Christmas 2012

Christmas has a number of special customs and practices drawn from various sources whether religious, pagan or simply cultural. One of the most widely accepted practices is the erection of a Christmas tree, the origins of which can be found far back in the period of the Renaissance era during Christian celebrations and with the early guilds in Germany and Livonia (now known as Latvia and Estonia). The first evidence of decorated trees associated with Christmas Day were trees in guildhalls decorated with sweets to be enjoyed by the apprentices and children in the guild halls. In 1441, 1442, 1510 and 1514, the Brotherhood of Blackheads erected a tree for the holidays in their guild houses in Tallinn and Riga. In the early 19th century, the custom became popular among the nobility and spread to royal courts across Europe as far as Russia. 

The tree was traditionally decorated with edibles such as apples, nuts or dates. In the 18th century, it began to be illuminated by candles which evolved in the 20th Century to being small electric lights with ever more elaborate forms of decorations. Customary practice is to place presents to family and loved ones under thr tree for discovery on Christmas Day. As this year draws to a close with many conflicts and challenges across the globe, the tree represents a simple link to the past which transcends across time to the future with the concept of life and generosity of spirit.

 

Where to now for Africa's Elephants ?

The estimates of the elephant population in Africa paint a grim picture of events taking place on that continent - from an estimated population and range of 1.3 million elephants in 1979, by 2007 the number had declined to 472,000 to 690,000. In many parts of Africa, elephants are now dying faster than they are being born almost entirely due to the impact of poaching. The Kenyan Wildlife Service found in a census this year that the elephant population in the Samburu / Laikopia region had lost over 1,000 elephants in just four years as the animals are slaughtered for their ivory. Similar events are occuring across several African countries. In Central and Western Africa, poaching accounts for between 84 % and 90 % of all elephant deaths while in Eastern and Southern Africa, the percentages are 51 % to 59 % of all deaths. These are extraordinary numbers and if maintained will lead to the extinction of the species in the wild in Africa within a relatively short time-frame. Poachers, including heavily armed groups use AK-47 assault rifles and RPG rocket propelled grenades to kill whole herds with the ivory predominantly being exported to Asia (China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines).

DOHA 2012 - Climate Change Negotiations

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) took centre stage this week when the 18th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC to the Kyoto Protocol opened on Monday, 26 November 2012. COP18, as it is commonly referred, continues for two weeks until Friday, 7 December in Doha, Qatar, and expectations of major developments in various negotiations to mitigate the impact of climate change are very low. Ever since the debacle at the Copenhagen conference in 2009 (COP15), the reality of the quite substantial divisions between various groups of nations has been clearly apparent. The issue remains what can possibly provide a future step beyond the Kyoto protocol than to have some form of agreement such as Kyoto II. However genuine agreement remains elusive even with recent reports such as the World Bank warning of the a serious risk of a 4 degree Celsius rise in temperature actually occuring. The research findings of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at COP18 that the permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere is melting should provide an incentive for an agreement to be reached. But will there be any such agreement ?

Wildlife corridors - more hope than ecological reality

One of the fundamental challenges confronting ecologists and wildlife conservators is finding an acceptable balance between preservation of natural habitat versus the intrusion of human activity usually related to economic and development objectives. The answer, it has seemed, lies with the creation of wildlife corridors which enables isolated ecosystems to be linked by 'corridors' of under-developed or undeveloped tracts of land/forest/bush. The theory is based on the idea that wild animals will move through the corridors and interbreed with other threatened populations of the same species and thus make threatened groups more resilient. How much evidence exists however that this process actually works ? In reality the evidence is thin and limited. For example. in the Brazilian Amazon, the corridors are only required by law to be 60 metres in width yet studies of birds and animals in the region found that a width of 400 metres was required. As a result, there has been no success with the corridors as they currently exist.

The seven coutnries of Central America and Mexico have all agreed to join together the many small protected areas in their borders to form the MesoAmerican Biological Corridor. Unless there is considerable more knowledge and data on optimum corridor size and biological diversity, it's unlikely this initiative will succeed.

World Bank calls for action on climate change

The World Bank has joined the call for greater action on climate change with the release of its' report titled "Turn Down the Heat". According to the Bank, the planet is plausibly on track to reach 4 degrees Celsius in warming above pre-industrial levels as early as 2060 which is double the 2 degrees Celsius threshold established as the target by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to mitigate climate change. A world with a 4 degree C increase would experience major floods, unprecedented heatwaves and negative impacts on ecosystems and human services. This reflects the warning conveyed in the IPCC's 4th Assessment in 2007 and the IPCC has already indicated that the 5th Assessment Report due in 2013 will reinforce the view that current CO2 emissions have been increasing rather than declining. The World Bank warns that a 4 degree C warming would have stronger impacts in some parts of the planet than others, particularly the Middle East, North Africa, the Mediterranean and the contiguous United States which would have summers hotter than the most extreme heatwaves to date. For Australia, the interior of the continent would be uninhabitable during the Summer months with knock-on effects on water, agriculture and population distribution. The acidification of the oceans would also mean impacts on coral reefs with a corresponding loss of food sources, income, tourism and shoreline protection - all of which apply to Australia.

The report makes sobering reading but equally underscores the critical message that there is still time to act, but only if the action is today and not put off until tomorrow.

 

The full report can be accessed at this link: http://bit.ly/UO5GNq

Mining in the Arctic - the growing environmental challenge

The Leiv Eiriksson sent to Greenland's Baffin Bay

The constant reduction in ice coverage in the Arctic have not only opened up the North East passage but created opportunities for the exploitation of the oil, gas and mineral reserves found in what was once a too remote and difficult region. September 2012 was significant as it marked the lowest seasonal coverage of ice ever recorded being 3.41 million square kilometres. In terms of mineral resources, the Arctic (including Greenland) has considerable deposits including an estimated 90 million barrels of oil (or 13 per cent of the Earth's remaining total). There are also gas deposits in the Barents and Karens Seas and rare earth elements at Kvanefjeld in Greenland. While there has been, for many years, a small degree of mining present in the region, it is only a matter of time till much more large scale exploration and extraction projects are underway with substantial risks for the environment and the planet.

Kyoto II and a low carbon future - there is no Plan B

Executive Director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Christiana Figueres, addressed a standing-room only lunchtime gathering at the Lowy Institute for International Policy on Wednesday 24 October 2012.

She reviewed progress with the establishing a low-carbon future emphasising that every nation and every sector of society holds part of the solution to solving a global problem and a top-down level approach on its own will not work. The international climate change negotiations are the intergovernmental face of this global trend towards a low-carbon future with the next step in the international response to climate change, being in Doha, this year.

She made three key points in her speech starting with a negative reality but balanced with two positive trends. First the negative reality is the progress has been slow and the world is well behind the targets needed to manage climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.

The positive points are that a large number of countries are implementing carbon reduction and emission trading schemes or equivalent. Australia is not alone in developing a response and the Clean Energy Future policy of the Australian Government is in line with policies being taken overseas by many countries including many of Australia's trading partners - China, South Korea and Singapore.

 

She observed that she is often asked what she has for “Plan B” if the negotiations fail. Her response: “There is no Plan B for there is no Planet B. There’s no alternative for we only have one planet and failure is not an option”.

The sustainable world from Monsanto's view

Monsanto is arguably the world's largest multinational agricultural biotechnology company (but not agricultural company per se) with assets of $19.8 billion USD and the leader in genetically modified grain. It has an interesting history having previously been a chemical, polymers and plastics company and was transformed between 1997 and 2002 into the current entity. It still produces some pesticides but in its earlier incarnation, DDT and Agent Orange came from this company as well as PCBs for insulation. As a corporation it remains highly controversial and its development of GM products remains highly contested in the public domain.

Social License to Operate and Coal Seam Gas Mining

 A central principle and mechanism for community engagement used in the mining industry generally is termed the 'Social License to Operate' or SLO. This term is used to describe the approval and / or ongoing acceptance for a development granted by the local community and other related stakeholders. It's not a static arrangement but a dynamic approval which must be renegotiated continually as new information comes to light or circumstances change. Arguably the coal seam mining sector has failed to adequately address this critical link to communities with whom they interact and ultimately also affect with their mining operations. SLO has five key features -

• Starting point is that no SLO exists until one is negotiated - miners cannot assume they have any social licence from the community until they engage in dialogue to establish one.
• Dynamic is the descriptive term underpinning the SLO and an SOL must be earned and then maintained.
• Key values for an SLO must include credibility, transparency and fundamentally, trust.
• Dialogue enabling communties and stakeholders to engage meaingfully with miners on issues around the acceptibility of new or continuing operations.
• Information which is sufficient and from a range of perspectives for public education to enable communities and the broader public to make informed decisions, consider trade-offs and develop realistic expectations concerning coal seam gas mining.

To the degree that there is a high level of opposition to coal seam gas mining, there is equally apparent an absence of a social license to operate.

Genetically Modified Food - the Greenpeace view

Genetically Modified (GM) Food - The perspective from Greenpeace - this short animation contains some of the accepted information on this issue but should be seen as one view on the debate as some explantations are contestable.

Genetically Modified Crops - The Upside Debate

Maize harvested

Any discussion involved genetically modified (GM) foods plus GM crops immediately triggers regular and consistent controversy with steadfast opposition from both environmentalists and some in the agriculture sector. However not all of the negative reaction is warranted and in a number of cases, the evidence against GM crops is flawed. In September 2012, the University of Caen, France reported that rats fed GM maize with an inbuilt resistence to the herbicide, glyphosate, were more susceptible to cancer. However subsequent analysis of the study has found that many of the control mice fed non GM maize also developed cancer. This month, the European Food Safety Authority concluded that the Caen study was of "insufficient scientific quality to be considered valid for risk assessment.."

An alternative set of data from the US National Agricultural Statistics Service has found that between 1996 and 2010, use of herbicides and insecticides with GM crops apparently declined by 9.1 % globally compared with non-GM crops. This is due to the fact that some GM crops have been engineered to be partly pest resistant and hence require less pesticides. Other GM crops produce sufficient pest resistant chemicals to not require spraying at all. This is a debate however which remains inconclusive and will continue for many years to come.

Asteroid collisions - size doesn't matter after all

The idea that asteroid collisions with Earth pose any more a direct threat than science fiction films from Hollywood would portray ('Deep Impact' ) is a common belief not readily shared by many astronomers. This conventional and common understanding is grounded in a perception of a giant asteroid hurtling to earth in an event similar to the extinction of the dinosaurs. In reality, much smaller and more readily Near Earth Objects (NEO) which traverse similar orbits can, in fact, do extraordinary damage without actually striking the planet.

This was demonstrated all too effectively by the Tunguska event where a very powerful explosion occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, in the early morning on June 30,1908. It is estimated the asteroid,measuring 70 meters in diameter entered Earth's atmosphere travelling at a speed of approx 33,500 miles per hour and during its rapid descent, the space object heated the air surrounding it to 44,500 degrees Fahrenheit. At 7:17 a.m. (local Siberia time), at a height of about 28,000 feet, the combination of pressure and heat caused the asteroid to fragment and explode, producing a fireball and releasing energy equivalent to about 185 Hiroshima atomic bombs (NASA). 2,000 square kilometers of forest was destroyed. The above ground explosion is in fact referred to as an ‘air burst’ and constitutes the more likely threat to the Earth from asteroids. The Tunguska asteroid is now considered to have been much smaller than first estimates and was probably 30-50 meters in diameter. Measurement of sizes of asteroids suggests that even relatively small objects with the correct mass, trajectory and speed would be able to create a downward directed blast from an air burst with devastating results.The images in this post show the effects of the 1908 blast, many years after it occurred.