24/06/2017

'Ocean Elders' Urge Malcolm Turnbull To Reject Adani Coalmine

The Guardian - 

Prominent oceanographers and global leaders write to Australian prime minister and Queensland premier
Marine biologist Sylvia Earle addressing the general assembly to mark World Oceans Day on 8 June. Earle has spearheaded a group of prominent oceanographers and marine biologists in opposing the Adani mine in north Queensland. Photograph: Kim Haughton/UN Photo
A group of prominent oceanographers and global leaders has written to Malcolm Turnbull urging him to reject the proposed Adani Carmichael coalmine, which it says will have a devastating impact on the Great Barrier Reef.
The letter from the group Ocean Elders, which includes the renowned marine biologist Dr Sylvia Earle, argues that if it goes ahead the coalmine will damage international efforts to mitigate climate change by increasing global carbon emissions.
The Unesco world heritage committee has released a draft report saying that 75% of the world’s 29 listed coral reefs have been exposed to conditions that cause coral bleaching in the past three years, largely due to climate change.
‘We are in a runaway situation with respect to a warming planet, changing [the] chemistry of the ocean,” Earle said in an interview recorded for RN Breakfast. “We know what to do, it’s a matter of being smart enough, courageous enough, bold enough, sensible enough, to go in this better pathway.”
Earle said the link between the proposed $16bn Adani coalmine and damage to the Great Barrier Reef was “not just speculation,” and said scientific monitoring of the reef showed an “unprecedented decline.”
“I think historically and perhaps even now that people don’t know that their actions in Australia but also globally are altering the resilience, the health of the ocean,” she said. “All of us can do something to turn it around.
“I am not alone being upset about what is happening to the Great Barrier Reef. I know people in Australia who are upset, but this is a world heritage area, a place that is unique and the people who live in Australia have a particular opportunity to take action that can influence something globally, not just now, but far into the future.”
The letter from Ocean Elders was co-signed by Earle; Prince Albert II of Monaco; Sir Richard Branson; Swiss balloonist Dr Bertrand Piccard; prominent oceanographers Dr Walter Munk, Capt Don Walsh, and Jean-Michel Cousteau; former Costa Rican president Jose Maria Figueres; Queen Noor of Jordan; Hawaiian navigator Nainoa Thompson; microbiologist Dr Rita Colwell; CNN founder Ted Turner; and adventurer Sven Lindblad.
It argued that Australia’s responsibility for mining the coal was not abrogated if it was burned in India, as the Indian-owned company Adani intends.
“The 4.7bn tons of carbon dioxide created over the proposed life of the mine from the burning of the coal, whether in Australia, India or any other country, will further contribute to the damaging effects of climate change, including increases in global air and ocean temperatures, increased acidity of oceans, and destruction of coral reefs,” it said.
The letter also suggested that the economic case for federal government support of the mine does not stack up, citing the “decreasing global market for coal.”

Great Barrier Reef: diving in the stench of millions of rotting animals

Adani is awaiting approval for a $900m taxpayer loan to build a railway from the Abbot Point coal terminal to the Carmichael mine.
The letter urged Australia to “demonstrate climate leadership” by abandoning the project.
It was sent to Turnbull and the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, on 14 June, the day the Senate passed changes to the Native Title Act that would allow the mine to go ahead without unanimous support from traditional owners.
Adani lost majority support from the Wangan and Jagalingou traditional owner group last week, but the native title amendments mean it does not need majority support to broker an Indigenous land use agreement, which is critical to the project securing finance.
On Wednesday Queensland’s environment minister, Steven Miles, issued a statement in response to the the World Heritage Committee draft report on climate change and coral bleaching, calling for “immediate action on a global scale” to protect the future of all coral reefs, particularly the Great Barrier Reef.
“This means that both Australia and Queensland will need to do their fair share,” he said.
It is the second time the Ocean Elders have written to Turnbull, following a letter in April 2016 that urged Australia to phase out coal and “become a renewable energy based nation.”
The organisation was founded in 2010 to further a push by Earle to draw public attention to need for greater conservation and protection of the ocean.

Coral violently spews out algae in response to heat stress

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Chad Is The Country Most Vulnerable To Climate Change – Here’s Why

The Conversation - 

European Commission DG ECHO / flickr, CC BY-SA
Of the 186 countries assessed in a recent survey of climate vulnerability, Chad was rated most in peril. A combination of high poverty, frequent conflicts, and the risk of both droughts and floods means the central African nation is bottom of the list, just below Bangladesh and some way behind Norway, the country least vulnerable to climate change.
So why Chad? For a start, it is one of the poorest countries in the world. Around 87% of Chadians are classified as poor, according to the Multidimentional Poverty Index, which factors in health, education and living standards. That's the fourth highest rate in the world. The percentage who are "destitute" (63%), the most extreme category of poverty, is also the fourth highest in the world.
The landlocked country stretches from the Sahara to Cameroon. TUBS / wiki, CC BY-SA
This is exacerbated by the fact that the country has been in civil war or conflict for 35 out of the 57 years since it gained independence from France.
Any poor or conflict-prone country will always be vulnerable, but Chad's geography means climate change is a particular risk. Chad is bigger than many Westerners may realise. At 1.28m km² it's larger than Nigeria and twice the size of Texas. Around 90% of its 10m people live in the southern half of the country, as most of the northern half extends well into the Sahara desert.
Most Chadians base their livelihoods on subsistence farming and livestock rearing. The semi-arid rangelands of the Sahel, in the north of the country, provide pasture for livestock during the rainy season, while the fertile agricultural fields in the south produce most of the cash and food crops. When the dry season begins, pastoralists move their herds south to feed on the leftovers of the agricultural harvest.

Chad's changing climate
Since the mid-20th century, temperatures in Chad have been increasing while rainfall is decreasing. Ninety percent of the country's largest lake, Lake Chad, has disappeared over the past 50 years due to a combination of droughts and increasing withdrawals for irrigation. Climate studies project things will get increasingly hot and arid throughout the 21st century, which means lower crop yields, worse pasture, and a harder life for anyone dependent on Lake Chad.
Lake Chad has been disappearing because of repeated droughts and excessive use of its waters for irrigation.Philippe Rekacewicz, Le Monde diplomatique, February 2008
Rural areas are most at risk from climate change because that's where most of the population, and most of the poverty, is found. However, urban areas are not safe either, as the country's growing cities struggle to accommodate the arrival of new residents. Sanitation services like sewage, storm water drainage and waste collection are poor, according to the World Bank. In the event of floods, as happened in 2010, 2011 and 2012, the infrastructure cannot cope and untreated sewage could infect the water supply, creating a high risk of infectious diseases such as cholera.

Demographic challenges
Chad's population is mostly young, and high youth unemployment has already caused unrest in the capital N'djamena. Vulnerability to climate is made worse by civil unrest or conflict because people cannot receive the help they need during climate-related disasters such as droughts or floods.
Chad also hosts some 300,000 refugees from Darfur on its eastern border with Sudan, according to UN figures, while an additional 67,000 refugees from the Central African Republic are in camps on its southern border. These refugees consume Chad's limited resources and sometimes compete with the local population. This creates resentment and sometimes violence between the refugees and their hosts.
Farchana refugee camp in eastern Chad. European Commission DG ECHO, CC BY-SA
To make matters worse, the Boko Haram crisis in northeastern Nigeria has spilled over to the Lac region of Chad, which now has more than 60,000 displaced people registered there and several thousand more that are unregistered. This is worrying as the country's unemployed youth, restless and with plenty of time on their hands, could be at risk of recruitment and radicalisation by Boko Haram.

The way forward
Despite these challenges, there are ways to mitigate the effect of climate change. For instance, farmers in Chad's semi-arid Sahelian zone have been using an indigenous rainwater harvesting technique called Zaï to successfully grow crops. Zaï involves the digging of small pits and sowing crops in them. The pits retain water for a long period of time and are particularly efficient when there isn't much rain.
Zaï in action (photo taken in neighbouring Niger). CGIAR Climate / flickr, CC BY-NC-SA
The Zaï technique was enhanced by introducing manure and compost into the pits to provide nutrients to the crops. This helped rehabilitate soils that are heavily degraded and significantly increased the yields of food crops.
Agroforestry, the combining of crops and trees in the same patch of land, can also help mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Tree roots stabilise soils and protect them from eroding during heavy rainfall, while also restoring fertility simply by producing litter which eventually makes its way back into the earth.
Of course, any country would be better placed to deal with climate change if it simply became much wealthier. Chad began producing petroleum in 2003, and it now accounts for 93% of all exports. However, this left the country vulnerable to declines in oil prices. So, when the price did indeed crash in late 2014, Chad suffered a significant loss of revenue. Needless to say, the impact of climate-related disasters such as droughts or floods becomes magnified if the country does not have the resources to combat them.
Chad cannot rely on oil forever. Farming is still the mainstay of its economy and, in the longer term, developing sustainable agriculture and livestock farming will be key in providing employment and maintaining food security.

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Top Global Banks Still Lend Billions To Extract Fossil Fuels

The Guardian - 

Analysis of world’s lenders reveals many claim green credentials while still financing fuels like tar sands, oil and coal
Dozens of Fs were awarded (on a scale of A to F) for tar and oil sands exploitation. Photograph: Aaron Huey/National Geographic/Getty Images
Some of the world’s top banks are continuing to lend tens of billions for extracting the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels, according to a report of top lenders.
Finance provided for these fossil fuels – tar sands and other unconventional oil and gas, as well as coal and liquefied natural gas – amounted to $87bn for the top 37 banks in 2016. That represented a slump of more than a fifth compared with the $111bn raised the previous year, and was also down on 2014’s total of $92bn.
However, the analysis, carried out by a group of NGOs including the Rainforest Action Network and Sierra Club, showed that multinational banks around the globe, including many household names, were trumpeting their green credentials while continuing to pour money into the dirtiest fuels.
The report, entitled Banking on Climate Change 2017, scored the institutions from A to F on their practices, including the banks’ policies, the nature of the investments, the size and type of transactions, and the impact on climate change.
The highest rating went to a handful of banks who scored a B for having scaled back their support for coal mining and coal-fired power generation, including France’s Credit Agricole and Germany’s Deutsche Bank, but none of those studied fared well across the board, and dozens of Fs were awarded for tar sands exploitation and ultra-deep water drilling for oil.
Banks in Asia tended to fare badly, including China Construction Bank, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China and Mizuho. The UK’s HSBC and Barclays scored above average for good practice on coal mining but slipped down to a D and below on unconventional oil and LNG exports.
Big banks were among the most vocal supporters of the Paris climate agreement – which aims to keep warming to below 2C – and many set out supportive policies. For instance, in 2015, ahead of Paris, Citigroup and Bank of America pledged to reduce their financing of coal as a way of limiting their exposure to carbon-intensive fossil fuels.
But the report’s publishers said the finance groups needed to show more commitment in their lending practices, and warned that last year’s sharp fall in financing for carbon-intensive fuels could turn out to be a blip if banks followed the lead of Donald Trump, the US president, who this month rejected the Paris agreement.
Yann Louvel, climate and energy campaign coordinator at BankTrack, said: “There is simply not enough time left for excuse-making, fiddling at the policy edges and more egregious investments in extreme infrastructure projects, [such as] pipelines that transport tar sands oil. We hear of [banks’] revulsion to Trump’s stance on climate change and their support for clean investments, yet their actions of continued investments in extreme fossil fuels demonstrate that they actually side with the Trump approach.”
Lena Moffitt, senior campaign director at the Sierra Club, predicted that individual bank customers would make decisions on where to put their money based on how they performed on climate change. “The people are watching where and what banks sink their funds into, and they will not back down until every last one commits to investing in a future that benefits their communities, their economies, and their health.”
Separately, research from the OECD found that few countries were doing as well as they should on fostering greener economic growth. In a survey of industrialised nations’ performance from 1990 to 2015, only about half had managed to “decouple” their economic growth from carbon emissions, which economists believe is key to maintaining prosperity while tackling climate change.
The OECD named Denmark, Estonia, the UK, Italy and the Slovak Republic as those making the most progress on green growth since 2000.
Simon Upton, environment director at OECD, warned that countries must step up their policies to achieve economic growth sustainably. “While there are signs of greening growth, most countries show progress on just one or two fronts and little on others,” he said. “We need much greater efforts across the board, if we are to safeguard natural assets, reduce our collective environmental footprint, and sever the link between growth and environmental pressure.”
For instance, environment-related taxation has fallen in the last 20 years, and the rate of development of new green technologies has slowed since 2011. Meanwhile, air pollution remains “dangerously high”, with fewer than one in three developed countries meeting World Health Organisation guidelines on fine particulates, and an area the size of the UK has been covered by buildings since 1990, adding to stress on food supplies and water.
Several banks told the Guardian they were actively engaged in a transition away from high-carbon fossil fuels. Bank of America said its coal policy had been on a “trajectory we have had in place for several years, to continue to reduce our credit exposure to the companies focused on coal mining”, and that it would “continue to help energy clients find ways to diversify their portfolio to include cleaner fuel sources”.
Standard Chartered Bank, which is active in the developing world, came 31st in the list of 37 banks in terms of exposure to high-carbon fuel. A spokesman said: “The emerging markets we operate in need reliable and accessible energy to support economic growth. This needs to be balanced by mitigating the environmental impacts of power generation and consistent with the Paris agreement. We have tightened lending criteria to the energy sector.”
Banks also said the rankings and report failed to take account of their activities in boosting the green economy, such as investments in renewable energy and underwriting green bonds for socially and environmentally beneficial projects.
Deutsche Bank said it had revised its approach in December 2016, which would not have been captured in the report’s data. As a result of the revision, Deutsche Bank no longer grants new finance for greenfield thermal coal mining or new coal-fired power plant construction, and is reducing its exposure to the sector.
A spokesman for HSBC said: “Dangerous levels of climate change will only be avoided by society working together, and governments, businesses, communities and civil society share a common goal. The finance sector has an important role and HSBC will play its full part in the critical transition to a low-carbon economy.”

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