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Archive for October, 2010
Need to Move Indonesia’s Capital Growing Urgent in Face of Climate Change, Experts Say
Posted by Yahoo: Veby Mega on October 28th, 2010
Yahoo: Sea level rise, worsening flooding and land subsidence in and around Jakarta have prompted Indonesian officials to resurrect plans to move the country's capital - but local residents and experts say Jakarta itself will not survive unless it adapts to cope with climate change.
Plans to relocate Indonesia's central government, parliament and public offices to another province on the island of Java or to another island in the Indonesian archipelago have been proposed on and off since the 1930s because...
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Hopes for treaty rise at UN biodiversity summit
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 28th, 2010
AFP: Hopes rose that rich and poor nations will be able to forge a historic treaty to protect the world's ecosystems after grinding progress was made at a UN summit on Thursday, delegates said.
Representatives of more than 190 countries have been meeting in the central Japanese city of Nagoya for nearly two weeks in an effort to set goals on saving habitats which would help to end the mass extinction of species.
With talks due to wind up Friday, delegates said last-minute negotiations among environment...
World Bank to account for nature
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 28th, 2010
BBC: The World Bank has launched a global partnership aimed at helping countries include the costs of destroying nature into their national accounts.
Ten nations will take part in the pilot phase, including India and Colombia.
The bank's president Robert Zoellick said environmental destruction happens partly because governments do not account for the value of nature.
The partnership was launched at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Nagoya, Japan.
"We know that human...
Runaway Global Economy Decimating Nature
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 28th, 2010
Inter Press Service: One-fifth of all birds, fish and animals are threatened with extinction - as many as six million unique and irreplaceable forms of life – an authoritative new assessment warned Wednesday.
Deforestation, agricultural expansion, overfishing, invasive alien species and climate change are the specific causes, but the main engine of destruction is an economic system that is blind to the reality that there is no economy or human well-being without nature, experts here say.
"Without global conservation...
ALERT! Canada to Place Pacific Coastal and Temperate Rainforest Ecosystems at Risk for Tar Sands Pipelines and Further Oil Addiction
Posted by Water Conservation Blog on October 27th, 2010
TAKE ACTION HERE NOW!
The proposed Canadian Enbridge Northern Gateway oil sands pipeline through British Columbias pristine temperate rainforests and coastal ecosystems seeks to export tar sand [search] synthetic petroleum to Asia. Tar sands oil production will increase by 30%; causing up to five times the climate change pollution as conventional crude oil, and turning boreal forest the size of New York and New Jersey into an ecological wasteland. B.C.'s precious and fragile temperate rainforests and coastal waters will be placed at risk by major industrial development, and First Nations' salmon economy endangered. A whole series of new pipelines are being built and planned which, like needles, will inject the U.S. and Asia with another dose of dirty oil over-development. Tar sands and boreal forest destruction [search] must end, not be negotiated upon and greenwashed in backrooms by foundation fed green NGOs, as has become the pattern in Canadian forest advocacy.
New monkey found in Myanmar near China dam project
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 27th, 2010
Reuters: A new type of snub-nosed monkey has been found in a remote forested region of northern Myanmar which is under threat from logging and a Chinese dam project, scientists said Wednesday. They said hunters in Myanmar's Kachin state said the long-tailed black monkey, with white-tufted ears and a white beard, could often be tracked in the rain because its upturned nostrils made it prone to sneezing when water dripped in. "It's new to science. It's unusual to travel to a remote area ...
Reality check for ‘miracle’ biofuel crop
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 27th, 2010
SciDev.Net: The hardy jatropha tree as a biofuel source may not be the panacea for smallholders that some have claimed, say Miyuki Iiyama and James Onchieku. It sounds too good to be true: a biofuel crop that grows on semi-arid lands and degraded soils, replaces fossil fuels in developing countries and brings huge injections of cash to poor smallholders. That is what some are claiming for Jatropha curcas, the 'miracle' biofuel crop. But studies on the ground suggest a lot more research and ...
Pennsylvania Governor Bans Fracking in State Forests
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 27th, 2010
NYT: Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania signed an executive order on Tuesday effectively banning further natural gas development on state forest lands. Mr. Rendel, a Democrat, said the moratorium was needed in part to prevent the unchecked industrialization of public lands in a state that has seen a boom in natural gas development unparalleled there. Much of Pennsylvania, along with large swaths of New York and West Virginia, sits atop the Marcellus Shale, a potentially vast ...
Drought Has Amazon Tributary At Record Low Levels
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 27th, 2010
Associated Press: A severe drought has dropped water levels on a major Amazon tributary to their lowest point since officials began keeping records more than a century ago, the government reported Monday, cutting off dozens of communities who depend on the river for work and transportation.
Floating homes along the Rio Negro now rest on muddy flats, and locals have had to modify boats to run in shallower waters in a region without roads. Some riverbanks have caved in, although no injuries have been reported. Enormous...
The decline of the eel
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 27th, 2010
Guardian: There are six of them, writhing lazily at the bottom of Darryl Clifton-Dey's plastic tank. "Weird" doesn't, frankly, do them justice: small, beady eyes; big ugly snout. Sinuous, slimy; even on a sunny morning on the banks of the Thames, faintly sinister. Beasts of legend and bad dreams. Even lightly sedated, one half-hearted wriggle and they slide effortlessly out of your grasp, a powerful ripple of grey-green and silver. Their skin is extraordinary, like liquid velvet.
It's not widely known that...