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  • PM ‘ignoring’ plight of Australia’s sinking islands

     

    Through the plane window I could see Boigu was little more than an oblong mangrove swamp, just a few kilometres off PNG.

    Even at its centre, wide muddy expanses covered in shallow ponds formed intricate patterns of tan and yellow and grey, and reflected the sunlight back at me.

    On arrival I was introduced to Keith Pabai, who, along with being the headmaster of the island’s primary school, is a traditional owner.

    He took me around, showing me how far the last king tide – in January 2009 – had crashed over sea walls and flooded the town.

    All but a tiny proportion of the island had been submerged. The fresh water supply had been threatened.

    “For some of our community members that was a frightening experience,” he said.

    “In my lifetime that’s the biggest tide ever that I’ve seen, where that amount of – that excess of water coming through the community.”

    He motioned toward the small incline which led up to the lip of the covered dam.

    “Having the water here, that was scary, right up next to our water supply. The water was actually right around the whole dam,” Mr Pabai said.

    Also disturbing to the community was the fact that one of its most sacred sites, the waterfront cemetery, was being slowly washed away.

    I went to visit it and, sure enough, many of the graves had clearly been damaged. Wooden crosses had collapsed and were now entwined in tree roots exposed by erosion.

    Here was an ancient culture which, if the scientists were right, would surely soon be swamped. But, according to Mr Pabai, there was no question the community wanted to stay put.

    “It is something we haven’t thought of yet as a community, but these things are something we have to consider in the future, but at this time not as yet,” he said.

     

    ‘Freak tides’

     

    The next day, I flew to another vulnerable island, this time in the centre of the Strait.

    Warraber is, like several other stunning little islands, supported by coral. It is also very low.

    I was received at the airport by local councillor Willie Lui, who toured me around his tropical paradise home.

    Mr Lui showed me the lengths his community had gone to try to hold back the tides.

    The biggest rocks that could be found had been dumped at the foreshore and covered with tyres, dead trees and brush. New palms had been planted in front of piles of coconuts.

    It was an admirable effort for such a small community, but I secretly feared it would not hold.

    In an interview, Mr Lui was clearly angry.

    “We feel that nothing is actually being done,” he said.

    “We’ve seen that the tides are getting higher, the winds are getting stronger, we’re getting more freak tides … and it not only scares me, it scares all of my community members.

    “Australian dollars are going overseas to actually help other countries, and as a newly elected leader I find it hard to wrap my head around why the Government is fixing problems overseas. What about our own backyard. What about the Torres Strait?”

     

    Conspiracy theories

     

    Mr Lui said that the lack of response from authorities had resulted in conspiracy theories.

    Rumours had started circulating that the Federal Government was secretly planning a forced relocation of people living on the six vulnerable islands in the Strait.

    “How things are going at the moment, with the Local Government trying to secure funds from the State and the Federal Government, it makes the people think that the Government wants us to relocate – that’s what goes through the mind of the locals, the community members,” Mr Lui said.

    Back on Thursday Island, which is the Strait’s administrative centre, the chairman of the Torres Strait Regional Authority, John Toshi Kris, has been working to try to secure funds from the Government.

    He too is “bamboozled” at the fact Australia is giving Pacific Island countries $150 million in funding to adjust to climate change, while calls for $22 million to fund mitigation work in the Strait have amounted to nothing.

    “This has been going on for the last two years,” he said.

    “We haven’t had a single dollar coming in to fix up those short-term projects that we’ve identified.

    “We’ve seen houses going under water.

    “People are frustrated with sandbags. What they need to see is real projects on the ground to try and save these communities.”

    Mr Kris also pointed out the potential of a massive influx of climate refugees from the low-lying, swampy southern coast of PNG.

    “Erosion can cause a lot of people, issues coming across the border. The Government has been focusing on other countries but right on their doorstep here is a huge issue which can lead to a [big] national crisis … for our country,” he said.

    “When we’re talking about the low lying part of Papua New Guinea, we’re not talking about tens and thousands of people, we’re talking about over 100,000 people that could actually come across.”

  • Copenhagen deal taking world to 3.5 degree rise

  • Copenhagen must be a turning point. Our children won’t forgive us if we fail

     

    And today, together with Norway and Australia, the UK is taking a further step to a Copenhagen agreement: publishing a framework for the long-term transfer of resources to meet the mitigation and adaptation needs of developing countries.

    Let no one be in any doubt about the overwhelming scientific evidence that underpins the Copenhagen conference. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change brings together over 4,000 scientists from every corner of the world. Their recent work has sharpened, not diminished, the huge and diverse body of evidence of human-made global warming. Its landmark importance cannot be wished away by the theft of a few emails from one university research centre. On the contrary, the pernicious anti-scientific backlash that the emails have unleashed has exposed just what is at stake.

    The purpose of the climate change deniers’ campaign is clear, and the timing no coincidence. It is designed to destabilise and undermine the efforts of the countries gathering in Copenhagen today.

    And the reason is that – if we can summon the political will to secure the ambitious agreement we need – Copenhagen is poised to achieve a profound historical transformation: reversing the road we have travelled for 200 years.

    Over that time we have based our prosperity on burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. Now we need to create wealth and quality of life, not by putting carbon into the atmosphere but by taking it out. We need to build, in short, a low carbon economy. And not just at home: our aim must be to do this in every major economy of the world.

    This will involve change: a shift from the energy dictatorship of oil and traditional fossil fuels to the efficiency, self-reliance and security of low carbon energy systems, which will be the engine of growth and job creation over the coming decade.

    Inevitably, as with every great project of social and economic progress in the global and public interest, there will be vested interests who seek to oppose it. And so I will take on with evidence, argument and moral passion all the anti-science and anti-change environmental Luddites who seek to stand in the way of progress.

    As we embark on these two weeks of negotiations, the British government is absolutely clear about what we must achieve. Our aim is a comprehensive and global agreement that is then converted to an internationally legally binding treaty in no more than six months. The agreement must put the world on a path to no more than two degrees of global warming. That means at least halving global emissions by 2050. And at the same time the deal must provide help to the poorest and most vulnerable countries to adapt to those climatic changes that are now inevitable – and that many are already experiencing.

    While we have made huge progress over recent weeks, there is still movement required. First, all countries need to reach for high level ambition in their commitments to reduce their emissions and their emissions growth. Many countries have put forward offers that are dependent on the ambition of others. The European Union, notably, has committed to reducing our emissions by 30% if the overall deal is strong enough. Others, such as Australia and Japan, have made similar offers. So in Copenhagen we need to ensure that all countries move to the top of the range of their ambition, thereby enabling others to do so in a process of mutual reinforcement.

    Second, we need a financing agreement that enables developing countries to tackle climate change. Money is needed for both adaptation to climate change and for its mitigation – that is, for investment in low carbon energy and energy efficiency, for green technology co-operation and – perhaps most important of all – to enable a radical reduction in deforestation in the rainforest countries.

    That is why at the Commonwealth meeting last weekend I proposed, and the Commonwealth agreed, a Copenhagen Launch Fund to provide financial assistance to developing countries – not simply in 2013 but now, starting next year and building to $10bn annually by 2012. I am delighted that President Obama is not only going to Copenhagen to help conclude the deal, but leading the way on this. Along with President Sarkozy, Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Rudd he has committed his country to paying its fair share. This week I will ask the whole of the EU to do so as well.

    And as our joint statement says, at Copenhagen we also need to address the need for financing in the longer term, to support adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. The world needs to be sure that the agreement will secure the required level of global emissions reductions. But that means developing countries must to be able to plan their investments with confidence. So we need to consider a system of “payment for results”, in which low carbon and sustainable forest mitigation plans are financed over the long term for the emissions reductions they achieve.

    Third, we need to design a “transparency mechanism” by which all countries can see clearly what is happening, not only in their own countries but in others. In a great global project of mutual ambition, we all need to be confident in one another.

    When I first said leaders should go to Copenhagen, I wanted to ensure that there was as little room for failure as possible. More than 100 leaders are now attending. If by the end of next week we have not got an ambitious agreement, it will be an indictment of our generation that our children will not forgive. I will be doing everything in my power to ensure we succeed.

    Sometimes history comes to turning points. For all our sakes, the turning point of 2009 must be real.

    • What do you want from Copenhagen? Write your own editorial.

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  • China’s carbon emissions will peak between 2030 and 2040, says minister

     

    Thinktanks, research groups and academics in China have variously estimated that the emissions peak could come between 2020 or 2050, but the government has yet to announce a target.

    Wan narrowed the range considerably by predicting that the peak would definitely come between 2030 and 2040.

    “There are some uncertainties here, so it is difficult to say whether it will be in the beginning, the end or the middle, but I can say for sure it will be within that range,” he said. “As the minister of science and technology I would say the sooner the better.”

    The precise timing, he said, would depend on uncertain factors such as the pace of China’s economic growth, rate of urbanisation and level of scientific development. But he added that the earlier date in the range would be possible if China continued to invest in renewable energy, improved energy efficiency, commercialised carbon capture technology and changed consumer behaviour.

    Wan, a non-Communist member of the state council, said China has proved its ability to meet and often exceed its targets in the current five-year plan to improve energy efficiency by about 20%. His ministry has already exceeded by 30% its goal during this period of investing 10bn yuan to reduce emissions and deal with the consequences of climate change.

    Jim Watson, of the Tyndall Centre at the University of Sussex, said: “I think this range makes it difficult for China to make a full contribution to keeping the rise in global temperatures below two degrees. That would be more compatible with a peak within 2020 to 2030. But it is very significant that the minister is willing to talk of a peak, even a range, at this stage.”

    Environmental groups gave a cautious welcome to the figure, but said China could be more ambitious if rich nations provide technology and finance. “This is a good thing. This is the first time that a ministerial-level official has confirmed the peak range,” said Yang Ailun of Greenpeace. “If China really makes climate change a priority, they could peak by 2030. And if they get support from developed countries, they could do it even faster.”

    An agreement to transfer technology and money from rich to poor nations is one of China’s main goals at the Copenhagen conference. China is keen to get international help to reduce the price of silicon processing for solar panels and to develop ultra-efficient coal gasification plants.It is already collaborating with the UK on a project to capture carbon dioxide. In future, Wan said the country will explore the potential for storage or conversion to algae biofuels.

    “Seventy per cent of our electricity comes from coal,” the minister said. “If we can capture all the CO2 from this, imagine how much emissions we could save. But it is not something we can do in the short term.”

    But most of China’s future emissions savings will come from improved efficiency of power plants, buildings and transport and from nuclear, solar and other forms of renewable energy.

    Last week, the government in Beijing announced its first carbon intensity target, which would slow the increase of emissions relative to economic growth by 40%-45% between 2005 and 2020. Even with this measure, the country’s output of carbon dioxide is expect to increase by about 90% if the economy grows by 8%.

    Although the carbon intensity target is lower than China achieved over the previous 15 years, Wan said it posed an “arduous task” because the government has already picked most of the low-hanging fruit when it came to upgrading inefficient power stations.

    Wan said the priority at Copenhagen would be to establish a framework for transferring funds and money, rather than getting hung up on figures.

    “If we can achieve this goal, that is good enough,” he said. “Copenhagen is very important to all governments and politicians. It’s an important turning point, but it is also just the start of human efforts to tackle climate change. It is not the end.”

  • Signs of change in the Himalayas as Copenhagen summit begins

    Signs of change in the Himalayas as Copenhagen summit begins

    On a 1,000-mile journey from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal, the Guardian finds clear evidence of the terrible threat that global warming now poses to the millions who rely on water from the roof of the world

    Gallery: A climate change journey from the mountains to the sea

     

    John Vidal on the threat global warming poses to millions in Asia Link to this video

    Way above us in the Himalayan cloud are jagged, snowbound peaks – Annapurna, Damodar, Gangapurna, Dhalguri. Below us is the Thulagi glacier, a river of ancient ice snaking steeply down the Marshyangdi valley from near the top of Mount Manasulu.

    The small plane banks and skims a lonely pass and we find what we have been looking for: at Thulagi’s snout is a milk-blue lake marked on few maps. It has doubled in size in just a few years and is held back only by a low wall of dead ice and earth. If Thulagi carries on melting at the present rate, nothing will stop billions of litres of water bursting through this natural dam and devastating villages, farmland and everything below.

    Thulagi is one of 20 steadily growing glacial lakes in Nepal which mountain communities and scientists fear will inevitably rupture if the growth in greenhouse gas emissions is not stemmed by world leaders at the Copenhagen climate summit. Average temperatures across Nepal have risen 1.6C in 50 years – twice the global average. But here on the roof of the world, in what is called the “third pole”, they are already nearly 4C above normal and on track to rise by as much as 8C by 2050.

    Temperature rises like this in the Himalayas would be a catastrophe. It is not just the future of a few mountain communities at stake but the lives of nearly one in four people in the world, all of whom rely on the Himalayas for water. Nepalese rivers alone provide water for 700 million people in India and Bangladesh. “If there is less snow in the Himalayas, or the monsoon rains weaken, or the glaciers melt with climate change, then all south Asian farming, industry, water supplies and cities will suffer,” said Nepalese climate specialist Ngamindra Dahal.

    On a 1,000-mile journey from the world’s greatest water source in the Himalayas, down rivers and then by train through Nepal, India and Bangladesh to the Bay of Bengal, we saw evidence of profound changes in weather patterns right across south Asia. Wherever we went we were told of significant temperature increases, and found governments slowly waking up to the threat of climate change and communities having to respond in any way they could to erratic rains and more serious droughts, floods and storms.

    The starting point was Jomsom, a small town in the Kali Gandaki valley, 2,300 metres high and at the heart of the Annapurna range. This remote town, which saw its first ever car last year, has experienced no snowfall this winter. The temperature soared way above normal to 27C, and only fell to 13C, against a usual -4C, while the snowline has risen above 5,000 metres. The Gandaki river, fed by 1,200 glaciers, flows to the Ganges and on to Bangladesh.

    “The temperature is higher, so there’s less snow, and less meltwater in spring to plant crops. People have no need to come down from the mountains in winter. They can grow chillies and peppers now,” said Sunil Pant, a Nepalese MP. “But now they cannot grow wheat or staple foods.”

    It’s the same story even in the Everest valley region, 400 miles to the east of Jomsom, where the snowfall is becoming increasingly unpredictable. Already, some communities believe they are a living under a death sentence, according to Lucky Sherpa, the MP for the region. “They say they are not sure there will be a tomorrow,” she said. “The snow used to come up to your waist in winter. Now children do not know what snow is. We have more flies and mosquitoes, more skin diseases. Communities are adapting by switching crops, but diseases are moving up the mountains, the tea and apple crops are being hurt and wells are drying up.”

    Two hundred miles away in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, Simon Lucas, a climate change officer at the UK Department for International Development, confirmed that river flows in winter have seriously declined. “The trends are clearer in Nepal than in other countries,” he said. “People cannot plant their crops in the spring because the winter snows are not so heavy. They have always relied on snow and glacier melt”.

    Britain last week earmarked £50m for Nepal to adapt to climate change, mainly through investing in its forests, but climate scientists say it faces ever more erratic, intense and unpredictable rainfall. We found the evidence for that when we headed south towards Nepal’s border with Bihar state in India. Here the problem is not too little water but far too much; last year, following torrential monsoon rains, Nepal’s greatest river, the Khosi, broke though two kilometres of embankment and flooded hundreds of square kilometres of farmland. Nearly 1,500 people died and 3 million people were displaced. Fifty thousand people in Nepal and many more in India lost their homes, and the river changed its course by more than 150km.

    The Khosi is known as “the river of sorrow” because it often floods, but the scale of what happened last August shocked both Indian and Nepalese governments. When the waters finally receded, people found vast areas of farmland covered by a 6ft-deep sea of sand brought down in suspension from the mountains. Seven months on, the embankment has been repaired but people are devastated and everyone is frightened that this kind of flood will become more common.

    “It’s impossible to cultivate anything”, said Ashma Khatoum, a farmer. “There are no toilets, or clean drinking water. I don’t believe we will ever get back to normal again.”

    We crossed the Indian border and went straight from severe flood to deep drought. Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, is experiencing one of its worst droughts in a generation. This year it has had only 15-30% of its usual rains. Most of the state has been declared a drought zone and 63 million people are expected go hungry next year.

    “Climate change is definitely happening,” said Vyas Ji, principal secretary in the department of disaster management in the Bihar state capital, Patna. “We used to have droughts every four or five years and floods every two to three years. Now it’s very erratic. Even the flood-prone districts are facing drought. Rainfall used to be predictable, limited and beneficial to farmers. Now it is unpredictable, heavier and harmful. Now there is no winter. Farmers are confused. This was a rice cultivating state but the seedlings get destroyed.”

    We headed south again, to Kolkata, one of India’s great cities, which last week was warned again by international scientists that it was acutely vulnerable to sea level rises. Here temperatures have risen significantly and there are more cases of dengue fever and malaria, said the city mayor, Bikash Bhattacharya. “Copenhagen is the last chance that the poor have. If we do not succeed and we go on with business as usual, then the world’s poor people will have a very hard time.”

    “Climate change is not the future. It is now. Tens of thousands of Indians are already in a critical situation,” said Sugata Hazra, director of Jadavpur University’s school of oceanography in Kolkata. His researchers have recorded sea levels in the Bay of Bengal rising far faster than the global average, and more cyclones hammering the coast. The result is the inundation of islands from higher tides and surges.

    “The rate of relative sea level rise in the Sagar Islands [in the Indian Sundarbans] is 3.14mm per year, which is substantially more than the global average of 1-2mm per year. It is up to 5.2mm in some places. By 2020 at least 70,000 people will have been made homeless.”

    Anurag Danda, head of WWF’s Sundarbans delta programme, appealed to politicians in Copenhagen for help. “For the people of the Sundarbans, climate change has arrived. The Maldives gets the attention, but there are many other people facing disaster.”

    From Kolkata we headed to the Bangladeshi border. There, India is building a 15ft fence to keep its neighbours out. For the moment those wanting to leave are mainly young men seeking work in the booming Indian economy, but in future, say analysts, it could be climate refugees.

    Bangladesh is by far the most densely populated large country in the world and, being entirely on a low-lying delta, it is one of the most vulnerable. It stands to lose 20% of its land to sea level rise in the next 80 years and is already experiencing more frequent and more intense cyclones. In the last seven years, four of the most powerful storms ever recorded have slammed its coasts.

    Climate change, on top of all its other problems, means Bangladesh faces even deeper problems, said Kim Streatfield, director of the Centre for health and population research at ICDDR, an international research institution in Dhaka. He fears the combination of climate change and an expected 50m-100m population rise in the next 50 years will devastate the country unless action is taken. “Increasing salinity in the water will have a major effect on food production,” he said. “In addition, the water table is dropping two to three metres a year, and one in four wells can be dry in the dry season.”

    Our south Asian climate odyssey from source to sea ended south of Chittagong, on the Bay of Bengal. There, where the waters of the Kali Gandaki, the Ganges and Nepal’s many other rivers reach the ocean, communities are experiencing higher tides and more flooding, as well as the loss of farmland and fishing.

    “The sea water now comes right into our houses. We would all like to move, but there is nowhere to go,” said Geeta Das, a teacher in Bolihut village, near Chittagong. Her home has been partly washed away and her bed is now just a foot from where the waters reached a few weeks ago. “We panic when it is cloudy and it is about to rain. We fear we will lose our children.”

    A neighbour, Madhuri Das, said: “We do not need scientists or anyone to tell us things are changing. We know the sea level is rising. We have always lived here. The floods are more frequent and we now fear the sea. Ten years ago, the sea water never came to the village. We cannot afford to raise our houses except on mud, which gets washed away. We can’t use the toilets, and diseases are now more common. Our water is no longer sweet.”

    Nurun Nahar, a Bolihut fisherman, gave up his trade when catches declined precipitously three years ago. His experiences speak for the 700m people who depend on Nepal and the Himalayas for their lives: “We are poor so we cannot do much to adapt on our own to what we can see is taking place. But we do not want to depend on nature any more. We see so many changes happening. All we want is a secure life. We are resilient but we must look to the rich to help us make this world a better place.”

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  • Greenpeace greets world leaders with age-old lesson

     

    Related Coverage

    Greenpeace have also planned a special message for Mr Rudd, giving him a shock preview of how he’ll look in 2020 at Copenhagen International Airport.

    It’s commissioned a series of billboards featuring the world’s leaders apologising in 2020 for their inaction on climate change in 2009.

    Mr Rudd joins an aged US President Barack Obama, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Brtain’s Gordon Brown, looking mournful and claiming: “I’m sorry. We could have stopped catastrophic climate chage … we didn’t.”

    See the billboards here – Kevin Rudd’s at No 10