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PASADENA, Calif. – A new NASA study of Earth's polar ozone layer reinforces scientists' understanding of how human-produced chlorine chemicals involved in the destruction of ozone interact with each other. A team of scientists led by Michelle Santee of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., examined how nighttime temperatures affect chlorine monoxide, a key chemical involved in ozone destruction. Combining NASA satellite measurements with a state-of-the-art chemical model, they found this relationship to be more consistent with recent laboratory work than with some older laboratory and field observational data. This verification is important, because scientists have not been able to conduct appropriate laboratory experiments relevant to understanding how polar chlorine monoxide behaves at night at the lowest temperatures of the stratosphere, Earth's second lowest atmospheric layer.
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Thursday,27 May, 2010 | Hits: 143
Hyderabad, : The Union Secretary for the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Mr Deepak Gupta, today called upon wind energy power generation firms to use the generation-based incentives and accelerated depreciation to help achieve the Plan targets of new capacity addition.
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Friday,04 June, 2010 | Hits: 147
Politicians won't act to conserve biodiversity unless they have strong evidence that it is an effective strategy for combating global poverty.
Tomorrow (22 May) is the International Day for Biological Diversity. But planned celebrations are sure to be dampened by the news that the world has failed to meet its target to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss This target, set for 2010, was agreed by parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2002 and subsequently incorporated into the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of ensuring environmental sustainability by 2015.
Later this year, political and scientific leaders at two major international meetings will face hard questions about why global efforts to stem biodiversity loss have not been more successful — and what must be done about it.
The first is the MDG review summit in New York in September. And at the second, the Biodiversity Summit scheduled for October in Nagoya, Japan, CBD signatories are due to agree a new set of targets — and hopefully a more realistic strategy for achieving them.
The failure to halt biodiversity loss does not reflect a lack of commitment by the scientific community. Over the past few decades, many scientists have spearheaded efforts to highlight the damaging impacts that human activity can have on our natural environment.
Persuading policymakers
But it has been difficult to align this message with the priorities of politicians. The key challenge is to persuade policymakers that preventing biodiversity loss is an essential step towards the much more widely accepted political goal of eliminating global poverty.
To some champions of biodiversity, the links are obvious. They point out, for example, that all social development relies on 'services' provided by natural ecosystems — from clean air and water to food and renewable energy sources — and that any damage to these services threatens the communities that depend on them.
But, so far, such 'self-evident' arguments have failed to convince politicians to take action.
What is needed is more robust evidence that conserving biodiversity alleviates poverty. Policymakers need firm scientific evidence of a direct link between protecting the natural environment and promoting the interests of poor communities.
There are already some efforts that are coming up with the evidence. This week, for example, we report on a study in Kenya that shows that protecting fish stocks by limiting fishing can preserve their economic viability.
More evidence was presented last month at a conference in London, organised by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). A highlight was an address by Craig Leisher from The Nature Conservancy, United States, who described five key interventions from peer-reviewed research where biodiversity conservation has been shown to alleviate poverty, such as forest tourism
Complicating factors
But the broader message to emerge from the London meeting, in particular from three 'state of knowledge reviews' commissioned by the IIED, is that there is an overall lack of robust, scientific evidence on the relationship between biodiversity and poverty.
One of the reviews, examining spatial patterns of biodiversity and poverty, endorsed the widely-held view that they do indeed overlap, but concluded that precisely where depends on which definitions of biodiversity and poverty are used.
Further, the existence of a spatial correlation does not increase our fundamental understanding about how and why biodiversity and poverty overlap.
Another of the reviews highlighted the lack of sound evidence on the extent to which the poor depend on biodiversity. One of the authors, Bhaskar Vira from the University of Cambridge, pointed to a conceptual leap between the abundance of resources — such as non-timber products — and biodiversity. "Is it dependence on biodiversity that we're documenting, or just dependence on resource-based livelihoods?" he asked.
In many cases, there is also the complication of accurately determining the extent to which conservation elements of projects have successfully reduced poverty, to avoid exaggerated claims about the role conservation has played.
None of these questions have easy answers. But what is clear is that more research is needed to produce hard evidence of the links between biodiversity and poverty.
Research — and action
To investigate the links, researchers will have to work together effectively across disciplines. And donors will have to give higher priority to research projects that are explicitly oriented to demonstrate the links between biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation.
Of course, there is always the danger that a call for more research can be used as an excuse for political inaction in the meantime.
But without solid evidence that biodiversity conservation can alleviate poverty, politicians simply won't buy into the idea of protecting biodiversity, or will take action that however well meaning, ends up unfocused and ineffective.
There is no clearer example of the need to base good policy on sound scientific evidence; generating such evidence must be recognised as one of the major tasks ahead.
{xtypo_info}David Dickson, DirectorSian Lewis, Commissioning editorSciDev.Net{/xtypo_info}...
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Thursday,20 May, 2010 | Hits: 191
Himalayan countries must set aside their differences and collaborate on science in order to avoid a common water crisis, says a report.
Environmental pressures, including those from climate change, could have unprecedented effects on the livelihoods of millions of people in the Hindu-Kush Himalaya region, according to the study, published by the UK-based Humanitarian Futures Programme, the Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, and China Dialogue.
Yet scientific research is either non-existent or, where it exists, is not shared beyond a country's borders, said the report, 'The Waters of the Third Pole: Sources of Threat, Sources of Survival'. And scientists are failing to communicate what they do know to the public and policymakers, it added.
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Tuesday,25 May, 2010 | Hits: 277
Polluting factories in rural communities are forming a deadly toxic cocktail for villagers, leading to surging rates of cancer
Zheng Gumei thought she was down with a cold until the doctor told her to wait outside the room so he could talk to her son alone.
"I knew then that I must have a serious illness," the 47-year-old farmer recalled, wiping away the tears and then staring into the distance. "I'm having treatment now. See, my hair has fallen out," she said, taking off her hat to show the side-effects of chemotherapy.
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Sunday,30 May, 2010 | Hits: 280
The Environment Ministry will hold a series of country-wide public meetings from next week to discuss the proposed Rs 44,000 crore Green Mission which aims to increase the total forest cover by 20 million hectares by 2020.
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Tuesday,01 June, 2010 | Hits: 257
The first UK project allowing builders to buy "credits" in conservation schemes, to offset the damage they are doing elsewhere, has been launched.Conservation credit – or biobanking – schemes have been trialled in the US, Australia and South Africa and experts believe the industry could become worth billions of pounds in Britain.
The initial step is the sale of shares in a £100m project to restore and reconnect fragmented wetlands, woodlands and grasslands around the headwaters of the river Thames in the west of England.The shares are being sold by the Environment Bank, a company that helps deliver "mitigation and compensation schemes associated with planned development".
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Thursday,27 May, 2010 | Hits: 523
Oslo conference attended by 52 nations produces first concrete sign of global action on climate change since Copenhagen
Rich and poor countries today agreed on guidelines for releasing aid to save forests, in the first concrete sign of global action on climate change since Copenhagen.Norway, which chaired this week's climate conference, said aid pledges to save forests had risen by $500m (£345m) since the UN climate conference in Copenhagen last December.But this is less than was expected just weeks ago – showing the limits of more state funding amid economic crises and unrest in the financial markets.Some experts say the modest increase in state aid for forests, whose conservation is seen as the cheapest way of lowering carbon emissions, underlines the need for private sector engagement.
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Wednesday,26 May, 2010 | Hits: 291
Having unveiled its Rs 44,000 crore 'Green Mission' aiming to enhance its forest cover, India hopes to secure global funding to undertake the ambitious programme to curb greenhouse gas emissions. At a presentation at the Oslo Conference on Climate and Forests yesterday, Environment Secretary Vijai Sharma said, "Since the bulk of India's biodiversity is in forests, there is a need to put REDD (Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and Plus programme on the same footing, as envisaged in Bali Action Plan.
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Thursday,27 May, 2010 | Hits: 528
India's greenhouse gas emissions grew 58 percent between 1994 and 2007, official figures released on Tuesday showed, helped up by a largely coal-reliant power sector that nearly doubled its share in emissions.
Total emissions rose to 1.9 billion tonnes in 2007 versus 1.2 billion in 1994, with industry and transport sectors also upping their share in Asia's third largest economy and confirming India's ranking among the world's top five carbon polluters.
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Tuesday,11 May, 2010 | Hits: 283
