Developing Nations Discuss Ways to Fight Climate Change

By Brent Latham (VOA News)

The delegates at the U.N. conference on climate change in Ghana say they are pleased with the progress made after a week of negotiations. Brent Latham reports from our West Africa bureau in Dakar, the parties hope to shape a new global environmental regime to further incorporate African countries in the fight against global warming.  

The U.N.-sponsored meeting in Accra was one in a series aimed at forging a deal to replace the Kyoto protocol, which expires at the end of 2012, and was never fully embraced.  

The process has sped up, and parties have become more serious about reaching an agreement, said executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Yvo de Boer said that time is running out to come to reach an accord on climate change, and that he witnessed a growing sense of urgency at the conference.  

Developing countries demonstrated initiative this week, says Keya Chatterjee, deputy director of the climate change program at Washington, D.C.-based World Wildlife Fund.

“What we have seen is the emerging economies and developing countries that have been taking the lead. It has been really interesting to watch,” said Chatterjee. “Many developing countries have come to the table with specific targets, with national action plans on climate change.”

Countries designated by the Kyoto accord as developing are not required to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. A major issue in the negotiations for the new environmental deal is how to incorporate developing countries into the fight against climate change without hampering their economic growth. Negotiators are also considering ways to reward countries that avoid deforestation.  

Chatterjee says it is important that developing countries are becoming more involved in the global fight against climate change, which can have adverse effects on agricultural outputs.

Read on here.

Kenya: First Steps Taken To Tackle Climate Change

By SAMWEL KUMBA (Daily Nation)

A planned climate change office will address the impact of global warming.

The move indicates the Government’s seriousness in tackling the effects of climate change, Environment and Mineral Resources assistant minister Jackson Kiptanui had said.

“In Kenya we are concerned about the adverse impacts of climate change on the environment and water towers including the Mau catchment, Tana River, Aberdare ranges, Mt Elgon and Cherangany,” he said.

Illegal settlers

Mr Kiptanui, who was addressing the 22nd Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum at a Nairobi Hotel yesterday, termed it unfortunate that the country’s water catchment areas were being invaded by illegal settlers.

This, he said, resulted in deforestation and land degradation, which reduced the flow of water in stream, affecting millions of people downstream.

Professor Richard Odingo from the University of Nairobi’s Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, warned that global warming was a real threat in Kenya and could lead to reduced food production.

In Kenya, losses for three crops — mangoes, cashew nuts and coconuts — could cost almost Sh32 billion with each one metre sea level rise.

Read on here.

Xcel to Expand Greenhouse-Gas Data Relating to Risks Associated with Climate Change Litigation

 

By Rebecca Smith (Wall Street Journal)

Xcel Energy Inc. agreed to expand its disclosures about the possible impact of climate-change and greenhouse-gas legislation on its business in response to a 2007 subpoena from the New York attorney general.The settlement is “an effort to create a new model” for climate-change disclosures to investors, said Katherine Kennedy, New York’s special deputy attorney general for environmental protection.

Xcel, a Minneapolis-based energy company, doesn’t own any generating plants in New York but it is a major owner of coal-fired plants in other states and is building an additional plant in Colorado, its first such plant in almost three decades.

New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, last year issued subpoenas to Xcel and four other energy companies — AES Corp., Dominion Resources Inc., Dynegy Inc. and Peabody Energy Corp. — citing the 1921 Martin Act that gives his office broad powers to access internal documents of firms doing business in New York, even if the primary relationship is a listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

Several Eastern states have taken steps to discourage production of electricity from coal due to the air pollution that results, which can blow across state boundaries. New York has asserted a right to intervene in coal-plant proposals in other states by arguing that carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere and affects the whole planet. The initial batch of Martin Act subpoenas related to climate change targeted firms with plans to build additional coal plants.

Under the agreement announced Wednesday, Xcel will beef up its disclosures in annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For example, there will be a more rigorous analysis of its perceived financial risk from existing laws and possible future laws, its actual and expected emissions levels, mitigation actions and other disclosures.

Read on here.

A Detour in Maryland’s Climate Change Roadmap

In the laundry list of recommendations for curbing greenhouse gases put out this week by the Maryland Commission on Climate Change, one idea that didn’t make it was halting construction of the long-disputed Intercounty Connector. 

That’s not surprising, perhaps, when you consider that the commission was appointed by Gov. Martin O’Malley. Despite an otherwise green record – he scored a record-high A-minus recently from the Maryland League of Conservation Voters - the governor has taken heat from environmentalists for his vow to complete the six-lane tollway through Washington’s suburbs.

The issue divides environmentalists - not over its substance but over the political pragmatism of potentially angering a powerful patron.  A lawsuit filed by environmental and community groups to stop the highway was thrown out, allowing construction to begin - though the groups have appealed.

“It was one of the most controversial topics discussed,” said Brad Heavner, state director of Environment Maryland and a member of one of the climate commission’s working groups. 

It seems that ICC foes did briefly plant their flag during the climate commission’s deliberations last fall, before being thwarted by supporters of the east-west highway.  A small working group focused on transportation and land use issues reportedly put forward a recommendation to stop building the ICC in consideration of its impacts on climate change.  They argued that that the $2.4 billion project would encourage more driving – and release more climate-warming greenhouse gases – than if the state expanded transit service and put tolls on existing roads to ease traffic congestion.  

The Environmental Defense Fund, for instance, has estimated that building the 18.8-mile highway would boost gasoline consumption in the Washington region by 5 percent within a generation.  And if the state invested instead in transit and other measures to reduce driving, the difference in fuel use could be as much as 11 percent, according to the group’s analysis.

Read on here.

Alaska: Climate-Change Frontier

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff| (Christian Science Monitor)

On the approach to Exit Glacier in southeastern Alaska, wooden signs mark nearly 200 years of the ice’s retreat. They begin at 1815, about a mile and a half from the ice’s current terminus. That was the end of a several centuries-long cold spell known as the Little Ice Age. Since then, the bluish ice has receded up the valley at an average rate of 13 meters per year.

Scientists are quick to say that glaciers naturally come and go and that no single phenomenon can be pegged with certainty to human-induced climate change. (Exit Glacier began shrinking before the Industrial Revolution greatly increased greenhouse gases, for one thing.)

But the glacier’s retreat is part of a greater trend. Ice fields throughout the region are thinning. The pattern is apparent in other parts of the world as well. With few exceptions, mountain glaciers in Patagonia, the Himalayas, the Alps, the Rockies, and the Andes – are shrinking. As Doug Causey, vice provost for research and graduate studies at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, says, “We have a pretty good idea of what causes ice to melt.”

The world is warming. Average global temperatures have increased by 1.36 degrees F. since the 19th century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In the past 50 years, the rate of warming has nearly doubled. The warming trend is even more pronounced at high latitudes. Temperatures in Alaska have risen 3.6 degrees F. in the past half-century. The warmer conditions are changing marine and terrestrial ecosystems and forcing human communities to adapt as well.

Warmer winters have resulted in spruce bark beetles eating through vast tracts of forest. Some wetlands appear to be drying out. Several coastal villages previously protected by sea ice now find themselves exposed to the ocean’s full fury. They’ll have to relocate.

“What’s happening with climate change – it’s not speculation,” says Colleen Swan, a tribal administrator of Kivalina, a 399-person Inupiat community on the Chukchi Sea. “It’s our reality.”

Alaskan glaciers are thinning at a rate of 1.8 meters yearly, according to laser measurements taken from aircraft.

Read on here.