Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Tropical cyclone Nargis struck the coast of Myanmar on Saturday May 3rd. The storm made landfall in the Irrawaddy delta, leaving 5,000 square kilometres under water and tens of thousands of people dead or missing. "The information that we're receiving indicates that there may well be over 100,000 deaths in the [Irrawaddy river] delta area," warned Shari Villarosa at the United States embassy in Myanmar.

The government of Myanmar was heavily criticized for delays in allowing foreign assistance into the country and for ignoring warnings of the storm's imminent arrival. "Forty-eight hours before [tropical cyclone] Nargis struck, we indicated its point of crossing (landfall), its severity and all related issues to Myanmarese agencies," said B P Yadav of the Indian Meteorological Department. Environmental destruction may have exacerbated the impact. The increase in population in the coastal area led to "encroachment into the mangrove forests, which used to serve as a buffer between the rising tide, between big waves and storms and the residential area," reported Surin Pitsuwan, secretary general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Whether or not climate change is leading to more severe storms remains open to debate. "It's only in the long term that you get the perspective that lets you say whether an extreme event is part of a wider trend," said Hervé Le Treut of the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique in Paris.

Creating a market for carbon as a tool to tackle the climate problem has been vehemently attacked by leaders of the world's indigenous peoples. "It's a new way to make money," charged Jihan Gearon of the Indigenous Environmental Network. "It has nothing to do with environmental concerns or indigenous peoples' rights." The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues focused on climate change during its seventh session, held at the end of April. The Forum recommended that the international community take serious measures to mitigate climate change, as the survival of the traditional ways of life of indigenous peoples depended in large part on the success of those efforts. It stressed that indigenous peoples’ traditional livelihoods and ecological knowledge can significantly contribute to appropriate and sustainable mitigation and adaptation measures.

According to a new report from the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington DC, the World Bank's role in carbon markets is "dangerously counterproductive." The World Bank is "playing both sides of the climate crisis," concludes Janet Redman, main author of the report. "It is making money off of causing the climate crisis and then turning around and claiming to solve it," she says. Instead of encouraging clean energy investors, the Bank is lending much of its financial support to the fossil fuel industry. According to the World Bank, the global carbon market grew to US$64 billion in 2007, more than twice the value in 2006, although there was a leveling off of transactions under the Clean Development Mechanism.

"Increases in food prices are not the consequence of food shortages, it's the consequence of human greed that is putting at risk the lives of millions of men, women and children," according to Jay Naidoo, chairman of the Development Bank of Southern Africa. "There are companies that are making super profits on this issue," he said. He called on the international community to take concerted action to control surging food prices. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations agency responsible for efforts to promote food security, has been criticized for its handling of the world food crisis. Abdoulaye Wade, president of Senegal, described the FAO as a "bottomless pit of money, largely spent on its own functioning, with very little effective operations on the ground."

Jeffrey Sachs, United Nations economic adviser, holds the European Union (EU) and United States' policy on biofuels as partly responsible for the surge in food prices. "The United States programme has a larger impact, but neither of them makes much sense in terms of environmental effects, energy balance or food policy," he said. "I would advocate reconsideration of both," he added. According to Olivier De Schutter, special rapporteur to the United Nations, on the right to food, "the ambitious objectives for the production of biofuels that have been set by the United States and the European Union are irresponsible." He has called for a freeze on all investment in the sector. Stavros Dimas, EU environment commissioner, accepts that "the effects on the environment may not be all that beneficial, especially in the case of low-productivity biofuels." The EU is formulating new rules on biofuel development that will take account of environmental and social concerns. "It's a question of making sure that the correct biofuels are being promoted... we have to be vigilant," commented Christophe Bouvier, European regional director of the United Nations Environment Programme.