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Managing director of Ebono Institute and major sponsor of The Generator, Geoff Ebbs, is running against Kevin Rudd in the seat of Griffith at the next Federal election. By the expression on their faces in this candid shot it looks like a pretty dull campaign. Read on

  • The fight against eco-imperialism

     

     

    Since the 1970s the green movement has acquired ever-greater prominence in international development. In the last decade, global warming concerns have refocused the emphasis of poverty reduction strategies away from development and towards the environment. This is portrayed as a win-win situation – where the interests of the local people are perfectly aligned with the interests of environmental campaigners. Sustainable technologies like wind turbines and solar panels improve the lot of the recipients while keeping their carbon emissions to a minimum. However, this approach has been criticised as a form of eco-imperialism – because western carbon considerations remain a limiting factor on developing world progress.

     

    The Working Group on Climate Change and Development is a network of more than 20 NGOs including WWF, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. Founded in 2004, its “central message is that solving poverty and tackling climate change are intimately linked and equally vital, not either/ors”.

     

    The group’s most recent report lists the overarching challenges as (1) how to stop and reverse further climate change, (2) how to live with the degree of climate change that cannot be stopped and (3) how to design a new model for human progress and development that is climate-friendly. The makes fascinating reading – and is illuminating as to the ideological backdrop to development policy.

     

    These environmental groups, while spanning quite a large spectrum, tend to demonstrate an affinity with the pro-rural socialist left. The report describes climate change as not just a threat but also an “opportunity” to re-think the entire global system. It challenges western notions of development and growth and, most starkly, concludes that “mere reform within the current global economic system will be insufficient” to tackle poverty in a carbon constrained future. Indeed, members of these groups often seem to embrace rural village life as representing a pre-industrial idyll which should be preserved.

     

    Such romantic ideology therefore seeks to largely maintain the status quo – where the African poor are kept “traditional” and “indigenous”. It’s hard to disagree with Lord May, former president of the Royal Society in his observation that “much of the green movement isn’t a green movement at all, it’s political”.

     

    With poverty redefined in terms of the environment and infused with pro-rural socialism, large-scale projects to industrialise or modernise are not the priority – indeed, western-style development and modernisation are seen as part of the problem. Instead there is a self-limiting bottom-up approach which subsidises underdevelopment not as a transitionary phase but as an end goal.

     

    To effectively sideline the development strategy that every western country has undertaken in raising living standards is remarkable. Indeed, while India and China have lifted at least 125m people out of slum poverty since 1990, over the same period 46 countries have actually got poorer – the large majority of them African states.

     

    It would be too simplistic to prescribe the industrialisation and modernisation agenda pursued by India and China as a panacea for the problems of sub-Saharan Africa, and the Indian and Chinese policies have not been without adverse consequences. Nevertheless, it is a staggering achievement which demonstrates that poverty alleviation should be pursued through a developmental agenda.

     

    The truth is that African poverty is not a result of global warming. It is likely that the poor will be disproportionately affected by global changes in temperature – but this is not a reason to limit development. It is development which will allow countries to better cope with the consequences of a changing climate. For example, the Netherlands is better prepared to build dams to protect its coastline from rising sea levels than Bangladesh. Those that will be hardest hit by global changes to temperature will be those who are most exposed to the vagaries of the environment now – the rural poor.

     

    Environmental policies that seek to reinforce the rural status quo as a means of limiting carbon emissions may be of benefit to the developed world, but they are detrimental to the long-term ability of the poor to cope with climate change. The planned South African power plant at Limpopo exposes the collision between these different policy aims. With the country going to the World Bank for a £2.4bn loan, international governments have been forced to weigh up developmental advantage versus environmental damage.

     

    South Africa suffers major power shortages and insists that a new plant is essential to the country’s economic progress. Environmentalists are horrified that the plant will emit 25m tonnes of carbon per annum, and point out that much of the new electricity will be used by heavy industry. Despite a concerted lobbying campaign from environmental groups, the loan was approved on Thursday – albeit with abstentions from Britain, America and the Netherlands. A US treasury spokesman explained that the abstention was due to an “incompatibility with the World Bank’s commitment to be a leader in climate change mitigation and adaption”. Considering that the World Bank’s first affirmed purpose is to alleviate poverty, we can see how pervasive the reframing of poverty in terms of environment has become.

     

    It is up to the developed world to produce the technologies for cleaner energy and implement policies to significantly reduce carbon emissions. It is not acceptable to use global warming as a way of limiting growth in poor African countries when our own climate emissions continue to rise.

     

    Environmental movements certainly have a role to play in highlighting ecological degradation and its impact on local people, and in some cases the interests of protecting the environment will be perfectly aligned with the needs of the local community. However, it is unacceptable for poverty reduction in the developing world to become a staging post for ideological battles lost elsewhere. We should embrace whatever methods provide the best outcome in alleviating poverty – whether that be new roads or airports, power stations or renewables. To do otherwise is to be guilty of the worst kind of eco-imperialism – where the poor are held back for the benefit of the rich.

  • The rising tide of coastal erosion

     

    Jules Pretty decided that blistered feet would be worth enduring to observe at close quarters the social, as well as environmental, effects of coastal erosion. The professor of environment and society at Essex University walked 400 miles around the coastline of East Anglia and travelled another 100 miles by boat. “I started under the M25 at Thurrock in Essex and finished up at King’s Lyn in Norfolk,” he says over the noise from the espresso machine in an Italian café near the Royal Society, where he is heading for a meeting.

    The view of a bustling, traffic-clogged Regent Street beyond the front window could hardly be more different from the expansive sparseness of the enchanting yet crumbling landscape that he encountered over 45 days, sometimes with only birdlife for company. “I heard the curlew and redshank, the outpouring of skylarks, and the crump of waves on the beach,” he writes in the introduction to his latest book, The Luminous Coast.

    The title comes from the effect on his vision of prolonged exposure to the suffused sunlight coming off the sea. “When I closed my left eye for a fortnight afterwards,” he recalls, “all the colours in my right eye were bleached out, like an old film.” It seems an appropriate image in the circumstances. Apart from its serious messages about the effects of climate change, the book is also a trip back into personal memory for the 51-year-old, who was brought up in Southwold and Lowestoft.

    These days he lives 12 miles inland. A sensible precaution, perhaps, for one who has seen at close quarters how the North Sea is taking substantial bites out of the east coast. “I did a night walk near Cromer with my brother under a full moon that brought the tide in even higher than ever,” he recalls. “We had to keep scrambling up the cliffs to avoid it.” In the cold light of dawn, they observed tractor tracks that came abruptly to an end. What were once agricultural fields are now at the cliff’s edge.

    Pretty has little doubt that the map of East Anglia will have been substantially redrawn by the end of the century, by which time his current home may well be much closer to the sea. “Because so much of this coast is one of those special wild places of England – and the effects of climate change are already visible – the walk reaffirmed my view that we should be doing more to protect it,” he says. “As it is, the so-called shoreline management plan seems to have decided that we can’t afford to stop certain places disappearing. Covehithe, north of Southwold, is one, Happisburgh in north Norfolk another. Great chunks are being eaten away. Some houses near the coast are valued at no more than £1. These are the homes of people who have lived there for generations in some cases. They have an emotional attachment.

    “The other part of my research was cultural. Modernisation is making us forget the specialness not only of coastline habitats but also the people engaged in practices that are ‘of the place’. Walking not only connects you with the land; it also allows you to come in by the back door, as it were.”

    To see people as they really are, in other words, doing the sort of jobs that have become almost extinct. But Pretty couldn’t guarantee just stumbling across the oyster men of Mersea Island in north Essex, the wildfowlers licensed to shoot geese and ducks on Canvey Island or the Norfolk marshes; or, indeed, the reedcutters on the Norfolk Broads. He made an initial mistake of trying to do the walk in one go. In 10 days he covered 160 miles.

    Not surprisingly, his feet were killing him by the time he reached Lowestoft. “I had blisters and had to ring my brother to collect me from our old school,” he sighs. “It made me realise that this shouldn’t be a route march. I needed to layer the journey in order to see different places and meet different people at different times of year.” So the other 35 days of his walk were spread out through 2007-08. He would take lengthy taxi rides back to his car, or his wife or friends would collect him. Through careful networking, he managed to meet the wildfowlers and reedcutters. And oyster men? “They let me go out with them,” he beams. “I also went on the Aldeburgh lifeboat. Those guys risk everything with a grace and aplomb that is instructive to all of us. And there’s a deep pride among the local community in what they do.”

    One of the hopeful observations to come out of his journey was the strong sense of community that he encountered – “despite the trappings of modern life,” as he puts it. “They still congregate in these little villages and towns. They go to the WI or the local fair or whatever, and they care about where they live.

    The question posed by the book is whether the rest of us care enough about them to save these communities from being washed away by ever-rising tides.

    The Luminous Coast will be published later this year by Full Circle

  • Going carbon neutral : Caliifornia pours a foundation for cities to build on

     

    Let’s look at California as an example. The state is leading the nation down the green path overall, adopting statewide policies that encourage residents to reduce their carbon footprints and change their wasteful ways.

    It is implementing the first-ever law that uses regulatory and market mechanisms to reduce green house gas (GHG) emissions. AB 32, or the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, is expected to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050. But that’s only the start.

    Another law, AB 375, sets GHG targets for different regions and connects land use with AB 32 goals by offering a roadmap for halting urban sprawl. Signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2008, it encourages cities to adopt a general plan with a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) that requires new development to be near transit or clustered with existing development. Cities are not required to adopt the SCS, but only those that do will be eligible for a share of the state’s $6 billion annual transportation budget. It also exempts qualifying smart-growth projects from the state’s onerous environmental review process.

    Faced with California’s GHG mandate, many local governments have already implemented green building standards for public and commercial projects, as well as programs designed to conserve resources and reduce waste and GHG emissions.

    Santa Monica, Pasadena and Los Angeles, for example, have adopted “green” building ordinances that require new and renovated public and commercial buildings to meet criteria for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver rating.

    Attorney Elizabeth Watson, a partner at the Los Angeles law firm Greenberg Luster, which specializes in land use, notes that cities started by imposing LEED standard on themselves before requiring them in the private sector. She predicts that local governments will eventually require existing buildings to be upgraded to sustainable standards, too.

    Los Angeles has already begun sustainable retrofits on its own buildings, Watson notes. Once the city determines a sustainable upgrade is reasonable to expect, it is likely to make sellers upgrade buildings to LEED standards before changing hands.

    This concept got a shot in the arm last year with California requiring building owners to disclosure a building’s energy rating to prospective buyers and renters. While this policy is intended as a “buyer beware” statue, the state is using this information to create a database of building energy use.

    The idea is that if building owners are forced to disclose this information periodically or when a property is sold or leased, they will upgrade the building’s energy systems to improve marketability, says Toni Liou, a principal at Los Angeles-based Partner Energy, an energy consulting firm that works with building owners and users to improve a building’s energy rating.

    Updates to California’s new Title 24 building energy efficiency standards, which came online Jan.1, also increased building energy performance standards, as well as water conservation and waste reduction requirements for all types of projects. For instance, 75% of water heated for swimming pools must be from solar, native plants must be used for landscaping, and 65% of waste must be recycled.

    The state also was first to offer PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy), a municipal solar finance program that enables home and building owners to install solar energy without any upfront costs and repay the loan over 20 years with savings from electric bills. It launched the Million Solar Roofs Initiative, which provides $2.9 billion in incentives for home and building owners who install solar electric systems. It also increased the amount of excess electricity utilities must buy back from owners of rooftop solar systems. Its Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) calls for 20 percent of California’s energy to come from renewable energy sources by 2010.

    Cities Lead the Way

     

    While the states are laying the foundation for sustainability, it is forward-thinking cities that are the leading the way toward true zero-emissions development, in California and elsewhere.

    Cities have the flexibility to lead because they have the greatest control over sustainability processes, explains Claire Bonham-Carter, a principal and director of Sustainable Development, Design and Planning in the San Francisco office of AECOM who is developing Climate Action Plans (CAPs) for several California cities.

    San Francisco, Berkeley, Chicago, Seattle, Portland and Boulder have all developed Climate Action Plans that outline strategies to bring down greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for climate change.

    So far, Austin, Texas, is the only U.S. city that has formally committed to going carbon neutral, but a number of projects attempting to reach the same goal are under way or proposed. The economic downturn has created challenges for many, delaying some of their grandest plans, but projects are still in the works.

    For example, Quay Valley is a proposed $25-billion, 13,172-acre new city of 150,000 people in central California that would produce all of its power with renewable energy technologies. That would include 100 solar arrays, wind turbines and geothermal to help with efficiency, according to Dustin Watson, a LEED-certified architect and vice president at Baltimore-based Developers Design Group, master planner for the project.

    “We’re starting to see clients like this one in California pushing the envelope,” Watson says.

    In New Mexico, Mesa del Sol, a 12,900-acre sustainable master-planned community under way south of Albuquerque, will utilize regionally available renewable energy resources to eventually power 37,000 residential units and 18 million square feet of commercial space.

    In fact, developers plan to make alternative energy technology the community’s primary economic driver and has already attracted two world-class solar energy companies. New Mexico is a national leader in alternative energy research, one of the highest concentrations of Ph.D.-level scientists in the nation. Both Sandia National Laboratory, just minutes from Mesa del Sol, as well as Los Alamos National Laboratory are focused on sustainable energy research.

    The federal government is also moving forward. The largest net-zero commercial building in the nation is under way in Golden, Colo. The $64-million, 218,000-square-foot building home for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a unit of the U.S. Department of Energy, will consume so little energy that it won’t need to draw a single electron from the grid.

    According to project manager Eric Telesmanich, this high-performance, LEED platinum building will attain net-zero status through conservation and alternative energy production. The goal is to limit energy use to no more than 32,000 BTUs per square foot a year, so that the one-megawatt solar array on the NREL campus meets all the building’s energy requirements. The typical commercial building in Colorado requires 65,000 BTUs per square foot annually.

    Getting to Net Zero

     

    Getting to net zero energy requires a closed-loop system, where everything onsite is used to produce energy, which is the way energy production is going in future, notes Dustin Watson.

    “What it boils down to is the most cost-effective way to get there,” he says, pointing out that the process begins with the free stuff, like taking advantage of natural breezes and daylighting, then applies conservation to decrease demand, and lastly introduces technologies for onsite energy production.

    Ideally, each community someday will operate on its own micro-grid system that derives energy from different sources, so that when one system has downtime the others pick up the slack, he explains. “It would be great if everyone’s house produced its own energy, and whatever isn’t used goes on a local grid for use by other buildings.

    “There’s lots of possibilities out there for the future. It’s an exciting time to be in this business,” he adds. “Things are happening so fast, it’s a full job just keeping up.”

  • Arctic winter ice recovers slightly despite record year low. scientists say.

     

    The twice yearly figures published by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre of the winter high and summer low for the Arctic sea ice is seen as a powerful indicator of global warming.

    Last night the US organisation released the data for the winter of 2009-10 showing the maximum extent reached on 31 March was 5.89m square miles (15.25m sq km). This was 250,000 square miles (650,000 sq km) below the 1979 to 2000 average for March when measurements are taken for winter sea ice. The rate of decline for March over the 1978 to 2010 period is 2.6% per decade, according to NSIDC data. Arctic sea ice reflects sunlight, keeping the polar regions cool and moderating global climate.

    NSIDC said there had been some recovery in the amount of ice that was two years old or more, from last year’s previous record low.

    However, the spread of the ice, though higher than in some recent very bad years, was still low compared to past decades. “I think it’s the sixth or seventh lowest maximum out of the previous 32 years,” said Walt Meier, a research scientist at NSIDC.

    Looking ahead to the other key annual figure – the lowest extent of sea ice at the end of the summer melting season – Meier said this year was also expected to be historically low, depending on temperatures and winds which blow the ice around, and sometimes out of the Arctic Sea into the warmer Atlantic and Pacific currents.

    “I would say [it’s going to be] low, perhaps one of the lowest, but not approaching 2007,” said Meier, referring to the record lows that year when the Arctic lost an area of ice the size of Alaska in one year. “Given the amount of thin ice we know we’re going to be low, it’s just a matter of how low.”

    Last month, Japanese scientists reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that winds rather than climate change had been responsible for around one-third of the steep downward trend in sea ice extent in the region since 1979. The study did not question global warming is also melting ice in the Arctic, but it could raise doubts about high-profile claims that the region has passed a climate “tipping point” that could see ice loss sharply accelerate in coming years.

    Last week the Catlin Arctic Survey leader Ann Daniels wrote for the Guardian about the ice seen by the team of three explorers trekking across the Arctic in “incredibly strong north winds” to measure ocean acidification linked to greenhouse gases. “We’ve also been seeing vast areas of open water and very thin ice — it’s the first time any of us have experienced anything quite like this on such a large scale,” wrote Daniels. “The way the ice is behaving is simply the strangest we have ever seen.”

  • Britain brandishes olive branch to restart global climate change talks

     

    Britain’s unilateral move addresses the key issue that doomed Copenhagen – that the rich accept the legally binding commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions enshrined in Kyoto.

    The initiative could lead to two separate global treaties on climate change. It also offers a challenge to China, India and other major developing countries, who have been unwilling to commit legally to acting on climate change because the Kyoto agreement specifically exempts them.

    “We are asking that developing countries internationalise in a legally binding agreement the actions they take domestically,” said the government action plan, published today in advance of formal UN negotiations that reopen next week in Bonn.

    “We would not envisage developing countries being subject to any punitive compliance measures,” it added.

    The move is the strongest signal yet that rich countries’ attempts to sideline or even abandon the Kyoto treaty have failed and that the negotiations will continue within the 192-nation UN climate body and not in smaller groups of countries as the US and other nations had wanted.

    “We hope by doing this we can take away the myth that developed countries were trying to destroy Kyoto,” said Miliband.

    “We are determined to unblock the negotiations. We are willing to offer a second agreement under Kyoto, provided there is a separate legal treaty covering all other countries.”

    The move was immediately welcomed by Bharrat Jagdeo, president of Guyana. But he warned that developing countries would not accept an agreement if rich countries – who have emitted by far the most carbon pollution – did not commit to further deep cuts in emissions.

    Referring to the US, he said: “There are countries who stick out and clearly need to do more work. If the largest [developed] country emitter falls so far below the minimum, it makes it far harder for other countries, and you lose the element of justice and fairness.”

    The diplomatic moves came as Gordon Brown met billionaire financier George Soros; Obama’s economic adviser Larry Summers; economist Lord Nicholas Stern and other finance ministers to find ways to raise $30bn (£20bn) a year immediately and $100bn a year by 2020 to enable developing countries to adapt to climate change.

    The high-level advisory group on climate change financing, convened by UN general secretary Ban Ki-moon and chaired by Brown and Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi, will consider at least six ways of raising up to $1tn dollars for climate change adaptation. These include:

    • a small levy on all international aviation and shipping

    • enlarging existing carbon cap-and-trade markets

    • imposing a small “Robin Hood”-type tax on all financial transactions

    • using the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights.

    The group of 19 financial leaders have been asked by Ban to report back by November, when UN climate talks take place in Cancun, Mexico.

    Environment and development groups welcomed the British initiative. Andy Atkins, Friends of the Earth’s executive director, said: “It’s positive that the government has restated its commitment to the Kyoto protocol, which enshrines the responsibility of rich countries, as the biggest historical polluters, to slash their emissions first and fastest.”

    Joanne Green, head of policy at development agency Cafod, said: “This shows that Gordon Brown is listening to the concerns of developing countries. This is a first stride in rebuilding the trust desperately needed between developing and developed countries.”

    And Melanie Ward, Christian Aid’s UK political adviser, said: “The positive language needs to be matched by the necessary political choices.

    “These include using international finance to support clean development in poor countries, rather than more dirty coal power stations, and demanding much deeper cuts in EU emissions levels.”

  • Arctic thaw frees overlooked greenhouse gas: study

    Arctic thaw frees overlooked greenhouse gas: study

    Reuters April 5, 2010, 4:26 am

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    OSLO (Reuters) – Thawing permafrost can release nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, a contributor to climate change that has been largely overlooked in the Arctic, a study showed on Sunday.

    The report in the journal Nature Geoscience indicated that emissions of the gas surged under certain conditions from melting permafrost that underlies about 25 percent of land in the Northern Hemisphere.

    Emissions of the gas measured from thawing wetlands in Zackenberg in eastern Greenland leapt 20 times to levels found in tropical forests, which are among the main natural sources of the heat-trapping gas.

    “Measurements of nitrous oxide production permafrost samples from five additional wetland sites in the high Arctic indicate that the rates of nitrous oxide production observed in the Zackenberg soils may be in the low range,” the study said.

    The scientists, from Denmark and Norway, studied sites in Canada and Svalbard off northern Norway alongside their main focus on Zackenberg. The releases would be a small addition to known impacts of global warming.

    Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas from human activities, dominated by carbon dioxide ahead of methane.

    It is among the gases regulated by the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol for limiting global warming that could spur more sandstorms, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

    Nitrous oxide comes from human sources including agriculture, especially nitrogen-based fertilisers, and use of fossil fuels as well as natural sources in soil and water, such as microbes in wet tropical forests.

    The scientists said that past studies had reckoned that carbon dioxide and methane were released by a thaw of permafrost while nitrous oxide stayed locked up.

    “Thawing and drainage of the soils had little impact on nitrous oxide production,” Nature said in a statement of the study led by Bo Elberling of Copenhagen University.

    “However, re-saturation of the drained soils with meltwater from the frozen soils — as would happen following thawing — increased nitrous oxide production by over 20 times,” it said.

    “Nearly a third of the nitrous oxide produced in this process escaped into the atmosphere,” it added.

    (Editing by Philippa Fletcher)