Climate change deal must aim to help women: U.N.

Women bear the brunt of drought, rising seas, melting glaciers and other effects of climate change but are mostly ignored in the debate over how to halt it, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said on Wednesday.

In its 2009 state of the world population report, the agency said the world's poor are the most vulnerable to climate change and the majority of the 1.5 billion people living on $1.0 a day or less are women.

"Poor women in poor countries are among the hardest hit by climate change, even though they contributed the least to it," said UNFPA executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid.

World leaders are due to meet at a U.N. global warming summit in Copenhagen in December and the U.N. agency urged them to think about how much women are harmed by climate change and how much they could be engaged in the fight against it.

"With the possibility of a climate catastrophe on the horizon, we cannot afford to relegate the world's 3.4 billion women and girls to the role of victim," Obaid said in a commentary on the report. "Wouldn't it make more sense to have 3.4 billion agents for change?"

Obaid said that because the poor are more likely to depend on agriculture for a living, they risk going hungry or losing their livelihood when droughts, floods or hurricanes strike. They also tend to live in marginal areas, more vulnerable to floods, rising seas and storms.

Because women are often the poorest in society and have less power over their lives, less recognition of economic worth and bear the brunt of raising children, they suffer more, she said.

The UNFPA report cited research which showed that women are more likely than men to die in natural disasters and that the gap is widest in poorer societies where women have low status.

It called for investments aimed at empowering women and girls -- particularly in education and health -- and said the international community's fight against climate change was more likely to succeed if policies and treaties take into account the needs, rights and potential of women.

"Girls with more education, for example, tend to have smaller and healthier families as adults," it said. "Women with access to reproductive health services, including family planning, have lower fertility rates that contribute to slower growth in greenhouse-gas emissions in the long run."

Source:
Reuters, "Climate change deal must aim to help women: U.N.", accessed November 18, 2009

U.S. residents fight for the right to hang laundry

Carin Froehlich pegs her laundry to three clotheslines strung between trees outside her 18th-century farmhouse, knowing that her actions annoy local officials who have asked her to stop.

Froehlich is among the growing number of people across America fighting for the right to dry their laundry outside against a rising tide of housing associations who oppose the practice despite its energy-saving green appeal.

Although there are no formal laws in this southeast Pennsylvania town against drying laundry outside, a town official called Froehlich to ask her to stop drying clothes in the sun. And she received two anonymous notes from neighbors saying they did not want to see her underwear flapping about.

"They said it made the place look like trailer trash," she said, in her yard across the street from a row of neat, suburban houses. "They said they didn't want to look at my 'unmentionables.'"

Froehlich says she hangs her underwear inside. The effervescent 54-year-old is one of a growing number of Americans demanding the right to dry laundry on clotheslines despite local rules and a culture that frowns on it.

Their interests are represented by Project Laundry List, a group that argues people can save money and reduce carbon emissions by not using their electric or gas dryers, according to the group's executive director, Alexander Lee.

Widespread adoption of clotheslines could significantly reduce U.S. energy consumption, argued Lee, who said dryer use accounts for about 6 percent of U.S. residential electricity use.

Florida, Utah, Maine, Vermont, Colorado, and Hawaii have passed laws restricting the rights of local authorities to stop residents using clotheslines. Another five states are considering similar measures, said Lee, 35, a former lawyer who quit to run the non-profit group.

'RIGHT TO HANG'

His principal opponents are the housing associations such as condominiums and townhouse communities that are home to an estimated 60 million Americans, or about 20 percent of the population. About half of those organizations have 'no hanging' rules, Lee said, and enforce them with fines.

Carl Weiner, a lawyer for about 50 homeowners associations in suburban Philadelphia, said the no-hanging rules are usually included by the communities' developers along with regulations such as a ban on sheds or commercial vehicles.

The no-hanging rules are an aesthetic issue, Weiner said. "The consensus in most communities is that people don't want to see everybody else's laundry."

He said opposition to clotheslines may ease as more people understand it can save energy and reduce greenhouse gases. "There is more awareness of impact on the environment," he said. "I would not be surprised to see people questioning these restrictions."

For Froehlich, the "right to hang" is the embodiment of the American tradition of freedom. "If my husband has a right to have guns in the house, I have a right to hang laundry," said Froehlich, who is writing a book on the subject.

Besides, it saves money. Line-drying laundry for a family of five saves $83 a month in electric bills, she said.

Kevin Firth, who owns a two-bedroom condominium in a Dublin, Pennsylvania housing association, said he was fined $100 by the association for putting up a clothesline in a common area.

"It made me angry and upset," said Firth, a 27-year-old carpenter. "I like having the laundry drying in the sun. It's something I have always done since I was a little kid."

Source:
Reuters, "U.S. residents fight for the right to hang laundry", accessed November 18, 2009

From the Inbox - Help Us Secure a Victory for the Joshua Tree

Send Your Letter to Secretary Salazar Today! Dear Friend, NPCA has scored a landmark victory in a long-term battle to protect Joshua Tree National Park from what would be the nation's largest garbage dump--the Eagle Mountain landfill! The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently handed down its decision invalidating the land exchange needed for this massive dump to proceed. NPCA has been fighting the proposed landfill--surrounded on three sides by Joshua Tree National Park's wilderness--for more than a decade and we could not have achieved this victory without ardent supporters like you! The nation's largest garbage dump on the doorstep of Joshua Tree National Park is just a bad idea all around. Development of the Eagle Mountain landfill would threaten the long-term survival of wildlife such as desert bighorn sheep and the desert tortoise; cause light pollution and air pollution that would impair our ability to see stars while camping at Joshua Tree; and destroy the solitude of the wilderness. And now, with the court's favorable decision--and with your continued support--we are poised for a permanent win on this issue. We need to convince the Department of the Interior to permanently abandon this damaging proposal. Take Action Now: NPCA members and supporters have provided thousands of comments at the right time to help us get this far. We now need your help to persuade Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to drop this destructive proposal and give Joshua Tree National Park the protection it deserves. Send a letter to the Secretary now urging him to use his authority to stop the Eagle Mountain landfill. NPCA--and the desert bighorn sheep of Joshua Tree National Park--thank you for taking a moment to protect one of America's treasured landscapes. Sincerely, Mike Cipra California Desert Program Manager

Great Barrier Reef survival "requires 25 percent CO2 cut"

Australia's Great Barrier Reef has only a 50 percent chance of survival if global CO2 emissions are not reduced at least 25 percent by 2020, a coalition of Australia's top reef and climate scientists said on Tuesday.

The 13 scientists said even deeper cuts of up to 90 percent by 2050 would necessary if the reef was to survive future coral bleaching and coral death caused by rising ocean temperatures.

"We've seen the evidence with our own eyes. Climate change is already impacting the Great Barrier Reef," Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, said in a briefing to Australian MPs on Tuesday.

Australia, one of the world's biggest CO2 emitters per capita, has only pledged to cut its emissions by five percent from 2000 levels by 2020.

It has said it would go further, with a 25 percent cut, if a tough international climate agreement is reached at U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen in December, but this is looking increasingly unlikely with legally binding targets now off the agenda.

"This is our Great Barrier Reef. If Australia doesn't show leadership by reducing emissions to save the reef, who will?" asked scientist Ken Baldwin, in calling for Australia to lead the way in cutting emissions.

But the Australian government is struggling to have a hostile Senate pass its planned emission trading scheme. A final vote is expected next week.

The World Heritage-protected Great Barrier Reef sprawls for more than 345,000 square km (133,000 sq miles) off Australia's east coast and can be seen from space.

The Australian scientists said more than 100 nations had endorsed a goal of limiting average global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, but even that rise would endanger coral reefs.

The scientists said global warming was already threatening the economic value of the Great Barrier Reef which contributes A$5.4 billion to the Australian economy each year from fishing, recreational usage and tourism.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that the Great Barrier Reef could be "functionally extinct" within decades, with deadly coral bleaching likely to be an annual occurrence by 2030.

Bleaching occurs when the tiny plant-like coral organisms die, often because of higher temperatures, and leave behind only a white limestone reef skeleton.

Source:
Reuters, "Great Barrier Reef survival "requires 25 percent CO2 cut"", accessed November 17, 2009

We need leaders, not politicians

Born in 1965, Kumi Naidoo fought against apartheid in South Africa before fleeing to the UK in 1987. Kumi spent his time in exile at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, earning a doctorate in political sociology. He returned to South Africa in 1990 to work on a wide range of education, development and social justice initiatives and was later the founding chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. Kumi took up the role of International Executive Director of Greenpeace on November 16, succeeding Gerd Leipold who steps down after nine years. His comments as he became the International Executive Director of Greenpeace follow:

Today we face a perfect storm. As the crises related to the climate, economy, food and poverty collide and combine they threaten to overwhelm us.

Climate change is not in the future anymore. This year 300,000 people will die from its impact, and next year that figure will rise. Climate refugees, climate conflict, climate fuelled famine and drought are all a reality.

Around the world civil society has responded to this storm with energy, creativity and action. As I take up my new position at Greenpeace, I know that I am committed to continuing to build a global coalition that can address these issues: One that puts the interests of the world's citizens foremost in the minds of their governments. One that can usher in a green, just and peaceful future for our planet.

When the public demands a fair, ambitious and binding deal at the Copenhagen Climate Summit politicians like Barack Obama tell them they are making "the perfect the enemy of the good".

Those politicians need to recognize where we are. Perfect has long gone. From Florida to Bangladesh one in 10 people live within a meter of sea level. The ice-caps are melting and it seems inevitable that all of those people will have to defend or abandon their homes this century. In this, and a thousand other ways all 6.5 billion of us are about to start paying the price for decades of inaction on climate change.

At Copenhagen we have our best chance to avert the worst of the coming climate catastrophe. So far the talks have been strangled by short term expediency, election cycles and national parochialism. Those of us who have followed the world trade negotiations are familiar with this lack of ambition. But Copenhagen is not a trade negotiation. You can't win this while others lose. Either we all get it right together or we all sink. Nature does not negotiate.

Science tells us that once the increase in global temperature crosses a 2 degree Celsius tipping point it will run away beyond our control. A temperature surge that will bring with it mass starvation, mass migration and mass extinction.

That's why we need a deal now.

Developing nations understand this. Their populations face the worst impacts of a problem they did not create. Despite this double injustice they have come to the negotiations with proposals and ideas. They have described the changes and sacrifices they are willing to make. The politicians of the rich world have shut the door in their faces.

The latest suggestion from the rich world is that a legally binding deal be replaced with a collection of politicians' promises, wrapped up in a photo-opportunity at Copenhagen. That's a gift the world can do without this Christmas. Better no deal at all than we go forward with a bad deal, whistling in the dark, as we walk toward catastrophe.

All the experience of UN summits and international talks has shown that nothing short of a legally binding treaty will get results. While we may not be able to get the i's dotted and t's crossed, that's no reason not to agree a deal with all the right bits in it and set the lawyers to work writing the most important treaty in history.

In the next month the millions of voices that have been raised around the world need to become even louder. The leaders of the developing world are already stirring to action, but the politicians in the rich world remain sound asleep. The global wake up call they need must come from the public they represent.

The must understand, they cannot change climate science so they must change their politics, and if they won't, then we must change the politicians.

Source:
Cable News Network, "We need leaders, not politicians", accessed November 17, 2009

U.N. forest plan could threaten species-scientists

A United Nations plan to protect the world's tropical forests to fight climate change could threaten more animals and plants with extinction, scientists said on Monday.

The U.N. scheme, to be discussed at climate talks in Copenhagen next month, could save some species, while inadvertently endangering many others, according to the team of international researchers.

Under the plan, called REDD, or reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation, poor countries will be paid to protect their trees to try to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Funded by a carbon market, it will let rich nations cut their emissions more cheaply.

In a paper published in Current Biology magazine, the scientists warned that the market may target forests that are cheap to protect and rich in carbon and neglect those that have less carbon but more endangered animals and plants.

"We are concerned that governments will focus on cutting deforestation in the most carbon-rich forests, only for clearance pressures to shift to other high biodiversity forests which are not given priority for protection," said the team's joint leader, Alan Grainger, of the University of Leeds.

Clearing forests for timber and farmland emits nearly a fifth of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change, according to U.N. estimates. Deforestation has threatened species such as the mountain gorillas of Africa and the giant pandas of Asia.

The scientists, from Britain, the United States, Germany, Switzerland and Singapore, said concentrations of carbon and biodiversity in tropical forests only partially overlap.

They said up to 95 percent of damage to REDD-protected forests could be displaced to nearby unprotected forests.

Their report cited the example of the Peruvian Amazon, where the creation of forest reserves contributed to a 300 to 470 percent rise in damage to forests in adjacent areas.

State workers and public money may be switched to REDD forests, leaving unprotected areas at risk, the paper said.

The scientists also fear that REDD could, perversely, lead countries to delay forest protection measures that they might otherwise have taken anyway, as they await the new agreement and the rewards it might bring.

They urged countries meeting in Denmark to add rules on safeguarding biodiversity to the text of any deal and consider giving incentives to poor nations that address the issue.

"Despite the best of intentions, mistakes can easily happen because of poor design," Grainger added. "A well designed REDD can save many species."

Source:
Reuters, "U.N. forest plan could threaten species-scientists", accessed November 16, 2009

Russia's Medvedev warns of climate catastrophe

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (left) warned on Monday that climate change posed a "catastrophic" threat in some of the sharpest comments yet on a subject the Kremlin has often seemed reluctant to confront.

Although the United States said that the consensus amongst the 19 leaders at the weekend Asia Pacific summit in Singapore was that a climate change deal this December was unlikely, Medvedev made clear he felt it was a top priority.

"If we don't take joint action, the consequences for the planet may be very distressing to the point that the Arctic and Antarctic ice can melt and change ocean levels," he said shortly before leaving Singapore.

"All of this will have catastrophic consequences."

Russia signed up the Kyoto protocol after years of haggling about its implementation, but has been criticized by environmental groups for not offering more ambitious emissions cuts ahead of December's Copenhagen summit.

In the past, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (right) had appeared to shrug off the threat from climate change, joking that Russians would welcome warmer weather and would need to buy fewer fur coats.

Some prominent Russian scientists argue that climate change is a natural phenomenon.

Source:
Reuters, "Russia's Medvedev warns of climate catastrophe", accessed November 16, 2009

State media: Heavy snow in China kills 21

Heavy snow in northern and central China has killed 21 people since Monday, the country's Ministry of Civil Affairs said Friday, according to state-run media.

Xinhua news agency said the ministry did not provide the causes of the deaths, except to note that two school canteens had collapsed in Hebei and Henan provinces since Wednesday, killing four children.

Chinese weather scientists were embarrassingly caught out by a sudden cold snap yesterday. They had decided to 'seed' clouds with chemicals to produce rain and ease a drought in Beijing. The operation went exactly as they had hoped - except that temperatures dropped sharply and the precipitation fell as snow.

It kept going for half the day, blanketing the capital's streets and hitting air and road travel. It was the earliest snow in Beijing for ten years.

The snow began to fall Monday on northern and central Chinese provinces, including Hebei, Shanxi, Henan, Shandong, Hubei and Shaanxi, and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Xinhua reported.

More than 9,000 buildings have collapsed, Xinhua said. Citing the ministry, it said the snow has caused an estimated 4.5 billion yuan (nearly $660 million) in damages.

The ministry said about 159,000 people have been evacuated from their homes or stranded vehicles, Xinhua reported.

Civil Affairs Minister Li Xueju has ordered local authorities to provide food, water and clothing to those who are still stranded, "and to make proper arrangements for people who lost their homes in the snow to get through the winter," Xinhua reported.

It said the Civil Affairs Ministry and the Ministry of Finance have allocated 20 million yuan (about $3 million) from their central budgets to Shanxi and Hebei provinces to help move those affected by the snow and to help them build houses.

Heavy snow has also fallen on Beijing, but no deaths have been reported there, Xinhua said.

Source:
Cable News Network, "State media: Heavy snow in China kills 21", accessed November 13, 2009

Australian koalas fast declining, researchers say

Australia's koalas have suffered a sharp population decline because of development, bushfires and global warming, and could vanish within decades, researchers said Tuesday.

Mainland Australia's wild koala population was between 43,000 and 80,000, well under previous estimates of more than 100,000, with the animals facing possible extinction in about 30 years, the Australian Koala Foundation said.

"The koalas are missing everywhere we look," foundation chief executive Deborah Tabart said. "It's really no tree, no me. If you keep cutting down tees you don't have any koalas."

Tabart and fellow researchers are in Canberra to urge government officials to declare the koala a threatened species and ensure more protection for koala habitats. Scientists say arid Australia is being hard-hit by climate warming.

The Koala Foundation, Tabart said, collected data from 1,800 field sites and 80,000 specific trees to keep track of numbers.

But in one area of northern Queensland state which had an estimated 20,000 koalas a decade ago, a team of eight people did not find even one koala after four days of recent searching.

Koalas live in eucalyptus forests in Australia's east and south, and are notoriously fussy about what types of eucalyptus leaves they eat.

The government's Threatened Species Scientific Committee in 2006 rejected calls to list koalas as a vulnerable species, finding there were likely to be hundreds of thousands of koalas in the wild.

The committee will make its next recommendation in mid-2010.

Source:
Reuters, "Australian koalas fast declining, researchers say", accessed November 13, 2009