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UN warns of worst mass extinctions for 65m years
David Adam, Guardian
UN warns of worst mass extinctions for 65m years
Humans have provoked the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65m years ago, according to a UN report that calls for unprecedented worldwide efforts to address the slide.
The report paints a grim picture of life on earth, with declining numbers of plants, animals, insects and birds across the globe, and warns that the current extinction rate is up to 1,000 times faster than in the past. Some 844 animals and plants are known to have disappeared in the last 500 years.
Released yesterday to mark the start of a UN environment programme meeting in Curitiba, Brazil, the report says: “In effect, we are currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the history of earth.” A rising human population of 6.5bn is wrecking the environment for thousands of other species, it adds, and undermining efforts agreed at a 2002 UN summit in Johannesburg to slow the rate of decline by 2010. The global demand for biological resources now exceeds the planet’s capacity to renew them by 20%.
The report, Global Biodiversity Outlook 2 from the secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, says: “The direct causes of biodiversity loss – habitat change, over-exploitation, the introduction of invasive alien species, nutrient loading and climate change – show no sign of abating.” It is bleaker than a first UN review of the diversity of life, issued in 2001, and says the 2010 goal can only be attained with “unprecedented additional efforts”.
(21 March 2006)
Many other related stories.
Study says U.S. companies lag on global warming
Claudia H. Deutsch, NY Timies
European and Asian companies are paying more attention to global warming than their American counterparts. And chemical companies are more focused on the issue than oil companies.
Those are two conclusions from “Corporate Governance and Climate Change: Making the Connection,” a report that Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmentalists, expects will influence investment decisions.
The report, released yesterday, scored 100 global corporations — 74 of them based in the United States — on their strategies for curbing greenhouse gases. It covered 10 industries — oil and gas, chemicals, metals, electric power, automotive, forest products, coal, food, industrial equipment and airlines — whose activities were most likely to emit greenhouse gases. It evaluated companies on their board oversight, management performance, public disclosure, greenhouse gas emissions, accounting and strategic planning.
(22 March 2006)
Related:
Chevron, PG&E cited for positive steps to combat global warming (SF Chronicle)
Treehugger
Others
Seattle cools down global warming
Carl Pope and Michael McGinn (guest columnists)
People outside Seattle probably have an image of software moguls, coffee, grunge and fish flipping through Pike Place Market. At the root of those easy stereotypes is the fact that Seattle is a city of innovation. It’s hard to deny that, off in this rain-shrouded corner of the country, Seattle comes up with some pretty cool ideas.
Seattle has now broken into the national consciousness with the boldest idea of all. While national leaders fiddle their thumbs on global warming, Seattle and Mayor Greg Nickels have laid down a challenge: American cities will lead the way on solving global warming by committing to a smart, clean energy future.
Nickels’ challenge set off an unprecedented response: 213 mayors from 38 states representing 43 million Americans already have followed Seattle’s lead by signing the “U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement.” They pledge to reduce global warming carbon dioxide pollution in their cities to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012 (seattle.gov/mayor/climate/).
It is a promise cities can keep, but they have to work at it. This week former Vice President Al Gore will join Nickels in releasing the recommendations of his Green Ribbon Commission where business, environmental and governmental leaders were asked to develop pragmatic and effective solutions.
(22 March 2006)
New USGS report: Scientific challenges for managing water in the western U.S
Environmental Science and Technology
As demand increases for existing water supplies in the western U.S., science becomes the crucial factor for resource choices.
The role of science in securing adequate water supplies for the arid West has shifted, finds a new report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). In the past, scientists labored to locate untapped water sources, but today’s challenge is ensuring sufficient water availability—not only for human use, but for ecosystem survival as well.
Factors such as population expansion, increased severity of droughts, climate change, legal battles over water rights, the depletion of aquifers, and endangered species protection complicate water management, USGS points out. While science can help to define the consequences and trade-offs of our choices, the reports states, “In reality, water supply and ecosystem needs may be mutually exclusive in some places.”
To better protect ecosystems and water supplies, USGS singled out specific research and monitoring needs. Scientists must determine sustainable aquifer renewal rates and more clearly define the long-term effects of artificial groundwater recharge. Efforts should also focus on further developing water-use strategies such as desalination and recycling. And future research must concentrate on sustaining individual endangered species and the ecosystems that support them.
(22 March 2006)
The report can be accessed at the USGS.
Farms ‘big threat’ to fresh water
BBC
Farming poses the biggest threat to fresh water supplies, according to a major United Nations report.
Agriculture was consuming more water as the world population increased and as people turned to a Western diet, one of the scientists on the report said.
Farms use two-thirds of fresh water taken from aquifers and other sources.
The UN concludes that ending subsidies on pesticides and fertilisers, and realistic pricing on water, would reduce demand and pollution.
A lack of adequate protective measures now will lead to greater problems in the future, warns the report, entitled Challenges to International Waters: Regional Assessments in a Global Perspective.
Our collective failure to value the goods and services provided by international waters is impoverishing us all
Klaus Toepfer, Unep
Co-ordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), it brings together evidence from about 1,500 researchers throughout the world.
It was released during the World Water Forum, held this year in Mexico.
Failure to protect fresh water reserves will lead to reductions in river flows, increased salinity of estuaries, and loss of freshwater plants and animals including some species used as human food, it says.
(21 March 2006)
In a thirsty world, Canada comes up empty
Chris Wood, The Tyee
How long can we pretend global water woes don’t affect us?
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[Editor’s note: Of 800 international journalists covering the Fourth World Water Forum underway in Mexico City, Chris Wood is the only Canadian. This is the first of several dispatches he will file for The Tyee.]
Water. H20. Agua. We’re famous for it in Canada. We love knowing that we have more of it than any other country on Earth. We write, paint and sing about it. We seek it out for recreation and spiritual solace, elevating our lakes and rivers to the status of cultural icons. What’s that old joke? A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe?
But apparently, our love affair with water is an exclusive thing: what’s ours is ours and the rest of an increasingly thirsty world is on its own. That, certainly, is the impression here in Mexico City, where much of the rest of the world has gathered on the site of a long-vanished lake for the Fourth World Water Forum.
The once-every-three-years event brings together private, public and civil-society participants from around the world to discuss solutions to humanity’s persistently troubled relationship with the liquid that gave us life and sustains every Earthly society. On the agenda are themes addressing everything from the one-sixth of the world’s population that still lacks safe drinking water, to how rich countries like Canada can better deal with the growing number of natural disasters involving water.
(21 March 2006)
Government ‘must meet water need’
BBC
Governments, not private firms, must take responsibility for getting water to their people, a new report argues.
“Private companies only invest where they can make a profit, not where there is the greatest need,” Peter Hardstaff of the World Development Movement says.
The organisation has launched the report, Pipe Dreams, on the eve of the United Nations’ World Water Day.
The Sustainable Development Network, on the other hand, argued last week that free markets improved water services.
The WDM is unconvinced by the conclusions of the Sustainable Development Network, an array of 30 non-governmental organisations.
“Time and again the private sector has failed to deliver the promised investment,” Mr Hardstaff, WDM’s director of policy, said.
(22 March 2006)
