06/07/01 -- While the Globe Burns, the UN Fiddles

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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

While the Globe Burns, the UN Fiddles

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06/07/01

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

The global ecosystem is collapsing. While the globe burns,

governments and the UN fiddle. We need to move past collecting data

and into massive, well-funded action programs. Following are

seemingly disparate news items. But they point out various aspects

of the environmental conundrum - ecosystems are failing, the survival

of all life is threatened, and there is an alarming lack of action

from policy-makers. Certainly programs such as the recently

announced Millennium Ecosystem Assessment are important - they can

gather important data crucial to the process of developing

environmental solutions. But the focus upon yet another lengthy data

collection effort, rather than major initiatives to stem ecosystem

decline, is troubling.

In the same week as the UN announced this four year program; they

also released a report that states Asia is heading for an

environmental disaster that will cost some $10 trillion to clean up.

In their words, fragile natural resources are being "ransacked" in a

desperate bid to survive; spawning land degradation, desertification,

deteriorating water quality - essentially wholesale ecosystem

collapse. Globalization and flows of resources from other areas can

stem the consequences of ecosystem failure - but only for so long,

and only at the price of additional ecosystem over-exploitation

elsewhere. A new scientific study indicates that ecosystem decline

through fragmentation stresses bird species in the Amazon. Have no

doubt - ecosystem decline stresses humans and all species as well.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment seeks "to determine the true

health of habitats everywhere in the world and whether they are

functioning for the benefit of humans as well as plants and

animals... It will provide remedies and chart ways in which the

Earth's ecosystems can be saved and restored." But we already know

rainforests are being lost, the climate is changing, oceans are

becoming less productive, water is scarce, toxic are accumulating,

etc. Without more attention being paid to methods to implement

solutions, this new study is likely to become another report that

sits on the bookshelves of environmental policy wonks.

With the exception of the Montreal protocol to address ozone

depletion; there has been a long record of failed international

programs to implement policy that addresses planetary environmental

issues; including the Convention on Climate Change, Convention on

Biodversity and Agenda 21 (in regard to sustainability). They failed

not because of lack of data (more is always better, but it was

adequate); but rather because of lack of political will and

mechanisms to develop and implement required changes in production

and consumption patterns.

Development of renewable energy sources, ending all old-growth

logging and mandatory environmental certification of all forest

management, reductions in fish harvests from oceans, pricing water to

reflect its true value while funding its conservation - each is

urgently required now to ensure the Earth remains habitable. We have

all the data needed to say these MUST happen. Every week that we

study rather than act upon widespread ecosystem collapse; the cost of

solutions soars, while the probability of success diminishes.

g.b.

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ITEM #1

Title: Asia faces environmental disaster: UN

Date: June 7, 2001

Asia is heading for a new regional crisis - this time an

environmental disaster that will cost some $10 trillion to clean up

over the next three decades, the United Nations says.

The UN's Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific

(UN-ESCAP) says in its five-yearly report, that poverty and

globalisation were putting enormous pressure on the environment.

The region's urban population doubled over the last 20 years to 1.4

billion, and is projected to swell by another 800 million in the next

two decades, it says.

"This amounts to the establishment of a new city of 150,000 people

every day for the next one and a half decades. "The magnitude of

the challenge is indeed daunting," UN-ESCAP executive secretary Kim

Hak-Su

said.

"ESCAP's message is a call for immediate action that must involve all

stakeholders, otherwise the environment will continue to deteriorate

further at a catastrophic rate."

Neglect of environment

The 1997-98 financial crisis which felled the region's economies was

one factor contributing to widespread neglect of environmental

protection measures and the development of clean technologies.

As a result, land degradation and desertification are also on the

increase, at an annual cost of $10 billion in South Asia and $700

million in north-east Asia alone.

Water quality is also deteriorating due to the uncontrolled discharge

of sewage and industrial waste, as well as runoff from chemicals used

in the agricultural industry, the report says.

Widespread poverty is forcing many to move to economically vulnerable

areas where they ransacked fragile natural resources in a desperate

bid to survive.

Price of living

As those ecosystems collapsed, millions moved on to the cities where

they are forced to find shelter in the slums and squatter settlements

that are mushrooming in the region's mega-cities.

ESCAP estimates that the cost of providing water supply, sanitation,

energy and transport to Asia's urban areas alone would cost some $10

trillion over the next three decades.

"Is Asia heading for another crisis, an environmental crisis? The

alarm bells are already sounding, calling for urgent attention of the

international community," UN-ESCAP executive secretary said.

"This is the major challenge confronting us in the new millennium."

ITEM #2

Title: Global Ecosystem Study Launched on World Environment Day

Date: June 5, 2001

TORINO, Italy, June 5, 2001 (ENS) - Scientists, governments and

environmental groups from around the world are planning a cooperative

assessment of all the planet's wildlife habitats and ecosystems. The

United Nations Environment Programme unveiled the plans at World

Environment Day 2001 celebrations in New York, Tokyo and Torino,

Italy this week.

The goal of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is to determine the

true health of habitats everywhere in the world and whether they are

functioning for the benefit of humans as well as plants and animals.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is co-chaired by Dr. Robert

Watson, chief scientist of the World Bank, and chair of the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. His co-chairs are Dr. A.H.

Zakri, director of the United Nations University's Institute of

Advanced Studies, and Angela Cropper and Dr. Harold Money of Stanford

University.

The four-year, $21 million study will examine the impacts that humans

are having on the planet. It will provide remedies and chart ways in

which the Earth's ecosystems can be saved and restored.

"If we are to rescue the Earth's life support systems, we need hard

facts," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the United Nations

Environment Programme (UNEP) which is playing a major role in the

project. "We already know a great deal. We have sufficient knowledge

to turn fine words into actions. But important questions remain,

which is why I welcome this scientific undertaking."

The first task will be to find a common approach to the ecosystem

assessment that can work for the wide variety of scientific and other

organizations involved.

The study starts off with a unique asset - a set of 16,000 Landsat

satellite images donated to UNEP earlier this month by the U.S.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The images

contain vital information on the changes which have occurred to

coastal areas, countryside, mountains, wetlands, agriculture and

urban sprawl since the Earth Summit in 1992.

Based on the satellite images, UNEP reported May 18 that the once

fertile crescent created by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is

rapidly drying up. Drainage and damming has destroyed close to 90

percent of these Mesopotamian marshlands.

Dan Claasen of UNEP's Division of Early Warning and Assessment said,

"One of the most difficult challenges will be the assessment of

inaccessible coastal and deep ocean areas including coral reefs,

mangrove swamps and the continental shelves. We hope the satellite

data will play an important role in mapping the location and extent

of such sites. This will allow us to identify areas where direct

scientific assessments by people on the ground are urgently needed."

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment will build on the Pilot Analysis

of Global Ecosystems published in 2000 and produced by the World

Resources Institute in collaboration with the United Nations

Development Programme, UNEP and the World Bank.

Assessment co-chair Cropper said, "The pilot analysis shows that the

driving forces behind rapid deterioration of the world's ecosystems

are rapid population growth and increased consumption. We now want to

expand this analysis and go deeper."

Support for the start-up period of the Millennium Ecosystem

Assessment has been provided by the Avina Group, the David and Lucile

Packard Foundation, the government of Norway, the Swedish Agency for

Development Cooperation, the Summit Foundation, the United Nations

Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Environment

Programme (UNEP), the Wallace Global Fund and the World Bank.

ITEM #3

Title: Fragmentation linked to stress in birds

Source: Society for Conservation Biology

Date: May 29, 2001

Contact: Jeff Stratford

stratja@auburn.edu

334-844-1659

Amazon forest birds are particularly sensitive to habitat

fragmentation -- even patches as big as 250 acres are missing many

species -- but no one knows why. New research offers a clue: birds in

fragments have slower-growing feathers. This suggests that they are

more stressed, which could decrease survival and reproduction.

"There might be physiological consequences for birds that live in

fragments," says Jeff Stratford of Auburn University in Auburn,

Alabama, who did this work with Philip Stouffer of Southeastern

Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. This work is in the June

issue of Conservation Biology.

This the first evidence that fragmentation may have direct

physiological effects.

Stratford and Stouffer compared feathers from two common bird species

(the white-crowned manakin and the wedge-billed woodcreeper) that

were captured in either forest fragments or continuous forest near

Manaus, Brazil. To determine how fast the feathers had grown, the

researchers measured the daily growth bars. Healthier birds

presumably have feathers with wider growth bars.

The researchers found that feathers from birds captured in forest

fragments had grown slower: for instance, feathers from birds in

2.5-acre fragments grew 10% slower than those from birds in

continuous forest.

Why do birds in fragments have slower growing feathers? Stratford and

Stouffer ruled out the obvious possibility of insufficient food. The

manakin's diet includes fruit and the woodcreeper eats insects living

on tree trunks and branches, and fragmentation does not reduce either

type of food.

In fact, fragmentation may not even affect feather growth directly.

Rather, less robust birds may be more likely to end up in undesirable

habitats like fragments. This is supported by the finding that

manakins were rarely recaptured in fragments, implying that they had

grown their feathers in continuous forest. "We suggest that these

birds are social subordinates that are wandering about the

landscape," says Stratford.

Birds in fragmented habitats elsewhere may be even more stressed

because the fragmentation in this study was relatively mild. For

instance, the forest fragments were separated by pasture and

regenerating forest rather than by parking lots and houses. "Even

though things look bad, this is a 'best case scenario'," says

Stratford.

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For more information contact:

Philip Stouffer (504-549-2191, stouffer@selu.edu)

For faxes of papers, contact Robin Meadows robin@nasw.org

For more information about the Society for Conservation Biology:

http://conbio.net/scb/

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