By Anna Shen
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Sep 11 2013 (IPS)

Newly arrived from London, Robert Swan is facing a promise he made to famed marine researcher and conservationist Jacques Cousteau decades ago.

Robert Swan in Antarctica. Courtesy of the explorer.

Cousteau asked him to preserve the Antarctic, as the “last great wilderness on earth”, from likely drilling and mining that could begin in 2041, which is the year the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty will be up for review and possible amendment.  If the treaty is altered, one of the most pristine parts of the world would likely be forever changed.

Swan plans to draw attention to this issue through what he calls his “last great exploration”. At age 60, he plans to walk once more to the South Pole, and to do so surviving on renewable energy only.

Swan is no stranger to a tough challenge. In the 1980s he was the first person to walk the North and South Poles. Swan has dedicated his life to drawing attention to climate change, and now he hopes to raise even more awareness through his latest expedition.

His first stop was at the American Renewable Energy Day conference in Colorado, where he addressed renewable energy leaders such as Ted Turner and T. Boone Pickens. Now he is on to the United Nations, where he will speak at TEDx UN Plaza on Sep. 16.

Below are excerpts from his conversation with Anna Shen.

Q. Can you tell me what Jacques Cousteau asked you to do, and about your upcoming expedition?

A.  Jacques Cousteau asked me to preserve Antarctica. His 50-year mission was to preserve a place, and then use renewable energy to save it. And to save it is to think about making it not worthwhile for companies to go to Antarctica to explore it.

The real story here is about the last great exploration. I walked to both poles and saw all these things about climate change before the world began to wake up to them. The last great exploration is to survive on earth.

We need to look at how we are going to power our planet. If we don’t there will be no world to explore. We are undertaking an expedition in two years time that is a really big challenge, and we will survive in Antarctica on renewable energy, which nobody has done before. We are willing to go back and put renewable energy to the ultimate test. We will not survive on earth unless we start relying on clean energy.  Decisions today are threatening the future of life on earth.

This is a story that begins with walking to the poles to experience the issues -walking across ice caps that are melting, having our faces burnt off due to a hole in the ozone 25 years ago. What was our response to that? We could join Greenpeace and become activists and they do an excellent job. But what could we do that was different?

We could work with industry and business because everyone makes choices about how to spend money.  But let’s inspire people too, especially youth, with social media and our Facebook page.

Q. How does your mission on creating awareness on renewable energy relate to developing countries?

A. When I walked the poles 22 years ago, the whole issue of energy was not in the front of people’s minds. People were not engaged in thinking about energy. Also, energy use in China and India was not ramped up.

I am working in India on renewable energy projects; if we don’t get India and China using clean renewable energy with one billion people [each], we will have a problem. However, I have been dealing for 15 years with countries like India and China, which are far more important to get right than the USA; there are more people in Bombay than in California – there are 30 million people in one city in India.

Q. Thinking about renewable energy is great in theory, but who are the leaders in producing this technology?

A. The U.S. is the most advanced in this area and has the most money. It is brilliant at technology. If somebody has a good idea in America, there is a good chance to make it happen.

Steve Jobs started in a garage in Berkeley. If you have a fantastic idea, you can get it going, and get the financial support to make the technology happen. That is because people are willing to invest; banks and infrastructure support it to make it happen.

Somebody in China or India may have a great idea but then there is not the financial backing to make it happen. They can’t finance it; that is why America has its advantage, and these big people realise that there is money to be made, and a market.

Q. What is missing in the international debate on renewable energy?

A. Science is telling us that we should be doing certain things, but people are not responding to it globally because people are not listening. People are stuck. There are lots of nations out there that are developing and they want what we want, what we have in the West. The international community needs to be much clearer on directions forward. The USA can help the international community by showing better leadership.

A nation like India produces 1.0 to 1.5 tonnes of carbon per person, but in the U.S. the number is 22 tonnes. The people of India say, “How can we make changes when they produce 22 and we produce one? Why can’t we do what we are doing?” The U.S. needs to show personal leadership, that we are making changes, or else the rest of the world won’t take it seriously. Europe also needs to show leadership.

Excerpt:

Mt. Herschel from Cape Hallet, Antarctica with Seabee Hook penguin colony in foreground. Credit: Andrew Mandemaker/cc by 2.5

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jul 15 2013 (IPS)

International negotiations between more than two-dozen countries to set up conservation areas in the Antarctic seas were thrown into confusion Monday when the Russian and Ukrainian delegations questioned the body’s legal standing to make such designations, despite previous precedent.

Representatives from 25 countries are currently in special two-day talks in Germany under the auspices of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), an organisation that over the past half-century has been widely credited with keeping the Southern Ocean in unusually pristine condition.“The Ross Sea MPA proposal would protect a pristine ecosystem that has fully intact food webs and hosts numerous iconic species." -- Andrea Kavanagh of the Pew Charitable Trusts

“This morning a legal question came to the table [on] whether CCAMLR is in a position to establish marine protected areas [MPAs] in the Ross Sea,” Terje Lobach, chair of the CCAMLR Commission, told reporters on Monday on the sidelines of the talks in Bremerhaven, Germany, according to a recording obtained by IPS.

“The issue was raised by Russia and also by Ukraine, whether CCAMLR really has the competence of establishing MPAs … But many lawyers spoke against the suggestion by Russia and Ukraine and said definitely CCAMLR has the power to mandate MPAs.”

At issue is a proposal, put forth by the United States and New Zealand, that would create the world’s largest marine protected area, in the Ross Sea off Antarctica. If the negotiations are successful, the results would also constitute the most significant example of international powers collectively creating such a conservation area in international waters.

“The Ross Sea MPA proposal would protect a pristine ecosystem that has fully intact food webs and hosts numerous iconic species, such as whales and penguins,” Andrea Kavanagh, director of the Southern Ocean Sanctuaries Campaign at the Pew Charitable Trusts, a Washington-based conservation organisation, told IPS from the Germany summit.

“This is a prime opportunity for countries to protect an ecosystem that’s still intact, but it’s also an opportunity, for the first time ever, for multiple governments to come together to create a marine protected area of this size – usually this is done in just one country’s territory. If they can see this through, it would be historic in terms of international ocean governance and conservation.”

The administration of President Barack Obama has repeatedly offered its strong support for the Ross Sea proposal, a stance it reiterated on Monday, calling the move a potentially “historic step”.

“The Ross Sea Region is one of the last and greatest ocean wilderness areas on the planet,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement.

“With limited human impact to-date and a long history of scientific exploration and discovery, the Ross Sea Region is also a natural laboratory for scientific study to better understand climate change, our oceans, and our world.”

On Saturday, a group of high-profile conservation advocates, speaking under the umbrella of the Ocean Elders, sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, reminding him of Russia’s part in founding CCAMLR and noting Russia’s “critical leadership role to play in determining the future of Antarctica”.

Stalling tactic?

The U.S.-New Zealand Ross Sea proposal would protect around 600,000 square miles of marine ecosystem (an additional proposal would sequester off another 733,000 square miles off the coast of East Antarctica). The two areas together would double the amount of marine ecosystem currently under international conservation protection.

Within that area, however, commercial fishing would be prohibited, and it is this element of the proposal that has riled certain countries that would prefer that any protected area regulates but does not outlaw commercial fishing operations.

When the proposal was first put forward, last fall, Russia and Ukraine were joined by China, Japan and South Korea in questioning the idea, particularly the science around the MPA’s proposed delineation. Indeed, the current summit was called specifically in order to address those questions.

Since then, U.S. and New Zealand officials have reportedly reworked and bolstered the scientific rationale for the proposal. Monday and Tuesday mark the critical political discussions by the CCAMLR commission, but for the previous several days the organisation’s Scientific Committee sifted through the scientific data behind the proposals.

On Monday, the Scientific Committee announced that it was suggesting that the proposal for the Ross Sea MPA go forward.

“We didn’t necessarily talk about the size [of the MPAs] per se, but we talked about the science that underpins the objectives for those areas that were identified. For many of the areas, we felt there was sufficient science and was the best scientific data available to support those areas,” Chris Jones, chair of the Scientific Committee, told reporters Monday.

“In terms of the Scientific Committee, I think our work is done – we have now established that the best available science has been used to underpin these proposals … It’s really up to the commission now and the values of the various members of CCAMLR – and the political will.”

Over the past half-year, U.S. and New Zealand representatives have also reportedly engaged in extensive bilateral deliberations with the rest of the 25 countries, particularly with the holdouts. Given these discussions, observers say the Russian delegation’s new questions about CCAMLR’s legal standing took nearly all delegations by surprise on Monday.

“If nothing else this is pretty bad-faith negotiating, as the proponent countries have been going to Russia, talking to their scientists, inviting comments, inviting discussion – never once did Russia mention that it thinks this body might not have the legal authority to establish an MPA,” the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Kavanagh says.

“Further, no else has ever expressed this legal concern before, so it’s unclear whether this is just a delaying tactic or whether the Russian delegation is awaiting instructions from the capital about how to proceed.”

Yet according to the CCAMLR Commission’s Lobach, initial discussions among legal experts at Bremerhaven were clear that the body does have legal standing to create MPAs – as it did in 2011 with a smaller area, in the South Orkney Islands, to which Russia agreed.

Because CCAMLR operates on a consensus basis, however, the queries raised by Russia and Ukraine could now derail the Ross Sea MPA proposal. The organisation’s rules state that there will be no possibility of extending the discussions beyond Tuesday.

“If this issue is not resolved,” Kavanagh says, “it is likely that other countries won’t be willing to discuss the proposal any longer.”

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

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Apr 24 2013 (IPS)

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."It's absurd. We're going to the ends of the world to find the last few fish." -- Greenpeace's Thilo Maack

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.