Coalition of Alaska Native groups to sue federal government over polar bear protection

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A coalition of Alaska Native groups put the federal government on notice Monday that they intend to sue over a recovery plan for polar bears faced with diminishing sea ice and climate change.

The groups contend that the Department of Interior ignored their concerns when the agency designated coastal areas of the North Slope as critical habitat for polar bears.

The Arctic Slope Regional Corporation and the North Slope Borough are leading the coalition in sending a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and providing 60-days notice of intention to sue.

The letter says critical habitat designation will not mitigate or remove climate change, which is the primary threat to polar bears. However, the designation will impair Alaska Natives' ability to benefit from their own resources, and that will cause Native communities to suffer, it says.

Polar bears were declared threatened in 2008 under the federal Endangered Species Act.

More than 187,000 square miles (484,000 square kilometres) in and near the Beaufort and Chukchi seas have been designated as polar bear critical habitat. The designation is required as part of a recovery plan.

North Slope Borough Mayor Edward S. Itta said the designation will restrict normal community growth in villages and threatens access to traditional subsistence hunting areas.

"The critical habitat designation does not get at the problem of melting sea ice, so it won't help the polar bear," he said. "As a solution, this completely misses the mark."

The state of Alaska has made similar arguments against the listing and also is suing to overturn it.

The state claims that climate models are unreliable and that polar bear populations have not crashed. It says the critical habitat designation will increase costs or even kill resource development projects that are important to Alaska.

The Interior Department, however, has looked at numerous peer-reviewed scientific U.S. Geological Survey reports. The most ominous says that changes in sea ice could result in the loss of two-thirds of the world's current polar bear population by 2050, including all of Alaska's.

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Mummified Forest Provides Climate Change Clues

This undated image provided by Ohio State University shows Ellesmere Island National Park in Canada. Ohio State University researchers and their colleagues have discovered the remains of a mummified forest that lived on the island 2 to 8 million years ago, when the Arctic was cooling. This mummified forest is giving researchers a peek into how plants reacted to ancient climate change. That knowledge will be key as scientists begin to tease out the impacts of global warming in the Arctic.

On a remote island in the Canadian Arctic where no trees now grow, a newly unearthed mummified forest is giving researchers a peek into how plants reacted to ancient climate change.

That knowledge will be key as scientists begin to tease out the impacts of global warming in the Arctic.

The ancient forest found on Ellesmere Island, which lies north of the Arctic Circle in Canada, contained dried out birch, larch, spruce and pine trees. Research scientist Joel Barker of Ohio State University discovered it by chance while camping in 2009.

"At one point I crested a small ridge and the cliff face below me was just riddled with wood," he recalled.

Armed with a research grant, Barker returned this past summer to explore the site, which was buried by an avalanche 2 million to 8 million years ago. Melting snow recently exposed the preserved remains of tree trunks, leaves and needles.

About a dozen such frozen forests exist in the Canadian Arctic, but the newest site is farthest north.

The forest existed during a time when the Arctic climate shifted from being warmer than it is today to its current frigid state. Judging by the lack of diverse wood species and the trees' small leaves, the team suspected that plants at the site struggled to survive the rapid change from deciduous forest to evergreen.

"This community was just hanging on," said Barker, who presented his findings Thursday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

The next step is to examine tree rings to better understand how past climate conditions stressed plant life and how the Arctic tundra ecosystem will respond to global warming.

Since 1970, temperatures have climbed more than 4.5 degrees in much of the Arctic, much faster than the global average.

Barker also plans to conduct DNA tests on the remains.

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As climate-change talks continue, lack of consensus spurs smaller-scale actions

CANCUN, MEXICO - In response to growing frustration that the U.N. climate negotiations are not producing real-world results, individual nations, states and business are cobbling together patchwork solutions to preserve forests, produce clean energy and scrub pollution from the air.

Under this new approach, businesses in California will offset their greenhouse gas emissions by funding tropical forest preservation in Mexico and Brazil; Japan will help pay for nuclear power plants in developing nations; and South Korea will invest in promoting renewable energy at home.

But the central question remains: Will a bottom-up network of ad hoc arrangements and bilateral deals be enough to avert dangerous climate change?

For years, international policymakers operated on the assumption that they would develop a successor to the landmark 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding international accord to reduce greenhouse gases. They expected to agree on a common path for cutting the world's carbon output, dole out key nations' specific obligations and create a common market for trading greenhouse emissions. That vision has evaporated, replaced by a much looser web of climate-related efforts across the globe.

"The web of them together is an international architecture," said Robert Stavins, who directs Harvard University's environmental economics program. "You'll see a bottom-up linkage of climate policies that are very different between countries, regions, and even on the sub-national level."

The advantage of the U.N.-led talks taking place here - increasingly frenzied as they go into the final day Friday - is that they offer every country big and small the ability to argue its case. But the failure of political leadership and lack of a consensus among rich, poor and rapidly developing nations is forcing a departure from the way the world has approached climate-change policy for the past two decades.

Brazil's climate-change ambassador, Sergio Serra, described the U.N. climate negotiations as "on life support" and the goals for this conference so modest that "we are just trying to keep things honorably alive."

In an interview Thursday, Mexican President Felipe Calderon predicted the talks would produce meaningful results by week's end, but he expressed frustration with the cumbersome U.N. process. If negotiations fail, he added, Mexico would push for "a change in the rules."

"I am not allowing another 10 years to go by before we pass an agreement," he said.

Meanwhile, countries and regions are pressing ahead with their own mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions that will involve carbon trading systems - allowing companies to compensate for their emissions by buying credits that are used to invest in pollution-reducing projects in other parts of the world.

"That could open the door for ties between industrialized nations such as Australia, Japan and those in the European Union and developing countries," Serra said. That is good, he said, "though it remains unclear how this will work, since each trading system may involve a different set of rules."

Jake Schmidt, who directs international climate policy for the Natural Resources Defense Fund, an advocacy group, said, "Countries aren't just sitting and waiting for this international agreement to deliver."

On the state level, California recently announced that starting in 2012 it would allow companies forced to cut their carbon output to offset some of their emissions by supporting certified forest protection projects in the Brazilian state of Acre and the Mexican state of Chiapas. Linda Adams, California's secretary for environmental protection, said at a panel in Cancun that the decision will "pave the way for others to be part of our carbon market."

Even developing countries that are not bound by mandatory limits yet are looking at ways to cut their greenhouse gases. Mexico is examining how to convert its urban solid waste into energy, for example, while some of its farmers are producing shade-grown coffee for Starbucks using practices that sequester carbon.

Steve Cochran, vice president for climate and air at the Environmental Defense Fund advocacy group, said this new period of experimentation could lay the foundation for a more ambitious global effort in the future.

"People need to see, touch and feel that some of this stuff actually works," he said. "And when they do that, they'll be willing to take broader steps."

But even the emerging approaches, such as donations from rich countries to poor ones to conserve their forests, need to work out some kinks. On Wednesday, Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo publicly questioned why it's taking so long to get its first installment of funds under a $250 million forest conservation agreement with Norway.

"The international community has a very poor track record of delivering help," he said, blaming World Bank officials for a recent delay. Yvonne Tsikata, World Bank country director for the Caribbean, said in a statement that her institution was just serving as a "financial intermediary" and was awaiting the sign-off from a steering committee comprising officials from Guyana and Norway before transferring the funds.

In the meantime, representatives from nations most vulnerable to climate change said they still needed a global agreement - and soon. The current emissions pledges that industrialized and developing countries have made as part of the U.N. process fall well short of ensuring global temperatures don't exceed 3.6 degrees above pre-industrial levels, which many scientists agree could be a significant tipping point.

"Individual actions by themselves cannot substitute for international governance," said Grenada's permanent U.N. representative, Dessima Williams, who chairs a coalition of 43 small island nations threatened by rising sea levels. "We realize the multilateral process is complex and long-term. We have been in it, and we're in it for the long haul. Our problem is the islands are really suffering."

These annual negotiations, formally known as the Conference of Parties (COP), have taken place for the past 16 years and now even some senior U.N. diplomats and advisers have raised the question of whether it's worth imposing an expiration date.

"Which COP will be the final one for a decision?" asked one top U.N. official here, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on the subject. "Are we just going to go on and on?"


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What climate deal may be agreed in Cancun?

Countries in talks at Mexico's Cancun beach resort are split over how to toughen existing pledges to cut carbon emissions, made at last year's Copenhagen summit which ended in a brief, non-binding agreement.

Issues that hinge on a deal on emissions include long-term climate aid for developing countries and payments to tropical nations to protect their forests.

Following are areas of possible agreement at the November 29-December 10 talks:

* Extending the Kyoto Protocol

- Decide whether to continue the protocol, as favored by developing countries. Its first round of targets ends in 2012

- Decide on the length of commitment period of the next round of targets, for example whether to 2017 or 2020

- Decide whether to cancel surplus, tradable emissions credits owned by countries that are well below their 2008-2012 Kyoto targets. Credits are called assigned amount units (AAUs) * Emissions targets

- Decide new national targets either under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol or the 1992 U.N. climate convention, or both

- Some industrialized countries do not like Kyoto, as so far it has only controlled the emissions of developed countries. A way out may be to note new targets in an appendix to Kyoto and the convention

- Refer to a long-term goal, for example to limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F)

- Mention the widely held scientific view that emissions targets pledged so far are too weak

- Review in 2013-2015 whether targets need strengthening * Measurement

- Also called measurement, reporting and verification (MRV)

- Agree to measure developed country emissions, for example annually, and also their contribution to climate aid funds

- Agree to measure developing countries greenhouse gases and their actions to slow emissions growth, perhaps every two to four years

- Agree common accounting standards, for example on measuring carbon emissions from forests * Protecting rainforests

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http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B60GH20101207

'2010 hottest year ever recorded'

As delegates struggle to arrive at a consensus on key climate change issues at the annual climate change conference in Cancun, the World Meteorological Organization has released a report which says 2010 is the hottest year ever recorded. "The year 2010 is almost certain to rank in the top 3 warmest years since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850," WMO said in a report.

WMO, however, cannot make a final ranking for 2010 until the organization has factored in the date for November and December. Over the ten years from 2001 to 2010, global temperatures have averaged 0.46 C (0.82 F) above the 1961-1990 average, the report said.

According to WMO, the recent warming has been especially strong in Africa, parts of Asia, and parts of the Arctic.

The report also pointed out several instances of extreme weather conditions in the summer during which Pakistan, experienced the worst flooding in its history as a result of exceptionally heavy monsoon rains.

"The event principally responsible for the floods occurred from 26-29 July, when four-day rainfall totals exceeded 300 millimetres over a large area of northern Pakistan centered on Peshawar," the report said.

"The most extreme heat was centered over western Russia, with the peak extending from early July to mid-August," it said.

Meanwhile, no breakthroughs emerged after day 3 of negotiations in Cancun where negotiators are seeking a "balanced" set of outcomes, which should include progress on divisive issues like mitigation and financing.

The contentious climate meeting in Denmark, last year, yielded the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, which called on all countries to reduce greenhouse gases, 100 billion dollars in long term finance to developing countries and 30 billion dollars to short-term finance to the poorest and most
vulnerable countries.

In 2010, 37 industrialised nations and 42 developing countries submitted mitigation targets and voluntary actions to reduce their carbon emissions.

Developed countries have already announced pledges of USD 28 billion for the fast track funding, according to the UN So far, delegates here indicated that progress is being made on issues like technology transfer and adaptation.

Meanwhile, the future of the Kyoto Protocol remains uncertain. Japan has already said that it opposes the extension of the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in 1997.

"Japan will not inscribe its target under the Kyoto Protocol on any conditions or under any circumstances," its delegate, said in an open meeting of all the countries on Wednesday.

While developing countries want to extend the only treaty that binds industrialised countries to reduce carbon emissions, Japan wants one treaty that should include legal obligations for emerging economies like China and India

The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 by which rich nations committed to cut emissions by an average 5% over 1990 levels.

However, US is not part of the Kyoto Protocol, which means that it would not have obligations to reduce emissions in the second commitment period, which is could potentially begin in 2013.

China and US are the largest emitters of greenhouse gases.

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