Saturday, April 17, 2010

Carbon emissions lead to dangerous changes in oceans


The rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is driving fundamental and dangerous changes in the chemistry and ecosystems of the world's oceans, warn international marine scientists. More than 30% of the CO2 released from burning fossil fuels, cement production, deforestation and other human activities goes straight into the oceans, turning them gradually more acidic. "Ocean conditions are already more extreme than those experienced by marine organisms and ecosystems for millions of years," the researchers said. "This emphasises the urgent need to adopt policies that drastically reduce CO2 emissions." Ocean acidification, which the researchers call the "evil twin of global warming", is caused when the CO2 emitted by human activity, mainly burning fossil fuels, dissolves into the oceans.
It is happening independently of, but in combination with, global warming. "Evidence gathered by scientists around the world... suggests that ocean acidification could represent an equal - or perhaps even greater threat - to the biology of our planet than global warming," says study co-author, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. "The resulting acidification will impact many forms of sea life, especially organisms whose shells or skeletons are made from calcium carbonate, like corals and shellfish," adds Hoegh-Guldberg, professor at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. "These changes are taking place at rates as much as 100 times faster than they ever have over the last tens of millions of years," Hoegh-Guldberg says.
The scientists say there is now persuasive evidence that mass extinctions in past Earth history, like the "Great Dying" of 251 million years ago and another wipeout 55 million years ago, were accompanied by ocean acidification, which may have delivered the deathblow to many species. "These past periods can serve as great lessons of what we can expect in the future, if we continue to push the acidity the ocean even further," said lead author, Carles Pelejero, from the Marine Science Institute of CSIC in Barcelona, Spain, according to a release of the ARC Centre. "This will create conditions not seen on Earth for at least 40 million years," he said.
These findings were published in the latest issue of Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Peruvian Amazon trees a niche market for carbon trading

In a far-flung corner of the Peruvian Amazon, a multinational company aims to offset carbon dioxide emissions from its factories in France by planting thousands of trees which may also provide an income for local communities.

Amid accusations of greenwashing levelled at big firms trying to clean up their image, Nestle Waters France has hired French environmentalist Tristan Lecomte and his carbon management company, The Pure Project, to execute its plan.

Nestle wants to offset the equivalent of all the annual carbon emissions from its Vittel mineral water plants in France and Belgium -- about 115,000 tonnes of carbon a year.

In order to do this, it is investing 409,000 euros (550,000 dollars) to fund the planting of a total of 350,000 trees, mostly tropical hardwoods, in an existing project in the Bolivian Amazon and a new one in the jungle of Peru with a view to renewing the same number of trees every year.

For Lecomte it will be working with old friends -- cocoa farmers in the remote village of Santa Ana and other communities who live in the dense, high forest alongside the deep brown Huayabamba river, near the town of Juanjui, in Peru's heavily deforested San Martin region, about 600 kilometers (375 miles) from Lima.

It's there where Lecomte already works with small cocoa farmers making fair trade and organic chocolate for Alter Eco, France's number one fair trade brand.

"These farmers are organic, they benefit from fair trade and now they plant these trees so they also fight against global warming," he told AFP standing at dusk in the riverside village of Santa Rosa.

"They are at the forefront of the fight against climate change, they see the change in the weather and they want to fight against it for themselves and their children."

His company, The Pure Project, will pay them one Peruvian Sol (around 30 US cents) for every tree seedling they plant on their farmland which can be any number between 85 to 1,111 per hectare.

Once the trees reach the minimum legal diameter to be cut, they can be harvested by the farmer and sold.

Amid the intense green and the constant thrum of living creatures, the saplings grow at an accelerated rate with dinner-plate sized leaves reaching up to the sunlit cracks in the tree canopy.

Trees grow faster in the Amazon rainforest -- the lungs of the planet -- than anywhere else in the world, and can reach between six to 12 metres (18 to 36 feet) in just one year.

"Apart from reforesting we're doing business", said Ozwaldo del Castillo, a cocoa farmer with two adult sons and an 11-year old daughter who lives in Santa Ana.

"We may be old when those trees are ready to be cut down but if you think of the next generation, our children and their children will benefit in the future."

But as well as combating climate change and providing a kind of retirement fund for the farmers, the agro-forestry project is a form of sustainable development which can revitalize deforested and unproductive land -- the result of slash and burn agriculture.

"Migrants coming from the highlands of Peru on arriving in the Amazon don't know how to cultivate without slashing and burning the plants and trees," Lecomte explained.

"This has a very bad effect on the water resources, on soil erosion, and on biodiversity of course. People's fields are slipping into the river because there are no big trees and their roots to maintain them."

Moreover, the bigger trees such as teak and cedar provide ideal conditions for the smaller cocoa trees which grow best in the shade, while the roots of the bigger trees oxygenate the soil.

The result is that these farmers can double their yield to up to 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds) of cocoa beans per hectare per year.

The Peruvian project is awaiting validation by the Voluntary Carbon Standard, or VCS, in July.

The Pure Project is running similar projects in 14 countries with a number of corporate clients including cosmetics firm Clarins, Hugo Boss and French retailer E. Leclerc.

It's ambitious in its vision. It plans to plant up to four million trees in the next five years, which could capture 2.3 million tonnes of carbon over the next four decades. These could be sold on the voluntary carbon market by the company to fund further tree planting.

Despite the despondency which followed December's Copenhagen climate change summit, idealists like Lecomte are undeterred.

He's convinced projects like this are the beginning of a much bigger trend and could also be an important niche market for developing nations like Peru.

"Sustainability is not an obstacle to the growth of big companies, quite the opposite it can be a strategic advantage," he maintains.

Projects like these, he says, work as a form of marketing for companies like Nestle but they also have a real impact on the farmers in the developing world.



Tuesday, April 13, 2010

93% of wild medicinal plants in endangered list: Study

Ninety three per cent of wild medicinal plants used for making ayurvedic medicines in the country are endangered and the government is trying to relocate them from their usual habitat to protect them.


The threat to the plants came to the fore in an assessment exercise in different states carried out by the Botanical Survey of India.

The assessments were done for a total of 359 prioritized wild medicinal plant species. Out of this, 335 have been assigned Red List status ranging from critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable to near-threatened.

In addition, a total of 15 such species recorded in trade have been found threatened, officials in the health ministry's Ayush department said.

Some of the rare plants reported to be threatened, have been relocated during the last decade, including Utleria Salicifolia and Hydnocarpus Pentandra in Western Ghats, Gymnocladus Assamicus and Begonia Tessaricarpa from Arunachal Pradesh and Agapetes Smithiana in Sikkim.

The assessments have involved conducting Conservation Assessment and Management Prioritisation using International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List Categories.

The officials said the medicinal plant resources in the country are threatened by over exploitation to meet the demand of herbal industries.

As per the information received from the Ministry of Environment and Forests, about 95 per cent of such plants are harvested from the wild, primarily from forests.

The National Medicinal Plants Board constituted in November 2000, has been implementing a Central sector scheme for development and cultivation of medicinal plants since 2000-01.

This scheme was revised and renamed as "Central Sector Scheme for Conservation, Development and Sustainable Management of Medicinal Plants" during 2008-09.

States forest departments have been given assistance for protection and propagation of such endangered species, especially used by the herbal industries.

Projects for setting up of 29 Medicinal Plants Conservation Areas (MPCAs) have also been implemented in the states covering mainly the medicinal plants viz Asoka, Guggal and Dashmool varieties.

The scheme is being implemented with an outlay of Rs 321.30 crore during the 11th Plan.

In addition, a new "Centrally Sponsored Scheme of National Mission on Medicinal Plants" with a total outlay of Rs 630 crore is being implemented since 2008-09 by National Medicinal Plants Board. A total of 24 states have been covered under the scheme.