Asylum-seekers must not be forcibly returned to central Iraq - UN

The United Nations refugee agency today called on all States to continue to refrain from forcibly returning Iraqi asylum-seekers to Baghdad, Kirkuk and other violence-prone areas in the centre of the country, warning that the situation was still too precarious due to continuing violence and serious human rights violations.

Civilians continue fleeing clashes in northern Yemen, UN reports

Thousands of civilians continue to steam out of northern Yemen, where the clashes between Government forces and rebels enter their fifth month, the United Nations refugee agency reported today.

U.S.: “We All Breathe the Same Air and Drink the Same Water”

Some 8,000 kilometers from the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Native American environmental experts from 66 tribes came together at a summit here last week to address the most pressing needs in their communities - problems, all emphasized, that know no geographic boundaries.

These include water and air pollution, superfund cleanup, mining and illegal dumping, as well as the impacts of climate change.

Increasingly frequent “100-year” floods in Oklahoma, the disappearance of medicinal plants, the uncharacteristic unreliability of monsoon season in New Mexico, and diminished snow pack on sacred peaks have left most tribal people with little

A Navajo woman holding corn and cota plants. Cota is used as an ingredient in a sweet beverage, as a dye, and as a medicine. @National Geographic

doubt that climate change is already here.

“There are those who still rely on traditional agriculture for their livelihood and for ceremonial purposes - the growing of corn, the harmonious relationship between the seasons,” said Milton Bluehouse of the New Mexico Environment Department, who is also a member of the Navajo Nation.

“Global warming impacts our cultures strongly. In Navajo country, for example, if there’s no snow on the mountain, we can’t have our yeibichei dances,” he told IPS.

A yeibiche dance is a nine-day curing ceremony performed by specially trained medicine people.

“There are people who rely on these healing ceremonies,” Bluehouse said. “Grandmothers who have physical ailments, veterans suffering PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families, all putting tremendous faith in the healing they feel can come through yeibichei dances.”

The 300 participants at the Dec. 2-4 summit hail from sovereign nations found within the borders of the southwestern U.S. states of Oklahoma, where in previous centuries many eastern tribes were relocated to reservations, Texas and New Mexico, where many tribes still live in portions of their pre-conquest ancestral homelands.

Sponsored by the Inter-Tribal Environmental Council (ITEC) with funds from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it included representatives from state and federal agencies – who, while welcomed, faced some tough questions from the audience.

Dr. Al Armendariz, the EPA’s new regional administrator, was asked, for example, how tribes could complete EPA objectives with limited financial resources. Many tribes must compete for EPA grant money and then match grants with up to 50 percent of their own money. For many, the cost of implementing needed programs is prohibitive.

One assistant director of environmental affairs for his tribe, who preferred to remain anonymous, described the situation to IPS as “like throwing scraps to dogs”.

The EPA’s Region VI is a large area comprised of the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, and of the 66 federally recognized tribes in these states. More than 750,000 Native Americans live on five million acres of tribal land in the region.

Although tribes share many values and goals, there is enormous diversity not only of ecosystems, but in language, customs, and history. New Mexico alone, where the summit took place, is home to 19 Pueblos, two Apache tribes, and part of the Navajo Nation (Right: Navajo Flag). Some 20 percent of state land is tribally-owned.

But, as the governor of Santa Ana, Bruce Sanchez, put it in opening comments, “We all breathe the same air and drink the same water. There are no boundaries when it comes to the environment. The sooner we learn to survive on the mother earth, the better.”

Others raised concerns about the lingering health effects of past uranium mining, as well as air, land, and water contamination from Los Alamos National Laboratories. Given the Barack Obama administration’s support of nuclear energy as a so-called green alternative to coal and gas, these “legacy issues”, many feel, must be addressed.

Armedariz agreed, and told IPS, “Pushing nuclear power has to happen hand in hand with addressing historical issues. Safety and water issues are very big.”

Many tribal members, who preferred to remain off the record, disagreed with the idea that cleanup issues are “historical”, and remain skeptical that nuclear power can ever be green. In a state with a long history of dealing with pollution from the nuclear industry, the issue won’t go away.

All stressed that there is no single tribal perspective on how to deal with environmental problems because each tribe is unique, but that most tribe share values of protecting and preserving natural land, air, and water cycles for future generations.

Dozens of smaller sessions addressed specific initiatives, from a solar energy project on the small Pueblo of Jemez that offers promise for Indian Country’s capacity to meet the energy needs of the entire U.S. and dramatically reduce its carbon footprint, to a project of the National Tribal Environmental Council (NTEC) to build a national database among the 596 state-recognized tribes, using simple Internet technology to share information with each other and, ultimately, the U.S. and other governments.

NTEC has called for the inclusion of Indian tribal governmental representatives on the U.S. delegation to Copenhagen, and will be bringing a representative of the Montana-based Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes to the Dec. 7-18 U.N. climate conference.

When most people think of how climate change is affecting Native communities, images of Arctic tribes losing habitat to melting ice caps jump to mind. In the southwestern United States, the main issue is - as it has long been - water.

Unaddressed, climate change will bring severe drought. “Water is life,” says Michael Chavarria, former governor and current water quality officer for Santa Clara. “We need to water our corn, our chile, our melons, or they die off. The same for ourselves if we can’t consume our water.”

In New Mexico, river and spring water is used not only for subsistence agriculture, but for “cultural purposes”, with many Pueblo people drinking water in rivers and streams that they consider sacred from the point of origin.

When water or land is threatened, Chavarria, says, “Where are we going to go? There’s nowhere else for us to go. We’ve been on our reservations from time immemorial.”

Genevieve McGeisey, a Seminole water quality scientist with the Santa Ana tribe in New Mexico, agrees that the main impact of climate change in the southwest is the inconsistency of water supplies.

She viewed her work, not just as benefiting one tribe, but as a collaborative effort to help “all the stakeholders in the watershed”.

“We’re supposed to leave something for our kids, not take from them. We’re already five generations in debt. How are we going to fix it for our kids?” she asked.

Native Americans, she says, “need to become our own scientists, our own environmentalists. We can translate back to our tribe and speak to EPA or other government agencies in their terms, to make our concerns understood.”

Bernardino Chavarria Assistant Director in the Office of Environmental Affairs for Santa Clara, refers to the tribal professionals in his field as “conservationists”.

“All have PhD’s,” he said, clarifying that, while many actually do have degrees in environmental fields, “we are [also] all PhD’s of our own people, our own history. There’s so much knowledge in indigenous communities, which have been able to survive in harsh environments because of their knowledge of their land. We need to consult with them, to achieve mutual consent.”

ITEC Director Nancy Johns agrees. “Across the world, diverse as we are, indigenous people have the same appreciation and respect for mother earth.”

This veteran planner of conferences, asked if she could tell the planners of the Copenhagen one thing, answers readily. “Respect tribal sovereignty. Tribes are nations unto themselves. Include tribes in planning and thinking about these issues. Tribes should be right up there at the table.”

Source:
IPS, “U.S.: “We All Breathe the Same Air and Drink the Same Water“”, accessed December 8, 2009

How to finance a climate change fund

Money for a vital ‘green fund’ in the developing world could come from a loan of IMF special drawing rights

George Soros
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 December 2009 13.00 GMT
It is now generally agreed that the developed countries will have to make a substantial financial contribution to enable the developing world to deal with climate change. Funds are needed to invest in new low-carbon energy sources, reforestation and protection of rainforests, land-use changes, and adaptation and mitigation. But there is no similar agreement on where the money will come from.
The developed countries are reluctant to make additional financial commitments. They have just experienced a significant jump in their national debts, and they still need to stimulate their domestic economies. This colours their attitudes. It looks like they will be able to cobble together a “fast-start” fund of $10bn a year for the next few years, but more does not fit into their national budgets. This is unlikely to satisfy the developing countries.
I believe that this amount could be at least doubled and assured for a longer time span. Developed countries’ governments are labouring under the misapprehension that funding must come from their national budgets. But that is not the case. They have the money already. It is lying idle in their reserve accounts at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Spending it would not add to any country’s fiscal deficit. All they need to do is to tap into it.
In September 2009, the IMF distributed to its members $283bn worth of special drawing rights (SDRs), arcane financial instruments that essentially constitute additional foreign exchange. They can be used only by converting them into one of four currencies, at which point they begin to carry interest at those currencies’ combined treasury bill rate. At present, the interest rate is less than 0.5%.
Of the $283bn worth of recently distributed SDRs, more than $150bn went to the 15 largest developed economies. These SDRs will sit largely untouched in the reserve accounts of these countries, which don’t really need any additional reserves.
I propose that the developed countries – in addition to establishing a fast-start fund of $10bn a year – band together and lend $100bn worth of these SDRs for 25 years to a special green fund serving the developing world. The fund would jump-start forestry, land use, and agricultural projects – areas that offer the greatest scope for reducing or mitigating carbon emissions, and that could produce substantial returns from carbon markets.
The returns such projects could generate go beyond addressing carbon emissions. Returns from land-use projects, for example, could also include the potential to create more sustainable rural livelihoods, enable higher and more resilient agricultural yields, and generate rural employment.
This is a simple and practical idea, and there is a precedent for it. The UK and France each recently lent $2bn worth of SDRs to a special fund at the IMF to support concessionary lending to the poorest countries. At that point, the IMF assumed responsibility for the principal and interest on the SDRs. The same could be done in this case.
I further propose that member countries agree to use the IMF’s gold reserves to guarantee the interest payments and repayment of the principal. The IMF owns a lot of gold – more than 100m ounces – and it is on the books at historical cost. Thus, at current market prices, it is worth more than $100bn over its book value. It has already been designated to be used for the benefit of the least developed countries. The proposed green fund would meet this requirement.
This means that the developed countries that lend the SDRs would incur no interest expense and no responsibility for repayment. There are some serious technical problems involved in offsetting the interest income against the interest expense, particularly in the United States, but the net effect would be a wash. These technical difficulties stood in the way of previous attempts to put the SDRs to practical use, but they do not apply to the proposed green fund.
There are three powerful arguments in favour of this proposal. First, the green fund could be self-financing or even profitable; very little of the IMF’s gold, if any, would actually be used.
Second, the projects will earn a return only if developed countries co-operate in setting up the right type of carbon markets. Establishing a green fund would be an implicit pledge to do so by putting the gold reserves of the IMF at risk.
Finally, this money would be available now, jump-starting carbon-saving projects.
For all these reasons, the developing countries ought to embrace my proposal. The key point is that it is possible to increase substantially the amount available to fight global warming in the developing world by using the existing allocations of SDRs, with interest payments on them guaranteed by the IMF’s gold reserves.
All that is lacking is the political will. The mere fact that tapping SDRs requires congressional approval in the US ensures that nothing will happen without public pressure – including pressure from the developing countries. Yet it could make the difference between success and failure in Copenhagen.
• Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.

Kofi Annan - Climate change puts us all in the same boat. One hole will sink us all

Global warming does not respect borders. A mindset shift is required if world leaders are to save us from ourselves

Kofi Annan
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 December 2009 13.05 GMT
The UN climate change conference in Copenhagen offers the prospect of a robust political deal, endorsed by the world’s leaders and witnessed by the world’s people, that sets out clear targets and a timeline for translating it into law. To be a truly historic achievement, such a deal must do two things.
First, it must lay the basis for a global regime and subsequent agreements that limit global temperature rise in accordance with the scientific evidence. Second, it must provide clarity on the mobilisation and volume of financial resources to support developing countries to adapt to climate change.
The stakes are enormous. Economic growth has been achieved at great environmental and social cost, aggravating inequality and human vulnerability. The irreparable damage that is being inflicted on ecosystems, agricultural productivity, forests and water systems is accelerating. Threats to health, life and livelihoods are growing. Disasters are also increasing in scale and frequency.
But despite the mounting evidence of negative impacts, reaching a deal will not be easy. It will require extraordinary political courage – both to cut the deal and to communicate its necessity to the public.
A mindset shift is required. Distrust and competition persist between regions and nations, manifest in a “no, you must show your cards first” attitude that has dogged the negotiations leading up to Copenhagen. This has to be overcome.
A deal that is not based on the best scientific evidence will be nothing better than a line in the sand as the tide comes in. But short-term considerations, including from special interest groups and electoral demands, are working against long-term solutions.
Success in reaching a deal will require leaders to think for future generations, and for citizens other than their own. It will require them to think about inclusive and comprehensive arrangements, not just a patched up compilation of national or regional interests.
A deal that stops at rhetoric and does not actually meet the needs of the poorest and most climate vulnerable countries simply will not work. The climate cannot be “fixed” in one continent and not another. Climate change does not respect national borders. We are all in the same boat; a hole at one end will sink us all.
For it to work, climate justice must be at the heart of the agreement. An unfair deal will come unstuck. Industrialised countries such as the United States must naturally take the lead in reducing emissions and supporting others to follow suit, but developing countries like India or China also have an increasing responsibility to do so as their economies continue to grow.
Tragically, it is the poorest and least responsible who are having to bear the brunt of the climate challenge as rising temperatures exacerbate poverty, hunger and vulnerability to disease for billions of people. They need both immediate help to strengthen their climate resilience as well as long-term support to enable them to adapt to changing weather patterns, reduce deforestation, and pursue low-emissions, clean energy growth strategies.
The deal must include a package of commitments in line with the science and the imperative of reducing global emissions by 50-85% relative to 2000 levels by 2050.
This requires a schedule for richer countries to move to 25-40% emission cuts by 2020 from 1990 baselines; clear measures for emerging economies to cut emissions intensity; and clarity about both immediate and longer term finance and technical support for developing countries, notably the poorest and most vulnerable among them.
Will we get there? The targets that have been proposed for emission reductions by many industrialised countries such as the EU, Japan and Norway are encouraging, as are those being made by the big emerging economies including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and South Korea.
Recent announcements by the US on emission targets represent a significant shift and provide a basis for scaling up commitments in the coming years. So does the recognition by emerging economies that they also have a role in supporting the most vulnerable countries.
Welcome too are the proposals for financial support to LDCs and small island states made at the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad, as well as proposals by the Netherlands, France, and the UK, among others.
But much greater specificity on finance is needed. Existing official development assistance (ODA) commitments to help the poorest countries meet the Millennium Development Goals need to be met. And significant additional finance that is separate from and additional to ODA needs to be mobilised to support them meet the incremental costs generated by climate change.
A deal that is not clear on the finance will be both unacceptable to developing countries, and unworkable. Finding the additional resources and communicating its necessity will not be easy, particularly in the current economic climate, but it must be done.
A successful deal could incentivise not only good stewardship of forests and more sustainable land use, but also massive investment into low-carbon growth and a healthier planet, including in sectors such as energy generation, construction and transportation.
And it could usher in an era of qualitatively new international co-operation based on common but differentiated responsibilities – not just for managing climate change, but for human development, social justice and global security.
Ultimately, at stake is whether our leaders can work to help us save ourselves from … well, from ourselves. The legacy of today’s politicians will be determined in the weeks to come.
• Kofi Annan was UN secretary-general from 1997 to 2006. He now chairs the Kofi Annan Foundation and the Africa Progress Panel and is president of the Global Humanitarian Forum
For regular updates on the Copenhagen climate talks and beyond

Acid oceans ‘the evil twin of global warming’ could wipe out many marine species

Published Date: 11 December 2009
By Jenny Fyall
THE acidity of the oceans will rise by unprecedented levels causing mass extinction of marine species unless emissions are cut, a Scots-sponsored report has warned.
The report, presented at the Copenhagen climate summit, said the acidity of the oceans has already risen 30 per cent since industrialisation began. If levels continue to rise, acidity could increase by 120 per cent by 2060. This would make the seas more acidic than they have been for 21 million years, according to the IUCN report – which was part sponsored by Scottish Natural Heritage.The acidity could put 70 per cent of cold water corals at risk by the end of the century.The oceans act as a huge carbon sink, as is taken out of the atmosphere and dissolves in the seawater, where it forms carbonic acid.As humans put increasing amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, the seas are becoming rapidly more acidic, damaging the ability of plankton, shellfish, molluscs and reef-building species to create skeletons or shells – with knock-on effects up the marine food chain.”Ocean acidification can be best described as the evil twin of climate change,” said Dan Laffoley, lead editor of the guide, and marine vice chairman of IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas. As well as providing about half the Earth’s natural resources, the oceans also produce half the oxygen we breathe.Prof Laffoley warned that ocean acidification would affect seas and coastal areas all around the world. “No matter where you are, remember that every breath you take and every drop of water you drink connects you back to the ocean,” he said.Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of the IUCN Global Marine Programme, added: “The ocean is what makes Earth habitable and different from anywhere else we know in our solar system and beyond – now’s the time to act to minimise the impacts on our life support system while we still have time.”

Dear Dirk

Last week, we were told by journalists that Dirk Ahner, the Commission’s Director-General for regional policy, had apparently sent a letter to the members of the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control committee, criticising Open Europe’s 50 examples of waste involving EU funds.

Despite the fact that the letter addressed our publication, and cited extensively from it, Mr. Ahner did not send a copy to Open Europe, and has failed to send us one after repeated requests both on the phone and by email.

In the end we managed to get the letter from other sources. You can read it here.

Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

As I committed to do, I have asked my services to investigate their claims on the projects in question. However, it is essential to underline to the citizens you represent that, given the shared management system, the European Commission is not responsible for the selection of the projects… Most of the claims are true, in the sense that European money has co-financed the projects mentioned. However, Open Europe seems to take the view that anything related to tourism and culture is a waste of money, regardless of whether the projects create jobs and are part of an overall development strategy. Some statements are misleading or completely incorrect: just to take an example, the Commission will not pay a cent to the mentioned Slovakian bulletin-board tender (project 49).

Well, we don’t take the view that anything “related to tourism and culture is a waste of money”, but, as we set out here, the structure and nature of the EU budget often facilitate poor project selection, to a greater extent than national spending schemes do. We also wanted to illustrate how having a massive redistribution scheme involving some of the richest countries in the world sending money back and forth via Brussels (at a huge admin cost) is becoming increasingly hard to justify economically. In addition, we wanted to highlight one of the wider problems with the EU budget (the co-financed part in particular, i.e. the Structural Funds and the Rural Development Programme), namely the blurred line between the spending of public money and accountability.

Predictably, Mr. Ahner passes on the responsibility for the project selection to member states, as the Commission usually does (but then goes on to defend the projects, interestingly).

It is true that the managing authorities in the member states select projects - no one is disputing that - but the Commission runs the policy and does have a thing or two to say about the project selection as well - in addition to being one of the staunchest defenders of the Structural Funds. And some of the people on the ground won’t let the Commission off the hook that easily. For example, responding to one item on our list - the ‘gender equal’ wood design centre in Sweden - one of the local officials involved in the project defensively wrote, “The gender-part of that project was just a small part, put there to please the EU officials.”

So as a taxpayer, if I’m not happy with the way the Structural Funds are ran and spent, who should I approach? As we’ve said many times before, the Commission could do itself a massive favour by encouraging member states to scrap the Structural Funds in the most well-off member states - say, those with a GDP of 85-90% of average EU GDP or more - where the value-added of the EU funds, on the whole, is negligble at best. None of these issues were addressed by Mr. Ahner. Anyway, here’s our open letter to Mr. Ahner:

Open letter to Dirk Ahner, Regional Policy Director-General, European

Dear Mr. Ahner,

We write to you in regards to a letter you sent to members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control (“Subject: OPEN EUROPE ‘fraud and waste’ list of projects”, REGIO B1/AM D(2009)). Since the correspondence with the MEPs was addressing material published by Open Europe, we thought it appropriate to respond and also to address some of the claims you make in the letter (see attached document).

First, it is regrettable that the Commission continues to single out Open Europe for criticism, and has not given us opportunity for the right of reply. You sent the letter to MEPs, without copying to Open Europe, and failed to respond to telephone calls as we sought to find a copy of the letter. Despite repeated requests over the phone and via email, your office has still not sent us a copy of the letter. In fact, Open Europe was not even acknowledged when we tried to get hold of the letter. Instead we have acquired the letter from other sources. Your refusal seems to be in violation of the European Ombudsman’s Code of Good Administrative Behaviour.

Of the 17 Regional Development Fund projects analysed, you seem to be saying that one of them is incorrect, in that EU funds were not in the end used for the purposes mentioned: the ‘Bulletin-board tender’, which Open Europe said was indeed being investigated by the Commission. You claim that the point about Lazarote hotels having illegally received EU funds is “incorrect”, but are only able to clarify that “the Spanish authorities removed the hotels from the ERDF programme. This means that the hotels will not receive any funding from the EU budget.” No evidence is provided to show that the hotels did not receive the money – only that they “will” not receive money in the future – so we remain unconvinced by your claim that this is incorrect.

For all the other projects, you either defend the use of funds, or simply state that the example is correct, such as the fact that the Chairman of Porsche received €2,500 in EU rural development funds for a small estate in Bavaria where he goes hunting in his free time. For one or two you quibble over the amounts spent.

It is most concerning that you have spent so much time piecing together this rebuttal, and sent it to members of the European Parliament with an instruction that they “underline to the citizens you represent that, given the shared management system, the European Commission is not responsible for the selection of the projects funded.” There is no acknowledgement of Open Europe’s wider point which is that the waste is ultimately down to the structure of the EU budget (as Open Europe has set out here, for instance: http://euobserver.com/7/28979 ) - and that the budget in general and the Structural Funds in particular are in need of fundamental reform.

Open Europe maintains that all are examples of the EU wasting money, and an illustration of how the EU budget is spent, which was the objective of our report. Your comments represent a different point of view about how public money should best be spent, which Open Europe is seeking to challenge.

We look forward to a more open dialogue with the European Commission on these issues in the future.

Yours sincerely,

Open Europe

Thirsty camels face bullet after terrorising Australian town

Australian authorities plan to round up about 6,000 wild camels with helicopters and shoot them after they overran an outback town in search of water, trampling fences, smashing tanks and contaminating supplies.

The Northern Territory government announced its plan yesterday for Docker River, a town of 350 residents where thirsty camels have been arriving every day for weeks because of drought conditions.

“The community of Docker River is under siege by 6,000 marauding, wild camels,” the local government minister, Rob Knight, said in Alice Springs,

Camels were introduced into Australia as pack animals for the vast outback in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but were released into the wild as rail and road travel became more widespread. With few natural predators and vast sparsely-populated areas in which to roam, the feral animal population has soared, putting pressure on native species by reducing food sources, destroying habitat and spreading disease.

310 miles (500km) north-east of Docker. “This is a very critical situation out there, it’s very unusual and it needs urgent action.”

The camels, which are not native to Australia but were introduced in the 1840s, have butted water tanks, approached houses to try to take water from air conditioning units and knocked down fencing at the small airport runway, Knight said.

The carcasses of camels killed in stampedes at water storage areas were contaminating the water supply, he said.

The government plans to use helicopters next week to herd the camels about nine miles outside the town and shoot them, leaving their carcasses to rot in the desert. A grant of A$49,000 (£27,000) will be provided for the cull and to repair damaged infrastructure.

“We don’t have the luxury of time because the herd is getting bigger,” Knight said.

It is common to see some camels in the remote community, but the continuing drought and an early heatwave have dried up other water sources and forced more of them into the town. Much of Australia is gripped by some of the worst drought conditions on record.

More than a million feral camels — the largest wild herd on earth — roam central Australia, damaging fragile desert ecosystems and water sources.

The camels, along with donkeys and horses, are also destroying revegetation projects in the desert communities by ripping up plants.

In August, the federal government set aside A$19m for a program to slash the wild camel population, including a possible mass slaughter.

Glenys Oogjes, executive director of the national advocacy group Animals Australia, said the plan to kill camels by helicopter was barbaric, and that the community could instead set up barriers to keep out the camels.

“It’s a terrible thing that people react to these events by shooting,” she said. “The real concern is the terrible distress and wounding when shot by helicopter … There will be terrible suffering.”

Explorers brought camels to Australia to help them travel in the desert, and now an estimated 1 million roam wild across the country. They compete with sheep and cattle for food, trample vegetation and invade remote settlements in search of water, scaring residents as they tear apart bathrooms and rip up water pipes.

Docker River residents were not especially concerned when about 30 camels came into the town looking for water a few weeks ago, said Graham Taylor, head of the local council. But fears grew as more animals arrived every day.

He said many people were too frightened to leave their homes because of the animals, which can grow up to 2.1 meters (7 ft) tall and weigh 900kg (2,000lb).

“We need to get the risk and that threat away from the people,” he said.

Source:
Guardian, “Thirsty camels face bullet after terrorising Australian town“, accessed December 8, 2009

Copenhagen Summit: developing nations warn of failure without US reverse

Philippe Naughton in Copenhagen

The top African negotiator at the Copenhagen climate summit called on Barack Obama today to live up to the world’s expectations of him as a Nobel laureate and commit America to a meaningful global agreement to tackle global warming.
The call from Lumumba Di Aping of Sudan, who chairs the G77 group of developing nations, came as President Obama visited the Norwegian capital Oslo - just 300 miles to the north - to pick up a Nobel Peace Prize that many feel is premature.
Mr Di Aping, who has spent the opening days of the Copenhagen summit railing against Western attempts to impose a climate deal, said the the world “cannot achieve an equitable and a just deal that would save the planet without the participation of the United States”.
He repeated a call for American to ratify and join the Kyoto Protocol, which Mr Obama has already made clear he will not do. The US walked away from the landmark deal to cap CO2 emissions in 2001 when President Bush decided that it would be too costly for American business.

“We should not waste time trying to reinvent what we have already achieved,” Mr Di Aping said. “That simply undermines the fight against the emissions. That’s the challenge President Obama needs to rise to - that’s what we expect of him as a Nobel prizewinner, that is what we expect of him as one of the new advocates of multiateralism.”
The Sudanese diplomat backed an innovative idea proposed earlier today by the financier George Soros for industrialised nations to free up unused Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) - foreign exchange reserves issued by the International Monetary Fund - to held poorer countries head off cope with global warming.
Mr Soros, himself worth an estimated $11 billion, wants to create a $100 billion fund to invest in and finance reforestation and agriculture projects and says it could help break a financing logjam in the Copenhagen negotiations - although he doubted that the United States would want to get involved.
Picking up on the idea, Mr Di Aping immediately doubled it to $200 billion and said that the question should be asked of the US Congress: “You approve billions of dollars in defence budgets: why can’t you approve $200 billion to save the world?”
The SDR idea looks unlikely to gain much traction in Copenhagen, but beyond the dramatics there were the first signs of some serious progress towards a deal.
Mr Obama is due to arrive in Copenhagen next Friday along with at least 110 other world leaders, the latest among them President Medvedev of Russia. The US leader will doubtless remember his last trip to Copenhagen when he came to tout Chicago as potential host of the 2018 Olympic Games, only for IOC members to choose Rio de Janeiro instead.
The US President had originally planned to stop off in Copenhagen yesterday, en route to the Nobel ceremony, but decided last week to come for the final day of the talks on December 18, when any deal would be signed by the assembled leaders.
That suggested a degree of optimism in the American camp that something worth signing will emerge from the two weeks of negotiations in Copenhagen.
Because of the US refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which obliged developed nations to cut CO2 emissions by 5 per cent on 1990 levels by 2012, the Copenhagen conference has twin-track negotiations on reaching a successor accord to Kyoto and a separate pact to which the United States would also sign up.
But there is a growing feeling among delegates from developed and emerging economies that there is no point sticking with the Kyoto Protocol if the United States is not involved and the summit should focus its attention on an entirely new treaty.
Developing nations would resist such a proposal - and reacted angrily to a “Danish text” which effectively took such a line - but may have no choice if they want to receive the vast sums on offer to help them mitigate the effects of global warming.
The EU’s chief climate negotiator, Anders Turesson, complained today that the slow pace in the formal plenary session of the conference was preventing progress elsewhere, including in the negotiating track with with the Americans are most closely involved.
The plenary session has been tied up over calls from developing nations for a much more ambitious target on limiting global warming.
More than half the countries at the 192-nation back a call from the Pacific island of Tuvalu - which says it is already sending climate refugees abroad - for a formal target of limiting rises in termperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Industrialised nations have backed a 2C target.
In his Nobel acceptance speech, Mr Obama said that world had to come together to confront climate change.
“There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades,” he added.

Copenhagen: Barack Obama backs Norway-Brazil forest protection plan

US president endorses scheme proposed by Norway and Brazil that would protect the world’s rainforests with funding from rich countries which cannot cut their emissions at home
John Vidal in Copenhagen
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 December 2009 17.12 GMT
The US president, Barack Obama, made his first public intervention in the Copenhagen climate summit today by backing a plan put forward by Norway and Brazil which would protect the world’s rainforests with funding from rich countries that cannot meet their commitments to cut emissions domestically.
Speaking after he accepted the Nobel peace prize in Oslo, Norway, Obama said: “I am very impressed with the model that has been built between Norway and Brazil that allows for effective monitoring and ensures that we are making progress in avoiding deforestation of the Amazon.
“It’s probably the most cost-effective way for us to address the issue of climate change - having an effective set of mechanisms in place to avoid further deforestation and hopefully to plant new trees.”
The president is not due at the conference for another week but his intervention comes at a critical time in the summit where negotiations on deforestation are moving rapidly.
The scheme is seen as attractive because pilot studies have shown it to be effective and has the backing of Prince Charles’s Rainforest Project.
Countries are more or less unanimously behind finding a way to reduce deforestation, which accounts for 16% of world greenhouse gas emissions, but are encountering sticking points which require the intervention of heads of state.
At least 20 different plans for Reduced deforestation and degradation (Redd) plans have been put forward by many different countries, but talks are in the balance over the rights and safeguards for people who live in or depend on the forests; how the money can be prevented from falling prey to corruption; how to measure and verify claims of protection and the future of existing forest industries.
Rich countries are eager to find a solution because a successful deal will provide them with a solution to “offset” hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon. Poor countries, especially in the tropics, are equally keen because they stand to receive vast cash flow for protecting their forests.
Brazil is critical in forest talks because it not only is responsible for nearly 20% of all global forest emissions, but it has the largest swath of trees in the world and therefore stands to make more money than anyone else by protecting them.
Today, the talks were moving quickly. The EU has proposed a 50% cut in the rate of deforestation by 2020 and a complete halt by 2030. But Brazil said it did not want a specific target or timetable, arguing that Redd would be voluntary, and that developing countries needed to see how much money they might receive before committing themselves to such an ambitious global scheme.
Obama’s endorsement of the Brazil-Norway plan was welcomed by non-governmental organisations who said that it indicated that money had a good chance of being found to set up Redd schemes.
A global deforestation initiative would take many years to establish, and would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to set up because it would require satellite technology and pilot projects. In addition, governments will have to pass domestic legislation before it begins.
Also in Copenhagen, Google demonstrated a new technology prototype that enables online, global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the Earth’s forests. The technology, which combines satellite photography, area-measuring software and a “cloud” processing engine, will be offered as not-for-profit service to all nations.