Constantine Alexander's blog

European Commission provides €268.4 million for 202 new environment projects

European Commission provides €268.4 million for 202 new environment projects
	The European Commission has approved funding for 202 new projects under the LIFE+ programme, the European Union's environment fund. The projects are from 25 Member States and cover actions in the fields of nature conservation, environmental policy, climate change and information and communication on environmental issues. Overall, they represent a total investment of some €516.5 million, of which the EU will provide €268.4 million. Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik said: "In this 20th anniversary year of the founding of LIFE and of the Habitats Directive, I'm delighted to announce the continuing financial support for high quality environmental projects across the EU. These latest LIFE+ projects continue a trend, started more than two decades ago, for innovative and best-practice actions furthering nature conservation, improving the environment and tackling climate change". The Commission received 1 078 applications from the 27 EU Member States in response to its latest call for proposals, which closed in July 2011. Of these, 202 were selected for co-funding through the programme's three components: LIFE+ Nature and Biodiversity, LIFE+ Environment Policy and Governance and LIFE+ Information and Communication.     Read the full press release and a summary of the projects by country
To find out more about the LIFE programme, visit the website at: http://ec.europa.eu/life

Wild biodiversity provides hope for a protected planet

The wild biodiversity of the world’s parks, reserves and protected areas can be a vital component for conservation, according to the latest volume in a series on landscapes and seascapes that are influenced by humans. The book, published by IUCN’s (International Union for Conservation of Nature) World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), is titled Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. It provides a diverse set of worldwide case studies in protected areas with rich cultural, spiritual and natural heritage. Examples include Makuira National Park in Colombia, where the traditional knowledge and management system of the local indigenous Wayuu people has led to a well-protected area that benefit local communities; and the indigenous Angami people of Khonoma Village in Northeastern India, where an active youth organization plays an important role in management of local hunting.

Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity is the first global attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of protected landscapes for biodiversity conservation and is the third volume in the series Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes.  With the IUCN World Conservation Congress less than two months from now, the book is a vital document of progress and challenges for protected areas, which will inform the progressive steps that must be taken at Congress. A launch of Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity will take place at the Protected Planet Pavilion in Jeju, South Korea, on 7 September from 09:30 – 10:30am.

Key Issues:

• Recognition and fostering of indigenous people and local communities’ cultures and traditional roles in land and sea stewardship can bolster natural resources conservation and sustainable development.  “Protected areas have long provided a vehicle for official recognition of traditional management and support emerging ideas that protected areas need not be managed by the state but can be effective if they are under the control of indigenous peoples, local communities, and individuals,” says Jessica Brown, volume Editor and Chair of the WCPA Specialist Group on Protected Landscapes. “Challenges remain, but local communities in countries from Australia to Croatia have shown that wild biodiversity in protected areas with a heavy human footprint can still thrive—these case studies serve as an important blueprint for the future.”
• Protected landscapes are effective for biodiversity conservation, yet good management is key. “We set out to investigate whether protected areas in human-influenced, cultural landscapes can provide effective biodiversity conservation—a critical issue for an increasingly crowded planet,” says Nigel Dudley, of Equilibrium Research, the volume’s Co-editor. “Our research suggests that if correctly managed, such areas can conserve biodiversity, but we are still at the beginning of learning how to carry out these landscape approaches that put conservation into practice.”

IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, helps the world find pragmatic solutions to our most pressing environment and development challenges by supporting scientific research; managing field projects all over the world; and bringing governments, NGOs, the UN, international conventions and companies together to develop policy, laws and best practice. IUCN is the independent advisory body to the World Heritage Committee on natural heritage.

Contact:

• Jamie Kemsey, Protected Areas Regional Communications Network Manager, IUCN Global Protected Areas Programme
• Maggie Roth, IUCN Media Relations

Related Links:

• Click here for the full publication
• More information on the WCPA
• More information about IUCN’s World Conservation Congress
• Equilibrium Research 

 

Scientists connect seawater chemistry with climate change and evolution

		This is a satellite view of the Zagros mountain belt in western Iran. The range forms part of the most extensive belt of water-soluble gypsum on Earth, stretching from Oman to Pakistan, and well into Western India. Scientists suggest that the dissolution of ancient salt deposits caused drastic changes in seawater chemistry, which may have triggered long-term global cooling. Credit: US Geological Survey/Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science

Humans get most of the blame for climate change, with little attention paid to the contribution of other natural forces. Now, scientists from the University of Toronto and the University of California Santa Cruz are shedding light on one potential cause of the cooling trend of the past 45 million years that has everything to do with the chemistry of the world's oceans.

"Seawater chemistry is characterized by long phases of stability, which are interrupted by short intervals of rapid change," says Professor Ulrich Wortmann in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Toronto, lead author of a study to be published in Science this week. "We've established a new framework that helps us better interpret evolutionary trends and climate change over long periods of time. The study focuses on the past 130 million years, but similar interactions have likely occurred through the past 500 million years."

Wortmann and co-author Adina Paytan of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California Santa Cruz point to the collision between India and Eurasia approximately 50 million years ago as one example of an interval of rapid change. This collision enhanced dissolution of the most extensive belt of water-soluble gypsum on Earth, stretching from Oman to Pakistan, and well into Western India – remnants of which are well exposed in the Zagros mountains.

The authors suggest that the dissolution or creation of such massive gyspum deposits will change the sulfate content of the ocean, and that this will affect the amount of sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere and thus climate. "We propose that times of high sulfate concentrations in ocean water correlate with global cooling, just as times of low concentration correspond with greenhouse periods," says Paytan.

"When India and Eurasia collided, it caused dissolution of ancient salt deposits which resulted in drastic changes in seawater chemistry," Paytan continues. "This may have led to the demise of the Eocene epoch – the warmest period of the modern-day Cenozoic era – and the transition from a greenhouse to icehouse climate, culminating in the beginning of the rapid expansion of the Antarctic ice sheet."

		This is the Zagros mountain belt in western Iran as seen from the space shuttle Atlantis. The range forms part of the most extensive belt of water-soluble gypsum on Earth, stretching from Oman to Pakistan, and well into Western India. Scientists suggest that the dissolution of ancient salt deposits caused drastic changes in seawater chemistry, which may have triggered long-term global cooling. Photo courtesy of NASA

The researchers combined data of past seawater sulfur composition, assembled by Paytan in 2004, with Wortmann's recent discovery of the strong link between marine sulfate concentrations and carbon and phosphorus cycling. They were able to explain the seawater sulfate isotope record as a result of massive changes to the accumulation and weathering of gyspum – the mineral form of hydrated calcium sulfate.

"While it has been known for a long time that gyspum deposits can be formed and destroyed rapidly, the effect of these processes on seawater chemistry has been overlooked," says Wortmann. "The idea represents a paradigm shift in our understanding of how ocean chemistry changes over time and how these changes are linked to climate."

The findings are reported in the paper "Rapid Variability of Seawater Chemistry over the Past 130 Million Years." The research is supported by a Discovery Grant to Wortmann from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and a National Science Foundation CAREER award to Paytan. Data used in the research was collected through the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) and facilitated by the United States Implementing Organization (USIO) and the Canadian Consortium for Ocean Drilling (CCOD).

The Integrated Ocean DrillingProgram (IODP) is an international research program dedicated to advancing scientific understanding of the Earth through drilling, coring, and monitoring the subseafloor. The JOIDES Resolution is a scientific research vessel managed by the U.S. Implementing Organization of IODP (USIO). Texas A&M University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the Consortium for Ocean Leadership together comprise the USIO. IODP is supported by two lead agencies: the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. Additional program support comes from the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD), the Australia-New Zealand IODP Consortium (ANZIC), India's Ministry of Earth Sciences, the People's Republic of China (Ministry of Science and Technology), and the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources. 

The Canadian Consortium for Ocean Drilling (CCOD) is a consortium composed of Canadian universities formed to facilitate, support and encourage Canada's participation in IODP.

Contact: Sean Bettam
s.bettam@utoronto.ca
416-946-7950
University of Toronto

Global CO2 emissions continue to increase

Per capita emissions in China reach European levels

Prepared by the Ministry of the Environment based on the Handbook of Energy & Economic Statistics in Japan (partially supplemented by UNFCCC data)

Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) – the main cause of global warming – increased by 3% last year, reaching an all-time high of 34 billion tonnes in 2011. In China, the world's most populous country, average emissions of CO₂ increased by 9% to 7.2 tonnes per capita. China is now within the range of 6 to 19 tonnes per capita emissions of the major industrialised countries. In the European Union, CO₂ emissions dropped by 3% to 7.5 tonnes per capita. The United States remain one of the largest emitters of CO₂, with 17.3 tones per capita, despite a decline due to the recession in 2008-2009, high oil prices and an increased share of natural gas. These are the main findings of the annual report 'Trends in global CO₂ emissions', released today by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL).

Based on recent results from the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) and latest statistics on energy use and relevant activities such as gas flaring and cement production, the report shows that global CO₂ emissions continued to grow in 2011, despite reductions in OECD countries. Weak economic conditions, a mild winter, and energy savings stimulated by high oil prices led to a decrease of 3% in CO₂ emissions in the European Union and of 2% in both the United States and Japan. Emissions from OECD countries now account for only one third of global CO₂ emissions – the same share as that of China and India combined, where emissions increased by 9% and 6% respectively in 2011. Economic growth in China led to significant increases in fossil fuel consumption driven by construction and infrastructure expansion. The growth in cement and steel production caused China's domestic coal consumption to increase by 9.7%.

The 3% increase in global CO₂ emissions in 2011 is above the past decade's average annual increase of 2.7%, with a decrease in 2008 and a surge of 5% in 2010. The top emitters contributing to the 34 billion tonnes of CO₂ emitted globally in 2011 are: China (29%), the United States (16%), the European Union (11%), India (6%), the Russian Federation (5%) and Japan (4%).

Cumulative CO₂ emissions call for action

An estimated cumulative global total of 420 billion tonnes of CO₂ were emitted between 2000 and 2011 due to human activities, including deforestation. Scientific literature suggests that limiting the rise in average global temperature to 2°C above pre-industrial levels – the target internationally adopted in UN climate negotiations – is possible only if cumulative CO₂ emissions in the period 2000-2050 do not exceed 1 000 to 1 500 billion tonnes. If the current global trend of increasing CO₂ emissions continues, cumulative emissions will surpass this limit within the next two decades.

Fortunately, this trend is being mitigated by the expansion of renewable energy supplies, especially solar and wind energy and biofuels. The global share of these so-called modern renewables, which exclude hydropower, is growing at an accelerated speed and quadrupled from 1992 to 2011. This potentially represents about 0.8 billion tonnes of CO₂ emissions avoided as a result of using renewable energy supplies in 2011, which is close to Germany's total CO₂ emissions in 2011.

PBL – the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency

PBL is the Netherlands' national institute for strategic policy analysis in the fields of environment, nature and spatial planning. It contributes to improving the quality of political and administrative decision making by conducting outlook studies, analyses and evaluations in which an integrated approach is considered paramount. Policy relevance is the prime concern in all PBL studies, for which independent and scientifically sound research is carried out on a solicited and unsolicited basis.

The Joint Research Centre (JRC)

As the Commission's in-house science service, the Joint Research Centre's mission is to provide EU policies with independent, evidence-based scientific and technical support throughout the whole policy cycle. Working in close cooperation with policy Directorates-General, the JRC addresses key societal challenges while stimulating innovation through developing new methods, tools and standards, and sharing its know-how with the Member States, the scientific community and international partners. Key policy areas include: environment and climate change; energy and transport; agriculture and food security; health and consumer protection; information society and digital agenda; safety and security, including nuclear; all supported through a cross-cutting and multidisciplinary approach.

EDGAR - Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research

The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) uses the latest scientific information and data from international statistics on energy production and consumption, industrial manufacturing, agricultural production, waste treatment/disposal and the burning of biomass, in order to model emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants for all countries of the world in a comparable and consistent manner. EDGAR (version 4.2) is also unique in its provision of historical emissions data for 20 years prior to 1990, the reference year for the Kyoto protocol. Emissions are publicly available through the EDGAR website, hosted by the JRC.

• Download the "Trends in global CO₂ emissions" report.

Contact: Elena Gonzalez Verdesoto
jrc-press@ec.europa.eu
European Commission Joint Research Centre