Tiempo Climate Newswatch

As the latest sessions of the key working groups charged with moving forward the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) opened in Panama, Dessima Williams of Granada, representing small island states, appealed to the negotiators to "step forward and guarantee the continuity of the Kyoto Protocol." "Countries that are serious about addressing climate change should be using this meeting to raise, not lower, expectations for Durban," she said. "Last year, we learned that greenhouse gas emissions hit their highest level on record, and some parties are acting like we have all the time in the world to act when, in fact, any additional delay endangers the survival of entire nations."

In her opening address, Christiana Figueres, UNFCCC executive secretary, said that the forthcoming climate summit in Durban "needs to address both further commitments of developed countries under the Kyoto Protocol and the evolution of the mitigation framework under the Convention for developed and developing country Parties, in the context of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities." With time limited, she warned that the process of developing the next stage of the climate treaty may require immediate interim arrangements that safeguard environmental integrity and ensure continuity of the regime.

A new study has identified a series of indicators of coral reef collapse and catch thresholds that could prevent over-fishing, providing sustainability targets that can help reef fisheries support the resource they depend on. "This information is critical to policy makers and reef managers," said Aaron MacNeil from the Australian Institute of Marine Science. "If fish stocks can be maintained at a certain level, the chances of retaining a sustainable fishery and a healthy reef system are greatly improved."

"Our work shows that as fish biomass – the number and weight of fish living on a reef – declines due to fishing pressure, you cross a succession of thresholds, or tipping points, from which it is increasingly hard to get back," commented Nick Graham of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (ARC CoE) in Australia. "For example, you see patches of weeds replacing coral, you see more sea urchins devouring the coral, you see a general decline in the species richness on the reef, and you see less coral cover." The loss of hard corals, often taken as a major warning sign, is actually the last stage in the reef system's collapse. "By the time you see the loss of live coral cover, it may be already too late to save the reef," Graham explained.

An international team of scientists has developed a new technique for assessing how much carbon dioxide is absorbed and released by plants, which shows that more is passing through vegetation than previously thought. "What this means is that plants are working faster than we thought they did," said Colin Allison of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Melbourne, Australia. The results could mean that global primary productivity (GPP) is 25 per cent higher than current estimates suggest, leading to some revision of global carbon models.

"If we are right, and GPP needs to be revised upward by about 25 per cent, it means that our fundamental understanding of how land plants function on the global scale is still a bit fluid," said team leader Lisa Welp-Smith of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the United States. The finding does not mean that more carbon is being locked away by plants. "It means more carbon dioxide is passing through plants, not that it actually stays there very long," she said. The team used oxygen isotope markers in carbon dioxide and more than 30 years of data from a global network of air samples.