i * Water &N Life retrun to Iraq * Climategate - the need for openness * Britaina as 'dirty man of Europe' * BP accused of killing endangered sea turtles * The changing face of China's coal industry * Chinese protesters confront police over incinerator plans * De-forestation on Sumatra * Australian town's bottled water ban * The Last Nomads * UK woodlands tackle climate change * Chinese legislature passes first climate change resolution * Climate change - natural disasters in UK * Time-line for Copenhagen * Climate change threat to Pacific Islanders * Supermaket supplies helping to destoy Amazon rainforest * Greenland ice could fuel US sea level rise * Yellow River erosion * The Scilly Isles & global warming * The Prince of Wales in the Galapagos Islands * Amazon rainforest at risk of ecological catastrophe * References on Environmental issues
Water and life return to Iraq's 'Garden of Eden'
One of Saddam Hussein's
greatest acts of ecological destruction – the draining of the
Mesopotamian marshes – has been reversed as birds and rivers return to
the region
Iraq's marshes drained by Saddam in the 90s to punish rebellious marsh inhabitants are now thriving once more. Photograph: Korsh Ararat, Omar Fadil and Mudhafar Salim/Nature Iraq
Saddam Hussein's draining of the Mesopotamian marshes of Iraq
– recorded as the Garden of Eden in the Bible - was one of the most
infamous outrages of his regime, leaving a vast area of once-teeming
river delta a dry, salt-encrusted desert, emptied of insects, birds and the people who lived on them.
But nearly two decades later the area is buzzing and
twittering with life again after local people and a new breed of Iraqi
conservationists have restored much of what was once the world's third
largest wetland to some of its former glory.
The story of this once almost impossible restoration is told in an
exhibition of photographs that has opened in the UK. They show the huge
expanses of reeds and open water – now at least half the size of the
Florida Everglades – where plants, insects and fish have returned,
creating a vast feeding area for migrating and breeding birds,
including the majestic Sacred Ibis, the endemic Basrah Reed Warbler and
the Iraq Babbler, along with most of the world's population of Marbled
Teal ducks, bee-eaters and many more.
"We call them stop-over sites, refuelling sites," said Richard
Porter, Middle East advisor for the conservation group Birdlife
International, who has helped train biologists and other experts for
the local Birdlife partner Nature Iraq.
"They are as important as the breeding and over-wintering grounds for
species; if you have got to make a journey from central Africa to
norther Europe and Asia, and you've got nothing to feed on, you're
stuffed."
The Mesopotamian marshes originally made up an area more than three times the size of Norfolk, where the exhibition is showing, in Holt.
It sprawled across thousands of square kilometres of floodplain where
the Euphrates and Tigris rivers divided into a network of tributaries
meandering and pulsating south to the Arabian sea. They were home to
more than 80 bird species, otters and long-fingered bats, and hundreds
of thousands of Marsh Arabs who grew rice and dates, raised water
buffalo, fished and built boats and homes from reeds.
In the early 1990s, this way of life came to an abrupt end
when Hussein ordered the marshes to be drained to punish the local
population for an uprising after his failed invasion of Kuwait, a
problem exacerbated by the continued construction of dams upstream.
He ordered the area to be hemmed in by constructing around 4,000km
of earthen walls that towered up to 7m above the unbroken flat
landscape. The wetlands retreated to as little as 5-10% of their
original size, according to a 2001 United Nations Environment Agency report.
After Hussein was toppled by American forces in 2003, Azzam
Alwash returned from his adopted home in the US to the area, where he
had lived for part of his childhood, and learned to hunt ducks with his
father while they inspected the irrigation ditches. Alwash found the
local people who had stayed had already begun to break up the walls
with shovels or earth diggers, and they have continued to do so. They
have destroyed up to 98% of the embankments, he told the Guardian, "not
because they are tree-huggers or bird-lovers, but because it's a source
of economic income to them, because they can harvest reeds and sell
them. They can fish and feed a family or sell them to earn extra
income."
Alwash, a civil engineer, set up Nature Iraq and has organised
training for graduates who help with monitoring work. "We take guards
with us with Kalashnikovs, but the most difficult part is the road
between [the capital] Baghdad to the marsh," said Alwash. "Once I'm
inside the marshes it's relatively safe."
About half the original marshland has been restored - even more
had been reinstated, but there was a setback last year because of a
drought. Nature Iraq has now drawn up a plan to cope with the
diminishing water flows from dams upstream in Turkey by channelling
irrigation water back into the rivers and building a barrage to retain
meltwater from the mountains and create a "mechanical flood" of water
to replicate the important pulses of freshwater that wash through the
marshlands every spring.
Alwash and his team are also trying to tackle the problem of local
poaching, although he has great sympathy with those who have few
alternative sources of income, and hopes the opening of a new oil
industry will help create jobs.
"We have done some work in trying to educate the lo
cals," he added. "We say: 'Go out and hunt but take less; make $10
today – you don't have to make $20, and make $10 tomorrow'. We just
keep at it. You can't give up."
A scientist checks the effects of climate change on an Australian rainforest. Photograph: Phil Walter/Getty Images
"Like it or not, this [demand for openness] indicates a
transformation in the way science has to be conducted in this century."
That, say many, will be the lasting legacy of the independent review published last week into the controversial emails between climate scientists that were stolen from the University of East Anglia and posted online.
Scientists were cleared, as expected, of any fiddling of the figures
to exaggerate the case for global warming. But the review heavily
criticised them and the university for consistently blocking access to
data and failing to recognise the risk such secrecy posed to the
"credibility of UK climate science".
It is now possible to assess the damage. The scientific
evidence – showing that the world is warming fast due to human actions
and presents a clear future danger – remains untarnished. However, the
public's trust in that science has been scorched.
Professor Bob Watson, chief scientific adviser to the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and former head of the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
said he wanted the report to "draw a line under this episode so that
the scientific community can begin to regain the trust of the public
and continue to do its vital work on climate change".
But if there was no great global warming conspiracy, why did
the leaking of the emails last November become such a PR disaster?
Climate scientists, such as Oxford University's Myles Allen, blame the
media: "What everyone has lost sight of is the spectacular failure of
mainstream journalism to keep the whole affair in perspective."
The review, led by Sir Muir Russell, does not mention the media.
Instead, it examines the reaction of the scientists at the UEA's
Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to the pressure exerted by bloggers: "An
important feature of the blogosphere is the extent to which it demands
openness and access to data. A failure to recognise this and to act
appropriately can lead to immense reputational damage by feeding
allegations of cover-up."
The review adds: "We found a lack of recognition… of the extent to
which earlier action to release information… might have minimised the
problems."
Pressure on the scientists, whose once esoteric work creating
records of past temperatures had gained global significance, was
intense. In 2005, CRU head Phil Jones replied to a request: "We have 25
or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available
to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" But,
the review implies, the more they blocked, the more the Freedom of
Information requests flooded in.
On the same day the Russell review was published, the Information
Commissioner's Office published a little-noticed notice stating that UEA had breached two FOI regulations
in relation to requests made in 2008. Professor Geoffrey Boulton, an
eminent earth scientist and Russell review panel member, said: "We have
to move science from a private enterprise to a public enterprise."
It was bad luck that the CRU scientists were singled out, said Dr James Lovelock,
originator of the Gaia hypothesis, adding that the group was among the
best in the world at climate science. But he said: "Science has to
start examining the way it works. This report compares peer review,
which is 'pure', with the blogosphere, which is 'impure' – and there's
some truth in that, to be sure – but the peer-review process can be
exceedingly prejudiced and exert censorship even."
Russell found the CRU scientists were innocent of subverting
the peer-review process, through which researchers recommend or reject
work for publication in a journal. The review acknowledges the language
in some emails could be thought to reflect "partial and aggressive"
behaviour, such as this from CRU's Keith Briffa: "Confidentially I now
need a hard and if required an extensive case for rejecting" a paper.
But, said Russell, "we think it more plausible that it reflects the
rough and tumble of interaction in an area of science that has become
heavily contested".
Arch-critic of CRU, blogger Steve McIntyre, was far from convinced.
In his opinion, "the only reasonably objective inquiry to date", which
criticised the behaviour of the CRU scientists, was that by Fred Pearce in The Guardian.The editor of the Lancet,
Dr Richard Horton, gave evidence to the inquiry on peer review. What
was at stake was far bigger than the climate change science being done
at CRU, he said.
"What Russell has identified is the beginning of a revolution
in the way science is being done," he said. "If scientists don't adapt
to this soon, the trust that the public and politicians put in science
will be jeopardised. The credibility of science itself is at stake."
Eiris review names Britain as 'dirty man of Europe'
Survey of Europe's top 300 companies reveals UK as worst offender in terms of corporate impact on global warming.
Protesters in New Orleans target BP over the oil spill from its
drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico. Photograph: Mark
Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
Britain is being accused of being the "dirty man of Europe" after
new research showed that, of the world's top 300 companies, more than
half of those most engaged in carbon-polluting sectors were based in
the UK.
A review of Europe's top 300 companies by the ethical investment
consultant Eiris found that the greatest proportion of those with "very
high impact" in relation to global warming came from the UK, more than
double the number from any other country.
Of those companies in the top 300 dedicated to solving or mitigating the problems of climate change,
only 3% were located in Britain. Eiris's findings come at a time when
BP, one of the UK's best-known companies, has attracted bad publicity
worldwide over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
A spokesman for Eiris said that its review was "worrying from a
consumer point of view but also from an investment perspective". He
added: "It is particularly alarming for pension funds and other
long-term investors as climate change rises up the political agenda."
The greater exposure of UK plc to risk from climate change largely stems from the number of big oil and mining companies that dominate the FTSE 100 index in London.
Greenpeace said that the Eiris research was a "shameful"
indictment of the UK, which had failed to build up a low-carbon
business sector despite much political rhetoric.
Ben Stewart, a spokesman for the environmental campaign group,
said: "It seems Britain is still the dirty man of Europe. These figures
will shame the succession of ministers who promised Britain would be at
the forefront of developing clean tech.
"As things stand, our economy is poorly placed to benefit from
this century's inevitable shift to low-carbon industry, while Germany
looks well-positioned to gain from first-mover advantage."
Eiris estimates that 41% of the top 300 companies in Britain and
Europe have a significant impact on global warming, either directly
from their operations or through the products they manufacture.
However, there was some good news to come out of the survey. More
than 60% of companies with a high or very high impact on the
environment have put in place measures under which executive
remuneration is in some way linked to the company's carbon emission
reductions.
More than half of all companies in the most polluting brackets
have some kind of long-term carbon reduction targets in place, although
Eiris notes that concrete action is harder to find.
French and German companies in the top 300 are at the forefront
among those providing solutions to climate change. The consultancy
does, however, point out that many British businesses may be excluded
from the ranking because they are smaller.
In fact, the UK government has led initiatives to limit climate
change, publishing the low carbon transition plan and introducing a
carbon reduction commitment energy efficiency scheme, as well as a
feed-in tariff scheme, promoting clean energy production in the home.
In the 1980s, the UK was described by Scandinavian countries as
"the dirty man of Europe" because of high emissions of sulphur dioxide
from industrial power plants, which exported acid rain across the Baltic
BP accused of killing endangered sea turtles in cleanup operation
Environmentalists press Obama administration to put a halt to BP's 'burn fields' to dispose of oil from the Gulf spil
A Kemp's Ridley turtle rescued from the BP oil spill is cleaned up at the Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans. Photograph: Bevil Knapp/EPA
Endangered sea turtles and other marine creatures are being
corralled into 500 square-mile "burn fields" and burnt alive in
operations intended to contain oil from BP's ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration confirmed today.
The killing of the turtles – which once teetered on the brink of
extinction – has outraged environmentalists and could put BP into even
deeper legal jeopardy.
Environmental organisations are demanding that the oil company
stop blocking rescue of the turtles, and are pressing the US
administration to halt the burning and look at prosecuting BP and its
contractors for killing endangered species during the cleanup
operation. Harming or killing a sea turtle carries fines of up to
$50,000 (£33,000).
"It is criminal and cruel and they need to be held accountable,"
said Carole Allen, Gulf office director of the Sea Turtle Restoration
Project. "There should not be another lighting of a fire of any kind
till people have gone in there and looked for turtles."
The Obama administration, confirming the kills, said BP was under
orders to avoid the turtles. "My understanding is that protocols
include looking for wildlife
prior to igniting of oil," a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said. "We take these things very
seriously."
The agency this week posted a single turtle spotter on the burn
vessels, but government scientists are pressing for more wildlife
experts to try to rescue the animals before the oil is lit – or at the
very least to give them access to the burn fields.
"One can't just ride through an area where they are burning and
expect to be safe while looking for turtles. We don't expect that, but
we would like to access those areas where we suspect there may be
turtles," said Blair Witherington, a sea turtle research scientist at
Florida's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.
More than 425 turtles are known to have died in the spill zone since 30 April, Noaa said.
Conservationists say the losses could imperil the long-term
survival of the creatures. All five species of turtles found in the
Gulf are endangered or threatened: the Kemp's Ridley most of all.
But in a video posted on YouTube, Mike Ellis, a skipper from
Venice, Louisiana, accuses BP of chasing away a boat of
conservationists trying to rescue turtles caught in the oil and weed a
few miles away from the leak.
"They ran us out of there and then they shut us down," said Ellis.
On days when the weather is fine and there is relatively no wind,
BP conducts up to a dozen "controlled burns", torching vast expanses of
the ocean surface within a corral of fireproof booms.
Biologists say such burns are deadly for young turtles because oil
and sargassum – the seaweed mats that provide nutrients to jellyfish
and a range of other creatures – – congregate in the same locations.
The sargassum is also a perfect hunting ground for young sea turtles,
who are not developed enough to dive to the ocean floor to forage for
food.
Once BP moves in, the turtles are doomed. "They drag a boom
between two shrimp boats and whatever gets caught between the two
boats, they circle it up and catch it on fire. Once the turtles are in
there, they can't get out," Ellis said.
The heartbreak for conservationists is that the convergence of
sargassum and oil offers the best chance of finding young turtles
before they suffocate on the crude. But it can also be deadly.
"When they breathe and come to the surface, they get a mouthful
and a bellyful of toxic substance that is very much like wallpaper
paste," said John Hewitt, the director of husbandry at the New Orleans
aquarium. "If we don't remove them and clean them up, in three or four
days that probably spells the end of the turtle."
Since the spill, the aquarium has taken in 90 sea turtles,
scrubbing the oil off their shells with toothbrushes and washing-up
liquid.
Even before the fires, the two-month gusher in the Gulf of Mexico was threatening the long-term survival of sea turtles.
"This is the worst calamity that I have ever seen for sea
turtles," said David Godfrey, executive director of the Sea Turtle
Conservancy. "This is really the cradle of sea turtle reproduction for
the western hemisphere."The threat to the turtles could continue well
after the gusher is capped. The oil spill is turning vast expanses of
the Gulf into a dead zone, killing off the jellyfish, crabs and conches
that are the staples of an adult diet.
Conservationists are also worried about the survival of the next
generation of loggerhead turtles, which are about to climb up on to
badly oiled shorelines to begin their nesting season. "They are doomed"
said Godfrey.
Godfrey said his organisation was working on plans to dig up about
1,000 nests, or 100,000 eggs, from nesting grounds in the Florida
Panhandle and transfer them to hatcheries for safekeeping. "It is a
last gasp measure to save 100,000 young sea turtles," he said. "We need
every one of these turtles to survive."
The changing face of China's coal industry
Jonathan Watts reports from Inner Mongolia on a project that could clean up the planet's fastest growing source of greenhouse emissions – or make them far, far worse.
A local holds a banner reading "oppose garbage incineration, protect green Guangzhou" outside government offices in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. Photograph: Reuters
Chinese police have dispersed a demonstration by hundreds of Chinese protesters over a planned waste incinerator in the southern city of Guangzhou.
Residents are unhappy about what they see as inadequate consultation for the project. A public meeting this morning broke down when officials were deluged with around 200 petitioners.
The frustrated crowd surged into the municipal government office and demanded to be heard. They then occupied the city square, where they staged a peaceful sit-in. Wen Yunchao, a blogger and rights activist at the scene, told the Guardian by telephone that the number of protesters had swelled to about 800 as word spread by mobile phone and internet. The authorities declared the gathering illegal after the participants demanded the resignation of the city's deputy general secretary, he said.
The demonstration was broken up by police, who used crowd barriers to drive the protesters off the square. Most of the protesters were home-owners and villagers from Panyu, the district where the planned incinerator is expected to handle 2,000 tonnes of waste per day.
Others were from Likeng, which is in the process of expanding an incinerator despite concerns among nearby residents that it will lead to an increase in cancer cases. The government has said such claims are groundless.
China's southernmost province has been at the forefront of the country's breakneck economic development and has experienced some of its worst environmental degradation and social turbulence. In 2005, police killed three villagers in Shanwei, Guangdong province in a violent protest over a planned power plant. The same year, thousands of riot police evicted farmers locked into a land dispute in Sanshan.
Many of the protesters in the latest peaceful protest were middle-class home-owners, who oppose the construction of a potential environmental hazard in their neighbourhood. The government sometimes pays more heed to this group than dispossessed farmers. In 2007, a "walk" by thousands of middle-class residents through the streets of Xiamen in Fujian province prompted the government to rethink plans for a para-xylene chemical plant in the area.
In the latest case, however, the Panyu local government has stated its intention to push ahead with the project once an environmental impact assessment is completed.
Editor's note: Much of the world's toxic waste, including from the UK has been shipped to this region fo incinertion for several years, particularly since I have been in China. It's big business.
De-forestation on Sumatra - from The Guardian with links - 2009.10.06.
Australian town in 'world-first' bottled water ban. 2009.09.26.
An Australian town pulled all bottled water from its shelves Saturday and replaced it with refillable bottles in what is believed to be a world-first ban.
Hundreds of people marched through the picturesque rural town of Bundanoon to mark the first day of its bottled water ban by unveiling a series of new public drinking fountains, said campaign spokesman John Dee.
Shopkeepers ceremoniously removed the last bottles of water from their shelves and replaced them with reusable bottles that can be filled from fountains inside the town's shops or at water stations in the street. "Every bottle today was taken off the shelf and out of the fridges so you can only now buy refillable bottles in shops in Bundanoon," Dee told AFP.
The tiny town, two hours south of Sydney, voted in July to ban bottled water after a drinks company moved to tap into a local aquifer for its bottled water business. "In the process of the campaign against that the local people became educated about the environmental impact of bottled water," said Dee.
"A local retailer came up with this idea of well why don't we do something about that and actually stop selling the bottled water and it got a favourable reaction," he said. Dee said the 2,000-person town had made international headlines with their bid, which he hoped would spur communities across the world to action.
"Whilst our politicians grapple with the enormity of dealing with climate change what Bundanoon shows is that at the very local level we can sometimes do things that can surprise ourselves, in terms of our ability to bring about real and measurable change that has a real benefit for the environment," he said.
Activists say bottling water causes unnecessary use of plastics and fuel for transport. A New South Wales study found that in 2006, the industry was responsible for releasing 60,000 tonnes of gases blamed for global warming.
Dust blankets the Opera House at sunrise Photograph: Tim Wimborne/Reuters
The last nomads: drought drives Kenya's herders to the brink
In the isolated border lands between Kenya and Somalia, families have always clung to a precarious existence. Now a decade of droughts has tested their endurance
Peter Beaumont travelled to the border town of Elwak to meet the desperate families abandoning the ranger lands for an equally uncertain future living by the road Link to this video
Hawa Hassan comes leading three donkeys, accompanied by two female relatives and a handful of the family's smallest children. They have walked out of the drought-withered acacia scrub, travelling 15 miles in a day to reach the Kenyan settlement of Makutano, not far from the border with Somalia.
Makutano is a sparse collection of tukuls – dome-shaped dwellings patched with cloth and tarpaulin and sections of woven-grass matting – scattered along the dirt road. Passing through a fence of piled thorn around the settlement, Hawa and the other women unload branches from the donkeys' backs. Quickly and dextrously they bend and lash the boughs, framing an igloo-shaped structure in a few minutes, one of three that will be erected by the women in a sandy clearing among the low and spiny trees.
The men, says 55-year-old Hawa, are a day behind the women with what remains of their livestock – some camels and 18 goats out of the 40 they once owned. The rest perished through lack of water – or were slaughtered for meat so her family could survive a few more days on their journey.
As Hawa works the rough twine around the sticks, she describes in a few sentences the story that marks not simply the end for her family of generations of nomadic existence in the isolated lands where Kenya meets Somalia and Ethiopia, but the imminent collapse of a whole way of life that has been destroyed by an unprecedented decade of successive droughts.
"We have no water," she explains, "and no food. We have left the pastures because we have lost so many goats. We had to come here to seek assistance. For the past two months we have talked and talked about making this decision. We waited because we thought there might be some rain."
And in these few minutes on arriving at Makutano, Hawa's world is utterly transformed. A nomad when she walked in through its fence, in the moment of settling into its impoverished community she became something else instead: part of the burgeoning class of pastoral dropouts. No longer self-sufficient. Condemned to live at the very margins of Kenyan life. "I'm not sad that I came," she says. "I can get water here. I don't want to leave my life. If I could get some goats then I would return to herding... I can't feel good about being in a settlement. It has been forced on me. I don't wish it for my life."
A day later, I return to Makutano to find Hawa again, and to see how she has settled in. The men of her family have now joined the women. Children crowd outside the tukuls eating porridge made of maize mixed with ground tree bark – a traditional coping technique during times of little food. But Hawa is not there. One group of Hawa's relatives I do notice, however. A mother and young children, they sit eating next to the corpses of two of the family's goats that had collapsed and died a few hours before.
Other family members are gathered quietly around something lying on the ground, the motionless figure of a woman in her late 60s, her face wrapped in a shawl. A grandmother, someone explains, she is sick from hunger and malaria. It does not look as if she will survive the evening.
What is happening in Kenya's ranger lands is the slow death of an existence, with families attempting to cling stubbornly to a land where the acacia scrub has been scorched to a spectral grey; where wind erosion scourges the possibility of life out of the fragile, desiccated soil. It has always been a hard living, herding goats, camels and bony cattle on the migration routes between the dry season and the wet season pastures. These days it looks close to impossible: the herders have begun slaughtering what precious stock has survived in order to feed their families.
Those trying to assist the nomads in the ranger lands around the dusty town of Elwak on the Somalia border understand that there is a catch-22 in their efforts to help them: that external help – for all that it is desperately needed – may also be hastening the end of nomadic pastoralism in this region.
Where water is provided, delivered in a solitary tanker with a broken steering column, the nomads will gather, attracted by what is an occasional and insufficient supply of water. And be encouraged to drop out. New parts for the water truck can take up to three months to come from Nairobi, so its drivers have been forced to make their own uncomfortable decision: to drive it until it breaks completely rather than take it off the road for temporary repairs.
The watering points in the new settlements also attract wild animals. In the villages we hear stories of infants and livestock snatched by predators. And so far it is a very piecemeal relief effort. While some plastic water tanks are being trucked in by Kenya's government, most settlements are reliant on dirty water pans – often shared by animals and humans.
While Hawa Hassan says she will miss her life among the tracts of thorn bushes, most recent pastoral dropouts interviewed by the Observer conceded that while in the past, perhaps, they had settled for brief periods, this time many are doing it for good.
The last drought – which began in 2005 – saw a dropout rate of close to 80%. This time the numbers are between 55% and 60%. But with no rains likely for weeks at the earliest, and then only the short rains, the situation is worsening by the day.
The current drought, which began when the rains failed once again in April, is not yet as bad as the drought that came in 2005 and left this area littered with the corpses of animals. But the animals are dying now, the weakest stumbling and falling, unable to get up again. And the consequence of a change in the global weather patterns that has seen three serious droughts within a decade, when previously a bad one occurred every nine to 12 years, has been a whittling away at the nomads' capacity to restock with animals, to replenish and survive – normally a period of about three years.
The problems are exacerbated by the political marginalisation of this remote region – nearly 700 miles from Nairobi – whose residents, mainly Muslims, have long been regarded with either suspicion or indifference by those in the capital.
The result has been a mounting desperation. Families who are rich enough have taken their animals hundreds of miles by lorry to Mombasa on the coast to pasture them, or have had fodder brought from Nairobi. Those lacking in resources have been forced over the border to Somalia or into Ethiopia where many have seen their cattle stolen by militias, or have been drawn into sometimes violent conflicts over competition for resources.
One man, recently returned from Ethiopia, shows me a freshly healed wound on his throat that was sustained in a fight before he was driven back across the border. Others speak of losing all their camels to raiders in Somalia. And not all these conflicts are occurring across the border.
One morning I accompany the limping government water truck on its deliveries. First stop is a settlement named Iresuki. A group of women wait by the road with empty 20-litre plastic canisters. As the tanker arrives a fight breaks out between several women desperate to get water.
The problem is explained. The tanker visits on average just once a week. The water it delivers lasts only four days. So those without access to donkeys to fetch water from elsewhere are forced to beg and borrow. Or go thirsty.
In another village, Dowder, I come across a temporary water pan – a tarpaulin laid into a broad trench in the earth – into which the tanker deposits water for livestock. A few muddy puddles are all that remain of the water.
Abdi Kher Hassan and Bishar Dahir are scooping up the puddles, a few spoonfuls at a time. "It's for my family to drink," says Abdi. "For our homes." Unlike Hawa, Abdi has no wish to return to the ranger lands and the nomadic way of life. He dropped out of pastoralism two and a half years ago. His life is not much better.
"When we had livestock we had to move around," he says with sad logic. "Now our livestock is gone, we don't have to move. Before I had 50 goats. Now I have five. Those are ones that I'll stay home with. I don't want to go back to that life. It is too hard. My children are getting an education here. I don't want them to follow their father and grandfathers as the situation gets worse."
Bishar says they have chosen to settle on these remote and dusty roads so that their plight remains visible to the government. "If we went to the big towns, no one would notice us. We have settled here where people will notice us and where we can be helped."
The escalating collapse of the pastoralist way of life is having a profound social impact on the dropouts, those on the verge of dropping out, and the few settled communities in the region.
At a bush madrasa, an irritable teacher with a stick beats children struggling to learn Islamic verses drawn with charcoal on flat sections of tree bark. Their parents, it transpires, are still in the bush trying to survive but have given their youngest children to relatives – who have already dropped out – to care for in settlement.
Other problems are more obvious. The dropouts congregating in Elwak and by the road have little access to healthcare and sanitation – a particular issue in the town, where the tukuls have sprung up around homes, behind the healthcare centre, and around the water towers. Most of the dropouts are lacking in any employment.
For the children it is a particularly harsh existence. Close to the water towers in Elwak, Khadija Omar is standing over the body of the last of her 50 goats. She arrived in Elwak 10 days before. One of her children has pneumonia, another has malaria. She says she will survive by gathering firewood.
Ahmed Ibrahim, of Northern Aid, a local partner of the British charity Christian Aid, which is about to launch an appeal to counter the effects of the drought in Kenya, describes the situation of the nomads as desperate. "The pastoralists know that to take their livestock into areas like Somalia, where there is a war, is unsafe. It is a mark of their desperation."
"The way the climate is changing – if it continues – it will be very difficult to sustain the nomadic way of living. It is a very hard task. We fear that soon people will begin dying not just from the lack of food but from a lack of water."
He believes that despite the terrible conditions visible already, the nomads are currently only at the beginning of what has become a disaster.
The flight from drought
A third drought in a decade is afflicting the countries in the Horn of Africa. In Kenya, more than three million people are facing food and water shortages. The worst problems have been in the north of the country, where conflicts over resources have broken out between groups of nomadic pastoralists, killing dozens.
In desperation, some nomads have crossed the borders into Ethiopia and war-torn Somalia. Others have sent women and children to lead herds into the Tsavo national park to graze, while those who are wealthy enough have moved livestock by truck as far as Mombasa on the coast in search of grazing land.
The UK's woodlands will be "hugely important" in efforts to tackle climate change and cope with its impacts, the Forestry Commission said as it launched the most comprehensive survey of our forests ever undertaken.
Tim Rollinson, director-general of the Forestry Commission, said the massive, five-year survey of 15,000 woodland sites across England, Scotland and Wales would help plan for "an uncertain future" brought on by a changing climate.
British woods and trees will not only play a key role in storing carbon and cutting the emissions causing global warming, but also help wildlife and people cope with impacts such as hotter summers and increased risk of flooding.
The survey will provide "crucial information" on the extent and health of British woodlands, including how much carbon they store, while in the future, surveyors will return to each of the sites to monitor changes.
The Forestry Commission has already seen a number of changes to woodlands in Britain, such as greater use of wooded areas for recreation and increased planting of more urban forests, to give access for city-dwellers to woods.
Mr Rollinson said he expected to see other changes over the next 20 years, including the planting of more woodland and changes in management to maximise the carbon storage it can deliver.
The Government recently said it wanted to see 10,000 hectares of new woods planted each year to store carbon, as part of the Low Carbon Transition Plan which aims to cut the UK's emissions by 80% by 2050.
Mr Rollinson said: "What we're doing with this survey is planning for an uncertain future, and that future is strongly linked to a changing climate. "There's no doubt that woodland can be a substantial help with climate change, and we want to see more trees being planted.
Chinese legislature passes its first climate change resolution
New laws to combat global warming are highly likely, according to the state mediaJonathan Wattsguardian.co.uk, 2009.08.29.
China's top legislative body approved its first climate change resolution today and announced plans to draw up new laws to combat global warming, according to the state media.
The moves by the rubber-stamp National People's Congress are timed to strengthen China's negotiating position as it prepares a new announcement on emissions policy before the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.
Environmentalists welcomed the unusually high degree of attention that the NPC's standing committee paid to the environment during a week-long session in which lawmakers also debated a more ambitious target for renewable energy. Details of the final resolution were not immediately available, but a draft submitted this week called on the government to take further measures to control greenhouse gas emissions and invest more in low carbon technology.
There was tough language on international negotiations, noting that China would defend its right to further economic development. Senior lawmakers said further action would follow. "China will draw up new laws and regulations to provide a legal basis for combating climate change," Wang Guangtao, director of the NPC's environment and resource protection committee was quoted as saying by the China Daily.
While apparently lacking specific targets to reduce emissions, the resolution was welcomed by environmental groups. "It's very significant. For the first time, they have put climate change at the core of economic and social planning at all levels of government," said Yang Ailun, climate and energy campaign manager for Greenpeace China. "This lays the ground for China to make a big announcement ahead of Copenhagen."
Ahead of those crucial climate talks in December, Yang said the government appeared to be leaning towards a mid-term target for carbon intensity, as first reported in the Guardian.
This would represent progress from China's current policy of reducing energy use relative to gross domestic product in the latest five-year economic plan.
But even the setting of a carbon intensity goal for 2020 would disappoint hopes that China will set a target for overall emissions to peak. Last week, an influential research panel said this might be possible by 2030, but the government has given no suggestion it will make this into policy.
The draft resolution called for the government to strengthen its early warning systems and make better preparation for extreme events, such as typhoons. It recommends greater investment in water-saving technologies and low carbon energy.
"We should make carbon reduction a new source of economic growth, and change the economic development model to maximise efficiency, lower energy consumption and minimise carbon discharges," the draft says.
All of the measures included in the draft resolution were previously outlined in government white papers, but environmentalists said the issue has moved to a more prominent position in the nation's political system and a climate change law is highly likely.
"This is a good step forward," said Yang Fuqiang, the director of global climate solutions at the China office of the World Wildlife Fund. "Before we only had government policy, which local governments could challenge, but a law would be harder to violate."
Lawmakers are also discussing a revision of the renewable energy law that could set the stage for the government to raise its target for wind, hydro, nuclear, solar and biomass, currently set at 15% of the total energy mix by 2020.
China is already ahead of its interim goals for wind, hydro and nuclear power. Each extra percentage point that can be added to the renewables target by 2020 is estimated to save 150 million tonnes of coal equivalent.
Climate change: melting ice will trigger wave of natural disasters. Robin McKieThe Observer 2009.09.09. Scientists at a London conference next week will warn of earthquakes, avalanches and volcanic eruptions as the atmosphere heats up and geology is altered. Even Britain could face being struck by tsunami
Kirkjufell volcano erupting above the town of Vestmannaeyjar, Heimaey Island, Westmann Islands, Iceland. Photograph: Emory Kristof/National Geographic/Getty Images
Scientists are to outline dramatic evidence that global warming threatens the planet in a new and unexpected way – by triggering earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches and volcanic eruptions.
Reports by international groups of researchers – to be presented at a London conference next week – will show that climate change, caused by rising outputs of carbon dioxide from vehicles, factories and power stations, will not only affect the atmosphere and the sea but will alter the geology of the Earth.
Melting glaciers will set off avalanches, floods and mud flows in the Alps and other mountain ranges; torrential rainfall in the UK is likely to cause widespread erosion; while disappearing Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets threaten to let loose underwater landslides, triggering tsunamis that could even strike the seas around Britain.
At the same time the disappearance of ice caps will change the pressures acting on the Earth's crust and set off volcanic eruptions across the globe. Life on Earth faces a warm future – and a fiery one. "Not only are the oceans and atmosphere conspiring against us, bringing baking temperatures, more powerful storms and floods, but the crust beneath our feet seems likely to join in too," said Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre, at University College London (UCL).
"Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something," added McGuire, who is one of the organisers of UCL's Climate Forcing of Geological Hazards conference.
Time-line for CopenhagenClick image
Climate change threat to Pacific Islanders. By Bonnie Malkin in Sydney: 2009.07.27.
More than 75 million people living on Pacific islands will have to relocate by 2050 because of the effects of climate change.
Fishermen paddle off Kennedy Island in the remote Western Province of the Solomon IslandsPhoto: AFP
A report by the charity said Pacific Islanders were already feeling the effects of global warming, including food and water shortages, rising cases of malaria and more frequent flooding and storms. Some had already been forced from their homes and the number of displaced people was rising, it warned.
"The Future is Here: Climate Change in the Pacific" predicted that many Pacific Islanders would not be able to relocate within their own countries and would become international refugees. It urged neighbouring wealthy countries to take urgent action to curb their carbon emissions to prevent a large-scale crisis.
Half of the population of the Pacific live less than 1.5km from the coast and are incredibly vulnerable to sea-level rise and extreme weather. But as well as moving out, the report found that some countries had started adapting to the changing climate.
Fiji is attempting to "climate-proof" its villages by testing salt-resistant varieties of staple foods, planting mangroves and native grasses to halt coastal erosion in order to protect wells from salt water intrusion, and moving homes and community buildings away from vulnerable coastlines.
In the Solomon Islands officials are looking for land to resettle people from low-lying outer atolls, and those living in the outer atolls of the Federated States of Micronesia were also moving to higher ground. The tiny nation of Tuvalu also recently pledged to become carbon neutral by 2020.
Andrew Hewett, Oxfam Australia Executive Director, said it was vital that Australia started working with Pacific governments to plan for the impact of climate change. The Australian government's commitment of $150 million (£75m) to help Pacific Islanders adapt to climate change needed to at least double, it said.
With only months to go until the crucial UN negotiations in Copenhagen in December, Australia needed to show Pacific leaders it was willing to do its fair share to address one of the most pressing challenges in the region, with projections that 75 million people in the Asia-Pacific region will be forced to relocate by 2050 if climate change continues unabated.
Not all will have the option of relocating within their own country.
Pacific leaders will raise the issue of climate change with Kevin Rudd, the Australian prime minister, at the Pacific Islands Forum on Aug 4.
• Meat companies sued over Amazon deforestation • Accused firms supplying Tesco, Asda and M&S
A three-year survey by Greenpeace shows that western demand for beef and leather and an increase in cattle ranching is leading to intensified deforestation in the Amazon Link to this video
Brazilian authorities investigating illegal deforestation have accused the suppliers of several UK supermarkets of selling meat linked to massive destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Brazilian firms that supply Tesco, Asda and Marks & Spencer are among dozens of companies named by prosecutors, who are seeking hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation.
The move follows a three-year investigation by Greenpeace into the trade in cattle products such as meat and leather traced to illegal farms across the Amazon region. The Greenpeace report, revealed in the Guardian earlier this month, showed that a handful of major Brazilian processors exported products linked to Amazon destruction to dozens of blue-chip companies across the world. Daniel Cesar Avelino, the public prosecutor handling the cases, brought by Brazil's Federal Public Prosecution Office (MPF), said: "We know that the single biggest driver of deforestation in the Amazon is cattle. We want all companies who are part of this destructive economic chain to be responsible for their economic crimes."
The MPF has started legal action against 21 farms and slaughterhouse companies, including Bertin, which supplies Tesco and Princes Food with processed beef. The MPF said the investigated Brazilian companies could be to blame for illegal deforestation across 150,000 hectares. It is seeking £630m compensation for "environmental crimes against Brazilian society". The accused farms include the Espirito Santo farm in Para state, which the Guardian visited in an undercover investigation with Greenpeace last month. Bertin said it was "analysing the content of the [legal] action to respond later". The MPF has also warned a further 69 firms for buying products associated with illegal deforestation, including JBS, which supplies Princes Foods, Asda and Marks and Spencer.
Bertin and JBS, the Greenpeace report said, source cattle from illegal farms, and ship the beef and hides to facilities in the south of Brazil for export. Greenpeace claims records show that cattle from hundreds of farms across the Amazon are mixed and processed in this way, making it currently impossible to trace the origins of products.
"In effect, criminal or 'dirty' supplies of cattle are 'laundered' through the supply chain." JBS would not comment. Several supermarkets in Brazil, including Wal-Mart, have already banned beef from deforested areas. The Brazilian Association of Supermarkets said it would cancel supply contracts with accused farms. John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace, said: "Major supermarkets in Brazil have promised action to remove Amazon beef and leather from their stores, and now it's time that UK companies did the same … we need to see British firms cancelling contracts with suppliers who are implicated in Amazon deforestation."
The UK supermarkets said the beef did not come from the Amazon. Tesco and Marks and Spencer said they had received assurances from their suppliers. Asda said it was sending people to Brazil to audit the supply line.
Princes Foods said: "We have contacted both suppliers to discuss the claims in detail, and they are liaising directly with Greenpeace. We will monitor the outcome of these discussions closely."
In a separate move, the World Bank said it will withdraw a $90m (£54.47m) loan to Bertin from its private lending arm, which Greenpeace says was used to expand activities in the Amazon. Bertin supplies several companies with leather for shoes, including Nike and Timberland.
A Timberland spokesman said it was "actively engaged with Bertin to better understand this very complex issue". Nike said it was meeting its tannery suppliers and investigating the supply chain. Greenpeace wants companies to refuse to buy products sourced from farms that have carried out illegal deforestation. It wants consumers to pressure supermarkets and high-street brands identified in the report to clean up supply chains.
Clearing tropical forests for agriculture is estimated to produce 17% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions – more than the global transport system. Cattle farming is now the biggest threat to the remaining Amazon rainforest, a fifth of which has been lost since 1970. The Greenpeace report compiles government records, company documents and trade data from Brazil, China, Europe, Vietnam and the US to piece together the global movement of meat, leather and cosmetics ingredients made from Brazilian cattle.
Greenland ice could fuel severe U.S. sea level rise. 2009.05.29.
Reuters – The small town of Ilulissat in Greenland is seen in this photo taken August 16, 2007. New York, Boston … By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New York, Boston and other cities on North America's northeast coast could face a rise in sea level this century that would exceed forecasts for the rest of the planet if Greenland's ice sheet keeps melting as fast as it is now, researchers said on Wednesday.
Sea levels off the northeast coast of North America could rise by 30 - 50cm (12 to 20 inches) more than other coastal areas if the Greenland glacier-melt continues to accelerate at its present pace, the researchers reported.
This is because the current rate of ice-melting in Greenland could send so much fresh water into the salty north Atlantic Ocean that it could change the vast ocean circulation pattern sometimes called the conveyor belt. Scientists call this pattern the meridional overturning circulation.
"If the Greenland melt continues to accelerate, we could see significant impacts this century on the northeast U.S. coast from the resulting sea level rise," said Aixie Hu, lead author of an article on the subject in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "Major northeastern cities are directly in the path of the greatest rise," said Hu, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
This is an even bleaker assessment than an earlier study indicated. A March article in the journal Nature Geoscience said warmer water temperatures could shift ocean currents so as to raise sea levels off the U.S. northeast coast by about 20cm (8 inches) more than the average global sea level rise.
NOT LIKELY BUT POSSIBLE
However, this earlier research did not include the impact of melting Greenland ice, which would speed changes in ocean circulation and send 10 - 30cm (4 to 12 more inches) of water toward northeastern North America, on top of the average global sea level rise. That could put residents of New York, Boston and Halifax, Nova Scotia, at risk since these cities and others lie close to sea level now, Hu said in answer to e-mailed questions.
Not only would coastal residents be at direct risk from flooding but drainage systems would suffer as salty ocean water would move back into river deltas, changing the biological environment, Hu wrote in an e-mail. (Editing by Bill Trott) Ecological disaster facing the Amazon by Peter Alyne
Between 20 & 40% of Amazon's trees at risk.Photo GETTY
Even small rises in temperature could destroy large swathes of the jungle, they believe.
Changing rainfall patterns already under way could leave up to three quarters of the forest dry and withered by the middle of the next century.
The result would not only be an ecological "catastrophe" but could also turn the global weather system on its head, the researchers said.
The findings were presented to the climate summit in Copenhagen by scientists at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre in Exeter, which specialises in climate prediction and research. The team has calculated that if, as widely anticipated, the world’s average temperature rises by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from the pre-industrial levels of around 14C (57F) by the middle of the century, then between 20 and 40 per cent of the Amazon’s trees will disappear.
The process, once started, could take hundreds of years to reverse. Even the most modest predictions of a 1 degree C rise will see some irreversible damage to the tree coverage.
Dr Chris Jones, co-author of the study, said: 'On any level of pragmatic timescale we should see any loss of the Amazon forest as irreversible.'
The team believes that the process, known as dieback, will begin when average global temperatures reach around 15C. Weather system changes will mean less rainfall on the jungle which will result in saplings failing to reach maturity while older trees die and wither away.
Once the process begins it will feed on itself as less tree cover will mean less water evaporation to create more rain. Eventually it could have the effect of turning more than a million square miles of the jungle in Brazil into savannah.
The process would be accelerated by logging, which often involves burning down the wood, releasing carbon, to clear it for agriculture. However, a reduction in logging would help the rainforest to survive changes in climate.
Prof Peter Cox, Met Office professor of climate system dynamics at the University of Exeter, said: 'Ecologically, it would be a catastrophe and it would be taking a huge chance with our own climate. "The Tropics are drivers of the world’s weather systems and killing the Amazon is likely to change them forever.'
National Geographic: excellent resources for general environmental interest, including materials for teachers and students. Includes Audio / Video resources.
www.nationalgeographic.com/education - includes Education Network (EdNet), teacher's store, JASON project - your gateway to adventure. Also: Maps, Photos, News and Audio/Video links
http://www.ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0512/index.html - National Geographic Magazine Online Note: section of the address '0512' links to May's edition. Subsitute '0412' for April issue etc, or search for back-copies, archive features / topics.
Iraq's marshes drained by Saddam in the 90s to punish rebellious marsh inhabitants are now thriving once more. Photograph: Korsh Ararat, Omar Fadil and Mudhafar Salim/Nature Iraq 
A scientist checks the effects of climate change on an Australian rainforest. Photograph: Phil Walter/Getty Images
Protesters in New Orleans target BP over the oil spill from its
drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico. Photograph: Mark
Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
A local holds a banner reading "oppose garbage incineration, protect green Guangzhou" outside government offices in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. Photograph: Reuters 
Kirkjufell volcano erupting above the town of Vestmannaeyjar, Heimaey Island, Westmann Islands, Iceland. Photograph: Emory Kristof/National Geographic/Getty Images
Time-line for Copenhagen Click image
Between 20 & 40% of Amazon's trees at risk. Photo GETTY
