Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The global culture of excess, typified by the fact that the average American consumes more than his or her weight in products every day, is emerging as the greatest threat to the planet, according to State of the World 2010 from the Worldwatch Institute based in Washington DC. The report cites cultural patterns as the root cause of an unprecedented convergence of ecological and social problems, including a changing climate, an obesity epidemic, a major decline in biodiversity, loss of agricultural land and production of hazardous waste. Erik Assadourian, project director, warned that "until we recognize that our environmental problems, from climate change to deforestation to species loss, are driven by unsustainable habits, we will not be able to solve the ecological crises that threaten to wash over civilization."

The report presents examples of strategies that can change consumer habits. In Italy, school menus are being reformulated to use healthy, local, and environmentally-sound foods, transforming children's dietary norms in the process. In the German suburb of Vauban, bike paths, wind turbines and farmers' markets are not only making it easy to live sustainably but are making it hard not to. In the United States, carpet company Interface Inc has set the goal of taking nothing from the Earth that cannot be replaced by the Earth. In Ecuador, rights for "Pachamama" (Mother Earth) have entered into the Constitution. "As the world struggles to recover from the most serious global economic crisis since the Great Depression, we have an unprecedented opportunity to turn away from consumerism," commented Worldwatch president Christopher Flavin. "In the end, the human instinct for survival must triumph over the urge to consume at any cost."

"The world will have to use all options to contain average global warming within two degrees Celsius. Agriculture and land use have the potential to help minimize net greenhouse gas emissions through specific practices, especially building soil and biomass carbon," said Alexander Müller, assistant director-general with the Food and Agriculture Organization, announcing a new report on drylands pastoral systems and climate change. "We have a fantastic potential to have both better livelihoods and a better natural resource base while mitigating and adapting to climate change," said report co-author Constance Neely from Heifer International. The report concludes that pastures and rangelands could become greater than forests if properly managed.

Improved management practices that would restore organic matter to grassland soils could sequester up to one billion tonnes a year of carbon according to some estimates, though this would require a vigorous and coordinated global effort and appropriate funding. A more realistic short-term goal would be to place five to ten per cent of grazing lands worldwide under carbon sequestration management by the year 2020. This could store 184 million tonnes of carbon a year. Socio-political and economic barriers, such as land tenure, common property and privatization issues, competition from cropping and lack of education and health services for mobile or nomadic pastoralists, would have to be overcome. The report proposes payment for environmental services, including both financial rewards and non-financial incentives such as capacity building and knowledge sharing, and increased access to existing funding mechanisms such as the Global Environment Facility.

A meeting of European Union (EU) environment ministers in Spain has re-affirmed the EU's conditional goal of a 30 per cent reduction in carbon emissions below 1990 levels by 2020, despite disappointment over the outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit. The EU had hoped that the offer to deepen its commitment from 20 to 30 per cent would inspire other nations to adopt more ambitious targets. "We definitely think we should maintain the 30 per cent offer. We think it is very, very important. It has always been a conditional offer but it is a very important signal that it is maintained," British energy and climate change minister Ed Miliband said.

The EU plans to make greater use of informal bodies such as the Major Economies Forum and the G20 in future discussions on climate change due to concern that the United Nations framework can readily be blocked by a small number of obstructionist states. "EU officials are pretty upset with the United Nations process and feel pretty frustrated," commented Jason Anderson from WWF. "The trick is to find a way to avoid the blockages. If you could just get the major emitters to agree to things, that would take some major problems out of the process," he continued.