Climate Click

Incorporating a gender focus in public policies for confronting and adapting to the impacts of climate change is still a pending task in the Caribbean, despite women’s proven skills in risk and disaster management.

Women, especially at the community level, tend to head up the networks trained in disaster evacuation and contingency plans, and play key roles in health measures and shelters during emergencies.

But they are also among the most vulnerable, as reflected by statistics on the victims of impacts of extreme weather events.

In 2007, Hurricane Noel claimed 88 lives in the Dominican Republic, and left 14 people missing and 66,000 homeless.

Harvesting tropical forests for timber may not be the arch-enemy of conservation that it was once assumed to be, according to a new study led by a University of Florida researcher. Selective logging may be one of the few feasible options left for conserving tropical forests given the huge financial incentives pushing tropical landholders to convert primary forests into cash-generating agricultural plantations.

 The report analyzed data from more than 100 studies of tropical forests on three continents that had been harvested for timber. Results suggest that while biodiversity and carbon retention take a hit from selective logging, the losses are survivable and reversible to a degree if the forest is given adequate time to recover. The study appears in the online version of the journal Conservation Letters. That’s not the case when forests are converted to rubber or palm oil plantations, said the study’s lead author, Jack Putz, a UF professor of biology. Once a forest is gone, it is hard to get it back in any semblance of its former glory. “We aren’t advocates for logging,” he said. “We’re just acknowledging that it is a reality — and that within that reality, there is a way forward.” The study found that on average, 85 to 100 percent of the animal and plant species diversity present before an initial harvest remained after the forests were selectively logged. Forests also retained 76 percent of their carbon after an initial harvest. 

 The authors concede that the reports they analyzed could be overly optimistic portrayals of forest health. They nevertheless maintain that even moderately well-managed forests provide valuable benefits, and that badly managed forests can recover many of their most valuable attributes over time. The continued existence of indigenous people culturally bound to these forests depends on forest survival, Putz said. Other people benefit from the eco-services that forests provide like soil erosion control, carbon sequestration and habitat for wildlife. The problem, he said, is that there are powerful economic forces driving developing nations to convert their forests to cash crops and cattle ranches. A forest sustainably managed for timber and biodiversity might earn $2,000 per acre every 20 to 30 years. In contrast, a palm oil plantation can bring in the same amount in less than a year. 

The effects of climate change could seriously damage the Chinese economy in the near future, according to the Chinese government’s latest research into the phenomenon. Both food and water supplies are threatened with critical shortages, while an increase in flooding and drought could ravage vulnerable areas.

The 710-page “Second National Assessment Report on Climate Change” was published last year, but only recently entered the public domain. Authored by teams of government-supervised scientists, the report builds on an initial assessment conducted in 2007 to provide evidence and forecasting which will shape, rather than set, government policy.

The booming industry that has put millions of new cars on China’s roads and sprouted legions of factories has helped propel China towards its current status as the world’s second-largest economy. However, it has also made China the world’s biggest producer of the harmful greenhouse gasses which now present a long-term threat to the impressive growth in prosperity.

According to the report, China’s carbon-dioxide emissions (a major “greenhouse gas”) will only begin to diminish after 2030, with no significant drop until around 2050. By then, if current global warming trends are allowed to continue unhindered, China’s grain output could fall by up to 20 percent. This, says the report, could potentially be offset to a degree by the fertilizing effects of more carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, in addition to shrewd crop choices and improvements to farming practices.

However, by the end of the century, based on the results of various projections of greenhouse gas levels, China’s atmospheric temperature will increase by between 2.5 and 4.6 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average. It is the effect this warming will have on the country’s water which poses the greatest danger to society.

Penguins are in dire peril due to climate change and a resurgence of hungry whales, according to the results of a long-term study.

Back in the early 80s, about half of Adelie and chinstrap penguins on the West Antarctic Peninsula returned to their breeding grounds after hatching. That number has plummeted to just 10 percent today – the implication being that the AWOL penguins have starved to death.

Biologist Wayne Trivelpiece of the National Marine Fisheries Service, a researcher in the study who has been on the penguin case since the 1970s, thinks he knows what’s killing off the birds: a lack of krill. These tiny shrimplike crustaceans are a huge food source to young penguins, and without enough of them the creatures are essentially screwed.

Around half of businesses have said the government's carbon reduction commitment energy efficiency scheme (CRC) is an unneccessary burden whose league table will be meaningless, a survey suggests.

The survey, conducted for npower, also found that 41 per cent of firms felt the CRC should be postponed until the UK's financial recovery is more secure. A similar number want financial incentives reintroduced and through that the CRC is now effectively a tax.

npower claimed that a significant number of firms will also miss the next milestone of the scheme - the submission of the first footprint report at the end of July. 

The United Nations is compiling pledges by developing countries to fight climate change, from Mongolia's plan to set up solar power stations in the Gobi Desert to promises by the Central African Republic to cover a quarter of its territory with forests.

The pledges are voluntary, and many nations made them conditional of financial and technical help from the industrial world.

But the list  released Monday  helps satisfy demands by wealthy countries, which are obliged to cut carbon emissions under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, that all countries help fight global warming.

Last December rich countries approved plans for a Green Fund to administer billions of dollars for developing nations, but further action to define the fund has been delayed.

One group in Brattleboro England, has decided to spend Lent reducing their carbon footprint. The Brattleboro Area Interfaith Initiative is taking part in a carbon-fast, an idea that originated in England, spread to Boston and now Vermont, and is expanding its reach even more.

The New England Regional Environmental Ministries is sending daily emails to people in more than 30 states with tips on ways to cut their carbon emissions. And 5,600 people have already signed up on-line to take part.

VPR's Mitch Wertlieb speaks with Fred Taylor is an environmental studies professor and writer who lives in Dummerston. He helped get churches in the Brattleboro area involved in the project.