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	Nations failing to take real actions on climate change by NYT / SMH & agencies   Oct 2010 (New York Times)   With wounds still raw from the chaotic United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen last December, negotiators are making final preparations for next month’s meeting in Cancún, Mexico, in a surly mood and with little hope for progress.   There currently seems little chance of completing a binding global treaty to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases, few if any heads of state are planning to attend, and there are no major new initiatives on the agenda.   Currently delegates in Tianjin, China, at the last formal meeting before the Cancún conference opens Nov. 29, are hung up over the same issues that caused the collapse of the Copenhagen meeting. Even some of the baby steps in the weak agreement that emerged from last year’s meeting, a slender document known as the Copenhagen Accord, have been reopened, to the dismay of officials who thought they had been settled.   Agreement on critical issues like short-term financial aid for vulnerable countries and monitoring and reporting of emissions by major economies appears even farther away than it was at the end of the Copenhagen meeting. At Copenhagen, wealthy countries pledged to raise $100 billion over the next decade to help the developing world respond to climate change, with $30 billion in “fast start” financing available by 2012. But that money has barely started to flow, and many developing nations are pressing rich countries to raise the ante, a seemingly unlikely prospect.   The conflict is following the familiar lines that led to the crackup in Copenhagen. Wealthy countries are insisting on deep and verifiable cuts in emissions from major developing countries like China and India, while the poorer nations are asking the rich countries to do more to reduce their own pollution and come up with more money to help the rest of the world adapt to the changes wrought by a century of unchecked carbon gases from the industrialized world.   Developing-country negotiators continually chide American officials for the failure of the United States to enact any sort of comprehensive climate and energy legislation.   China’s top global warming negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, complained in Tianjin on Wednesday that developed nations were not living up to their own commitments while demanding more from the poorer countries. “The commitments made so far are far from what we expected,” the Associated Press quoted him as saying. “We hope they can make dramatic reductions.”   Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) says “Governments must ensure that the rest of the world believes in a future of ever-increasing government commitment to combat climate change. They need to agree on what can be achieved in Cancún and how it will be achievable,” Ms. Figueres stressed.   She noted the need for a new global framework to help countries adapt to climatic changes. “Governments must bridge differences in order to reach a tangible outcome in Cancún.”   The recent floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia and mudslides in China have spotlighted the dangers of extreme climate events.   “The bottom line is that it is in no one’s interest to delay action,” she said. “Quite on the contrary, it is in everyone’s ultimate interest to accelerate action in order to minimize negative impacts on all.”   Oct 2010   Oxfam International says the world"s poorest countries are missing out on aid earmarked for climate change programs at the expense of emerging superpowers China, India and Brazil.   Oxfam"s analysis finds one-third of international money aimed at climate programs went to the three major emerging nations, while the world"s poorest 49 countries got just one-eighth.   The findings come from an Oxfam briefing analysing climate change aid controlled by the Global Environment Facility between 1991 and 2010.   The poorest 49 countries were given $450 million in climate aid out of $3.5 billion available. China, India and Brazil received $1.2 billion between them from the same pool.   Oxfam climate change adviser, Kelly Dent, said "poor countries are feeling the worst impacts of climate change but are not getting their fair share of current climate finance". The briefing found just 7.5 per cent of climate change aid helped countries adapt for the impact of climate change, while 83 per cent of climate finance went towards mitigating carbon emissions.   That means only $220 million was spent on national climate change adaptation plans, such as drought-proofing crops, although $2 billion was needed. Oxfam said climate aid was controlled by 20 funds and programs, but a single entity needed to be set up by United Nations climate negotiations. Visit the related web page
	World Biodiversity in Crisis by IUCN / The Guardian & agencies   September 29, 2010   Human Impact on World"s Rivers "Threatens Water Security of 5 Billion".   Nearly 80% of the world"s rivers are so badly affected by humanity"s footprint that the water security of almost 5 billion people, and the survival of thousands of aquatic species, are threatened, scientists warned today.   The global study put together by institutions across the globe is the first to simultaneously look at all types of human intervention – from dams and reservoirs to irrigation and pollution – on freshwater. It paints a devastating picture of a world whose rivers are in serious decline. While developing countries are suffering from threats to both water security and biodiversity – particularly in Africa and central Asia – the authors said they were surprised by the level of threat posed to wildlife in rich developed countries.   "What made our jaws drop is that some of the highest threat levels in the world are in the United States and Europe," says Prof Peter McIntyre, one of the lead authors, who began work on the project as a Smith Fellow at the University of Michigan. "Americans tend to think water pollution problems are pretty well under control, but we still face enormous challenges." Some of the worst threats to aquatic species in the US are in the south-eastern states, including the Mississippi river.   Prof Charles Vörösmarty of the City University of New York, lead author and an expert on global water, said the impact on wildlife in developed countries was the result of river systems that had been heavily engineered and altered by man.   "With all the protection the EU has in place for waterways, it was surprising to see it was a hotspot for biodiversity loss. But for a long time Europeans have altered their landscapes, including the removal of 90% of wetlands and floodplains, which are crucial parts of river ecosystems," he said.   Published in the journal Nature, the international team behind the report looked at datasets to produce a map of how 23 different human influences – such as dams, the introduction of alien non-native fish and pollution – affect water security and biodiversity. Previous studies have tended to look at just one influence at a time.   Even the world"s great rivers, such as the Yangtze, the Nile and the Ganges, are suffering serious biodiversity and water security stress, the map shows. Despite their size, more than 30 of the 47 largest rivers showed at least moderate threats to water security, due to a range of human impacts such as pollution and extracting water for irrigation.   Even the Amazon, has human fingerprints on it, said Vörösmarty. "While the Amazon is in generally good shape, in the upstream regions such as Peru, there are many high density areas of people that inject threat into the system. The legacy of that human threat passes downstream into the remote forested areas of the river."   Globally, between 10,000 and 20,000 aquatic wildlife species are at risk or face extinction because of the human degradation of global rivers, the report said.   The world"s least affected rivers, the authors found, were those furthest from populated areas, such as remote parts of the tropics, Siberia and elsewhere in the polar regions.   Vörösmarty said he hopes the report highlights the need to address the root causes of the degradation of rivers. "We"re spending trillions of US dollars to fix a problem we"ve created in the first place. It"s much cheaper to treat the causes rather than the symptoms, which is what we do in the developed world today," he said.   A report by the UK"s Environment Agency last year admitted only five of 6,114 rivers in England and Wales are considered pristine and three-quarters were so polluted they are likely to fail European quality standards.   Sept 2010   One in Five Plant Species face Extinction.   One in five of the world"s plant species – the basis of all life on earth – are at risk of extinction, according to a new study.   The first ever comprehensive assessment of plants, from giant tropical rainforests to the rarest of delicate orchids, concludes the real figure is at least 22%. It could well be higher because hundreds of species being discovered by scientists each year are likely to be in the "at risk" category.   "We think this is a conservative estimate," said Eimear Nic Lughadha, one of the scientists at Kew Gardens in west London responsible for the project.   The plant study is also considered critical to understanding the level of threat to all the natural world"s biodiversity, said Craig Hilton-Taylor of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which runs the world"s offical "red list" of threatened species. "Plants are the basis of life, and unless we know what"s happening to plants it has many implications," said Hilton-Taylor.   The results will be presented to world leaders meeting at Nagoya in Japan in October to discuss the world"s biodiversity crisis.   "This is a base point," said Lughadha. "What we do from now is going to lead to the future of plants. We need to challenge the idea that plants are there to be exploited by us, we need to move to a system where we"re nurturing plants much more carefully and actively taking steps to conserve them."   Politicians and conservation experts will also be told that by far the biggest threat to plants is human – rather than natural – causes, especially intensive agriculture, livestock grazing, logging and infrastructure development.   Caroline Spelman, the UK environment secretary, who will travel to Japan for the final talks, said the results were deeply troubling. She added: "Plant life is vital to our very existence, providing us with food, water, medicines, and the ability to mitigate and adapt to climate change."   Scientists randomly selected 7,000 species from across the major plant groups as a representative sample of the estimated 380,000-400,000 so far known to science. Of these, 3,000 were found to have too little information to begin making an proper assessment – a result that was expected and so built into the selection process.   The remaining 4,000 species were assessed and the level or risk based on a combination of the absolute number of plants estimated in the wild, the known decline, and the total area in which they are thought to live.   Of the 4,000, 63% were found to be of "least concern", 10% near threatened, 11% vulnerable, 7% endangered and 4% critically endangered. Another 5% were rated "data deficient".   Nearly two-thirds of threatened plant species are found in tropical rainforests, five times the proportion for the nearest other habitats – rocky areas, temperate forests and tropical dry forests. This is because of their density of biodiversity and the widespread risks of logging and clearance for other agriculture, said analysts.   The assessment was done using experts and collections at the herbaria at Kew Gardens, the Natural History Museum in London and Missouri Botanical Garden in the US, plus specialist experts from the IUCN. Visit the related web page
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