Tiempo Climate Newswatch

WWF has warned that 568 million acres of forest may disappear by the year 2050 if action isn't taken to limit deforestation and curb climate change. "We are squandering forests now by failing to sort out vital policy issues such as governance and economic incentives to keep forests standing," said Rod Taylor, WWF International Forests director. The WWF report advocates the goal of zero net deforestation and forest degradation - ZNDD - by 2020 as a global benchmark.

The Living Forests report identifies five key issues crucial to limiting deforestation whilst avoiding negative consequences. ZNDD should never be at the expense of biodiversity conservation: agricultural expansion in highly biodiverse grasslands to ease pressure on forests, for example. Strategies should immediately prioritize forests with the highest biodiversity. ZNDD is only possible under good governance, which means secure land tenure, effective laws and policies and empowered, committed local communities whose rights are respected. While much forest destruction is encouraged by market demand, markets can also drive better management. Incentives for high social and environmental standards and bans on trade in illegally-sourced timber can help. Crop and livestock production plays a major role in forest loss so strategies are needed to reduce food waste, meat and dairy intake, energy use and over-consumption among richer people and to ensure poor people have the food, energy and materials they need. Finally, ZNDD needs to be adapted nationally, regionally and locally to ensure that people's welfare is not harmed.

Responding to discussion at the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in Brussels, Connie Hedegaard, European Union climate commissioner, said that, "from what I've heard in these last two days, the conclusion must be that it is highly unlikely that the world will see a legally-binding deal done in Durban." She explained that it was "not that they do not think it's important - but there is just this feeling that it's simply not doable for Durban." Nevertheless, the European Union remains committed to a binding deal. "We're not putting on the brake here," she emphasised.

"I don't think anyone thinks there's going to be an actual, completed legally-binding agreement in Durban," Todd Stern, the United States special envoy for climate change, said following the meeting. Stern said that negotiators at the forum discussed working on "decisions or language that [following the South African summit] would look toward negotiation of a legally-binding agreement in the coming year." Even so, he said that there was no certainty that such a deal would eventually be reached. "I think that there are different views about the sort of degree of necessity or not of a legally-binding agreement," Stern added. "Our view in the United States is that it is not a necessary thing to happen right away."

Global ocean warming could return stored carbon dioxide to the atmosphere faster than the 400 to 1,300 years previously thought, accelerating climate change, according to Australian scientists. "We now think the delay is more like 200 years, possibly even less," said Tas van Ommen of the Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart. The finding stems from analysis of bubbles of carbon dioxide trapped in Antarctic ice cores and records of palaeo-temperature.

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in the United States have improved understanding of how clouds affect the amount of sunlight, heat, reaching the Earth's surface. "Clouds are one of the least understood aspects of climate change. They can block the sun, but light can also bounce off one cloud into another cloud's shadow and increase the solar energy hitting earth," said PNNL atmospheric scientist Evgueni Kassianov. The team's results, based on data from the southern Great Plains in Oklahoma, took account of wavelength differences in the degree to which both clouds and aerosols affected direct and scattered sunlight received on the ground. Aerosols proved the bigger contributor to wavelength differences. "If you want to study how aerosols and clouds interact, you need to look in the region of the spectrum where aerosol effects are significant," said Kassianov. "If you want to fish, you go where the fish are biting."