Winter 2012

WELL WORTH READING

WHAT WOULD IT TAKE … to shape a planet on which people, other living things and the systems that support us can sustainably co-exist?

http://environment.umn.edu/momentum/issue/4.1w12/index.html

Guardian Global Development
Put planet and its people at the core of sustainable development, urges report

UN panel calls for sustainable development indicators that factor in poverty, inequality, science and gender equality

reddit this

Mark Tran in Addis Ababa
guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 January 2012 12.00 GMT
Article history

Ban Ki-moon
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon at the AU summit. Sustainable development will be a key focus of his second term. Photograph: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images

Social and environmental costs need to be integrated into measurement of economic activity, a new UN report said on Monday as it urged world leaders to focus on the long-term resilience of the planet and its people.

The report from the high-level panel on global sustainability calls for a set of sustainable development indicators that go beyond the traditional approach of gross domestic product. It recommends that governments develop and apply a set of sustainable development goals that can mobilise global action.

At the report’s launch during the AU summit, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, made it plain that sustainable development is a top priority for his second term of office.

“We need to chart a new, more sustainable course for the future, one that strengthens equality and economic growth while protecting our planet,” he said.

Ban established a 22-member panel in August 2010, co-chaired by Finland’s president Tarja Halonen and Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa. The group was tasked with producing a blueprint for sustainable development and low-carbon prosperity.

The panel’s final report, Resilient People, Resilient Planet: a Future Worth Choosing, contains 56 recommendations to put sustainable development into practice and to mainstream it into economic policy as quickly as possible.

Halonen stressed the importance of placing people at the centre of achieving sustainable development.

“Eradication of poverty and improving equity must remain priorities for the world community,” she said. “The panel has concluded that empowering women and ensuring a greater role for them in the economy is critical for sustainable development.”

The report feeds into preparations for the UN conference on sustainable development (Rio+20) in Brazil in June 2012. Among its key points is that most goods and services sold today fail to bear the full environmental and social cost of production and consumption.

“Based on the science, we need to reach consensus, over time, on methodologies to price them properly. Costing environmental externalities could open new opportunities for green growth and green jobs,” says the report.

Underscoring the importance of science as an essential guide for decision-making on sustainability issues, the report calls on the UN secretary-general to lead efforts to produce a regular global sustainable development outlook report that integrates knowledge across sectors and institutions, and to consider creating a science advisory board or scientific advisor.

The report stresses the importance of gender equality in any serious shift towards sustainable development.

“Half of humankind’s collective intelligence and capacity is a resource we must nurture and develop, for the sake of multiple generations to come,” says the report. “The next increment of global growth could well come from the full economic empowerment of women.”

Among the recommendations for a sustainable economy, the report calls for a phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies and other “perverse or trade-distorting” subsidies by 2020. However, such decisions can be politically unpopular, as the unrest in Nigeria over a reduction in fuel subsidies underlined. Aware of the political sensitivities involved, the report says the reduction of subsidies must be done in a manner that protects the poor.

The report calls on governments to change the regulation of financial markets to promote longer-term and sustainable investment. It cites the example of Norway, where the ministry of finance is responsible for co-ordinating work on a national strategy covering the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development.

To implement this strategy, Norway has integrated sustainable development into the annual budget. In every yearly budget, follow-up is reported in a separate chapter that includes contributions from each government ministry as well as the statistics office.

As the report notes, Norway has developed 18 indicators that have become increasingly important in monitoring the extent to which the country’s activities are consistent with sustainable development targets.

While welcoming the panel’s vision, Oxfam said the recommendations were weak.

“The emphasis on women’s rights and the call for an ‘ever-green’ revolution in agriculture, so it is more resource-efficient and productive, is helpful, but concrete recommendations on reforming the food system are thin,” said Sarah Best of Oxfam. “There is nothing in the report on how to finance the recommendations – for instance, through a levy on international shipping and aviation, or a financial transaction tax – which has been backed by the UN panel on climate finance.”

The panel’s findings come 25 years after Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former prime minister of Norway, produced a landmark eponymous report that defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

“Since then, the world has gained a deeper understanding of the interconnected challenges we face and the fact that sustainable development provides the best opportunity for people to choose their future,” says the report. “This makes ours a propitious moment in history to make the right choices and move towards sustainable development in earnest.”

As chosen by Sara Phillips, ABC environment journalist and editor

1) Fukushima

First there was an earthquake, then there was a tsunami. Then the nuclear power plant at Fukushima melted down after it was swamped by the sea. Thousands of people died in the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, but the focus remained for months on the power plant: watching, waiting, wondering whether more radiation, more silent cancer would be released, of whether it would be wrestled under control.

It was only last week that the Japanese government announced they had achieved “cold shutdown” of the plant, ushering in a new period of rehabilitation for the area.

2) A price on carbon

Australians started the year with a new Climate Commission to tell us that climate change was indeed ¬¬- still, in fact – happening and a Multiparty Climate Change Committee to come up with a policy solution. By mid-year the government announced we would have a tax on the big emitters of carbon, morphing into an emissions trading scheme after three or so years. By the year’s end, both houses of parliament passed the relevant legislation meaning after more than a decade of debate and discussion, the government finally put a cost and therefore a disincentive on releasing carbon dioxide.

3) Durban

Also on the climate change front, the 17th meeting of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP17 of the UNFCCC) surprised everyone when they agreed to agree. After years of fraught negotiations and hopes dashed, 194 countries agreed to sign up to an agreement that would be drawn up four years hence. The result was simultaneously lauded and lamented by environmentalists who couldn’t seem to work out whether it was a good thing that agreement had been achieved, or a bad thing that it was all so vague and far-off.

4) Water, water everywhere

Australia spent a lot of the year mopping up. Queensland copped it bad when immediately after massive, dramatic floods swallowed its most populous areas, it was knocked again by Cyclone Yasi, one of the biggest cyclones the nation has ever seen. And while attention tended to focus on Queensland, down in Victoria and Tasmania they got out the gumboots and the kayaks and cleaned up their own widespread, slow-moving floods.

5) Coal seam gas

Farmers this year discovered they only own the top couple of metres of their land when gas companies exercised their right to dig around under the surface looking for resources. Encouraged by a similar backlash in the USA, farmers “locked the gate” against the miners. The resource in question is gas, created by seams of coal running underground. Proponents of the exploration say gas burns cleaner than coal and therefore exploiting the riches is a climate friendlier way of creating wealth and jobs than simply mining the coal. Opponents say it poisons and depletes the underground water that nurtures a lucrative agricultural industry. One thing is for sure, this argument has a long way yet to run.

Another story that will beef up in 2012 is the Murray-Darling Basin. With the proposed Basin Plan released only recently for comments, next year is sure to see a lot more debate over this peculiarly Australian issue.

My favourites from ABC Environment

We’ve published hundreds of stories on ABC Environment this year. We’ve had some of the world’s best writers on environment, such as Gro Harlem Brundtland, Yvo de Boer, Peter Singer, Achim Steiner, John Cook, Paul Gilding and even Malcolm Fraser. Here’s my favourites of the many, many great ones.

It’s not just about bike lanes
by Jan Garrard
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2011/09/08/3312420.htm

Flying foxes may not be endangered
by Eugenia Lee
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2011/07/18/3270559.htm

What if trees could sue?
by Peter Burdon
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2011/05/17/3216161.htm

A carbon tax is not the solution
by Bjorn Lomborg
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2011/03/09/3158295.htm

Wired to share
by Sue White
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2011/01/18/3115522.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/opinion/a-mining-law-whose-time-has-passed.html   recently published this important oped

A Mining Law Whose Time Has Passed

By ROBERT M. HUGHES and CAROL ANN WOODY

Published: January 11, 2012

Mining claims for copper, gold, uranium and other minerals cover millions of those acres, and the law, now 140 years old, makes it nearly impossible to block extraction, no matter how serious the potential consequences. Soaring metal prices are now driving new mine proposals across the West.

Oregon’s Chetco River is one example. The river’s gin-clear waters teem with wild trout and salmon, including giant Chinook salmon tipping scales at more than 60 pounds. In 1988, Congress designated the Chetco a national wild and scenic river “to be protected for the benefit of present and future generations.”

But the river is now threatened by proposals to mine gold along almost half of its approximately 55-mile length. Suction dredges would vacuum up the river bottom searching for gold, muddying water and disrupting clean gravel that salmon need to spawn. Despite the Chetco’s rich fishery and status as a wild and scenic river, the United States Forest Service is virtually powerless to stop the mining because of the 1872 law.

As Michael P. Dombeck, a former chief of the Forest Service, explained to a Senate committee in 2008, “it is nearly impossible to prohibit mining under the current framework of the 1872 mining law, no matter how serious the impacts might be.”

Under the law, mining companies — not the government — decide whether and where to file their claims on public land. (National parks, monuments and wilderness areas are excluded.) Federal agencies review the plans, but they are approved as a matter of course. Mining companies pledge to protect rivers threatened by their operations. But the industry’s track record hardly inspires confidence.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that headwater streams in 40 percent of Western watersheds are polluted by mining. A scientific review in 2006 of 25 modern Western mines by the environmental group Earthworks found that more than three-fourths resulted in water contamination. Over all, the E.P.A. has estimated that it will cost $20 billion to $54 billion to clean up abandoned mine sites.

As fisheries scientists, we are deeply concerned about the impact mining has had on our nation’s dwindling fisheries and the inadequacy of the 1872 law to regulate modern mining. In contrast to the pick-and-shovel operations of a century ago, most modern mines are large-scale operations that use toxic chemicals to extract metals from the ore, and they generate vast amounts of mine waste. After these mines close, treating the polluted water in perpetuity is often necessary.

At Oregon’s Formosa mine, for instance, toxic metal-laden drainage from mines is contaminating 18 miles of prime salmon habitat. In Montana, the Zortman Landusky Mine has polluted a dozen streams with arsenic, selenium and other harmful metals. The acidic runoff will continue for centuries.

Last year, the Kensington mine in Alaska was permitted to dispose of toxic mine waste directly into a freshwater lake, decimating its native fish population. The Rock Creek and Montanore mines are proposing to tunnel under the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness in Montana. Scientists predict that these mines will deplete flows in wilderness streams, including essential habitat for the region’s threatened bull trout.

At the request of members of the Oregon Congressional delegation, the Forest Service proposed to withdraw a portion of the Chetco River temporarily from the jurisdiction of the 1872 mining law while seeking additional protection. This type of stopgap effort highlights the need for a comprehensive overhaul of the archaic law.

In a 2010 paper published in the journal Fisheries, we recommended important mining policy changes. Federal land managers must have discretion to balance mining with other land uses, and say “no” to mine proposals when necessary. No mines should be approved that can result in perpetual water pollution. There should be clear environmental standards, requirements to restore fish and wildlife habitat to pre-mining conditions and sufficient reclamation bonds to cover the full cost of cleanup. A dedicated source of funding should be established to pay for cleanup of the thousands of abandoned mines that continue to pollute our streams.

The mining industry has powerful friends in Washington, however, and nothing has come of our proposals or of other reform efforts. Now Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, is pushing a measure that would require mining companies to pay a royalty equal to what other industries have been paying for decades, provide safeguards for clean water and give communities and agencies a say about where mining is permitted.

The bill merits broad bipartisan support. It is unwise to let this 140-year-old law continue to operate at the expense of clean water, healthy fisheries, public lands and taxpayer dollars. America’s mining law must be brought into the 21st century.

http://summify.com/story/TwpQ8C7Xr1KNWu8N/www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/over-half-germany-renewable-energy-owned-citizens-not-utility-companies.html

Written by: Matthew McDermot          January 6, 2012

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A New Approach to Solving Climate Change, Part 3: Bolivia

http://nextgenjournal.com/2012/01/a-new-approach-to-solving-climate-change-part-3-bolivia-3/

Grayson is a former member of Congress, hailing from central Florida. He’s a Harvard graduate who worked briefly as an economist before returning to Harvard to earn his law degree. He’s also a Democrat who was swept out of office this year after only one term in Capitol Hill, caught in the Republican riptide that regained control of the House.

And as you can see from this clip from “Real Time with Bill Maher,” his liberal mindset clicks with the stated grievances of the Occupy movement … .

Perhaps, as O’Rourke says, Grayson could be a rallying voice for the 99% movement.

Response by Dr Paul Taylor

In the article, http://tinyurl.com/3um2znt , it might be sensational for
Jacobson to say, painting your roof white may worsen global warming but this
claim is premature on two accounts.

It does not calculate the decreased warming due to reduced use of fossil
fuel for air conditioning, which could be significant. In Australia air con
is an accelerating use of energy from coal, which produces both greenhouse
gases and black carbon.

The paper argues that the increased radiation reflected back to the
atmosphere by white roofs would be absorbed by black carbon particulates in
the atmosphere, but does not take into account that reducing black carbon
particulates is one of the fastest ways we could reduce global warming. In a
real world we should paint our roofs white AND reduce particulates and its
the net effect as both those project proceed over decadal times scales that
concerns us – likely to be quite beneficial to most rapidly decelerate
global warning. (Cleaning up CO2 is also necessary, but won’t have much
impact on present warming in the pipeline because CO2 has an effective
residence time in the atmosphere of 100 years.)

Jacobson is the capable Stanford scientist who published the paper on
achieving 100% renewable on global scale in 2 or 3 decades, which supports
BZE work. It is interesting that he has developed a fine scale climate model
but he needs to take the next steps of including fossil fuel use and black
carbon reduction feedbacks as well.

Neigbours in the caldera have achieved 12 deg temp reductions inside their
home by using highly IR reflecting white paint treatment on their roof,
providing increased comfort while reducing fossil fuel and making a house
more capable of running off sunshine = even more fossil fuel reduction.  Now
we need to advocate cleaning up black carbon as an early an urgent step.

Yes, cleaning up particulates will also reduce global dimming and expose
more warming, which will need to be cured by transitioning to C free energy
and extracting C from the atmosphere. this will all be required to get
the camel of civilization through the eye of the global warming needle.

Dr Paul Taylor

Having been fortunate enough to do some honorary work as a visitor to America with Friends of the Monarch in Pacific Grove, California – known as ‘Butterfly Town’ here is a story I wrote that features on TripAdvisor

http://julieboyd.com.au/otterly-delightful/ (story also embedded below!)

Published on Trip Advisor http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g32737-d104804-r117850634-Monterey_Bay_Aquarium-Monterey_Monterey_Peninsula_California.html

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/butterfly-monarch.html#cr

Monarch butterfly lands in Dorset

Monarch butterflies are more usually seen in North America – Photo by Shane Austin

Monarch butterfly turns up in Dorset

October 2011. A rare butterfly, normally found on the other side of the Atlantic, has been discovered on England’s South Coast. The Monarch buterfly, a spectacular black and orange vagrant butterfly, was seen on Buddleia plants in Ringstead Bay, in Dorset. It is not known if the butterfly was blown here as a result of the Indian summer currently gripping the UK or was deposited by hurricane winds from America.

Small populations in Spain
Monarchs are large and unmistakeable with the majority being found in North America, but a smaller population survives in Southern Spain and on the Canary Islands.

Vast migration
Richard Fox, Surveys Manager at Butterfly Conservation said: “Monarchs are one of the wonders of the natural world. At this time of the year they migrate an astonishing 3,000 miles to their over-wintering grounds in mountains of Mexico. But storm systems on the Eastern Seaboard of America can pick them up and deposit them on the West Coast of Ireland and the Southwest of England.”

The last few weeks have also seen many rare vagrant birds from North America arriving in the UK as a result of the hurricane season. The last good Monarch year was in 1999 when scores turned up in the UK.

The butterfly was spotted by accountant Shelley Cunningham, 24, from Yeovil and trainee wildlife guide Shane Austin, 39, from Taunton. Shelley, who three years ago was confined to a wheelchair, is walking the South West Coast Path to raise money for the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI) who treated her for curvature of the spine.

Shane said: “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the Monarch, it was feeding on Buddleia with around 20 Red Admirals. It’s big and beautiful and doesn’t look like any butterflies you see here, it is just awe inspiring when you think how far it has flown.”

Shelley underwent three years of surgery to be able to walk again. She is five weeks into the gruelling six-week walk and has raised £3,000 for the charity Above and Beyond.

She said: “The BRI really helped me get back on my feet so this walk is to give something back, seeing the Monarch was just a fantastic added bonus.”

Monarch butterflies in North America
Read more about the fantastic Monarch butterfly migration from Canada to Mexico.

For more information about monarch butterflies and their migration, visit www.monarchwatch.org

Illustration from Nomads of the Wind and Other Wonders of the Butterfly World – Photographic Story of the Monarch Butterfly Migration

Monarch butterflies swarm around a few trees in winter in Mexico

Monarch butterfly lands in Dorset

Monarch butterflies are more usually seen in North America – Photo by Shane Austin

Monarch butterfly turns up in Dorset

October 2011. A rare butterfly, normally found on the other side of the Atlantic, has been discovered on England’s South Coast. The Monarch buterfly, a spectacular black and orange vagrant butterfly, was seen on Buddleia plants in Ringstead Bay, in Dorset. It is not known if the butterfly was blown here as a result of the Indian summer currently gripping the UK or was deposited by hurricane winds from America.

Small populations in Spain
Monarchs are large and unmistakeable with the majority being found in North America, but a smaller population survives in Southern Spain and on the Canary Islands.

Vast migration
Richard Fox, Surveys Manager at Butterfly Conservation said: “Monarchs are one of the wonders of the natural world. At this time of the year they migrate an astonishing 3,000 miles to their over-wintering grounds in mountains of Mexico. But storm systems on the Eastern Seaboard of America can pick them up and deposit them on the West Coast of Ireland and the Southwest of England.”

The last few weeks have also seen many rare vagrant birds from North America arriving in the UK as a result of the hurricane season. The last good Monarch year was in 1999 when scores turned up in the UK.

The butterfly was spotted by accountant Shelley Cunningham, 24, from Yeovil and trainee wildlife guide Shane Austin, 39, from Taunton. Shelley, who three years ago was confined to a wheelchair, is walking the South West Coast Path to raise money for the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI) who treated her for curvature of the spine.

Shane said: “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the Monarch, it was feeding on Buddleia with around 20 Red Admirals. It’s big and beautiful and doesn’t look like any butterflies you see here, it is just awe inspiring when you think how far it has flown.”

Shelley underwent three years of surgery to be able to walk again. She is five weeks into the gruelling six-week walk and has raised £3,000 for the charity Above and Beyond.

She said: “The BRI really helped me get back on my feet so this walk is to give something back, seeing the Monarch was just a fantastic added bonus.”

Monarch butterflies in North America
Read more about the fantastic Monarch butterfly migration from Canada to Mexico.

For more information about monarch butterflies and their migration, visit www.monarchwatch.org

Illustration from Nomads of the Wind and Other Wonders of the Butterfly World – Photographic Story of the Monarch Butterfly Migration

Monarch butterflies swarm around a few trees in winter in Mexico

The Forest for the Trees: In Arizona, trees are cut down to save forests from massive fires and to combat climate change.

By JUSTIN GILLIS

Published: October 1, 2010

But these trees are not supposed to turn red. They are evergreens, falling victim to beetles that used to be controlled in part by bitterly cold winters. As the climate warms, scientists say, that control is no longer happening.

Across millions of acres, the pines of the northern and central Rockies are dying, just one among many types of forests that are showing signs of distress these days.

From the mountainous Southwest deep into Texas, wildfires raced across parched landscapes this summer, burning millions more acres. In Colorado, at least 15 percent of that state’s spectacular aspen forests have gone into decline because of a lack of water.

The devastation extends worldwide. The great euphorbia trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the Atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires fed by hot, dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing on a large scale to a heat blast in Australia, and the Amazon recently suffered two “once a century” droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees.

Experts are scrambling to understand the situation, and to predict how serious it may become.

Scientists say the future habitability of the Earth might well depend on the answer. For, while a majority of the world’s people now live in cities, they depend more than ever on forests, in a way that few of them understand.

Scientists have figured out — with the precise numbers deduced only recently — that forests have been absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that people are putting into the air by burning fossil fuels and other activities. It is an amount so large that trees are effectively absorbing the emissions from all the world’s cars and trucks.

Without that disposal service, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be rising faster. The gas traps heat from the sun, and human emissions are causing the planet to warm.

Yet the forests have only been able to restrain the increase, not halt it. And some scientists are increasingly worried that as the warming accelerates, trees themselves could become climate-change victims on a massive scale.

“At the same time that we’re recognizing the potential great value of trees and forests in helping us deal with the excess carbon we’re generating, we’re starting to lose forests,” said Thomas W. Swetnam, an expert on forest history at the University of Arizona.

While some of the forests that died recently are expected to grow back, scientists say others are not, because of climate change.

If forests were to die on a sufficient scale, they would not only stop absorbing carbon dioxide, they might also start to burn up or decay at such a rate that they would spew huge amounts of the gas back into the air — as is already happening in some regions. That, in turn, could speed the warming of the planet, unlocking yet more carbon stored in once-cold places like the Arctic.

Scientists are not sure how likely this feedback loop is, and they are not eager to find out the hard way.

“It would be a very different world than the world we’re in,” said Christopher B. Field, an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

It is clear that the point of no return has not been reached yet — and it may never be. Despite the troubles of recent years, forests continue to take up a large amount of carbon, with some regions, including the Eastern United States, being especially important as global carbon absorbers.

“I think we have a situation where both the ‘forces of growth’ and the ‘forces of death’ are strengthening, and have been for some time,” said Oliver L. Phillips, a prominent tropical forest researcher with the University of Leeds in England. “The latter are more eye-catching, but the former have in fact been more important so far.”

Scientists acknowledge that their attempts to use computers to project the future of forests are still crude. Some of those forecasts warn that climate change could cause potentially widespread forest death in places like the Amazon, while others show forests remaining robust carbon sponges throughout the 21st century.

“We’re not completely blind, but we’re not in good shape,” said William R. L. Anderegg, a researcher at Stanford University.

Many scientists say that ensuring the health of the world’s forests requires slowing human emissions of greenhouse gases. Most nations committed to doing so in a global environmental treaty in 1992, yet two decades of negotiations have yielded scant progress.

In the near term, experts say, more modest steps could be taken to protect forests. One promising plan calls for wealthy countries to pay those in the tropics to halt the destruction of their immense forests for agriculture and logging.

But now even that plan is at risk, for lack of money. Other strategies, like thinning overgrown forests in the American West to make them more resistant to fire and insect damage, are also going begging in straitened times. With growing economic problems and a Congress skeptical of both climate science and new spending, chances for additional funding appear remote.

So, even as potential solutions to forest problems languish, signs of trouble build.

In the 1990s, many of the white spruce trees of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula were wiped out by beetles. For more than a decade, other beetle varieties have been destroying trees across millions of acres of western North America. Red-hued mountainsides have become a familiar sight in a half-dozen states, including Montana and Colorado, as well as British Columbia in Canada.

Researchers refer to events like these as forest die-offs, and they have begun to document what appears to be a rising pattern of them around the world. Only some have been directly linked to global warming by scientific studies; many have yet to be analyzed in detail. Yet it is clear that hotter weather, of the sort that science has long predicted as a consequence of human activity, is playing a large role.

Many scientists had hoped that serious forest damage would not set in before the middle of the 21st century, and that people would have time to get emissions of heat-trapping gases under control before then. Some of them have been shocked in recent years by what they are seeing.

“The amount of area burning now in Siberia is just startling — individual years with 30 million acres burned,” Dr. Swetnam said, describing an area the size of Pennsylvania. “The big fires that are occurring in the American Southwest are extraordinary in terms of their severity, on time scales of thousands of years. If we were to continue at this rate through the century, you’re looking at the loss of at least half the forest landscape of the Southwest.”

The Carbon Dioxide Mystery

In the 1950s, when a scientist named Charles David Keeling first obtained accurate measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a mystery presented itself. Only about half the carbon that people were releasing into the sky seemed to be staying there. It took scientists decades to figure out where the rest was going. The most comprehensive estimates on the role of forests were published only a few weeks ago by an international team of scientists.

As best researchers can tell, the oceans are taking up about a quarter of the carbon emissions arising from human activities. That is causing the sea to become more acidic and is expected to damage marine life over the long run, perhaps catastrophically. But the chemistry is at least somewhat predictable, and scientists are reasonably confident the oceans will continue absorbing carbon for many decades.

Trees are taking up a similar amount of carbon, but whether this will continue is much less certain, as the recent forest damage illustrates.

Carbon dioxide is an essential part of the cycle of life on Earth, but geologic history suggests that too much can cause the climate to warm sharply. With enough time, the chemical cycles operating on the planet have a tendency to bury excess carbon.

In the 19th century, humans discovered the usefulness of some forms of buried carbon — coal, oil and natural gas — as a source of energy, and have been perturbing the natural order ever since. About 10 billion tons of carbon are pouring into the atmosphere every year from the combustion of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests.

The concentration of the gas in the atmosphere has jumped 40 percent since the Industrial Revolution, and scientists fear it could double or even triple this century, with profound consequences.

While all types of plants absorb carbon dioxide, known as CO2, most of them return it to the atmosphere quickly because their vegetation decays, burns or is eaten. Every year, during the Northern Hemisphere growing season, plants and other organisms inhale some 120 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere, then exhale nearly the same amount as they decay in the winter.

It is mainly trees that have the ability to lock carbon into long-term storage, and they do so by making wood or transferring carbon into the soil. The wood may stand for centuries inside a living tree, and it is slow to decay even when the tree dies.

But the carbon in wood is vulnerable to rapid release. If a forest burns down, for instance, much of the carbon stored in it will re-enter the atmosphere.

Destruction by fires and insects is a part of the natural history of forests, and in isolation, such events would be no cause for alarm. Indeed, despite the recent problems, the new estimate, published Aug. 19 in the journal Science, suggests that when emissions from the destruction of forests are subtracted from the carbon they absorb, they are, on balance, packing more than a billion tons of carbon into long-term storage every year.

One major reason is that forests, like other types of plants, appear to be responding to the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by growing more vigorously. The gas is, after all, the main food supply for plants. Scientists have been surprised in recent years to learn that this factor is causing a growth spurt even in mature forests, a finding that overturned decades of ecological dogma.

Climate-change contrarians tend to focus on this “fertilization effect,” hailing it as a boon for forests and the food supply. “The ongoing rise of the air’s CO2 content is causing a great greening of the Earth,” one advocate of this position, Craig D. Idso, said at a contrarian meeting in Washington in July.

Dr. Idso and others assert that this effect is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, ameliorating any negative impacts on plant growth from rising temperatures. More mainstream scientists, while stating that CO2 fertilization is real, are much less certain about the long-term effects, saying that the heat and water stress associated with climate change seem to be making forests vulnerable to insect attack, fires and many other problems.

“Forests take a century to grow to maturity,” said Werner A. Kurz, a Canadian scientist who is a leading expert on forest carbon. “It takes only a single extreme climate event, a single attack by insects, to interrupt that hundred-year uptake of carbon.”

It is possible the recent die-backs will prove transitory — a coincidence, perhaps, that they all occurred at roughly the same time. The more troubling possibility, experts said, is that the die-offs might prove to be the leading edge of a more sweeping change.

“If this were happening in just a few places, it would be easier to deny and write off,” said David A. Cleaves, senior adviser for the United States Forest Service. “But it’s not. It’s happening all over the place. You’ve got to say, gee, what is the common element?”

Tracking an Ebb and Flow

So far, humanity has been lucky. While some forests are starting to release more carbon than they take up, that effect continues to be outweighed by forests that pack carbon away. Whether those healthy forests will predominate over coming decades, or will become sick themselves, is simply unclear.

The other day, deep in a healthy New England thicket of oaks, maples and hemlocks, two young men scrambled around on their hands and knees measuring twigs and sticks that had fallen from the trees.

“What was the diameter on that?” asked Jakob Lindaas, a Harvard student holding a pencil and clipboard.

Leland K. Werden, a researcher at the university, called out a metric measurement, and they moved to the next twig. It was one of thousands they would eventually have to measure as part of an effort to tell how fast the wood, knocked off the trees in an ice storm in 2008, was decaying.

The debris they were cataloging would not have struck a hiker as anything to notice, much less measure, but the Harvard Forest, 3,000 acres near Petersham, Mass., is one of the world’s most intensively studied patches of woods. The work the men were doing will become a small contribution toward solving one of the biggest accounting problems of modern science.

In every forest, carbon is constantly being absorbed as trees and other organisms grow, then released as they die or go dormant. These carbon fluxes, as they are called, vary through the day. They vary with seasons, with climate and weather extremes, with the health of the forests and with many other factors. Across the world, scientists are struggling to track and understand this ebb and flow.

A 100-foot tower stands in the middle of the Harvard Forest, studded with instruments. Put up in 1989, it was the first permanent tower of its kind in the world, built to help track the carbon fluxes. Now hundreds of them dot the planet.

Meticulous measurements over the decades have established that the Harvest Forest is gaining weight, roughly two tons per acre per year, on average. It is characteristic of a type of forest that is playing a big role in limiting the damage from human carbon emissions: a recovering forest.

Not so long ago, the land was not a forest at all. Close to where the men were working stood an old stone fence, a telltale sign of the land’s history.

“When the European colonists came to America, they saw trees, and they wanted fields and pastures,” explained J. William Munger, a Harvard research fellow who was supervising the measurements. So the colonists chopped down the original forest and built farmhouses, barns, paddocks and sturdy stone fences.

By the mid-19th century, the Erie Canal and the railroads had opened the interior of the country, and farmers plowing the thin, stony soils of New England could not compete with produce from the rich fields of the Midwest. So the old fields were abandoned, and trees have returned.

Today, the re-growing forests of the Eastern United States are among the most important carbon sponges in the world. In the Harvard Forest, the rate of carbon storage accelerated about a decade ago. As in much of the world, the temperature is warming there — by an average of 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 40 years — and that has led to longer growing seasons, benefiting this particular forest more than hurting it, at least so far.

“We’re actually seeing that the leaves are falling off the trees later in the fall,” Mr. Werden said.

Scientists say that something similar may be happening in other forests, particularly in cold northern regions that are warming rapidly. In some places, the higher temperatures could aid tree growth or cause forests to expand into zones previously occupied by grasslands or tundra, storing more carbon.

Forests are re-growing on abandoned agricultural land across vast reaches of Europe and Russia. China, trying to slow the advance of a desert, has planted nearly 100 million acres of trees, and those forests, too, are absorbing carbon.

But, as a strategy for managing carbon emissions, these recovering forests have one big limitation: the planet simply does not have room for many more of them. To expand them significantly would require taking more farmland out of production, an unlikely prospect in a world where food demand and prices are rising.

“We’re basically running out of land,” Dr. Kurz said.

Even in forests that are relatively healthy now, like those of New England, climate risks are coming into focus. For instance, invasive insects that used to be killed off by cold winters are expected to spread north more readily as the temperature warms, attacking trees.

The Harvard Forest has already been invaded by an insect called the woolly adelgid that kills hemlock trees, and managers there fear a large die-off in coming years.

Wildfires and Bugs

Stripping the bark of a tree with a hatchet, Diana L. Six, a University of Montana insect scientist, pointed out the telltale signs of infestation by pine beetles: channels drilled by the creatures as they chewed their way through the juicy part of the tree.

The tree she was pointing out was already dead. Its needles, which should have been deep green, displayed the sickly red that has become so commonplace in the mountainous West. Because the beetles had cut off the tree’s nutrients, the chlorophyll that made the needles green was breaking down, leaving only reddish compounds.

Pine beetles are a natural part of the life cycle in Western forests, but this outbreak, under way for more than a decade in some areas, is by far the most extensive ever recorded. Scientists say winter temperatures used to fall to 40 degrees below zero in the mountains every few years, killing off many beetles. “It just doesn’t happen anymore,” said a leading climate scientist from the University of Montana, Steven W. Running, who was surveying the scene with Dr. Six one recent day.

As the climate has warmed, various beetle species have marauded across the landscape, from Arizona to Alaska. The situation is worst in British Columbia, which has lost millions of trees across an area the size of Wisconsin.

The species Dr. Six was pointing out, the mountain pine beetle, has pushed farther north into Canada than ever recorded. The beetles have jumped the Rocky Mountains into Alberta, and fears are rising that they could spread across the continent as temperatures rise in coming decades. Standing on a mountain plateau south of Missoula, Dr. Six and Dr. Running pointed to the devastation the beetles had wrought in the forest around them, consisting of a high-elevation species called whitebark pine.

“We were going to try to do like an eight-year study up here. But within three years, all this has happened,” Dr. Six said sadly.

“It’s game over,” Dr. Running said.

Later, flying in a small plane over the Montana wilderness, Dr. Running said beetles were not the only problem confronting the forests of the West.

Warmer temperatures are causing mountain snowpack, on which so much of the life in the region depends, to melt earlier in most years, he said. That is causing more severe water deficits in the summer, just as the higher temperatures cause trees to need extra water to survive. The whole landscape dries out, creating the conditions for intense fires. Even if the landscape does not burn, the trees become so stressed they are easy prey for beetles.

From the plane, Dr. Running pointed out huge scars where fires had destroyed stands of trees in recent years. “Nothing can stop the wildfires when they get to this magnitude,” he said. Some of the fire scars stood adjacent to stands of lodgepole pine destroyed by beetles.

At the moment, the most severe problems in the nation’s forests are being seen in the Southwestern United States, in states like Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The region has been so dry that huge, explosive fires consumed millions of acres of vegetation and thousands of homes and other buildings this summer.

This year’s drought came against the background of an overall warming and drying of the Southwestern climate, which scientists say helps to explain the severe effects. But the role of climate change in causing the drought itself is unclear — the more immediate cause is an intermittent weather pattern called La Niña, and research is still under way on whether that cycle is being altered or intensified by global warming, as some researchers suspect. Because of the continuing climatic change, experts say some areas that are burning this year may never return as forest — they are more likely to grow back as heat-tolerant grass or shrub lands, storing far less carbon than the forests they replace.

“A lot of ecologists like me are starting to think all these agents, like insects and fires, are just the proximate cause, and the real culprit is water stress caused by climate change,” said Robert L. Crabtree, head of a center studying the Yellowstone region. “It doesn’t really matter what kills the trees — they’re on their way out. The big question is, Are they going to regrow? If they don’t, we could very well catastrophically lose our forests.”

Stalled Efforts

Scientists are coming to a sobering realization: There may be no such thing left on Earth as a natural forest.

However wild some of them may look, experts say, forests from the deepest Amazon to the remotest reaches of Siberia are now responding to human influences, including the rising level of carbon dioxide in the air, increasing heat and changing rainfall patterns. That raises the issue of what people can do to protect forests.

Some steps have already been taken in recent years, with millions of acres of public and private forest land being designated as conservation reserves, for instance. But other ideas are essentially stymied for lack of money.

Widespread areas of pine forest in the Western United States are a prime example. A scientific consensus has emerged that people mismanaged those particular forests over the past century, in part by suppressing the mild ground fires that used to clear out underbrush and limit tree density.

As a consequence, these overgrown forests have become tinderboxes that can be destroyed by high-intensity fires sweeping through the crowns. The government stance is that many forests throughout the West need to be thinned, and some environmental groups have come to agree.

But the small trees and brush that would be removed have a low commercial value, especially in a weak economy. With little money available to subsidize the thinning, the Forest Service is reduced to treating only small sections of forest that pose the biggest threat to life and property.

On an even larger scale, experts cite a lack of money as endangering a program to slow or halt the destruction of tropical forests at human hands.

Deforestation, usually to make way for agriculture, has been under way for decades, with Brazil and Indonesia being hotspots. The burning of tropical forests not only ends their ability to absorb carbon, it also produces an immediate flow of carbon back to the atmosphere, making it one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

Rich countries agreed in principle in recent years to pay poorer countries large amounts of money if they would protect their forests.

The wealthy countries have pledged nearly $5 billion, enough to get the program started, but far more money was eventually supposed to become available. The idea was that the rich countries would create ways to charge their companies for emissions of carbon dioxide, and some of this money would flow abroad for forest preservation.

Climate legislation stalled in the United States amid opposition from lawmakers worried about the economic effects, and some European countries have also balked at sending money abroad. That means it is not clear the forest program will ever get rolling in a substantial way.

“Like any other scheme to improve the human condition, it’s quite precarious because it is so grand in its ambitions,” said William Boyd, a University of Colorado law professor working to salvage the plan.

The best hope for the program now is that California, which is intent on battling global warming, will allow industries to comply with its rules partly by financing efforts to slow tropical deforestation. The idea is that other states or countries would eventually follow suit.

Yet, scientists emphasize that in the end, programs meant to conserve forests — or to render them more fire-resistant, as in the Western United States, or to plant new ones, as in China — are only partial measures. To ensure that forests are preserved for future generations, they say, society needs to limit the fossil-fuel burning that is altering the climate of the world.

And they say the dying trees are fuelling “plague proportions” of destructive insects, which are invading the area in record numbers.

Meanwhile, food and water resources are drying up for native mammals, with studied fauna weighing 30 per cent less this year than last.

Aerial and ground surveys of WA‘s northern jarrah forest reveal that 20,000ha of ecosystem has collapsed, while other areas are on the verge of failure.

WA’s Centre of Excellence for Climate Change Woodland and Forest Health, which has been monitoring the forest from the Perth Hills to York and south to Collie since January, warns that the finding is the tip of the iceberg.

Centre director and ecologist Giles Hardy said the face of the Perth Hills was changing. Big trees some hundreds of years old were likely to become a thing of the past in some areas.

About 6 per cent of the jarrah ecosystem in the South-West had suffered the same fate, but the Perth Hills area was the worst affected, researchers said. Centre ecologist George Matusick described the collapse, which followed one of the hottest, driest summers on record, as dramatic and quick.

While the problem had been evident in the past few years, he said it became significantly worse in February when healthy trees began turning yellow and died within days. Those dying areas continued to expand until June.

“It’s a very dramatic change, I mean, what happened last summer (to the forest) was unprecedented,” Dr Matusick said.

An abundance of drought-stricken trees has made it easier for fungal diseases such as phytophthora dieback, as well as pests and insects to gain a stronger foothold.

Researchers say record levels of wood-boring insects have invaded the area. “There are up to 110 larvae per square metre where normally you would get just one or less,” Prof Hardy said.

“These are potentially plague proportions, nowhere in the literature can we find those sorts of numbers.”

Meanwhile, wildlife carers say mammals in the area weigh 30 per cent less than this time last year.

Conservation biologist Chris Phillips said the loss of the northern jarrah forest would cause the demise of unique wildlife species that relied on it.

“Black cockatoos are already under immense pressure from habitat loss and with this sudden and rapid decline of the jarrah forest many other vulnerable species of flora and fauna will face an uncertain future,” Mr Phillips said.

Jarrah trees aren’t the only victims, with wandoo, tuart and WA’s peppermint species agonis vital for the survival of the western ringtail possum also in decline.

The Department of Environment and Conservation said it supported the centre’s research and was not surprised by tree deaths in record dry conditions.

It said there was no feasible method of controlling wood borers in natural jarrah forests and more research into tree deaths was needed.

Modelling shows that WA’s South-West will be 40 per cent drier by 2070.

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/special-features/insect-plague-hits-in-big-dry/story-e6frg19l-1226145214545

See how it was done by an Indian Scientist. http://sustainabilityliteracyaustralia.com/2010/08/29/value-of-a-tree/

See why it needs to be done http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/just-1-of-central-highlands-old-growth-survives-20110911-1k498.html#poll

Hazel Henderson started the dialogue about Natural Economics in the 80′s and 90′s(see other entries on this blog). Until we have the capablity to measure our natural assets and include them in GDP- the plunderers won’t be able to be stopped. Question is how much is ‘progress’ costing, not how much is being generated in $ terms

Marine survey uncovers a deep sea treasure trove

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/marine-survey-uncovers-a-deep-sea-treasure-trove-20110911-1k48h.html#ixzz1XhgYKywM

See photos of Hastings Point here http://savehastingspoint.com/photo-gallery/

The developers claim

- it’s ok to put a road in the riparian zone along the banks of the estuary

- they should be exempt from adhering to 50m riparian zones around the estuary

- filling a 10ha area to 3.9metres will not impact the flow of water into adjoining properties which are at ground level

- stormwater runoff is not an issue as it will ‘disperse naturally’ regardless of whether the ground is supersaturated and the tide is incoming.

Please send and email through the following link to the NSW Department of Planning as the consent body for this.

Further information about the 20 year fight to save the village may be found at http://savehastingspoint.com/the-truth/

To provide a submission click on

http://majorprojects.planning.nsw.gov.au/index.pl?action=view_job&job_id=4886

Section for putting in a submission is at the bottom of the page

YOU NEED TO WRITE SOMETHING LIKE

Submission for LOT 156, Creek St – 06_0153 – PPR

The Hastings Point DCP has been put in place to protect the interests of all current and future residents of Hastings Point. This flawed proposal LOT 156, Creek St – 06_0153 – PPR fails to comply and puts at serious risk the environment, estuary, groundwater; as well as the safety, property and commercial interests of every existing resident and owner in Creek Street. It is unconscionable that one developers return should be allowed to override the rights of every other owner in Creek Street when there is a reasonable alternative which would enable this developer a reasonable return while minimising the risk to everyone else.

I object to the referenced proposal and fully support the submissions of the Hastings Point Progress Association and community experts.

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READ THE ACTUAL SUBMISSION FROM THE HPPA below

Director, Metropolitan & Regional Projects North

Department of Planning & Infrastructure

GPO Box 39

Sydney NSW 2001

Submission for LOT 156, Creek St – 06_0153 – PPR

The Hastings Point DCP has been put in place to protect the interests of all current and future residents of Hastings Point. This flawed proposal LOT 156, Creek St – 06_0153 – PPR fails to comply and puts at serious risk the environment, estuary, groundwater; as well as the safety, property and commercial interests of every existing resident and owner in Creek Street. It is unconscionable that one developers return should be allowed to override the rights of every other owner in Creek Street when there is a reasonable alternative which would enable this developer a reasonable return while minimising the risk to everyone else.

I object to the referenced proposal for the following reasons:

1. ENVIRONMENT

The Hastings Point DCP provides for restoration of riparian land for protection of the environment, natural habitat and flood hazard.  The proposal ignores this in most places.

The restoration requirement applies on & around the proposed development site where vegetation was illegally removed and landform changed, including filling the estuary.

The proponent has overlaid riparian buffer zones with a midge zone These are two completely separate issues with different vegetation requirements and are in total conflict. They must be kept separate entities.

The proposal does not include vegetated buffers from wetland communities & EECs.

Vegetated buffers of 50-100 m should be imposed after reestablishing the estuary and EEC communities in the restored riparian zones as provided by HPDCP.

Any midge buffer should follow the vegetated buffer before the development.

The developer’s vegetation mapping of Lot 156 is wrong as are its flaura and fauna reports which should be assessed by experts experienced with this site.

Lot 156 sits in a wildlife corridor with endangered species that visit and breed in the area including the bush and beach stone curlews, jabirus and others.  The extent of the development proposed in this area will destroy this habitat.

The flood access road with cycle path proposed will adversely affect the environment and wildlife which inhabits this area.  The volume of human traffic using this area and the construction of such a road requires an environmental impact statement. Destroys the safety and amenity of adjacent residents.  It is contrary to its 7A protection zoning.  It should be restored as provided in HPDC

Foreshore access points which exist & do not destroy buffer should be retained/returned.

There is no open public space and a park should be included as per HPDC.

1. GROUNDWATER and SALTMARSH

Groundwater is a dynamic resource around an estuary and cannot be measured with a single ‘snapshot.’ The level of groundwater in Hastings Point varies on a daily basis and as such the estuary and aquifers both require the largest saltmarsh zones to retain health.

The saltmarsh is also a dynamic resource and cannot be confined to a ‘zone. Saltmarsh is mown weekly by the developers in order to claim a ‘grassed area’ however inspection of the site show clearly immature saltmarsh species attempting to regenerate. The speed of regeneration of this area, when this is allowed to occur, is seen clearly in the Part 7A zone which has only regrown in the past 4 years.

It was understood at the inspection meeting on November 2010 DoP planner Marek Holin advised that the developers had been ordered to stop mowing in specified areas. This has not occurred.

1. AMENITY

This community has fought since 1980 to preserve the amenity of this area and a DCP exists for the area. This must be adhered to. Lot 156 Creek St is an integral component of this DCP.

1. FLOODING

Use of an area flood plan is inappropriate and dangerous. A localised flood study must be completed.

The developer’s flood models are flawed and must be investigated. Lot 156 was completely under water in 2005 flood – knee deep – as was half of north star and Creek Street.  They go under water with heavy rain events.  Reports & models to the contrary are false & do not depict even the current flood hazard state of the local area. The catchments to north of North Star flow north to south through the park – mapping that shows it flows east to west is false.

Stormwater drains located in 2 Creek St routinely fills to capacity in heavy storms (eg this week) and on an incoming king (or often high) tide there is simply nowhere for stormwater to escape.

It is inappropriate to fill the only flood plain available to drain the surrounding catchments.  It exists for a purpose.

Storm water and drainage solutions are inadequate and adjoining properties including my own will be adversely affected.

There is no satisfactory solution for the redirection of water flow.  The change in water levels/flows will damage critical habitat and wetland ecosystems

A restored estuary will improve flow to reduce flood hazard and improve water quality.

1. SEALEVEL RISE

No accommodation has been made for any level of sea-level rise in this proposal. Given the recent, serious ingress of sea to Kingscliff beach necessitating seawall development, Pottsville beach necessitating seawall development and severe erosion of Hastings Point Beach, and experience by local residents of seawater filling stormwater drains in Hastings Point on a regular basis, it is a reasonable assumption that if this development was to proceed, a major seawall construction would be required to be funded (by ratepayers or state govt) in the near future. This is an unreasonable impost.

1. FILL

The level of fill proposed for the development and the emergency access road will increase flood hazard to an unacceptable level.

There are significant inconsistencies from the proponent. E.g. They claim that the maximum fill height is 3.4 m whereas their own engineers cross sections of the site show 3.9m approx. The Visual Height impact Assessment uses a max floor height of 3.1m.

Any level of fill is inappropriate for this property. Any proposed development must be required to use stump housing rather than fill to enable uninhibited flow of water during major storm events.

This developer has a seriously flawed record with the use of fill. The type of fill proposed for Lot 156 is Class M (see engineering impact stt). This would not allow sufficient absorption of stormwater. Given that the developer claims to have his own source of fill it is reasonable to presume this is the same fill as used on 4-6 Creek St (also owned by these developers). With 4 and 6 Creek St these developers went to considerable lengths to justify the development on the grounds that absorption of water into the storm water table, and retention of existing trees on site only to fill the site with clay based fill and remove most existing trees.

These developers have been required by Council to remove such fill from 4-6 Creek St, but have again failed to comply.

1. ROAD SAFETY

Proposed upgrade of Creek St does nothing to improve safety of resident in fact makes it more hazardous

-          the increase in traffic volume, which will far exceed 100% will create excessive noise and endanger the number of young children in the street who currently play together on the verges.

-          There is no curb barrier in Creek St. This is not wanted by residents but this is a safety issue.

-          No traffic calming means that Creek St will become more of a speed hazard. This has already become a significant issue for local residents since development commenced at Lot 156.

-          Inappropriate footpaths proposed for the elderly and disabled (blind) residents of the street. ‘Meandering paths’ are totally inappropriate for guide god usage.

The Proposed ‘ACCESS Rd requires a number of assumptions each of which provides significant

risk to the environment and other owners in Creek Street

1. The traffic noise will impact severely and adversely, the commercial retuens for owners of holiday properties at 2 Creek St. These owners invested in good faith and are entitled to the quiet enjoyment of their properties.
2. Access necessitates severe impact on the riparian zone which should be restored under the Hastings Point DCP and not further damaged. This road has not only been rejected by Council because it is contrary to the primary objective of the 7a Environmental Protection zone (a slim buffer which sits adjacent to wetland and EECs), but can now be rejected on the basis that it is inconsistent with one of the main strategies and desired future character objectives of HPDC; namely, “The natural environment along the foreshore of Christies Creek is to be protected and restored where clearing and changes to the landform have occurred

1. IMPACT on COMMERCIAL and Private Investment

This development will place our lives and properties at risk.

This will decrease the value of our properties and increase the cost of insurance.

Emergency access roads do not exist for North Star Resort and increased flood hazard will trap us in flood times.

I fear for my safety, life and ability to access safe refuge.

TWEED COAST RD INGRESS and EGRESS

Proposed changes to the intersection of Coast Rd and Creek St will have a significant impact on the properties on that intersection. The impact on the investment and commercial returns of owners of rental and holiday accommodation will be particularly impacted and will require compensation.

SEWERAGE

Functioning of the sewerage pumping station in Creek Street has been of ongoing concern to residents in the area over the past decade. Any increase in volume through the station is of concern.

DEVELOPER TRACK RECORD

This developer should not be allowed to profit from accumulated misdeeds perpetuated by both themselves and the previous owner. Failure by successive agencies to enforce the restitution of Christies Creek estuary has resulted in an inappropriate zoning being attributed to this site.

The current owner purchased the site in the full knowledge that it was highly constrained yet has continued to degrade the land, the estuary and the community in his own commercial interests to the detriment of every other owner.

Hastings Point already has an example of a failed development at ‘The Point’ where current residents clearly warned of failure=

PROPOSED SOLUTION

The environment and amenity of Hastings Point is enjoyed by thousands of students, visitors and locals.  The safety of existing residents and visitors must not be compromised, and the proposal that one developer’s yield should be paramount over the commercial viability of an existing development in the street and private investment which has been classified as ‘waterfront’ for rates purposes for decades is unconscionable.

Ecological & Zoning

1.       The proposal is an overdevelopment of the site which fails to deal adequately with the constraints of the site such as incorporating sufficient buffers to estuary and wetland/riparian zones. (HPDC sets out clearly the heavy constraints of the site – “development is problematic”)

2.       Irrespective of a 1980’s zoning of residential, the proposal must be assessed against current law and policy which provide for and deal with the relevant constraints.

3.       The riparian zones must be “restored”, “re-established” (HPDC) – restored means returned to their original state i.e. with either estuary or EEC riparian communities which will enhance and protect the immediate riparian zone and the estuary.  HPDC is very strong on this point.  It does not limit itself to simply vegetate i.e. with anything.

4.       From these restored areas, vegetated buffers of 50-100 m must be imposed from which further midge buffers should be designed (HPDC, TCEMP, Tweed DCPA5, CDG etc – refer law in my original submissions, TSC and Aus Wetland Subs)

5.       Justifications for the proposed buffers areas are no different than those detailed at length by Australian Wetlands and TSC’s original submissions to the EA of the concept plan.

6.       The proposed Emergency Access Road is contrary to the objectives of 7A zoned land and the law and policy which applies re restoration and buffers as noted in 3, 4 and 5 above.  The road is not restricted to the current lawn only and is proposed over estuary, mangrove and saltmarsh. (MHWM has not been adequately proven by proponent)

7.       Given this, Council’s consent should be refused for filling and building a bridged road in the road reserve owned by it which joins the sewerage pump station with Lot 156 and is necessary to access LOT 156 land where the proponent’s emergency access road is proposed.  It would be reasonable to refuse consent given Council’s strong objection to this road in this 7A zone.  The bridged road would also require removal of trees on the edge of the road reserve which presence are protected in the Locality Plan – view lines.

8.       Proper application of law and policy re 3, 4 & 5 in respect of restoration and buffers, means that the majority of the middle of the development site and the north western part should not be supported by TSC.

Flooding

9.       Removal of an emergency access road because of environmental constraints would also mean that any development on Lot 156 would necessarily require a waiver of the application of the emergency access road requirement under the Flood Liable Land DCP.

10.   Such waiver and departure from the Flood Liable Land DCP could only be condoned for a small no. of houses – so it is a matter of no development or a small development which shows respect for the flood liable lands policy and the significant environmental law and policy outlined in 3, 4 & 5 above.

11.   There are serious questions regarding the regional flood modelling of BMT WBM given that it incorrectly depicts areas dry on Lot 156 and various parts of the Northern Precinct which were under ½ m of water in the 2005 flood and seriously inundated in heavy rain events.

12.   There are serious questions regarding the drainage model of OPUS given that it incorrectly depicts the flow paths of water for the northern catchment and North Star precinct.

13.   On the basis of these flawed models, the community does not accept that there will be no increase in flood hazard to them.  These inaccuracies are serious.  OPUS was corrected by Danny Rose on the flow directions but it continues to misrepresent them.

14.   Given the true directional flows of water in the Northern Precinct, fill in Creek St is a serious issue and the consent authority requiring fill for existing houses or a small no. of additional houses should be reconsidered.  Raised houses can provide sufficient flood immunity and at the same time reduce storm water and flooding impacts on other residents.  It would improve permeability of water and protect the integrity of the ground water for the local environment.

Flora and Fauna 

15.   The failure to incorporate appropriate buffers from the development and the changes in hydrology through filling the site will have a significant impact on local fauna and flora.

16.   There are significant endangered species and migrating birds in the area that require specific riparian zoned areas which contain EEC communities which are vital for their survival.  Rhonda James, Dave Milledge and other experts will be addressing these issues.  I have just received more contact from bird advocates who visit Hastings Point who can list regular sightings of various protected migrating species and again, regular sightings of the beach stone curlew on the south eastern parts of Lot 156.  They will be corresponding with Rhonda James this week and I will have Rhonda contact Sandy Pimms to provide this additional evidence.

17.   Significant Impact assessment (EPBC Act and Threatened Species Act) is crucial given the number of migratory and endangered birds that use this corridor and edges of Lot 156 as habitat.

Views & Amenity

18.   The view lines will be breached under the locality plan and the suggestion that the dwellings will fall within the midlayer box which drops from 20 Creek Street when viewed from the headland and bridge is false.  These houses will sit clearly above the midlayer box as represented by the proponent’s own diagrams.

19.   The views and amenity of Creek St residents will be severely affected by the raised emergency access road and filled site.  Any suggestion to the contrary is unrealistic.  Given the past illegal activity and its effect on their amenity already, this would be highly inappropriate.

20.   Foreshore access should be returned to the locals given the manner in which it was illegally removed and foreshore crown land stolen.

21.   The amenity of Hastings Point is its views, naturalness and diverse environment.  It is highly prized for this reason.  This proposal will adversely affect this amenity and in doing so reduce the use and enjoyment for the public and locals of the area.

Roads & Footpaths

22.   Any change in the height of Creek St will have a significant impact on the residents on the northern side of Creek St.

23.   The change in the width of the road plus a footpath on the southern side will result in the green verge becoming nearly non existent.  This is not supported by the Locality Plan or the community- but the contrary – retain green verge.  This needs to be respected.  The HPDC is a newer instrument which is specific for Hastings Point and which underwent significant community consultation.  Legally, there is sufficient case precedent to support that it takes priority over a shirewide DCP to the extent of any conflict.  Widening of the road and inclusion of a footpath further reduces the filtration capacity of this land which will not be removed by swale drains and must be maximised given the flatness of the land.  This is evident in heavy rain events.  I will have resident provide you with further photos in this regard.

24.   A smaller development will resolve the traffic issues where Creek St meets Coast Road.

Education and Economic

25.   The proposed development will significantly impact the environment and in turn the potential viability of the education programme run by Hastings Point Marine Education Centre.  This receives thousands of students annually – all schools and students are putting in submissions.

26.   It also impacts on the potential return of the owners of North Star and 2 Creek Street as the safety and amenity of the area is significantly impacted.

27.   In reducing the amenity and increasing the flood hazard to the area, it reduces the value of people’s properties considerably.

28.   Any claim by the proponent that reducing the development would provide no economic return to him is false.  Given that the developer paid $1.2 mill for the land, a small development of 6-12 houses would still provide him with a great return.

Planning – General

In short, the constraints to the land in respect of “adjoining environmental zones, flooding, acid sulphate soils, flora and fauna protection, the identified visual settings, sea level rise and access” have been specifically addressed by HPDC in respect of the Lot 156 site to conclude: “As such development of the site is problematic”.

The legal support to respect these constraints exists and should be applied.   In considering the constraints of the land, it is a recurring mandate in HPDC to protect and restore/re-establish where clearing and changes to the landform have occurred.

BOGOTA, Aug 16, 2011 (Tierramérica) – The traditional knowledge of nature developed since ancestral times by Colombia’s indigenous peoples is increasingly challenged by the unnatural effects of climate change, a phenomenon that is deeply troubling to the keepers of this knowledge, says biologist Brigitte Baptiste.

This observation is based on personal contacts with indigenous elders, since the government has no policies that recognise or support traditional knowledge, said Baptiste, 47, a respected academic with a PhD in environmental sciences and an environmental activist with close ties to peasant and indigenous communities.

Fortunately, however, these problems are being discussed by the country’s sabedores (literally, “those who know”, the keepers of this knowledge), she added.

Since January, Baptiste has been the director of Colombia’s Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute. She is the author of dozens of articles and book chapters on a wide range of subjects including bioethics and gender diversity. Tierramérica talked with her about some of the points she raised during her presentation at the Second National Climate Congress held in Bogota on Aug. 3-5.

Q: At the Congress you stated that traditional knowledge is losing validity as a result of climate change. Have concrete effects been detected, for example, in the traditional observation systems of indigenous communities?

A: No, because we have not investigated this in depth. The government has no concrete policy to promote traditional knowledge or to recognise its importance. We know because of personal contacts with taitas (wise elders) in the Putumayo, with the curacas of the Mirití River, and the mamos of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, who have begun to say that there are signs that are varying from the usual patterns which have traditionally been used for making decisions.

When certain plants stop flowering for three or four years, they say, we have no memory of this ever happening before. The indigenous system of monitoring is based on people’s memory, fed by all of their ancestral knowledge, but it is very local.

When this happens, they say, they need to “converse” to see if anyone remembers this ever happening anywhere else, and what happened later: if it was the announcement of a major drought, or the deterioration of the soil, or that there was going to be 10 or 15 years of malaria. The good thing is that they are doing it. There is active discussion among indigenous sabedores. But we actually hear very little about it.

Q: You also said that it isn’t known what effect climate change will have on biodiversity in Colombia. Why is that?

A: Life forms react in surprising ways to pressures of any kind. Species don’t adapt one by one. One might think that if it heats up, the species that are susceptible to high temperatures will disappear. But no. Every organism in a species has differentiated genetic information. So part of the population of a given species may react in a different way from another.

And species are linked to one another. Consider the figures in Colombia: 784 species of amphibians, 1,714 species of birds, 35,000 species of plants, and they will not react one by one. They will react as ecological groups, full of trophic interactions – who eats whom – predatory interactions.

We need figures and data from 10, 20, 30 years ago, and that is something we don’t have. Colombia has no system for monitoring biodiversity that could indicate what might be happening.

It is only now that we have some high-quality satellite images, from about 20 years back. And certain very precise records from 20th-century researchers, from 50, 60 years ago. This is reliable information that we can use to begin to speculate and construct models as to how biodiversity is going to respond, if it gets warmer, rains more, or becomes much drier.

Q: You mentioned that there are species of birds that are changing thermal layers, altitude ranges.

A: Some preliminary studies have identified some species that might suffer from this problem. Birds are associated with a certain type of forest – for example, forests that are found at an altitude of 1,000 meters above sea level. Eventually this forest may move upward, and the birds will move up as well.

But what happens if, farther up, the soil isn’t appropriate for the survival of this forest? Then the forest will no longer be able to continue moving up, and as a result, the birds will not have a habitat.

Q: What are the international “rankings” of Colombian biodiversity?

A: Colombia is the country with the greatest wealth of birds. More than 15 percent of the world’s birds live in Colombia. It is probably first or second in terms of amphibians, frogs. We compete with Indonesia above all with regard to endemic species: what determines if a country has a greater or lesser wealth of biodiversity tends to be the species that have developed exclusively in that country’s environments.

In terms of plants we are also in first or second place worldwide, comparable only to Brazil. And we are in third or fourth place in terms of mammals. And also freshwater and marine fish species, although the latter tend to be shared more with other countries.

The Magdalena River is unique in the world. It runs from south to north, crossing almost all of the equatorial territory. It is tremendously fertile, receiving all of the nutritional contributions of the forests of the entire Andean sub-region. Almost all of its fauna is endemic. Close to 40 percent of the organisms that live in the Magdalena are only found in the Magdalena, which makes this river basin, in general, a world treasure of biodiversity.

Q: Even though the riverbanks are so destroyed?

A: Data on total extinction still do not indicate the collapse of biodiversity. Despite the mercury and the excessive sedimentation, the Magdalena River continues to have an extremely important level of biodiversity.

Q: Can biodiversity also help us adapt to climate change?

A: Yes, and this is very important. We try to raise awareness among the productive sectors that the best insurance for production lies in biodiversity. Because the biological controls of the future will be found in biodiversity, the ecosystem services that can mitigate the effects of drought or some nutritional dysfunction.

The productive sectors need to better understand the system of ecological functions in which they are immersed and recognise that, if these ecological functions are lost, they will have to reach into their own pockets to replace them. Abundant and healthy biodiversity is a clear determinant of lower expenditure on controlling productive processes.

And that is because biodiversity mitigates the effects of climate change, although we don’t know how exactly. There are practical reasons for maintaining biodiversity and investing resources in its management, because when biodiversity is lost, it never comes back.

* Constanza Vieira is an IPS correspondent. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank. (END)