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.

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”.

The world’s water supply is being strained by climate change and the growing food, energy and sanitary needs of a fast-growing population, according to a United Nations study that calls for a radical rethink of policies to manage competing claims.

Skawa River Flood, Poland

“Freshwater is not being used sustainably,” UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said in a statement. “Accurate information remains disparate, and management is fragmented … the future is increasingly uncertain and risks are set to deepen.”

It says that demand from agriculture, which already sucks up around 70 percent of freshwater used globally, is likely to rise by at least 19 percent by 2050 as the world’s population swells an estimated 2 billion people to 9 billion. Farmers will need to grow 70 percent more food by that time
as rising living standards mean individuals demand more food, and meat in particular.

The report will be debated at the World Water Forum in Marseille.

A “silent revolution” has taken place underground, the report warns, as the amount of water sucked from below the surface has tripled in the past 50 years, removing a buffer against drought.  And just as demand increases, supply in many regions is likely to shrink because of changed rainfall patterns, greater droughts, melting glaciers and altered river flows, it says.

“Climate change will drastically affect food production in South Asia and Southern Africa between now and 2030,” the report says. “By 2070, water stress will also be felt in central  and southern Europe.”

Asia is home to 60 percent of the world’s population but only around a third of water resources, it points out.  A separate water study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released last week forecast world water demand would rise by 55 percent by 2050, with more than 40 percent of the global population likely to live in water basins facing water stress.

The report says with limited supply, policymakers will have to better manage the competing demands of farmers, energy producers and humans demanding drinking water and sanitation.  “The lack of interaction between the diverse communities of users, decision makers and isolated water managers has caused serious degradation of the water resource,” it says.  The World Health Organisation said last week the U.N. target to raise the proportion of people with access to safe drinking water by 2015 had actually been reached at the end of 2010.

However the figure was contested by French charity Solidarites International, which said 1.9 billion people remained without safe drinking water, not the 783 million estimated by the United Nations.  The charity is among groups planning to challenge official messages at the Forum, with some associations holding an alternative event in Marseille.

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.

Australia and Japan told delegates in Durban that they support a new legally binding deal, during an edgy meeting at the UN climate change talks yesterday evening. “The role of the forest is not for carbon stocks” said the head of the Bolivian delegation, as REDD+ talk’s progress at COP17.

The two countries, which have both rejected a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol after it expires next year, are willing to look at a new agreement encompassing “major economies”. Australia said a deal must set obligations for a broad set of parties.

They were joined in their calls by the Less Developed Countries (LDCs) and the EU during talks, which one delegate inside the room described to RTCC as “calm but tense”.

Colombia and the Marshall Islands demanded that work on the text of a deal should begin immediately. China sought to limit the conversation to the mere possibility of a deal, rather than its actual substance.

Grenada, representing the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) said it preferred a second commitment period of Kyoto and accused some nations of having “a 2012 vision rather than a 2020 vision”. Venezuela went one step further saying that the failure to produce a second commitment period would represent “a wrongful act”.

There were also calls for a voluntary set of pledges, as suggested ahead of the Durban conference. These were dismissed by the representative of Bolivia as “untrustworthy”.

Bolivia: No to REDD+!

While REDD+ talks pick up speed at the negotiations in Durban, some delegations have suggested bringing forward issues that were intended for consideration at COP18, the Bolivian delegation spoke out in opposition of the scheme in its first press conference of the talks.

Rene Orellana, head of the Bolivian delegation said: “As people who live in the forest, we are not carbon stocks. We disagree with REDD because we oppose the commoditisation of the forest.”

“It’s a complex and dangerous situation to see forests as carbon stocks. The forest provides a role as food security, a water source and biodiversity for our indigenous population. REDD reduces the function of the forest to just one, carbon stocks.”

Currently the discussions around REDD+ are focussing on three main barriers to the implementation and scaling up of the scheme; how to monitor the carbon stored and saved in trees, how to safeguard populations in forest areas and questions remaining around the financial side – including how much finance will be available and where it will come from (i.e. market mechanisms, public finance etc).

Bolivia – a country which has 50% forest coverage – aims at putting forward a different proposal based on finding different sources of finance other than carbon credits, the recognition of multiple forest functions and methodologies for integrated forest management.

However, the Bolivian delegation said that no attention was being paid to the proposals they had put on the table.

Source: RTCC

The Flemish Ministry for Environment, the regional authority for the Northern part of Belgium, has released a report which shows dramatic temperature increases in the last 180 years. The report bases itself on the recently released Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The Ministry has taken key indicators and analyzed the situation in Belgium. The main conclusions are that:

• The annual average temperature in Belgium shows continuous increase since the early 19th Century. The average temperature is 2.3 degrees Celsius higher than that in 1830.
• The warmest years in the period analyzed are situated between 1989 and 2000. (see graph below)
• The major increases in temperature have occurred during the Spring and Summer seasons.
• Rainfall has increased an average of 5 mm per decade, with more precipitation observed in Winter and less in Summer.
• Average sea-level has risen on the Belgian coast by 103mm-133mm compared to 1970.

Since climate change is the long-term effect of human activity on the Earth’s climate, this study shows proof that there have been significant changes in Belgium. In simple terms, the facts that the average temperature has risen, that there is more rainfall in the Winter and less in Summer, and that the warmest years have been more recently recorded all show a tendency for a change in the Belgian climate.

The image below shows a graphical representation of the rise in average temperature in each season in Belgium since 1830.

Source: Vlaamse Milieumaatschapij (Flemish Ministry of Environment)

Vilnius, a fantastically well-preserved mix of Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, classical and contemporary architecture, is enchanting the eye of the visitor. And the lungs as well. While documenting for a short climate change related article it bounced as a surprise that the Lithuanian capital enjoys the cleanest air in urban agglomerations in Europe. The answer to such low levels of CO2, CO, NOx or heavy metals in the East-European air of Vilnius, as well as to being an overtly bicycle and people friendly city, must have lied in some really alternative local leadership and policies.

View of Vilnius Centre. Photo 2C

Thus, I wrote a letter to the town’s charismatic mayor. Arturas Zuokas peaked global notoriety following a rather military public-relations move when he drove a tank over an illegally parked automobile and his Youtube viral video became quite an international alternative media hit (see embedded video). As an environmental journalist and passionate cyclist, I was rejoicing in some strange feeling of justice and revenge. On the other hand, watching a Soviet tank rolling on the street in an apparent legitimate mission gives me the chills, brings back a scary image of Brezhnev, and makes me wonder if urban ecology did actually need a PR war-monger.

“Sometimes you need a tank to get your message across,” wrote Zuokas to 2Celsius. “If you see something, you have to do something about that – and this is the only way to solve problems. We have, shortly after this event, strengthened forces against illegal car parking. The number of policemen on patrol has been doubled in the city.” Indeed, Vilnius was one of the first towns to introduce an intelligent city-wide traffic management system (TMS). The municipality improved its control over the rising amount of traffic in the city center causing serious congestion and jams. The traffic system was set-up by Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services Group, in conjunction with a local consortium.

Arturaz Zuokas, mayor of Vilnius. Photo: zuokas.lt

Well, same Siemens indexed Vilnius as the capital with the cleanest air in the EU. Says Zuokas: “talking about air pollution, one of the latest Green City Index made by Siemens company revealed that Vilnius can be proud to have the cleanest air among European capitals. Also infrastructural changes – new bypass roads are being build – help to control and reduce pollution. “

“There always should be balance between all kinds of transportation in the city. We are glad numbers of those who chose riding a bike in the city are increasing significantly during recent years,” the mayor added.

“We are always thinking how to solve traffic problems in the city, especially in the Old Town (included in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1994 – n.n.). We are investigating most modern and environmentally friendly ideas to implement them into our public transport in the City Centre as well as all over the city. Different financing structures are also being considered.” Public transport, far from satisfying Jan Gehl’s sustainable city, relies on soviet flavored electric trolley buses, gas guzzling buses and a bunch of higher-speed vans named maxi-taxis.

Vilnius has already gone through the East-European trauma of having a bike sharing system implemented when no one was prepared for a non-motorized urban evolution; an older program of the municipality named the “Ride Orange” turned out to be a flop due to massive thievery from the two-wheeled orange armada.

Electric bus in Vilnius. Photo 2C

During Zuokas’ first term, the municipality invested in the construction of cycling paths and the installation of bicycle stands, while private sponsors such as Rubikon Apskaitos Sistemos, Utenos Alus (beer), Baltic Vairas (the largest East-European bicycle construction plant), Lietuvos Draudimas, Pieno Zvaigzdes and other firms – had bought the bikes. The 1,000 orange bikes, in a good yet involuntary promotion of green jobs, were ordered from the Siauliai-based company Baltic Vairas.

The Hype

“Ride Orange” eventually had some downturns. Are you envisioning similar projects?

“Yes we do. This summer Vilnius has become the first city in Europe to offer an electric bike share system, we are also looking forward to implement city bike rental system as soon as possible,” Zuokas replied.

Vilnius, electric bike rentals. Photo 2C

Indeed on the occasion of the European basketball championship, September 2011, in Vilnius, the municipality launched a “Rent and Share” program allowing residents and tourists to rent electric bicycles at four Tourism Information Centers located in the business downtown and Old Town areas. One has to block approximately EUR145 on her credit card and pay around EUR5 per hour in order to get electric on bicycling. Thieves must face top notch technology this time; all electric bikes are being monitored via GPS.

“Everyone should find the most comfortable way to travel in the city. Segway is also one of them, but I often use a bike or electric bike as well. There is no need to advertise comfortable transport,” concludes the mayor, a declared fan of electric transport.

NIBBLES

Green space. “Vilnius has number of green spaces that we are up to preserve, develop and manage properly. We are also looking for the ways to expand these areas. In the near future we will renovate one of the oldest park of the city – Sereikiskiu parkas, that is situated in the very heart of Vilnius – in the Old Town near the Gediminas Castle.”

Vilnius Cathedral. Photo 2C

Energy saving in buildings (Lithuania does not have a Green Building Council). “House [insulation and] renovation is a big issue in our country and in Vilnius as well. There is a municipal company that consults and helps citizens to organize the renovation projects, but the program is still moving too slowly. There are some financial incentives from the Central Government, but it seems that there is much work to be done in this field.”

Strategy. “Vilnius has no particular document as Environmental Master plan. But the principles of city development are stated in other relevant plans, as General Plan until 2015, Vilnius City Strategic Plan for years 2012-2020. They include principles of sustainable development, green areas saving and healthy environment creation. Whereas Vilnius is a green city, it has clear objectives to save the best it has.”

PR. Besides riding tanks and Segways, Zuokas ticked something extra in his PR endeavors. He was endorsed in his last election campaign by… Jeremy Irons. Yes, the actor.

Corruption. Zuokas was convicted of bribery and thrown out of office in 2007, merely to return in the last municipal elections.

International relations. Within the same PR/advertising paradigm, the mayor has proposed the Lithuanian government buy an island in Greece to use as a resort – “an exclusive place for rest in the Mediterranean for our citizens, but also a great global advert for Lithuania.”

Raul Cazan

Attempts to contain the fire on the platform in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20th 2010| Photo: EPA

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 was one of the most publicised environmental disasters in history. Now, the European Union is planning to adopt new rules on offshore drilling for oil and gas in order to prevent such a disaster from occurring in European waters. However, European oil companies have managed to influence the decision and reduced the extent of the new regulations.

Gunther Oettinger, Commissioner for Energy, announced on Oct. 13th that new safety and environmental rules will be implemented to cover all offshore platforms in Europe. He stated: “Safety is non negotiable. We have to make sure that a disaster similar to the one in the Gulf of Mexico will never happen in European waters. This is why we propose that best practices already existing in Europe will become the standard throughout the European Union.” The new rules could become a definite proposal for legislation as early as next year, and the European Parliament has already stated its support for the idea.

The new regulations would cover three aspects of offshore drilling: prevention, response, and financial liability. Any new permits issued for the activity will have to be issued after an investigation into the capability of the company in question to meet EU standards, which will be standardised across the Union. In addition to this, a permit will be granted only to companies who use the best available technology, ensuring the highest safety standards. The EU will also impose supervision by independent experts in addition to the already existing national authorities.

In the case of a disaster, the company operating the offshore platform will have to clean up the environmental damage within a zone of 307 km (200 nautical miles) off the European coast, which is an extension of the current 22 km (12 nautical miles). The European Maritime Safety Agency will oversee the application and execution of these rules. Also, the company responsible would have to pay financial compensation.

However, the new rules have been dulled down in favour of big oil companies. The initial idea behind the EU regulations was that it would cover all European-based companies and their world-wide operations. However, on Oct. 27th it was announced that they would only cover offshore drilling in Europe. This has led activists to point out that oil companies already use the best equipment when operating in Europe, while disasters and oil spills tend to occur in operations in developing countries. Two examples are the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and several oil spills in Nigeria (which actually caused more damage than the one in the Gulf) for which Shell is partially responsible. The new EU directive on the matter would therefore enforce double standards – one for Europe and one for the rest of the world.

Furthermore, the UK government has spoken out against the new regulatory measures. They have stated that they already have very robust regulations on offshore drilling and the proposal for European standards would actually reduce the UKs regulatory regime while placing unnecessary strain on British industry. These issues could put into question the adoption of the directive.

On the whole, European-wide regulations on offshore drilling are an admirable cause. However, the fact remains that an imposition of these measures on all operations by European companies would have been a greater victory for the environment. International organisations such as Greenpeace are calling for similar initiatives on the international level and, with EU support, they might even come into existence.