Tiempo Climate Newswatch

In the run-up to the First Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, India has announced that it is unlikely to accept any restriction on emissions. "There is no way that anybody can expect countries like India to cap their emissions for the next 20-25 years," said S K Joshi from India's environment ministry. "We welcome the talks among the parties for the second commitment period strictly in accordance with the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. The issue of entitlements has to be addressed and the countries that have agreed to take on commitments under the Protocol have to show demonstrable progress."

Greenhouse gas emissions from the richer nations have fallen overall since 1990, largely as a result of the collapse of Soviet-era industries. By 2003, total emissions from forty developed nations had dropped by 5.9 per cent below the 1990 level, surpassing the Kyoto Protocol target of a 5.2 per cent reduction by 2008-2012. "Further efforts are required to sustain these reductions and to cut the emissions further," warned the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. "Greenhouse gas projections indicate the possibility of emission growth by 2010. It means that ensuring sustained and deeper emission reductions remains a challenge for developed countries," said Richard Kinley, acting head of the Secretariat.

More information

• Reuters
• Reuters

• On the Web: The climate negotiations

People living in sub-Saharan Africa and along the coasts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans are likely to be amongst the most seriously affected by the health impacts of climate change. The finding results from a new study led by Jonathan Patz of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the United States. "Many of the most important diseases in poor countries, such as diarrhoea and malnutrition, are highly sensitive to climate," said co-author Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the World Health Organization. "The health sector is already struggling to control these diseases and climate change threatens to undermine these efforts."

Patz and colleagues argue that climate change poses a "global ethical challenge", with those most at risk being least responsible for the problem. "The United States is the number one emitter of greenhouse gases, and as a developed nation must take a leadership role," to deal with these health problems, concludes Patz. "Our energy-consumptive lifestyles are having lethal impacts on other people around the world, especially the poor." But, he continues, China, the second largest emitter, must adopt strategies to reduce its emissions too, despite their per capita emissions being a fraction of the United States.

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• Washington Post
• Independent
• Guardian
• Reuters

• Link to full article in Nature, SciDev.Net

In its Global Forest Resources Assessment, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that around 13 million hectares of forests, an area the size of Greece, are destroyed each year. The net rate of loss is, however, decreasing - down from 8.9 million hectares a year during the 1990s to 7.3 million hectares a year since the turn of the century. This improvement is largely the result of new plantations. "There are reasons to be very optimistic about what is happening," said Hosny El-Lakany, FAO assistant director general for forestry.

Environmental groups responded with a warning against complacency. "FAO continues to emphasize the net forest loss number. This is misleading because most of the world's most valuable forests, especially in the tropics, are vanishing as fast as ever," said Simon Counsell of the Rainforest Foundation. Counsell also challenged the FAO methodology, arguing that the definition of forest - ten per cent ground cover by tree canopy - was not stringent enough. "These figures are the main basis for global decision making on the world's most important ecosystems. We fear that bad decisions are going to made on the basis of bad data."

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Background

• CNN
• BBC
• Pravda

• Global Forest Resources Assessment, FAO
• On the Web: Forests and climate