• CHINA
  Meteorologists Warn of Climate Catastrophes

• KENYA
  Mau Forest Indigenous People Under Pressure

• NEW ZEALAND
  Gondola Plan for Fiordland Raises Storm

• AUSTRALIA
  Dingoes Inter-Breeding Into Extinction

• CANADA
  Government Buys Greenhouse Gas Emission Cuts

• YEMEN
  Arid Yemen Wins Water Conservation Funding

Chinese Meteorologists Warn of Climate Catastrophes

In a seminar focused on strategic countermeasures to deal with climate change, the scientists responded to a report last month by the U.S. Defense Department warning that climate wars could be on the horizon as nations contend for scarce water supplies and environmental refugees are swept across the globe by events beyond their control.

"To secure China's voice in world environmental diplomacy regarding adverse climate changes, China must be well prepared with related strategies, programs and projects if a climate war is to occur as some foreign experts have predicted," the meteorologists were quoted by the state run "China Daily" as saying on Thursday.

The scientists urged the Chinese government to fund development of a supercomputer forecasting model as a way to predict adverse impacts on the economy and society that might be brought by climate change and build China's capacity to deal with it

"Only by building a capability against climate changes can China know how deal with the worst threat of catastrophic climate change like global warming that may occur in the next 20 to 30 years and become a menace to food, water, energy and environmental security," the newspaper quoted Ye Duzheng as saying. Ye is a senior academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Other scientists also urged an increase in funds for climate change research. They urged the government to launch China's Climate Observation System to obtain first hand data for climate change research.

Mau Forest Indigenous People Under Pressure

Late last month two politicians were killed, a woman was wounded and hundreds of people were driven from a site in the Ogiek ancestral forest in western Kenya along the Uganda border, where 200 of their houses were burned to the ground.

The Ogiek, an indigenous people living in Kenya's Mau Forest, are fighting to remain in their ancestral homeland. The former government of Kenya tried to force them out of the forests, supposedly to protect the environment, but did set aside some land for them. The Ogiek say they are not an environmental threat, they have been "the guardians of these forests since time immemorial."

The attackers, from the Pok ethnic group of the Sabaot tribe, grabbed land at Chepyuk given to the Ogiek by the previous government under President Daniel Arap Moi, the Ogiek say.

None of the attackers was arrested, but 30 Ogiek jailed. The local Member of Parliament John Bomet Serut, a Sabaot, refused to permit the government's General Service Unit to restore order, because he claimed that this paramilitary unit itself would worsen the situation by torturing people.

Local donations to the displaced Ogiek were frustrated by the administration of the area, the Ogiek say, and they are appealing for legal aid funding, food, shelter, medical treatment in prison, and a vehicle to patrol their land, as well as health and education facilities.

The ongoing destruction of the Mau catchment area by logging is the underlying problem. The Indigenous Peoples Land Commission of Kenya said the fight over the forest is threatening the survival of at least three million people.

Returning from an extensive tour of the Mau forest last month, commission officials, led by chairman Charles Sena, told reporters that the livelihood of Ogiek and Maasai indigenous communities is at risk.

Tourism in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve and the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem could suffer, the "East African Standard" newspaper reported February 25.

Forests remain on less than two percent of Kenya’s land, and they are essential for water conservation in this drought prone country. They are home to indigenous peoples that live by hunting animals and gathering food plants, herbs, and honey within the forests.

The Ogiek gather wild plants for food and medicine, and collect honey from beehives that they make from hollow logs and place in the high branches of the forest trees.

On July 6, 2001 the Moi government announced that it had banned logging in the Mau forest, but the logging is continuing, despite some official attempts to stop it. On February 4, police and Kenya Wildlife Service personnel confiscated 30 tons of timber and logging equipment in Nakuru.

Environmental groups in Kenya and around the world have been warning for years that logging in the Mau forest will have a devastating impact on water quality and level in Lake Nakuru, inhabited by the world's largest concentration of flamingoes and protected under the Ramsar Convention. The lake is Kenya's second most visited tourist site.

Today Lake Nakuru National Park Chief Warden Joseph Warutere told "The Nation" newspaper that some of the streams running into the lake had lost most of their flow due to the dry conditions and other factors such as "the destruction of Mau Forest."

Kenya's fragmented forests harbor half the country's plant species, 40 percent of mammal species, 35 percent of butterfly species and 30 percent of bird species - on two percent of the country's land mass.

Gondola Plan for Fiordland Raises Storm

The $100 million project would hang a gondola up the Caples Valley, through Fiordland National Park from Queenstown to Milford Sound. It would provide a new tourist gateway to the sound and cut at least three hours off the return drive back to Queenstown.

But the project is already running into opposition from the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, New Zealand's largest conservation organization. Forest and Bird spokesperson Sue Maturin said the idea is offensive to thousands of New Zealanders who treasure these natural unspoiled places.

“The gondola is not a benign, silent, invisible thing, Maturin said. "The original proposal involved building a new road into the Caples valley. Who would want to walk beside a major highway with a constant stream of noisy buses zooming past, let alone climb up to the Mckellar Saddle to watch a gondola swish by?”

Maturin said that since the announcement Thursday her office has been inundated with callers pledging their support, including offers of money to help the society launch a campaign.

Skyline Enterprises already owns gondolas in Queenstown and Rotorua. The Ngai Tahu are the Maori people of the southern islands of New Zealand, the country's third largest tribe.

Their proposal would take tourists along a road up the remote Caples Valley, entertain them at a terminus building and ferry them above the forest canopy, over the Greenstone track into Fiordland National Park.

Part of the magic of the Caples Valley, said Maturin, is that it is one of New Zealand’s most easily accessible routes into the mountains, suitable for young and old and beginner hikers. The group's "Gondola Be Gone" protest stickers are in great demand, she said.

Fiordland is in the far southwestern corner of the South Island and much of the region is inaccessible by road. Fiordland is also the final refuge of the world's only flightless parrot, the nocturnal kakapo.

Dingoes Inter-Breeding Into Extinction

After surviving more than 200 years of persecution from shooting, trapping and poisoning, the true dingo is disappearing due to a dilution of its native gene pool by interbreeding with domestic dogs gone wild.

Research by Dr. Alan Wilton, a geneticist at the University of New South Wales, has used DNA to confirm previous conclusions from skulls that if cross-breeding continues, dingoes could reach extinction within 50 years.

Dr. Corbett, who worked with CSIRO's Division of Wildlife and Ecology in Darwin, believes that if the dingo is to survive, it must be recognized as a native Australian species.

"The next step is addressing the problem of crossbreeding with domestic dogs. This could involve banning dingoes from being kept as pets, and sterilization of dogs kept by outback stations, mining town residents and Aborigines in remote areas," he said back in 1995 when his book, "The Dingo in Australia and Asia" was published.

Today Dr. Corbett is working with Earth-Water-Life Sciences Pty Ltd, and he has even greater difficulty finding a pure dingo in the wild than he did in 1995. He has examined skulls from seven major regions and found that only 74 percent of the 180 skulls examined could be classified as dingo and the proportion of hybrids is increasing. Dingoes are a subspecies of wolf, Canis lupus dingo, and evolved on the Asian mainland where they are common today, especially in Thailand. Asian seafarers transported dingoes to virtually all the tropical world, including Australia, some 3,500 to 4,000 years ago. After dingoes colonized the Australian mainland, they are believed to have contributed to the extinction of native wildlife.

Canadian Government Buys Greenhouse Gas Emission Cuts

PERRL is seeking proposals to enhance carbon sinks on agricultural and forest land. Forests and agricultural soils absorb and store CO2 from the atmosphere, and the government sees them as playing a key role in Canada’s efforts to address climate change.

PERRL offers Canadian companies and organizations economic incentive to take immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through projects in sectors such as landfill gas capture, renewable energy and carbon sinks.

PERRL is also intended to help public and private sector organizations develop a better understanding of how several key elements of emissions trading work. Emissions trading may be an important element in Canada’s overall climate change strategy, the government says.

Through PERRL, the government of Canada purchases greenhouse gas emission reductions and removals from qualified projects on a fixed price per metric ton basis. Projects are selected and reductions are purchased through a competitive auction process.

The first round of proposals, launched in 2002, secured commitments to achieve close to 900,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions reductions from Canadian landfills by the end of 2007, at an average cost of just over C$3.30 per ton.

In the second round, PERRL called for proposals for renewable energy projects. These proposals are currently being reviewed and results will be announced shortly.

This latest auction round will provide $2.5 million to new carbon sink enhancement projects, split equally between agriculture and forestry. A final round of bids will be called later in 2004, inviting proposals for projects in all areas covered under previous rounds - landfill gas capture and combustion, CO2 capture and geological storage, renewable energy and carbon sinks.

The provincial and territorial governments were active and constructive partners in developing PERRL, and there is ongoing opportunity for them and other potential partners to participate in the program.

Alberta’s Climate Change Central is a partner in PERRL, having contributed $50,000 to sponsor the purchase and retirement of emission reductions from Alberta based projects.

Through PERRL, municipalities, industry and other partners have demonstrated Canadian excellence in developing innovative climate change solutions that serve the environment, the economy and society, while contributing to the achievement of our international commitments.

PERRL project submissions for the current round are being accepted until April 6, 2004 via the MERX electronic tendering service at: http://www.merx.com.

Visit the PERRL Web site at: http://www.ec.gc.ca/PERRL for full details on PERRL and on how to participate in this program.

Arid Yemen Wins Water Conservation Funding

The International Development Agency, an arm of the World Bank Group which provides interest free development assistance to the poorest countries, will issue the credit. World Bank commitments to Yemen total about $2 billion for about 130 operations.

The groundwater credit is part of a total of $145 million credit for three projects in Yemen aimed at expanding access to basic services, addressing water scarcity in farm areas, and providing infrastructure to improve services and environmental conditions in poor communities.

The projects respond to the government of Yemen’s efforts to fight poverty through an economic reform program to stimulate growth while ensuring that vulnerable segments of the population are protected, the bank said last week.

The $40 million Groundwater and Soil Conservation Project is designed to address Yemen’s critical problem of unsustainable groundwater extraction caused by the rapid spread of groundwater irrigation and dwindling rates of recharge.

The project will assist the government of Yemen to conserve water in farming areas, improve recharge and protect watersheds by improving water use efficiency and increasing surface and groundwater availability. It will also provide support to local institutions to enable them to manage local water resources in a sustainable manner.

Christopher Ward, an agricultural economist and consultant to the World Bank who worked on the Groundwater and Soil Conservation Project, is a specialist in Yemeni water issues. He told the British-Yemeni Society in a 2000 lecture that historically, Yemenis have been adept at making the best use of their scarce water through elaborate water harvesting structures, and skillful management of springs and flood flows.

But the country has fallen into a water crisis, Ward said, characterized by the "very rapid mining of groundwater, extreme water supply shortages in the major cities, and limited access of the population to safe drinking water."

The crisis is caused by rising demand for water as the population grows and market-led agriculture develops; the unregulated exploitation of groundwater resources; and policies which have promoted expansion rather than efficient use and sustainable management, he said.

"These problems are by no means unique to Yemen, but in no other country in the Middle East is the rate of exhaustion of aquifers proceeding so fast; no other capital city, for example, faces the dire prospect of running out of water within the next decade," said Ward.

The root cause, the project document states, "is a weak management framework ill-adapted to ensuring sustainable extraction levels, efficient water use, and watershed protection."

Yemen is a rural country with three-quarters of its total population of about 19 million living in rural areas. Irrigated agriculture remains the main economic activity and source of income and employment in rural areas. The depletion of groundwater directly impacts poverty, employment, and social order. The protection of the groundwater resource and of the watersheds that replenish the resource is of paramount importance, the project document states.

The objective of the project is to assist the government of Yemen in promoting groundwater conservation in farming areas and increasing surface and groundwater availability.

The project will work to improve irrigation water use efficiency, improve recharge and protection of watersheds, and support the groundwater management framework and institutions that will have the incentive and capacity to manage local water resources in a sustainable manner.

Two projects for the area of Sana'a, the national capital, apply integrated management approaches to water resources while improving the efficiency and sustainability of both agricultural use and of water and sanitation for the capital city.