ACTION ALERT!
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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
SOS - Save Our Planet, Call on the Earth Summit to Take Real Action
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TAKE ACTION:
SOS - Save Our Planet
http://www.environmentalsustainability.info/ - send a personal SOS
message to the World Summit on Sustainable Development calling for
real action to save our Planet (provided by WWF, featured link in
middle of page)
August 15, 2002
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
What an exciting time to be alive! Humanity is witnessing the
beginning of the end of the Earth. With global population estimated
to grow by 2 billion people by 2025, nearly half the world will
suffer from water shortages, the world's forests will disappear,
greenhouse gas emissions will increase and fossil fuel consumption
will continue to rise, a new United Nations report warns. Our
actions (or lack thereof) - including at the upcoming Earth Summit in
South Africa - will determine the Earth's fate. The report, entitled
"Global Challenge, Global Opportunity: Trends in Sustainable
Development" can be found on the Earth Summit's web site at
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/whats_new/feature_story20.html
Signs of ecological deterioration, portending global ecological
collapse, are all around us; forests are burning, droughts and floods
rage, drinkable water is scarce. Another shocking report indicates
the ocean food chain - upon which all life depends - is breaking down
as the result of climate change (article 2 below). A new European
study shows rainforest loss remains unacceptably high at 0.43% a
year (article 3 below). This finding is less than the generally
accepted 0.5% annual rate provided by FAO. Nonetheless, the authors
are careful to note that annual loss of rainforests twice the size of
Belgium is alarming and not good news.
It is clear that in a World split between conspicuous affluence and
abject human want - that the environment upon which we all depend can
only be sustained if we seek to equitably meet basic human needs for
all of humanity. Sustainable development is largely a utopian notion
that is unlikely to be fully achieved - but we can be more
sustainable, and make improved efforts to meet all of humanities
basic needs without undermining global ecological systems. This will
require huge additional protected areas free from commercial development,
and more benignly and restoratively managing the human landscape. The
World's leaders must be challenged to take real action to Save Our
Planet. Send your SOS message from the Eco-Portal at
http://www.environmentalsustainability.info/ , using the featured
link provided by WWF.
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ITEM #1
Title: New UN Report Highlights Urgent Need to Address Damaging
Trends
Critical Trends Report Global Challenge, Global Opportunity
Source: United Nations WSSD Secretariat, United Nations Department
of Economic and Social Affairs
Date: August 13, 2002
New York, 13 August- If current patterns of development continue,
nearly half of the world's people will suffer from water shortages
within the next 25 years, the use of fossil fuels, along with
greenhouse gas emissions, will grow, and the world's forests will
continue to disappear, according to a new United Nations report
issued today by the Secretariat for the upcoming World Summit on
Sustainable Development.
With projections indicating that the world's population will grow by
about two billion people by 2025, the new report, Global Challenge,
Global Opportunity, underscores the need for greatly increased
efforts to support sustainable development to better manage global
resources in a rapidly changing world.
"These problems are urgent and must be addressed now," according to
Nitin Desai, Johannesburg Summit Secretary-General. "We have to
change, from the present model of development to sustainable
development or else we risk further jeopardizing human security
everywhere."
According to the report, air pollution kills three million people a
year, 300 million suffer from malaria, 1 billion lack access to clean
water and 2 billion lack access to proper sanitation facilities.
There are over 2.5 billion people who depend on fuelwood for cooking
and heating-a major cause of indoor air pollution-and people in
developed countries are using up to 10 times as much fossil fuel as
people in developing countries.
Agricultural production is expanding to feed more mouths, yet this
expansion has heavily contributed to deforestation, and further
expansion is limited by a lack of freshwater resources.
Not all the news is bad, however. The report also points to promising
trends, such as the decline in the rate of population growth, which
often means smaller families and a greater investment in children's
education, nutrition and health care. Income poverty is declining in
Asia and Latin America, and hunger is slowly declining in all
regions. The standard of living in many Asian countries is slowly
catching up with developed countries.
Desai said the purpose of this new report was to provide background
information on the key issues that will dominate the World Summit on
Sustainable Development taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa,
from 26 August to 4 September. The Summit is expected to result in a
new global implementation plan to accelerate sustainable development,
as well as the launch of a series of innovative partnerships to
promote sustainability.
Many of the world's political, business and non-government leaders,
including over 100 presidents and prime ministers, have indicated
that they will participate in the Summit, a fact, Desai said, shows
"that they are sufficiently committed to come to the Summit and make
a difference."
Among the Summit's objectives, Desai, said, was to get the world to
undertake sustainable development projects on a grand scale. "We have
seen many highly innovative small scale initiatives, but we need to
go to scale if we are going to really benefit from sustainable
development."
He also said the Summit must make it clear that many problems, and
their solutions, are connected. "If you want to improve children's
health, you can't do it unless you also address problems of water and
sanitation," he said. Likewise, recent news of the Asian Brown Cloud,
a three kilometer thick layer of haze over much of South and
Southeast Asia, he said, was a problem that must be addressed on
many levels, including energy.
Desai said that 75 per cent of the Summit's implementation plan had
been agreed upon, including several highly substantive commitments on
water and sanitation, energy, natural disaster mitigation, and
production and consumption. He was confident that the remaining
differences would be reconciled quickly.
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on the Summit
to focus on actions that address water and sanitation, energy,
health, agricultural productivity, and biodiversity and the
protection of ecosystems. "These are five areas," he said, "in which
progress would offer all human beings a chance of achieving
prosperity that will not only last their own lifetime, but can be
enjoyed by their children and grandchildren too."
ITEM #2
Title: Weak link found in ocean food chain
Phytoplankton have declined, NASA satellite data shows
Source: MSNBC
Date: August 14, 2002
Aug. 14 - The lowest rung in the ocean food chain, and thus a key
factor in that chain of life, has seen its numbers decline over the
last 20 years, new research from NASA shows. Phytoplankton numbers
have dropped by 30 percent in parts of the North Pacific, but what's
not clear is whether the shift represents a major climate trend or
just a seasonal change.
THE MICROSCOPIC, free-floating plants serve as food to other marine
life and are thus seen as valuable tools to check the planet's pulse.
"The whole marine food chain depends on the health and productivity
of the phytoplankton," NASA researcher Watson Gregg said in a
statement stressing the importance of the research.
SATELLITE DATA USED
The researchers compared satellite data that measured chlorophyll,
which phytoplankton emit, to calculate that North Pacific populations
were 30 percent less in the summers of 1997-2000 than in the summers
of the mid-1980s. Phytoplankton fell by 14 percent in the North
Atlantic Ocean over the same time period.
Summer phytoplankton concentrations did rise by more than 50 percent
in both the Northern Indian Ocean and the equatorial Atlantic Ocean,
the researchers found, and large areas of the Indian Ocean showed
large increases during all four seasons.
But the researchers emphasized that because phytoplankton are more
common in the northern oceans, the overall results were a decline in
phytoplankton globally.
"This is the first time that we are really talking about the ocean
chlorophyll and showing that the ocean's biology is changing,
possibly as a result of climate change," said Margarita Conkright, a
co-author of the study and scientist at the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration.
TEMPERATURES, WINDS A FACTOR?
The researchers suggested warmer sea temperatures and a drop in winds
could be factors in the decline.
Higher sea surface temperatures reduce mixing with cooler, deeper
waters rich in nutrients for the phytoplankton.
Winds, for their part, can stir up the ocean, creating an upwelling
of nutrients from below. A reduction in winds can thus limit the
availability of nutrients.
In the North Pacific, summer sea surface temperatures were 0.7
degrees Fahrenheit warmer from the early 1980s to 2000, the
researchers noted, and average spring wind strength decreased by
about 8 percent.
Whether those changes, and the population declines, are tied to long-
term climate change or a shorter-term ocean cycle requires further
study, the researchers said.
The researchers did not study zooplankton, microscopic ocean animals
like krill, because they do not emit chlorophyll.
The study was published in Geophysical Research Letters, a peer-
reviewed publication of the American Geophysical Union.
ITEM #3
Title: Rainforest loss slower than thought - study
Source: Reuters
Date: August 14, 2002
BRUSSELS - A European study has found that the world's tropical
rainforests are disappearing more slowly than previously thought,
though the rate of destruction is still alarming, a magazine
reported.
The study by a team at the European Union's Joint Research Centre
found the area of rainforest destroyed between 1990 and 1997 to be 23
percent smaller than the generally accepted figure.
"I think we have to be cautious about saying it's good news," said
Hugh Eva co-author of the team's report published in this week's
issue of the Science magazine.
Even the new figures mean an area of rainforest twice the size of
Belgium is cut down each year, Eva told Reuters on Monday. Most
researchers rely on data from the United Nation's Food and
Agriculture Organisation, which show the world's rainforest cover
diminishing by about 0.5 percent a year.
Instead of measuring the entire area of rainforest, the new study
used satellite images to concentrate on areas where deforestation was
thought to be most likely. It estimated the annual loss to be 0.43
percent.
Rainforests account for much of the earth's biodiversity and help
remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Their destruction is
believed to hasten global warming.
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