Grinding poverty and tectonic volatility make a devastating combination.

In Port-au-Prince, which has some of the largest slums in the world, even the best constructed buildings have reportedly collapsed, suggesting that the sprawling, densely populated hillside slums would be devastated .

“With major buildings destroyed it is likely that less well-constructed homes will be even more seriously affected. The island has not yet recovered, let alone been able to protect itself properly,” said an Oxfam spokeswoman today. “That construction is a recipe for disaster when an earthquake strikes,” said Kate Hutton, a seismologist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “This is an area that is particularly vulnerable in terms of construction practice.”

The geological conditions in Haiti are similar to those at the San Andreas fault in California, where two tectonic plates are sliding past each other. The Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault has been accumulating stress for more than two centuries and this energy has now been released in a very large, magnitude seven earthquake.

In addition to being large, the quake was at a shallow depth – six miles (10km). “Closeness to the surface is a major factor contributing to the severity of ground shaking caused by an earthquake of any given magnitude,” said David Rothery, a planetary scientist at the Open University.

“Shaking tends to be greatest directly above the source. In this case the epicentre was only nine miles (15km) from the centre of the capital, Port-au-Prince. From the pictures I have seen, and from what I know of Haiti’s impoverished economy, I doubt if buildings there have been constructed with earthquake resistance in mind. They are at risk of further collapse caused by aftershocks, of which there have been several strong ones. The debris in the streets suggests that people would have been killed or injured by falling masonry if they tried to flee buildings while the ground was shaking, rather than sheltering under a table until motion had ceased.

“It is many decades since a comparably strong quake has hit Haiti, and I wonder if the population was adequately aware of what they could do to protect themselves,” he said.

The north Caribbean Islands are not frequently hit by large earthquakes. This one was caused by a sideways slip on a fault that marks part of the northern edge of the Caribbean plate grinding against the North American plate.

Further to the east the plate boundary changes direction and becomes a subduction zone that is the cause of the volcanoes of the Caribbean arc, including the erupting Soufriere Hills volcano on Montserrat. David Kerridge, head of earth hazards at the British Geological Survey, said that with a big earthquake in mountainous terrain there was a strong possibility of landslides, which could cause many casualties in more remote parts. “Due to disruptions in communications the extent of the disaster might not be clear for a few days.”

Deadly decades

1963 Hurricane Flora kills 8,000 Haitians

1986 Duvalier dictatorship falls, destabilising the country

1998 Hurricane Gordon causes mudslides that kill almost 1,000 residents

2004 Flooding from Hurricane Jeanne leads to 3,000 deaths

2004 Military coup drives out former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide

2008 Hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike strike, leaving 1,100 people dead or missing and causing $1bn worth of damage

2008 Food riots in Port-au-Prince

2008 School building collapses in Pétionville, killing nearly 100

British coastal cities threatened by rising sea ‘must transform themselves’

In a model that explores managed retreat from the coast in some areas, Hull’s historic city centre would be limited to an island reached by bridges and Venetian-style water taxis, while in Portsmouth large parts of Portsea island would be given back to the sea while new “hillside living” developments would be built on densely packed hillside terraces, akin to the towns of Italy’s Amalfi coast. “The scenarios we have created are extreme, but it is an extreme threat we are facing,” said Ruth Reed, Riba president. “Approximately 10 million people live in flood-risk areas in England and Wales, with 2.6m properties directly at risk of flooding.”

Other options include building out into rising waters using piers and platforms to create new habitable space – a strategy known as “attack”. In Hull this could involve floating disused oil rigs up the Humber and reusing them for offices, homes and university buildings, while in Portsmouth two-storey piers could be built with the lower tier used for traffic and the top tier used for pedestrian space.

Architect David West, one of the report’s author’s, admitted the proposals were “blue sky thinking” and uncosted, but said they had the potential to relieve pressure for housing on inland sites. “I think the concept of arriving at Hull as if you were arriving at Venice airport and taking a boat into the city is really exciting.”

The proposals were met with scepticism in Portsmouth. “A retreating coastline in this area would have a significant detrimental impact on the internationally designated harbours,” said Bret Davies, a coastal strategy manager at Portsmouth city council.

The Environment Agency’s coastal policy adviser, Nick Hardiman, warned that extending into the sea was likely to be too expensive and structures were not likely to be sustainable.In the next financial year the Environment Agency will spend £570m on building and maintaining flood defences.

Mike MacCracken, a global warming expert at the Climate Institute in Washington DC, who is organising the conference’s scientific programme, said: “Most of the talk about these geo-engineering techniques say they should be saved until we get to an emergency situation. Well the people of the Arctic might say they are in an emergency situation now.”

He added: “It is hard to see how mitigation [carbon cuts] can save the Arctic and losing the Arctic is a tremendous risk, not just for the region but for the rest of the world. So are there other ways to save it?”

Without significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, scientists say global average temperatures could rise by 4C within many of our lifetimes, which could devastate wildlife and threaten the water and food supplies of hundreds of millions of people.

Geo-engineering techniques, such as filling the sky with shiny dust to reflect sunlight, could curb such temperature rises without the need to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. The meeting aims to assess risks and benefits, establish ground rules for research and plan experiments that would be needed before a full scale geo-engineering attempt.

Calls for such research have increased as pessimism grows about the likely course of global warming.

In an influential report last year, the Royal Society, Britain’s premier scientific academy, concluded that geo-engineering methods that block out the sun “may provide a potentially useful short-term back-up to mitigation in case rapid reductions in global temperature are needed”. The society stressed that emissions reductions were the primary solution, but recommended international research and development of the “more promising” geo-engineering techniques.

Bob Watson, chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, told the Guardian in November he backed such research. “We should at least be looking at it. I would see what the theoretical models say, and ask ourselves the question: how can we do medium-sized experiments in the field,” Watson said. “I think it should be a real international effort, so it isn’t just the UK funding it.”

MacCracken said: “If there is going to be funding for this kind of research and you are someone in the UK government, then what kind of safeguards do you want to have in place that nothing can go wrong? Because if something does go wrong then you could be up before parliament or worse.”

He added: “We also have to be mindful about how we communicate these ideas to the public because some of them can sound a little like Doctor Strangelove.”

He said the March meeting was based on a landmark gathering of scientists involved in research with genetically modified (GM) organisms in 1975, which established voluntary guidelines to protect the public, and paved the way for breakthroughs such as the mass production of synthetic insulin in GM bacteria. The geo-engineering conference will take place at the same Asilomar centre, on the Monterey Peninsula.

Some scientists have criticised the upcoming conference because its funding is being arranged by a US group called the Climate Response Fund, which promotes geo-engineering research, and is run by Margaret Leinen, a marine biologist. Leinen’s son, Dan Whaley, runs a firm called Climos, a company set up to profit from geo-engineering by selling carbon credits generated by fertilising ocean plankton with iron. Leinen was formerly chief scientific officer with Climos, but told Science magazine she has taken all possible steps to avoid a conflict of interest, and no longer holds a position, shares or intellectual property in the firm.

MacCracken said one aim of the conference was to judge which techniques could work on a global scale, which could count against ocean iron fertilisation. “We don’t want to go out and test approaches that could not be scaled up enough to be useful. Would we risk doing anything in the ocean that would only have a small effect? Almost certainly not.”

The push towards geo-engineering research has not pleased everyone. A recent report (pdf) for the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation by the ETC group called geo-engineering an act of “geo-piracy” and warned that the “the world runs a serious risk of choosing solutions that turn out to be new global problems”.

There are also concerns about how to regulate geo-engineering and whether its techniques could be developed and unleashed by a single nation, or even a wealthy individual, without wide international approval.

The House of Commons science and technology committee will tomorrow open an inquiry into the regulation of geo-engineering, with David MacKay, chief scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, among those due to give evidence.

From artificial trees to giant space mirrors: Possible geo-engineering solutions

Stratospheric aerosols

Spray shiny sulphur compounds into the high atmosphere to reflect sunlight. Relatively cheap and easy to do, though the chemicals gradually fall back to earth. The most likely option, though possible side effects include changes to global rainfall.

Ocean fertilisation

Dump iron into the sea to boost plankton growth and soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Hard to do on a significant scale, and doubts about how deep the plankton would sink have raised doubts about how long the carbon would be secured.

Cloud whitening

Fleets of sailing ships strung across the world’s oceans could spray seawater into the sky to evaporate and leave behind shiny salt crystals to brighten clouds, which would then reflect sunlight back into space. Could be turned off at any time, but might interfere with wind and rain patterns.

Space mirrors

A giant orbiting sunshade in space to block the sun. More likely to be a collection of millions or even trillions of small mirrors rather than a giant orbiting parasol. Very expensive and impractical with current technology.

Artificial trees

Devices that use a chemical process to soak up carbon dioxide from the air. Technically possible but very expensive on a meaningful scale.

Biodiversity criucial to lives of billions, says UNEP

Biodiversity crucial to lives of billions, says UNEP

Ecologist

12th January, 2010

Ecosystems are buffering humanity against the worst impacts of global warming and also alleviating poverty, says United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

The continued loss of animal and plant species, and ecosystems such as forests, is causing poverty as well as environmental damage, said UNEP executive director Achim Steiner.

Speaking at the launch of the UN’s international year of biodiversity in Berlin this week, Steiner re-iterated the economic value of coral and forest ecosystems.

Value of nature

According to estimates from the groundbreaking Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study published last year, coral reefs generate up to $189,000 per hectare in costal defence and even more in fisheries and tourism revenues. While continued deforestation and forest degradation is costing $2-4 trillion a year.

‘The world’s biodiversity and ecosystems might seem abstract and remote to many people. But there is nothing abstract about their role in economies and in the lives of billions of people,’ said Steiner.

‘The range of benefits generated by these ecosystems and the biodiversity underpinning them are all too often invisible and mainly undervalued by those in charge of national economies and international development support,’ he added.

Coral and forests

Steiner said one fifth of coral reefs were already degraded or at risk of collapse due to over-fishing, pollution or coastal developments.

‘If you factor the true value of coral reefs into economic planning, it is likely that far more rational and sustainable choices would be made in terms of development, emissions and pollution control and resource management.

‘It is a similar story in respect to all of the planet’s nature-based assets, from forests and freshwaters to mountains and soils,’ he said, adding that 15 per cent of the annual global carbon dioxide emissions currently absorbed by forests.

New body

UNEP is also due to decide next month whether to set up a body similar to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for biodiversity. The proposed International Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) would use the latest science to help drive forward policy recommendations.

Steiner said he hoped the new body would ‘de-mystify terms such as biodiversity and ecosystems’, and start convincing countries to include the value of natural capital in their national accounts and economic decisions.

Friends of the Earth said previous UN moves on biodiversity had not been successful.

‘The 193 countries known as Parties of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity have so far failed to significantly reduce the rate at which biodiversity is being lost, despite their 2003 pledge to reduce these rates by 2010,’ said Friends of the Earth International’s coordinator of the Forest and Biodiversity Programme Isaac Rojas.

Useful links
Friends of the Earth
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity report (TEEB)

14 January, 2010

Has the cold weather caused the nation’s carbon emissions to go up?

C Dyer, by email

There’s a temptation to immediately assume that emissions must have gone up during the freezing conditions as shivering folk around the country reach for the heating controls, or switch on the kettle to fill a hot water bottle. In fact, the National Grid has been reporting record surges in demand. But what about the reduction in road traffic over the same period? Does our reduction in mobility cancel out the heating-related emissions?

Please do post your thoughts below and I’ll return later in the week to go through the responses.

European environmental miniisters meeting in Seville must raise their game

There will, however, be those wishing to continue to offer a range of targets in order leverage other nations up to a higher level of ambition: the “we will if you will” approach. But one thing that was clear in Copenhagen was that the major power blocks were not there to negotiate their targets. The US arrived with a number and was not about to change it, not without domestic legislation in place, which may take another 12 months to pass. The Chinese also, for the first time, arrived with a number but they too offered it on a non-negotiable basis. So who was the EU was trying to tempt into accepting higher targets?

The way forward agreed under the Copenhagen accord is a bottom-up approach: countries will voluntarily pledge targets. The EU knows that there is a yawning gulf between the targets rich countries have offered to date and what is needed to keep the world safe from more than 2C of global warming.

They and many others also now know that the 20% target is far from stretching, and that they could very comfortably go further. Latest analysis from Sandbag, the emissions trading campaigners, finds that with greenhouse gas emissions dropping because of the recession, the EU could now meet a unilateral target of a 30% reduction very easily

First, the EU is almost half way there already. Latest information from the European Environment Agency indicates that in 2008 our emissions levels were already at 10.7% below 1990 levels and that business-as-usual would take us close to 15%. Data for 2009 is very likely to show a further reduction.

Second, and most strikingly, recent studies have shown the drop in emissions during the recession has now lowered the costs of meeting a 30% target to at least €100bn below the projected costs for the 20% target.

Last, the presence in the EU of an emissions trading system and comprehensive policies to cut energy wastage and to boost the supply of lower carbon energy and fuels means the EU has the tools to meet a 30% cut effectively and efficiently.

Although the 20% target looked impressive when it was set in 2008, much has changed internationally since then. The 20% target is now lower in ambition than targets offered by the US and Japan when expressed in relation to most recent emissions data. China has also offered a target to decrease the carbon intensity of its economy and other major economies such as Brazil have also pledged unilateral, ambitious targets. The EU can no longer claim that 20% is a credible and world-leading target.

Other nations have made bold steps. President Lula of Brazil, a developing country with no current legal obligation to take action, has already enshrined in law its commitments to reduce emissions and deforestation [webcast of speech]. The newly elected President of Europe Hermann Van Rompuy, and the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, would do well to read his Copenhagen speech and reflect on what it means to lead.

Europe has the opportunity to inject new enthusiasm and hope into the deflated international climate talks by entering an ambitious 30% target into the Copenhagen accord. If the EU sticks with 20%, allowing billions of extra tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it would add insult to injury for the least developed and vulnerable countries already experiencing the negative impacts of a warming globe.

Now is not the time to sit back and wait, Europe must lead by example and demonstrate its commitment to making a low carbon economy a reality.

Bryony Worthington is the founder of Sandbag.org.uk. Sandbag has launched a new briefing and targeted political action calling on Europe to lead. Please sign Sandbag’s online letter to urge Hermann Van Rompuy, and the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to commit to 30% cuts in emissions.

Category: General news

Grinding poverty and tectonic volatility make a devastating combination.

Deadly decades