Tiempo Climate Newswatch

"Governments have a responsibility this year to take the next essential step in the battle against climate change," said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, as she opened the third round of climate negotiations this year. "How governments achieve the next essential step is up to them. But it's politically possible. In Cancún, the job of governments is to turn the politically possible into the politically irreversible," she added.

Progress, however, proved slow. "I came to Bonn hopeful of a deal in Cancún, but at this point I am very concerned as I have seen some countries walking back from progress made in Copenhagen," said United States representative Jonathan Pershing. The draft negotiating text on long-term cooperative action has doubled in length to 34 pages with new proposals added and old ones reinstated. "The mitigation discussion even went backwards and became more polarized," remarked Gordon Shepherd at WWF. There has been no resolution of the contentious issue of limits on emissions growth in the major developing nations. There were also signs of deepening rifts over finance for the poorer developing countries. The Copenhagen Accord pledge that US$100 billion a year would be raised by 2020 to assist poor countries adapt to climate change is being questioned. "It sounds very large," said Dessima Williams, delegate from Grenada. "For the donor countries it is a lot to ask taxpayers to pay. But you must weigh that against the need" of countries at risk.

As the meeting ended, Figueres said that the draft negotiating text would not be allowed to grow further. She did feel that some progress had been made on the shape of a future deal. "If you see the bigger picture, we have progress here in Bonn. It is hard to cook a meal without a pot, and governments are much closer to actually making the pot," she said. The final negotiating session before the end-of year Cancún summit will be in Tianjin, China, in October, following high-level political meetings in Geneva and New York. All industrialized nations have now submitted pledges under the Copenhagen Accord to reduce emissions by the year 2020 and 38 developing countries have submitted their proposals to limit emissions growth.

Around 14 million people have been affected by the worst flooding to hit Pakistan in eighty years. At least 1600 people have been killed. The Federal Flood Commission reports that 1.4 million acres of crop land has been flooded and more than 10,000 cows have perished.

In Khyber_Pakhtunkhwa province in northwest Pakistan, the floods devastated areas affected by last year's military offensive against the Taliban. "The economy was restarting... people were getting back to work, people were starting to live some semblance of normality. Of course the flooding's just turned that completely around again and put people back to square one," said Simon Worrall of the Norwegian Refugee Council. As the flooding swept south, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that more than 500,000 people in Sindh province had been relocated with evacuation continuing. There has been anger at the absence abroad of President Asif Ali Zardari, who many feel should be supervising the relief operation.

Restoration of damaged rainforests is more effective at capturing carbon than softwood monoculture plantations, according to an Australian study that challenges existing views. "Carbon markets have become a potential source of funding for restoration projects as countries and corporations seek the cheapest way to reduce carbon emissions", said researcher John Kanowski from the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. "However, there is a concern that this funding will encourage single species monoculture plantations instead of diverse reforestation projects, due to the widely held belief that monocultures capture more carbon."

The research team studied three types of projects in northeastern Australia: monoculture plantations of native conifers, mixed species plantations and rainforest restoration projects with a wide range of rainforest trees. "We found that restoration planting stored significantly more carbon in above-ground biomass than the monoculture plantations of native conifers and tended to store more than mixed species timber plantations," Kanowski reported. It was found that the monoculture plantations reforestation projects were more densely stocked, there were more large trees and the trees that were used had a higher wood density then the plantation conifers.