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  • Get ready for seven-foot sea level rise as climate change melts ice sheets

     

    The IPCC’s 2007 sea level calculations — widely recognized by the academic community as a critical flaw in the report — have caused confusion among many in the general public and the media and have created fodder for global warming skeptics. But there should be no confusion about the serious threat posed by rising sea levels, especially as evidence has mounted in the past two years of the accelerated pace of melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.

    Most climate scientists believe melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet will be one of the main drivers of sea level rise during this century.
    The message for the world’s leaders and decision makers is that sea level rise is real and is only going to get worse. Indeed, we make the case in our recent book, The Rising Sea, that governments and coastal managers should assume the inevitability of a seven-foot rise in sea level. This number is not a prediction. But we believe that seven feet is the most prudent, conservative long-term planning guideline for coastal cities and communities, especially for the siting of major infrastructure; a number of academic studies examining recent ice sheet dynamics have suggested that an increase of seven feet or more is not only possible, but likely. Certainly, no one should be expecting less than a three-foot rise in sea level this century.

    In the 20th century, sea level rise was primarily due to thermal expansion of ocean water. Contributions of melting mountain glaciers and the large ice sheets were minor components. But most climate scientists now believe that the main drivers of sea level rise in the 21st century will be the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (a potential of a 16-foot rise if the entire sheet melts) and the Greenland Ice Sheet (a potential rise of 20 feet if the entire ice cap melts). The nature of the melting is non-linear and is difficult to predict.

    Seeking to correct the IPCC’s failure to come up with a comprehensive forecast for sea level increase, a number of state panels and government committees have produced sea level rise predictions that include an examination of melting ice sheets. For example, sea level rise panels in Rhode Island and Miami-Dade County have concluded that a minimum of a three- to five-foot sea level rise should be anticipated by 2100. A California report assumes a possible 4.6-foot rise by 2100, while the Dutch assume a 2.5-foot rise by 2050 in the design of their tidal gates.

    Given the growing consensus about the major sea level rise on the way in the coming century or two, the continued development of many low-lying coastal areas — including much of the U.S. east coast — is foolhardy and irresponsible.

    Rising seas will be on the front lines of the battle against changing climate during the next century. Our great concern is that as the infrastructure of major cities in the industrialized world becomes threatened, there will be few resources left to address the dramatic impacts that will be facing the citizens of the developing world.

    The ramifications of a major sea level rise are massive. Agriculture will be disrupted, water supplies will be salinized, storms and flood waters will reach ever further inland, and millions of environmental refugees will be created — 15 million people live at or below three feet elevation in Bangladesh, for example. Governments, especially those in the developing world, will be disrupted, creating political instability.

    The most vulnerable of all coastal environments are deltas of major rivers, including the Mekong, Irrawaddy, Niger, Ganges-Brahmaputra, Nile, and Mississippi. Here, land subsidence will combine with global sea level rise to create very high rates of what is known as “local, relative sea level rise.” The rising seas will displace the vast majority of people in these delta regions. Adding insult to injury, in many parts of Asia the rice crop will be decimated by rising sea level — a three-foot sea level rise will eliminate half of the rice production in Vietnam — causing a food crisis coincident with the mass migration of people.

    The Mississippi Delta is unique because it lies within a country with the financial resources to fight land loss. Nevertheless, we believe multibillion-dollar engineering and restoration efforts designed to preserve communities on the Mississippi Delta are doomed to failure, given the magnitude of relative sea level rise expected. Former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt said in 2008 that it was an “ineluctable fact” that within the lifespan of some people alive today, “the vast majority of that land will be underwater.” He also faulted federal officials for not developing migration plans for area residents and for not having the “honesty and compassion” to tell Louisiana residents the “truth”: Someday, they will have to leave the delta. The city of New Orleans can probably be protected into the next century, but only at great expense and with little guarantee that future storms like hurricane Katrina will not inundate the city again.

    Pacific and Indian Ocean atoll nations are already being abandoned because of the direct and indirect effects of sea level rise, such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater. In the Marshall Islands, some crops are being grown in abandoned 55-gallon oil drums because the ground is now too salty for planting. New Zealand is accepting, on a gradual basis, all of the inhabitants of the Tuvalu atolls. Inhabitants of Carteret Atoll have all moved to Papua, New Guinea. The forward-looking government of the Maldives recently held a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the ultimate fate of their small island nation.

    The world’s major coastal cities will undoubtedly receive most of the attention as sea level rise threatens infrastructure. Miami tops the list of most endangered cities in the world, as measured by the value of property that would be threatened by a three-foot rise. This would flood all of Miami Beach and leave downtown Miami sitting as an island of water, disconnected from the rest of Florida. Other threatened U.S. cities include New York/Newark, New Orleans, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, Tampa-St Petersburg, and San Francisco. Osaka/Kobe, Tokyo, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Nagoya are among the most threatened major cities outside of North America.

    Preserving coastal cities will require huge public expenditures, leaving smaller coastal resort communities to fend for themselves. Manhattan, for example, is likely to beat out Nags Head, North Carolina for federal funds, a fact that recreational beach communities must recognize when planning a response to sea level rise.

    Twelve percent of the world’s open ocean shorelines are fronted by barrier islands, and a three-foot sea level rise will spell doom for development on most of them — save for those completely surrounded by massive seawalls.

    Impacts in the United States, with a 3,500-mile long barrier island shoreline extending from Montauk Point on Long Island to the Mexican border, will be huge. The only way to preserve the barrier islands themselves will be to abandon them so that they may respond naturally to rising sea level. Yet, most coastal states continue to allow massive, irresponsible development of the low-lying coast.

    Ironically, low-elevation Florida is probably the least prepared of all coastal states. Hundreds of miles of high rises line the state’s shoreline, and more are built every year. The state pours subsidies into coastal development through state-run insurance and funding for coastal protection. If a portion of those funds were spent adapting to sea level rise rather than ignoring it, Florida might be ready to meet the challenge of the next century. Let’s hope the state rises to the challenge.

    Despite the dire facts, the next century of rising sea level need not be an economic disaster. Thoughtful planning can lead to a measured retreat from vulnerable coastal lowlands. We recommend the following:

    Immediately prohibit the construction of high-rise buildings and major infrastructure in areas vulnerable to future sea level rise. Buildings placed in future hazardous zones should be small and movable — or disposable.

    Relocation of buildings and infrastructure should be a guiding philosophy. Instead of making major repairs on infrastructure such as bridges, water supply, and sewer and drainage systems, when major maintenance is needed, go the extra mile and place them out of reach of the sea. In our view, no new sewer and water lines should be introduced to zones that will be adversely affected by sea level rise in the next 50 years. Relocation of some beach buildings could be implemented after severe storms or with financial incentives.

    Stop government assistance for oceanfront rebuilding. The guarantee of recovery is perhaps the biggest obstacle to a sensible response to sea level rise. The goal in the past has always been to restore conditions to what they were before a storm or flood. In the United States, hurricanes have become urban renewal programs. The replacement houses become larger and larger and even more costly to replace again in the future. Those who invest in vulnerable coastal areas need to assume responsibility for that decision. If you stay, you pay.

    After years of reluctance, scientists and governments are now looking to adaptation measures as critical for confronting the consequences of climate change. And increasingly, plans are being developed to deal with rising seas, water shortages, spreading diseases, and other realities of a warming world.
    Get the Corps off the shore. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, more or less by default, is the government agency in charge of much of the planning and the funding for the nation’s response to sea level rise. It is an agency ill-suited to the job. Part of the problem is that the engineers’ “we can fix it” mentality is the wrong mindset for a sensible approach to responding to changing sea level.

    Local governments cannot be expected to take the lead. The problems created by sea level rise are international and national, not local, in scope. Local governments of coastal towns (understandably) follow the self-interests of coastal property owners and developers, so preservation of buildings and maintaining tax base is inevitably a very high priority. In addition, the resources needed to respond to sea level rise will be far beyond those available to local communities.

    Responding to long-term sea level rise will pose unprecedented challenges to the international community. Economic and humanitarian disasters can be avoided, but only through wise, forward-looking planning. Tough decisions will need to be made regarding the allocation of resources and response to natural disasters. Let us hope that our political leadership can provide the bold vision and strong leadership that will be required to implement a reasoned response.

  • Qatar to use biofuel? What about the country’s energy consumption?

     

    But the airline is doing an analysis to see if it might one day start burning biofuels. Perhaps the biofuels will be grown on the huge chunk of farmland the state controversially wants to buy in Kenya.

    Qataris have the highest carbon footprint on the planet. The country’s per-capita emissions from burning fossil fuels are way ahead of any other nation, and almost three times those of everybody’s poster bad boy, the US. This is all the more extraordinary since Qatar’s electricity is mostly generated from burning natural gas, which has half the emissions of coal.

    Those emissions have also risen almost fourfold since 1990. But, thanks to the vagaries of the Kyoto Protocol, the country is not penalised for this. Qatar is by some measures the second richest country in the world, but for the purposes of climate law, it is classified as a developing nation. And so it has no emissions targets.

    How come Qatar’s emissions are so high? The main reason is its soaring use of energy. By the end of next year Qatar will have six times the electricity-generating capacity it had as recently as 1995. One outlet for all this power is industry, based round its huge natural gas reserves. Just this week, the national gas company announced a deal with ExxonMobil for a new $6bn (£3.69bn) petrochemicals plant.

    A lot of Qatar’s gas is exported as liquefied natural gas – the country is the world’s largest producer of the stuff. It’s a fairly clean fuel at our end, but takes a lot of energy to liquefy in Qatar. So to that extent Qatar is taking a hit to allow Europe and North America to cut their emissions – handy for helping us meet the Kyoto Protocol, but not much good for the planet.

    The Qatari government recently used this argument to downplay its emissions. In its recent Human Development Report, it called them “relatively modest”.

    But that is not the real story. Those Qatari emissions are so extraordinarily high for another reason. Qataris just don’t seem to care.

    Sure, there is the biofuels initiative from the state airline. Sure, a year ago Qatar held a conference to discuss how to cut its emissions without damaging the economy.

    But if its rulers were serious about cutting emissions they might charge for their energy supplies. Yes, you read that right. Qatari households get their electricity free. So why would they cut down on how much they burn?

    Oh, and they get their water free as well. And in Qatar, even more than most places in the Middle East, water is liquid electricity. Almost every drop coming out of the taps is produced from desalinating seawater. This is extremely expensive in energy – and therefore expensive in carbon emissions.

    But because the water is free, Qataris waste it like, well, water. Despite being a desert state with virtually no rainfall, the country has among the highest per-capita water uses in the world. Use averages around 400 litres per head per day. According to Hassan Al-Mohannadi, a geographer at the University of Qatar, people in “big, often palatial houses” consume up to 35,000 litres per day.

    Even here, they have a way of blaming foreigners. According to Hassan Al-Mohannadi, one reason water use is so high is that “the large number of foreign domestic servants, who come from water-rich countries, are not educated in water conservation”.

    Water consumption continues to rise, so Qatar is building more desalination plants. If Qatar was serious about cutting its carbon footprint it would do something about water demand. At the least, it might charge for the stuff.

    Will Qatar’s emissions carry on up? Looks Likely. Electricity demand is currently rising by about 7% a year. That is not as fast as the national economy, which is growing by 11% annually – the fastest boom on the planet.

    But stopping this out-of-control carbon-emitting juggernaut will take more than an Airbus full of biofuels.

  • Climate scientists convene global geo-engineering summit

     

    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.

  • Arctic permafrost leaking methane at record levels, figures show

     

    The discovery follows a string of reports from the region in recent years that previously frozen boggy soils are melting and releasing methane in greater quantities. Such Arctic soils currently lock away billions of tonnes of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, leading some scientists to describe melting permafrost as a ticking time bomb that could overwhelm efforts to tackle climate change.

    They fear the warming caused by increased methane emissions will itself release yet more methane and lock the region into a destructive cycle that forces temperatures to rise faster than predicted.

    Paul Palmer, a scientist at Edinburgh University who worked on the new study, said: “High latitude wetlands are currently only a small source of methane but for these emissions to increase by a third in just five years is very significant. It shows that even a relatively small amount of warming can cause a large increase in the amount of methane emissions.”

    Global warming is occuring twice as fast in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth. Some regions have already warmed by 2.5C, and temperatures there are projected to increase by more than 10C by 2100 if carbon emissions continue to rise at current rates.

    Palmer said: “This study does not show the Arctic has passed a tipping point, but it should open people’s eyes. It shows there is a positive feedback and that higher temperatures bring higher emissions and faster warming.”

    The change in the Arctic is enough to explain a recent increase in global methane levels in the atmosphere, he said. Global levels have risen steadily since 2007, after a decade or so holding steady.

    The new study, published in the journal Science, shows that methane emissions from the Arctic increased by 31% from 2003-07. The increase represents about 1m extra tonnes of methane each year. Palmer cautioned that the five-year increase was too short to call a definitive trend.

    The findings are part of a wider study of methane emissions from global wetlands, such as paddy fields, marshes and bogs. To identify where methane was released, the researchers combined methane levels in the atmosphere with surface temperature changes. They did not measure methane emissions directly, but used satellite measurements of variations in groundwater depth, which alter the way bacteria break down organic matter to release or consume methane.

    They found that just over half of all methane emissions came from the tropics, with some 20m tonnes released from the Amazon river basin each year, and 26m tonnes from the Congo basin. Rice paddy fields across China and south and south-east Asia produced just under one-third of global methane, some 33m tonnes. Just 2% of global methane comes from Arctic latitudes, the study found, though the region showed the largest increases. The 31% rise in methane emissions there from 2003-07 was enough to help lift the global average increase to 7%.

    Palmer said: “Our study reinforces the idea that satellites can pinpoint changes in the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from a particular place on earth. This opens the door to quantifying greenhouse gas emissions made from a variety of natural and man-made sources.”

    Palmer said it was a “disgrace” that so few satellites were launched to monitor levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. He said it was unclear whether the team would be able to continue the methane monitoring in future. The pair of satellites used to analyse water, known as Grace, are already over their expected mission life time, while a European version launched last year, called Goce, is scheduled to fly for less than two years.

    The new study follows repeated warnings that even modest levels of global warming could trigger huge increases in methane release from permafrost. Phillipe Ciais, a researcher with the Laboratory for Climate Sciences and the Environment in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, told a scientific meeting in Copenhagen last March that billions of tonnes could be released by just a 2C average global rise.

     

    More on methane

    While carbon dioxide gets most of the attention in the global warming debate, methane is pound-for-pound a more potent greenhouse gas, capable of trapping some 20 times more heat than CO2. Although methane is present in much lower quantities in the atmosphere, its potency makes it responsible for about one-fifth of man-made warming.

    The gas is found in natural gas deposits and is generated naturally by bacteria that break down organic matter, such as in the guts of farm animal. About two-thirds of global methane comes from man-made sources, and levels have more than doubled since the industrial revolution.

    Unlike carbon dioxide, methane lasts only a decade or so in the atmosphere, which has led some experts to call for greater attention to curbs on its production. Reductions in methane emissions could bring faster results in the fight against climate change, they say.

  • Report Limks Vehicle Exhaust to Health Problems

     

    It said there was “strong evidence” that exposure to traffic helped cause variations in heart rate and other heart ailments that result in deaths. But among the many studies that evaluated death from heart problems, some did not separate stress and noise from air pollution as a cause, it said.

    The institute, based in Boston, is jointly financed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the auto industry to help assure its independence. Its reports are peer-reviewed but are not published in a scientific journal.

    The researchers noted that proving that air pollution from vehicles caused illness was difficult. The pollutants studied often come from sources like industry in addition to cars and trucks, they said, and many of the studies failed to rule out factors like income levels that could contribute to the illnesses studied.

    Many people who live near major roads fall into lower-income categories. Vibration and noise rather than air pollution could also cause some health damage, the report said.

    Nonetheless, “we see a strong signal that says traffic exposure seems to be causing effects,” said Dan Greenbaum, the president of the institute.

    The study found that the biggest effects occurred among people who lived within 300 to 500 meters — about two-tenths to three-tenths of a mile — from highways and major roads. That applies to 30 percent to 45 percent of the population of North America, the authors said.

    The pollutants studied in the report do not include ozone, the chemical for which the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new regulations last week. Ozone is more prevalent in places distant from highways.

    For many categories of health effects, the authors concluded that the studies completed so far suggested that air pollution from vehicles was the cause, without establishing that as fact.

    Contacted for comment, the environmental agency said it welcomed the study. The agency added that it was taking steps to cut toxic materials in gasoline and that the federal recovery act included $300 million for cleaning up diesel engines.

    Outside experts briefed on the study had mixed reactions.

    “Like the issue of second-hand smoke, it’s very difficult to understand the exact mechanisms that make it bad — but it’s easy to understand that it is in fact bad,” said Rich Kassel, an expert on diesel engines at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “This study underscores that difficulty.”

    “Despite 40 years of building ever-cleaner vehicles, we still have a vehicle pollution problem in this country,” Mr. Kassel said.

    Howard J. Feldman, the director of regulatory and scientific affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, noted that the evidence of a causal factor was inconclusive for some ailments.

    “The only conclusive thing that was found was with the asthma,” Mr. Feldman said. “Nothing else was found to be conclusive, which to me was interesting in itself.”

    “These are epidemiological studies, which by definition reflect past exposures with past fuels,” he added.

    As emissions from traffic decline, Mr. Feldman predicted, exposures from other sources will become more important.

  • 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)