by Raul Cazan

When we are climbing a mountain, it may witness our behavior with a somewhat remote or mild benevolence. The mountain never fights against us, and it will hold back avalanches as long as it can, but sometimes human stupidity and hubris and a lack of intimate feeling for the environment result in human catastrophes – that is, catastrophes for mothers, fathers, wives, children and friends. There is a sense of both greatness and fragility that escapes us while reflecting upon the mountains.

Breithorn, 4165 m, Switzerland

Purely local mountain cultures are incompatible with cosmopolitan and urban ones. The intrusion of new values and lifestyles rapidly undermines mountain culture. Even though in Europe worship of the mountains has faded in dark ages of history, Arne Naess, the great philosopher, reminds us of some cult of mountains remaining. Tseringma (Gauri Sankar) is still worshiped. “When we suggested to the Sherpas of Beding, beneath Tseringma, that they might have their fabulous peaks protected from “conquests” and big expeditions, they responded with enthusiasm. A special meeting was announced, and the families voted unanimously to ask the central authorities in Kathmandu to refuse permission for climbing expeditions to Tseringma” (The Ecology of Wisdom. Writings by Arne Naess, edited by Allan Drengson and Bill Devall, Counterpoint, Berkeley, USA, 2008, page 65). Goenden, the leader of Beding walk all the way to the Nepalese capital to contact the administration. Alpine clubs and the government largely ignored this initiative even if Sherpas would not mind losing the money they could earn from expeditions. “Enlightened” Sherpas would tolerate organizers of expeditions going anywhere whilst high mountains need no “protection” as they are just great stone heaps and large glaciers.

Probably all parties were right. However, what Naess gets out of it is a certain idea of modesty in human relations with mountains and mountain people. “As I see it, says the philosopher, modesty is of little value if it is not a natural consequence of much deeper feelings and, even more important in our special context, a consequence of a way of understanding ourselves as part of nature in a wide sense of the term. This way is such that the smaller we come to feel ourselves compared with the mountain, the nearer we come to participating in its greatness. I do not know why this is so.”

FROM SACRED TO TOURISM

Mount Olympus and Mount Ida for the ancient Greeks, even Hephaestus’ workshop at the heart of Etna, or the mysterious Kogayon, the holy mountain of the Dacians somewhere in the Carpathians, through the Alpine peaks of Celtic gods, up to Akkha, the mystic Sami mountain in the Scandinavian North, they all are subdued to an assimilated divine greatness of the Mountains of Europe and of the mountainous peoples of Europe.

Dacian sanctuaries at Sarmizegetusa Regia in the Transylvanian Alps, Carpathians, Romania

Simulacra of biblical mountains, most peaks of Europe have been baptized with saints’ names in centuries of Christianity.

A syncretic combination of various elements also characterized the “sacred mountains” that were erected all over France in the squares and churches of the new Republic at the height of the Revolution in 1793 and 1794. These were constructed from piles of earth and other suitable materials. During the philosophical discussions of previous decades of the 18^th century, nature had interestingly gained an almost mystical character, as the essence of perfection. Society had to reconcile with it. And it was the embodiment of freedom, equality, and brotherhood from the flags of the French Revolution. The artificial mountains were used for the cultic representation of nature. Here, a Supreme Being revealed to man the laws of Nature and Reason, just as the biblical God had once given Moses the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, or the gods of Greek antiquity had lived on Mount Olympus. During celebrations of the Revolution, the artificial mountains were often climbed by a woman dressed in white. Standing at the summit, she was hailed as the new goddess of freedom and reason. (Jon Mathieu, The Sacralization of Mountains in Europe during the Modern Age.

The Sacri Monti (artificially constructed holy mountains) at the southern foothills of the Alps are also clearly related to topography. They developed in some regions near the border with Protestant countries during the decades around 1600. The idea of bringing “Jerusalem” to Europe and imitating it architecturally had already appeared before 1500 and gained greater significance after the Council of Trent (1545–1563). The thematic center of the Sacri Monti is formed by the life and the Passion of Christ on the mountain of Golgotha, or by remarkable scenes from the life of Mary, or the life of a saint. Here, as in other regions, it was often conspicuous but seldom very high mountains that received pilgrimage churches (Luigi Zanzi, Sacri Monti, 2002).

From these sacralizations of the mountain, nowadays we descend to a certain commodification.

ASCENSIO AD INFERNOS

Some years ago, in a mountain chalet on Monte Rite in the Italian Dolomites, Pavia University based mountain history professor Luigi Zanzi was screaming out a lecture about the crisis of mountain culture, the greatest provider of ecosystem services – since we are in need of contemporary environmental terms. This is the fragility of mountain communities.

Monte Rite, Dolomites, Italy

People of the mountain communities were free until less than a century ago; the areas that these people were occupying had been escaping any fiscal policies of the state, they were literal tax-free zones. Probably last examples of such relative liberty were the shepherd communities in the Transylvanian Alps scattered on the hills around Sibiu/Hermannstadt in Romania or the ones in the Balkan Mountains during the iron fist ruling of the communists.

For inhabitants of the alpine communities there should be no income taxes, says Zanzi, as capitalist economy cannot function over 2000 m altitude. Whereas agriculture, production and services in the lowlands of Europe enter the global economic competition, the economic life in the mountain is essentially local and based on a “integral ecology”.

Mountain economy keeps anywhere in Europe a sense of production and consumption that is always self-sufficient and difficultly defendable against invasion of the big capital usually interested in grand tourism projects. Local production in the mountains inherently presupposes local consumption; in case of extra production, people’s work should not be “exported” or distributed at long distance, says Zanzi, for the simple reason that they cannot afford competing with the bigger businesses in the lower lands.

Mountain economy is subsistence, however there is nothing demeaning in it. This traditional and ecological economy keeps a whole environment on which all subjects of the state depend. It surrounds glaciers, fights climate change and maintains a biodiversity that was lost elsewhere. These provided services cannot be taxed as simple as function of income in money because they are much more complex; they should be not taxed at all, concludes Zanzi.

RISK AND BLACK SNOW

Fragility of the mountain translates though into the fragility of our global climate.

The risks of the mountain must be studied more closely since climate change became obvious. The risks have always existed. They are partly cyclical, said Federica Cortese, Deputy Mayor of Courmayeur in charge of risk and the environment, President of the Fondazione MONTAGNA SICURA.

Mont Blanc, Crevasse on Glacier du Geant, France

But the risks are increased by the natural changes, by urbanization and by the practices of mountain recreation. But the glacier Jorasses (part of the Mont Blanc and Mer de Glace complex), among other causes threats by sliding on a slope driven by gravity. It leads to a steep face of the mountain where periodic blocks of ice break off. The ice can break off at any time, under the effect of buoyancy. Falls are unpredictable.
So the risks are real for practitioners of mountain recreation (climbing, skiing, shelter clients and residences located below). But the risks are real and big for houses in the valley of Val Ferret from under the glacier. Falling ice in winter could trigger destructive avalanches. The glacier des Grandes Jorasses is subject to multiple monitoring: monitoring of the ice mass with surveillance cameras.
More generally, scientists study the evolution of permafrost, the layer of soil, permanently frozen so far, which would tend to warm as a result of climate change. Sensors are placed in diferent locations to measure the temperature of the rock and soil in real time. The information is transmitted from the sensors to laboratories or researchers follow the phenomena and try to create models that predict the behavior of the mountain.
Permafrost in fact depends on phenomena such as the holding of massive rocks often partially stuck by frost. Rising temperatures could cause the collapse of massive rock walls.

Global warming may handicap some parts of agriculture. Melting glaciers may temporarily provide water for crops that warming can be traced back at higher altitude. Valley of Adige around Bolzano in South Tyrol, is covered with yards of apple that provide 10% of the European market. Growing apple trees has developed thirty years ago, enjoying a huge success. The sector is thriving, to the point that cultures extend aloft to enjoy the warming that reduces the risk of frost. But less the cold, less apples get their rosie glow!

In the glacier of Morteratsch in Switzerland, probably the place where glacier melting can be seen with naked eye, climate change works its way towards vaporizing ice and permafrost. High areas such as this “enjoy” quite a warming; increase in average temperatures has long over-passed any thresholds optimistically set by any United Nations branch.

Glacier Morteratsch in Switzerland

Uberto Piloni, consultant and mountain guide, shared the rapid melting and cracking of the Morteratsch; “warm water infiltrates under the big blocks of ice and form literal streams under the calotte making it break and slide downstream. Often times one can be amazed by impressive waterfalls that lie as a visual proof of  a melting at a speed of 1 cubic meter per second. Every here and there, crevasses create actual lakes, in fact some pits in which deep waters last for days. A pit like this is called a “swallower”,” concludes Piloni.

Climate change “has extreme effects on the Alps; the average increase in temperature in all the Alps is higher than the average increase in other areas of the Northern Hemisphere, we had 2 centigrade increase in the Alps (within the last two decades, n.n.), the effects are very visible and, most of all, very expensive. One of the most visible effects is the retreat of glaciers,” Marco Onida, General Secretary of the Alpine Convention told 2C.

Within an annual program consisting of sustainable crossing of the Alps and a lot of knowledge sharing – named SuperAlp! – The Alpine Convention let participants, all journalists, discover the conditions of alpine glaciers, one of the most evident indicators of the effects of climate change. It also intended to make this crossing an occasion to communicate the Alpine Convention and its Protocols as tools for the sustainable development of the Alpine region, easily transferable also to other mountain regions of the world. “We chose 5 glaciers in the Alps and we crossed them all in order to see with our eyes what the situation is and to talk to knowledgeable people, glaciologists, experts that have been living here for the last 50-60 years and that are able to explain what is the situation’s evolution, what is the speed of the retreat, what are the problems associated to this retreat and so on,” added Onida.

Marco Onida, Secretary General of the Alpine Convention

The glacier of Gran Paradiso (Grand Paradise) proves an infernal effect. The water that glaciers provide to the lowlands – and here we are talking about long flow rivers of Europe such as the Po or the Danube, carriers of immense biodiversity and culture – has been halved in the last decade, warns Eduardo Cremonese with the Environmental Agency of the Italian region of Val d’Aosta (Vallee d’Aoste). “People started to see that there is less water for them, less hydropower production. This low amount of snow and precipitations in general as well as the increase in average temperature in the spring is the danger for the valleys and also for the alpine areas.”

The research that the Agency in Aosta is carrying out is quite simple. Named “mass balance”, researchers are measuring the amount of snow and ice at the winter peak and then they repeat measurements in late spring. Subtracting, you get the amount of snow and ice melted. Comparative studies carried out each year in the last decade show that the glacier is continuously losing mass. “Just to give you an idea, we measured the ablation of the terminal part of the glacier and in less than 8 years we had to change 2 ten-meter long poles, that is Gran Paradiso lost a 20 meters thick layer of ice.”

At its turn, Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland, the longest in the Alps, has broken in 5 “tongues” along huge crevasses. Uberto Piloni says that there is an undeniable truth of constant melting and it is written in stone with nature’s means; in the last 60-70 years, the super-industrial times, there has been a constant melting as lichens that grow on rock show.

Global warming will cause problems especially in the drier parts of the Alps, in the valleys without glaciers with precipitation already low. This is underlined by Marc Zebisch, climate change expert at the European Academy (Eurac), a research center in the region of Trentino South Tyrol, Italy. Glacier retreat is one of the most overt indicators of climate change, however they do not have the biggest impact, says Zebisch. Snow gives the highest degree of fragility; alpine snow is “the water tower of Europe”, vegetation in the lower lands depends on the additional water that comes from the snow melting, that is all river streams and ecosystems consume the water that flows from the alpine snow, therefore less snow will impoverish biodiversity. A 4 degrees Celsius increase in average temperature in the Alps – very possible by 2050 – will cause more water in winter and much less during spring and summertime. This all means water shortages all over continental Europe similar to the drought of 2003 and less vigorous ecosystems.

Old ice and permafrost, due to low amounts of snowfalls, tend to get a darker color, a phenomenon named “black snow”. Naturally, the melting speed increases as this ice attracts the sun’s rays. Paradoxically, however, in the coming years we will have larger amounts of water in the continent due to massive melting of the alpine glaciers. Nonetheless, Carpathians or Apennine mountains lose their snow already in spring, as Eurac satellite photos show, and water shortages are to be expected in the near future.

Longest glacier in Europe, Aletsch in Switzerland

Businesses and developers, on the other hand, think in terms of credit and on shorter periods of time; they keep doing good business with useless ski slopes in the Alps or enjoy the large amounts of water for hydropower. We are living times of egotistic narrow approaches on development, times in which nuclear energy imported from France is used to uplift water basins in the Alps for artificial waterfalls that create hydro energy. These are times when energy and subsequent business are mere speculations, whereas glaciers on the alpine peaks are complexly connected with the fantastic biodiversity of the Danube Delta.

We gathered scientific information for the sake of a good article, but what we need is the modesty that Arne Naess was writing about. “…the smaller we come to feel ourselves compared with the mountain, the nearer we come to participating in its greatness.” Sustainability means humility and it brings long term thinking as today’s development seems to be upside down: alpine communities are disentangled, but ski slopes prevail; ecosystem services are denied, while big energy projects carve merciless into the body of the mountain; unemployment in alpine areas is frightening, but open cast cyanide mining or mountain top removals are seen as job providers; bad and genetically modified food is creating poverty, inequality and massive land-use change; alternative power sources are presented as panacea while water shortages are looming for downstream communities.

These are times of the “black snow”.

* https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:CeivszWI4-YJ:www.unilu.ch/files/The-Sacralization-of-Mountains.pdf+&hl=ro&gl=ro&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShZjiWVOrJtpWvtZiOx70smSWzQQ7Lm6xnqhdZpwI8AvR8bQPb3CQYIovCPCjD89gFixzlXRxT6GFRWdFIkT5CfG2nXb7VQULACgmTQ-DdTV9rhwMBvlfqhsmoCc6p–DNDaBtP&sig=AHIEtbQAkosDfG7CBN-xUsnAiRnRO4Y5gg

A coalition of environmental and health NGOs warned the European Parliament today that hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) of shale gas, shale oil, and coal bed methane represent an dangerous experiment on the environment and human health.

Shale gas in Europe

The warning comes following a draft report on shale gas published on the 11th of April by MEP Boguslaw Sonik for the parliamentary committee working on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. The draft, which promotes the expansion of shale gas developments in Europe, will be presented in front of the ENVI Committee tomorrow. It will influence Europe’s position on shale gas, potentially steering Europe’s energy policy in completely the wrong direction.The report ignores the risks and negative impacts of fracking, while presenting overly optimistic industry interests.

Antoine Simon, shale gas campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe said: “Europe must not fall into the shale gas trap – it threatens the health of local communities, the environment, locks Europe into fossil fuel dependency, and undermines renewable energy developments.”

“European politicians must resist industry rhetoric and take account of the very real dangers of shale gas. Member states must suspend ongoing activities, and ban new projects – we must put a stop to this socially and environmentally damaging technology before it spreads across Europe.”

Exploiting shale gas, shale oil and coal bed methane in Europe will increase greenhouse gas emissions and ensure fossil fuel dependency at the expense of renewable energy or cheaper and safer policies to save energy. Additionally, loopholes in European legislation allow companies to remain secretive about chemicals used during fracking, making it impossible to assess the environmental and health risks.

Lisette van Vliet, Senior policy officer for Health and Environment Alliance said: “Getting natural gas from shale is a mark of desperate addiction to fossil fuels and threatens our public health by polluting the environment. Toxic chemicals used in fracking can contaminate groundwater, and subsequently drinking water, and fracking worsens our air quality. We call on Parliament to take a strong stand, and not to feed this addiction!”

Geert De Cock, policy officer for Food and Water Europe said: “Detailed analysis of how European water legislation covers, or fails to cover, the impacts of fracking on the water quality, is dangerously absent.”

“Fracking for shale gas has led to thousands of water contamination cases in the US – leaks, spills, blowouts, and improper treatment of wastewater – yet Europe is turning a blind eye. We must take heed, and suspend all ongoing shale gas developments in Europe”.

Civil society calls on member states to suspend ongoing activities, to abrogate permits, and to place a ban on any new projects, and urges the European Parliament not to promote further development of shale gas.

Evidence suggests that climate change has led to changes in climate extremes such as heat waves, record high temperatures and, in many regions, heavy precipitation in the past half century, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said. Climate extremes, or even a series of non-extreme events, in combination with social vulnerabilities and exposure to risks can produce climate-related disasters, the IPCC said in its Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX).

While some extreme weather and climate events lead to disasters, others do not. Policies to avoid, prepare for, respond to and recover from the risks of disaster can reduce the impact of these events and increase the resilience of people exposed to extreme events, the IPCC shows in the report.

At the same time, as the IPCC notes in the report, limits to resilience are faced when thresholds or tipping points associated with social and/or natural systems are exceeded, posing severe challenges for adaptation.

“The main message from the report is that we know enough to make good decisions about managing the risks of climate-related disasters. Sometimes we take advantage of this knowledge, but many times we do not,” said Chris Field, Co-Chair of IPCC’s Working Group II, which together with Working Group I produced the report. “The challenge for the future has one dimension focused on improving the knowledge base and one on empowering good decisions, even for those situations where there is lots of uncertainty,” he said.

The IPCC released the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the report in November 2011. The full report released today provides the basis for the key conclusions first presented in the SPM. It offers a greater understanding of the human and economic costs of disasters and the physical and social patterns that cause them. It enables policy-makers to delve into the detailed information behind the findings to examine the material on which the IPCC based its assessments.

Teamwork across disciplines

The report is the outcome of cross-disciplinary teamwork between scientists studying the physical aspects of climate change, scientists with expertise in impacts, adaptation and vulnerability as well as experts in disaster risk management.

“The report integrates these three areas of expertise as an IPCC product which has high policy relevance to countries and communities across the globe,” said R.K. Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC.

“The authors assess scientific and technical information from around the world to provide and communicate knowledge on what we know with confidence, as well as identifying areas on which greater scientific evidence is essential to gain deeper understanding,” he said.

The environmental and social factors that influence the risk of disasters vary from region to region, but many of the effective strategies for dealing with disaster risk in a changing climate are similar.

“The most effective measures tend to be those that aid sustainable development, provide a diverse portfolio of options, and represent “low regrets” strategies in the sense that they yield benefits across a wide range of climate futures,” said Field.

The SREX has assessed a wealth of new studies, and new global and regional modelling results that were not available at the time of the Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, its last major assessment of climate change science. Some important conclusions delivered by the SREX therefore include:
- Medium confidence in an observed increase in the length or number of warm spells or heat
waves in many regions of the globe.
– Likely increase in frequency of heavy precipitation events or increase in proportion of total
rainfall from heavy falls over many areas of the globe, in particular in the high latitudes and
tropical regions, and in winter in the northern mid-latitudes.
– Medium confidence in projected increase in duration and intensity of droughts in some regions
of the world, including southern Europe and the Mediterranean region, central Europe, central
North America, Central America and Mexico, northeast Brazil, and southern Africa.

“The SREX provides an unprecedented level of detail regarding observed and expected changes in weather and climate extremes, based on a comprehensive assessment of over 1,000 scientific publications,” said Qin Dahe, Co-Chair of Working Group I.

Regional differences

“The report also provides improved differentiation of observed and projected changes in extremes of temperature, precipitation and drought across the continents of the globe,” said Thomas Stocker, the other Co-Chair of Working Group I.

Some examples include:

- While there is high confidence that heatwaves have become more severe in southern Europe
and the Mediterranean, the scientists have reported less confidence in changes observed in
central and northern Europe.
– Similarly for projected changes in heavy precipitation in Africa, the scientists have assessed
with high confidence that heavy precipitation will increase in East Africa, but report low
confidence in projected changes in southern Africa and the Sahara.
– The assessment of projected changes in dryness across South America indicates medium
confidence that dryness will increase in northeast Brazil, while confidence is low in all other
regions of South America.

Increasing exposure of people and economic assets has been the major cause of long-term increases in economic losses from climate-related disasters. Furthermore, the assessment indicates that in many regions of the world, socio-economic factors will be among the main drivers of future increases in related losses.

Many countries, including developing countries, face severe challenges in coping with climate-related disasters. For them the report is a rich source of knowledge.

“There are many options currently available that could improve preparation for effective response to extreme climate events and disasters, and enhance recovery from them, said Vicente Barros, the other Co-Chair of Working Group II. “This report identifies lessons learned from extensive experience in disaster risk management and from the growing focus on climate change adaptation.”

SREX will now be presented in the coming weeks to stakeholders around the world. The report’s authors will explain the report in events in developed and developing countries, to scientific experts, to local-scale practitioners and other stakeholders as well as international organizations.

In April and May, the report will be presented to policy-makers in half a dozen locations in Latin America, Asia and Africa, with the support of the Norwegian government and the Climate &
Development Knowledge Network. Events are also planned with UN agencies in Geneva, the policy community in Brussels and the insurance industry in London.

The report’s 592 pages cite thousands of scientific studies and have been subjected to three rounds of review by experts and governments to ensure that the findings are firmly based in the underlying scientific and technical information.

On publication the IPCC will also release earlier drafts of the report that were subject to formal review, comments by expert and government reviewers on those drafts, and responses by the authors to the comments. The IPCC will also publish some material used by the authors from sources other than peer-reviewed journals.

A total of 220 authors from 62 countries worked on the report, for which 18,784 outside expert and government review comments were received in the three rounds of formal review.
“The IPCC is deeply committed to producing reports that are policy-relevant but not policy prescriptive through a transparent process,” Pachauri said.

The report was originally proposed in 2008 by Norway and the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

In the Official Journal of the European Union dated March 9, 2012 the European Commission announces that it has decided on its own initiative to initiate an interim review investigation of the anti-dumping measures applicable to imports of bicycles originating in the People’s Republic of China. (BikeEurope)

In the Official Journal publication the European Comission says: “The Commission has at its disposal sufficient prima facie evidence that, as far as dumping and injury are concerned, the circumstances on the basis of which the existing measures were imposed might have changed and that these changes may be of a lasting nature.

Export quota system
“In particular, the information at the disposal of the Commission indicates that the export quota system that applied to bicycle producers in the People’s Republic of China and that hindered the exporting producers in being granted market economy treatment in the amending interim review, has been abolished in January 2011.

“Furthermore, changes to the structure of the Union industry have taken place. In particular, several Union producers switched from the complete cycle of production to (partial) assembly operations using imported parts.

Cost level of the Union industry
“Moreover, due to the EU enlargements of 2004 and 2007, a significant number of producers joined the Union bicycle industry. In addition several producers which had been part of the EU industry before the two enlargement rounds moved their production facilities or set up new facilities in the new Member States. As a result, the cost level of the Union industry might have changed.

“Finally, the present injury elimination level was calculated on the basis of bicycles made out of steel whereas it appears that currently the majority of bicycles are made of aluminium alloys. All these developments appear to be of a lasting nature and therefore substantiate the need to reassess the injury findings,” says the European Commission.

Exemption scheme
The review investigation will determine whether there is a need for the continuation, removal or amendment of the existing measures. Furthermore, the review investigation will also assess the exemption scheme and its functioning and will determine whether there is a need for any change thereto.

In order to obtain the information it deems necessary for its investigation, the Commission will send questionnaires to the sampled Union producers and to any known association of Union producers. These parties must submit a completed questionnaire within 37 days from the date of the notification of the sample selection, unless otherwise specified. The completed questionnaire will contain information on, inter alia, the structure of their company(ies), the financial situation of the company(ies), the activities of the company(ies) in relation to the product under review, the cost of production and the sales of the product under review.

Deadlines
Union producers, importers and their representative associations, users and their representative associations, and representative consumer organisations are invited to make themselves known within 15 days of the date of publication of this notice in the Official Journal of the European Union, unless otherwise specified. In order to participate in the review investigation, the representative consumer organisations have to demonstrate, within the same deadline, that there is an objective link between their activities and the product under review.

All interested parties may request to be heard by the Commission investigation services. Any request to be heard should be made in writing and should specify the reasons for the request. For hearings on issues pertaining to the initial stage of the review investigation the request must be submitted within 15 days of the date of publication of this notice in the Official Journal of the European Union. Thereafter, a request to be heard should be submitted within the specific deadlines set by the Commission in its communication with the parties.

Agriculture and forestry will part-take EU’s climate policies and emission reduction process, according to a proposal issued by the Directorate General for Climate Action.

The proposed new rules will  be submitted to the European Parliament and the European Council, together with an obligation for member states to adopt action plans for greener forestry, soil and agriculture.

A proposal for national emission reduction targets for these sectors is due to be issued later this year.

Forestry and agriculture are the last two major sectors without common European rules, nor specific climate policies.

Efforts to mitigate rural carbon dioxide emissions have only been partly recognized by the EU, due to a lack of common accounting rules and problems associated with robust carbon data collection from forests and soils.

“The proposal will also contribute to protect biodiversity and water resources, support rural development and have a more climate-friendly agriculture,” stated the EU climate commissioner, Connie Hedegaard.

On Poland’s Rebel Stance

”Poland’s no to the European Commission low-carbon Roadmap is unfortunate, but it will not stop Europe from moving on with its transition to a low-carbon economy,” added Hedegaard.

“The bad news was that Poland blocked Council conclusions for the second time. The good and encouraging news is that Poland was the only country to block. The Presidency and the other 26 member states explicitly asked the Commission to move on, and that is what we will do.

The day before the Council the Polish minister signed off an op-ed saying that EU should only have the 2050 reduction objective. How to achieve it should be up to members states themselves as a matter of “subsidiarity”.

Let’s imagine that we said the same about the economic crisis, that the EU defined the economic target for 2050 but how to reach it and whether anything happened in the next 38 years would be an exclusive matter for individual member states. Everyone can see that this wouldn’t work. This is also true when it comes to our climate policies,” she added.

The EU can’t work like this. The EU is a democratic community where negotiations are about give and take to get a good result for all. We can’t move forward if the most reluctant one dictates the pace to the rest.

The Commission’s job is to take care of the common European interest. As late as last week all EU Heads of States and Government urged us to move forward on the low-carbon transition. This is what we will do. There are already a number of proposals from the Commission paving the way, e.g. the energy efficiency directive that the European Council wants to be adopted already in June and the Commission’s budget proposal with an ambitious climate mainstreaming.

Now the Commission will work on further measures needed to reach the cost-efficient milestones that will lead us to a low-carbon future”.

In spite of their opposition, airlines will profit from the European Union’s program to charge for carbon emissions by charging passengers for the costs in higher fares, according to a report released by Climate Advisers.

Connie Hedegaard

The report from Climate Advisers, a consulting group that helps companies deal with climate policies, and the Center for American Progress, coincides with a meeting in Moscow of officials from 26 countries to discuss opposition to the program.

Among the attendees are China and India, which have refused to participate in the European program, along with other opposing nations, such as the United States, that are seeking a political compromise. But Siim Kallas, the European Commission’s vice president for transport, and Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s climate commissioner, say the EU will not suspend the program.

The European Union’s climate chief said she hopes countries opposed to its rules that charge airlines for carbon emissions take their complaints to the U.N. aviation body, where talks could help to defuse tensions over the strict measures.

Last September, opposing countries threatened to file a formal complaint at the U.N.’s International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) against the EU program that came into force on Jan. 1, but have yet to take formal action to challenge the measures at that body.

Multilateral Agreement, a joke
“It’s one thing that they do not like what Europe is doing. What can they agree to in ICAO? It will be very interesting for us to see that next step,” EU Climate Commissioner said in an interview for Reuters.

Environment ministers of Brazil, South Africa, India and China issued a statement condemning the EU’s airline emissions charges, and said the bloc was jeopardizing the global fight against climate change by acting on its own rather than building a multilateral agreement.

“That is of course not a valid argument,” Hedegaard said. “Everybody knows that Europe has been fighting for a multilateral system. Everybody knows that other parties blocked that.”

Europe has worked for a decade though ICAO to craft a solution to curb airline emissions, and launched its own Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) after it failed to win a global agreement.

Trivial fares
Under the ETS, airlines would be required to pay for 15 percent of the carbon they emit, a cost Hedegaard said would add about 1.5 euros ($2) to the cost of a trip from London to New York or about 2 euros to a trip from Beijing to Frankfurt.  Airlines that fly to Europe and do not comply with the ETS face a fine of 100 euros for each tonne of carbon dioxide emitted and for which they have not paid allowances.

In the case of persistent offenders, the EU can ban airlines from its airports – a measure that has drawn protest from airlines around the world. China has banned its carriers from taking part and the United States has urged the EU to reconsider the program, warning it would take unspecified action if it were enforced.

More than a hundred countries now support a French proposal to create a “World Environment Organization” at the upcoming 20th anniversary conference of the Rio Summit, France’s ecology minister said, quoted by Agence France Presse.

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, French Environment Minister

“More than 100 countries have now associated themselves with the proposal,” Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said at a conference in Paris aimed at stimulating ideas for June 20-22 global gathering.

The idea is to beef up the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which critics say lacks clout and resources for dealing with the world’s worsening environmental crisis.

Kosciusko-Morizet said the new agency was a key to the success of the June 20-22 conference, designed to assess the 20 years that have passed since the 1992 Rio Summit that nailed the environment to the political agenda.

It should be part of a rethink of the world’s economy, in which green issues and social questions should be placed alongside the search for profit.

“The new capitalism which emerges from the crisis has to be environmental, or it won’t be new,” she said.

The Paris conference gathered several hundred representatives from national and local government, think tanks and civil society with the declared aim of gingering up a programme, called “draft zero,” that is being hammered out for Rio.

Prispa (Romania) and Odoo (Hungary) are the Eastern European representatives at the Solar Decathlon, green building exhibition in Madrid, Spain, this year.

Prispa, Romania

The Romanian project has been rather linguistically inspired. In Romanian, “the PRISPA in front of your house is like a magic strip, an intermediary space between the interior and the exterior, which protects you from wind, from very brutal temperature changes, from sun that’s too strong, and it manages to do all this by design. Being such a control element, filtering the light and blocking or alleviating temperature alterations, it guarantees some of the energy efficiency.” So reads the webbie of the Romanian project, mainly lead by the Architecture School “Ion Mincu” in Bucharest.

Odooproject is also inspired by the local Magyar folk, however it plays joyfully with the in-living and the outside. “Our plans interpret the house-court relationship, which comes from the traditional Hungarian folk architecture. Because of the climatic conditions a closed building was needed, so “out” and “in” were sharply separated from each other. The house is a project of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

Odoo, Hungary

At the beginning of September 2012, the houses will be assembled at the Casa de Campo in Madrid, will be open to the public some days later, while they compete on the ten contests of the competition. After kick-off, the European Solar Decathlon will rank and evaluate the houses according to:

1. Architecture
2. Engineering & Construction
3. Energy Efficiency
4. Electrical Energy Balance
5. Comfort Conditions
6. House Functioning
7. Communication and Social Awareness
8. Industrialization & Market Viability
9. Innovation
10. Sustainability

The first international edition of the Solar Decathlon was held in 2002 at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. A large number of visitors came to see the solar houses, participate in educational workshops and discover the potential of renewable energies. It continued in 2005, 2007, 2009, its popularity constantly raising. In 2010, the city of Madrid organized the first edition of Solar Decathlon Europe (SDE). This first experience was a success and called for more. The city of Madrid won the organization of SDE 2012. France was chosen for the next European event in 2014. Furthermore, US Department of Energy announced recently a new partnership with China, who will have its own event in 2013.

SDE 2012 is organized by the Secretary of State for Housing and Urban Development at the Spanish Ministry of Public Works in collaboration with Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the support of the US Department of Energy. In addition, SDE counts with the collaboration of the Madrid City Council and Spanish Energy Saving Energy Agency IDAE, and the sponsorship of Saint-Gobain (main sponsor), Schneider Electric, Rockwool, Kömmerling and FCC.

2Celsius and Earth Day Network have covered past editions of the solar Decathlon in Washington, D.C. Enjoy some photos taken at the editions of 2008 and 2009 of the SD. (Pictures belong to 2C Photography under Creative Commons; please reference when copy)

The secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has launched a new online tool that showcases how businesses and communities can adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change. The new Adaptation Private Sector Initiative database on the web site features climate change adaptation activities pioneered by leading private companies, reads an UNFCCC press release.

Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Levi’s, Nestle and Starbucks are among a slew of large multinational companies who are sharing details of successful, business-friendly practices via the database, alongside a host of other household names. The database contains details of activities both on how companies can make profits or savings, or prevent losses through adaptation-related activities.

“By showcasing private sector adaptation success stories, we intend to help both communities and businesses become more climate-resilient and to put the benefits and business sense of adaptation
firmly on the agenda of the private sector. Climate risks which affect communities around the world are always also business risks,” UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, speaking from the World Economic Forum in Davos.

In 2011, ninety percent of the recorded natural catastrophes were weather-related. According to the UNís top climate change official, climate disasters such as extensive drought in Africa or massive
floods in South East Asia can have enormous impacts on the operation of any local or global business and consequently on its revenue stream, and both businesses and governments at all levels need to prepare.

There are currently around 100 examples of adaptation actions listed in the UNFCCC Private Sector Initiative database, which are both practical and in many cases scalable. The activities are undertaken either alone or in partnership with other stakeholders, from a wide range of regions and sectors, and also cover activities such as the development of climate friendly goods and services and
climate proofing the supply chains of companies. Examples of best practices include efforts to make drinking water clean and safe in developing countries and efforts to improve the yield of coffee beans in regions that are particularly vulnerable to climate change.

“Governments can take heart from and be inspired by these private-sector initiatives. We have seen good decisions on adaptation emerging from the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Durban
last year, including a decision to launch an Adaptation Framework and a Committee which will provide high-level guidance on adaptation action, as well as a new Technology Mechanism, which will boost cooperation on adaptation technologies,” the UNís top climate official Ms. Figueres said.

“At the same time, the initiatives detailed in the database both show how the private sector can secure early advantages by adapting without waiting for absolute policy certainty at the international
level, and how governments and the private sector can work together to respond to climate change now. Public-private partnerships and cooperation with a wide range of stakeholders is becoming increasingly important to ensure successful implementation,” she added.

In addition to the new database, the UNFCCC secretariatís Momentum for Change Initiative provides a platform to showcase successful public-private partnership at all levels that have led to real
benefits for both people and the climate.

See: <http://unfccc.int/secretariat/momentum_for_change/items/6214.php>

Sergio Zelaya, Coordinator of the Policy Advocacy and Global Issues Unit (PAGI) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Secretariat, answers Karsten Schulz’s questions on the role of social sciences in UNCCD processes, revitalization of the UN body, land management or local governance.

Sergio Zelaya

KS: How do you perceive the role of the social sciences in the UNCCD process? Especially in regard to the view that the natural sciences predominate in programmatic and information sharing processes?

SZ: I think that, from a theoretical point of view, social sciences should play a larger role in the programmatic process of UNCCD implementation. The nature of the text of the convention that was negotiated by Parties twenty years ago reflected the need to include the priority issues on the social and economic fronts that the countries had. And I think, even though the scenario has changed a lot since then, the priorities for the developing countries are still economic development: poverty reduction and economic growth. In addition, one of the objectives of the developed countries in the international community is to provide cooperation for the alleviation of poverty and for sustaining economic growth. So there is a coincidence among the developed and developing countries in regard to the long-term objective of human well-being. In the convention, this is also included theoretically. In practice, it hasn’t been like that. Now, the role of social science in these programmatic processes has been very weak in comparison to the natural sciences. Both of them have been weak. But the weakest is still the role of the social sciences.

KS: My second question regards the dynamics between developed and developing countries, especially at COP meetings. From your point of view as a negotiator, do you think that there is a divide in the interests of those two country groups, or do you think that interest groups are rather related to issues than geographical location? Or is there a combination of both?

SZ: A combination, yes. I think that the UNCCD as well as the other Rio conventions are a manifestation, a spillover of the United Nations system as a whole. There is a dialogue between developed and developing countries. And the structure of the United Nations, with the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council and the cooperation partners etc. reflects this idea. And, as I said, the UNCCD is also a reflection of this. This is one point. It is supported by the Articles 5 and 6 of the convention that indicate the obligations of    affected country Parties and developed country Parties. So different responsibilities are given to different groupings of countries. The same can be said for the issue of climate change for example. There are the Articles 2 and 3 of the UNFCCC, where it is said that reduction of greenhouse gas emission concentrations should take place without causing damage to social and economic growth and the countries that have caused these emissions should be responsible. For them, this is the same principle. So, that is one side, the side of the United Nations. But there is another side, the side of the local, the national governments. In developing countries, and even in affected developing countries, DLDD is not a priority. This set of issues is yet to be a priority. For them, as said, the priority is economic growth and poverty reduction. Only if combating DLDD is perceived as helping to achieve poverty reduction and economic growth, it will be part of the package that they can submit to their own governments and to the cooperation partners. The same can be said about the developed country Parties. They don’t have DLDD as a priority issue. There are other priority issues in their frameworks of cooperation and one can see very easily in an empirical study that on a country by country basis desertification is included at a very low priority level. So, none of these two groups have DLDD as a priority.

KS: Ok, thank you. This directly leads to my third question. The question concerns the paper “Revitalizing the UNCCD”. In this paper it is said that the interest in DLDD issues has been relatively low among climate negotiators.

SZ: I agree completely. But can I ask you one question before? What do you think about this paper?

KS: Well, I think that some of the judgments that are made in this paper are relatively harsh, because there are different political dimensions that have to be taken into account. For instance the position of the Parties. One cannot simply say that UNCCD negotiation capacities or policies alone are responsible for this lack of interest. It must be clearly said that even the best negotiators can not shift a country’s priority just like that. Many developed countries also do not like to see themselves just in a donor role. They expect to get something back for their engagement. So I think this paper is …

SZ: Biased?

KS: In a way.

SZ: Well, I agree with your assessment. But let me add one thing on the issue of politicization. The instrument of the convention was politicized since the beginning. So many developed and developing Parties saw this instrument on a different level vis-à-vis climate change and biodiversity, because the UNFCCC and CBD were negotiated based on sound scientific studies. This convention, however, was more of a political manifestation or declaration. Even though there were highly technical preliminaries.

For instance in 1974 there was an international meeting on desertification and another one in the 1980s. In the 1990s, when the convention came to life, twenty years of research needed to be integrated. But it wasn’t like that. So since the beginning, the convention has been seen as politicized. There is evidence for this, institutionally and on the negotiation side. Institutionally, in developing countries the convention is either negotiated by ministers of the environment, or by those of agriculture or foreign affairs. In the developed world, it is very easy to see that many countries have allocated the responsibility for this convention to their ministries of foreign affairs. The ministries of foreign affairs by their own nature are political instruments.

KS: Of course, and not environmental.

SZ: Not environmental, and not agricultural or energy-related like the ministries responsible for the other conventions. In Germany, for example, the ministry for the environment is responsible for the Convention on Biodiversity. The UNCCD is associated with the ministry for economic and development cooperation. Of course, these are different ministries by nature. This is the institutional side. On the negotiation side, since I was a negotiator in the 1990s, I reckon that the environmental community, in the developed as well as in the developing countries, came with their hands full to the conventions on biodiversity and on climate change. They didn’t care much about if this convention was going under the ministries of foreign affairs, because they already had a vision for these huge issues to be dealt with in the biodiversity and climate change conventions. But now, the issue of DLDD has been gaining interest and gaining profile.

KS: I have another question in this context. Was it also difficult for the UNCCD to initiate institutional cooperation because there is a focus on ecological issues on the one hand and on sustainable development on the other hand? Was that hard to combine?

SZ: Yes, it was hard to combine and I think there was not enough clarity from the side of the Parties and the Secretariat that services the Parties. From the Secretariat and other bodies, like the Global Mechanism. Is this a sustainable development convention or an environmental convention? If you say sustainable development convention, you have to have the guidelines for sustainability that guide and influence the decisions and must emanate from them. But COP after COP, the issues of sustainable development and the environment are still mixed together and not very clear. So more guidance and vision is needed.

KS: I see.

SZ: So we need a more strategic vision. And the Executive Secretaries that we have had so far had their own vision. But regarding sustainable development and the environment, a vision has yet to be provided to the Parties.

KS: A vision for combining both?

SZ: Either combining, or going this way or the other way. But some sort of vision.

KS: But by definition, one could say that the UNCCD is an environmental convention in regard to the Rio process as a whole. Do you think that has been prioritized or neither of it?

SZ: Exactly, neither of it. So how can we articulate this issue in a way that can help the affected countries, mostly developing, to address their priority issues? As I said, those priorities are poverty and economic growth. So how can we say: we assist you in your strategic vision, policies or guidelines regarding poverty-reduction and economic growth, including sustainable development in dryland ecosystems, and in view of the livelihoods of the affected communities? This governance is something that is still needed. Raising the awareness for the need to have an institutional focus in developed and developing countries has to be continuously addressed and clearly addressed by the Executive Secretary, the Secretariat, and the bodies of the convention.

KS: Thank you for these interesting insights. Now, there are some issues that have been identified in order to combine climate change and land issues. For instance sustainable land management and land rehabilitation. Do you think that these issues will be included more clearly in future climate agreements? Because right now, they are more or less incorporated in the issue of deforestation.

SZ: Well, sustainable land management is included expressively in the decision 3 of COP 8 of the UNCCD, where is says “DLDD/sustainable land management”. So what the Parties did on the one hand, in my interpretation, is that they identified the negative side, desertification, land degradation and drought, and the positive side, the forward-looking approach. On the other hand, the Bali meeting agreed upon the Bali Action Plan. This plan has building blocks and one of the building blocks is land and agriculture. So land is a building block of climate change adaptation and it is already included in the Bali Action Plan as part of long-term cooperation, action and shared vision.

KS: And why do you think it has not been addressed that much recently?

SZ: Well, in the last 20 years, since the convention on climate change appeared, for negotiators – and I was one, so I know exactly – the idea was to focus on greenhouse gas emissions. Of course there are other issues, like ecosystem resilience for instance. The terrestrial ecosystem, the marine ecosystem, the economic services provided by these ecosystems and social issues like gender, migration and so on. Now these issues were not specifically included, because the idea was to negotiate an instrument to address the ultimate goal of the UNFCCC: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So at that time it was a milestone to say: we have the climate convention and we have instruments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto-Protocol. Then, in Bali, the inclusion of the building blocks was the second milestone. So, from Bali until today, it is only two and a half years. In these two and a half years, much has been done to include the terrestrial and other ecosystems into the negotiations.

The problem is that in Copenhagen, the final document to be negotiated was actually not negotiated and something else came up. Now, during the last two years and for financial purposes the UNCCD has been focusing much more on its linkages with mitigation and the carbon contained in soils, in order to bring resources to the affected developing countries. But this has yet to be seen and under the UNFCCC the negotiations on mitigation will go on. But also on adaptation there are policies and measures that are taken, so that we can be included into the negotiation process. I would like to mention that the last document that is on the website, about a shared vision on adaptation and forests, talks about sustainable land management. And this is because of the advocated approaches of this convention. Actually, I have been participating in many meetings throughout 2008 and 2009 in order to include in the negotiations at least sustainable development or rural development, agriculture, water and land etc. Of course the UNCCD cannot claim the whole success, because other relevant actors, such as many country negotiators, the FAO, lots of NGOs, and institutions like IFAD are joining forces to achieve this. But we are a part of this and have been raising awareness among the focal points. Now, there are two more things I would like to mention on sustainable land management: on the conceptual side, for the functioning of an ecosystem, sustainable land management is a prerequisite. For instance, there is land degradation, a solution to land degradation is sustainable land management and these will address climate change. And in this way it should be advocated by the UNCCD. The second aspect is the population, the livelihoods, the human well-being. Whatever we do has to take into consideration the nature and the livelihoods of the people. That is what has been called human well-being. It is included in the rights that all humans have, today, and for future generations. These two long-term objectives can be achieved by concrete action on sustainable land management. Now, what is the prerequisite of sustainable land management? It is governance, empowerment, awareness, information at the local level. So we have to tackle those issues.

KS: How do you think the UNCCD can strengthen the role of local governance?

SZ: As an example, what we have been doing on this issue is choosing a rights-based approach, for instance regarding food security for the populations. In addition, we have the security approach. There is a natural expectation on what the land provides for you. And the government, the communities and the political as well as institutional environment have to enable people to produce on their land, give them the security, assurances and guarantees that they can use the land. Taking decisions from the bottom to the top is also important, as the text of this convention mentions. This is governance, the bottom-to-top approach. And I think this kind of governance is the obvious solution to DLDD.

KS: So while the UNCCD is naturally an instrument of global governance, one could say that through this approach and by its own definition it is also an instrument of local governance?

SZ: Yes, exactly. If we have global solutions on the one side and local solutions on the other, the convention has to advocate globally while being based on a solid local base and actions. Local solutions can help to achieve global solutions. It is an interaction. You used the word dynamics before. This is a dynamic system, and the nature of research in the social sciences is dynamics. I see different dimensions: first, create global awareness. This means training, retraining and all the derivatives like information, technology transfer, manuals, documents, materials etc. The second: act on the legal framework. How can this convention help to develop certain legal frameworks, for instance regarding anti-desertification and pro-sustainable land management? Not only at the national level. Large countries like Brazil and China must also act locally. Even an island needs action at the local level. The third one is the improvement of technology. This is different from education and training. It is learning by doing. How can we help people to achieve their goals on their own and with new technologies? Science is only the input. Science per se has no value. You can produce the best scientific result and put it in a closet. That helps no one. So we need scientific research as an input through which people can improve their own technologies. This is something that can be done and it would mean that research has not only to be done in the developed world, but also at the local level, with the local communities in developing countries. We need to provide the tools and improve the capabilities. Physical tools and also enabling tools, for instance infrastructure like roads and information services like radio or computers.

KS: So as a whole, this approach is about policy, capacity building and physical tools?

SZ: Yes, capacity building, instruments like policy, governance, infrastructure like roads to gain market access, and financial resources. This has to be considered initially. Just take the Marshall Plan for example. There was a lot of money initially. For the earthquake in Haiti, there are a lot of financial pledges initially. You cannot expect affected countries to come all the way from the distant position in which they are now in comparison with other countries regarding human-well being, and come up with all of this by themselves. There are many constraints that they have. So financial resources are important, mostly at the beginning. And this convention has to ensure that some of these resources are allocated for desertification and sustainable land management.

KS: And how do you think this could be achieved?

SZ: Well, my belief is that if what is said about money follows a good idea is true, then this has to be put in practice. But you have to have credibility and you have to have a vision. If you have good idea and you don’t have a long-term vision and your vision is not deducted from the demands of the local populations, it is just another idea put in a closet. So the idea has to be effective and it has to be borne by the people. You need empowerment. You cannot say: “I have an idea and I am going to implant this idea for you!” The idea has to be their idea. This is ownership and for sure it has high transaction costs. The UNCCD has to be aware of these costs. For two decades the UNFCCC has been raising awareness and been investing money in climate change awareness. And I think that is what we need to do. Passing from knowledge to action.

KS: Mr. Zelaya, I thank you very much for this interview.

SZ: You are very welcome.

This interview has been originally published in:

Schulz, Karsten: Linking Land and Soil to Climate Change. The UNCCD in the Context of Global Environmental Governance. Tectum: Marburg 2011, p. 162-171.

The paper is available for sale at Amazon UK as well as Amazon Germany.