The FCCA will also identify policies and practices that contribute to the rapidly emerging market for forest-based carbon credits/offset. The project will help establish the foundation for local communities to maximize the benefits from forest carbon finance — often referred to as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+).

By implementing activities in two vastly different countries that nonetheless share key characteristics common in much of the developing world, FCCA will generate important lessons for the international community as REDD increasingly takes center stage in efforts surrounding climate change mitigation.

In Ghana, the FCCA will initially work in the High Forest Zone of the Western region and later expand to Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions. These areas are extremely important for biodiversity conservation and habitat connectivity, but suffer from high rates of poverty as well as deforestation and degradation. Though the development of community forestry enterprises in the country is at an early stage, several important steps have been taken at the national level to facilitate local involvement in forestry, better control harvesting and trade of forest products, and maximize benefits to communities — all of which are fundamental bases for the success of carbon forestry. FCCA will build on these positive foundations and partner with communities, government and the private sector to grow the number of certified and legally verified forestry operations, increase capacities in enterprise management and help prepare communities to more fully engage in ongoing national REDD processes and implementation in pilot REDD projects.

In Honduras, where community forestry is more advanced, the FCCA project will focus on the northeastern region of the country, known as La Mosquitia. This region includes the Rio Plátano Biosphere Reserve, a 500,000 hectare stretch of forest recognized as the most biodiverse area in Central America. Partnering with communities that Rainforest Alliance is already collaborating with, FCCA will scale-up ongoing management activities around timber and non-timber forest products, and continue to build markets for these products, while supporting efforts to develop an enabling environment for REDD investments and pilot projects that will yield tangible benefits for local communities. As in Ghana, the private sector will be key partners, not only providing preferred markets for forest products produced by community forest enterprises, but also by ensuring community involvement in the design of carbon forestry initiatives.

Key targets to be achieved during the project include:

• 370,800 acres (150,000 hectares) of forest area brought under a formal step-wise verification and certification processes in accordance with Forest Stewardship Council certification criteria
• REDD pilot projects on 185,000 acres (75,000 hectares)
• 1,000 forest-dependent families with increased incomes from membership or employment in forest enterprises engaged in production activities and REDD activities
• 30 forest enterprises established or strengthened, with the capacity to engage in sustainable forestry and REDD.
• 20 private sector companies participating in alliances with community groups as buyers, investors or joint-venture partners

As a timely initiative working in two equally important but highly differentiated contexts, this USAID-supported project will generate both local and global benefits, improving the ability of local groups to benefit from their forest resources while disseminating critical lessons learned on REDD to the international community.

Humanity now requires the resources it would take almost one and a half planets to sustainably produce, according to new figures released today by Global Footprint Network.

The urgent threats we are facing today – most notably climate change, but also biodiversity loss, shrinking forests, declining fisheries and freshwater stress – are symptoms of this alarming trend.

Every year, Global Footprint Network calculates the Ecological Footprint of more than 100 nations and humanity as a whole. The Ecological Footprint determines the amount of productive land and sea required to produce the resources a population consumes and absorb its wastes. Put simply, it calculates how much nature can provide, how much is being used, and who uses what.

Famine on a World Wide Scale

The data show that in 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, humanity’s Ecological Footprint grew almost 2 percent from the year before, and 22 percent from a decade before, due to both rising population and per capita consumption. At the same time, biocapacity – the amount of resources nature can produce – has remained constant, and may even have declined slightly.

An end to our way of life!

The new numbers also reveal a growing disparity between those countries with the largest Ecological Footprints per capita – as high as 10 global hectares (26 global acres) – and those with the smallest, of just over one hectare (half an acre), in most cases too small to provide for basic needs. The data reveal that if everyone lived like the average American, it would require five planets to produce the resources we consume and absorb our CO2 emissions. If everyone lived like the average European, we would require the capacity of 2.5 planets. For a full list of countries, go to http://www.footprintnetwork.org/images/uploads/EF_by_nation_2006.pdf.

Despite these sobering findings, there are key opportunities to change our trajectory. “These trends show it is in the self-interest of each government to act now to succeed in a resource-constrained world, no matter what happens on the world stage,” said Global Footprint Network President Mathis Wackernagel. “Even as world leaders have acknowledged that an agreement at Copenhagen is out of reach, governments we work with from Ecuador to the United Arab Emirates are seeing the importance of taking bold individual action.”

Famine closer than we think!

Global Footprint network, www.footprintnetwork.org ,  a nonprofit research organization, is working with government and opinion leaders on every continent to make ecological limits central to policy and decision-making.

Preview the new data: www.footprintnetwork.org/factsheet2009 .

Kenya: drought leaves dead and dying animals in northen Kenya

We can overcome Climate Change, if we pull together not apart!

If current population and consumption trends continue, Africa’s Ecological Footprint (a measure of its demand on nature) will exceed its biocapacity within the next twenty years, according to a publication to be released by Global Footprint Network on Monday, October 19. A number of countries, including Senegal, Kenya and Tanzania, are set to reach that threshold in less than five years.

The Africa Factbook 2009 reveals that while Africa’s population grew from 287 million to 902 million people between 1961 and 2005, the amount of biocapacity (resources that are available on a renewable basis) per person decreased by 67 percent during this same time span. Though this is reflective of a global trend, it is particularly alarming for Africa, a region where ecological deficits can translate most directly into resource conflicts and shortages of food, fuel and other basic necessities for survival.

Bleak future for Africa's Beautiful Wild Animals

The Factbook, which reports key indicators on human development and ecological performance for 24 countries, is a culmination of two years of research by Global Footprint Network, the Swiss Agency for Development and local experts, and is published in partnership with UNESCO, the Luxembourg Development Corporation and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ).

The Ecological Footprint (the amount of productive land and sea area required to produce the resources a person or population consumes and absorb the carbon dioxide emissions) of the average person in Africa is extremely low, in many cases too small to meet basic needs for food, shelter and sanitation, the Factbook states. If large segments of the population are to move out of poverty, they will require greater access to resources to provide for their basic well-being.

Yet Africa’s natural resource stock – which contains 12 percent of the world’s biocapacity – is under increasing pressure both from within the region, by expanding population and the impacts of climate change, and from abroad, as other nations deplete their own resources.

Bleak Future!

Bleak Future!

“Development that ignores the limits of our natural resources ultimately ends up imposing disproportionate costs on the most vulnerable,” said Mathis Wackernagel, Global Footprint Network president. If Africa’s countries are to make advances in human development that can endure, they will need to find approaches that work with, rather than against the Earth’s ecological budget constraints.

Download the Africa Factbook 2009

Global Footprint Network will host a Webinar, The Wealth of Africa: securing human well-being in an ecologically constrained world, Tuesday Nov. 10th at 14:15 GMT. The Webinar, moderated by Dr. Wackernagel, will feature renown panelists including representatives of the African Development Bank, UNIDO, OECD and African Progress Panel. Participation is free. Click here to register.

Exactly how--and how quickly--continents arose and grew is a matter of ongoing debate. Scientific wisdom long held that the earth’s inner workings alone drove continent formation. But recent findings have turned the spotlight toward a once heretical idea: that large asteroid impacts played a constructive role as well.

Obama Frustrated with Outcome of Copenhagen Climate Talks

Despite near instantaneous condemnation of his role in the culmination of the COP15 climate negotiations last week, president Obama voiced his frustration over the course those negotiations took and accord that resulted from them.

Speaking with Jim Lehrer on Wednesday, president Obama said that “people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen.”

Lehrer asked about comments Obama made that Copenhagen “was a success anyhow,” despite the tepid nature of the accord. President Obama responded:

Hangzhou Polution in China

What—what did occur was that at a point where there was about to be complete breakdown, and the prime minister of India was heading to the airport and the Chinese representatives were essentially skipping negotiations, and everybody’s screaming, what did happen was cooler heads prevailed.

So that—that was an important principle, that everybody’s got to do something in order to solve this problem. But I make no claims, and didn’t make any claims going in, that somehow that was going to be everything that we needed to do to solve climate change. And—and my main responsibility here is to convince the American people that it is smart economics and it is going to be the engine of our economic growth for us to be a leader in clean energy.

See no evil... Please don't melt my home!

And if we pass a bill in the Senate, reconcile it with the House, that says we are going to invest in wind energy and solar energy and we’re going to be the guys who are producing wind turbines, and we’re going to be the folks who are producing solar panels on rooftops, and we’re going to be the country that is retrofitting all its homes and businesses so that we are 30 percent more energy efficient than we are right now, that produces jobs that can’t be exported; it reduces our dependence on foreign oil; it is good economics; it will increase our exports—oh, and by the way, it also solves the climate problem. And that is, I think, an argument that I’m going to be making not just next year, but for several years to come.
What I said was essentially that rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in which nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground and there wasn’t too much backsliding from where we were.

It didn’t move us the way we need to. The science says that we’ve got to significantly reduce emissions over the next—over the next 40 years. There’s nothing in the Copenhagen agreement that ensures that that happens.

Atlas, it´s time for your bath

What—what did occur was that at a point where there was about to be complete breakdown, and the prime minister of India was heading to the airport and the Chinese representatives were essentially skipping negotiations, and everybody’s screaming, what did happen was cooler heads prevailed.
And we were able to at least agree on nonlegally binding targets for all countries—not just the United States, not just Europe, but also for China and India, which, projecting forward, are going to be the world’s largest emitters.

So that—that was an important principle, that everybody’s got to do something in order to solve this problem. But I make no claims, and didn’t make any claims going in, that somehow that was going to be everything that we needed to do to solve climate change. And—and my main responsibility here is to convince the American people that it is smart economics and it is going to be the engine of our economic growth for us to be a leader in clean energy.

And if we pass a bill in the Senate, reconcile it with the House, that says we are going to invest in wind energy and solar energy and we’re going to be the guys who are producing wind turbines, and we’re going to be the folks who are producing solar panels on rooftops, and we’re going to be the country that is retrofitting all its homes and businesses so that we are 30 percent more energy efficient than we are right now, that produces jobs that can’t be exported; it reduces our dependence on foreign oil; it is good economics; it will increase our exports—oh, and by the way, it also solves the climate problem. And that is, I think, an argument that I’m going to be making not just next year, but for several years to come

A full transcript of the president’s remarks is available from PBS

Copenhagen, Denmark, December 21, 2009 – Island States gained ground at the climate talks in Copenhagen for their fast-action campaign to reduce non-CO2 forcers, including hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and black carbon, which are responsible for 50% of climate forcing. The fast-action strategies were among key issues still being negotiated before the heads of government arrived, and that were carried forward to next year’s negotiations.

“While the accord negotiated in the closing hours by a small number of heads of government, including China, India, and the US, is a disappointment to many-in process, form, and content-others will see the full engagement by heads of government as a milestone in climate policy,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development. “The true value of the accord depends on the follow-up.”

A key aspect of follow up, according to Zaelke, is the “fast, forgotten 50% of warming caused by non-CO2 gases and aerosols. Not only do non-CO2 pollutants make up half of warming, they are the half that can be solved quickly. Cuts in CO2 are essential but won’t result in cooling benefits for up to 1,000 years. The islands have recognized the urgent need for fast, near-term solutions, in addition to CO2 reductions.”

A new paper by Nobel Laureate Mario Molina, Zaelke, and others published on the opening day of the Copenhagen conference explains the importance of the non-CO2 approach for reducing risk of passing temperature tipping points for abrupt and irreversible climate changes. The paper appears in the Special Feature of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on climate tipping points edited by Professor John Schellnhuber. Molina, Zaelke, and other co-authors, including black carbon expert Professor V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution at the University of California, San Diego, calculate that fast action on the non-CO2 50% could offset as much as 40 years worth of CO2 emissions, and delay the time when dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system would otherwise be reached.

Molina and colleagues point to further support for the non-CO2 agenda in the 2009 G8 Leaders Declaration, which commits to fast-action to reduce black carbon and hydrofluorocarbons; the 2009 North American Leaders Declaration, which commits to reducing HFCs under the Montreal Protocol; the 2009 Tromsø Declaration by the Arctic Council which highlights the negative effects of black carbon, methane, and tropospheric ozone on Arctic snow and ice; and in two editorials published in 2009 by Nature, which emphasize the importance of looking beyond CO2 and endorse fast, near-term mitigation opportunities to avoid abrupt climate change, including strategies to reduce HFCs and black carbon and other short-lived climate forcers..

Lead by the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), island States are promoting two related fast-action strategies under the UN climate convention.  The first is to launch a work program on fast-action mitigation immediately. Emissions of black carbon, methane, and tropospheric ozone – all short-lived climate forcers – would be targeted under the work program to yield significant near-term benefits. The importance of addressing black carbon for a number of reasons including its significant contributions to climate change, ice melt, and respiratory diseases, is gaining steady support: last week, Nancy Sutley, head of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality, announced a US $5 million fund to begin reducing black carbon emissions in the Arctic.

The work program also promotes using carbon-negative technologies, such as biosequestration through biochar, in order to bring CO2 levels back down to 350 ppm and to avoid the consequences of passing tipping points for abrupt climate change.

“Failure to mitigate emissions is pushing us closer to climate tipping points like the melting of large ice shelves,” said Ambassador Masao Nakayama, Permanent Representative from FSM to the United Nations and member of the FSM delegation in Copenhagen. “Islands like Micronesia are already experiencing sea level rise, and it will continue unless we take serious and fast action on near-term solutions, including going carbon-negative.”

The second fast-action strategy proposed by the islands is to eliminate production and consumption of one of the six greenhouse gases-hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs-using the Montreal Protocol ozone treaty. The Montreal Protocol is widely regarded as the best environmental treaty, having already phased out 96 other chemicals similar to HFCs, which in addition to rescuing the ozone layer, also resulted in up to 222 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent in climate mitigation between 1990 and 2010.

Al Gore highlighted the successful Montreal Protocol in his speech to delegates in Copenhagen last Tuesday. Over its 22 years the ozone treaty has demonstrated how much can be accomplished through a multilateral agreement when all Parties, both developed and developing, are supported through timely assessments of science, technology and economics, a fair financial system that pays the full incremental cost for developing country Parties, and that has mandatory phase-outs for all Parties that lead to quick and cost-effective transitions to ozone- and climate-friendly substitutes, with a grace period for developing countries.

Phasing out production and consumption of HFCs under the Montreal Protocol would result in climate benefits of up to 170 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent by 2050. The Montreal Protocol’s potential to produce yet another significant win on climate was highlighted by recent articles in The Economist and Los Angeles Times. FSM, Mauritius, the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, along with other supporters of an HFC phase-down under the ozone treaty, are looking to next year’s Montreal Protocol meetings to reach agreement.

“The Parties are beginning to realize that these fast-action strategies are low-hanging fruit that can, and should, be picked now if we expect to save not only the islands, but the rest of the world from the catastrophic and likely irreversible consequences that are fast approaching,” said Romina Picolotti, former Minister of Environment of Argentina.

“For the first time in history the environment is at the top of the political agendas of world leaders,” added Picolotti. “Climate change has graduated in Copenhagen and is now playing in the big leagues jointly with national security and the economy. We can only hope that our political leaders are up to the challenge and behave responsibly with the fate of the Planet and all citizens of the world in their hands.”

Contact Info: Alex Viets, IGSD – +1-213-321-0911, aviets@igsd.org

Website : Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development

“From the Arctic sea ice to the Antarctic interior and the mountainous peaks of Peru, Alaska, and Tibet, ice is melting at an alarming rate. The accelerating loss of ice sheets, sea ice, and glaciers is one of the most powerful and striking indicators of a warming climate,” says Alexandra Giese, Staff Researcher of the Earth Policy Institute, in a recent release, “Ice Melting Faster Everywhere” “The most notable ice loss in recent years has been the shrinking of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.”

From the beginning of the satellite record in 1979 through 1996, ice area decreased at a steady rate of 3 percent per decade in response to rising temperature. In the following decade, ice area decreased by 11 percent, reaching a dramatic minimum in 2007. In September of that year, sea ice occupied only 3.6 million square kilometers, an area 27 percent smaller than the previous record low (in 2005) and 38 percent smaller than the 1979—2007 average. Summer sea ice coverage has increased slightly in the last two years, but it is still far below the long-term average.

The glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau make up the largest body of ice outside the poles and provide water to Asia’s major river systems, which supply water to over 2 billion people. This water is vital for drinking and for irrigating the wheat and rice crops in China and India, the largest in the world. In recent years, Himalayan glaciers have been retreating at rates ranging from 10 to 60 meters per year. As the glaciers disappear, the dry-season flows of river systems that depend on them may decrease by up to 70 percent, making them seasonal rivers. River systems at risk include the Yangtze, Yellow, Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra.

The Andes, home to 90 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers, are also experiencing rapid melt and a shrinking water supply: between the early 1970s and 2006, Peruvian and Bolivian glaciers lost about one third of their surface area. In Peru, glacier and snow melt provides 80 percent of the fresh water, used not only for drinking but also for hydroelectricity, which supplies more than 80 percent of the country’s power. In neighboring Bolivia, the La Paz governor is already anticipating severe water shortages and considering a program for migration out of the capital city. The 18,000-year-old Chacaltaya glacier, home of the country’s only ski resort, disappeared in 2009.

The glaciers of Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, long cultural and spiritual icons, decreased in area by 84 percent between 1912 and 2007 and continue to melt rapidly. In Alaska, 98 percent of glaciers are currently thinning or retreating. And accelerated melting puts Montana’s Glacier National Park on track to lose its namesakes by 2020.

These current ice loss trends are alarming, but perhaps more disconcerting is the fact that ice melt is occurring even faster than scientific models have predicted, emphasizing the need to cut emissions before the world sees ice sheet collapse, catastrophic inundation of low-lying coastal areas, and widespread water and food shortages. After all, in the words of Stockholm University professor Johan Rockström, “We don’t know how to refreeze the Greenland ice sheet.”

For full report please visit www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/indicators/C50/ice_melting_2009

Contact Info: Media & Permissions to Reprint Contact:
Reah Janise Kauffman
Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 12
E-mail: rjk (at) earthpolicy.org
Research Contact:
Janet Larsen
Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 14
E-mail: jlarsen (at) earthpolicy.org
Earth Policy Institute
1350 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 403
Washington, DC  20036
Web: www.earthpolicy.org

Website : Earth Policy Institute

WASHINGTON- A coalition of conservation and government accountability groups – the Center for Biological Diversity, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), and Council of Civic Associations – filed a formal 60-day notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Tuesday over the agency’s failure to respond to a scientific petition to designate critical habitat for the endangered Florida panther.

“The Florida panther is on its way to extinction as its habitat becomes suburbia,” said petition author Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Robinson added: “Critical habitat designation will protect the special places that Florida panthers call home and let endangered panthers expand their breeding range and raise more kittens – and if we’re lucky, make a future possible for this unique and beautiful animal. We hope that the government will acknowledge the strong science we submitted and designate critical habitat soon.”

The Center for Biological Diversity, PEER, and Council of Civic Associations filed the petition on September 17, 2009, triggering a statutory requirement for an initial finding on the petition’s scientific merit within 90 days — a deadline that has passed without action.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service is presiding over the slow-motion extinction of the Florida panther,” said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “Soon, the only place Florida panthers will be seen is on personalized license plates.”

The critical habitat petition presents evidence that 4,860 square miles — roughly 3 million acres — in southern Florida must be spared from further development to save and begin to recover the Florida panther.

Male panthers also roam northward across the Caloosahatchee River to other areas in Florida and even as far as west-central Georgia, where one was shot last year. But in recent decades no females have been sighted outside of south Florida. Originally, Florida panthers were native to a broad swath of the southeastern United States.

Said Ann Hauck of the Council of Civic Associations: “The Florida panther, which has been on the endangered species list for 43 years without recovery, represents what is left of an imperiled ecosystem, a symbol of everything else that is going to disappear unless the federal government undertakes protective measures that work. The most critical threat is the continued erosion of habitat essential to its survival and recovery.”

Critical habitat is defined in the Endangered Species Act as the areas necessary for the recovery of an endangered species. Research shows that animals and plants with critical habitat designated for them are recovering twice as fast as those without it.

The Florida panther has been on the endangered species list since 1967, but its habitat has been egregiously underprotected. The Florida Panther Recovery Plan (2008) and the September 2009 critical habitat petition identify three areas needed for protection: a “primary zone” where panthers currently live and reproduce, a “secondary zone” of adjoining areas that panthers sometimes roam, and a “dispersal zone” consisting of a narrow travel corridor between developments where panthers traverse the Caloosahatchee River to reach more distant areas and potentially set up homes.

Florida panthers are a subspecies of the puma, or mountain lion, with subtle differences in skull shape. They are uniquely adapted to a hot, humid climate and habitats that differ from those in the West. Adult male Florida panthers weigh an average of 116 pounds, and females weigh 75 pounds.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a nonprofit conservation organization with more than 240,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

Contact Info: Michael Robinson, Center for Biological Diversity, (575) 534-0360
Paula Dinerstein, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, (202) 265-7337
Ann Hauck, Council of Civic Associations, (239) 495-7379

Website : Center for Biological Diversity

A new social networking app for environmentalists lets you post environmental concerns as you see them, find green businesses in your area, and in general save the world.. One picture at a time.

St. Louis, MO – If a faucet is dripping in a city park, and there’s only one environmentalist there to see it – does anybody listen? Though the power of a new iPhone and iPod Touch application called EcoSnoop,- they will now. EcoSnoop blends environmental activism and responsibility with social networking, and backs it up with the power of the iPhone’s easy access camera and GPS tagging capabilities to create a new tool that is both easy to use

The premise is simple, yet powerful. Say you are walking down the street one evening and you notice an office building that has left on the majority of their lights, even though the business is closed. Snap a quick photo with your iPhone, and input as much information about the case as you see it. Through GPS, the case will be tagged so that other EcoSnoop environmentalists in the area can see it on their local maps as well, providing comments and suggestions on how to resolve the case. All it takes now is one of these EcoSnoopers to walk into the building the next day armed with not only the necessary evidence, but the support of others in the community and a plan of action on how to resolve the situation. Once a resolution is in place, the location can be tagged as resolved and given a green thumbs up as an environmentally aware business.

While EcoSnoop has its roots in the iPhone, a back end website is available for viewing cases as well. Currently undergoing a make-over, EcoSnoop.com will carry over the content from the feet-on-the street teams and special monitoring tools will be made available to city and state governments, campuses, and businesses along with concerned citizens. Integration with Facebook and Twitter will allow cases to gather awareness even quicker within communities.

Two versions of EcoSnoop are currently available for the iPhone – a free, ad supported version, and a ad-free version for those environmentalists willing to drop $1.99 towards the cause. Plans for expansion to other platforms including Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Palm are currently in the works. Ecosnoop can be downloaded at http://appsto.re/proecosnoop

About EcoSnoop

EcoSnoop was launched in 2009 and is the first mobile & web social network for the environmentally conscious. The team at EcoSnoop is focused on sensible solutions for saving energy and using public awareness to reduce waste on a global level. According to a McKinsey report, energy efficiency is the most affordable form of energy. Eliminating waste also saves money and improves security, making communities less dependent on others resources. EcoSnoop is meant as a tool for a gentle form of awareness. www.ecosnoop.com

Contact Info: Aaron Watkins
Appency PR & Marketing for EcoSnoop
Phone: +916-692-5117

Website : EcoSnoop