A man hauls water at the Chico Mendes landless peasant camp in Pernambuco, Brazil. Credit: Alejandro Arigón/IPS

Everyone knows water is life. Far too few understand the role of trees, plants and other living things in ensuring we have clean, fresh water.

This dangerous ignorance results in destruction of wetlands that once cleaned water and prevented destructive and costly flooding, scientists and activists warn.

Around the world, politicians and others in power have made and continue to make decisions based on short-term economic interests without considering the long-term impact on the natural environment, said Anik Bhaduri, executive officer of the Global Water System Project (GWSP), a research institute based in Bonn, Germany.

“Humans are changing the character of the world water system in significant ways with inadequate knowledge of the system and the consequences of changes being imposed,” Bhaduri told IPS.

The list of human impacts on the world’s water – of which only 0.03percent is available as freshwater – is long and the scale of those impacts daunting.

“We have accelerated major processes like erosion, applied massive quantities of nitrogen that leaks from soil to ground and surface waters and, sometimes, literally siphoned all water from rivers, emptying them for human uses before they reach the ocean,” Bhaduri said.

On average, humanity has built one large dam every day for the last 130 years, which distorts the natural river flows to which ecosystems and aquatic life adapted over millennia. Two-thirds of major river deltas are sinking due to pumping out groundwater, oil and gas. Some deltas are falling at a rate four times faster than global sea level is rising.

More than 65 percent of the world’s rivers are in trouble, according to one study published in Nature in 2010. Those findings were very “conservative” since there was not enough data to assess impacts of climate change, pharmaceutical compounds, mining wastes and water transfers, Charles Vörösmarty of the City University of New York previously told IPS.

Recently, China’s First National Census of Water discovered they’d lost more than 28,000 rivers compared to just 20 years ago. Most experts blame the loss on massive overuse and engineering projects to shift water from one region to another.

“We treat symptoms of environmental abuse rather than underlying causes…by throwing concrete, pipes, pumps, and chemicals at our water problems, to the tune of a half-trillion dollars a year,” said Vörösmarty, who is also co-chair and a founding member of the GWSP.

As these problems continue to mount, the public is largely unaware of this reality or its growing costs, he said in a release.

Protecting and investing in natural infrastructure is far cheaper than concrete and pipes, representing the smarter solution to water security. This approach also benefits tourism, recreation and cultural benefits, improved resilience and biodiversity conservation.

World experts are meeting in Bonn, Germany this week to consolidate this understanding and offer policy makers solutions to prevent ongoing damage to the global water system.

The Water in the Anthropocene conference will also make recommendations on how decision makers can adapt to the multiple challenges of growing water use, declining ecosystems and climate change.

The public and policy makers are not aware of these huge water challenges, said water expert Janos Bogardi, senior advisor to GWSP. Education aside, there is an overwhelming need to have well-defined global water quantity and quality standards that meet the needs of people, agriculture and healthy ecosystems.

The upcoming U.N. Sustainable Development Goals are expected to include “water security”, which is huge step forward, Bogardi told IPS.

“Defining these interrelated needs is huge challenge for scientists and politicians alike,” he said.

Reasonable daily water use to meet sanitary needs and drinking is 40 to 80 litres, but U.S. per capita daily use is over 300 litres, while Germany is 120 litres. In urban Hungary, where water is relatively expensive, consumption is 80 litres/day.

But how much water does nature need?

GWSP scientists’ best guess at this point is that taking 30 percent to 40 percent of a renewable freshwater resource constitutes “extreme” water stress which could tip an ecosystem into collapse. This can be mitigated if water is returned and recycled in good quality. Mining fossil groundwater resources is by definition non-sustainable.

“We have to be careful that the water security goal is truly sustainable for ecosystems,” Bogardi said.

It is not clear that the Sustainable Development Goal on water will “simultaneously optimise water security for humans as well as for nature”, said Vörösmarty.

“The water sciences community stands ready to take on this challenge. Are the decision makers?” he asked.

Cutting trees in Nicaragua. Deforestation is inherent to the predatory economy, whether for the exploitation of the timber itself, the soil beneath the trees, or resources in the subsoil. Credit: Germán Miranda/IPS

More than two dozen environmental organisations are urging California Governor Jerry Brown to disregard recommendations from a United Nations task force to include so-called forest “offsets” in the state’s new emissions-trading scheme.

The offsets would serve as a mechanism by which emissions-producing companies in California could continue to pollute if they compensate foreign governments for the protection of their own forests.

But critics say the consequences of such a policy would have repercussions that extend far beyond the environment.

“Independent investigations into the promotion of international forest offsets have raised serious concerns related to human rights violations and there is major opposition from indigenous peoples and local communities in both Chiapas, Mexico and in Acre, Brazil,” the groups said in an open letter sent this weekend.

Environmental groups say the move would simply shift the pollution from one country to another, rather than addressing the root causes of deforestation and climate pollution. The scheme would also create another set of economic and social problems for the communities in the regions paid to preserve their forests.

“Offsets are problematic in a number of ways,” Jeff Conant, director of the International Forests Programme at the U.S. office of Friends of the Earth, an activist network, told IPS. “First, they don’t actually reduce emissions. They just misplace emissions.”

The recommendations to include the offsets in new climate change-related legislation in California (known as AB-32) came from the REDD Offset Working Group (ROW), formed to implement a collaborative effort designed by the United Nations called REDD (which stands for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

As described by the U.N., REDD is “a mechanism to create an incentive for developing countries to protect, better manage and wisely use their forest resources, contributing to the global fight against climate change.”

Although California’s AB-32 already has a domestic offset exchange programme, the move to expand it globally prompted a vehement response last week from groups in Mexico worried about the possibility of “land-grabbing”.

The REDD programme “allows Northern polluters to purchase forest carbon offset credits from the global South,” the 15 groups, from Chiapas, Mexico, wrote in late April.

“This Agreement is underpinned by the logic of capitalist accumulation: it enables the purchase of carbon credits that will legally allow the continuation of the predatory and consumerist model.”

The response recommends instead that the “consumerist countries of the North … implement urgent mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without substitutions or offsets, and with a focus on the reduction goals of their own countries”.

‘Gaming, corruption, error’

“In Chiapas, you have customary titles and [land] rights that haven’t been fully resolved,” Bill Barclay, climate policy advisor at Rainforest Action Network, and advocacy group based here, told IPS.

“It’s a very complicated situation, and when you bring in someone who might come in and impose that and do it quickly and cheaply, it elevates social conflict.”

These critics are also wary of the potential pitfalls that could accompany payments to countries with little oversight and government accountability.

“Once you involve international entities – especially the most impoverished states in the hemisphere – you’re getting to a state … with a lot of gaming, corruption, fraud and error,” Jeff Conant says.

Activists say these problems shine a light on the broader complications that tend to lurk in a system as complicated as emissions trading or “carbon markets”.

“This is about the most complicated way you could come up with to try to bring money into the market to reduce emissions and generate innovations,” Conant says.

“There’s an ideology that says that allowing the markets to fix the climate problem is the most efficient way to go… Unfortunately, [the market] does not work in the favour of the most marginalised communities that are on the front lines.”

In fact, carbon offsets have critics even among pro-market economists. The new letter references the findings of a 2011 report that examined REDD from a “market perspective”, using the authors’ “experience in derivatives trading and systems architecture”.

Known as the Munden Report, it found that “using carbon markets to finance REDD… is likely to be a drain of resources, both in terms of money and time, away from the very serious problems REDD seeks to address.”

The letter from environmental groups also comes just as new reports have emerged on collapsing carbon prices in Europe, where the world’s first and most established carbon market is floundering.

Although the European system decided not to rely on forest offsets, many are still suggesting that the collapse of the E.U. carbon prices could have ripple effects for similar markets worldwide, particularly as advocates push for interlinking these systems down the road.

Both the price collapse in Europe and the social consequences of an international carbon offset exchange have bolstered support for the more direct carbon tax. Although this has been the preferred mechanism by environmental groups, it continues to be thought politically unviable in the U.S., at least for the time being.

“I think there is going to be a greater shift to carbon fees and away from carbon markets,” Barclay of the Rainforest Action Network told IPS.

“The carbon market is just proving to be extremely complicated, and not benefiting people at all. There’s just too much gaming and speculation, and it’s been too poorly regulated.”

Peter Mcharo's two children digging their father’s maize field in Kibaigwa village, Morogoro Region, some 350km from Dar es Salaam. Mcharo is one of the farmers who have benefitted from Conservation Agriculture. Credit: Orton Kiishweko/IPS

Smallholder farmer Peter Mcharo, from Morogoro Region in eastern Tanzania, has a reason to smile. His fields are full of green, healthy maize plants, he has richer soil and he spends less time farming now than he did two years ago.

Viewed as one of the major solutions to food insecurity and as a mechanism to adapt to climate change in Africa, conservation agriculture (CA) is giving Tanzanian smallholder farmers like Mcharo better harvests as the country faces an acute food shortage.

On Apr. 22, Minister of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives Christopher Chiza urged farmers to use CA, as 47 districts in this East African nation face a serious food shortage. This is despite a 12 percent surplus recorded during the 2011/2012 harvests.

The regions affected include, Kilimanjaro, Lindi, Tanga, Mtwara, Coast, Iringa, Kagera, Mwanza and Singida.

But Mcharo, who is from Kibaigwa village, told IPS: “In my five seasons of using the system, I have confirmed that it is better to use conservation agriculture as my colleagues in the village cooperative have made a larger profit per half hectare (compared to when we) cultivated a bigger piece of land.” Mcharo, and the 30 farmers in his village who belong to the Umoja (Unity in Swahili) cooperative, are all involved in CA.

They are among a number of farmers in the country who have benefited from a CA farming project since the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) introduced it here in 1998. The FAO-supported project, run by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, has benefited some 4,000 smallholder farmers, in the central and northern regions of Morogoro, Kilosa, Mbeya, Arusha, Babati and Manyara.

According to a 2007 report written by Richard Shetto and Marietha Owenya in conjunction with the FAO and other partners titled “Conservation Agriculture as practiced in Tanzania – three case studies”, agriculture is the basis of the country’s economy. It accounts “for about half of both the gross domestic product and merchandise exports. Some 80 percent of the 34.5 million country population, especially those in rural and peri-urban areas, depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.”

Conservation agriculture is a resource-efficient crop production practice that involves minimum or even zero mechanical disturbance of the soil, keeping the soil covered at all times – either by a growing crop or a dead mulch of crop residues – and using diversified crop rotation. In addition, the use of pesticides is reduced or avoided and biological control is encouraged.

The emphasis is on simple, low-cost tools such as ox-drawn planters and rippers. A Brazilian invention, the Fitarelli no-till planter, is increasingly becoming a popular CA tool.

This farming season, Mcharo used a ripper – a tool that causes minimum disturbance to the soil. He did not even till the land or use fertilisers, but the harvest from his 1.2-hectare farm has increased from barely 20kgs of maize per half hectare two years ago, to 50kgs on the same amount of land during the last harvest in November 2012. Mcharo also inter-crops groundnuts with his maize.

“I could spend well over 125 dollars in preparing my small piece of land and purchasing fertiliser and seeds but I would harvest only 15kgs of maize per half hectare, and get 106 dollars for it,” Mcharo said. “Apart from cutting down production costs, I have found this technology time-saving and less rigorous.”

The practice has also improved his way of life.

Mcharo earned 250 dollars on his last harvest – almost three times what he made the previous year. The farmer, who has a family of nine, said he was able to re-roof his home with iron sheets, buy a power tiller and add another 1.2-hectares to his farmland where he will start growing rice next season.

Agricultural engineer Mark Lyimo, from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, ran the initial phase of the implementation of CA and farm mechanisation for sustainable crop and livestock production.

He told IPS that conservation tillage – zero or minimum tillage – is one of the practices that has proved to combat soil degradation efficiently.

“This was necessary due to soil erosion and declining soil fertility that are threatening vast surfaces of agricultural lands in Africa and consequently the existence of farms and farming families,” he said.

“The technology focuses mainly on sustainable production of crops under intensive cultivation of land where two crops, a legume and a cereal, are inter-cropped twice a year,” Lyimo said. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, maize and legumes and beans and groundnuts are usually intercropped together in the northern and central regions.

He added that more work was needed to demonstrate that the technology can work in order to change the mindset of farmers who, for many years, were taught that it is necessary to plough and maintain a weed-free field for better crop production.

Joseph Ndunguru, a researcher at the Mikocheni Agricultural Research Institute in Tanzania, said moist soils that remain undisturbed produce good yields for farmers throughout the year.

“Besides reduced production costs, a farmer will find this technology time saving and less rigorous,” he said.

CA is credited with eliminating power-intensive soil tillage and reducing labour required for crop production by more than 50 percent for small-scale farmers, according to Lenny Kasonga from the University of Dar es Salaam.

Damian Gabagambi from Tanzania’s Sokoine University of Agriculture told IPS that the practice is good for farmers as it protects soil from vulnerability to drought by reducing water requirements by up to 30 percent.

And Mcharo said that thanks to CA, his maize is greener and healthier.

A white rhino at a sanctuary in South Africa’s Limpopo Province. Last year, poachers killed 668 rhinos in South Africa. Credit: Jennifer McKellar/IPS

Environment groups are applauding a new United Nations decision to officially characterise international wildlife and timber trafficking as a serious organised crime, in a move that advocates say will finally give international law enforcement officials the tools necessary to counter spiking rates of poaching.

Crimes related to the trafficking of flora and fauna are today one of the most significant money-makers for criminal networks, amounting to some 17 billion dollars a year, according to some estimates. That would make this black market the fourth-largest transnational crime in the world, according to Global Financial Integrity, a Washington watchdog group.

On Friday, a new resolution on the issue was adopted almost unanimously at the end of a summit of the U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ, often called the U.N. Crime Commission). The resolution, put forward by the United States and Peru, now urges member states to formally view the illicit trade in wild flora or fauna as a “serious crime”.

“It is commendable that the U.N. CCPCJ is now taking note of wildlife crime,” Peter Paul van Dijk, director of the tortoise and freshwater turtle conservation programme at Conservation International, an international network, told IPS.

“This demonstrates how wildlife crime is no longer perceived as a proportionally minor type of crime affecting specific species, but is now beginning to be understood as being symptomatic of underlying problems of natural resource security, governance and transparency, and ineffective international actions.”

He continues: “International wildlife crime can generate the funds to fuel insurgencies and instability, and warrants an equally coordinated and prioritised response from the international community, including the United Nations. “

Under U.N. rules, characterisation as a “serious crime” can require stiff sentences of four or more years in prison, and will also allow the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to broaden its role in combating the trade. For years, environment-related crimes have recorded one of the world’s lowest conviction rates.

“This is a breakthrough resolution in terms of recognising the serious nature of wildlife crimes, encouraging governments to view this not just as an environmental issue but as a crime akin to human or arms trafficking,” Wendy Elliott, the leader of the wildlife crime campaign at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a global conservation group, told IPS from Geneva.

“For so many years, poachers and wildlife traffickers have received fines and quickly been let back onto the streets. The most important element here is the potential deterrence of significant prison time.”

Development impact

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in poaching, particularly in Africa. Many suggest this is being driven largely by the increasing force of consumer spending in Asia.

Over the past decade and a half, experts say, South Africa has seen a staggering 5,000 percent increase in the illegal hunting of rhinoceroses, while elephant poaching is also currently at record levels, at some 30,000 deaths each year. Meanwhile, nearly a third of all global timber today is thought to have been illegally logged.

While wildlife crime was first discussed by the U.N. General Assembly a dozen years ago, Elliott says the issue has never been as serious as it is today.

“Historically, poaching was a small-scale local activity, but the value of both the product and the demand is now seen at levels akin to other major illegal commodities,” she notes.

“In turn, that has attracted organised criminal syndicates, so the response needed is something completely different. That’s the shift we’re now starting to see, but we need to really ramp this up globally – wildlife crimes prey on a finite set of resources, after all, and the clock is ticking.”

Much of the new international interest in wildlife and timber trafficking can almost certainly be traced to the groups that have become involved, as well as the illicit funding they’ve been able to secure. According to a new brief put out by the WWF and other environment organisations ahead of the U.N. Crime Commission meetings, these groups include rebels in Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan and others.

“Illegal trade in wildlife alone amasses profits of about 10 billion dollars each year, [and] the illicit trade is intertwined with corruption, money laundering, and the trafficking of other commodities such as weapons and narcotics,” Brian A. Nichols, an assistant secretary in the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told the U.N. Crime Commission in introducing the resolution.

“It undermines security, stability and the rule of law. The criminals that illegally poach and trade in wildlife are part of integrated networks that span continents. They devastate local communities and have pushed more and more species toward extinction.”

Indeed, the impact of wildlife poaching on local economies and development efforts can be extremely significant.

“These crimes are not only putting the survival of endangered species in peril, but are also threatening security and sustainable economic development,” Elliott notes.

“In many African countries, wildlife continues to constitute a major source of family income and gross domestic product. So this is imperative from a development perspective, potentially endangering years of development advances.”

Supply, demand

Following the passage of the new U.N. resolution, much of the impetus will now fall to national governments to oversee a strengthening of their anti-poaching and customs systems. Next week, governments in Central Africa are slated to meet to discuss links between poachers and ongoing security concerns.

“The proof of commitment will be in not only how many governments ensure adequate penalties, but how many invest in initiatives to engage police and customs investigators in combating these crimes,” Debbie Banks, a senior campaigner with the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a London-based watchdog, told IPS.

“Combating wildlife crime is not rocket science. The solutions and tools are widely available, but it’s a matter of how much governments are prepared to invest in them. We now have some great political commitments articulated in the new resolution, so it’s time for action.”

Importantly, the new resolution will apply equally to countries that have serious illicit export problems – for instance, in Central Africa – and to countries where demand tends to be highest, particularly in Asia.

“These increased penalties will need to affect not just those doing the supplying but also those creating the demand,” WWF’s Elliott says.

“To really reduce demand, it has become increasingly clear that we can’t just rely on awareness-raising campaigns – there has to be enforcement, as well. Unless the public feels real consequences for purchasing these items, demand reduction will be very hard to achieve.”

Mining tar sands oil in Canada. Credit: Chris Arsenault/IPS

Nearly 70 percent of known reserves of oil, gas and coal must remain in the ground to avoid dangerous climate change. So why did the energy industry spend 674 billion dollars in 2012 looking for more?

A moratorium on investments new fossil fuel infrastructure is the obvious thing to do about this, said Asad Rehman, head of international climate at Friends of the Earth in the UK.

The United Nations is the place to get countries to begin a serious conversation about imposing such a moratorium starting Monday in Bonn, Germany, Rehman told IPS.

The 195 parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are meeting next week in Bonn on a new climate treaty that would go into force in 2020 and discuss ways reduce emissions from fossil fuels prior to 2020.

The World Bank, International Energy Agency and a new report from economist Lord Nicholas Stern all say that close to 70 percent of known reserves of fossil fuels are “unburnable” to have a chance of global warming staying below two degrees C.

The global average temperature has already risen 0.8C, leading to the loss of most of the sea ice in the Arctic, extreme weather events around the world, rising sea levels and oceans that are 30 percent more acidic.

The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere will likely hit 400 parts per million (ppm) this May. That will be the first time in at least three million years.

All nations have agreed under the UNFCCC to keep temperatures below two degrees C, which is by no means a safe level of warming. However, scientists say we are on a path to at least three degrees C, which will trigger irreversible feedbacks leading to much higher temperatures and far worse impacts.

“It’s illogical to be making new investments in fossil fuel infrastructure,” Rehmand said.

The Carbon Tracker agrees. It’s a thinktank whose supporters include the big banks, Standard and Poor’s and the International Energy Agency. It co-authored the “Unburnable Carbon 2013″ report with Lord Stern.

The Carbon Tracker says investments in fossil fuel are foolish and continuing them will inevitably crash the global economy because countries will be forced to severely limit how much fossil fuel is burned.

“The scale of ‘listed’ unburnable carbon revealed in this report is astonishing,” said Paul Spedding, an oil and gas analyst at HSBC.

“This report makes it clear that ‘business as usual’ is not a viable option for the fossil fuel industry in the long term,” Speeding said in statement.

While banks and investors are finally waking up to the carbon-climate problem, countries have struggled for two decades under the UNFCCC to construct a global treaty to reduce carbon emissions enough to stay below two degrees C. Perversely, those same countries are pumping 1.9 trillion of their taxpayer’s money each year into subsidising the fossil fuel industry, reported the International Monetary Fund last month. (1.9. trillion seconds is about 60,000 years.)

Countries have promised to reduce these subsidies for the world’s richest industry, but few have acted.

“It’s bipolar…there is a complete lack of leadership,” said Alden Meyer, Union of Concerned Scientists’ director of strategy and policy.

The result is that global carbon emissions rise ever higher each year when they need to begin to decline. The gap between where we are and where we need to go is getting wider every year, Meyer said at a press conference last week.

The UNFCCC meeting in Bonn Apr. 29 to May 3 is one of several weeks of meetings before the annual Convention of the Parties (COP 19) negotiations in Poland this November. The main issues, as always, will be deciding how big the emissions cuts will be, the timing of those cuts and what the contribution should be for each country.

“There are two things to tackle in Bonn: how developed countries fulfill their promises to cut emissions deep and meet their financial commitments to enable developing countries to address climate change now,” said Meena Raman, negotiation expert at the Third World Network.

Developed countries and blocs like the U.S., Canada and the European Union do not appear ready to increase their promised emission cuts even though they are insufficient to achieve the two-degree C target and are collectively less than those from developing countries, as previously reported by IPS.

China is now the world’s biggest carbon emitter but it will be many years yet before the carbon molecules in the atmosphere with little Chinese flags on them will match those with U.S. flags. Since CO2 resides in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, emissions of 50 years ago have the same impact on the climate as those emitted today.

“It’s not hard to figure out the total amount of CO2 from the U.S. and other developed countries already in the atmosphere,” said Sivan Kartha, Senior Scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute’s US Center.

“Taking responsibility for the mess you made is a widely-accepted principle,” Kartha told IPS.

This politically thorny issue is known as “historical emissions” and it pits the South against the North. More recently, countries in the North have been pushing the concept of “mitigation potential” suggesting that it is harder for the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions because of existing infrastructure than it is for poor countries like India who haven’t built them yet, he said.

While “moratorium” will only be whispered about, “equity” will be the buzzword in play in Bonn this week, Kartha said.

Positive developments on climate are largely found outside the UNFCCC process. China and the U.S. recently signed a landmark agreement on climate and clean energy. Both countries agreed climate change poses a serious risk and have agreed to take a global leadership position, said Alden Myer.

“I take this a very positive sign,” but it remains to be seen if this translates into action, Meyer said.

Students rally in front of University Hall on Nov. 29, 2011. A special committee on divestment recently suggested that Brown withdraw its investments in the country’s 15 largest coal companies. Credit: Brown Divest Coal Campaign

Nearly a dozen U.S. cities have announced their interest in withdrawing municipal investments from fossil fuel companies, joining a fast-growing movement among colleges and universities that supporters say is allowing citizens concerned with environmental degradation and global climate change to act in lieu of federal action from the U.S. Congress.

On Tuesday, the San Francisco board of supervisors unanimously voted to recommend that the city’s retirement fund formally “divest” of any oil-and-coal holdings, some 583 million dollars’ worth. Next week, the nearby town of Berkeley is set to vote on a resolution that would request the enormous California state pension system to do the same.

Now, these initiatives have coalesced into a nascent movement. On Thursday, 11 mayors and city councils stated that they would be urging their cities to divest from investments in the 200 largest fossil fuel companies, while advocates say similar petitions are reportedly taking hold in 100 additional cities and states.

“This started [Thursday] with eight cities and by the end of the day we were already up to 11, and we’ve seen more interest since then,” James Irwin, a senior associate with the Mayors Innovation Project (MIP), a national network that is organising the new city divestment push, told IPS.  (The group’s municipal divestment guide can be found here.)

“That was after only a light first wave of outreach, so we expect to see more joining on now that the movement has begun,” he continues.

“This is part of building a moral argument that profiting from the wreckage of climate is wrong, that we shouldn’t be benefiting from climate change. Hopefully, this can be the start of a narrative highlighting how these companies are bad actors.”

By any measure, the divestment initiative has taken off surprisingly quickly. Substantive discussion began with regards to university investments only late last year, spearheaded particularly by the environmental advocacy group 350.org, and already petitions have reportedly sprung up at 300 institutions.

Expanding the movement to cities was an obvious next step, and related talks began in January. The following month, the city of Seattle – whose mayor has been at the forefront of the movement – announced that it would be encouraging its two-billion-dollar retirement fund to shed its stocks in companies that contribute to climate change.

“It’s the cities that will take the brunt of climate change, and that’s whether we get any federal or state funding – it’s up to us,” Larry MacDonald, mayor of the small town of Bayfield, Wisconsin, one of the municipalities that has pledged to divest its retirement fund, told IPS.

“A lot of the mayors I’ve spoken with feel very strongly that we only have one chance to act on this issue, and that we really can’t wait for federal or state officials. That said, of course, it’s also easier at the local level than at the federal level to make and act on these types of decisions.”

Trickle-up theory

Thus far, the majority of cities that have expressed interest in the divestment initiative have been politically left-leaning. Yet MIP’s Irwin says he’s confident this is solely an early dynamic, and points to similar experiences in the past.

“We very much view this as the vanguard – it’s the liberal college towns that often lead on issues that end up becoming mainstream, for instance recycling and today’s focus on green energy,” he says.

“These are also the cities where the mayors feel the safest, but really there’s very little downside politically, especially if you look at this issue economically. Staying invested in fossil fuels won’t make sense, for instance, when federal authorities finally do get serious on climate change – say, by putting a price on carbon.”

Indeed, on Thursday the U.S. Senate Finance Committee published a white paper that discusses the possibility of instituting a national “carbon tax”. For now, however, such proposals are still considered dead on arrival at the federal level, but in that void local-level officials are increasingly seeing both an opportunity and a responsibility.

“We certainly believe that cities are where innovation is happening – the politics are less difficult and there is often a greater concentration of people who want to see action on certain issues,” Irwin says.

“Over the last decade, we’ve seen mayors taking many important steps on climate change, and those activities have trickled up to the national level. This new movement is clearly about laying the foundation for working on the larger state and federal levels later.”

Re-alignment

Taking its inspiration from the anti-Apartheid movement of the 1980s, when some 155 U.S. schools came out against the South African government, the current divestment momentum began on college and university campuses. In addition to hundreds of schools currently being petitioned to withdraw their fossil fuel-related investments, dozens have reportedly started administrative processes to look more closely at the issue.

Endowments at these schools can be tens of billions of dollars each, and thus represent very significant potential leverage for those wanting to make both symbolic and substantive statements on behalf of environmental impact and climate change. Further, many of these institutions have notably forward-looking, altruistic mission statements.

“With Congress and international climate talks deadlocked, universities are at the front of this issue in that they have such high visibility – we have the opportunity to break this deadlock and create the political will necessary to help people take action on climate change,” Daniel Sherrell, a student leader with the Brown Divest Coal Campaign, at Brown University, told IPS.

“Right now, Brown’s investments in coal run counter to the university’s commitments to human rights. Those investments are also out of alignment with the science coming out of our own departments, which have consistently reinforced previous findings on human-caused climate change.”

A special committee on divestment recently suggested that Brown withdraw its investments in the country’s 15 largest coal companies. That recommendation may be voted upon by late May, and on Friday Sherrell participated in a preparatory subcommittee meeting to smooth the way ahead of the vote.

“Universities are about investing in both the future and the future of students – it doesn’t make sense to be spending money on my education if that money is also being spent on something that will threaten that future,” he says.

“More fundamentally, universities have long been a source of societal dialogue, and we’re trying to lead here. The more that cities, universities and individuals start standing up and saying this doesn’t make sense anymore, the more Congress will hear. This can shift the dialogue.”

Children from one of the communities in Ocean Division, southern Cameroon, who lost much of their forestland after the government leased it to a logging company. Credit: Monde Kingsley Nfor/IPS

Bordered by a rubber plantation in the west, a forestry plantation in the east and a palm oil farm in the south, the 18 local communities that live in Ocean Division, southern Cameroon, have had an uphill struggle for the rights to their land. 

In 2008, the government leased much of their forestland, about 47,000 hectares, to international company United Forest Cameroon.

But only through a sustained campaign and involvement by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a global coalition of organisations working to encourage forestland tenure, the communities were given back some of their land by a February 2012 prime ministerial decree.

Biang Marcelin is the chief of Adjab, one of the villages in Ocean Division. He told IPS that despite the turnaround by the government, the land given back to the community was not sufficient.

“This land was given for use to all 18 villages of this region, which has a total population of about 7,000 people. We asked for 17,000 hectares, but got 13,922 hectares.” Because the communities could not prove ownership of all 47,000 hectares, they had negotiated for the return of 17,000 hectares.

But the story of these communities testifies to the precarious nature of local communities’ land rights in Africa.

“Africa is indeed in a pivotal historic moment regarding who owns the land and, by extension, who owns Africa,” Andy White, the coordinator of RRI, told IPS.

Studies carried out by RRI show that, compared to other continents, Africa lags far behind with regard to meeting the main conditions for securing community tenure rights.

Less than 12 percent of laws recognising community and indigenous peoples land rights in Africa are adequate.

Governments in Africa own and manage 97.9 percent of forestland compared to 36.1 percent government ownership in Latin America and 67.8 percent in Asia.

Since 2009, the RRI has been working in West and Central Africa to stop landgrabbing and land allocations that do not serve a genuine public interest.

The group has also attempted to urge governments to legally recognise the rights of the rural poor, and to push for more equitable models that give forest communities a number of rights, including access to and usage of forest resources.

But only 13 countries out of the 24 in the two regions have undertaken appreciable efforts towards land tenure reforms.

“Some 13 countries have developed statutory tenure instruments. These include tools to formally establish new community rights, and to secure or strengthen existing rights.

“Some have also created institutional arrangements to recognise and secure rights such as local land charters, communal land certificates, and joint state forest management resources,” White said.

In East Africa, countries like Tanzania and Uganda have demonstrated a strong commitment to improving governance and curbing corruption by recognising both customary laws and community land rights.

According to Felician Kilahama, Tanzanian chairperson of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization committee on Forestry: “In Tanzania, where wildlife and fishery resources are found on community land, a village land act, which empowers that village to own that land, is issued by the national commission of land.”

“The land title is given to the village, and the village government or council with 25 members is in charge of overseeing that all resources are for the village and must benefit them,” Kilahama told IPS.

Uganda has also registered similar successes, according to Eddie Nsamba, the executive director of Consult Surveyors and Planners Uganda, an environmental impact assessment firm.

“Land governance in Uganda has changed; the state invested land in the citizens of Uganda instead of investing in itself. The state has 10 percent ownership of the land. What the government does is play the regulatory and control role over the land,” Nsamba told IPS.

In 1998, Uganda recognised customary and traditional ownership of land. It is estimated that some 80 percent of land in the country is owned in this way.

But these are far from perfect models.

“Wherever the reforms took place in West and Central African countries since 2009, it didn’t cover a whole bundle of rights,” Michael Richards, a natural resource economist with NGO Forest Trends, told IPS.

“The reforms that took place usually cover what appears to be a weaker and mostly revocable set of rights (access, usage, management, and extraction rights) but not ownership rights.”

The challenges that African countries face are steep and progress is slow, Phil René Oyono, an independent expert on natural resources, told IPS.

“In Gabon for example, the new land laws passed in 2012 revise the structure of land tenure rights mainly to provide a more flexible regime for commercial transaction on the land,” he said.

While governance of forest resources in Africa is plagued by serious conflicting choices, the flow of foreign capital into the continent is ever tempting.

In Liberia, for example, the Community Rights Law of 2009 was lauded as a major innovation because it recognised customary ownership of land.

But in 2012, the government negotiated a large-scale land acquisition with Malaysian-run Sime Darby and Indonesian Golden Veroleum. The companies were given about 220,000 hectares each of land – a significant portion of the country’s land. It rendered locals’ rights moot before they were implemented, Alfred Lahai, director of Green Advocates Liberia, told IPS.

White said that government structures across West and Central Africa were now “in a bind and divided, with some ministries choosing to hand over natural resources to agribusinesses and mining, and others seeking to protect the rights of their citizens.”

Antarctic Ocean Alliance activists outside the Russian Embassy in Berlin. Credit: Courtesy of George Torode

Everyone loves penguins, but few will know that Thursday is World Penguin Day. Fewer still are those who know penguins are threatened with extinction by climate change and giant fishing trawlers from Europe and Asia stalking the oceans around Antarctica.

Penguins are a protected species, but the factory-sized trawlers are vacuuming up the tiny shrimp-like krill that are their main food source. The Southern Ocean is also becoming increasingly acidic from emissions of fossil fuels and will have a significant impact on krill populations.

And yet efforts to create two marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean have been blocked by China, Russia and Norway.

A network of protected areas was supposed to be established last year but the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) failed to reach a consensus, said Donna Mattfield of the Antarctic Ocean Alliance, a coalition of 30 scientific and environmental organisations.

All 25 CCAMLR member nations had committed to establishing a network but could not agree on marine protected area (MPA) proposals for East Antarctica, and the Ross Sea. They previously agreed to one small MPA in the South Orkney Islands, Mattfield told IPS.

“There’s no scientific justification for not going ahead with the MPAs,” she said noting that less than two percent of the world’s oceans are under any kind of protective management.

The proposed MPAs cover several million square kilometres of the Southern Ocean with a combination of multiple use MPAs and no-take marine reserves. A final decision on these MPAs will come at a special CCAMLR meeting in Bremerhaven, Germany in July.

“The Southern Ocean is under increasing pressure from climate change and resource extraction, but areas such as the Ross Sea and East Antarctica are amongst the least impacted, healthiest, and most beautiful oceans in the world. They are one of the last remaining wildernesses on the planet and deemed a necessary ‘living laboratory’ by scientists”, said Onno Gross, a marine biologist and director of Deepwave, an ocean conservation NGO.

Of the world’s 18 penguin species, 13 are now so threatened they need special protection. In the last few years, factory trawlers have made their way to the remote Southern Ocean to catch krill for the fast-growing trade to supply krill as fish meal for farmed salmon.

More recently, krill are being used to supply the booming health food and pharmaceutical markets for omega-3 three fatty acids believed to prevent heart disease and inflammatory conditions such as arthritis.

“Omega-3 three fatty acids can be obtained from plants. We don’t need them from fish,” says Thilo Maack of Greenpeace.

Europeans are subsidising the construction of supertrawlers that are plundering the oceans off West Africa and now the Southern Ocean because there aren’t enough fish left in European waters, Maack told IPS.

He knows of at least two German-built supertrawlers that are fishing krill. “It’s absurd. We’re going to the ends of the world to find the last few fish. We haven’t learned from our mistakes,” he said.

CCAMLR has set a krill quota of 400,000 tonnes and some 50 trawlers now ply the cold and dangerous waters. Just last week in the Ross Sea, a Chinese supertrawler caught fire and its crew of nearly 100 had to rescued. Luckily the trawler did not leak its thousand tonnes of diesel fuel.

Not a great deal is known about Antarctic krill populations. They are believed to exist in the hundreds of millions of tonnes. However the Southern Ocean is undergoing rapid changes. Krill larvae feed on algae living on the bottom of sea ice, which is rapidly dwindling around the Antarctic Peninsula with rising temperatures.

According to one estimate, the number of krill in the Southern Ocean may have dropped by 80 percent since the 1970s.

CO2 emissions from fossil fuels has made seawater is 30 percent more acidic than 50 years ago. These acid waters weaken or dissolve the shells of many creatures like sea snails. This is already happening in parts of the Southern Ocean. Krill will also be affected especially as acidification worsens with more CO2 emissions, says Maack.

Without major emissions cuts, large parts of the Southern Ocean will be too acidic for shell-forming species, including most plankton and krill, by 2040, oceanographer Carol Turley from Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK previously told IPS.

“We are hoping Germany as host of the special CCAMLR meeting in July will push China, Russia and Norway into agreeing to the two proposed MPAs,” Maack said.

There is a lot riding on this decision Mattfield believes. “It’s an opportunity to create the biggest protected area in history,” she said.

Coastal erosion in Carriacou, Grenada. Credit: Peter Richards/IPS

Tourism, widely regarded as the mainstay of Caribbean economies, is being challenged to remain sustainable in an era of climate change and its impact on beaches, rivers and other attractions.

Carlos Vogeler, regional director for the Americas United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), speaking at a four-day Sustainable Tourism Development conference held here last week, said that World Tourism Day on Sep. 27 will be dedicated to tourism and water.

The goal is to shine a spotlight on water both as an asset and as a resource and on the actions needed to face up to the water challenge.

“Water is one of tourism’s main assets. Each year, millions of people travel around the world to enjoy water destinations both inland and in coastal areas and Caribbean destinations play a key role in this,” Vogeler said.

“Water is also one of tourism’s most precious resources, and as one of the largest economic sectors in the world, it is the responsibility of the tourism industries to take a leadership role and ensure companies and destinations invest in adequate water management throughout the value chain.

“If managed sustainably, tourism can bring benefits to the national and local communities and support water preservation,” Vogeler added.

In his message for World Tourism Day 2012, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recalled that “one of the world’s largest economic sectors, tourism, is especially well-placed to promote environmental sustainability, green growth and our struggle against climate change through its relationship with energy.”

Vogeler told IPS that UNWTO has been supporting better energy use in the tourism sector for years.

“We have been thrilled with the response we received from the international tourism community,” he said.

“The hotel industry accounts for 21 percent of the carbon emissions from tourism and in 2008, UNWTO launched the Hotel Energy Solutions Project for the accommodation sector and today we can provide hoteliers across the world with a free electronic software to assess their energy consumption and propose them the most profitable investment alternatives in terms of energy efficiency and renewable energies.”

The Sustainable Tourism Development conference was facilitated by the region’s tourism development agency, the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO).

Chairman Beverly Nicholson-Doty says devoting resources to develop and maintain a sustainable tourism industry for the future has a very strong potential for a high return on investment.

She told IPS that as one of the most tourism dependent regions in the world, it is crucial to ensure Caribbean residents and visitors fully understand that the preservation of its natural resources will determine its success in the future.

“The Caribbean is blessed with natural beauty – rainforests, beaches coral reefs, vistas, botanical gardens and rivers – there is no shortage of natural wonders,” she said.

“Discerning travellers are seeking a sense of the place – a term which encompasses how a destination cares for its environment and for its people. They feel the quality of their stay is linked to a destination’s commitment to sustainable tourism.

“Increasingly, travellers are specifically seeking out these experiences, and we must make a commitment to preserve our environment,” Nicholson-Doty added.

She urged Caribbean leaders to allocate resources to both the preservation of natural resources and the development of a cutting edge hospitality sector driven by high levels of service excellence in order to provide a well-rounded visitor experience.

“We have to pay close attention because it is our very success which can threaten our most valuable assets, and industry specialists tell us visitors are becoming increasingly aware of the potential negative impact of tourism on the natural beauty, cultural and historical offerings of a destination if not managed well.

“They want to feel their visit contributes to the conservation and enhancement of a destination’s environment, culture, health and general well-being,” the CTO chair said.

Co-Director at the Center for Responsible Travel, Dr. Martha Honey, agrees. She told IPS that growth in the tourism industry is being matched by growing interest in sustainable travel and it shouldn’t be a hard sell to get visitors to the Caribbean to assist in adopting environmentally friendly practices.

She pointed to an “increasing recognition among both travel professionals and consumers of the importance of responsible travel” adding that there is “strong evidence” that sustainable travel is “good for the economic bottom line”.

Dr. Honey cited several surveys which she said supported these points.

“Conde Nast Traveler found, in 2011, that 93 percent of readers said that travel companies should be responsible for protecting the environment; and in 2012, 71 percent of TripAdvisor members said they plan to make more eco-friendly choices in the coming year, up from 65 percent last year.

“A 2011 Harvard Business School study found that companies that adopted environmental, social, and governance policies in the 1990s outperformed those that did not. Adoption of these policies…reflect substantive changes in business processes,” she noted.

Nicholson-Doty told IPS many of the CTO’s 32 members were at varying stages of environmental consciousness and it was therefore necessary to “work together to ensure our policy makers provide the enabling environment for an industry seeking to maximise its sustainable tourism development.

“We must educate our industry to the tangible benefits of sustainable practices and how to make those profitable.”

The Caribbean has long been a leader in tourism.

Last year, the region welcomed nearly 25 million tourists, 5.4 percent more than in 2011 and the largest number of stayover visitors in five years. This rate of growth outpaced the rest of the world which saw arrivals increase by four per cent.
Back in 1950, only 25 million tourists travelled internationally. But the latest figures show one billion tourists travel the world in a single year and around five billion more travel domestically within their own countries.

“These tourists generate over one trillion U.S. dollars in exports for the countries they visit every year, which is close to six percent of the world’s exports of goods and services, and 30 percent of exports, if we consider service alone. One in every 12 jobs worldwide is connected to the tourism sector,” Vogeler told IPS.

“UNWTO is forecasting an average annual growth of 3.3 percent to the year 2030 to hit 1.8 billion international tourists,” he added, noting that “not many industrial sectors can claim this level of average sustained growth.”

Forward On Climate Rally. Washington DC, Feb. 17, 2013. Credit: Stephen D. Melkisethian/cc by 2.0

Advocacy groups here are applauding the publication of new government concerns, formally expressed Monday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), over a recent assessment of the environmental impact of a major oil pipeline that would run between Canada and the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Because the EPA will eventually have to sign off on any decision to approve the pipeline proposal, made by a Canadian company called TransCanada, this indication of the agency’s strong reservations over the government’s assessment could now further gum up the consent process for the seven-billion-dollar project.

While a draft State Department environmental impact assessment (known as an SEIS), released in March, found that the Keystone XL proposal would have no major environmental or climate impact, the EPA has now officially given that appraisal a rating of medium severity. In a letter to State Department officials Monday, the EPA expressed “environmental objections” to the SEIS due to “insufficient information”.

“The EPA has basically told the State Department that it needs to go back and do its homework – they looked at the major parts of the analysis and found it insufficient,” Daniel Kessler, a media campaigner with 350.org, an environment group, told IPS.

“That’s not really a surprise: anyone who doesn’t work for an oil company or the Canadian government has said this is a boondoggle. Still, at the end of the day the only thing that matters is what President [Barack] Obama thinks, and the EPA just gave him ample fodder to reject this proposal.”

In previous assessments, the EPA has expressed such strong concern only very rarely, giving out “environmental objections” or worse in just five percent of cases, according to Kate Colarulli, a campaigner with the Sierra Club, an advocacy group.

“We’re very pleased to see this come out of EPA, as it not only highlights a lot of the issues that we’ve point out, but also adds significant credibility to these concerns,” Colarulli told IPS.

“For a federal agency, this is really tough language. EPA’s job is to make sure that such assessments are both factually accurate and thorough, so that decision-makers have the best set of information, and here they’re saying the work needs to be better.”

Colarulli says this concern is underscored by the fact that the agency is in the midst of contentious Congressional confirmation hearings for a new administrator.

“This is a politically sensitive moment for EPA, so for them to come forward now shows they’re willing to put some skin in the game,” she says. “Their concerns about the negative consequences of the Keystone proposal are serious enough that they’re willing to take a public stand.”

Monday’s letter coincided with the end of a public response period on the State Department’s draft assessment. During that time, the agency reportedly received more than a million responses, although these have not yet been made public.

The State Department, meanwhile, has stated that the EPA’s concerns are just another part of this public response. “The State Department has always anticipated that in preparing a Final Supplemental EIS it would conduct additional analysis and incorporate public comments received on the Draft SEIS,” agency spokesperson Patrick Ventrell said in response to the EPA’s letter.

No updated modelling

The key concerns for the EPA have to do with the State Department’s determination that the direct environmental or climate implications of the Keystone XL proposal would be negligible.

The EPA suggests that the pipeline’s 50-year lifetime would result in 935 million metric tonnes of carbon emissions, a fact that the State Department appraisal does not counter. Nor does it contradict that the particularly dirty “tar sands” oil (or bitumen) that would flow through the pipeline releases far more greenhouse gas-related emissions than does conventional oil.

Rather, the State Department’s reasoning is that the Canadian tar sands would be developed regardless of whether the pipeline gets built – perhaps transporting the oil by train to the Pacific Ocean, instead. In fact, however, this conclusion has been repeatedly questioned, including by oil industry insiders and business analysts – and now by the EPA, the government’s lead regulator on such issues.

“We note that the discussion in the [draft] SEIS, while informative, is not based on an updated energy-economic modelling effort,” the EPA letter states.

“[W]e recommend that the Final EIS provide a more careful review of the market analysis and rail transport options … recognizing the potential for much higher per barrel rail shipment costs than presented in the DSEIS.”

Such suggestions will almost certainly need to be followed in some form. The pipeline’s cross-border nature has left the State Department as the lead agency in deciding on the Keystone XL proposal, with a decision ultimately needed from President Obama.

If none of more than a half-dozen federal agencies has any objection to the final assessment, the State Department would be able to unilaterally make a recommendation on the proposal. Yet the EPA’s letter makes clear that some bedrock objections already exist, and if they’re not dealt with the EPA would have another opportunity to make comments or to require that the approvals process be diverted directly to the White House.

“Both the State Department and President Obama’s administration have made clear that they intend to run a rigorous process using the best scientific evidence,” Anthony Swift, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defence Council, a watchdog group, told reporters Tuesday.

“And it’s impossible to do that while ignoring the findings of the EPA, which has the most expertise in environmental review. It would be very difficult to imagine the State Department ignoring the EPA comments.”

Conflicts of interest

Beyond some of the conclusions in the State Department’s assessment, the way the SEIS itself was undertaken has also come under fire. This follows on a 2011 investigation by the agency’s inspector-general that found that a previous version of the evaluation was carried out by a consultant with close and undisclosed (though not unlawful) links to TransCanada.

While that incident led to reforms of contractor-selection criteria, several groups are now alleging that the State Department has already violated those regulations by hiring a group called Environmental Resources Management (ERM) to complete the draft SEIS. ERM reportedly also has undisclosed ties to TransCanada.

On Monday, 11 environmental and public interest groups requested another investigation from the State Department inspector-general. A letter detailing the request, which IPS has seen, alleges “misleading disclosures on ERM’s conflict of interest questionnaire … [and] the Department’s apparent attempt to conceal ERM employees’ experience on TransCanada projects.”