Tiempo Climate Newswatch

As the United Nations Climate Change Conference began in Poznań, Poland, delegates from India and China welcomed the 2020 emissions target (a reduction to 1990 levels) proposed by Barack Obama, United States president-elect, but said that it is not tough enough. "It's more ambitious than President Bush but it is not enough to achieve the urgent, long-term goal of greenhouse gas reductions," commented He Jiankun of Tsinghua University in China. "It's not ambitious enough considering the Kyoto Protocol targets, but, given the eight-year Bush administration, it's progress," said Dinesh Patnaik of the Indian Foreign Ministry.

In his opening address, Yvo de Boer, head of the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, called on the industrialized nations "to show the world that they are willing to shift gear and take on the leadership role in emission reductions." The challenge in Poznań, he said, is to identify which proposals for ongoing action and a post-Kyoto agreement should be taken forward and to focus on ranges of emissions reduction targets for industrialized nations. He noted that progress also needs to be made in improving the geographical scope and effectiveness of the Clean Development Mechanism, fully operationalizing the Adaptation Fund and advancing work on reducing deforestation emissions from developing countries. Important issues related to national communications from non-Annex I Parties (mostly developing nations), such as the role of the Consultative Group of Experts and delays in processing, have to be resolved.

"Climate projections for the Pacific island countries are bleak and indicate reduced food security, especially for households," reports Alexander Müller of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The assessment is based on a new report prepared by FAO and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme. Regional forecasts suggest rainfall fluctuations could devastate agriculture through water stress, increases in pests and weeds and soil erosion and fertility losses. Increasing coastal inundation, salinization and erosion may contaminate and reduce the size of productive agricultural lands.

"It is critical to build resilience of food systems to avoid enormous future economic losses in agriculture, fisheries and forestry. Countries will have to assess how vulnerable their food systems are and how they can adapt agriculture, forestry and fisheries to future climate-related disasters. There is a need to act urgently," Müller argues. The report concludes that "nations that have pushed for monoculture crop production for foreign markets will need to assess their food security potential. It is well established that diversified agricultural systems will fare better under climate change scenarios." The authors call for a more systematic approach to climate change, with national development plans serving as the basis for adaptation measures involving governments, the private sector and civil society.

Rajendra Pachuari, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has lashed out at governments for spending trillions of dollars on the banking crisis while neglecting funding for poverty alleviation and climate change. "It defies any kind of logic, if you look at the type of money that the world has spent on these bailouts, 2.7 trillion [US] dollars is the estimate, and it's been done so quickly and without questioning," he said. Fifty billion dollars a year was the estimate for tackling the Millennium Development Goals on sickness and poverty, he noted. "But everyone scoffed at it. Nobody did a damn thing," he continued. "(Yet) here, you've got agencies, you've got organizations that are not only responsible for their own failure but the failure of the entire economic system, and they get cheques worth 2.7 trillion dollars. I find this amazing... What can you say, what can you do?" Pachauri reckons there will, eventually, be a "deep and major reappraisal of the way we've been growing economically."

Climate change is overwhelming disaster agencies, according to three major relief organizations. Kasidis Rochanakorn of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), warned that "capacity has been overwhelmed because of the frequency and intensity of natural disasters." OCHA has launched a new climate campaign. Jose Riera, policy adviser with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, fears that, in coming years, climate will suddenly become the main driver of refugee movements. A new scheme may be needed to compensate climate victims, argues a report commissioned by WWF UK. "The science is progressing far enough to make these kinds of claims [against major emitting nations] legitimate," said co-author Peter Roderick of the Climate Justice Programme.

A global poll indicates that the environment remains a major concern despite the financial downturn. Three quarters of those responding to an annual HBSC survey wanted their countries to reduce their "fair share" of greenhouse gases. "This research demonstrates the need for decisive action on climate change," commented Nicholas Stern, advisor to HBSC.

China and India are calling on the industrialized nations to increase financial support for action on climate change. "Developing countries are saying that if you expect us to make measurable, reportable and verifiable action, there has to be measurable, reportable and verifiable money on the table," said Yvo de Boer, head of the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. China has proposed that developed nations commit 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product. "It will be on the table at Poznań... India supports the Chinese proposal," said an anonymous Indian government official.

Greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2007, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reports. Based on the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, developed by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the total warming effect of all the long-lived greenhouse gases increased by 1.06 per cent from the previous year, by 24.2 per cent since 1990.

Carbon dioxide concentrations reached 383.1 parts per million, a rise of 0.5 per cent from the previous year. Methane levels registered their largest yearly increase over the past decade. Ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons registered lower levels than last year. "The Montreal Protocol, through the phase-out of ozone-depleting substances, has actually had a positive effect also on climate," said WMO expert Geir Braathen.

The amount of nitrogen in the foliage of trees affects significantly the role of forests in the Earth's energy balance, according to a new study. Nitrogen-rich foliage reflects more sunlight back to space, cooling the planet's surface. The evidence emerged from a study of forest sites across North America.

"Bits and pieces of evidence for this [cooling effect] have been around for years but nobody put them together before because it's a question we hadn't even thought to ask," said study leader Scott Ollinger of the University of New Hampshire in the United States. "Scientists have long been aware of the importance of albedo, but no one suspected that the albedo of forests might be influenced by nitrogen. And because most of the effect is in the infra-red region of the sun's spectrum, beyond that which human eyes can detect, the pattern isn't immediately obvious." Nitrogen-rich foliage also offsets greenhouse warming by absorbing more carbon dioxide.