China | News & Views

Forest loss slows, as China plants and Brazil preserves

The world’s net rate of forest loss has slowed markedly in the last decade, with less logging in the Amazon and China planting trees on a grand scale.

Yet forests continue to be lost at “an alarming rate” in some countries, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Its Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010 finds the loss of tree cover is most acute in Africa and South America. But Australia also suffered huge losses because of the recent drought.
“It is good news,” said the report’s co-ordinator Mette Loyche Wilkie, a senior forestry office with FAO.

The area of forests undisturbed by human activity continues to decrease, so countries must further strengthen their efforts to conserve and manage them
Eduardo Rojas, FAO

“This is the first time we’ve been able to say that the deforestation rate is going down across the world, and certainly when you look at the net rate that is certainly down.

“But the situation in some countries is still alarming,” she told BBC News.
The last decade saw forests being lost or converted at a rate of 13 million hectares per year, compared to 16 million hectares in the 1990s.
However, new forests were being planted to the tune of more than seven million hectares per year; so the net rate of loss since the year 2000 has been 5.2 million hectares per year, compared to 8.3 million in the 1990s.
Globally, forests now cover about 31% of the Earth’s land surface.

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Did the Copenhagen Summit Fail?

According to John Vidal, Allegra Stratton and Suzanne Goldenberg – ‘Copenhagen Ends in Failure’ cop15_logo_b_m1

(This article is a summary – read the full article at the guardian.co.uk)

The UN climate summit reached a weak outline of a global agreement in Copenhagen tonight, falling far short of what Britain and many poor countries were seeking and leaving months of tough negotiations to come.

After eight draft texts and all-day talks between 115 world leaders, it was left to Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, to broker a political agreement. The so-called Copenhagen accord “recognises” the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2C but does not contain commitments to emissions reductions to achieve that goal.

American officials spun the deal as a “meaningful agreement”, but even Obama said: “This progress is not enough.”

In a press conference held after the talks broke up, Brown said the agreement was a “vital first step” and accepted there was a lot more work to do to get assurances it would become a legally binding agreement. He declined to call it a “historic” conference:

The deal was brokered between China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US, but late last night it was unclear whether it would be adopted by all 192 countries in the full plenary session. The deal aims to provide $30bn a year for poor countries to adapt to climate change from next year to 2012, and $100bn a year by 2020.

But it disappointed African and other vulnerable countries which had been holding out for deeper emission cuts to hold the global temperature rise to 1.5C this century. As widely expected, all references to 1.5C in past drafts were removed at the last minute, but more surprisingly, the earlier 2050 goal of reducing global CO2 emissions by 80% was also dropped.

Obama hinted that China was to blame for the lack of a substantial deal. In a press conference he condemned the insistence of some countries to look backwards to previous environmental agreements. He said developing countries should be “getting out of that mindset, and moving towards the position where everybody recognises that we all need to move together”.

Negotiators will now work on individual agreements such as forests, technology, and finance – but, without strong leadership, the chances are that it will take years to complete.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport. Ed Miliband [UK climate change secretary] is among the very few that come out of this summit with any credit.” It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one on display here in Copenhagen.”

China has ‘open mind’

China’s lead climate change negotiator has said he was keeping an “open attitude” as to whether global warming cop_logo_1_r was man-made or due to natural cycles.

Xie Zhenhua said climate warming was a “solid fact” and that mainstream scientific opinion held it was due to emissions of gases such as CO2.

Mr Xie’s comments appeared to surprise the other environment ministers and envoys at a news conference at the end of their two-day meeting.
He said: “It is already a solid fact that the climate is warming.
“There is one starkly different view, that the climate change or climate warming issue is caused by the cyclical element of nature itself.
“I think we need to adopt an open attitude to the scientific research.”
He said that it was important to include as many views as possible “to be more scientific and to be more consistent”.

A number of scientists have recently disputed the figure. The vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said last week that it was an error and would be reviewed.
But the IPCC’s vice-chairman Jean-Pascal van Ypersele said it did not change the broader picture of man-made climate change.

At their weekend gathering, the officials said they would announce by the end of the month their plans to cut emissions.

They also agreed to contribute $10bn (£6.2bn) this year to help poor nations combat the effects of climate change.
Brazil’s Environment Minister Carols Minc said this would be “a slap in the face to the rich countries” who pledged at the Copenhagen climate summit in December to contribute $30bn (£18.5bn) in funding for the next three years and $100bn (£61.8bn) by 2020.

See the full article at the bbc.co.uk/news

Copenhagen Summit – Day 4 Summary

COP15 It’s day five of the negotiations and UK Ministers are starting to arrive, gearing up for the Ministerial segment of these crucial negotiations. Ed Miliband has joined the UK negotiating team and will today go into a series of bilateral meetings with key counterparts including the United States, China, South Africa and Denmark.

Yesterday the overarching plenary was suspended, but the negotiations have continued in other sessions on issues such as technology, finance, and adaptation.

As always the team at MoreEco have summarised the events of Day 4 for your.

Capping temperatures is ‘achievable’ says AVOID scientist - Carbon emissions must start to fall within the next 10 years to keep the rise in global temperatures below the 2 degree C level that would trigger environmental devastation, one of the UK Government’s leading climate scientists says.

US is determined to achieve strong agreement – Stern – The chief negotiator for the United States says that Washington is determined to get the ’strongest possible agreement’ in Copenhagen. Todd Stern said he was under no illusion that success would be easy but said that there was a strong political commitment to an agreement from the US Government.

A message from Global Agenda Council Members to World Leaders - More than 200 senior figures across business, finance and academia have called on world leaders to agree a ‘bold new deal’ to curb global warming and generate low carbon growth. The signatories, who are members of the Global Agenda Council on climate change of the World Economic Forum, an independent body, warned that climate change threatened to put ‘our very society at risk’.

Sweden pledges 800 million euro for climate change fund – Sweden says it will give 800 million euro (1.2 billion US dollars) to help developing nations fight climate change.

G-77: Personal call on President Obama - The Group of 77, representing the majority of the world’s developing countries, urges the US to join the Kyoto Protocol and commit to emission reductions comparable to those of other industrialized nations.

>>>Full in depth article visit COP15 and Act on Copenhagen

>>> View other MoreEco News & Views Summit Summary’s

Copenhagen Summit – Day 3 Summary

COP15 The third day of the UN climate conference in Copenhagen saw another political argument between the two biggest players – and polluters – China and the United States.

China: the US and EU must present deeper cuts – The United States and the European Union (EU) are expected by the Chinese delegation to bring more notable emission reductions targets to the Copenhagen climate talks. At a press conference Tuesday, the Deputy Head of the Chinese delegation, Su Wei (photo above), said neither the US, the EU, nor Japan had offered sufficient cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

US fires back at China – Statements by Su Wei, Deputy Head of the Chinese COP15 delegation, on lack of ambitions from the US were opposed by Todd Stern, President Barack Obama’s climate change envoy, as he arrived Wednesday at the conference in Copenhagen.

Developing countries split on demands – Small island states and poor African nations on Wednesday wanted the climate conference to aim at a legally binding deal tougher than the Kyoto Protocol. Richer developing countries opposed the proposal.

EPA chief: US will regulate CO2 with common sense – The United States for the first time outlined a dual path toward cutting greenhouse gases that would involve both President Barack Obama’s administration and the US Congress to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Denmark ready to pay its share – Denmark – the host country of the ongoing UN climate change conference – has put money on the table for adaptation to climate change in developing countries.

COP15 Video Highlights – Watch highlights from day 3 of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 (COP15) – recorded on December 9, 2009.