US: April 8, 2008
WASHINGTON - Nuclear war between India and Pakistan would cause more than slaughter and destruction -- it would knock a big hole in the ozone layer, affecting crops, animals and people worldwide, US researchers said on Monday.

Fires from burning cities would send 5 million metric tonnes of soot or more into the lowest part of Earth's atmosphere known as the troposphere, and heat from the sun would carry these blackened particles into the stratosphere, the team at the University of Colorado reported. "The sunlight really heats it up and sends it up to the top of the stratosphere," said Michael Mills of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, who chose India and Pakistan as one of several possible examples.

Up there, the soot would absorb radiation from the sun and heat surrounding gases, causing chemical reactions that break down ozone.

"We find column ozone losses in excess of 20 percent globally, 25 percent to 45 percent at midlatitudes, and 50 percent to 70 percent at northern high latitudes persisting for five years, with substantial losses continuing for five additional years," Mills' team wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This would let in enough ultraviolet radiation to cause cancer, damage eyes and skin, damage crops and other plants and injure animals.

Mills and colleagues based their computer model on other research on how much fire would be produced by a regional nuclear conflict.

"Certainly there is a growing number of large nuclear-armed states that have a growing number of weapons. This could be typical of what you might see," Mills said in a telephone interview.

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/47829/story.htm

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: April 6, 2008
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/world/americas/06brazil.html?_r=2&ref=world&oref=slogin&oref=slogin MANAUS, Brazil--- Some wore traditional headdresses, and some traveled by riverboat or canoe. But the dozens of "forest peoples" who descended on this capital of Amazonas State last week had a common goal of becoming bigger players in global climate talks.

A conference here that ended last Friday drew leaders of hundreds of indigenous groups in 11 Latin American countries and observers from Indonesia and Congo, the largest gathering of its kind, organizers said. They came to build a consensus for a plan in which wealthier countries would compensate developing countries for conserving tropical forests like the Amazon.

Such an international carbon-trading plan has been gaining momentum and was a central topic last December at a climate conference in Bali, Indonesia. Scientists generally agree that tropical deforestation accounts for 20 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

"There is a real sense that this potentially represents a huge opportunity for forest peoples to influence climate changenegotiations and create larger-scale incentives to stop deforestation and improve their living conditions," said Stephan Schwartzman of the Environmental Defense Fund in New York, who attended the discussions here.

On Friday, representatives from the 11 Latin American countries signed a declaration establishing the International Alliance of Forest Peoples and vowed to continue to push for a place at the table of climate change talks.

The Indonesian government has been promoting the idea of carbon trading at climate talks. But environmentalists see South America, where native populations have stronger legal claims to the land, as a major staging ground for building support for the concept.

...

Large-scale clearing of the Amazon forest — for wood, cattle-grazing and agricultural products like soybeans — is threatening the native people's traditional way of life. "The climate changes are a reality," said Manoel Cunha, chairman of Brazil's National Council of Rubber Tappers. "We have rivers that are unnavigable" and trees that no longer bear fruit, he added.

The plan, formally known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD, would involve payments by wealthy countries, principally the United States and European nations, to developing countries for every hectare, or 2.47 acres, of forest they do not cut down.

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor

The Guardian,Saturday April 5 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/05/biofuels.food

The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has called for a comprehensive review of the policy on biofuels as a crisis in global food prices - partly caused by the increasing use of crops for energy generation - threatens to trigger global instability.

"We need to be concerned about the possibility of taking land or replacing arable land because of these biofuels," Ban told the Guardian in Bucharest while attending this week's Nato summit. But he added: "While I am very much conscious and aware of these problems, at the same time you need to constantly look at having creative sources of energy, including biofuels. Therefore, at this time, just criticising biofuel may not be a good solution. I would urge we need to address these issues in a comprehensive manner."

... 

Some of the loudest criticism has come from within UN food agencies, which are struggling to keep up with commodity prices. Last month the World Food Programme issued an emergency $500m appeal to donors to help it meet its existing commitments to the world's hungry.

WFP officials say 33 countries in Asia and Africa face political instability as the urban poor struggle to feed their families.