Thalidomide effect mystery solved

Thalidomide affects limb and ear development in embryos

Scientists have discovered the primary mechanism by which thalidomide causes malformed limbs in developing embryos.

This side-effect was recognised after thousands of affected children were born to mothers who had been prescribed the drug for morning sickness.
Research in the journal Science reveals that thalidomide binds to and renders inactive the protein cereblon, which is very important in limb formation.
This finding could help the development of safer thalidomide-like drugs.
'Unknown mechanism'
Thalidomide can be effective in the treatment of certain cancers and leprosy, but the fact that it causes birth defects means that for women its use remains risky and controversial.
Medical researchers would therefore like to develop drugs that mimic the action of thalidomide, but do not affect limb development.
The research team, led by Takumi Ito from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, managed to isolate the negative effects of this "potentially useful" drug.
They set out to discover which target molecules thalidomide bound to in the body. They did this using tiny beads that extracted each individual molecule the drug bound to.
The scientists confirmed their conclusion by using genetic techniques to reduce the production of the cereblon protein in developing zebrafish and chick embryos.
The embryos with reduced cereblon had similar developmental defects to those that were treated with thalidomide.
"We [have shown] that cereblon... is a primary target of thalidomide teratogenicity" (or its ability to cause birth defects), the researchers wrote in their Science article.
Dr Ito told BBC News: "Although the mechanism for the teratogenic effect was made clear, the mechanism for its therapeutic effects remains unknown.
"[If we want to develop] a new drug devoid of teratogenic activity, it is important to understand [this] mechanism... this is what we are heading for."

Climate change human link evidence 'stronger'

Icebergs off Greenland: The review looked at changes in Arctic sea ice

A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change.

It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007.
The analysis, published in the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change Journal, has assessed 110 research papers on the subject.
It says the Earth is changing rapidly, probably because of greenhouse gases.
In 2007 the IPCC's report concluded that there was "unequivocal" evidence that the Earth was warming and it was likely that it was due to burning of fossil fuels.
Since then the evidence that human activities are responsible for a rise in temperatures has increased, according to this new assessment by Dr Peter Stott and colleagues at the UK Met Office.
The Met Office study comes at a time when some have questioned the entire basis of climate science following recent controversies over the handling of research findings by the IPCC and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
Dr Stott denies that the study has been published as part of a fight back by the climate research community.
"We started writing this paper a year ago. I think it's important to communicate to people what the science is showing and that's why I'm talking about this paper."

'Consistent picture'

The study, which looks at research published since the IPCC's report, has found that changes in Arctic sea ice, atmospheric moisture, saltiness of parts of the Atlantic Ocean and temperature changes in the Antarctic are consistent with human influence on our climate.
"What this study shows is that the evidence has strengthened for human influence on climate and we know that because we've looked at evidence across the climate system and what this shows very clearly is a consistent picture of a warming world," said Dr Stott.
The study brings together other research from a range of disciplines.
"We hadn't [until now] looked in detail at how the climate system was changing," says Dr Stott.
"[Our paper looks at] not just the temperatures but also the reducing Arctic sea ice and it includes changing rainfall patterns and it includes the fact that the atmosphere is getting more humid.
"And all these different aspects of the climate system are adding up to a picture of the effects of a human influence on our climate."
The Met Office study said that it was harder to find a firm link between climate change and individual extreme weather conditions - even though models predicted that extreme events were more likely.
According to the report: "Extremes pose a particular challenge, since rare events are by definition, poorly sampled in the historical record and many challenges remain for robustly attributing regional changes in extreme events such as droughts, floods and hurricanes."

Copenhagen 'fails forest people'

Deforestation is a major source of greenhouse gases

A multi-billion dollar deal tabled at the Copenhagen climate summit could lead to conflicts in forest-rich nations, a report has warned.

The study by the Rights and Resources Initiative said the funds could place "unprecedented pressure" on some areas.

Six nations offered $3.5bn as part of global plans to cut deforestation, which accounts for about 20% of all emissions from human activity.

Campaigners warn the scheme fails to consider the rights of forest people.

The money - tabled by Japan, Norway, Australia, France and the US and UK - was made available under the UN's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (Redd) scheme.

However, delegates in the Danish capital failed to reach agreement on the mechanisms needed to monitor and manage the framework.

Decision time

"One of the things that the world has learned over the years is that Redd is far more difficult than many people imagined," said Andy White, co-ordinator of RRI, a US-based think-tank, and one of the report's lead authors.

"The forested areas of the world - by and large - have very high levels of poverty, low levels of respect for local rights, and a very low level of control among local people to shape and control their destiny.

"So the rather simplistic notion that money from the rich North can control or limit deforestation was unrealistic."

Redd was developed as a global concept that would provide developing countries with a financial incentive to preserve forests.

The Copenhagen conference was expected to finalise an international Redd finance mechanism for the post-2012 global climate change framework.

The RRI's report, The End of the Hitherlands, said that there would be "unparalleled" attention and investment in forests over the coming year.

It asked: "But who will drive the agenda and who will make the decisions?"

The authors said studies showed that there was the potential for "enormous profits", but this would lead to increased competition for forest resources between governments and investors on one hand, and local communities on the other.

Dr White told BBC News that the UN-Redd scheme still had "tremendous potential".

"It requires, from our perspective, that the governments who tabled the $3.5bn quickly get together and decide on the standards and mechanisms that they will set up," he suggested.

"This would send the necessary signals to the private sector, as well as forest-rich nations, about what is expected from them in order to comply with the policy.

"Sorting out the institution arrangements in developing nations in order to manage the forest market is a huge undertaking."

But the report said that the "unprecedented exposure and pressure" on forest regions was being met by a rise in local groups setting up co-operatives and representative bodies.

The authors added that it gave "nations and the world at large a tremendous opportunity to right historic wrongs, advance rural development and save forests".

UN climate body admits 'mistake' on Himalayan glaciers

Neither satellites nor ground observations give a complete picture

The vice-chairman of the UN's climate science panel has admitted it made a mistake in asserting that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) included the date in its 2007 assessment of climate impacts.

A number of scientists have recently disputed the 2035 figure, and Jean-Pascal van Ypersele told BBC News that it was an error and would be reviewed.

But he said it did not change the broad picture of man-made climate change.

The issue, which BBC News first reported on 05 December, has reverberated around climate websites in recent days.

Some commentators maintain that taken together with the contents of e-mails stolen last year from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, it undermines the credibility of climate science.

Dr van Ypersele said this was not the case.

"I don't see how one mistake in a 3,000-page report can damage the credibility of the overall report," he said.

"Some people will attempt to use it to damage the credibility of the IPCC; but if we can uncover it, and explain it and change it, it should strengthen the IPCC's credibility, showing that we are ready to learn from our mistakes."

Grey area

The claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 appears to have originated in a 1999 interview with Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain, published in New Scientist magazine.

The figure then surfaced in a 2005 report by environmental group WWF - a report that is cited in the IPCC's 2007 assessment, known as AR4.

An alternative genesis lies in the misreading of a 1996 study that gave the date as 2350.

AR 4 asserted: "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world... the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."

Dr van Ypersele said the episode meant that the panel's reviewing procedures would have to be tightened.

Slow reaction?

The row erupted in India late last year in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate summit, with opposing factions in the government giving radically different narratives of what was happening to Himalayan ice.

IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri has been criticised by Jairam Ramesh

In December, it emerged that four leading glaciologists had prepared a letter for publication in the journal Science arguing that a complete melt by 2035 was physically impossible.

"You just can't accomplish it," Jeffrey Kargel from the University of Arizona told BBC News at the time.

"If you think about the thicknesses of the ice - 200-300m thicknesses, in some cases up to 400m thick - and if you're losing ice at the rate of a metre a year, or let's say double it to two metres a year, you're not going to get rid of 200m of ice in a quarter of a century."

The row continues in India, with Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh calling this week for the IPCC to explain "how it reached the 2035 figure, which created such a scare".

Meanwhile, in an interview with the news agency AFP, Georg Kaser from the University of Innsbruck in Austria - who led a different portion of the AR4 process - said he had warned that the 2035 figure was wrong in 2006, before AR4's publication.

"It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing," he told AFP in an interview.

He said that people working on the Asia chapter "did not react".

He suggested that some of the IPCC's working practices should be revised by the time work begins on its next landmark report, due in 2013.

But its overall conclusion that global warming is "unequivocal" remains beyond reproach, he said.

UK meeting aims for new global biodiversity deal

Conserving biodiversity benefits humanity, says the UN

Ingredients of a new deal on protecting global biodiversity are likely to be decided this week at a London meeting.

About 55 nations are sending delegates to the meeting, which will be chaired by UK and Brazilian ministers.

A key aim is to agree what sort of targets should be set at October's UN biodiversity summit for curbing the loss of species and ecosystems.

Governments are keen to avoid the kind of fundamental divisions that dogged last month's climate summit.

Writing on the BBC News website, UK Environment Secretary Hilary Benn argues that humanity's exploitation of the natural world may be approaching a "point of no return".

"The action we take in the next couple of decades will determine whether the stable environment on which human civilisation has depended since the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago, will continue," he writes.

Smart targets

In 2002, governments set a target of reducing significantly the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.

There is general agreement that the target will not be met; but at this year's summit of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), held in October in Japan, it is likely that governments will adopt a new set of targets.

According to UN documents prepared following consultations with governments, these could include:

• stopping the rate of biodiversity loss by 2020
• ending subsidies that harm biodiversity
• ending destructive fishing practices
• controlling the unintentional transfer of species from place to place
• placing at least 15% of land and sea area under protection

This week's meeting will see these options narrowed down, and its conclusions will form the basis of a draft agreement for the October CBD summit.

The UK hosts believe that discussing these ideas in advance among a wide group of nations will help avoid the wide divisions and acrimony evident during last month's climate summit in Copenhagen.

Delegates will also discuss what resources will be needed to ensure that developing countries can meet new targets.

Speaking at a scientific meeting last week, CBD executive secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf acknowledged that the 2010 target had been "a mistake", partly because many governments did not have the capacity to turn them into reality.

Mr Djoghlaf also pointed to a lack of awareness and knowledge about the natural world among the public and politicians, citing a study published last September showing that nearly 40% of British children between five and 10 did not know the difference between a bee and a wasp.

The UN holds that conserving biodiversity is important not just for itself, but for the benefits nature brings to humanity.

Investing in conservation, it argues, is of vital importance to human health and wealth, particularly in poor countries.

"Restoration of our ecosystems must be seen as a sensible and cost-effective investment in this planet's economic survival and growth," writes Mr Benn.

Acacia plant controls ants with chemical

Plants have systems for keeping their six-legged inhabitants in check

In Africa and in the tropics, armies of tiny creatures make the twisting stems of acacia plants their homes.

Aggressive, stinging ants feed on the sugary nectar the plant provides and live in nests protected by its thick bark.

This is the world of "ant guards".

The acacias might appear overrun by them, but the plants have the ants wrapped around their little stems.

These same plants that provide shelter and produce nourishing nectar to feed the insects also make chemicals that send them into a defensive frenzy, forcing them into retreat.

Nigel Raine, a scientist working at Royal Holloway, University of London in the UK has studied this plant-ant relationship.

Dr Raine and his colleagues from the universities of St Andrews, Edinburgh and Reading in the UK and Lund University in Sweden have been trying to work out some of the ways in which the insects and the acacias might have co-evolved.

He explains how the ants provide a useful service for the acacias.

"They guard the plants they live on," said Dr Raine. "If other animals try to come and feed on the rich, sugary nectar, they will attack them."

In Africa, one type of ant-guard, known as Crematogaster , will even attack large herbivores that attempt to eat the plant.

Ants will fiercely guard their acacia homes

"If a giraffe starts to eat the leaves of an acacia that is inhabited by ants, the ants will come out and swarm on to its face, biting and stinging," says Dr Raine.

"Eventually, the giraffe will get fed up and move off."

In the New World tropics, the Pseudomyrmex genus of ants fulfil a very similar guarding role.

For both species, the acacias provide little, reinforced structures that the ants hollow out and nest within, as well as sugar-rich nectar for them to eat.

"In return, both groups of ants protect their host plants from herbivores - both hungry insects and larger [animals]," explains Dr Raine.

Give and take

That is the plus side for the plants. But being inhabited by aggressive insects could make one important aspect of a plant's life difficult - flowering.

Flowers need to be pollinated so the plant can reproduce. So what stops the ants from attacking the helpful little pollinators or stealing all the tasty nectar that attracts them?

"Some plants do this structurally, with physical barriers to stop ants getting on to the flower, or sticky or slippery surfaces that the insects can't walk on," said Dr Raine.

"Acacias don't have these barriers. They have very open flowers, but still, the ants don't seem to go on to them. We wanted to know why."

One clever approach by the plant is a food "bribe". "Extrafloral nectaries" are small stores of nectar on stems, from which the inhabitants can feed without going on to the flowers.

Acacias also produce structures called beltian bodies on the leaf tips.

Ants protect the leaves from large herbivores

These, Dr Raine explains, are nutritious structures produced by the plant to feed its resident colony of ant-guards.

But when this isn't enough, it is a case of chemical warfare.

Flowers can produce a variety of chemicals. We can smell some of the volatile organic compounds they release when we sniff our favourite summer bloom.

But there is a more manipulative side to these scents.

Floral volatile compounds can act as signals - drawing in pollinators such as bees and hummingbirds in with their irresistible aromas.

To the ants, however, they are far from irresistible.

"The flowers seem to produce chemicals that are repellent to the ants," said Dr Raine. "They release these particularly during the time when they're producing lots of pollen, so the ants are kept off the flowers."

In recent studies, described in the journal Functional Ecology, Dr Raine and his colleagues found that the plants with the closest relationships with ants - those that provided homes for their miniature guard army - produced the chemicals that were most effective at keeping the ants at bay.

"And that was associated with the flower being open," he says. "So the chemicals are probably in the pollen."

A bribe: Plants provide "nectaries" on their stems

When the pollen has all been taken away - by being brushed on to the bodies of hungry pollinators and helpfully delivered to other plants - the flowers become less repellent.

"So at this point, the ants can come on to the flowers and can protect them from other insects that might eat them, so that the developing seeds aren't lost," he explains.

Dr Raines' team was able to test this using young flowers that had just opened and that contained lots of pollen.

The scientists wiped them on older flowers and on the acacia's stems.

This showed them that the effect was "transferrable" - the stems and older flowers that had been wiped became more repellent.

"It gives this really neat feedback system - the plant is protected when it needs to be protected, but not when it doesn't."

Selective deterrents

The repellent chemicals are specific to the ants. In fact, they attract and repel different groups of insects.

"[The chemicals] don't repel bees, even though they are quite closely related to ants. And in some cases, the chemicals actually seem to attract the bees," says Dr Raine.

The researchers think that some of the repellents that acacias produce are chemical "mimics" of signalling pheromones that the ants use to communicate.

"We put flowers into syringes and puffed the scent over the ant to see how they would respond, and they became quite agitated and aggressive" he explained.

"The ants use a pheromone to signal danger; if they're being attacked by a bird they will release that chemical that will quickly tell the other ants to retreat."

Dr Raine says this clever evolutionary system shows how the ants and their plants have evolved to protect, control and manipulate each other.

The ants may be quick to swarm, bite and sting, but the harmless-looking acacias have remained one step ahead.

Obama reaches climate deal with emerging powers

US President Barack Obama attends the morning plenery session of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) at the Bella Center in Copenhagen.

COPENHAGEN: US President Barack Obama forged a climate deal with emerging economic powers on Friday, breaking a deadlock at UN-led talks, but said the world still had ‘much further to go’ in the fight against global warming.

All sides conceded the agreement, which fell far short of United Nations ambitions for the Dec. 7-18 talks, was imperfect but said it was a starting point for a coordinated international effort to avert the catastrophic impacts of climate change.

‘This progress did not come easily and we know this progress alone is not enough ... We’ve come a long way but we have much further to go,’ Obama said after talks with China’s Premier Wen Jiabao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma which led to the breakthrough.

The agreement still had to win formal approval from a full meeting of all 193 nations at the talks. ‘If this makes it through the meeting in a couple of hours’ time then I see it as a modest success,’ said Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat. ‘We could have achieved more.’

Negotiators had struggled all day to find a compromise acceptable to all which could avert the threat of dangerous climate change, including floods, droughts, rising sea levels and species extinctions.

Tensions between China and the United States, the world’s two biggest emitters, had been particularly acute after Obama — in a message directed at the Chinese — said any deal to cut emissions would be ‘empty words on a page’ unless it was transparent and accountable.

Obama said that under Friday’s agreement, each country would set out ‘concrete commitments’ which would then be subject to ‘international consultation and analysis’.

A US official said it committed nations to carbon emissions cuts to curb global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

‘We’re going to have to build on the momentum we’ve established here in Copenhagen to ensure that international action to significantly reduce emissions is sustained and sufficient over time,’ Obama said.

TEXT ‘NOT PERFECT’

Speaking shortly after Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the deal was backed by all nations at the talks, and had succeeded in binding major carbon emitting countries to curbing their pollution.

Under the accord, he said all states including China would have to submit their written plans for curbs in carbon dioxide emissions by January 2010. And he said that all countries had signed up for a plan to provide developing nations with $100 billion a year in aid by 2020.

‘The text we have is not perfect.. If we had no deal, that would mean that two countries as important as India and China would be liberated from any type of contract....the United States, which is not in Kyoto would be free of any type of contract,’ he told reporters.

‘That’s why a contract is absolutely vital’
The European Union, which appeared to have been sidelined in Obama’s final negotiations, said the agreement ‘falls far below our expectation’.

A copy of the text, seen earlier by Reuters, included $100 billion in climate aid annually by 2020 for poor countries to combat climate change, and targets to limit warming and halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Brazil supported the accord, but its climate change ambassador Sergio Serra sounded a despondent note. ‘It’s very disappointing I would say, but it is not a failure...if we agree to meet again and deal with the issues that are still pending.’

Anti-poverty groups were more scathing. Tim Jones, climate officer for the World Development movement said the agreement was ‘a shameful and monumental failure that has condemned millions of people around the world to untold suffering’.

The European Union had pressed for a strong deal to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius and which included tough carbon curbs from other industrialised nations such as the United States.

Scientists say a 2 degrees limit is the minimum to avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change including several metres sea level rise, species extinctions and crop failures.

‘Given where we started and the expectations for this conference, anything less than a legally binding and agreed outcome falls far short of the mark,’ said John Ashe, chair the Kyoto talks under the United Nations.— Reuters

Copenhagen calling

Climate change demonstrators juggle an inflable globe as they gather outside The Parliament during the climate march in Copenhagen on December 12, 2009

A day before the historic summit that began on December 7, the Bella Center, a hi-tech mini city set up in the suburbs of Copenhagen to host the UN’s Conference on Climate Change 2009, was packed with journalists from all around the world.

It has been a long journey just getting here and expectations are running high. Two years ago, it was decided under the Bali Action Plan that global negotiations would be held for an ambitious international climate change treaty to be signed in December 2009 in Copenhagen. The second phase of the Kyoto Protocol (whose first commitment period comes to an end in 2012) is to be decided here as well as finance and transfer of technology to developing countries to help them to de-carbonise and adapt to climate change.

Science is telling us that we need at least 40 per cent reduction in global carbon emissions (at below 1990 levels) to limit global warming to within two degrees centigrade this century. If the planet warms up more than two degrees, then we will find ourselves living in a drastically different world than the one we know today. Melting of the polar sheets and sea level rise is already underway — as are more frequent and intense storms (three typhoons hit the Philippines in one season) and massive flooding (millions became homeless in India). Water scarcity will hit arid countries like Pakistan and our monsoon will be affected (it was already late this year).

Since Bali, negotiations leading up to the 15th Conference of Parties to the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 15) and the 5th Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (MOP 5) were on track. Negotiators from each country were working hard to come up with a refined text for Copenhagen (where they expected to ‘seal the deal’). Then, at the Bangkok climate change talks held in October this year, the European Union started to backtrack from its commitments. The EU was considered the ‘engine of climate negotiations’ and indeed they were responsible for the Kyoto Protocol (which the US did not ratify) and by 2020 had promised 20 per cent reduction in emissions.

It seems that the global economic recession has hit Europe hard and they have found it difficult to shoulder the responsibility to cap emissions. The fossil fuel industry has also been lobbying hard behind the scenes to sabotage a strong climate treaty. The EU is now playing a conservative role in the negotiations and is withdrawing their leadership. If the US doesn’t come up with good targets (for emissions reductions) in Copenhagen, then the EU will not go it alone.

The US has so far announced an absolute reduction target of 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020. This translates into a mere three per cent reduction below 1990 levels, which is far less than what the Europeans had signed under Kyoto. Worse, the US targets remain domestic targets and they are not under a legally binding agreement. This is also part of the US strategy — to dismantle the Kyoto Protocol and work towards a single political agreement, post Copenhagen, based on a pledge and review system (of national targets).

The Kyoto Protocol was not a perfect agreement but still it delivered the first legally binding cuts in the developed world and developing countries are anxious to keep it alive. China and the G-77 negotiating bloc (of which Pakistan is a member) in particular want to keep up the pressure on the developed world and it is a hard fight. Certainly, public and media pressure can change many dynamics as it did in Bali when the US was convinced to come on board with the Bali Action Plan which called for ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ for action on climate change.

In Bali, the developing countries agreed to take on measurable and reportable mitigation measures (not legally binding though). China later announced that it would cut energy intensity per unit of GDP by 20 per cent by 2020. Now it has doubled its target. Analysts say that this will require the country to take hard steps to restructure its industrial growth to reduce emissions. If this is the case then China would have done much more than the US! In Copenhagen, Pakistan will also back China against any legally binding obligations on developing countries which the developed world might try to enforce to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.

A global climate change campaign currently underway is calling for world leaders to take personal responsibility for a strong climate change deal in Copenhagen. They want the politicians to ensure a ‘fair, ambitious and binding’ treaty. So far, sixty-five world leaders have said they will attend the Copenhagen climate conference and several more have responded positively to invitations. President Obama will now arrive on December 18th to ensure that they ‘seal the deal’. The Chinese government has also confirmed that it will send its Prime Minister to Copenhagen. President Obama is a supporter of ‘climate justice’ but his personal feelings have to be translated into concrete action by the US for a low carbon future to emerge. After all, we are only talking about the survival of the human race!

Coral climate crisis puts 250 million at risk: UN

Senior UN economist Pavan Sukhdev said millions of people in the Caribbean, Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia dependent on fishing risk being forced to move away from the coast due to the destruction of coral ecosystems.

COPENHAGEN: More than 250 million people risk losing their livelihoods because of dying tropical coral reefs in what a senior UN environmental economist said on Saturday was part of a double climate crisis facing the world.

‘We forget that there are two emissions problems. The one that everyone is aware of and is doing something about is climate change,’ said Pavan Sukhdev of the UN Environment Programme on the sidelines of the world’s largest climate talks.

‘The second emissions problem is the emergency around coral reefs,’ he said.

‘More than 250 million people are at risk seriously of their lifeblood going away because of the lack of fish on tropical coral reefs,’ he told reporters in Copenhagen.

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries are trying to seal the outlines of a broader climate pact that aims to sharply cut emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

The leaders of more than 100 countries arrive next week hoping to overcome deep differences on who should cut emissions, by how much and who should pay.

Warming seas are causing corals to bleach, scientists say.

Normally corals recover from bleaching episodes, but now reefs are dying, destroying fisheries, because oceans are absorbing growing amounts of CO2 and becoming increasingly acidic.

Sukhdev said millions of people in the Caribbean, Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia dependent on fishing risk being forced to move away from the coast — in addition to people uprooted from coastal areas by rising seas.

Former fishing families who have to move will need food, new livelihoods and housing, he said.

Sukhdev pointed to a report backed by Prince Charles’ Rainforest Project that said in October that financing of 15 to 25 billion euros between 2010-15 could lead to a 25 per cent reduction in annual deforestation.

The report said that if payments were made, based on a system that monitored results and helped build up the capacity of developing countries to fight deforestation, the loss of forests could be curbed by about three million hectares (7.5 million acres) a year.

That could lead to an annual total emissions reduction of about seven billion tonnes of carbon-dioxide-equivalent, a sizeable slice of mankind’s yearly greenhouse gas emissions.

The UN climate panel says deforestation is responsible for about a fifth of mankind’s
greenhouse gas emissions, though some recent studies say the figure is closer to around 12 per cent.

Sukhdev said replanting forests in developing countries was a quick and cheap way to help soak up some of mankind’s CO2 emissions. Trees soak up CO2 as they grow and are a major natural carbon ‘sink’ along with oceans.

He said the suggested financing of 15-25 billion euros could lock away or prevent CO2 emissions at a cost of as little as a few euros a tonne of carbon dioxide. A tiny sum, he said, compared with the trillions spent on economic rescue packages.

Saudi, Canada worst ranked in Climate Protection Index

‘Once again, no country in the world embarked on the path of avoiding dangerous climate change’: pressure groups.

BERLIN: Saudi Arabia and Canada did the least this year to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming, two European pressure groups said in a report Monday.

In its fifth annual Climate Protection Index, the Climate Action Network and Germanwatch ranked the 57 countries responsible for 90 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions according to their anti-pollution efforts.

The index is based on three factors: the current level of CO2 emissions, whether they are rising or falling, and political and regulatory efforts for climate protection.

Brazil, Sweden and Britain turned in the best performance of the group, the report said, using data primarily gathered by the International Energy Agency.

But the climate watchdogs left the three top spots unfilled due to what they said was a universal failure to make the kind of fundamental changes necessary to avert a climate disaster.

‘Once again, no country in the world embarked on the path of avoiding dangerous climate change,’ the report said.

Brazil thus claimed fourth place, overtaking traditional front-runner Sweden, thanks in part to a sharp drop in emissions due to the global economic downturn. After Sweden and Britain came Germany, France and India.

China and the United States — the world’s top two emitters — scored poorly in the ranking at 52 and 53 although the authors of the study hailed ‘the beginning of a rethink in climate policy’ under US President Barack Obama.

The United States had ranked 58th last year.

Australia, Kazakhstan, Canada and Saudi Arabia brought up the rear of the current list due to what the report said were a pattern of high emissions and little change in climate policy.

Pakistan exposed to impact of glacial melting

From sea level rise to the melting of glaciers, from water scarcity to changes in the monsoon, Pakistan will be badly hit as temperatures rise further.

 COPENHAGEN: The melting of the glaciers will have an adverse impact on the entire South Asian region, said Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who came to a side event organised by Pakistan’s Ministry of Environment and IUCN at the Climate Summit here on Monday. He termed the Indian ministry’s recent reports of glaciers in the Himalayas being in a healthy state as incorrect, calling it ‘voodoo science’.

The idea behind the side event was to draw attention to ‘climate change and vulnerability challenges in Pakistan’ and Dr Arshad Khan, the executive director of the Global Change Impact Studies Centre in Pakistan, began with a list of ways in which Pakistan will be impacted by climate change.

From sea level rise to the melting of glaciers, from water scarcity to changes in the monsoon, Pakistan will be badly hit as temperatures rise further. Women and children will be the most affected and Dr Nizamuddin from the University of Gujrat launched a ‘Climate Change and Gender Report’ focussing on Pakistan, recently completed by his research team and funded by UNFPA.

Pakistan’s Minister for Environment Hameed Ullah Jan Afridi spoke about the negotiations and was joined by the head of the National Environmental Protection Agency in Afghanistan, Mustafa Zaher, who happens to be a nephew of the late King Zaher Shah. He urged the world community to act before it is too late, saying that ‘this is the only planet that we have to live on’!

Senior economist Dr Pervaiz Amir highlighted the other threats facing Pakistan at the moment. Aside from melting glaciers, Pakistan’s agriculture is in turmoil and he said people would have to move away from water intensive crops like rice, cotton and sugarcane. He pointed out that the Indus Delta region faces devastation with sea water intrusion up to 2.5 km upstream into the river; and lastly, rain patterns are changing dramatically. This winter, for instance, ‘we did not get the rains that farmers depend upon’.

‘We live in a multiple threat system and most of our development budget is going to fight extremism; we are unable to focus on the climate change front.’ He called for the setting up of an adaptation centre and for more efficient management of water. He said that adaptation funding was urgently needed in Pakistan. This money should be coming out from the negotiations under way at the conference. But according to Nilofer Hafeez, Deputy Secretary Climate Change, ‘the talks are more or less in a deadlock right now.

We are not moving forward. The Kyoto Protocol is the most crucial issue for developing countries. Unless the emission numbers (promised by the developed countries in Kyoto) are done there shouldn’t be further action’.