Category: Environment

Scientists announced Sunday that they had unravelled a mechanism by which Earth-warming carbon is sucked deep into the Southern Ocean to be safely locked away –a process that may itself be threatened by climate change.

Wind, eddies and currents work together to create carbon-sucking funnels, said the research team from Britain and Australia in a discovery that adds to the toolkit of scientists attempting climate warming predictions.

About a quarter of the carbon dioxide on Earth is stored away in its oceans — some 40% of that in the Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica.

At a depth of about 1,000 metres (3,200 feet), carbon can be locked away for hundreds to thousands of years, yet scientists had never been sure exactly how it gets there after dissolving into surface waters.

They had suspected the wind was the main force at play, pooling up surface water in some areas and forcing it down into the ocean depths.

Using 10 years of data obtained from small, deep-sea robotic probes, the researchers found that in addition to the wind, eddies — big whirlpool-like phenomena about 100 km in diameter on average, also played a part.

“You add the effect of these eddies and the effect of the wind and the effect of prominent currents in the Southern Ocean, you add these three effects, it makes … 1,000 km-wide funnels that bring the carbon from the sea surface to the interior,” study author Jean-Baptiste Sallee said.

The team had also used temperature, salinity and pressure data collected from ship-based observations since the 1990s.

“This is a very efficient process to bring carbon from the surface to the interior. We found in the Southern Ocean there are five such funnels,” said Sallee.

The team also found that the eddies counterbalanced a different effect of strong winds — that of releasing stored carbon by violent mixing of the sea.

“This does seem to be good news, but the thing is what will be the impact of climate change on the eddies? Will they stop, will they intensify? We have no idea,” said Sallee.

A changing climate could theoretically affect the nature and effect of the Southern Ocean eddies by changing ocean currents, intensifying winds or creating stark temperature spikes.

The findings mean that eddies must be taken into account in future climate models, said Sallee. They are not currently.

The study focused on the part of the Southern Ocean south of 35 degree south latitude.

The team could not say whether the same funnelling process would be at play in other seas, but Sallee said the Southern Ocean was “one of the most energetic places on Earth”, and the effect of eddies would likely be larger there than anywhere else.

There is also another carbon capturing process, not covered by this study, of CO2-producing micro organisms that live near the ocean surface sinking to the sea floor and settling there when they die.

The Rwanda Development Board (RDB) organized July 9, a workshop on“Development of short courses programs”.

The five-day workshop aims at developing the necessary skills of conservation organizations and individuals in the central Africa in fields related to sustainable forest and natural resources management.

The workshop was organized through KCCEM (Kitabi College of Conservation of Environmental Management in conjunction with Network of Forestry and environmental management institutions in Central Africa (RIFFEAC) with the support from GIZ (German Agency for International Cooperation).

The workshop taking place (9th -13th July) is convened at La PalisseNyandungu-Kigali.

Participants are drawn from Higher Education institutions in various countries including Gabon, DRC, Central African Republic, Congo Brazzaville, Cameroon, Burundi, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Germany and Rwanda.

They will share knowledge, skills and experience to deal with sustainable management of forests and biodiversity, while developing a curriculum of mid-level career professionals and communities needed in the region.

Nasasira Richard the Acting Principal of Kitabi College of Conservation and Environmental Management (KCCEM) told said that 30 participants will discuss developing short courses for capacity enhancement in as far as sustainable management of forests and biodiversity is in general.

He added that participants will learn from the Rwandan experiences on how trainings have been planned, executed and monitored.

A field excursion in south west of Rwanda, where KCCEM is located at the edge of Nyungwe National Park will demonstrate how the college has organized and trained different groups of communities around Nyungwe National Park in conserving biodiversity.

To challenge the skills gap in the mid-level management of the regions’ Natural resources, the government of Rwanda through the Rwanda Board of Development (RDB), established Kitabi College of Conservation and Environmental Management (KCCEM) aimed at developing capacity for Conservation and Environmental Management and tourism mid-level professionals in the Albertine rift region.

Participants will be enabled to design and develop training programs that meet the training needs for management of natural resource challenges that include; lack of skilled personnel, as most skilled personnel are attracted by other high-level jobs.

He noted,“We are joined here to work together to make sure that we contribute and add value to the present and future workforce that will lead our nations to the desired sustainable Development”NASASIRA, The KCCEM Principal emphasized.

The workshop is aimed at facilitating all the network member institutions to develop short term training programs that will bridge the skills gap provided to highly trained personnel and the mid mid-level professionals who in most cases do much in the conservation sector.

NASASIRA added that “the workshop will address the issue of qualified personnel who tend to seek employment outside of protected areas, which results in a skill gap in the mid-level management of the Albertine Rift’s natural resources, a problem that is common in all central African countries”.

To find a sustainable solution, institutions in central African countries are advised to work together, contribute and add value to the present and future workforce that will lead our nations to the desired sustainable Development through very useful short term training programs.

Officials from member countries of the lake Victoria Basin region have resolved to promote compliance to existing laws and regulations in order to realise the sustainable development in the Lake Victoria Basin.

The resolutions were confirmed during the 3rd Lake Victoria Basin Stakeholders Forum which took place at the Imperial Botanical Beach Hotel in Entebbe, Uganda.

Participants at the two-day meeting that concluded 29th June also commended the improvements in the coordination of sustainable development issues in the Basin, in line with the Kisumu Declaration of October 2009.

The stakeholders who participated in the Forum included Uganda’s 1st Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for East African Community Affairs Rt. Hon. Eriya Kategaya, the Assistant Minister for EAC (Kenya), Hon. Peter Munya;

Also in attendence were senior government officials, representatives of EAC institutions, knowledge leaders from various universities, environmental management agencies, investment promotion agencies, members of civil society networks, development partners and the key players from the private sector.

Uganda Minister for EAC Affairs, Rt. Hon. Eriya Kategaya, told stakeholders that sustainability ought to remain the basis of mutual cooperation amongst institutions and agencies working in the Lake Victoria Basin.

“Let me make this clear: there is enough room for all of us to strive to work together in the Lake and its Basin. What we really need to do is to strive to work together on the basis of mutual trust and respect for the various institutional expertise, values and mandates,” Kategaya said.

The Executive Secretary, Lake Victoria Basin Commission, Dr. Canisius Kanangire, noted that the Commission had contributed to the harmonisation of coordinated actions in various ways.

Under the Lake Victoria Environmental Management Project Phase II (LVEMP II), he said, LVBC had completed the strategy on proposed options for establishing the Lake Victoria Environmental Trust Fund; the Lake Victoria Basin Water Hyacinth Surveillance, Monitoring and Control strategy; and a Basin-Wide Strategy for Sustainable Land Management in the Lake Victoria Basin.

“I have no doubt that these strategies, when shared, understood and utilised, shall contribute to the environmental conservation and poverty eradication in the Lake Victoria Basin,” Dr. Kanangire said.

Dr. Kanangire thanked the Lake Victoria Region Local Authorities Cooperation (LVRLAC); the Nile Basin Discourse (NBD) and East African SusWatch Network for co-organising the Forum and encouraged all stakeholders to actively contribute to the realisation of the gathering’s resolutions.

The Lake Victoria Basin Stakeholders Forum is a biennial event organised by the Lake Victoria Basin Commission to share experiences on sustainable development issues in the Basin.

The 3rd Lake Victoria Basin Stakeholders Forum was held under the theme: “Enhancing Partnership for Sustainable Development”.

Participants had the opportunity to explore a diverse range of issues in four thematic areas, including: natural resources, environment and production systems; trade and investment; quality of life; and, knowledge management and information sharing in Lake Victoria Basin.

Negotiators neared a deal on fixing the world’s environment problems and easing entrenched poverty ahead of a UN summit on sustainable development starting on Wednesday, conference host Brazil said.

Around 50,000 activists, business executives and policymakers are attending the 10-day forum.

However, activists feared the outcome would be a bland compromise which would fall drearily short of reviving the spirit of the Earth Summit 20 years ago.

“We are in the final phase of negotiations. There is a very positive mood to find formulas to enable the outcome that we want,” said chief Brazilian delegate Luiz Alberto Figueiredo.

“We are absolutely convinced that the text will be closed tonight.”

On the table in Rio is a 50-page draft that would identify the world’s many environment ills, from climate change to desertification and overfishing, and spell out how the community of nations plans to tackle them.

Called “The Future We Want,” the communique would be endorsed on Friday after a three-day summit expected to draw around 100 heads of state and government.

Months of work have been invested in the document.

Nations and regional blocs have haggled especially over how to promote the green economy, funds to help sustainable development in poor countries and defining “Sustainable Development Goals” that would succeed the UN’s Millennium Development Goals after they expire in 2015.

Green activists and campaigners on poverty eradication said the text was already un-ambitious before negotiations stepped up a gear last Wednesday, and some predicted a serving of fudge was on the menu.

“What we are seeing in Rio are incredibly weak negotiations which do not produce the results required to lift people out of poverty and stop environmental degradation,” said Kit Vaughan of CARE International, a humanitarian organisation.

“Rio+20 is creating a black hole of low ambition and little substance.”
In a message to the conference, 40 figures, including former heads of state and Nobel laureates, said the scientific evidence of environmental over-reach “is unequivocal.”

“We are on the threshold of a future with unprecedented environmental risks,” they said.

“The combined effects of climate change, resource scarcity, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem resilience at a time of increased demand poses a real threat to humanity’s welfare.

“Such a future generates unacceptable risks that will undermine the resilience of the planet and its inhabitants.”

Signatories included Nobel chemistry laureate Yuan-Tseh Lee, Brazilian Environment Minister Izabella Monica Vieira Teixeira and Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Norwegian prime minister who in the 1980s issued a landmark report on sustainable development.

The Conference on Sustainable Development is the 20-year follow-up to the Earth Summit, where UN members launched offensives to roll back climate change, desertification and species loss and work to root out poverty.

Many experts quietly feel that these side events are far more effective in practical terms than the political declaration expected on Friday.

Corporations attending a business forum have announced scores of promises to do more to promote sustainability, though these pledges have also run into criticism that they amount to greenwash.

A “counter-summit” is being held in central Rio, some 40 km from the sprawling convention centre which has been declared United Nations territory for the occasion.

Inhabitants of areas surrounding Nyungwe National Park whose poperty were destroyed by wild animals from the park, shall be compensated very soon.

The announcement was made by the Head of Nyungwe park Rugerinyange Louis.

This was during a meeting held between Park authorities and stakeholders in the conservation of the park.

Nyungwe park spans between Rusizi and Nyamasheke districts. The meeting also agreed on strategies that would control any fire outbreaks in the park.

The meeting also reccommended punishment of anybody found engaging in illegal activities within the Park including poaching, illegal mining of minerals during the dry season.

In Bonn Germany, the UN climate talks are going nowhere, as politicians dither or bicker while the pace of warming dangerously speeds up, one of the architects of the Kyoto Protocol has said.

“It seems to me that negotiations are returning to square one,” said Raul Estrada, the “father” of the world’s only treaty to specify curbs in greenhouse gases, as the first talks for a new global pact took place in Bonn.

Estrada has defended his beleaguered accord and said efforts to engineer a replacement were in trouble.

“We are throwing the dice and then we advance three or four places. Then you throw again and you go back. This is the exercise on climate,” said the Argentine ex-diplomat who steered the historic 1997 conference which yielded Kyoto’s framework.

Kyoto binds 37 rich nations to reducing carbon emissions but does not have any targeted commitments for poor economies.

It is a format that critics say is hopelessly out of date today, given that China, India and Brazil are now giant emitters.

Kyoto’s first roster of pledges expires at the end of the year. Renewing it is one of several keys to unlocking a wider deal to be completed by 2015 and take effect by 2020.

Kyoto “is an excellent source of experience for any successor treaty,” Estrada said.

He added he had “serious concerns” about the 2020 negotiations launched last December in South Africa under the 194-party UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Senior officials met last week in Bonn for the first round of talks to follow up the so-called Durban Platform.

The 11-day parlay ended on May 25.

“There is very little science in the discussion, mostly political interests or political arguments trying to use things that were decided 20 or 30 years ago,” Estrada said.

With climate discussions in a fragile state since the chaotic 2009 Copenhagen Summit, Estrada said political and economic problems at home were preventing many countries from tackling climate change with the urgency it needed.

New research recently predicted Earth’s temperature rising by as much as five degrees Celsius (9.0 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels on current pledges, instead of the 2 C (3.6 F) limit targeted under the UNFCCC banner.

He pointed the finger at countries that had failed to live up to their Kyoto undertakings.

“I’m frustrated by those governments with whom we adopted the protocol unanimously in Kyoto, not by consensus but unanimously and later didn’t ratify it like the US or, having ratified the protocol, now they don’t comply with it, like Canada and Italy,” said Estrada.

Kyoto, which came into force in 2005, envisioned a five-per cent reduction of warming gas emissions by rich countries by 2012 from 1990 levels.

Globally, though, emissions have leapt to ever greater heights, driven especially by emerging giants which are burning coal to power their growth.

The United States signed but did not ratify the accord, while Russia and Japan have said they did not intend to sign up after Kyoto expires this year.

Canada has become the only country to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, and recently said it would not achieve the target of reducing emissions by 17 per cent by 2020 from 2005 levels.

Estrada said the new 2020 pact must include emission targets not only for countries but for industrial sectors, too — “the amount of carbon you are going to emit by ton of iron or steel or 1,000 megawatts or something like that.”

President Paul Kagame on Saturday noted that Community Work (Umuganda) will continue and shall be strengthened.

President Kagame was also participating in the monthly community work with residents of Rebero hill at Kigarama sector in Kicukiro district. Various government officials also accompanied the President.

Kagame said, “Umuganda has gained more strength and is a good culture of uniting efforts. Umuganda is not only a sign of good deeds in Rwanda but also worldwide and this gives more value to Rwandans. this is why we have to continue with Umuganda”.

The president urged Rwandans to be proud and accord themselves value while united to develop the country.

Paul Jules Ndamage the Mayor of Kicukiro also noted that more attention would be given to Rebero Hill to fight against soil erosion.

Rwandans living on steep hillsides will soon be relocated to other safer places in a bid to protect them from falling victim to mudslides and other disasters.

17 people have since died because of the problem of land slippage caused by recent heavy rainfalls.

The Prime Minister Dr. Pierre Damien Habumuremyi has said that in a period not exceeding one year, the census of people living on steep hillsides will be completed and decent places found where they can live.

Dr. Habumuremyi made the statement during a meeting held Monday with members of the Taskforce established by the Government, to prevent the impacts of disasters.

The Government of Rwanda has implemented various programs aimed at adressing extraordinary disasters including those caused by heavy rainfalls.

The meeting involving various authorities sought ways on how to implement the programs in order to limit the damage.

The meeting focused on general measures necessary to put in execution to address the problem of flooding, protect infrastructure and manage land.

Participants at the meeting also revisited the importance of meteorology in time of heavy rainfalls as those that knows the current Rwanda, the protection of the environment and population growth which is causing habitat inappropriate.

The Prime Minister has thus established a special committee to accelerate implementation of the programs.

The committee comprises of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, the Ministry of Local Government, the Ministry of Infrastructure, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Defense.

Dr. Habumuremyi said census of all persons residing on the steep hills should be complete in one year for them to find a suitable place where they should live.

Over 169 hectares of food crops have been washed away by the recent constant rains since 11 May in Murundi sector, Kayonza district.

The executive secretary of Murundi sector Murekezi Claude said most crops destroyed include those planted in low laying areas especially mashlands.

“beans,maize,sorhgum and soyabeans crops have been mostly washed away by floods”.

Residents in the area fear that in the nearfuture they will have to endure hunger since this season there is less to harvest from their gardens.

Not only crops, houses were also destroyed especially in Ryamanyoni and Cyamburara villages in Murundi sector.

Murekezi says that the concerned authorities have been notified about the problem and residents are waiting for the responces from above.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, the Prime Minister Dr. Pierre Damien Habumuremyi accompanied by government officials visited flooded areas resulting from busted Nyabugogo, Nyabarongo and Akagera rivers.

The Prime Minister diercted concerned institutions to respond quickly to the affected citizens and finding a long term solution to the flood problem.

Dr. Habumuremyi also said effective this week, a series of community work (Umuganda) should be conducted to cleanup roads and blocked water ways.

The world’s poorest countries have issued a bold plan to make the UN climate change talks more likely to reach their goal of having an effective and legally binding agreement ready for governments to adopt by 2015, the latest press release says.

The Least Developed Countries (LDCs) group’s formal submission to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, under which the talks take place, includes; The new legally binding agreement should take the form of a new protocol under the convention that builds on and enhances the commitments under the Kyoto Protocol.

They further suggest that parties should agree new rules to allow the adoption of the Protocol by a 75% majority, not by consensus as under current rules.

They go on to argue that a final negotiating text should be ready a full year ahead of the 2015 deadline rather than the usual six months deadline that the UNFCCC imposes.

“Raising the ambition of commitments to mitigate climate change before 2020 must be the top priority, ” the press release says. They add that the new Protocol should have as a key objective, the full implementation of mitigation, adaptation and finance and capacity building among others.

Systems for monitoring, reporting and verifying finance and mitigation actions must not be weaker than but should build upon those that already exist in the Kyoto Protocol.

“At last year’s conference of parties to the convention in Durban, parties agreed to complete negotiations by 2015, but such deadlines have been broken before,” says Pa Ousman Jarju, the chair of the LDC group.

“Our countries cannot wait. We are already feeling the effects of climate change, but the time has come for us to be leaders in the international effort to address this global challenge.”

“The creation of a new body to negotiate a second protocol under the Convention represents an overdue acknowledgement by all Parties that the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol alone are insufficient to drive action consistent with the ultimate objective of the Convention,” says Jarju.

“Urgent action is needed by all Parties to prevent dangerous interference with the climate system, and in particular to stay below 2°C and keep open the possibility of limiting warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial in the long-term as called for by the most vulnerable countries.”
As negotiators gather in Bonn for the latest round of talks this week, the LDC group also proposes changes to the way the negotiations work to make them faster and fairer.

To ensure that all issues can be dealt with, the group says the number and duration of future negotiation sessions must be agreed in Bonn, along with a timetable to discuss particular issues.

The group also says parties should consider electing officers to the bureau that will run the talks for more than the usual two year period, to ensure continuity – and that the size of the bureau should perhaps be expanded given the urgency of its task and that wide range of topics it must work on.

“The LDC group comes to the Bonn climate change talks with a strong set of recommendations,” says Pa Ousman Jarju. “In the spirit of international cooperation and with our desire to see the UN climate change convention meet its objective, we urge other parties to join our call for these improvements to the negotiating process and its final goals.”