The Amazon in the News

The worst floods on the records

The Negro River in Brazil’s Amazonas state in the Amazon Rainforest region is suffering the worst flood ever registered in the region, local authorities said Wednesday.

According to Brazil’s Geological Service, the Negro River’s water level had reached 29.78 metres on Tuesday, the highest record in a century, Xinhua news agency reported.

It forecast water level will continue to rise and remain above 29 metres for more than two months.

The flood has affected 75,000 families and has prompted 53 out of 62 municipalities in Amazonas state including state capital Manaus to declare a state of emergency.

Amazing fungus can consume discarded plastic

Researchers have discovered a fungus in the Amazon rainforest that can break down the common plastic polyurethane, used in billions of discarded plastic bottles.

Their pile-up, amounting to one billion tonnes since 1950s, is threatening to choke many of the eco systems so vital for survival of life. The synthetic material, derived from petrochemicals, degrades very slowly because of its complex chemical bonds.

Endophytes are fungi were found in plant stems collected in the Ecuadorian rainforest.

In plants they do not cause any noticeable disease symptoms in their hosts but they often play a key role in the decomposition of the plants after death. However, never before have they been tested for their ability to degrade synthetic materials.

McDonald’s launches new sourcing policy for palm oil, paper, beef to reduce global environmental impact

http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0310-mcdonalds.html

March 11, 2011

McDonald’s announced a far-reaching sourcing policy that could significantly reduce the fast-food giant’s impact on the environment, including global forests. Yesterday McDonald’s unveiled its Sustainable Land Management Commitment (SLMC), a policy that requires its suppliers to use “agricultural raw materials for the company’s food and packaging that originate from sustainably-managed land”. The commitment will be monitored via an independent evaluation process, according to the company. The policy will initially focus on five commodities: beef, poultry, coffee, palm oil, and packaging. McDonald’s target commodities are based on analysis conducted in partnership with environmental group WWF’s Market Transformation initiative led by Jason Clay.

Under SLMC, McDonald’s is working with the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef to improve the environmental performance of beef production and is sponsoring a three-year study to assess carbon emissions on 350 ranches in the U.K. and Ireland. The company said it plans to join the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) this year and will source only RSPO-certified palm oil by 2015. McDonald’s has also joined the Sustainability Consortium, a group working to build tools to assess the environmental impacts of consumer products over their life-cycle.

McDonald’s said it is introducing the policy as a response to consumer concerns. “We know that our customers care about where their food comes from,” said Francesca DeBiase, McDonald’s vice president for Strategic Sourcing, in a statement.

The announcement comes amid a broader emphasis on sustainability by consumer-facing retailers worldwide. As corporations have increased the share of resources they consume in meeting global demand for their products, they have found themselves increasingly under pressure to become better stewards of the environment. Accordingly, a number of major retailers in recent years have announced new sourcing policies that improve traceability of raw materials in their supply chains. Suppliers have either had to meet these criteria or find new customers.

McDonald’s experienced this first-hand in 2006 when the activist group Greenpeace launched a campaign targeting animal feed used to fatten chickens used for McNuggets in Europe. Greenpeace spent a year tracking soy as it moved through the supply chain from farms in the southern Amazon to ports on the Amazon River, across the Atlantic, and eventually to poultry facilities in Britain and Ireland.

The response was immediate. McDonalds—stung by the McLibel case of the 1990s and other activist campaigns—immediately demanded its suppliers provide deforestation-free soy, presenting the industry was presented with a daunting dilemma: move towards environmental respectability or off its biggest, and most influential, customers. The largest soy players—whose vast portfolio of commodities are sold globally—chose the former, agreeing to a moratorium on soy grown on newly deforested lands that has changed the way commodities are produced in the Amazon. The moratorium has been extended every year since and through monitoring, which has continually improved, has shown to be effective at reducing direct forest clearing for soy production.

In a sign of the campaign’s success, John Sauven, a Greenpeace campaign director at the time—issued a statement congratulating McDonald’s for using “its might to push a multi-million dollar industry towards a more sustainable future. I cannot say it came naturally to Greenpeace to jump into bed with the world’s largest fast food company!” Sauven said in the statement.

McDonald’s, which says it has 32,000 locations that serve approximately 64 million customers in 117 countries each day, acknowledged its global environmental responsibility in making its latest announcement.

“McDonald’s serves customers around the world, and we accept the responsibility that comes with our global presence,” said McDonald’s Chief Executive Officer Jim Skinner. “We will continue to focus our energy on developing sustainable sourcing practices and broadening our menu choices.”

 

Sustainable energy access critical for development in Africa | Helen Clark

29 Dec 2011

http://www.beta.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourperspective/ourperspectivearticles/2011/12/29/sustainable-energy-access-critical-for-development-in-africa-helen-clark.html

Almost 45 per cent of those who lack access to energy live in Sub-Saharan Africa, making up 69 per cent of the region’s population. They number 585 million people. Seventy eight per cent of those living in Sub-Saharan Africa use traditional biomass for cooking and heating (650 million).

Energy needs extend well beyond having electricity available in homes. In Africa, where so many depend on rain-fed agriculture for their livelihood, expanding access to energy for irrigation, food production, and processing is vital. It can boost agricultural productivity and rural incomes, and empower women who make up a significant proportion of the continent’s farmers.

For UNDP, access to sustainable energy is critical for making societies more equitable and inclusive, and for encouraging green growth and sustainable development overall. We advocate for equity, inclusiveness, resilience, and sustainability to be the guiding principles for efforts to achieve universal energy access.

We recognize that different groups have different energy needs. Therefore, governments need to balance the financing of large-scale energy projects with support for the off-grid, decentralized energy solutions which will help meet the needs of the poorest and most marginalised people. Cleaner cooking and heating fuels and motor power for productive activities are also needed.

If Africa’s abundant sources of renewable energy can be harnessed to help provide universal energy access, then poverty can be reduced and growth stimulated without damaging our climate ecosystems further. The International Energy Agency estimates that Sub-Saharan Africa will need cumulative investments of $US 389 billion to achieve universal electricity access by 2030 and of $US 22 billion for clean fuels and devices for cooking and heating by 2030.

Public funding alone will not be enough to cover the costs, African countries need to be able to attract and access different sources of finance.

The UN Secretary General’s initiative on Sustainable Energy for All is building a coalition of support for energy access which can help establish enabling conditions and give confidence to investors to support ambitious energy expansion and make energy poverty history.

Achieving sustainable energy for all will reduce energy poverty, and help combat climate change.

A strong outcome on sustainable energy is needed at Rio +20. It is highly relevant to all three pillars of sustainable development – the economic, social and environmental. UNDP is fully committed to play its part to make sustainable energy for all possible.

Year 9: The UN has attached equitably access to clean energy as part of which MDV?

 

Plant Eating Dinosaur Discovered in Antarctica

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111219102054.htm

Dec. 19, 2011

For the first time, the presence of large bodied herbivorous dinosaurs in Antarctica has been recorded. Until now, remains of sauropoda — one of the most diverse and geographically widespread species of herbivorous dinosaurs — had been recovered from all continental landmasses, except Antarctica. Dr. Ignacio Alejandro Cerda, from CONICET in Argentina, and his team’s identification of the remains of the sauropod dinosaur suggests that advanced titanosaurs (plant-eating, sauropod dinosaurs) achieved a global distribution at least by the Late Cretaceous. (The Cretaceous Period spanned 99.6-65.5 million years ago, and ended with the extinction of the dinosaurs).

Sauropoda is the second most diverse group of dinosaurs, with more than 150 recognized species. It includes the largest terrestrial vertebrates that ever existed.

Climate change will be good for Britain’s growers says Met Office but not for everyone else

From an article by Louise Gray

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8935793/Climate-change-will-be-good-for-Britains-growers-says-Met-Office.html

05 Dec 2011

The report, which brings together for the first time climate change projections for 24 different countries, found that farmers in the UK, Germany and Canada could all benefit from global warming.  In these temperate climates, the increase in temperature will not kill plants but can make it easier to grow crops like wheat. The UK could benefit the most with an estimated 96 per cent of agricultural land becoming more suitable for crops by 2100.

However Australia, Spain and South Africa will all see their crop production fall as the plants die in the hotter climate. More than 90 per cent of the land in these countries will become less suitable for agriculture. The report estimated that the production of staple food crops will decrease in parts of Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India Russia, Turkey and the USA. A recent Oxfam have warned that food prices are already rising as a result of reduced crop yield around the world due to climate change and warned the problem could drive malnutrition in future.

The report also estimated the likelihood of water shortages and floods in different countries across the world. In the UK the number of households under ‘water stress’ will increase to almost a quarter of the population as the average temperature rises by up to 3C in the south. This means that by 2100 18 million people will be at risk of ‘not having enough water to meet their daily needs’.

Water stress will be worse in South and South East, where there is already a problem providing the growing population with enough water. This winter water companies in Anglia, South East Water and Severn Trent have declared themselves in drought and are asking consumers to limit water use. It is expected the South East and Midlands will face a hosepipe ban next summer following the driest 12 months on record in some areas.

At the other end of the scale the risk of costal and river flooding will also increase because of rising sea levels and more heavy bursts of rainfall. The Met Office estimated that there will be a “general increase in flood risk for the UK”, although this will not apply everywhere. The projections ranged from a three and a half times greater risk of flooding to a decrease in flooding by a fifth.

A really neat way to look at things

Antarctic glaciers surge to ocean

From an article by Martin Redfern

Rothera Research Station, Antarctica

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7261171.stm

This is a long article which explains why there is some considerable concern about the ice sheets in West Antarctica about ice sheets the size of Texas. The basic problem appears to be that one of the major glaciers, the Pine Glacier, has increased its acceleration by 7 times since the 1990s. This demonstrates that there is a major instability. But it does not appear to be temperature increase that is causing the problem. Much more likely that a warm water current is undercutting the point where the glacier meets the sea that is increasing its flow over land towards the sea. It is also possible that geothermal heat being released by a volcano at the head of the glacier may also being having an impact. Whatever the causes, a major collapse of ice in West Antarctic can not be ignored.

Analysis Promising Biodiesel Crop needs Time To Prove Itself

http://planetark.org/wen/63724

Date: 28-Oct-11: From article by  Nina Chestney

There is new hope for biodeisal from a little known tree, the pongamia pinnata tree. It will not reduce food production as it grows on poor land but much more research is needed before we can be sure it will work.

Pongamia pinnata is native to Australia, India and parts of southeast Asia. Its oil has so far been used in medicines, lubricants and oil lamps. Pongamia is attractive because, after six years of cultivation, its oil yield is estimated to rise to around 23 tonnes per hectare per year — almost double yields of 12 tonnes from jatropha (see below), another tree that is a biodiesel feed crop, and 11 tonnes from palm oil.

But the optimism is cautious as prior experience with jatropha shows that what looks like a promising crop may prove disappointing. A few years ago, jatropha was hailed as a biofuel alternative to fossil fuels that would not further impoverish developing countries by diverting resources away from food production. Its high oil yield and ability to grow on marginal land were attractive, but its commercial promise was overstated. Some farmers found that it needed fertilizer to thrive and that its harvesting and processing proved energy-intensive.

However, the evergreen pongamia can grow on marginal arid or semi-arid land and is a nitrogen-fixing tree, which means that it helps fertilize the soil, is promising.

POTENTIAL?

While several large organisations have already planted trees in unused areas of Australia and India, it also believed that there is a role for small scale production.  India has recognized the potential for small-holders to grow the tree on marginal land and has encouraged them to plant around 25 million trees since 2003 and has bought the seed pods for processing into biodiesel.

Renewables boost local economies

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5gpcgaKvNQ7YNUH0PMqX6S2iZbvIg?docId=N0181921319104724426A

Renewable energy schemes such as wind farms and hydropower can help communities become sustainable and create local jobs, the Co-operative Bank said.

The bank said it had reached the milestone of lending more than half a billion pounds to renewable energy projects since 2007, and aims to have lent £1 billion by 2013.

It has funded 108 new renewable energy projects in this time, specialising in projects with a capital value of up to £25 million which are usually taken on by smaller developers, community groups and landowners.

They include onshore wind, hydroelectric, biomass and combined heat and power systems.

Richard Wilcox, head of social banking at the Co-operative Bank, said: “At a time when many communities are fighting for survival from the wider economic challenges, small to medium renewable energy schemes provide them an opportunity for communities to become sustainable, creating local jobs and diversifying local economies.”

He warned rapid growth in renewable energy investments could “grind to a halt” if current reviews of the subsidies systems for the technologies were not completed quickly and with a view to nurturing fledgling environmental industries.

Significant Ozone Hole Remains Over Antarctica

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111020145106.htm

Oct. 20, 2011

The Antarctic ozone hole, which yawns wide every Southern Hemisphere spring, reached its annual peak on September 12, stretching 10.05 million square miles, the ninth largest on record.  The ozone layer helps protect the planet’s surface from harmful ultraviolet radiation. NOAA and NASA use balloon-borne instruments, ground instruments, and satellites to monitor the annual South Pole ozone hole, global levels of ozone in the stratosphere, and the human-made chemicals that contribute to ozone depletion.

The upper part of the atmosphere over the South Pole was colder than average this season and that cold air is one of the key ingredients for ozone destruction. Other key ingredients are ozone-depleting chemicals that remain in the atmosphere and ice crystals on which ozone-depleting chemical reactions take place.

Even though it was relatively large, the size of this year’s ozone hole was within the expected range given the levels of manmade, ozone-depleting chemicals that continue to persist. Levels of most ozone-depleting chemicals are slowly declining due to international action, but many have long lifetimes, remaining in the atmosphere for decades.

As a result, scientists around the world are looking for evidence that the ozone layer is beginning to heal, but this year’s data from Antarctica do not hint at a turnaround. In August and September (spring in Antarctica), the sun begins rising again after several months of darkness. Circumpolar winds keep cold air trapped above the continent, and sunlight-sparked reactions involving ice clouds and human-made chemicals begin eating away at the ozone. Most years, the conditions for ozone depletion ease by early December, and the seasonal hole closes.

Levels of most ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere have been gradually declining since an international treaty to protect the ozone layer, the 1987 Montreal Protocol, was signed. That international treaty caused the phase out of ozone-depleting chemicals, then used widely in refrigeration, as solvents and in aerosol spray cans.

Global atmospheric models predicted that stratospheric ozone could recover by the middle of this century, but the ozone hole in the Antarctic will likely persist one to two decades beyond that.