By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Feb 8 2007 (IPS)

The severe degradation of the environment and its impact on climate change are dominating discussions currently underway at the 24th meeting of the governing council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in the Kenyan capital.

Delegates at the five-day meeting which ends Feb. 9, are in agreement that climate change, which remains the world’s overriding environmental challenge, requires global efforts to counter it.

Reducing deforestation is being cited as a key measure to mitigate some of the effects of climate change.

Achim Steiner, UNEP’s executive director, emphasised his organisation’s intention to plant a billion trees worldwide by year-end. Launched in 2006, the Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign, encourages the planting of trees appropriate to local environments.

However, some targetted local communities say they have minimal or no access to the internet, and are hindered by a language barrier.

”Communities do not have access to the internet for information and advice on the campaign, yet they are the ones who are expected to plant those trees,” James Maina, coordinator of Friends of Sports, an organisation promoting environmental conservation through sports in Mathare, a Nairobi slum, told IPS.

Indeed logging for commercial purposes emerged as a major reason for deforestation, which apart from increasing the occurrence of severe drought and flooding everywhere, was forcing wildlife from their forest habitats.

Environmentalists have declared a near conservation emergency in Indonesia where rapid loss of forests, even in national parks, has led to the reckless slaughter and displacement of native orangutans (apes).

”Illegal logging takes place in 37 out of 41 national parks in Indonesia. More than 1,000 orangutans, which are a major tourist attraction, have run away from the parks and are now living in rescue centres,” Rachmat Witoelar, Indonesia’s minister of environment said in Nairobi this week.

A UNEP report launched Feb. 6 at the meeting indicates that with continued logging, many parks may become severely degraded before 2012, increasing the rate of loss of the orangutans, which is up to 30 percent higher than previously thought.

According to the report, Rapid Response Assessment: The Last Stand of the Orangutan, 73 to 88 percent of all timber logged in Indonesia was illegal.

But a law banning illegal logging in the Asian country seems to be improving the situation, according to Witoelar. ”New loggers are very minimal. We are currently prosecuting 100 loggers; this has worked to deter other would-be loggers,” he told IPS.

In Kenya, a similar law is in place to help increase the forest cover which currently stands at a critical 1.7 percent, against a global green cover of 21.43 percent and an average of 9.25 percent for Africa.

Despite the 1999 ban, forests have continued to be depleted prompting the authorities to deploy district forest officers to patrol the country’s forests. ”We believe by officers being on the look out, we will have more trees standing, thereby improving the country’s forest cover,” Nafasi Mfahaya of the forest department in Kenya’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources said.

Still the climate change discussions also include concerns that another solution involves the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by industrialised countries.

”We can talk and talk at meetings, but action needs to come from the rich nations. Without them reducing their emissions, we can do so little to combat climate change,” Grace Akumu, executive director of Climate Network Africa, a Pan-African environmental organisation told IPS.

The United States, which is the largest producer of GHGs, (accounting for 25 percent of the emissions by industrialised countries), has not yet ratified the Kyoto protocol, which was signed by former president Bill Clinton’s administration. It committed the U.S. to a 7 percent reduction in GHG emissions.

Under the 1997 protocol, 35 industrialised nations are to reduce their emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2012.

The sticky issue of GHG emissions featured prominently in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in Paris last week. The report warned that time may be running out to control GHG emissions and to help developing countries cope with the adverse impact of climate change.

”The scientific and moral arguments for urgent action are now over. It is up to political and business leaders as well as citizens around the world to seize this challenge and work together to tackle the biggest challenge that humanity has ever faced,” said a statement circulated from the British International Institute for Environment and Development.

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