN) - One legacy of South Africa's extensive mineral deposits is the infrastructure and wealth of the country. But another more troubling legacy is emerging as an increasingly urgent problem: environmental contamination from over 100 years of mining that could severely pollute the country's water, affecting the food chain and citizens' health.

The magnitude of the potential problem has government agencies scrambling to coordinate a response to a relatively new issue for the regulatory bodies. "The truth of the matter is that as a nation we don't know how to deal with this problem because it has never happened to us before," said Dr Anthony Turton, a leading water researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

"This was always suppressed before because people didn't matter in the pre-1994 South Africa. All we've done so far is see the tip of the iceberg. We certainly don't have any coherent government strategies yet."

But the urgency is real. As more mines close and more tests reveal hazardous contamination levels in sediment and local food samples, there is growing concern about acidic waters emanating from disused mines.

The epicentre of the problem lies southwest of Johannesburg in a valley ringed by mines - both active and closed - where a small river called the Wonderfonteinspruit runs southwest from the mining town of Randfontein to Carletonville and Khutsong, and into the Mooi River, which provides water for Potchefstroom, a large university town.

Over 10 years of scientific studies have established that the sediment in the Wonderfonteinspruit is contaminated with radioactive uranium and high levels of other heavy metals in wastewater discharged from local mines.

By law, wastewater from mines is supposed to be treated to a standard established by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) before being discharged into waterways, but the evidence of contamination in the sediment means there has not been compliance. The mining companies were not closely regulated during the apartheid years, but environmental activists charge that while laws are now in place, enforcement is not.

Further complicating the enforcement issue is that several different mining companies - DRD, Gold Fields, Harmony - operate in the area and discharge water into the same canals and pipelines, so identifying a specific source of contamination can prove difficult.

A second source of pollution is runoff and wind-eroded particles from slime dams - soil residue from within the mines that often contains radioactive elements and heavy metals. On a recent site visit south of Carletonville, residue from eroding slime dams was observed washing down dirt roads towards drainage canals that empty into the Wonderfonteinspruit.

A 2007 report by the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) stated: "These slime dams and rock dumps are potentially significant contributors to diffuse contamination."

Wind-blown radioactive dust particles from the slime dams could also pose "significant radiation exposure" through inhalation or by contaminating agricultural crops, while cattle posed a serious problem because they churned up sediment loaded with radioactive elements and heavy metals in the waterways when they went into them.

After the NNR's report was released, the largest mining company operating in the area, Harmony, issued a directive to land and water users in the area, saying that cattle should no longer be watered in the river.

Thus far, the more proactive steps are coming from the local community. The Merafong Council, which includes the town of Carletonville and surrounding district, has put up signs warning people to not use the water and has provided drinking water to informal settlements on the river's banks.

"Although Water Affairs in their latest reports indicate that the water itself is safe, it is a known fact that there are sediments that are contaminated with radiological elements," said Albie Nieuwoudt, Strategic Executive for Economic Development, Planning, and Environmental Management at Merafong.

"That's why we put up the signs. We've just created our own Environmental Management section to look at issues arising from dust and slime dam residue; we've got a duty to protect our citizens."

Frustrations with government

Rene Potgieter, a former peat farmer who now works on the Wonderfonteinspruit contamination issue, said, "We have a group here organised through DWAF where water quality is monitored. I sit on the committee, and on a regular basis we look at what the discharge water qualities are. You just see noncompliance, noncompliance, noncompliance. But all DWAF does is monitor - they don't do anything with those results." 

Nieuwoudt said he had heard of NNR reports about vegetable samples but had not seen them yet. "Apparently they found some pollution in some crops. "There are small community farming projects using that water source from boreholes, so we need to be informed."

The NNR has made statements that contradict its own reports, several of which classify food samples as above the accepted limit. On 7 February 2008 it issued a statement about the Wonderfonteinspruit that said, "No evidence has been found indicating unacceptable levels of radioactivity in vegetables, fish and meat samples." NNR's CEO, Maurice Magugumela, has also assured the public that food from the area was safe to eat.

Yet an NNR status report in October 2007 said: "The NNR collected samples of vegetables (onions, asparagus and oats) and fish in the area and sent these for analysis. The projected doses from the samples taken indicate that the total doses from some [of] the samples taken are above the dose constraints and dose limits ... and are of safety concern from a radiological point of view."

When questioned about these discrepancies, Magugumela stated that it was a complex issue and different international measurements were used to determine dosage and when intervention was appropriate.

Acid Mine Drainage

After 100 years of mining in South Africa, the subterranean infrastructure is vast and many neighbouring mines are interconnected for safety reasons. To mine for gold, mining companies must displace the groundwater for the duration of the mining operation by pumping it out. This slurry carries an assortment of naturally present heavy metals to the surface on the slime dams and discharges water.

When a mining company ceases operation, water begins to re-enter the area and reacts with exposed pyrite, a mineral formation, which creates sulphate. Sulphate reacts with water to become sulphuric acid, which then dissolves the heavy metals into the mix as the water rises and eventually "daylights" onto the surface. At this point, the water is considered to be acid mine drainage (AMD) or "mine water decant".

"You get this flow of water that comes up through the springs and it is very low Ph - very acidic - and it is a whole cocktail of heavy metals and potentially radioactive metals," said the CSIR's Turton.

In the Wonderfonteinspruit area the aquifers are in dolomite, a spongy layer of rock through which water moves quickly. The speed of the water is increased by the mining shafts. In August 2002, acid mine water began to appear in the West Rand Mining Basin just above Krugersdorp Game Reserve.

Harmony Gold rapidly built containment dams and channelled the water into Robinson Lake for treatment, but a percentage of the water is unusable even after treatment and is released into the Tweelopie Spruit, a small river in the area.

A 2006 Water Resources Commission report described Robinson Lake as having an exceptionally high uranium concentration after the influx of AMD water. "This extreme concentration is believed to be the result of remobilisation of uranium from a contaminated sediment by acidic water."

A separate paper about the 2002 decant, written in 2007 by CSIR scientists and Water Geoscience Consulting, stated: "The ramifications of mine water decant for the subregion are enormous. The greatest focus in this regard is undoubtedly the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site ... Of no lesser concern, however, are the downstream landowners and agricultural activities that are largely or wholly dependant on groundwater for potable and business use."

According to Turton, "This is the source of major concern in the short term, but there are other future worries as mines close down and decant starts to move across to the East Rand."

He fears that the country's energy crisis will exacerbate the problem by forcing smaller mines that cannot absorb the financial losses caused by power outages to close. "If they close prematurely, this process will simply be accelerated like a domino effect and hit us before we have the necessary science in place to inform the policy-making process," he said.

But DWAF Minister Lindiwe Hendricks has stated that wastewater from mining operations is not a threat to the country's water supply. When the 2002 decant began, DWAF instructed the responsible mines to contain and treat the water. Hendricks said DWAF's plan to deal with future AMD issues was to build a long-term treatment plant. The Western Basin Environmental Company has been established to treat AMD water.

A Farmer's Tale 

Douw Coetzee's farm is located on the Wonderfonteinspruit stream, and his dam is a radioactive hot spot with high levels of radioactive sediment and other heavy metals like cadmium. The dam tested higher for radioactivity than the site above his property where mining waste enters the water via a pipe. Coetzee said he had submitted fish and cow samples from his farm months ago but had yet to hear any results.

Regulators from Harmony mines, as directed by the NNR, ordered Douw and his brother Sas to stop using the water for irrigation purposes because it exposed the sediment, so the Coetzees watched their fields wither and lost their primary income from maize.

Then they were told to keep their cattle away from the water because cattle disturb the sediment when they go into the water to drink, allowing the mine waste to move along in the water's flow. He cannot sell the cattle, which are multiplying rapidly, or the farm, for fear of contamination. "It's not morally right," he said.

He and his brother are not only worried about financial ruin but also their health. "I've lived here all my life; I played in this mud when I was a child. The cadmium level in our dam is 16,000 times higher than the allowed maximum. We're caught up now in nothing but meetings and maintaining what's left of the farm," said Coetzee.

"Basically we're just keeping the cattle alive and having to borrow money from the bank. This was supposed to be my legacy to my children, but everything has been stopped. This is horrible."

He said there were approximately 50 subsistence farmers upstream who did not know about the issues until he and his brother met with them. Whether or not those farmers were still irrigating with river water was unclear. The farmers' union spokesman was unavailable for comment.

What's next

The NNR has established a Regulatory Steering Committee, involving all the relevant local and national government agencies, to be advised by a team of scientific experts yet to be named.

The CSIR's Turton noted that even though many people were frustrated with the current number of reports, the reports thus far have been inadequate in scope and funding.

He said two studies were needed to clearly define the issues in the area and allow government agencies to act: one is a "fate and pathway" report that will definitively determine whether the heavy metals and/or radioactive pollution are entering the food chain and, if so, what steps are necessary to break the chain of pollution; the second is an epidemiological study of people exposed to mine waste.

The reports could potentially create a rough blueprint of the mining pollution issues and appropriate actions that other areas of the country will face. "This is a national strategic issue," said Turton. "We know the next decant will be in the East Rand in the next 10 years, when they stop mining. It is the only way we will get a handle on human health issues arising from chronic exposure."

The Coetzee brothers plan to take meat samples from their cattle to a laboratory in Europe and also have themselves tested while there. Douw pointed to a collection of disused buildings on the property and said the farm used to employ 19 families.

"We tried to hold onto them as long as possible but eventually they didn't get anything from us because we didn't have any money," he said. "It's complete ruins now. These used to be nice houses." 

By Alok Jha in Boston
The Guardian
Friday February 15 2008

A global map of the overall impact that 17 different human activities are having on marine ecosystems. Insets show three of the most heavily impacted areas in the world, and one of the least impacted areas.

Fishing, climate change and pollution have left an indelible mark on virtually all of the world's oceans, according to a huge study that has mapped the total human impact on the seas for the first time. Scientists found that almost no areas have been left pristine and more than 40% of the world's oceans have been heavily affected.

"This project allows us to finally start to see the big picture of how humans are affecting the oceans," said Ben Halpern, assistant research scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who led the research.

"Our results show that when these and other individual impacts are summed up the big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected. It was certainly a surprise to me."

Human impact is most severe in the North Sea, the South and East China Seas, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Gulf, the Bering Sea, along the eastern coast of North America and in much of the western Pacific.

The oceans at the poles are less affected but melting ice sheets will leave them vulnerable, researchers said.

The study found that almost half of the world's coral reefs have been heavily damaged. Other concerns rest with seagrass beds, mangrove forests, seamounts, rocky reefs and continental shelves. Soft-bottom ecosystems and open ocean fared best but even these were not pristine in most locations.

For the full article, please visit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/15/biodiversity.scienceofclimatechange \\

From: Science and Development Network, ENN

Published February 14, 2008 09:17 AM

http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/31183

Earth scientists from Israel, Jordan and Palestine have formed a research partnership to map seismic activity in the region.

The collaboration began last month (January), according to lead scientist Hillel Gilles Wust-Bloch from the Minerva Dead Sea Research Center at Tel Aviv University in Israel, and the team are due to have a meeting next week (21 February).

The researchers, from Tel Aviv University, Al-Balqa Applied University in Jordan, and An-Najah National University in Palestine will work together to map a 100 square kilometre area around the ancient city of Jericho — one of the world's most vulnerable areas for earthquakes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/15/biodiversity.scienceofclimatechange
Alok Jha in Boston
The Guardian
Friday February 15 2008

Fishing, climate change and pollution have left an indelible mark on virtually all of the world's oceans, according to a huge study that has mapped the total human impact on the seas for the first time. Scientists found that almost no areas have been left pristine and more than 40% of the world's oceans have been heavily affected.

"This project allows us to finally start to see the big picture of how humans are affecting the oceans," said Ben Halpern, assistant research scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who led the research.

"Our results show that when these and other individual impacts are summed up the big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected. It was certainly a surprise to me."

Human impact is most severe in the North Sea, the South and East China Seas, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Gulf, the Bering Sea, along the eastern coast of North America and in much of the western Pacific.

The oceans at the poles are less affected but melting ice sheets will leave them vulnerable, researchers said.

The study found that almost half of the world's coral reefs have been heavily damaged. Other concerns rest with seagrass beds, mangrove forests, seamounts, rocky reefs and continental shelves. Soft-bottom ecosystems and open ocean fared best but even these were not pristine in most locations.

Previous studies of human impacts have focused on a single activity or on an isolated ecosystem, and rarely on a global scale.

Fiorenza Micheli, an associate professor of biology at Stanford University, said the maps should guide ocean management in future.

"By seeing where different activities occur and whether they occur in sensitive ecosystems we can design management strategies aimed at shifting activities away from the most sensitive areas."

To make the map scientists compiled global data on the impacts of 17 human activities including fishing, coastal development, fertiliser runoff and pollution from shipping traffic.

http://www.oxfam.org/en/policy/briefingnotes/bn_asia_up_in_smoke_nov07

The human drama of climate change will largely be played out in Asia, where over 60 per cent of the world's population, around four billion people, live. Over half of those live near the coast, making them directly vulnerable to sea-level rise. Disruption to the region's water cycle caused by climate change also threatens the security and productivity of the food systems upon which they depend. This report looks at positive measures that are being taken - by governments, by civil society and by people themselves - to reduce the causes of climate change and to overcome its effects.

Summary and overview
The human drama of climate change will largely be played out in Asia, where over 60 per cent of the world's population, around four billion people, live. Over half of those live near the coast, making them directly vulnerable to sea-level rise. Disruption to the region's water cycle caused by climate change also threatens the security and productivity of the food systems upon which they depend. In acknowledgement, both of the key meetings in 2007 and 2008 to secure a global climate agreement will be in Asia.

The latest global scientific consensus from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that all of Asia is very likely to warm during this century. Warming will be accompanied by less predictable and more extreme patterns of rainfall, including droughts and more extreme inundations. Tropical cyclones are projected to increase in magnitude and frequency, while monsoons, around which farming systems are designed, are expected to become more temperamental in their strength and time of onset. Ironically, if certain types of industrial pollution are reduced, the temporary cooling effect that results from having blankets of smog, could lead to very rapid warming. But existing projections are already bad enough.

There is growing consensus about the current challenges facing Asia and what is needed to tackle them. Many of these are elaborated in this report. There is reason to hope. There is already enough knowledge and understanding to know what the main causes of climate change are, how to reduce future climate change, and how to begin to adapt.

This report looks at positive measures that are being taken - by governments, by civil society and by people themselves - to reduce the causes of climate change and to overcome its effects. It gives examples of emissions reduction; alternative water and energy supply systems; preservation of strategic ecosystems and protected areas; increasing capacity, awareness and skills for risk and disaster management; and the employment of effective regulatory and policy instruments. The challenge is clear and many of the solutions are known: the point is, to act.

By Jonathan M. Katz
Associated Press
Sunday, February 17, 2008; Page A22

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/16/AR2008021602511.html 

GRAND COLLINE, Haiti, Feb. 16 -- Far from the spreading slums of the Haitian capital, past barren dirt mountains and hillsides stripped to a chalky white core, two woodcutters bring down a towering oak tree in one of the few forested valleys left in the Caribbean country.

Fanel Cantave, 36, says he has little choice but to make his living in a way that is causing environmental disaster in Haiti. And these days, he and his son, Phillipe, 15, must travel ever farther from their village to find trees to cut.

...

For example, the U.S. Agency for International Developmentembarked on an ambitious $22.8 million project in the 1980s to plant about 30 million trees that could provide income for peasants. But the project focused on trees that can be made into charcoal for cooking, and nearly all were eventually cut down.

Environmental Minister Jean-Marie Claude Germain said reforestation projects and efforts to preserve trees in three protected zones were set back by the violent rebellion that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 and prompted the United Nations to send in thousands of peacekeepers to restore order.

"Even though there were agricultural laws, the laws were not respected," Germain said. "We are trying to create order now."

Stability returned with the 2006 election of President Ren¿ Pr¿val and U.N. military action against powerful gangs in Port-au-Prince, the capital. But in a nation where 80 percent of the 8.7 million people live on less than $2 a day, trees mean income for those lucky enough to have access to them.

Some groups say they've found success on a limited scale by planting fruit trees and protecting hardwoods through micro-loans and agricultural assistance. Floresta USA, based in San Diego, has been working in Haiti for the past decade and is planting about 33,000 fruit and hardwood trees a year. The Organization for the Rehabilitation of the Environment, based in southern Haiti, has produced more than a million fruit trees since it began work in 1985.

Compared with USAID's failed plan, smaller programs have had more luck by focusing on fruit trees, which farmers are more likely to preserve to sell the fruit. And smaller organizations are able to work with farmers and tailor planting to the needs of specific areas.

"People aren't excited about 'Hey, let's go plant trees.' They're excited about 'How can I feed my family? How can I make ends meet?' " said Scott Sabin, Floresta's leader.

From: , Science and Development Network, More from this Affiliate
Published February 18, 2008 09:17 AM

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/31344 

Two studies have shown that changes in land use to produce crop-based biofuels can actually result in more greenhouse-gasemissions than burning fossil fuels.

The studies, both published in Science last week (8 February), estimate the impact of converting forests and grasslands into cropland for the production of biofuels.

Both conclude that the resulting carbon emissions, released through decomposition or burning of biomass, create a 'carbon debt' that takes decades or even centuries to be paid back through biofuel usage.

This finding undermines previous claims that substituting fossil fuels with biofuels should offset greenhouse-gas emissions because biofuels sequester carbon while they grow.

According to Timothy Searchinger, researcher at Princeton University and the lead author of one of the studies, previous assessments did not include the carbon storage and sequestration sacrificed when diverting land from its existing use.

From: Reuters
Published February 18, 2008 05:50 AM

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/31272 

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union stepped up pressure on Croatia on Monday not to apply a protected fisheries zone to its EU neighbors.

The ecological and fisheries zone came into force on January 1, theoretically excluding fishing vessels from Slovenia, which holds the EU presidency, and Italy from Croatian waters. So far Croatia has done nothing to enforce the zone, aimed at preserving fish stocks and limiting pollution.

EU foreign ministers stopped short of suspending part of Zagreb's accession negotiations but made clear they were keeping the issue under review and asked the European Commission to hold further talks and report back to them at a forthcoming meeting.

"The council recalls its conclusions of December 2007, calling on Croatia to fully respect the agreement of June 4, 2004, and not to apply any aspect of the Ecological and Fisheries Protection Zone to the EU member states until a common agreement in the EU spirit is found," ministers said in a statement adopted without discussion at their monthly meeting.

From Sahra News

02/13/2008

The president presides over today's agenda in Mbour

Senegal - A conference of ministers from countries in Africa's Sahel region is taking place in Mbour, Department of Mbour, Senegal. Their goal: to come up with funding strategies to implement an innovative weapon to hold back the Sahara Desert. The "Great Green Wall" was conceived by Nigeria's ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2005 and has been enthusiastically supported by Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade. It will consist of a strip of trees and shrubs and a series of small irrigation basins stretching across 11 countries, according to Senegal's Minister of the Environment, Djibo Leyti Ka. Mamadou Ibrahima Ouattara of the African Union Commission, along with a group of engineering and water experts, presented the plan to the European Union in Brussels, Belgium two weeks ago. The EU promised to fund a feasibility study.
  - summary by Louise Shaler
Source: Le Soleil by Babacar Bachir Sane
Original Language: French

02/12/2008

Utah - Utah State Engineer Jerry Olds and his staff handle about 6000 cases involving water rights every year, which has prompted State Senator Dennis Stowell of Parowan to introduce SB85, a bill to create a policymaking board intended to speed up the process for individual landowners. Stowell's proposed Water Rights Board would set fees, make rules, review final decisions made by Olds or the Division of Water Rights, and require the governor to appoint a state engineer from a list of nominations submitted by the board. Olds objected that a board would only slow things up more. Other critics said that more lawyers would be needed if individuals had to show the board proof that they were actively developing their water rights for a "beneficial use," as required by state law.

  - summary by Louise Shaler
Source: Deseret Morning News by Stephen Speckman

Source: New York Times
February 19, 2008

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Last August, a team of Russian scientists and legislators trekked to the North Pole and plunged through the ice pack into the abyss, descending more than two miles through inky darkness to the bottom of the ocean.

There, explorers planted Russia's flag and, upon surfacing, declared that the feat had strengthened Moscow's claims to nearly half the Arctic seabed. The ensuing global headlines fueled debate over polar territorial claims.

But that wasn't the whole story. The heroes of the moment did not mention that the dive had American origins.

Alfred S. McLaren, 75, a retired Navy submariner, would like to set the record straight and, as he puts it, "acquaint the Kremlin with the realities" of recent history and international law.

A major figure of Arctic science and exploration who spent nearly a year in operations under the ice, Dr. McLaren says he developed the polar dive plan and repeatedly shared his labors with the Russians and their partners — a claim he supports with numerous e-mail messages and documents.

The Russians, for their part, acknowledge that Dr. McLaren played a central role in the dive's origins. But they say he took no part in substantive planning and logistics.

Dr. McLaren's plan drew on federal polar data and recommended specific sensors and methods to ensure a safe return.

"I wrote the procedures for the dive," he said in an interview. The Russians, he added, "went for the territorial claim."

For the full article please visit the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/world/europe/19arctic.html?pagewanted=print

Source: The Social Science Research Council Blog

Author: Munzoul Assal

Posting Date: January 29, 2008

Sudanis one of the fastest urbanizing countries in the world. Population figures show that the country was already 40% urbanized in 2005 and that figure excludes the displaced of Darfur and the large numbers of unregistered migrants and squatters in Khartoum. Darfurtoday is approximately one third urban, one third rural and one third displaced. Even with the most optimistic scenarios for peace and stability, the majority of Sudanese including Darfurians will soon be living in cities. This is a pathological urbanization it is occurring without social integration. This essay asks, what does this entail for the future of Sudan?

Despite decades of war, Sudan's population has been growing at about 2.8% per annum. That population growth is fastest in a few urban centers, with Khartoumhaving the biggest share. The capital's population grew from just 250,000 on the eve of independent to an estimated 2,831,000 in 1993 a year when the census estimated Sudan to be 25% urbanized. By 2005 Khartoumwas estimated at 4.5 million officially and more than 7 million unofficially with 40% of the country urbanized, and fully half the urban population in the capital. This makes Khartouma primate city, not only in terms of absolute figures, but also politically, economically and socially, as large as all the other urban centers combined.

Migration to Khartoumstarted after independence. For some years, migration was seasonal, and migrants often returned to their areas of origin. But since the 1970s, most migration to Khartoum has been a response to natural and man-made disasters and the inequality of resource distribution. Most of Sudan's economic capital and social services are concentrated in Khartoum. Just as economic resources flow to the center and not the peripheries, so too do people move to the metropolis. The long civil war in southernSudandestabilized communities and pushed millions of internally displaced persons (IDPs) northward. Today, more than 2 million IDPs live in Khartoum---almost one quarter of the population. This can be seen elsewhere too. Nyala now has a population of 1.2 million, plus 300,000 IDPs, making it contend with Port Sudanas the country's second largest city. More than one in five Darfurians live in and around Nyala. But it is in the three towns of Khartoum, Omdurman and KhartoumNorth that we see the most extreme and significant urbanization, and it is here that the country's political future will be decided. Hence this essay focuses on the national capital.

What is the implication of urbanization for the prospects of democratic transformation in Sudan? Will we see urban polarization, poverty and squalor, with resources and services failing to match the demands of urban inhabitants? Khartoumis marked by extreme socio-economic inequality. Rich and upper class residential areas co-exist side by side with squatter settlements and IDP camps. There is a widening gap between the rich and the poor. Khartoumis witnessing a remarkable real-estate development including residential complexes, infrastructure and foreign investment projects that are mostly run by Asians. It is becoming one of the most expensive cities in the world. Yet, these developments do not benefit half of Khartoum's population living in the peripheries of the city. The city provides few if any services to this vast group.

For the full essay and comments by Alex de Waal, please visit the Social Science Research Council's blog at: http://www.ssrc.org/blog/2008/01/29/

From: Reuters
Published February 19, 2008 11:39 AM
Source: http://www.enn.com/lifestyle/article/31419/print 

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - Climatechange threatens the human rights of millions of people who are at risk of losing access to housing, food and clean water unless governments intervene early to counter its effects, experts said on Tuesday.

At a conference on climate change and migration, United Nations officials said rising sea levels and intense storms, droughts and floods could force scores of people from their homes and off their lands -- some permanently.

"Globalwarming and extreme weather conditions may have calamitous consequences for the human rights of millions of people," said Kyung-wha Kang, the U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights.

"Ultimately climate change may affect the very right to life of various individuals," she said, pointing to threats of hunger, malnutrition, exposure to disease and lost livelihoods, particularly in poor rural areas dependent on fertile soil.

Kang, a South Korean, said countries had an obligation "to prevent and address some of the direst consequences that climate change may reap on human rights."

This may include providing safe housing, ensuring good sanitation and water-drinking supplies, and making sure citizens have access to information and legal redress, and take part in decision-making, she said.

Environmental disasters and natural resource scarcity have long been seen as contributors to displacement, for instance in Sudan's Darfur region where 2.5 million people have been driven from their homes by conflict rooted in part in access to water.

But the United Nations has not yet expressly tackled climate change as a human right, for instance by enshrining the right to protection from its effects in an international convention.

Michelle Leighton, director of human rights programs at the University of San Francisco's law school, told the conference pressures from global warming could also force would-be migrants into the hands of criminals.

Some three quarters of sub-Saharan Africa's agricultural drylands are now degraded to some degree, she said, pointing to West African countries such as Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria as most acutely vulnerable to climate change-related damage.

Many people in Somalia, Mali and Cape Verde will also have little option but to leave their lands in coming years, and many are likely to turn to human smugglers for help in accessing more prosperous countries in Europe and elsewhere, she said.

"This is a big business now," Leighton said. "If the climate change predictions come true, and we see much more pressure on agricultural lands in sub-Saharan Africa, we are likely to see an increase in illegal smuggling as well."

Gordon Shepherd of WWF International told the session that such pressures must be addressed by the international community as well as governments. "None of us will escape the effects of the disasters that are facing the future generations," he said.

UNEP PRESS RELEASE

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=528&ArticleID=5751&l=en

For more information, please contact: Nick Nuttall, UNEP Spokesperson and
Head of Media, on +41-79-596-5737; Email: nick.nuttall@unep.org; or Robert
Bisset, UNEP Spokesperson for Europe, on tel: +33-6-2272-5842, Email:
robert.bisset@unep.fr

Global Warming Adding to Pollution and Over-Harvesting Impacts on World's
Key Fishing Grounds, Says New UNEP--'In Dead Water'--Report

10th Special Session of UNEP's Governing Council/Global Ministerial
Environment Forum, Monaco, 20-22 February

MONACO/NAIROBI, 22 February 2008---Climate change is emerging as the latest
threat to the world's dwindling fish stocks, a new report by the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP) suggests.

At least three quarters of the globe's key fishing grounds may become
seriously impacted by changes in circulation as a result of the ocean's
natural pumping systems fading and falling, it suggests.

These natural pumps, dotted at sites across the world including the Arctic
and the Mediterranean, bring nutrients to fisheries and keep them healthy
by flushing out wastes and pollution.

The impacts of rising emissions on the marine world are unlikely to end
there. Higher sea surface temperatures over the coming decades threaten to
bleach and kill up to 80 per cent of the globe's coral reefs---major tourist
attractions, natural sea defences and also nurseries for fish.

Meanwhile, there is growing concern that carbon dioxide emissions will
increase the acidity of seas and oceans. This, in turn, may impact calcium
and shell-forming marine life including corals but also tiny ones such as
planktonic organisms at the base of the food chain.

The findings come in a new rapid response report entitled "In Dead Water"
which has for the first time mapped the multiple impacts of pollution,
alien infestations, over-exploitation and climate change on the seas and
oceans.

 ...

This 10-15 per cent of the oceans is far higher than had previously been
supposed and is "concurrent with today's most important fishing grounds",
including the estimated 7.5 per cent deemed to be the most economically
valuable fishing areas of the world, it adds.

...
It is the largest gathering of Environment Ministers since the UN Climate
Convention Conference in Indonesia just over two months ago where
Governments agreed to the Bali Road Map aimed at delivering a deep and
decisive climate regime for post-2012.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director,
said...

"Climate change threatens coastal infrastructure, food and water supplies
and the health of people across the world. It is clear from this report and
others that it will add significantly to pressures on fish stocks. This is
as much a development and economic issue as it is an environmental one.
Millions of people including many in developing countries derive their
livelihoods from fishing while around 2.6 billion people get their protein
from seafood", he said.

...

In Dead Water Key Findings

* Half the world's catch is caught along continental shelves in an area of
less than 7.5 per cent of the globe's seas and oceans.
* An area of 10-15 per cent of the world's seas and oceans cover most of
the commercial fishing grounds.
* 80 to 100 per cent of the world's coral reefs may suffer annual bleaching
events by 2080 under global warming scenarios.
* Those at particular risk are in the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean,
the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and in the Caribbean
* Over 90 per cent of the world's temperate and tropical coasts will be
heavily impacted by 2050. Over 80 per cent of marine pollution comes from
the land. Marine areas at particular risk of increased pollution are
South-east and East Asia.
* Increasing concentrations of C02 in the atmosphere are likely to be
mirrored by increasing acidification of the marine environment.
* Increasing acidification may reduce the availability of calcium
carbonates in sea water, including a key one known as aragonite which is
used by a variety of organisms for shell-building.
* Cold-water and deep water corals could be affected by acidification by
2050 and shell-building organisms throughout the Southern Ocean and into
the sub-Arctic Pacific Ocean by 2100.
* Climate change may slow down the ocean thermohaline circulation and thus
the continental shelf "flushing and cleaning" mechanisms, known as "dense
shelf water cascading", over the next 100 years. These processes are
crucial to water quality and nutrient cycling and deep water production in
at least 75 per cent of the world's major fishing grounds.
* Dead zones, areas of de-oxygenated water, are increasing as a result of
pollution from urban and agriculture areas. There are an estimated 200
temporary or permanent dead zones up from around 150 in 2003.
* Up to 80 per cent of the world's primary fish catch species are exploited
beyond or close to their harvesting capacity. Advances in technology,
alongside subsidies, means the world's fishing capacity is 2.5 times bigger
that that needed to sustainably harvest fisheries.
* Bottom trawling is among the most damaging and unsustainable fishing
practices at the scales often seen today
* Alien invasive species, which can out-compete and dislodge native ones,
are increasingly associated with the polluted, over-harvested and damaged
fishing grounds. The report shows that the concentration of "aliens"
matches with some precision the world's major shipping routes.

Dr. Christian Nellemann, who headed up the rapid response team that
compiled the report, said: "We are already seeing evidence from a number of
studies that increasing sea temperatures are causing changes in the
distribution of marine life."

Some of these changes are being found from the Continuous Plankton Recorder
survey of the North-east Atlantic.

Warmer water copepod species or crustaceans have moved northward by around
1,000km during the later half of the 20th century, with the patterns
continuing into the 21st century.

"Further evidence of this warming signal is seen in the appearance of a
Pacific planktonic plant in the North-west Atlantic for the first time in
800,000 years by transfer across the top of Canada due to the rapid melting
of the Arctic in 1998", said Dr. Nellemann. "We are getting more and more
alarming signals of dramatic changes in the oceans. It is like turning a
big tanker around. Our ability to change course and reduce emissions in the
near future will be paramount to success."

The link between healthy and productive fishing grounds and ocean
circulation or "dense shelf water cascading" is in some ways only now
emerging.

Three years ago the Hotspot Ecosystem Research on the Margins of European
Seas, of which UNEP is part, documented such a phenomenon in the Gulf of
Lions in the north-western Mediterranean.

A quantity of water equal to two years-worth of the river discharge from
all rivers flowing into the Mediterranean is, in four months, transported
from the Gulf of Lions to the deep western Mediterranean via the Cap de
Creyus canyon.

It has a critical impact on the population of the heavily harvested deep
sea shrimp Aristeus antennatus, the crevette rouge, by bringing food that
in turn triggers a sharp increase in young shrimp resulting in plentiful
catches three to five years after the "cascading" event.

 "Imagine what will happen if climate change slows down or stops these
natural food transport and 'flushing' effects in waters that are often
already polluted, heavily fished, damaged and stressed", said Dr.
Nellemann. "We are gambling with our food supply."

Dr. Stefan Hain, of UNEP's World Conservation Monitoring Centre, said it
was critical that existing stresses were also addressed in order to
conserve fish stocks and coral reefs in a climate constrained world.

He said there was growing evidence that coral reefs recover from bleaching
better in cleaner, less polluted waters.

Dr. Hain cited monitoring of corals around the main Seychelles island of
Mahé which were among corals world-wide that suffered from the high sea
surface temperatures of the late 1990s. Here coral reef recovery rates have
varied between 5 to 70 per cent.

"Coral reefs recovering faster are generally those living in marine
protected areas and coastal waters where the levels of pollution, dredging
and other kinds of human-induced disturbance are considered low", he said.

Notes to Editors

The report "In Dead Water: Merging of climate change with pollution,
over-harvest, and infestations in the world's fishing grounds" can be
accessed at www.grida.no, at www.unep.org or www.globio.info, including
high- and low-resolution graphics for free use in publications.

The 10th Special Session of UNEP's Governing Council/Global Ministerial
Environment Forum is taking place between 20 and 22 February in Monaco; see
www.unep.org/gc/gcss-x/

The theme is Globalization and the Environment--Mobilizing Finance to Meet
the Climate Challenge.

The host country Monaco's web site is available at:
www.unep2008.gouv.mc/pnue/wwwnew.nsf/HomeGb

Source: AllAfrica/Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)

22 February 2008
Posted to the web 22 February 2008
Kigali

FDLR-FOCA rebels have become well-entrenched in the South and North Kivu provinces of eastern DR Congo and have developed diversified sources of financing that can keep them going for years, UN investigators have reported.

The rebels under the banner Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda-Forces combattantes abacunguzi (FDLR-FOCA) are said to control mineral rich areas where they massively export deposits for revenue and arms. FDLR is the political arm and the FOCA stand in as the military wing.

According to a report by five experts for the UN Security Council, the FDLR-FOCA control cassiterite deposits north of Lulingu, in Shabunda region (South Kivu), in Nyabiondo, Walikale region (North Kivu), and in Lemera (South Kivu). They also manage gold deposits in Kilembwe (South Kivu).

These minerals are transported to general collection points near the mining deposits. The output is typically transported by road and air by comptoirs (buying houses) to their headquarters, many of which are located in Goma and Bukavu - capitals of North Kivu and South Kivu respectively.

To export the minerals, according to the investigators, the rebels use mainly boats on numerous rivers and particular routes such as Kanvinvira-Uvira-Bukavu-Hombo-Itebero-Kibua and Uvira-Kilembwe (South Kivu), as well as Ishasha-Nyabiondo-Remeka-Kibua, Ishasha-Nyabiondo-Kimua-Kibua Ishasha-Nyabiondo-Kishanga, Ishasha-Nyabiondo-Pinga, Kasindi-Butembo-Lubero-Kasuo, Kasindi-Butembo-Lubero-Kasuo-Ikore-Pinga-Nyabiondo (North Kivu).

For the full article, please visit: http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200802220753.html \\

We hope you will join us for our next meeting of the Environment-Security Cross-Cutting Initiative on "Conservation and Peacebuilding". The meeting will be held on Monday, March 10th from 12:00pm - 2:00 pm.

We will be joined by guest, Dr. Saleem Ali, who will explore the findings of his most recent edited volume, Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution (MIT Press, September, 2007)

PLEASE RSVP to Jen Mulvey at jmulvey@ciesin.columbia.edu or 845-365-8988 by March 7, so we can order the right amount of food.

Saleem H. Ali Bio:

Associate Professor of Environmental  Studies at the University of Vermont's Rubenstein School of Natural  Resources, and  on the adjunct faculty of Brown  University's   Watson Institute for International Studies For the 2007-2008 academic year, he is  also serving as the Associate Dean for Graduate Education in Natural  Resources at the University of Vermont. His research focuses on the  causes and  consequences of environmental conflicts and how ecological factors can  promote  peace. He is also on the visting faculty for the United Nations mandated University for Peace (Costa  Rica), where he teaches a course on Indigenous Environment and  Development Conflicts. Much of his empirical research has focused on  environmental  conflicts in  the mineral sector and he is the author of  Mining, the Environment and Indigenous Development Conflicts (published the University  of Arizona Press,  fall 2003). His most recent edited volume isPeace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution (MIT Press, September, 2007),  which has received cover endorsements from E.O.  Wilson, George Schaller and Achim Steiner, and a foreword by Julia  Marton-Lefevre.

Dr.  Ali is also a member  of the expert advisory group on  environmental conflicts for the United Nations Environment Programme  with a  specific interest in transboundary conservation zones. As part of this  effort, he is a member of the World Commission on Protected Areas and the IUCN Taskforce on Transboundary Conservation. He has also been involved  in promoting environmental education in  madrassahs (Islamic religious schools) and using techniques from  environmental  planning to study the rise of these institutions in his ethnic homeland  -- Pakistan,  under a grant from the United States Institute of Peace.

 Some  of his current research on environmental health perception in mining  areas and social resposibility in the mining sector is supported by the  Tiffany &Co. Foundation .
 

Prior  to embarking on an academic career, Dr. Ali has worked  as an environmental health and safety professional atGeneral Electric   (based at GE headquarters in Fairfield,  CT, and at silicone resin  manufacturing sites in New  York). He has served  as a consultant for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Health Canada  as an Associate at the Boston-based consulting firm Industrial Economics Inc.   Pro bono projects include a mining impact prospectus for the Crowe  Tribe of Montana  and research assistance to Cultural Survival (an indigenous rights NGO).
 

He is  also a professional mediator and has conducted workshops on  consenus-building for private and public interests, as well as peer  review of research publications for the World Bank, the [International Institute for Sustainable Development|http:\\www.iisd.org], The  Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
, the Journal of Environmental Management, the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, the Natural Resources Forum  and Yale University Press.
    
 Research appointments include a Public Policy Fellowship at Griffith University in Brisbane,  Australia, a Baker Foundation Research Fellowship at Harvard Business  School and a parliamentary internship at the U.K. House of Commons. Teaching  experience includes courses on environmental planning, conflict  resolution,  industrial ecology, research methods and technical writing. Professor  Ali  received his doctorate in Environmental Planning from the  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an  M.E.S. in environmental law and policy from Yale  University, and his  Bachelors in  Chemistry from Tufts University (summa  cum laude). 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/955c1844-e09d-11dc-b0d7-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1 

By William Wallis

Published: February 21 2008 19:13 | Last updated: February 21 2008 19:13

The blast from a bus horn disturbs the calm of dawn in the city of Kisumu, western Kenya, signalling the arrival of another cargo of traumatised passengers.

At a makeshift transit centre near the shores of Lake Victoria, where local church groups are providing food, medical care and onward passage to victims of violence further east, the vehicle pulls in. Its passengers step down to recount the terrifying ordeal that has forced them back to a region many left generations ago in search of better livelihoods. Some were witness to forced circumcisions and beheadings. Others were warned to leave or expect the same.

The bomb that detonated when incumbent President Mwai Kibaki seized a dubious election victory last December from the jaws of defeat has provoked an exodus that risks permanently fracturing Kenya's multi-ethnic society. What started as a wave of protests centred in Nairobi slums and the opposition stronghold of Kisumu turned rapidly into a cycle of communal violencethat has swept across the fertile Rift Valley in-between.

Within the confines of a Nairobi hotel, Kenya's rival politicians are now wrestling with each other in negotiations mediated by Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary-general. Outside, the nation has been crumbling as they speak.

These deliberations have resonance far beyond Kenya's borders. The country's stability as a regional entrepot is essential for the economic health of east and central Africa and for the regeneration of neighbouring states wracked by war. Until recently, it was central to a narrative that saw the continent turning a corner, drawing in more investment, consolidating peace and attaining unprecedented levels of economic growth. The speed with which this has unravelled has forced the world to think again.

...
Bars and restaurants in Nairobi's wealthier neighbourhoods appear at first to be part of a different reality. They have filled up again with the fashion-conscious and well-to-do, jiving to the sounds of Swahili rap. But conversation can turn acid in an instant, with former friends from across the political divide retreating from each other into ethnic identities that mattered less before. Under threat from vigilante gangs, landlords in the bustling capital have started throwing out tenants if they belong to the wrong ethnic group.

...

Mr Annan, after weeks of mediation efforts, has at least secured agreement from rival negotiating teams on a putative agenda for reform. This would include revision of the constitution and an independent review of the electoral process. It would also address inequities in the distribution of land, power and wealth.

On paper, this tackles some of the issues that have turned once-peaceful Kenya into a powder keg. Yet there are few precedents in Africa for a transition to more equitable rule led by the very politicians who have most to lose. Moreover, in the slums of Kisumu and Nairobi, in camps for the internally displaced and among the pro-opposition tribes at the forefront of ethnic cleansing, grievances that predate the elections have been magnified tenfold since.

With the economy in freefall, the means to address these grievances have also diminished. Official estimates suggest 50,000 Kenyans have lost their jobs in a month. The real number, given that 12 times as many have been uprooted, may be far higher. In Kisumu, a city of half a million, the consequences are stark.

...
The city's other main employers were Kikuyus, who owned hotels, transport businesses and shops, and also staffed the hospitals and schools. Some are still hiding with friends. But the majority have fled. Their houses have been looted so comprehensively that there is no longer evidence they were anything but empty plots. As the price of food rises and crime picks up, wealthier members of the Luo community fear they may be next.

... 

"There has been no boom here. Enterprise in the town is owned by very few people. Most of them are Indians. The Kikuyus owned the retail and transport businesses," says Joshuah Nyamori, who hopes to become the town's mayor in a council vote next week. "This was unsustainable. With almost nil ownership among the local population and wages below the official lowest government rate, they did not see the economy's relevance."

Each region in Kenya has its own dynamic, and large parts of the country have remained calm. But such inequities are mirrored everywhere.

In the four decades since independence, successive constitutional amendments have concentrated power in the presidency, which became the anchor for a system oiled by patronage and graft. Mr Kibaki pledged to reform this. In his first term, the economy was doing better - growing at close to 7 per cent. But grand-scale corruption was still rife and for most Kenyans little changed.

In a climate seething with frustration, it was easy for the opposition coalition led by Mr Odinga to crystallise resentment around ethnicity. His campaign spoke of devolution but for many, it now seems, this was understood as kicking the Kikuyu out.

...
There have been 81 military coups in sub-Saharan Africa in just over half a century and at least 125 further failed attempts. But apart from six hours in 1982 when Hezekiah Ochuka, a private in the Kenya Air Force, tried and failed to overthrow the government, Kenya has been spared this scourge, write William Wallis and Matthew Green.

Its army has built a reputation for professionalism, especially in the period since Ochuka's attempt to drag it into politics claimed 145 lives. Over the years it has insulated Kenya from wars across its borders in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Uganda, and led Africa in peacekeeping training.

Partly to guard this reputation, senior commanders have been reluctant to be dragged into the crisis sparked by December's flawed elections, which has claimed more than 1,000 lives. According to separate sources close both to the government and the military, President Mwai Kibaki has considered imposing a state of emergency at least once since December when violence seemed to be spinning out of control. But the army resisted, fearing that if it takes a position in the deadly rivalry pitting Mr Kibaki against Raila Odinga, the opposition leader, their own ranks will split.

"The role of the military is to set and sustain the stage for political action. The question the army has been asking is, is this a legally elected government? If not, and they deploy, are they supporting a 'civilian coup?'" says one person close to the senior command.

...
Instead the army has played a low-key role, distributing food and opening up blocked transport links. On at least one occasion, however, it did step into the fray: according to witnesses in the Rift Valley town of Nakuru, the army last month intervened and prevented a fight between hundreds of ethnic Kalenjin and an equal number of armed Kikuyus.

If negotiations towards a power-sharing government fail and violence escalates, an interim military administration ahead of fresh elections might also be seen in opposition circles as a possible last resort.

Kate E. Jones1, Nikkita G. Patel2, Marc A. Levy3, Adam Storeygard3{, Deborah Balk3{, John L. Gittleman4
& Peter Daszak2

[ For Full Article|^nature06536.pdf]

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) are a significant burden on global economies and public health1-3. Their emergence is thought
to be driven largely by socio-economic, environmental and ecological factors1-9, but no comparative study has explicitly analysed
these linkages to understand global temporal and spatial patterns of EIDs. Here we analyse a database of 335 EID 'events' (origins of
EIDs) between 1940 and 2004, and demonstrate non-random global patterns. EID events have risen significantly over time after
controlling for reporting bias, with their peak incidence (in the 1980s) concomitant with the HIV pandemic. EID events are dominated
by zoonoses (60.3% of EIDs): the majority of these (71.8%) originate in wildlife (for example, severe acute respiratory virus,
Ebola virus), and are increasing significantly over time. We find that 54.3% of EID events are caused by bacteria or rickettsia,
reflecting a large number of drug-resistant microbes in our database. Our results confirm that EID origins are significantly correlated
with socio-economic, environmental and ecological factors, and provide a basis for identifying regions where new EIDs are
most likely to originate (emerging disease 'hotspots'). They also reveal a substantial risk of wildlife zoonotic and vector-borne EIDs
originating at lower latitudes where reporting effort is low. We conclude that global resources to counter disease emergence are
poorly allocated, with the majority of the scientific and surveillance effort focused on countries from where the next important
EID is least likely to originate.

From: WWF
Published February 22, 2008 09:41 AM

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/31616

Borders will matter less to central Africa's mountain gorillas, following the launch of a strategic conservation plan and an associated project which covers adjoining areas of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

There are only about 720 gorillas left in the tropical mountain forests shared by the three countries, the Central Albertine Rift Area Network. The gorillas' natural habitat is threatened by the destruction of these forests and the great apes themselves are victims of poachers.

Protected area authorities of the three countries launched their 10-year Transboundary Strategic Plan for the Central Albertine Rift Protected Area Network on 20 February 2008 in Kampala.

The project is part of the 10-year strategic plan developed by the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), the Office Rwandais du Tourisme et des Parcs Nationaux (ORTPN) and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), and is supported by the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP). IGCP is a coalition of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), and Fauna & Flora International (FFI). The project secretariat is to be hosted by IGCP.

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/47135/story.htm

MIAMI - A hurricane that hit Miami in 1926 would cause up to $157 billion in damage if it were to strike today, according to a study published this week.
US storm costs are rising because of higher populations and wealth on the coasts, not a spike in the number or power of hurricanes, the study said. Its conclusions run counter to the notion that the $150 billion in damages caused by the destructive Atlantic hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 might be linked to global warming, which some scientists believe is behind a spate of extraordinarily powerful hurricanes in recent years.

An extrapolation of current trends "suggests a storm like the 1926 Great Miami Hurricane could result in perhaps $500 billion in damage as soon as the 2020s," the study said.

Hurricanes and their destructive potential have become a key concern in global energy, insurance and commodities markets in the last decade. Scientists believe the Atlantic basin entered a new era of more frequent hurricanes around 1995, which could last 25 to 40 years.

...

"Unless action is taken to address the growing concentration of people and property in coastal hurricane areas, the damage will increase by a great deal as more people and infrastructure inhabit these coastal areas," said Landsea, a researcher with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The study was published in Natural Hazards Review, a publication aimed at civil engineers.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)
Story by Jim Loney

Tomorrow at 7 pm, Book Culture presents:

An evening with Tanisha Fazal, author of State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation

Professor Fazal will be joined by Charles H. Tilly, the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Book Culture

536 W. 112^th Street

New York City

A book signing reception will follow the reading and conversation.

Tanisha Fazal is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Columbia.  She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University.  She is currently writing a book on the death and survival of states in the international system.  She has been a fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.  In 2002 she was awarded the Helen Dwight Reid Award of the American Political Science Association.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0228/p04s02-woeu.html
By Fred Weir | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the February 28, 2008 edition

Moscow - Strained by the coldest winter in 30 years, Tajikistan's Soviet-era infrastructure has buckled, leaving millions of its citizens without water and electricity. Aid groups have been quick to step in, but the mountainous Central Asian republic is facing a serious humanitarian crisis which could spark unrest in this volatile region, experts warn.

Russia, Kazakhstan, and US aid groups have responded to a $25 million appeal from the United Nations for emergency assistance last week, after water and sewage pipes burst - even in the capital city of Dushanbe, where temperatures reached minus 13 degrees F.

During the bitter cold snap that began in late January, rivers froze solid, virtually shutting down the giant Nurek hydroelectric station that is the only source of power for the isolated republic of 7 million. Emergency services were swamped.

About 260,000 Tajiks are in need of immediate food assistance, and up to 2 million face starvation by winter's end if they don't receive swift help, according to the UN. The country urgently needs supplies of portable generators, kerosene stoves, food, blankets and warm clothes.
...
The Tajik government says the country's industry is at a virtual standstill, while food production and distribution businesses are at less than half capacity due to power shortages and transportation paralysis.

Unexpectedly heavy snowfalls have blocked roads, cut access to remote mountain regions of the country, and raised concern about flash floods when the spring thaw begins.

Various US aid agencies have pledged about $2.5 million.

Tajikistan was the poorest republic in the former Soviet Union. Its infrastructure was largely destroyed during a bitter four-year civil war that ended in 1997 with the defeat of Islamist rebels based in next-door Afghanistan.

Even before the current crisis, according to UN figures, about two-thirds of Tajikistan's people subsisted on less than $2 per day, while 41 percent lacked regular access to clean drinking water.

Despite some improvements, experts say that under the increasingly authoritarian President Emomali Rakhmon - who was reelected to another seven-year term in 2006 with no serious opposition - little has been done to rebuild shattered infrastructure, especially in far-flung mountain communities, and that his administration is ill-equipped to deal with a social crisis.

"The Tajik president has concentrated power so narrowly that he's lost any idea of what's happening beyond the capital city," says Andrei Grozin, head of Central Asian studies at the official Institute of Commonwealth of Independent States in Moscow. "The authorities are simply not able to cope with the problems, which means they can keep growing till they reach a critical mass."

Experts warn that any popular unrest that breaks out in Tajikistan could have ripple effects throughout the volatile former Soviet Central Asian region, and possibly spread to the Tajik-populated regions of northern Afghanistan.

• Researcher Olga Podolskaya contributed to this report.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0228/p04s02-woeu.html
By Fred Weir | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the February 28, 2008 edition

Moscow - Strained by the coldest winter in 30 years, Tajikistan's Soviet-era infrastructure has buckled, leaving millions of its citizens without water and electricity. Aid groups have been quick to step in, but the mountainous Central Asian republic is facing a serious humanitarian crisis which could spark unrest in this volatile region, experts warn.

Russia, Kazakhstan, and US aid groups have responded to a $25 million appeal from the United Nations for emergency assistance last week, after water and sewage pipes burst - even in the capital city of Dushanbe, where temperatures reached minus 13 degrees F.

During the bitter cold snap that began in late January, rivers froze solid, virtually shutting down the giant Nurek hydroelectric station that is the only source of power for the isolated republic of 7 million. Emergency services were swamped.

About 260,000 Tajiks are in need of immediate food assistance, and up to 2 million face starvation by winter's end if they don't receive swift help, according to the UN. The country urgently needs supplies of portable generators, kerosene stoves, food, blankets and warm clothes.
...
The Tajik government says the country's industry is at a virtual standstill, while food production and distribution businesses are at less than half capacity due to power shortages and transportation paralysis.

Unexpectedly heavy snowfalls have blocked roads, cut access to remote mountain regions of the country, and raised concern about flash floods when the spring thaw begins.

Various US aid agencies have pledged about $2.5 million.

Tajikistan was the poorest republic in the former Soviet Union. Its infrastructure was largely destroyed during a bitter four-year civil war that ended in 1997 with the defeat of Islamist rebels based in next-door Afghanistan.

Even before the current crisis, according to UN figures, about two-thirds of Tajikistan's people subsisted on less than $2 per day, while 41 percent lacked regular access to clean drinking water.

Despite some improvements, experts say that under the increasingly authoritarian President Emomali Rakhmon - who was reelected to another seven-year term in 2006 with no serious opposition - little has been done to rebuild shattered infrastructure, especially in far-flung mountain communities, and that his administration is ill-equipped to deal with a social crisis.

http://www.ecc-platform.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1312&Itemid=161
Source: WWF

22 Feb 2008 - Borders will matter less to central Africa's mountain gorillas, following the launch of a strategic conservation plan and an associated project which covers adjoining areas of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
There are only about 720 gorillas left in the tropical mountain forests shared by the three countries, the Central Albertine Rift Area Network. The gorillas' natural habitat is threatened by the destruction of these forests and the great apes themselves are victims of poachers.

Protected area authorities of the three countries launched their 10-year Transboundary Strategic Plan for the Central Albertine Rift Protected Area Network on 20 February 2008 in Kampala.

The project is part of the 10-year strategic plan developed by the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), the Office Rwandais du Tourisme et des Parcs Nationaux (ORTPN) and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), and is supported by the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP). IGCP is a coalition of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), and Fauna & Flora International (FFI). The project secretariat is to be hosted by IGCP.

Also launched was a 4 million euro transboundary conservation project funded by the Dutch Government through the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Kigali Rwanda.

The new transboundary strategic plan aims to improve community livelihoods and contribute to the stability of the region. It will also assist in strengthening and making similar the three countries's policies and laws on the conservation and management of the protected areas.

"This is an exciting development", said Dr Susan Lieberman, Director of WWF International's Species Programme. "We applaud this tremendous contribution of the government and people of the Netherlands, which recognizes that species conservation and sustainable development and poverty alleviation go hand in hand."

Saving the endangered mountain gorillas of Africa will be a key component of the 4-year project.

Mountain gorillas are the main tourist attraction in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda, earning these countries about US$ 5 million every year, and are thus a critical element of livelihood programmes in the region for local communities.

WWF joins the chief executives of the three partner organizations (ICCN, ORTPN, and UWA) in calling for enhanced political support from their respective governments.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7267011.stm

Last Updated: Wednesday, 27 February 2008, 13:43 GMT

The water authority in the Gaza Strip has urged people to boil their drinking water to avoid the spread of disease.

The authority said Israel's blockade had delayed essential supplies, including chlorine, and there was now a risk of water being contaminated.

The authority said the situation could lead to a health disaster to Gaza's 1.5m inhabitants.

UN officials have asked Israel to lift the blockade. Israel says its actions are to counter militant rocket fire.

The Coastal Municipality Water Utility issued the warning in radio and newspaper advertisements, blaming Israel for the absence of equipment and chemicals for treating water.

It said there had been no deliveries of chlorine through the Israel-controlled goods crossing since 21 January.

Israel has tightened its blockade of the Gaza since the militant Hamas movement took control in June 2007.

Further restrictions on everything except humanitarian and medical supplies were imposed in recent weeks in response to continued rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=89357

Turkey stepped up its offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq on Wednesday and refused to set a pull-out timetable, despite a US warning that the incursion should last no more than "a week or two." The military said 77 members of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were killed overnight in what they called the heaviest clashes since its forces rolled over the border into the snow-bound mountains of northern Iraq last week.

That brought the army toll of PKK dead to 230, while its own losses climbed to 27 with the deaths since Tuesday evening of five soldiers and three government-armed Turkish Kurd "village guard" militiamen, the general staff said.

As fighter-bombers continued to pound rebel positions on the sixth full day of the incursion, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates made it clear that US support for its NATO ally was not open-ended. The offensive must end quickly, he said.

...

The United States has backed the offensive, supplying Turkey with intelligence on PKK movements, and said the Turkish military had acted "responsibly so far."

But Washington is wary of the prospect of conflict between Turkish forces and the Kurdish administrators of northern Iraq - two key US allies with chilly ties.

Turkey has long accused the Iraqi Kurds of providing the PKK with a safe haven, weapons and ammunition. The military warned the Iraqi Kurds this week not to shelter PKK rebels fleeing the fighting.

...

"The Turkish danger is looming large. They are coming with their canons, guns and planes," said Juthiar Khalil, 25, of Qimary village along the border with Turkey as he sat with nine of his friends around a small stove in a grocery shop.

• AFP

ByScott Baldauf| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
and Rob Crilly| Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the February 29, 2008 edition

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0229/p01s02-woaf.html?page=2 

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa; and Nairobi, Kenya - After weeks of rancorous negotiations to resolve a postelection conflict that killed nearly 1,500 people, Kenya's two rival parties signed an agreement on power-sharing Thursday.

Under the agreement, President Mwai Kibaki will retain the position of president, although international observers and Kenya's own election commission have declared his election deeply flawed. Opposition leader Raila Odinga will become prime minister, although his powers are decidedly ceremonial.

The pact does not address such key issues as a new Con-stitution, land redistribution, and human rights violations. But with it, Kenya appears to be turning the corner toward a tentative peace. Now begins the work of making politicians set aside rivalries and greed to form a unity government and to urge ethnic communities that have massacred each other to make amends.

 ...

The power-sharing agreement may be the crucial starting point toward peace, but it is perhaps the easiest step. Many analysts anticipate greater difficulty in the days ahead, as the new Kenyan government of national unity takes up the more contentious issues, such as rewriting the Kenyan constitution, balancing the distribution of wealth and land ownership, reining in politically connected militias, and punishing those persons who have instigated or promoted ethnic violence.

"The danger here is that people will say we have an agreement, so let's carry on with our lives," says Jacqueline Klopp, a political scientist and Kenya expert at Columbia University. "The politicians have their agreement, but their militias and their supporters have not demobilized. Until we have some peace-building, some recognition that what we did was wrong, people are not going to just start going back to Eldoret."

By Donald Kirk| Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the February 29, 2008 edition

Seoul, South Korea - The visit to Pyongyang this week by the New York Philharmonic - and American patrons of the orchestra - provided their North Korean hosts with an unaccustomed show of defiance.

During one of the carefully scripted tours of the capital prior to Tuesday's concert, two dozen well-to-do Philharmonic patrons surprised their omnipresent guides by refusing to toss flowers before the enormous statue of the late "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung, father of the current leader, Kim Jong Il.

"They offered us flowers at the hotel to put in front of the statue," says G. Chris Andersen, founding partner of GC Andersen Partners, a New York investment banking firm. "We declined that opportunity, saying we don't do that in our country."

That small act of defiance was one sign of an ambivalence shared by many of the more than 100 musicians, who flew to South Korea to give the final concert of the tour Thursday. While deeply moved by extraordinary displays of hospitality as well as the cheers of the audience, some of the musicians were uncomfortable about playing in a nation suffering from lack of food as well as political persecution.

"How many millions of people could be fed with all they spent on us," asks Enrico DiCCecco, a violinist in his 47th year with the orchestra. "What killed us," he says, is knowing that Kim Jong Il "is starving his own people."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0229/p04s03-woap.html