Developers plan to pump 7 million cubic metres of sand and mud from a central lagoon to build five four-star resorts and extend urban areas of Addu, the southernmost atoll of the Indian Ocean state.

Ibrahim Mohamed Solih will approve the intensive development on a visit 25-28 March, The Times of Addu reports. The project is popular with islanders hoping for jobs and better housing but comes at the cost of “significant irreversible damages” to the lagoon and surrounding reefs, according to a 751-page environmental impact assessment (EIA).

In an online meeting between environment minister Shauna Aminath and planning minister Shifaz Ali last July, minutes show that the environment ministry was “deeply concerned” about the project’s environmental impacts. But Aminath said this month in parliament that she “will not obstruct the development of Addu”.

The island of Hulhumale, a suburb of the Maldives’ overcrowded capital Male and home to its main airport, is entirely artificial (Photo: Zairon/WikiCommons)

Internationally, the government is known for its forceful climate advocacy on behalf of sinking island nations. Former president Mohamed Nasheed once hosted a cabinet meeting under water to draw attention to rising sea levels and at Cop26 in Glasgow, Aminath co-chaired talks on adapting to climate change.

Humaida Abdul Ghafoor is a campaigner from Save Maldives, which opposes land reclamation. She accused the government of hypocrisy and sacrificing the environment to economic development just like the big emitters it criticises.

“A lot of international actors want to listen to the people representing the Maldives but [the government] say one thing to the international people in the English language but they speak something else at home in [the national language] Dhivehi,” she told Climate Home News.

A map of Addu with existing land (green), proposed new land (yellow) and where the sand will be taken from (dark stripes). (Picture: Environmental Impact Assesment/Screenshot)

Addu is home to 20,000 people on six thin strips of land surrounding a lagoon.

The proposed development will use dredging ships to draw sand from the bottom of the lagoon and dump it in shallow water to make a solid base to build on.

This process harms plants and sea creatures both by sucking them up from the seabed and by stirring up sediment so the water becomes murky, according to the EIA.

A dredging ship at work at an oil refinery in Nigeria. (Photo: GodwinPaya/Wikicommons)

Andre Droxler is environmental science professor at Rice University who has worked extensively in the Maldives. He told Climate Home: “These ships are sucking in everything… it’s huge!”

He said that corals in the Maldives and around the world were already suffering from bleaching caused by increasing water temperatures and this dredging would further damage Addu’s corals.

While most of the damage will be inside the lagoon where the dredging will take place, Droxler said it could spread to the barrier reef which surrounds Addu and helps protect it from storm surge and sea level rise.

The dredging is designed to develop Addu’s tourism industry but it could backfire. Addu has few direct international flights so most visitors take an expensive, 90-minute connecting plane from the Maldives capital Male.

One of the main reasons they do so is, according to the Lonely Planet, “some superb diving opportunities” and the chance to see corals and sharks.

Addu Dive is one of several scuba diving centres in the area (Photo: Addu Dive/Facebook)

The EIA estimates there will be an economic loss to Addu’s diving operators and four local dive schools of $4.8-7.7 million a year if the reclamation goes ahead.

“What tourists are they hoping to bring when everything that would bring tourists to Addu is going to be destroyed – its wildlife, its marine life, its biodiversity, its diving interest?” asked campaigner Ghafoor. “The business thinking is from the time of dinosaurs.”

Other than tourism, the Maldives’ other big industry is fishing and the environment ministry expressed concerns that the project would damage bait fishing for tuna, a complaint raised at two public consultation sessions.

Despite these concerns, the EIA concluded that the project is “well received by the community” who hope it will bring economic benefits.

Abdulla, who gave only his first name, is from Addu’s capital Hithadoo, where he said most people supported the project. “Housing is a real issue in the Maldives. Two to three generations live in an average Maldives household,” he explained.

He opposes the plans and would like to see less environmentally destructive options. “Show [people] a better housing solution if not for land reclamation and they will listen to it. They’re very educated,” Abdulla said.

Respondents to the EIA’s online survey had other suggestions for how to build more homes. These included encouraging multi-storey buildings, seizing abandoned and undeveloped land and developing floating cities.

Housing is built near Addu’s main settlement Hithadoo (Photo: Raw Pixel)

Abdul Hannan lives in the capital Male and rents out a simple three bedroom house in Addu to budget travellers for $116 a night.

He told Climate Home that the Maldives had a “dilemma” and that “though the Maldives is very threatened with climate change, average Maldivians do not seem to be bothered”.

He said: “While reclamation – if not careful – might cause environmental problems, I suppose Addu people would be hoping to benefit from the reclaimed land rather than thinking about resulting environmental damages”.

“People will be expecting land plots to build houses or government-built flats. Businessmen will be hoping to get land plots for warehouses, storage places and plots for shops etc,” he added.

Maldives environment minister Shauna Aminath speaks at Cop26 (Photo: Kiara Worth/Flickr)

An Indian company, Afcons Infrastructure Limited, won a contract worth a reported $147 million for the work, backed by India’s export credit agency.

The Maldives is heavily in debt. When tourism collapsed in 2020, its debt to national income ratio nearly doubled to 97%.

Nasheed has called for debt restructuring so that the Maldives can invest in adapting to rising sea levels.

Ghafoor disagreed. “Nobody owes us funding in that regard because the Maldives is destroying itself. It is self-harming”, she said.

Nasheed, who founded an NGO called the Maldives Coral Institute, has not spoken out against the project. Nasheed is from the governing party and did not respond to two requests for comment from Climate Home.

“He is a politician. He has been instrumental in doing many of these things himself during his presidency,” Ghafoor said.

Campaigners are taking the government to court, arguing that the project is a violation of the 2008 constitution and its duty for the state to promote “ecologically balanced sustainable development” and “prevent pollution, the extinction of any species and ecological degradation”.

But Ghafoor does not have much more faith in the judiciary than in the government. “We are not relying on that at the moment because the court is not a really good place,” she said.

Controversies around reclamation are not specific to the Maldives or even to modern times. Young Rae Choi researches reclamation projects at Florida International University and said they have been happening for centuries in places like the Netherlands, Manhattan and San Francisco Bay.

Recently though, they have become more common and are particularly popular in East Asia and the Arabian Gulf. Globally, tourism is a relatively minor driver of reclamation compared to ports, airports, industry and luxury housing. Perhaps the most striking example of “prestige reclamation” is the Palm Jumeirah resort in Dubai.

She said that bringing sand in from outside of the atoll would be less environmentally damaging but also more expensive and “probably not economically feasible”.

Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah is made up of artificial islands for luxury property (Photo: Jason Mrachina/Flickr)

Ajwad Mustafha is the environment ministry’s permanent secretary. He told Climate Home: “The main reason for the project is to create space to facilitate the development of Addu City, where there is currently no available land for additional housing and economic infrastructure…

“It is fully understood that a project of this magnitude will have significant environmental impacts, especially in an atoll like Addu,” he said. The Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing the EIA and may attach conditions to the development.

“Therefore, the proposed methodology, environmental impacts and the mitigations measures suggested in the EIA may change. So, it is bit early for us to say what the actual impact would be at this stage, since this is an ongoing process.”

He said that, as well as reclamation, the project includes coastal protection and construction of flood (stormwater) mitigation system between the island and newly reclaimed land.

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On 25 July, Japanese-owned bulk carrier MV Wakashio ran aground on a coral reef off the coast of Mauritius, leaking up to 1,000 tonnes of heavy oil into a pristine lagoon.

Its location on the edge of protected fragile marine ecosystems and a wetland of international importance made the spill one of the worst environmental disasters ever to hit the western Indian Ocean.

Yet because the oil came from a ship designed to transport solid cargo, Mauritius could be eligible for less than 2% of the maximum compensation available when an oil tanker is wrecked. The compensation claim will be decided by the courts in Mauritius once the full impact of the spill has been assessed.

On Wednesday, dolphins washed up on Mauritius’ white-sand beaches and died. The pollution has dashed hopes of reviving the fishing and tourism industries from the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s discouraging. It really has affected everything,” Yuvan Beejadhur, a former blue economy expert at the World Bank and a coordinator of citizen movements in Mauritius, told Climate Home News.

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Earlier this month, shipping company Nagashiki, which operated the vessel, confirmed that Mauritius was seeking compensation for the spill.

In a statement, Nagashiki director Yoshiaki Nagare, apologised for the incident and said the company was “aware of the responsibility of the parties concerned and intended to respond in good faith to damages in accordance with applicable law”.

Ambassador Jagdish Koonjul, Mauritius’ permanent representative to the UN, told CHN the country had received “an enormous amount of goodwill” from the Japanese ship owners and the international community, with around 60 experts helping the island’s authorities to assess the long-term impact of the spill.

However, securing “fair” compensation could be challenging, according to Jason Chuah, professor of commercial and maritime law at City University’s Law School, in London, UK.

Had the MV Wakashio been an oil tanker, Mauritius would have been eligible for up to $1 billion in compensation under maritime law, he wrote in a blog post. Instead, because it is a bulk carrier, compensation could be capped much lower and Mauritius may be entitled to a maximum of $18 million.

The difference is based on the assumption bulk carriers, which carry solid cargoes like grain or coal, have lower pollution potential than tankers.

“But try telling that to the people whose livelihoods have been devastated by 1,000 tonnes of oil spilled,” said Chuah, of City University.

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Ships have got bigger since those rules were written and carry more fuel, so even bulk carriers can cause significant spills, explained Regina Asariotis, a maritime lawyer at Unctad, the UN body dealing with trade and development issues.

Ambassador Koonjul said the international community should reconsider the legal framework and align regulations for both tankers and bunkers “to make sure that more than adequate compensation is given to any oil spill”. “Because an oil spill is an oil spill, whether it is caused by a bunker or a tanker,” he said. “We had never expected how huge this kind of spill could be.”

He added: “Tourism and preserving nature is all we have as resources and if these are damaged then obviously it’s going to be extremely bad for us. It is high time for small islands to look into how to better prepare ourselves to this kind of damage.”

The UN has expressed its intention to set up a recovery fund to support the Mauritian government and provide financial relief to fishermen who have lost their income.

Although the full cost of clean-up and extent of the environmental, social and economic impact of the spill will take a long time to establish, campaigners fear the company responsible will get off lightly.

“The spill has impacted our livelihoods and our reputation as being a clean island is totally tarnished. These are costs that need to be evaluated,” said Beejadhur.

“International maritime law favours vessels, it does not favour the communities that rely on corals and lagoons to survive. It may be hard to get compensation to the scale that we need.”

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Under international law, compensation for oil spills are capped regardless of the extent of the damage. That is unless a court can demonstrate it resulted from a deliberate act or omission by the shipowner, “committed with the intent to cause such loss” – a high degree of culpability that is difficult to prove.

The fallback is the 2001 Bunker Convention, which imposes a strict liability on shipowners in the event of a spill. However, the amount of compensation that can be paid is capped by a separate legal framework and dependent on the size of the ship.

Had Mauritius ratified a protocol which updates the cap for compensation, the island could have received up to $65 million, according to some estimates — still far below the sums available from an oil tanker wreck. Ambassador Koonjul told CHN Mauritius was taking the necessary measures to ratify the protocol.

“By limiting the liability we are allowing companies to externalise the damage to the people that they have harmed rather than taking full responsibility… we need to rethink whether it’s consistent with international environmental law,” Alex Lenferna, a climate justice advocate for 350Africa, whose family originated in Mauritius, told CHN.

If polluting doesn’t come at an expensive cost, then the fossil fuel industry has every reason to “be around for much  longer,” he added.

The post Mauritius oil spill compensation could be limited by maritime law technicality appeared first on Climate Home News.

Covid-19, which has killed more than 180,000 people worldwide, is thought to have originated in animals, perhaps bats, before infecting people in Wuhan, China.

Global warming, a rising human population, pollution and destruction of wildlife habitats are among the factors raising the risk of such zoonotic diseases, which jump from animals to humans.

Zoonotic disease was mentioned in the last round-up of scientific knowledge by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013-14, but the pandemic potential was not a focus.

That will change in its next assessment report, due to be published in stages over 2021-22 as the main scientific guide for government action on global warming. Each section is likely to be delayed by a few months, IPCC scientists say.

“Pushing wildlife out of natural habitats, high density living and closer interactions between animals and humans… are a risky cocktail,” said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told Climate Home News.

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In an Earth Day presentation on 22 April, he noted a study finding that 96% of the weight of all living mammals are people and domesticated animals such as chickens and cows, with just 4% made up of wild creatures.

Many researchers reckon that human activities have become the overwhelming force of change on the planet, and qualify for a new geological epoch dubbed the Anthropocene, based on the Greek word “anthropos”,  meaning “man”. It would succeed the current Holocene, which began at the end of the last Ice Age about 11,700 years ago.

“This is a manifestation of the Anthropocene,” said Rockström of the coronavirus pandemic.

IPCC scientists say it is urgent to find out how far humans can influence the planet before ecosystems collapse, such as tropical coral reefs that are bleaching and dying in warming waters.

“Humans are exploiting natural resources and the world up to its limits. Knowing those limits would be very, very important. It’s a matter of survival,” Hans-Otto Pörtner, of the Alfred Wegener Institute and co-chair of the IPCC working group on the impacts of climate change,  told Climate Home News.

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Before the coronavirus, the IPCC had already planned to explore links between climate change and biodiversity by holding a first joint workshop, in May, with the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

That event will be delayed by several months, Pörtner said. More scientists were starting to look into the links between biodiversity, climate change and coronavirus and early findings will be included in the next IPCC report.

“There are similarities between the crises [of coronavirus and climate change] in the need for science-based policies – you see the same politicians failing on this [pandemic] as they are failing on the climate side,” Pörtner told CHN. “We need policymakers who have an understanding of the risks.”

He declined to single out any governments for criticism. IPCC scientists consulted for this article gave their personal views, not those of the IPCC.

The IPCC assessment report in 2014 had a chapter on health and climate change. It outlined health threats from heat waves and deadly wildfires, malnutrition because of less food production in poor regions and diseases such as malaria and dengue spread by mosquitoes expanding their ranges.

The publication of the first part of the next IPCC report looking at the physical science of climate change, including scenarios for future warming, is likely to be delayed by about 3 months from April 2021, said co-chair Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a climatologist at the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory in Gif-sur-Yvette, France.

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She and Pörtner paid tribute to IPCC scientists who are continuing work despite lacking access to laboratories or field work as countries are put under lockdown. Particularly in developing nations, many struggle with weak internet links and face extra stresses in taking part – IPCC work is prestigious but unpaid.

Masson-Delmotte said the world needed to find ways to plan for the future even when there was “deep uncertainty”, a phrase used in past IPCC reports about how, for instance, to predict the future of Antarctic ice beyond 2100. A major collapse of the ice sheet would raise global sea levels by several metres.

“A clear lesson from the pandemic is that there is a global failure in preparedness, and planning for managing a known risk,” she said.

The response to the pandemic could also inform efforts to cut emissions.

Greenhouse gas emissions are predicted to fall around 6% in 2020, as non-essential work and travel is put on hold to slow the spread of Covid-19. The UN estimates that emissions will have to fall 7.6% a year over the coming decade to limit temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial times, the tougher target in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The post Next UN climate science report to consider lessons from coronavirus appeared first on Climate Home News.

Many fish, corals and other marine life are suffering in ever warmer waters, with more frequent underwater heatwaves, acidification caused by man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and a decline in levels of oxygen, the world’s leading climate scientists said.

“Over the 21st century, the ocean is projected to transition to unprecedented conditions,” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a special report about the oceans and the cryosphere – the world’s frozen regions. It was compiled by more than 100 authors from 36 nations.

The report is the most detailed look at the impact of climate change ranging from melting glaciers on the world’s highest mountains to the depths of the oceans that cover 71% of the Earth’s surface.

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“The open sea, the Arctic, the Antarctic and the high mountains may seem far away to many people,” said Hoesung Lee, chair of the IPCC. “But we depend on them and are influenced by them directly and indirectly in many ways.” Melting Himalayan glaciers, for instance, provide water to grow crops or generate hydropower before flowing into the oceans.

The report points to alarming signs of an accelerating melt of Antarctica that could herald an irreversible thaw from the world’s biggest store of frozen ice, ahead of Greenland.

Even so, sea level rise could be limited to 43cm by 2100, and around a metre by 2300, if the world sharply cuts greenhouse gas emissions in line with a goal set by almost 200 nations in the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit warming to 2C above pre-industrial times, it said.

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But a future with no meaningful action and rising greenhouse gas emissions could push up sea levels by 84cm by 2100, about 10cm higher than estimated in the most recent IPCC global assessment in 2014 because of Antarctica’s quickening melt.

On that track, seas could rise by anywhere between 2.3 and 5.4 metres by 2300, it said. That would redraw maps of the world, make entire low-lying nations in the Pacific Ocean uninhabitable and swamp coasts from Bangladesh to Miami.

Lee said that there were worrying signs that the world was losing the race against climate change. “We need to take immediate and drastic action to cut emissions right now,” he said.

“Humanity is exacting a terrible toll on the ocean,” Norway’s prime minister Erna Solberg and Palau president Tommy Remengesau Jr. wrote in CNN on Monday. “Global warming, combined with the negative impacts of numerous other human activities, is devastating our ocean, with alarming declines in fish stocks, the death of our reefs, and sea level rise that could displace hundreds of millions of people.”

Authors said those different futures for rising seas highlighted stark choices now.

“Although many of the messages may seem depressing … there are actual, positive choices that can be made to limit the worst impacts of climate change,” said Michael Meredith, of the British Antarctic Survey.

Nerilie Abram, of Australian National University, also said: “We see changes in all of these areas, from the tops of high mountain to the depths of the oceans and the polar region …We see two very different futures ahead of us.”

The report was published two days after leaders failed to match UN secretary general Antonio Guterres’ call for nations to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 45% below 2010 levels by 2030 at a summit in New York.

Global CO2 output continues to rise. Guterres said such immediate action was needed to get on track to limit warming to 1.5C, the toughest goal of the Paris Agreement. Global average temperatures are already up about 1C.

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Delegates to the IPCC said Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s top oil producer, had repeatedly sought changes at the Monaco meeting, partly to weaken links to an IPCC report in 2018 that examined ways to achieve the 1.5C goal.

Largely at Saudi insistence, Wednesday’s text, for instance, merely said it “follows” the 1.5C report and another about climate change and land issued this year. Many other delegates had favoured the word “complements” to underscore that the reports are part of a family of scientific studies.

Delegates said the Saudis pushed to water down any wording that would link this report to the IPCC’s 1.5 degrees report. In Katowice, the COP only “noted” the 1.5C report, under pressure from Saudis, Americans etc, stopping short of “welcoming” it. 

Saudi Arabia seemed to worry that the Santiago COP may “welcome” this new report. If so, it could implicitly endorse the findings in the 1.5C report if they were strongly connected in the text, so they wanted to loosen any links.

Some authors said wrangling over wording ended up helping because authors tightened the scientific findings.

Martin Sommerkorn, an author with the WWF conservation group, said that “the report ended up stronger because of a defence of the science.”

Delegates said the wrangling contributed to delay the meeting, with an all-night session lasting into Tuesday, from a scheduled finish on Monday.

They also said that the US delegation did not stand in the way of the science, even though US president Donald Trump plans to pull out of the Paris Agreement.

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Among other findings, the report said the maximum catch of fish in the oceans, already falling because of factors including over-fishing and pollution as well as warming waters, would fall by between 20 and 24% this century unless governments take strong action to rein in greenhouse gas emissions.

And fish stocks would be driven polewards or to the depths as the waters warm, perhaps causing conflicts over dwindling resources.

The report said extreme high tides or storm surges that historically happened only once a century could become at least annual events by 2100, exacerbated by rising sea levels. And a melt of permafrost could release methane and undermine infrastructure in mountains or polar regions.

“The impacts of human-made carbon emissions on our oceans are on a much larger scale and happening way faster than predicted,” said Taehyun Park, global climate political advisor with Greenpeace East Asia.

The post Dying oceans rising faster than predicted, UN warns in stark report appeared first on Climate Home News.

Greenhouse gas emissions rose 0.6% to 538.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) from the previous year, mainly due to a 19% rise in LNG exports and growth in steel and aluminium production, the government said in a quarterly greenhouse gas update.

LNG output added 4.7 million tonnes CO2-e, more than offsetting a 2.1% drop in emissions from the electricity sector, the biggest source of carbon emissions, as the growth of wind and solar power has reduced the use of dirty coal.

Emissions were 11.7% below their 2005 level, with about 11 years to go to meet Australia’s commitment under the Paris climate accord to slash emissions by at least 26% from 2005 levels by 2030 to help combat global warming.

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Australia’s emergence as the world’s top LNG exporter has created a quandary for the conservative government, as methane and carbon emissions from gas and LNG production make it harder for the country to meet its greenhouse gas emission targets.

At the same time, Canberra has praised the benefits of the LNG export industry and its role in helping cut emissions in the countries that buy the LNG. The government claims the gas replaces dirtier coal-based energy in those countries.

“Australia’s LNG exports for the year to March 2019 are estimated to be worth A$47.8 bln ($32 billion) and have the potential to reduce global emissions by up to 152 Mt CO2-e, or up to 28% of Austrlaia’s annual emissions,” Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said in a statement.

The emissions footprint from the LNG industry should improve over the next year. The recent start-up of carbon capture and storage at Chevron Corp’s Gorgon LNG project off Western Australia will bury up to 4 million tonnes of emissions a year.

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The process involves removing CO2 from the gas that Chevron produces from the Gorgon project at Barrow Island, and injecting it through wells into reservoirs under the ocean floor, 2 km (1.2 miles) below the island.

Also on Friday, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) downgraded the reef’s status to the lowest level, which could jeopardise its World Heritage listing.

The agency said the health of the world’s largest coral reef system, off the northeast coast of the state of Queensland, had deteriorated since its last review in 2014, but the problems the reef faced were not insurmountable.

“This report draws attention to the fact that the outlook for the Great Barrier Reef, the long term outlook, is very poor- that’s largely driven by climate change,” GBRMPA’s chief scientists David Wachenfeld told reporters in Sydney.

“Despite that, with the right mix of local actions to improve the resilience of the system and global actions to tackle climate change in the strongest and fastest way possible, we can turn that around.”

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The report, which is compiled every five years, painted a deteriorating picture of widespread coral bleaching, habitat loss and degradation caused by human-induced climate change, overfishing, poor water quality, and coastal land clearing for grazing.

Some parts of the reefs remained in good condition but many species including dolphins, dugongs, sharks, rays and turtles were being threatened.

Unesco’s World Heritage Committee last year called for global action on climate change to protect five large coral reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef.

The committee is due to consider the reef’s heritage listing, considering its health and a possible “in danger” status.

“The Great Barrier Reef is one of the globe’s most famous World Heritage Areas yet the report finds that its integrity is challenged and deteriorating,” environmentalist group Australian Marine Conservation Society said in a statement.

“This is now the third outlook report. We’ve had ten years of warnings, ten years of rising greenhouse emissions and ten years watching the reef heading for a catastrophe,” said the group’s director of strategy Imogen Zethoven.

“This report will be a major input into Unesco’s committee and here is a very strong case for the reef to be considered for the in danger list.”

The inclusion of the reef on the in danger list would be an embarrassment for the government and could damage the tourist industry.

Unesco’s chief of the Asia and Pacific region, Feng Jing, said the organisation was following closely the state of the reef and progress made in protecting it and would consider its status in July next year.

“We would hope that the collective efforts undertaking by the State Party of Australia will bring the change that is needed to ensure the sustainable conservation of the Great Barrier Reef,” Jing said in an emailed statement.

The post Australian emissions rise as LNG production soars appeared first on Climate Home News.

Oceans mop up vast amounts (up to 80%) of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by humans. The ecosystems they support could provide new, albeit controversial, ways to draw carbon from the air.

But their health and management remains sidelined from the key political forum on climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

That could change this year. Host nation Chile, which has control over almost 18 million sq km of the world’s oceans, is calling this year’s Cop25 UN climate conference in Santiago a “Blue Cop”.

At a special preparatory meeting in Madrid earlier this month politicians, scientists, and NGOs discussed ways to use the meeting to gain political traction.

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“Time is running out,” Chile’s environment minister and the Cop25 president Carolina Schmidt told the meeting through a video. “This is why Chile has been pushing to highlight this problem. In our vision, there cannot be an effective response to climate change without a global response to ocean issues.”

The UN body of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is due to release a landmark report on the complex linkages between ocean and climate change in September. This is expected to add impetus to Chile’s programme.

What it means to host a “Blue Cop” is still up for debate. Rémi Parmentier, secretary of Because the Ocean, an initiative signed by 23 countries at COP21 in Paris to call for the IPCC report, told Climate Home News “the role of the ocean in mitigating climate change, and the ocean change that it is causing (ocean warming, acidification, deoxygenation, etc) will take centre stage, now and in the future”.

“Ocean and climate are two sides of the same coin: if we want to protect the climate, we must protect the ocean, and vice-versa,” Parmentier said.

According to observers from the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, some governments at the meeting requested that ocean health be placed on the formal agenda for the Cop. This would hoist marine issues at the top of the list of climate priorities.

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Other governments were more reluctant, stressing that the creation of special slots for ocean matters could delay negotiations. Instead, the UN could hold a special event in relation to the publication of the IPCC report or release a political statement, they suggested. (The meeting was closed and ENB did not attribute the statements.)

Political statements are a common device in the UN process. They can propose solutions to specific problems, form new commissions or simply commit governments to place new attention on an issue.

Several countries, including Chile, Monaco and France, are pushing for countries to include ocean health issues alongside the energy transition, forestry, agriculture and industry in the national climate plans they submit to the UN climate process. Launching the Cop25 talks this month, Chilean president Sebastian Piñera used his speech to call for this.

These voluntary plans can include anything governments wish, but their inclusion would indicate governments are considering what they can do to protect the ocean carbon sink. Spain’s minister for the ecological transition Teresa Ribera said the IPCC report would identify specific measures that countries could take that could then be addressed in their reports.

Scientists and policy-makers are currently debating what these could be, with some calling to monitor ocean acidification or increase the number of marine protected areas. Others have suggested that national jurisdictions should count and cut their shipping emissions, which account for 2.5% of global emissions, according to the latest International Maritime Organisation (IMO) study.

Participants also voiced caution that a renewed focus on the ocean could boost controversial technologies, such as ocean fertilisation and blue carbon credits.

Ocean fertilisation refers to the sprinkling of iron into the oceans to spur the growth of algae, or phytoplankton, which bloom and capture large quantities of carbon through photosynthesis.

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Scientists are still evaluating the consequences of the geotechnology, however. Sunken blooms could, for example, deplete oxygen reserves, which are vital for marine life, and produce greenhouse gases that are more perilous than CO2.

Head of the Paris-based Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) Sébastien Treyer, told CHN that it was therefore “very important that all the potential negative impacts that solutions like ocean fertilisation can have on ocean ecosystems and ecological cycles are assessed” before promoting them through climate negotiations.

An emphasis on offsetting emissions through blue carbon, or the carbon stored by coastal ecosystems such as mangrove forests, seagrass meadows and salt marshes, also comes with its own set of risks. In the past, the inclusion of such spaces into carbon markets have led to “ocean grabbing” from small-scale fishermen, civil societies such as Afrika Kontakt have argued.

Parmentier cautioned that “avoid repeating past abuse with regard to carbon credits”.

On top of the the Blue Cop and IPCC report, 2021 will also mark the start of the UN decade on Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

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Scenarios in which temperatures temporarily exceed 1.5C above pre-industrial levels should not count as aligned with the Paris Agreement’s tougher target, the bloc argued.

As this article was published, the world’s top climate scientists were deep in talks with government diplomats in a conference hall in South Korea. They face an all-night session in their attempt to agree what the report will say about the feasibility of halting warming at 1.5C – and what happens if we fail.

The final summary of the report, which will be delivered on Monday, will describe “pathways” that could see the climate stabilise at 1.5C by 2100. Almost all of these scenarios include some form of “overshoot”, before temperatures are lowered again by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air.

In confidential comments, lodged prior to this week’s meeting and seen by Climate Home News, the EU said drifting above the threshold would bring irreversible effects such as the loss of coral reefs, “with unprecedented consequences on societies and economies”.

Sources at the meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in South Korea told CHN language has been agreed that will state with “very high confidence” that warming to 2C would destroy more than 99% of all coral reefs. At 1.5C, reefs will decline by 70-90%.

“Half a billion people depend directly or indirectly on coral reefs for their livelihoods, hence loosing coral reefs does not only mean loosing a unique ecosystems with very rich biodiversity,” said the EU comment, adding that “1.5C consistent pathways must not include overshoot”.

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The comments also said breaching the 1.5C limit “will likely trigger a cascade of negative effects and consequences which we cannot oversee in their entiety [sic] and therefore swift action… to reverse global warming is the only rationale [sic] insurance strategy.”

The EU questioned why earlier drafts of the summary had only applied “medium confidence” to a statement that overshoot scenarios posed a greater risk than stopping warming at 1.5C. The EU called for this to be changed to “high confidence”.

Research published by the Royal Society in April found overshoot was “unavoidable”, unless you adopt a generous estimate of the amount of CO2 that can be emitted under a 1.5C threshold and technologies for removing carbon are rapidly deployed.

But Bill Hare, CEO and senior scientist at Climate Analytics, stressed that scenarios with limited or no overshoot exist. “At the EU level [they] require higher ambition for EU 2030 [national climate] goals, more renewable energy and faster electrification of transport,” he added.

The EU faces two major climate policy decisions in the coming year: whether to amend its current 2030 target and what to aim for by 2050. According to reporting by Euractiv, EU environment ministers are preparing to acknowledge that the lower 1.5C target of the Paris Agreement is preferable to 2C.

“The commission is still working on its long term low emission strategy and will propose a first draft in November. The IPCC special report, once adopted, will present crucial scientific input for our long term strategy,” said Lynn Rietdorf, a spokesperson for the European Commission.

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These changes, caused by the combined stress of gradual climate change and extreme weather events, are overwhelming ecosystems’ natural resilience.

Variable climate

Australia is one of the most climatically variable places in the world. It is filled with ecosystems adapted to this variability, whether that means living in scorching heat, bitter cold or a climate that cycles between the two.

Despite land clearing, mining and other activities that transform the natural landscape, Australia retains large tracts of near-pristine natural systems.

Many of these regions are iconic, sustaining tourism and outdoor activities and providing valuable ecological services – particularly fisheries and water resources. Yet even here, the combined stress of gradual climate change and extreme weather events is causing environmental changes. These changes are often abrupt and potentially irreversible.

They include wildlife and plant population collapses, the local extinction of native species, the loss of ancient, highly diverse ecosystems and the creation of previously unseen ecological communities invaded by new plants and animals.

Australia’s average temperature (both air and sea) has increased by about 1°C since the start of the 19th century. We are now experiencing longer, more frequent and more intense heatwaves, more extreme fire weather and longer fire seasons, changes to rainfall seasonality, and droughts that may be historically unusual.

The interval between these events has also shortened, which means even ecosystems adapted to extremes and high natural variability are struggling.

As climate change accelerates, the magnitude and frequency of extreme events is expected to continue increasing.

What is ecosystem collapse?

Gradual climate change can be thought of as an ongoing “press”, on which the “pulse” of extreme events are now superimposed. In combination, “presses” and “pulses” are more likely to push systems to collapse.

We identified ecosystems across Australia that have recently experienced catastrophic changes, including:

• kelp forests shifting to seaweed turfs following a single marine heatwave in 2011;
• the destruction of Gondwanan refugia by wildfire ignited by lightning storms in 2016;
• dieback of floodplain forests along the Murray River following the millennial drought in 2001–2009;
• large-scale conversion of alpine forest to shrubland due to repeated fires from 2003–2014;
• community-level boom and bust in the arid zone following extreme rainfall in 2011–2012, and
• mangrove dieback across a 1,000km stretch of the Gulf of Carpentaria after a weak monsoon in 2015-2016.

Of these six case studies, only the Murray River forest had previously experienced substantial human disturbance. The others have had negligible exposure to stressors, highlighting that undisturbed systems are not necessarily more resilient to climate change.

The case studies provide a range of examples of how presses and pulses can interact to push an ecosystem to a “tipping point”. In some cases, a single extreme event may be sufficient to cause an irreversible regime shift.

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In other systems, a single extreme event may only be sufficient to tip the ecosystem over the edge when gradual declines in populations have already occurred. More frequent extreme events can also lead to population collapse if a species does not have enough time to recover between events.

But not all examples can be directly linked to a single weather event, or a series of events. These are most likely caused by multiple interacting climate “presses” and “pulses”. It’s worth remembering that extreme biological responses do not always manifest as an impact on the dominant species. Cascading interactions can trigger ecosystem-wide responses to extreme events.

The cost of intervention

Once an ecosystem goes into steep decline – with key species dying out and crucial interactions no longer possible – there are important consequences.

Apart from their intrinsic worth, these areas can no longer supply fish, forest resources, or carbon storage. It may affect livestock and pasture quality, tourism, and water quality and supply.

Unfortunately, the sheer number of variables – between the species and terrain in each area, and the timing and severity of extreme weather events – makes predicting ecosystem collapses essentially impossible.

Targeted interventions, like the assisted recolonisation of plants and animals, reseeding an area that’s suffered forest loss, and actively protecting vulnerable ecosystems from destructive bushfires, may prevent a system from collapsing, but at considerable financial cost. And as the interval between extreme events shorten, the chance of a successful intervention falls.

Critically, intervention plans may need to be decided upon quickly, without full understanding of the ecological and evolutionary consequences.

2016: the year climate change came home

How much are we willing to risk failure and any unintended consequences of active intervention? How much do we value “natural” and “pristine” ecosystems that will increasingly depend on protection from threats like invasive plants and more frequent fires?

We suspect the pervasive effects of the press and pulse of climate change means that, increasingly, the risks of doing nothing may outweigh the risks of acting.

The beginning of this century has seen an unprecedented number of widespread, catastrophic biological transformations in response to extreme weather events.

This constellation of unpredictable and sudden biological responses suggests that many seemingly healthy and undisturbed ecosystems are at a tipping point.

Rebecca Harris is a climate research fellow at the University of Tasmania. David Bowman is a professor of environmental change biology at the University of Tasmania. Linda Beaumont is a senior lecturer at Macquarie University.

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With the Ocean Summit in Mexico 7-9 March, and with 2018 dubbed the International Year of the Reef, the world’s coral reefs are getting extra attention. Yet E3G research has found that virtually no climate finance is going towards saving coral reefs, on which half a billion people rely on for food and coastal protection.

Coral reefs are vitally important for the planet, being home to a quarter of all fish species, and with an economic value of around $9.9 trillion globally. Coral reefs also support iconic species such as dolphins and sharks.

It is also known the oceans are responsible for producing most of the oxygen we breathe. The damage we are doing to the world’s ocean ecosystems could be life-threatening for humans.

The world’s richest countries have promised to distribute $100 billion of climate finance to developing countries by 2020. However, our analysis has found that virtually none of this finance is currently going to save coral reefs.

Less than 0.01% of climate finance from development banks 2010-15 went on coral reefs

We analysed the OECD database of almost 3,000 climate finance projects from 2010 to 2015, covering the ‘big six’ development banks.  Only 3 of these projects mentioned coral reefs in the project description. These projects totalled a value of $4.5 million, out of a total of around $67 billion in climate finance by development banks – or less than a hundredth of one percent.

One of these projects was the Coral Reef Restoration Program implemented by the Inter-American Development Bank in Belize and Jamaica. The other two projects were part of the Coral Triangle Initiative.

Development banks have not yet set up programmes to specifically target coral reefs in Pacific countries, even though Pacific islands are particularly dependent on fish for food and livelihoods. Multilateral climate funds, including the Global Environment Facility, fared better with five reef-related projects (totalling $42 million).

The coral triangle initiative has now received additional funding, and there may be other projects benefitting coral reefs which did not show up in this database. Still, given the magnitude of the problem, the level of finance is pitiful.

What can be done?

Even without climate change, coral reefs are threatened by over-fishing, pollution from agriculture, plastic pollution, and chemicals in sunscreen. The warming ocean and rising acidity threaten to push many coral reefs over the edge.

However, the situation is not completely hopeless. Coral expert Dr Austin Bowden-Kerby has noted that “some corals have adapted over thousands of years to live and be healthy in extremely hot waters”. Through an active adaptation strategy of protecting reefs with marine zones, reducing pollution, and restoring the reef, coral reefs might have a chance.

In Fiji, coral gardening – a strategy of identifying and planting adapted corals – is being done without any government support by hotels and resorts, who have noticed regenerating the reef brings in tourists. On it’s own this isn’t enough, but it does offer hope for reef restoration.

Funding towards coral reefs seems to be a major gap in the climate finance landscape. Funding may also be needed for ‘coral vaults’ to act as gene banks for species faced with extinction. Around 50% of reefs may have been lost already.

Since many coral reefs are found in developing countries and small islands, these countries could benefit from international funding to set up marine protected areas, and coral restoration programmes linking to research institutes.

Coral reefs as green infrastructure

One problem could be that green infrastructure is not sufficiently prioritised by climate funds. Most focus on hard infrastructure, like sea walls, rather than coral reefs which act as natural barriers to protect the coast from cyclones.

Green infrastructure which can protect the coastline also includes mangrove forests. Mangroves are some of the world’s most important carbon sinks and also help trap sediment, protect against cyclones, and shelter small fishes.

Bowden-Kerby argues: “If the coral reefs go, then the sea grass, mangrove, and beach ecosystems go – as will entire atoll nations. This is the system where we must now make our stand.”

Moreover, the development banks need to better align their efforts with the Paris Agreement. Recent research by Oil Change International found that the development banks are providing more than three times the amount of annual finance to fossil fuel exploration than to climate finance for small island developing states.

Donors have pledged to scale up funding for climate resilience. How about starting with coral reefs?

Helena Wright is a senior policy adviser at E3G

The post Why are the world’s climate funds ignoring coral reefs? appeared first on Climate Home News.

But a UN meeting this week about climate change and oceans reminds us a related crisis is unfolding largely away public attention: the one-two punch of ocean warming and acidification.

With record temperatures sweeping over continents year after year, it is easy to overlook that the ocean has absorbed some 90% of the heat trapped by the carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution; and how much of that CO2 has dissolved into seawater as carbonic acid, altering its basic chemistry.

The UN meeting follows on the heels of a new secretary general report that investigates the impacts of these changes and the findings are concerning, to say the least.

The report describes record ocean temperatures pushing fish species toward cooler latitudes and out of reach of artisanal fishers; it documents widespread coral bleaching across the tropical belt and how most reefs could enter a state of permanent decline by 2040; it shows how ocean acidification has damaged a range of calcifying marine life, such as corals and shellfish; and it raises fears that the cumulative effects of the impacts are degrading phytoplankton, zooplankton, and krill, the foundation of the ocean’s food chain.

Estimated change in annual mean sea surface pH between the pre-industrial period (1700s) and the present day (1990s). (Source: Global Ocean Data Analysis Project)

Perhaps most ominously, it warns that the ocean system could be reaching the limits of its ability to store all that excess carbon and heat released by human activities.

The timing of the meeting and report are not accidental. On 5-6 June the UN will host the first ever Oceans Conference, which will focus on accelerating the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal targets designed to restore and conserve marine environments.

One of the targets calls on the international community to cut emissions and address the impacts of ocean acidification.

But even under the best-case scenario global emissions are unlikely to peak before midcentury. That means in the short-term we must take action locally to help build resilience in our fisheries, coral reefs, and coastal ecosystems and give them a chance to adapt to the unprecedented changes.

Pacific islands are already leading the world in these efforts. In just the past few years, Palau, Kiribati, Fiji, and others have created or expanded marine protected areas – zones that prohibit activities known to damage or slow an ecosystem’s recovery.

We also manage the parties to the Nauru Agreement, the world’s largest sustainable purse seine tuna fishery, with a combination of the latest science and strict controls to prevent overfishing and harm to sharks, sea turtles and birds. The approach has led to an increase in the value of the tuna harvest and can serve as a model for fisheries management elsewhere in the Pacific and around the world.

Of course, much more needs to be done. A good start would be for the international community to provide the means of implementation needed to establish more MPAs and support ecosystem-based approaches to marine governance that have proven so successful in the Pacific and elsewhere. The private sector also has a role to play in developing new partnerships and sources of finance to support these goals.

The reality is we possess many of the tools we need to take care of our fish, coral reefs and coastal habitats. But, as with climate change, we lack the political motivation to deploy the solutions as fast and broadly as required. For now, the most important step we can take might be to encourage our leaders to attend the Oceans Conference, listen to what is happening to our oceans, and take action before its too late.

Ambassador Marlene Moses is Nauru’s permanent representative to the UN and chair of the Pacific Small Island Developing States 

The post Ocean acidification is global warming’s forgotten crisis appeared first on Climate Home News.

This is the picture painted by divers, marine scientists and campaigners – and endorsed by two whistleblowers from the country’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). After a 2016 ocean heatwave that killed 70-80% of the country’s surface corals, widespread dredging and land reclamation threatens their recovery.

Under president Abdulla Yameen’s “transformative economic agenda,” investors are being courted for massive resort and infrastructure projects. To facilitate this, the tourism ministry has taken over environmental impact assessments for resort developments from the EPA.

Ibrahim Mohamed, an EPA deputy director on secondment to James Cook University in Australia, said ministers now routinely overruled experts.

“If [a project] gets rejected [on environmental grounds] and the minister thinks it might be politically advantageous, they will go ahead with the project,” he told Climate Home by Skype. “People have a fear of rejecting the government’s decisions… The [environmental assessment] process is quite stringent, but in the end, it is prone to quite a lot of intimidation.”

Report: Saudis make Maldives land grab to secure oil routes to China

One of the most dramatic interventions was on his home atoll of Addu, in the southern Maldives. Last November the ruling party celebrated as a reef was blasted with explosives – a practice not seen in ten years – to create a shipping channel. The EPA initially withheld approval but caved under pressure.

The haste to green-light investment threatens the vibrant ecosystems that draw tourists and sustain tuna fishing – the Maldives’ two main earners.

“If we neglect the environment… we will lose resilience,” added Mohamed, who is writing a doctorate on climate adaptation in the Maldives. “Most of these coastal modifications aren’t well planned.”

A senior source still working at the EPA, who did not wish to be named, backed up Mohamed’s assessment and did not comment further.

Fishermen use small fish from the reefs as bait for tuna (Pic: Greenpeace/Paul Hilton)

The need for development outweighs the risks, said Ibrahim Hussain Shihab, a spokesperson for the president’s office. Asked about the tourism ministry taking control of EIAs, he said: “It made sense to move the process to the ministry due to the fact that they deal day-to-day with the resorts.” Government projects remain within the EPA’s remit. In the Addu case, he said other options to open the channel had been exhausted and the amount of blasting was “minimal”.

Coral reefs are increasingly threatened by climate change. Last year, a turbo-charged El Niño event warmed the oceans, causing the third global bleaching event on record. The Maldives, home to some of the most spectacular marine life in the world, was not spared.

Dredging puts the reefs under further pressure, stirring up sand that blocks out light. Observers warn it is going ahead with little regard for the consequences.

Environmental impact assessments are “cut and paste,” said Shahina Ali, a recreational diver and advocate for biodiversity education. “In a time where we have had coral bleaching, the reefs are a bit fragile and when the reclamation is not done properly, it has a further effect.”

Hussain Rasheed Sendi, director of five dive centres, used to swim in Embudu lagoon, near Malé, as a boy. A nursery for marine life, much of it has been buried to create luxury beach getaways within easy reach of the international airport.

“This amount of land reclamation has never been done before,” said Sendi. “That is the scary part, you don’t know what will happen… Coral bleaching we can’t stop, but dredging we could at least give a break.”

Shiham Adam, director of the government-funded Marine Research Centre (MRC), acknowledged the ecological impacts of land reclamation.

“It would definitely not help to recover corals, there is no doubt about it,” he said. “When sand particles land on the coral polyps, it would cause stress.”

While he claimed the MRC had sometimes given “very strong views” on potentially damaging projects, overall he defended the practice: “We are reclaiming massive swathes of coral reefs, but once it is reclaimed, it can be a very nice stable area.”

Officials are optimistic the reefs will bounce back from last year’s bleaching, as they did within about a decade of 1998, the last event on that scale. Shihab added: “We cannot be expected to suspend all development initiatives in the meanwhile due to worldwide environmental factors that are sadly outside of our control. To do so would be a betrayal to the needs of the Maldivian people.”

“To suspend all development initiatives… would be a betrayal to the needs of the Maldivian people”

The stakes are high. Resort leases are worth millions of dollars. Government officials say the influx of cash will raise living standards. But large sums of money from such developments have previously gone astray.

The Maldives scores just 36 out of 100 on Transparency International’s corruption perception index, below the global average. National campaigners say the situation has deteriorated under Yameen, who took power in 2013 under contentious circumstances.

An explosive Al Jazeera documentary in September linked president Yameen to the disappearance of US$80 million from state coffers – the biggest corruption scandal in the country’s history. He denies any wrongdoing.

Oversight of land deals is being weakened, rather than strengthened. The law was changed last year to allow uninhabited land or lagoons to be leased with no public tender process. Feydhoo Finolhu, a popular picnic spot for residents of the crowded capital Malé, was awarded to an unidentified Chinese company for $4m.

In the most audacious plan yet, Yameen is in talks with the Saudi royal family about a $10bn development on sparsely populated Faafu atoll.

“President Yameen’s regime has been characterised by ‘mega projects’ supposedly designed to help the people,” said opposition lawmaker Eva Abdulla. “But they are invariably, in the end, exposed as money laundering and embezzlement rackets. We have every reason to believe Faafu will be the same.”

A planned visit by King Salman this month was cancelled at the last minute, ostensibly in response to a flu outbreak, following protests against the mooted deal.

Pro-democracy NGO Transparency Maldives is demanding the government consult citizens before agreeing a deal of this size. “You can’t tell us: this is what the project is after you have signed the contract. That is just not acceptable,” said director Mariyam Shiuna.

Shihab from the president’s office said any large scale investment would be subject to parliamentary approval. The administration is “committed to sharing details” of any major venture “once initial detailed discussions take place”.

The population of the Maldives is scattered across roughly 190 low-lying islands (Pic: Flickr/IWRM AIO SIDS)

Hand-in-hand with the courting of foreign investment is a plan to urbanise the 400,000 population. Already, a third are crammed into Malé, an island two kilometres wide. The high-rise city makes a stark contrast with the nearly 190 islands inhabited by 5,000 people or fewer.

Souvenir seller Moussa Afeef’s story is typical. He and his family came to the capital for jobs, education and healthcare. But he misses home in the Maldives’ southernmost atoll, where people live by fishing and growing what fruit and vegetables they can in the thin sandy soil.

“It is very expensive in Malé. I have in my island a house, we can get fish for free,” he told Climate Home.

The government is focusing development on bigger settlements, according to housing and infrastructure minister Mohamed Muizzu. “You need a lot of investment every year in the government’s budget if you want to provide all the facilities to all the islands, so it is not sustainable to do that.”

He expects one in three islands to be abandoned, following a trend since the 1970s. In the latest relocation, a year ago, 170 people living on Gaadhoo were given cash grants and houses on Fonadhoo, the administrative centre of Laamu atoll. “It has always been a pull factor, we don’t force people to move.”

While there is no official plan to redevelop the deserted islands as resorts, they could be more valuable to outsiders, Muizzu suggested: “Our thinking is we should make the best use of these islands, because there is already some infrastructure, there are some buildings… why not make some use of it for industry or tourism or whatever?”

A wall of tetrapods protects built-up Malé from storm surges (Pic: Flickr/Mark Fischer)

One of the factors driving migration is coastal erosion. The Maldives’ 26 atolls, ring-shaped island chains formed from the barrier reefs of long-collapsed volcanoes, are naturally in flux. Sea level rise is set to accelerate the impact of swirling currents.

Malé is defended from storm surges by a wall of tetrapods. On the other side of the airport a stretch of reclaimed land is 2 metres above sea level, higher than the natural islands. Known as Hulhumalé, this suburb is destined to outgrow the capital.

“It is helping us buy more time to become more climate resilient in the future,” said the woman in the marketing suite. A scale model shows a cruise terminal, theme park, high-rise housing and even a monorail. If fully developed, it is expected to house 240,000 people.

So far, around 40,000 people live in the first phase of the development, which was started in 1997 and welcomed its first residents in 2004. Guesthouses and cheery cafes along the seafront cater to internal travellers and budget tourists. Two jetskis zip alongside the beach, through the rain. The rest is empty save for a few diggers and piles of building materials.

Reclaimed land near the airport is destined for major development (Pic: Jenny Bates)

Pumping sand from the lagoon floor to shore up coastal defences or create islands is technically straightforward, but its impacts can be complex. It disturbs benthic fauna – creatures on the seabed – and stirs up sediment, harming coral health, said Michael Sweet, a marine biologist at Derby University who has published research on human impacts on reefs.

“Islands are known to ‘move’ but we as humans do not like this,” he observed. “My only advice would be to not fight nature and limit dredging activities as much as possible.” Where dredging is seen as essential, Sweet suggested timing activities so that currents “flush the system” could mitigate the impacts. “This would take a significant level of understanding of the local hydrodynamics on any given reef,” he added.

Mohamed said the EPA used to require developers to model the hydrology of their proposal. Then the agency was sidelined.

Two snorkel dives in South Malé lagoon illustrate how delicate the balance is for corals. One reef bursts with colour and movement, a “hope site” spared the worst of the bleaching by a cooling current. A turtle grazes. A shark flits past. Countless varieties of fish dart across patches of purple, pink and orange coral.

Just 15 minutes away by speed boat, it is a different picture. A film of sludgy green-brown algae veils white skeletons. The fish are still beautiful, but less densely packed. Last year the Banyan Tree resort recorded sea surface temperatures of 33.6C, compared to the usual 27-28C. Before the heatwave, this reef had 90% live coral cover. After, it fell to 9%.

Several resorts keep coral nurseries in a bid to sustain their star attraction. Banyan Tree’s marine lab is experimenting with running a small electric current through an underwater iron frame to attract calcium ions and help corals grow back faster. Results of a controlled study are expected later this year.

The MRC’s Adam said resort reefs were often in better shape than those of inhabited islands, as a result of these attentions.

Mohamed Nasheed became the Maldives first democratically elected president in 2009 (Pic: Flickr/ Mauroof Khaleel)

But the lagoons are in for engineering on an unprecedented scale. A statement from the president’s office says the proposed Saudi development on Faafu atoll would involve “several tourist resorts and airports”.

Maldivian planning laws are “some of the strictest in the world,” assures the statement. Any developments will “respect the fragile ecosystem that encompasses the archipelago”.

“When there is no coral, there is no Maldives”

Given the secrecy surrounding deals and suppression of environmental concerns, others are not convinced.

Former president Mohamed Nasheed is in exile, hoping to return home next year to contest a presidential election. That depends on the judiciary lifting his 13-year prison sentence for terrorism charges, which a UN working group found to be “arbitrary” and “politically motivated”. He told Climate Home in London transparency was essential to the country’s resilience in the face of climate change.

“First and most importantly, good governance is the most important adaptation measure,” he said. “If you don’t have governance you end up coming with mad solutions. You end up giving the wrong contract to the wrong person. You end up building the wrong revetment at the wrong place. You end up building bridges to nowhere.”

Yameen’s urbanising drive is undermining the national identity, added Nasheed. “We are an island nation and we have remained an island nation for the last 7,000 years,” he said. “To abandon the natural growth of that settlement, we have always felt would be wrong. If you ask the people of the islands in any free manner… I don’t believe that they would want to abandon their islands and come to a central place.”

A threat to the reefs is a threat to national survival, said veteran diver Sendi. “When there is no coral, there is no Maldives.”

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It’s not making many headlines, but then the biannual UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conference rarely does. Especially not in a year like 2016.

And that’s a pity, because at stake is the air you breathe, the trees that surround you and the fate of the earth’s 8.7 million species of flora and fauna.

Also at stake is the ability of communities across the world to cope with erratic weather patterns linked to climate change like flash flooding, acidifying oceans, drought and storms.

“Everything is inter-linked,” says Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, a former Brazilian government official who has been executive secretary of the CBD since 2012.

“If countries want to meet the Paris climate agreement and the sustainable development goals in 2030 they also need to make progress in biodiversity.”

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That means slowing and then reversing deforestation so there are more trees to suck up carbon emissions from fossil fuels, and managing wetlands that can act as a buffer against storm surges.

It means working out how countries can better manage livestock and look after fish stocks so species can be supported if their habitats are damaged or waters become too acidic.

“Unless we can do a better job we won’t make it,” says Dias, who argues that countries and businesses are – eventually – starting to understand why biodiversity matters.

The Brazilian leaves his role after this meeting, but he wants governments to understand that building walls as protection – no Trump pun intended – is not going to crack it.

Consumption pains

Instead he advocates what CBD wonks call ecosystem-based adaptation, sustainable landscapes where farmlands also act as resilient barriers against the worst climate change can deliver.

That means fewer huge single-crop farms, more trees, better water conservation and the active restoration of exploited and abandoned lands.

It means rethinking consumption patterns, tougher regulations on extractive industries and curbing the poaching of wildlife populations.

Progress on this has been slow, he admits, and the facts bear him out. From 1970 to 2012, populations of fish, birds, mammals and reptiles fell 58% said WWF in its 2016 Living Planet report.

“Lose biodiversity and the natural world, including the life support systems as we know them, will collapse,” WWF International head Marco Lambertini warned earlier this year.

Countries are not on track to meet UN's 2020 biodiversity targets, @CBDNews chief tells @edking_CH pic.twitter.com/0gly3BKIOI

— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) December 6, 2016

That’s not to say nothing is happening. In 2011, CBD member states agreed to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets: 20 goals to be met by 2020 that could stabilise global losses.

Virtually all have a component that involves climate change, be it a requirement to boost environment education levels, to halve the loss of natural habitats and the goal of restoring 15% of degraded ecosystems so nature can thrive.

Still, it’s not happening fast enough. “We’re not fully on track,” Dias says, arguing that the goals were deliberately challenging so as to keep governments honest.

“At our last conference (2014 in South Korea) we recognised progress but said efforts so far are insufficient to ensure we will meet all targets by end of decade.”

One problem is too many governments and international organisations work in “silos” he says, a familiar message but one he says is essential to drum into leaders.

For example, farming or extractive ministries may not realise their government has afforestation commitments, while finance ministries may offer incentives to ecologically damaging practices.

Only 15% of the CBD’s 195 parties have whole-of-government policy approaches, and without any move towards what he terms “mainstreaming” the battle to protect biodiversity could be lost, the result as much of isolated technocrats as a deliberate desire to harm the planet.

“The big concern is that the main drivers of biodiversity loss are too strong – such as population growth, consumption, pollution and climate change. It’s an uphill battle,” he says.

UN's #COP13 biodiversity summit draft decision on #geoengineering – story to come on Wednesday pic.twitter.com/J13fUGWvcc

— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) December 6, 2016

The bottom line is – as ever – money, and it’s a mixed outlook.

A goal to double international biodiversity-related financial flows to developing countries was met in 2015, while the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, Germany and Sweden are among those praised by the CBD for supporting 129 delegates from poorer countries to attend the summit.

Maintaining those levels of funding is an “outstanding challenge” Dias told the COP13 conference earlier this week.

The combined impact of a Donald Trump presidency, the continued aftershocks from the financial crisis, Europe’s concern over immigration and pressure for funds to flow to climate projects may hurt.

The CBD is financed through from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), an international body that itself gets the bulk of its cash from the US, with negotiations on the replenishment of its trust fund to start in 2017.

The UN hopes the GEF will deliver $2.739 billion and leverage a further $5.938bn from 2019-2023. “Certainly the new president can influence decisions that the US makes regarding funding… but it’s too early to assess that,” says the CBD chief.

As for his successor, he reckons forests will likely dominate his inbox, and the trends do not make for good reading.

Since 1990, an area the size of South Africa has been lost, and while rates of tree loss are slowing they are not stopping. Even Brazil recently experienced an upsurge in the destruction of the Amazon after years of positive progress.

“We need more attention to reduce deforestation… overall Brazil has had a good reduction – other areas like Indonesia are more challenging with the burning of peatlands. It’s a big issue we need to push countries to control.”

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The latest four-month forecast from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch has raised alerts for reefs in the south Pacific and eastern Indian ocean into March next year.

The alert level is lower than in previous years, representing a slight cooling off as the world moves out of a very large El Niño (which raised global water temperatures and exacerbated the bleaching event) and into a La Nina phase.

But Dr Mark Eakin, the coordinator of NOAA Coral Reef Watch, said the lower levels of stress this year were still a concern. Reefs that have been exposed to repeated bleaching for two or three years are more fragile.

“So many corals are pre-stressed that this could be enough to push more over the edge,” said Eakin. He said the longer term outlook showed reefs in the Maldives could be hit again by April.

Thermal stress level required for 60% and 90% chance of bleaching. Source: Noaa Coral Reef Watch

Bleaching occurs when corals are exposed to small but rapid increases in heat for a week or more. If the temperature does not return to normal with a few weeks, the corals can die off and be replaced by algae.

Global and repeated coral bleaching events are a new phenomenon, said Professor Nick Graham, a marine ecologist from Lancaster University. They are driven by the rise in ocean temperature from global warming.

“Previous bleaching events have tended to occur over one year [or] season for a given location,” said Graham.

“The 2015-2016 event has shocked many coral reef scientists, with lots of locations being bleached two years in a row. If this extends into 2017 for some locations, this really is uncharted territory. We know very little about how the reefs will respond to such repetitive thermal stress.”

Since late 2014 corals have been hit by elevated water temperatures in every major coral region of the world, often repeatedly. It is just the third time a bleaching event has extended across the globe. The previous worst was a 1998 event that lasted little more than a year and killed 16-19% of the world’s coral.

What is coral bleaching?

Corals are formed by an interaction between small animals (corals) and very tiny plants called zooxanthellae. Interactions between the two generate a reef’s brilliant colours.

For reasons not clearly understood, when water warms rapidly (even by a small amount like 1C) the zooxanthellae leave the corals, depriving them of their food source and colour. They turn bone white. If the heat persists for too long the coral will die.

Algae, which is usually cleaned off by the living corals can now grow, making it impossible for new colonies of coral and zooxanthellae to grow back even once the temperature drops. When this happens it takes decades for reefs to recover, if they ever do.

“It’s too early to say how much coral has been lost globally from the 2015-2016 bleaching, but it is safe to say it has been the worst on record, surpassing the losses documented from the 1998 event,” said Graham.

The advent of La Nina – even though it will bring some relief to the Pacific – carries further complications. It often brings very active cyclone seasons to the north east of Australia, where the Great Barrier Reef has just experienced its worst bleaching on record. These storms can do extensive damage to even healthy reefs.

“Cyclones break the coral structure down. The northern section of the Great Barrier Reef [on which two thirds of the coral has been killed] will be very vulnerable to extensive physical damage from cyclones in coming years,”  said Graham.

“Once the physical structure (i.e. the dead coral skeletons) is lost, there are dramatic declines in reef associated fish assemblages, and recovery of the reef becomes more challenging.”

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And the proportion of storms that meet the classification of category 4, with winds at 200 kilometres per hour, and category 5, with gusts of more than 250 kph, has at least doubled and may have tripled.

The good news for mariners is that those tropical cyclones that stay over the open ocean have not got significantly worse. The windstorms that pound the land, though, are potentially more destructive.

The cause of the intensity is an overall warming of ocean surface waters in the northwest Pacific.

And the researchers say: “The projected ocean surface warming pattern under increasing greenhouse gas forcing suggests that typhoons striking eastern mainland China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan will intensify further.

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“Given disproportionate damages by intense typhoons, this represents a heightened threat to people and properties in the region.”

The study was published in Nature Geoscience on the same day as theInternational Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) study of the state of the oceans.

It confirms that the number of severe hurricanes has increased by 25% to 30% for each degree of global warming so far. And, once again, greenhouse gas emissions are to blame.

“Most of the heat from human-induced warming since the 1970s – a staggering 93% – has been absorbed by the ocean, which acts as a buffer against climate change, but this comes at a price,” says Dan Laffoley, marine vice-chair of theWorld Commission on Protected Areas at IUCN, and one of the study’s authors.

“We were astounded by the scale and extent of ocean warming effects on entire ecosystems made clear by this report.”

https://twitter.com/wxpete75/status/775681356655366148

The IUCN study was compiled by 80 scientists from 12 nations and it highlights the scientific evidence of impacts on marine life – from microbes to the great sea mammals – that are likely to increase significantly even if humans drastically reduce fossil fuel combustion and cut the carbon dioxide emissions that drive global warming.

The scientists say ocean warming is already affecting ecosystems from the poles to the Equator, driving plankton, jellyfish, seabirds and turtles up to 10 degrees of latitude nearer to the poles.

In East Africa, ocean warming has reduced fish numbers by destroying parts of the reefs the fish depend upon. If humans go on releasing carbon dioxide emissions at the current rate, marine fisheries harvests in southeast Asia are expected, by 2050, to be up to 30% lower than the average for the years 1970-2000.

Both studies are confirmatory rather than ground-breaking. Researchers have repeatedly warned that Pacific tropical cyclones and Atlantic hurricanes are likely to become more destructive.

Landfalling storms

Atmospheric scientists Now Wei Mei and Professor Shang-Ping Xie, of theScripps Institution of Oceanography in California, report that they looked again at the data, to confirm first that landfalling storms – about half of all typhoons hit the coasts – have intensified, and secondly that rising sea surface temperatures are the cause.

The IUCN research, too, is a re-examination: other studies have confirmed thelink between ocean warming and climate change, and between ocean warming and ecosystem destruction. But, on a planet that is 70% ocean, nobody can be sure of the consequences.

“Ocean warming is one of this generation’s greatest hidden challenges – and one for which we are completely unprepared,” says Inger Andersen, director general of the IUCN.

“The only way to preserve the rich diversity of marine life, and to safeguard the protection and resources the ocean provides us with, is to cut greenhouse emissions rapidly and substantially.”

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

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Shovelled full of coal, the steam locomotive was hauling freight along the world’s first intercity rail route – a major advance in the industrialisation of the globe.

It was around this moment, scientists have discovered, that our own planet began to go off the rails.

Using 2,000 years of paleoclimate data – the earth’s historical temperature measured from natural sources such as the growth bands of corals and trees, ice cores and the amount of pollen trapped in sediment layers – a global team of researchers lead by Australian National University associate professor Nerilie Abram, have pinpointed the moment when the earth’s temperature began to rise because of human greenhouse gas emissions to between 1830 and 1850.

Abram said the findings, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, were “extraordinary” and had implications for our understanding of the sensitivity of the globe to even tiny increases of carbon in the atmosphere.

A scientist extracts coral cores at Rowley Shoals, west of Broome in Western Australia.
Source: Eric Matson, Australian Institute of Marine Science

Study co-author, Dr Helen McGregor, from the University of Wollongong said: “The early onset of warming detected in this study indicates the earth’s climate did respond in a rapid and measurable way to even the small increase in carbon emissions during the start of the industrial age.”

Abrams said the increase in atmospheric carbon between the onset of warming and the end of the 1800s was “small”, around 15 parts per million. But even this raised the temperature by a few tenths of a degree. The increase since 1900 has been more than 100 parts per million.

Paleoclimate temperature records were most famously analysed in the 1990s by US scientist Michael Mann to produce the “hockey stick” graph, which shocked the world with its dramatic depiction of the rapid recent rise in temperature after a millennia of relative stability.

400ppm: The milestone that puts Earth in the “danger zone”

But these natural almanacs have never so accurately calculated the beginning of human-induced warming.

In a paleoclimatological first, Abram’s study incorporated not only land based sources like tree rings, but measured marine temperatures as well. The scientists found the land of the northern hemisphere and seas of the tropics began warming at roughly the same speed around 1830.

“Seeing that parts of the oceans are a very responsive part of the climate system is a new and very interesting bit of information,” said Abram. Particularly because those oceans contain some of the most climate sensitive ecosystems, coral reefs. The southern hemisphere was around 50 years behind. This was likely the result of cooling currents in the huge southern oceans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5VC98yZCu0

This regional variability also allowed Abram’s team to chart the different stages of “emergence” around the globe. That is the point at which the average temperature has increased so much that it exceeds even extreme natural fluctuations.

“In the tropical oceans and the Arctic in particular, 180 years of warming has already caused the average climate to emerge above the range of variability that was normal in the centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution,” said Abram. The Antarctic, however, remains stubbornly un-warmed to this day.

Because of the huge technological leaps and enormous new wealth that drove projects like the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, early industrial emissions were dominated by the United Kingdom.

According to the World Resource Institute, by 1850 the furnaces of the British industrial revolution had belched 122.6 million tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

This cumulative total was twice as much as the rest of the world combined had emitted to that point – most of it coming from Britain’s great rivals, France, the US and Germany. Today, Britain emits around 500 million tonnes every single year.

The findings shift our understanding of exactly what is normal, because instrumental records of the global temperature only reliably go back as far as 1880.

Using that baseline, Nasa has determined that the first six months of 2016 were 1.3C warmer than normal. But Abram says the world had already warmed a few tenths of a degree by 1880, pushing the world beyond the 1.5C limit already.

“That’s important for conversations that we are having at the moment about trying to limit warming to 1.5C. We are getting scarily close to that already, but that’s when we are talking about the baseline being in the 1880s-1900. So we don’t yet have the full picture,” she said.

The post Climate change now has a start date appeared first on Climate Home News.

Half of the reef’s coral has disappeared in the past three decades due to a combination of warming ocean temperatures, coastal development, invasive starfish and agricultural runoff.

A survey published this week in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism found 69% of tourists had been driven by a sense of urgency to see Australia’s coral icon while there was still time.

This year, the reef has experienced its worst bleaching event on record. A huge underwater heatwave, which has killed off coral across the globe, has affected 93% of the reefs along the 2,300km wonder. In the northern and central sections, almost half the coral has been bleached so intensely and for so long that it will not recover.

“Our research suggests that the ailing health of the Great Barrier Reef has in fact given tourists a new reason to visit, albeit one that doesn’t exactly promise a long-term future,” authors Annah Piggott-McKellar and Dr Karen McNamara of the University of Queensland wrote in the Conversation.

Healthy coral on Wilson Reef in the Great Barrier Reef marine park. Photo: XL Catlin Seaview Survey/Underwater Earth

It is a poignant example of the times we live in. Reef visitors were asked to choose between 15 reasons for their trip.

“To see the reef before it is gone” was the forth strongest motivator, after “to discover new places and things”, “to rest and relax; and “to get away from the demands of everyday life”.

Corbin Forest, a Texan student who visited the reef in June while studying in Australia, said he had never heard of bleaching specifically but was aware the reef was in danger.

“I had just heard for years that “it’ll be gone [sometime this century]”, “it’s being polluted”, “tourism is killing it”. So I figured I needed to make sure I saw it before it disappeared in case any of that ended up being true,” said Forest.

https://twitter.com/CorbinForest/status/752551753388691456

Forest took a snorkelling tour on Green Island, a popular dive spot near Cairns. In April, a survey found that a third of the corals there had been bleached, but few had yet died.

“I was not aware of any type of bleaching and am not sure what it is entirely so I wasn’t looking for it, but if it means the different colours of the coral disappear, I can see that being an occurrence there. Much of the reef looked a greyish-brown colour, unlike what I was expecting,” said Forest.

The most recent major assessment of reef health found that unless radical cuts are made to global carbon emissions, ocean conditions would become so warm that bleaching will occur on the reef every year by the middle of the century. Reef scientists believe that this would be the end of the ecosystem.

This has lead some tour operators, including Australia’s national airline Qantas, to use “last-chance tourism” as a marketing tool. Time Magazine listed the reef as one of ten “amazing places to visit before they vanish”.

Great Barrier Reef tourism is an industry worth $5.4bn per year and 60,000 people have jobs that rely on the reef’s ongoing health.

Source: Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority

Reef tour operators have reacted vociferously to media coverage of the bleaching event, which they deem to be damaging to their business prospects.

One business leader has called it a “great white lie”. Earlier this year, the Australian government and Unesco were left red-faced when it was discovered they had removed the Great Barrier Reef from a scientific report on the threat climate change posed to world heritage sites. The Australian government explained that it had been concerned about negative impacts on tourism.

But it may be that in the short term, the threat has played a role in a mini-tourism boom. The UQ survey was conducted in 2015, before the bleaching event had struck. That year saw record number of tourists visit the reef (although the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority notes that there a many factors that affect numbers).

“This raises another question,” said Piggott-McKellar and McNamara. “Is there a threshold beyond which the Great Barrier Reef is seen as “too far gone” to visit? If so, might future more frequent or severe bleaching episodes take us past that threshold?”

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A draft of the UNESCO report, containing details of the threats posed by climate change to the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and the Tasmanian wilderness, was sent to Australia’s ambassador to UNESCO George Mina in February.

Mina forwarded it to the Environment Department for comment. Several emails were exchanged with UNESCO officials. The report was published in May without any mention of Australian sites.

The doctoring was revealed by the Guardian in May, leading to global concern and outrage over the apparent ability for a government to influence the UN body’s scientific reporting.

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Correspondence between Mina, staff at UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre and the Department of Environment was released to Climate Home after a Freedom of Information (FoI) request. But the documents were almost entirely blacked out at UNESCO’s behest.

Deb Callister, an environment department official, told Climate Home that she had consulted with UNESCO about releasing the emails that lead to the removal of the Australian sections.

“UNESCO advised that it is their practice not to disclose exchanges of letters or correspondence between the Secretariat and its Member States, and requested that this type of material not be disclosed pursuant to this FOI request,” said Callister.

Given this, she said disclosure of the emails “would or could reasonably be expected to, cause damage to the international relations of the Commonwealth” – making them exempt from FOI requests.

UNESCO spokesman George Papagiannis would not comment on the conversations between Callister and the World Heritage Centre and denied that governments have the power to veto the contents of any UNESCO publication.

“This was a report on the impact of climate change on World Heritage,” said Papagiannis.

“It was not a report on the Great Barrier Reef. All World Heritage sites are affected, in varying degrees, by climate change. The report sought to illustrate this through a selection of sites. This was accomplished and should be the focus of our attention.”

Correspondence between Unesco, George Mina and the Department of Environment (Australia)

Unesco’s director-general Irina Bokova is currently running for the top job at the UN.

Papagiannis said Bokova was not involved in the decision-making during the original amending of the report, or the subsequent quashing of the email release.

Professor Will Steffen, a scientific reviewer on the Great Barrier Reef section of the report, said he was surprised by the apparent collusion between the Australian government and UNESCO in keeping the details of the lobbying secret.

“But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It is indeed concerning, though, when scientifically authoritative and credible information is suppressed for any reason,” he said.

According to Papagiannis, UNESCO chose to replace the Great Barrier Reef with the Lagoons of New Caledonia and the Rock Islands Southern Lagoon in Palau to represent the threat of climate change to coral reefs in the report.

He made no mention of what was used to replace the particular concerns associated with the other two sites that were excised.

Report: Australia approval of vast coal mine ‘evil’ says marine scientist

The lead author of the report Adam Markham said it was his understanding that the decision to change the report was taken in order to avoid a battle with the Australian government.

Australia and UNESCO have had a difficult recent history, with Australia lobbying hard (and successfully) against a proposal to include the Great Barrier Reef on the list of world heritage sites ‘in danger’.

“UNESCO officials have said that they didn’t want Australia’s request to delay the report because it contained important info, and they that they didn’t want to go to the mat on the issue because the report was meant to be illustrative of different types of climate impacts,” he said.

Markham, who is director of climate change at the Union of Concerned Scientists but not a scientist himself, said: “I think scientists should listen to what Australia and UNESCO have to say about what transpired and decide for themselves how they feel.” He would work with UNESCO again, he added.

The Australian government has previously said it had told UNESCO that publication of a document detailing the perilous future under climate change might adversely affect tourism at the sites.

Details of this correspondence, including whether UNESCO asked the Australian government to provide evidence to back up this claim, or if that was the sum total of Australia’s representation to the body, are hidden by the censor’s marker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5WphA8364c

Susie de Carteret, a British tourism operator who sells holidays exclusively to Tasmania, told Climate Home that reports about environmental damage could affect tourism in isolated cases.

“There are a few passionately eco-conscious folk who will be put off travelling there because they believe there is a significant ecological or environmental concern wrought by human actions,” she said. “You are talking a very small number but it doesn’t take much to affect the brand.”

However, de Carteret added, “news coverage of the Australian government insisting on scratching every reference to the country in the report is the most damaging thing to the brand and simply highlights that the country has a problem.”

The 104-page report that was eventually published detailed the risks posed by climate change to 31 world heritage properties in 29 countries.

Stonehenge, Venice, Yellowstone National Park and the Galápagos Islands were among popular tourism destinations featured in the report, apparently without objection from their own national governments.

In one of the few meaningful passages of the correspondence between Australia and UNESCO to escape erasure, an environment department official details the minimisation of tourism impacts in Kakadu National Park.

The emails make clear that the Great Barrier Reef and Tasmania’s world heritage forests – which were suffering an exceptional and likely climate-driven fire event at the very moment the emails were being exchanged – were also discussed although all details regarding Tasmania have been removed.

Two sentences regarding the reef remain. They note the progress being made under the Australian government’s Reef 2050 Plan. This plan had been positively mentioned in the draft report.

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The corals have been hit by unusually high sea temperatures – a consequence of El Niño, the periodic blister of heat that bubbles up in the Pacific and started in full force last year.

Corals thrive in tropic seas, but, like all animals, there is a limit to their heat tolerance. And in a year in which global temperatures each month have set records, even the corals are feeling the heat, scientists told this week’s 13th International Coral Reef Symposium in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoralCoE) at James Cook University in Queensland, said: “We measured the condition of surviving corals as part of our extensive underwater surveys of Australia’s worst-ever bleaching event. We found that coral bleaching has affected 93% of the Great Barrier Reef.

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“While the central and southern regions have escaped with minor damage, nearly half of the corals have been killed by mass bleaching in the northern region.”

His CoralCoE colleague, Bill Leggat, head of the Symbiosis Genomics Research Group, said: “Normally, when bleaching kills corals it is a slow death that progresses steadily when temperatures remain high. The corals usually rely on mechanisms that help them fight and counteract the damage. But this time, on some reefs, it looks like they have died very quickly.”

Coral and algae called zooxanthellae live in a mutual help relationship. The algae harness the light to make nutrients that nourish the coral host, and they also give the corals the pattern of colours that make the reefs such a marvel.

But as temperatures soar beyond the coral comfort zone, the relationship breaks down. Where a healthy coral polyp might have up to two million zooxanthellae per square centimetre, numbers may drop to 200,000 in a bleaching event.

But this time, at least in the northern end of the reef, conditions are much worse. Some corals have almost no algal partners left.

“These corals are among the most damaged I have seen,” Dr Leggat said. “For some surviving corals in the northern Great Barrier Reef, over 50% of the coral cells are dead. In some regions, the corals were so badly damaged that we were unable to study their tissue because it was rotting away.”

“It’s time to shift this conversation to what can be done to conserve these amazing organisms… local conservation buys us time, but it isn’t enough”

Bleaching and devastation were first reported last year. Coral is already threatened by insidious change in sea water chemistry as ever more carbonic acid – from dissolved atmospheric carbon dioxide, the product of the combustion of fossil fuels – gets into the sea.

Rising sea levels also present a problem. Researchers believe that the loss of the Bramble Cay melomys, a rodent native to the reef, could be counted as the first real mammal extinction laid directly at the door of climate change.

Reefs normally support rich and complex ecosystems, but when the reef suffers, so do all the creatures that make their homes in the corals.

Report: Coral IVF offers hope for world’s threatened reefs

Coral reefs have been hit by massive bleaching events in the past, and recovered. But this event seems more sustained. A report from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) suggests that many coral reefs will be exposed to higher-than-normal sea temperatures for the third year in a row, with damage to reefs in Hawaii, Guam, the northern Mariana islands, the Florida Keys, the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

“It’s time to shift this conversation to what can be done to conserve these amazing organisms in the face of this unprecedented global bleaching event,” says Jennifer Koss, coral reef conservation programme director at the NOAA.

“We have boots on the ground and fins in the water to reduce local stressors. Local conservation buys us time, but it isn’t enough. Globally, we need to better understand what actions we all can take to combat the effects of climate change.”

Combination punch

Even so, there is some hope. A study backed by 35 scientists reporting for the UN Environment Programme says that reefs nearest the surface along the full length of the Great Barrier have been affected by the combination punch of global warming and the extremes of El Niño.

But it says that deeper reef environments – 40 metres to 150 metres below the waves – could serve as a refuge for species driven from the shallows, although more research needs to be done to establish a role for these regions.

“They aren’t a silver bullet, but they may be able to resist the most immediate impacts of climate change – thereby providing a refuge for some species and potentially helping to replenish destroyed surface reef and fish populations,” says Professor Elaine Baker, a senior expert at of the University of Sydney’s school of geosciences.

This article was produced by Climate News Network

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With the projected rise in sea levels by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of up to one metre within the century, the most vulnerable coastal communities and low-lying island states — several of which are in Pacific — face the real possibility of their islands and communities being submerged well within the next hundred years.

Recent events and the experience of the most vulnerable island communities clearly indicate that climate change is already seriously affecting the low-lying island communities in the Pacific.

Cyclone Pam, which hit and seriously damaged the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu in March of 2014, also veered north on a path never previously witnessed to hit the islands of Tuvalu and the southern island of the Gilbert Island Group of Kiribati.

Kiribati is on the Equator and was previously not prone to cyclone events, being in a region regarded as free from cyclones.

This unprecedented event clearly indicates that the weather patterns in this region are being altered and suggests that sea level rise may not be the most immediate threat to the security of these highly vulnerable island countries, but rather more highly energized and more frequent storms.

Cyclone Winston, which hit Fiji early in 2016, was categorized as the most severe storm ever recorded in the southern hemisphere.

These cataclysmic events, together with ongoing and increasing severity of coastal erosion and periodic flooding, have now rendered what were once viable communities uninhabitable.

Sea water has intruded into the underwater aquifers (a source of potable water and a lifeline for these communities), causing contamination to water supplies and damage to food crops.

An estimated 45,000 school-aged children have no access to education as a result of Cyclone Pan (Pic: UNICEF)

On the southern island of the Gilbert Island Group, some villagers have now relocated to other parts of the island and several more will have to do the same well within the next decade.

However, these atoll islands are on average no more than two meters above sea level. Therefore, the ability and the options for relocation on the islands are limited.

Against this background and against the projected increasing severity of climate change impacts, the future of these communities and their capacity to continue as viable communities on their home islands is also severely limited.

Unless significant resources are to be made available from the developed world to build capacity to withstand the increasing severity of climate change impacts, a community’s ability to adapt and to remain in its homelands would not be an option.

Vanuatu islanders survey the damage wreaked by Cyclone Pam (Pic: Unicef Pacific)

In an attempt to provide themselves with any measure of an option against the relentless onslaught of climate change, these most vulnerable countries have formed coalitions such as the Climate Vulnerable Forum.

The CVF is composed of countries ranging from the highly populous nation of Bangladesh to the small island nations of Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, and Kiribati in the Pacific, and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.

To highlight their extreme vulnerability as atoll island nations, the latter group formed the Coalition of Atoll Island Nations on Climate Change (CANCC), to focus international attention on the reality that their future as sovereign nations is in serious jeopardy.

But in spite of the strong desire and commitment of these countries to be able to continue to remain in their homelands, their ability to adapt and build the resilience required to withstand ongoing and future climate change impacts is entirely dependent on substantial intervention by the international community.

And even then it would be most unlikely that the scale of resources needed to guarantee the security of their entire populations is likely to be forthcoming.

Relocation, no matter how undesirable, must therefore be the brutal reality of the future of atoll island nations, and part of the solution.

Kiribati has advocated that migration with dignity must be part of a climate change adaptation strategy, rather than relocation of its people as climate refugees.

But the reality of what faces member countries of the CANCC in the future also holds true for countries like Bangladesh, where a significant number of their very large population is highly vulnerable and would also need to relocate from their existing communities.

And the moral challenge for the global community, among others, is then: “Are we able to face up to a catastrophe that is of our own creation?”

Anote Tong is the former president of Kiribati. This article first appeared on UNEP’s Medium page.

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Data from NASA suggests May’s temperatures were the hottest for that month globally and made it the warmest northern hemisphere spring on record.

“The state of the climate so far this year gives us much cause for alarm,” said David Carlson, head of the World Meteorological Organisation’s climate research programme.

“Exceptionally high temperatures. Ice melt rates in March and May that we don’t normally see until July. Once-in-a-generation rainfall events. The super El Niño is only partly to blame. Abnormal is the new normal.”

The news comes a day after scientists at the UK Met Office published research indicating global levels of carbon dioxide have passed the 400 parts per million milestone for good.

Severe coral bleaching events off Australia, fast shrinking Arctic sea ice and early snow melt are other signs of a fast evolving climate, said the WMO.

“The strong El Niño – which has now dissipated – fuelled the high temperatures witnessed so far in 2016.

“But the underlying cause of global warming remains greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activities.”

The post NASA: World just baked in hottest May on record appeared first on Climate Home News.

Bouts of gradual warming have spurred parts of the Great Barrier Reef to build heat tolerance, limiting the severity of bleaching and preventing die-offs.

But more sudden increases in temperature seen by future scenarios were likely to skip this “practice run”, the study published in journal Science on Thursday said.

Heat-stress causes coral to expel their pigmented algae, revealing a brittle limestone skeleton. Reefs act as sanctuaries for marine life and buffer coastlines from storm surges.

It comes as the 1,400-mile-long reef off Australia’s north-east coast suffers widespread bleaching, driven by a powerful El Nino and climbing carbon emissions.

Report: Australia approval of vast coal mine ‘evil’ says marine scientist

“When corals lose the practice run, there is no break, or ‘relaxing’ for the corals as summer stress develops,” said Scott Heron, a coral expert at US science agency NOAA and co-author of the study.

“In future summers, bleaching events will occur more often and, without the practice run, become even more severe–with a greater risk for coral mortality and a fast decline in coral cover across reefs.”

More than three quarters of reefs have built up tolerance as waters have warmed, according to the study which crunched 27 years of data.

A mere 0.5C rise in ocean temperature, expected within four decades at current rates, could destroy that protective mechanism, researchers found. The southern part of the reef is particularly vulnerable.

Report: Coral IVF offers hope for world’s threatened reefs 

As Australia bids to protect its reef, understanding temperature patterns was vital, said Bill Leggat from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

“This knowledge will help managers increase the likelihood of coral surviving bleaching events in the future by reducing the impact of other stressors, such as pollution and over-use, at both local and regional scales.

Peter Mumby, also from Coral CoE added: “Our results underscore, once again, the importance of global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We can still have a beautiful reef if people are willing to change behaviour.”

The post Oceans warming too fast for Great Barrier Reef – study appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Flickr/ Oregon State University)

By Alex Pashley

Australian lawmakers have been slammed as “crying crocodile tears” after giving the go-ahead for a mega-mine amid scientist warnings of record bleaching across the Great Barrier Reef. 

The Queensland government granted leases on Sunday at the AUS $22 billion Carmichael mine, which aims to produce 60m tonnes of coal a year for shipment through the delicate, coral ecosystem to Asia.

In recent months, warm waters driven by a strong El Nino and man-made emissions have caused vast tracts of the 2,300-km long reef to turn white. Corals bleach when heat-stressed, expelling algae to reveal a limestone skeleton, which makes them brittle.

The National Coral Bleaching Taskforce says 95% of reefs from Cairns to Papua New Guinea are now severely bleached.

The decision to approve the mine added “fuel to the fire” as it spurred global warming, said Greens leader Larissa Waters. “Crying crocodile tears about coral bleaching while giving this dangerous mega mine the all clear is both hypocritical and irresponsible.”

The decision was akin to “evil” according to one of the world’s leading marine scientists.

“It defies reason,” said Charlie Veron, former chief scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. “I think there is no single action that could be as harmful to the Great Barrier Reef as the Carmichael coal mine.”

Carmichael is the biggest of several coal mines planned for Queensland’s Galilee Basin as Australia meets Asian demand for the fuel.

If fully developed, Greenpeace estimates the greenhouse gas emissions from burning the fuel will exceed the combined output of Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Unesco “notes with concern” the reef is threatened by climate change and coastal development.

Report: Coal protest highlights danger to Great Barrier Reef 
Comment: Australian coal is no answer to India’s energy needs 

Scientists at UCL, a UK university, calculate more than 90% of Australia’s known coal reserves need to stay in the ground to hold global warming to 2C, as internationally agreed.

A spokesperson for environment minister Greg Hunt said the government was “investing more money and taking more action than ever before to protect this great natural wonder.”

It comes at a time of increasing criticism of the Turnbull government after plans to axe 350 jobs at its leading science agency on federal spending cuts.

Leaked emails made public on Monday showed managers discussing a “clean cut” of 120 staff, removing all capacity for climate science. A CSIRO spokesman said the plan was discussed but eventually rejected.

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The Great Barrier Reef is under threat from ocean acidification (Pic: Catlin Seaview Survey / Underwater Earth)

By Tim Radford

Scientists from the US and Australia have direct evidence that the increasing acidity of the oceans is slowing the growth of coral reefs.

In the first-ever experiment that manipulated seawater chemistry in a natural coral reef community, they used a set of semi-detached lagoons – reef enclosures naturally cut off from the ocean at low tide – to run a sustained experiment in which they altered the chemistry of the immediate seas.

What they found was that when they returned the lagoon’s pH value − a measure of the acidity of water − to the marine alkalinity levels that had been consistent for most of human history, the corals grew with measurably more vigour.

They report in Nature journal that they were able to match levels of pH to a measure of the net calcification (how much calcium they were accumulating) of the community of corals they were examining.

Weakened growth

The message is simple. Corals grow better when oceans are at the levels of low acidity that encouraged the evolution of coral communities in the first place.

The rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are not only raising global temperatures. They are also making the oceans more acidic, and, as a consequence, coral growth is weakened. Since tropical coral reefs represent one of the richest ecosystems in life’s web, this is not good news.

This real-life, real-ocean experiment confirms predictions based on climate models and on controlled laboratory studies, and also on direct observations made by members of the same research team in previous years.

But what has consistently bedevilled prediction has been uncertainty about the extent of other impacts.

The planet’s coral reefs have, over time, been hurt by human action in the form of pollution, overfishing and even quarrying. They have also been damaged at intervals by periods of extreme water temperatures, driven by natural phenomena such as the El Niño cycle. So direct measurement of the impact of changes in water chemistry has been hard to establish.

“The only real, lasting way to protect coral reefs is
to make deep cuts in our carbon dioxide emissions”

The scientists measured the acidity of seawater that flowed over a reef off Australia’s One Tree Island in the southern Great Barrier Reef. At low tide, the reef encloses a lagoon isolated from the rest of the ocean

They then added sodium hydroxide to bring the pH closer to what it would have been two centuries ago, based on estimates of what carbon dioxide levels must have been at the time.

The altered water was then they pumped onto the reef, and measurements were taken of the rate at which the corals took up calcium from the water to make their skeletons.

“Our work provides the first strong evidence from experiments on a natural ecosystem that ocean acidification is already slowing coral reef growth,” says the study’s leader, Rebecca Albright, a marine biologist in the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science, California.

“Ocean acidification is already taking its toll on reef communities. This is no longer a fear for the future, it is the reality of today.”

Her Carnegie colleague, environmental scientist Ken Caldeira, says: “The only real, lasting way to protect coral reefs is to make deep cuts in our carbon dioxide emissions.

“If we don’t take action on this issue very rapidly, coral reefs – and everything that depends on them, including wildlife and communities – will not survive into the next century.”

The effect so far is small: without the acidification trend, corals might make 7% more growth. But the implication is that, over time, the entire Great Barrier Reef system could be threatened by ocean acidification.

Ocean circulation

In a second study, published in Nature Communications, a team led by Mathieu Mongin, a biogeochemical modeller at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Hobart, Tasmania, used a computer model based on ocean circulation and biogeochemistry and other data from 3,581 reefs to confirm the hazard.

Their results also indicate the complexity of the problem. Corals build their skeletons with a form of calcium carbonate called aragonite, and the change in ocean chemistry is steadily lowering the aragonite saturation state of the reef waters.

However, these levels are not uniform, and the latest study suggests that the corals upstream – that is, to the north and on the ocean edge – could be making the most of the available calcium, while those further inshore and to the south get less, and are therefore increasingly at risk of eventual dissolution.

“In other words, good coral health in the outer reefs, especially in the northern and southern regions, creates less favourable conditions for the mid-lagoon central reefs,” Dr Mongin reports.

This article was produced by Climate News Network

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Jamie Craggs – aquarium curator at the Horniman Museum alongside coral specimens from Singapore (Pic: Ed King)

By Ed King

A small laboratory nestling in the bowels of one of London’s more eccentric museums is an unlikely venue for a breakthrough scientists hope can help save the world’s coral reefs.

Perched on a hill in South East London, the Horniman is best known for its collection of stuffed animals – including a giant walrus – and a vast display of musical instruments.

But tucked away from prying eyes, a team of four led by aquarium curator Jamie Craggs have become the first British scientists to use IVF to artificially reproduce coral.

It is not the first time this has been done globally. What makes this achievement unique is the team appear to have worked out why and when corals decide to spawn, previously a mystery.

In the oceans this usually happens once a year under specific conditions, limiting the opportunities for scientists to collect eggs and sperm.

Craggs thinks his team may have cracked the code, which is linked to water temperature, light and feeding patterns.

“There’s a lot of research into the impact of climate change on corals but a reef can’t recover unless it can reproduce,” he says.

“The limit at the moment is researchers have 2-3 days to do all their studies in the year because of these mass spawning events.

“But if we understand it in captivity can we then manipulate the corals using [computers] so we can spawn when we want.”

Craggs in his ‘corridor’ lined with tanks full of tropical fish, corals and jellyfish (Pic: Ed King)

Scientists believe modern ‘stony corals’ known as scleractinians have existed for 240 million years, evolving into around 1500 species.

They are now facing threats including over-fishing, attacks by alien species, ocean acidification and global warming, that some experts warn could lead to extinctions.

Last October, experts at US agency NOAA said a mass die-off of corals was taking place across the world, linked to climate change and the El Nino weather phenomenon.

It can take 10-15 years for corals to grow back after a ‘bleaching’ event, removing a vital part of the ocean food chain and leaving the organisms weaker than before.

How does coral IVF work?

The team first created the conditions for a rare ‘spawning’ of eggs: Nine corals from two species known as Acropora tenuis and Acropora millepora released an estimated 130,000. Using the eggs and the sperm contained inside each cluster they completed eight cross-fertilizations, shaking the mixture in a test tube to replicate waves, a process that eventually resulted in thousands of ‘babies’ now growing slowly in carefully monitored conditions.

“Corals are fundamental to structure of reefs, and a quarter of all marine species occur on coral reefs,” says Cragg.

“They offer a myriad of niche environments where an explosion of life can occur. If you remove the corals the environment and life disappears. These are the architects of the reef.”

Deterioration in the past few decades has been marked. A study cited by WWF claims 27% of the world’s coral had been destroyed by 2003. The International Union for Conservation of Nature says coral cover on Caribbean reefs fell from 50% in the 1960s to 8% by 2013.

The corals are kept in tanks under computer-controlled LEDs that replicate their natural conditions throughout the day (Pic: Ed King)

Experts are in a race against time to protect the planet’s remaining reefs. And if they can’t save coral in its current form, they may be able to develop newer, resilient species that can cope in a warming world.

The advances achieved at the Horniman opens the possibility of inducing regular mass spawnings, increasing global numbers.

If the success could be replicated, it would mean more raw materials for scientists to work with, more chances to experiment with coral blends that could be more resistant to climate change.

The Australian Institute for Marine Science and the Smithsonian Institute have formed a partnership for human assisted evolution – identifying types of coral that can cope with warming waters.

Still – it’s early days, stresses Craggs. He is working with samples taken from Singapore and the Great Barrier Reef which already carried eggs.

“We need to make sure our method is working accurately. This is one success. The next challenge is to go through the whole cycle in captivity – that would be very special.” he says.

The post Coral IVF offers hope for world’s threatened reefs appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: Pixabay)

By Ed King

Mired in debt, threatened by climate change, the Seychelles last month pulled off a deal to tackle both in what officials say could be a template for future efforts to protect the planet.

The government struck agreement with the influential Paris Club of creditors, who agreed to cancel US$30 million of debt if the country launched a massive ocean conservation project.

In exchange for the debt relief, the Seychelles has agreed to ensure 30% of its 1.3 million square kilometres of sea become the Indian Ocean’s second largest marine reserve.

“We are 155 small islands, but we are a large ocean state,” Seychelles ambassador to the UN, Ronnie Jumeau, told Climate Home.

“The oceans are a carbon sink, and our forests are our coral reefs. No SID [small island developing state] has ever approached it this way before. It brings conservation and development together.”

Report: Warming seas devastate coral reefs in global bleaching event

Around 200,000 square kilometres of the Seychelles’ ocean will be designated as no-fishing areas, leaving fish, coral and rare turtles undisturbed and boosting populations.

The deal is only the third time a developing country has managed to buy back some of its debt from the Paris Club, and it comes with the blessing of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and UN Development Programme.

And it’s easy to see why it appeals to the Seychelles government, which has pledged to reduce the country’s public foreign debt from 150% to 50% of national income by 2018.

Many small nations are being left into a “debt hole” said Jumeau, a result of years of loans from rich countries to aid development.

According to 2014 figures from the World Bank, $1.9 trillion was owed by developing country governments, a figure that leaps to $5.4 trillion when you include private sector debt.

Even the UN’s flagship Green Climate Fund accepts loans from donors, and is unlikely to just rely on grants to meet its long term targets.

For Seychelles president James Michel the deal is a victory that could help the country break a cycle of loans and ever-higher interest payments.

“Through this debt exchange, we shall be better able to protect our oceans, create opportunities for artisanal fishing, reduce our foreign exchange payments, and keep more money within our economy,” he said.

Climate finance: A gaping wound that needs healing

Others remain unconvinced. Tim Jones from the Jubilee Debt Campaign has long tracked what he said are the rank inequalities in development finance.

Debt swaps are “pulling money out of thin air” he said, double counting climate finance and debt relief to present an overly rosy picture.

They also hand power to creditors, who can dictate what the money should be spent on, argued Jones, who said the best way to help poorer nations progress would be for some or all of their debts to be written off.

Still, for Jumeau the deal is a rare bright spot amid the turbulence of his usual habitat at the heart of UN climate negotiations.

“We are breaking a lot of new ground,” he said, predicting this could be the first of many such ‘swops’ that offer a win-win for rich and poor alike.

Climate vulnerable countries like the Seychelles may also benefit from protecting areas of coast that can offer natural protection if and when extreme weather events hit, he added, given the devastation tropical storms and rising sea levels can wreak on economic growth.

“It is crazy when you are going into debt for something that you did not cause.”

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Hurricane Patricia, the strongest intense tropical cyclone to make landfall in the Western Hemisphere, was influenced by strong El Nino conditions, the WMO said. It hit Mexico last month. (Flickr/ NASA Earth Observatory)

By Alex Pashley

A “very strong” El Nino set to continue into next year is among the three most powerful on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

The UN weather agency said it will soon know if this year’s phenomenon will beat 1997-98’s event, which disrupted global rainfall patterns and caused billion-dollar economic losses. 1972-73 and 1982-83 were other strong El Nino years.

“[T]his El Nino is one of three strongest for more than 50 years,” Michel Jarraud, head of the Vienna-based body told reporters on Monday.

“This is one technically ranking among 1998. It may be higher. We shall know over the next few weeks.”

The weather phenomenon characterised by abnormally warm waters around the equator in the Pacific ocean has caused coral bleaching, droughts in eastern Africa, and intensified tropical cyclones, he added.

Report: Warming seas devastate coral reefs in global bleaching event

It was also a factor in Indonesia’s devastating year for forest fires, as dry conditions fanned the flames.

In October, waters were about 2C warmer than average. El Nino is set to reach its peak strength by January before declining in the first three months of 2016, the WMO forecasts.

This year is on course to be the hottest year since records began, but it isn’t clear if climate change is causing El Nino, Jarraud said.

“We cannot establish a link at this stage between climate change and the occurrence of El Nino. What I have said is that we are in uncharted territory because some impacts are interacting with the impacts of climate change.”

Countries were better prepared this time to respond to the phenomenon after the forecasting techniques had improved. Losses of economic output are expected to be lower, Jarraud said.

It comes weeks before a major climate conference in Paris, known as COP21, that aims to limit global warming.

“It is not because of the COP, but because of the laws and physics and the interaction of the ocean and atmosphere. Nature doesn’t know about the timing of the COP, but the COP knows about the timing of nature,” he added.

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Typhoon Koppu made landfall near the town of Casiguran on the island of Luzon on Sunday morning, bringing winds of close to 200km/h (124mph) (Flickr/ Share GK)

By Alex Pashley

A powerful typhoon battering the Philippines is “further evidence” of the urgency to craft a robust global warming pact, the chair of a group of threatened islands has said.

The last round of interim talks before a Paris summit has got off to a rocky start following discontent over the latest draft of a negotiating text.

Thoriq Ibrahim, the Maldives’ environment minister and chief of the alliance of small island states (AOSIS), raised the super-storm before a heated opening session on Monday.

“As if further evidence was needed to illustrate the urgency of the climate crisis, we begin talks as yet another devastating storm churns over the Philippines,” he said in a statement.

Report: Developing countries demand additions to slimmed-down climate text

The shortened text, revealed earlier this month, rewrites a core provision of the UN’s climate change convention that recognises islands’ vulnerability to rising sea levels and storm surges, said Ibrahim. Developed countries demanded additions as the event resumed on Monday.

Typhoon Koppu has so far killed three people and caused 23,000 to flee their homes on the island group of Luzon, according to disaster agency officials, ABC News Australia reported. Officials predict the situation will worse as flood waters rise.

With all the rain, flooding is inevitable – this is Rizal in eastern Luzon #LandoPH #Koppu – the waters are rising pic.twitter.com/YBGQshuErC

— David Shukman (@davidshukmanbbc) October 18, 2015

Hurricane Joaquin, which destroyed homes and crops on the Caribbean islands of the Bahamas last week, and the third global incidence of coral bleaching on record, displayed the need to act said Ibrahim.

Countries must commit to lowering a threshold to avoid dangerous warming from 2C to 1.5C, agree compensation for those affected and stump up finance to address climate impacts, he urged.

“We are staring at a once-in-a-generation opportunity to tackle climate change in Paris.

“But a final agreement is by no means assured and recent history makes it clear that success will require compromise, yes, but one that reflects the views of all parties—especially the most vulnerable.”

Analysis: What role should climate compensation have in a Paris deal?

For its part, the Phillipines made a coded call for climate compensation in its national submission to the deal last month.

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A fire coral in Bermuda, before and after bleaching (Pic: XL Catlin Seaview Survey)

By Megan Darby

Corals are bleaching across all the world’s oceans in only the third die-off of its scale in history, scientists revealed on Thursday.

El Nino and a Pacific warm water mass known as “The Blob” are combining with human-caused climate change to drive record high ocean temperatures.

These hostile conditions are expected to deplete more than 38% of the world’s reefs by the end of 2015, according to the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Recent damage to corals in the Caribbean follows bleaching in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans earlier in the year, confirming the phenomenon as global in scope.

It has knock-on effects for species that rely on healthy corals for food, as well as for people who make a living from tourism or fishing.

“What really has us concerned is this has been going on for a year and is likely to last another year,” said NOAA coral specialist Mark Eakin.

The El Nino weather system, characterised by a period of warm water across much of the Pacific, is forecast to remain strong until early 2016.

A scientist assesses the damage (Pic: XL Catlin Seaview Survey)

When ocean temperatures stay higher than the seasonal average for weeks, corals can expel their colourful algae, leaving only white skeletons.

That has happened on a global scale only twice before, in 1998 and 2010.

It can take 10-15 years for coral to grow back after such bleaching, with the sensitive ecosystem only regaining its former strength after 20-30 years.

While climate change brings hazards like heatwaves, intense storms and flooding above the surface, an estimated 93% of extra heat goes into the oceans.

That increases the risk of bleaching and could limit the ability of reefs to recover from shocks.

Excess carbon dioxide also dissolves to make the oceans more acidic, which slows regrowth of coral’s calcium carbonate structures.

“We have got to recognise that coral reefs and almost every other ecosystem are not keeping up with changes in our climate,” Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, chief scientist at the Catlin Seaview Survey, told Climate Home.

A file fish searches for healthy coral polyps to eat (Pic: XL Catlin Seaview Survey)

There was a glimmer of good news for reefs in July, when researchers reported some success in transplanting corals to cooler waters.

But Hoegh-Guldberg said it would cost trillions of dollars to roll out that approach on the scale required to halt or reverse coral’s decline.

Only global cooperation to rein in greenhouse gas emissions can give corals a chance of survival in the long term, he said, coupled with measures to prevent overfishing and pollution.

Countries are aiming to stabilise temperatures at 2C above pre-industrial levels with an international pact in Paris this December.

If they achieve that, Hoegh-Guldberg said, “we probably won’t experience reefs like we used to over the next few decades, but in the second half of the century, we could see coral come back.”

The post Warming seas devastate coral reefs in global bleaching event appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: NOAA)

By Alex Pashley

Barack Obama stepped up US efforts to promote sustainable fisheries and reduce marine pollution on Monday, as he vowed not to leave a planet beyond repair for future generations.

“Economies, livelihoods, foods all depend on our ocean, and yet we know that our actions are changing them,” he said in a video address to be screened at the second Our Ocean conference, launched by the US last year.

“Greenhouse gas emissions are making our seas warmer and more acidic. Marine pollution harms fish and wildlife affecting the entire food chain. Illegal fishing depletes the world’s fisheries. Because this affects every part of the world, we all have to play our part at home.”

Report: Earth’s oceans have economic value of $24 trillion, says WWF

The US said it would protect an 875-square mile shipwrecked-lined area of Lake Michigan and the ecologically-rich tidal waters of Maryland, according to a White House factsheet.

The country would also take on illegal fishing and assist developing countries to stop the practice.

Last year, President Obama signed a proclamation to create the world’s largest marine reserve off-limits to fishing in remote Pacific Islands.

Oceans are acidifying at a rate 10-100 times faster than any point in the last 55 million years, the factsheet added.

The Democrat leader has propelled climate action to the top of his agenda, and in August unveiled flagship climate legislation to slash power plant emissions.

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Corals turned pale on warming waters in the Indian Ocean in April (Credit: Living Oceans Foundation)

By Alex Pashley

Coral bleaching is advancing across the world’s oceans after breaking a brief hiatus last year.

Researchers have discovered reefs in the Pacific and Indian oceans have whitened – and the Caribbean is expected to follow as the northern hemisphere flips to summer.

Rising sea temperatures on slowing trade winds are stressing the sensitive organisms to expel pigmented algae in their tissues.

“We’re in the midst of what is likely to be only the third time we’ve had coral bleaching as one big warming event sweeps through the world’s oceans,” Mark Eakin at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told RTCC.

Report: El Nino likely to ensure 2015 breaks warming records

Bleaching occurs when corals face stress due to changes in nutrients, light and temperature, but it’s only the latter that can cause widespread damage.

Deprived of a main food source, reefs could become brittle skeletons. Storm surges then skittle these nurseries for diverse marine life.

In 1998, the worst event on record, hotter waters through the El Nino phenomenon killed 16% of the world’s coral. In 2010, another El Nino year, saw bleaching from the Seychelles to Panama.

And with scientists predicting a moderate El Nino this year corals are braced for more trouble.

NOAA sees global bleaching in 2015, though not as severe as 2010 (Credit: NOAA)

In mid-2014 doldrum-like conditions impacted reefs in Guam and the Mariana Islands in the Pacific, and have spread to the Indian Ocean this year, said Eakin, a coordinator at NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch.

On June 2 the federal agency declared “a full-fledged global bleaching event” was “likely”, though less than severe than 2010.

Report: Corals everywhere could lose their colour in 2015

Andrew Bruckner at the Living Oceans Foundation caught this firsthand.

Diving in March and April in the atolls of the British Indian Ocean Territory, observations were alarming at some reefs the institute’s chief scientist told RTCC.

“During March we saw no bleaching whatsoever, the water was basically around its seasonal maximum temperature of 29C. Though we came back nine days later and started to see coral getting pale quick,” he said.

On one dive in the Salomon Atoll, Bruckner documented corals turning a kaleidoscope of colours as they produced fluorescent pigments while bleaching as temperatures reached up to 32C at up to 35 metres depth.

“While beautiful, this wasn’t normal,” he added.

Bruckner described the corals as “coloured popcorn” as bleaching was most severe at shallower depths (credit: Living Oceans Foundation)

For now, time and research is needed to assess the true impact. Colder waters through currents in June have brought relief as temperatures subsided.

Corals can grow back after states of ‘mortality’, though frequent warming events stunt the natural replenishment of healthy reefs.

After chronic bleaching in 1998, a study showed of 21 reefs in the Maldives, just 12 grew back. Meanwhile on the Chagos archipelago where Bruckner’s team carried out surveys all had recovered by 2006, in part due to its remoteness.

“With two years of reproductive failure you’ve just effectively lost all the new baby coral that were coming through,” he said.

“Coral are the foundation of reefs which protect from storms and provide habitat. Think of tropical rainforests, coral are the equivalent to the trees.”

In Australia, the government and campaigners are tussling over plans to build a coal port that would busy shipping lanes through the Great Barrier Reef.

UNESCO may still declare the world’s largest reef as “in danger”. In Mexico, parts of the Mesoamerican reef are at risk due to port expansion in the city of Veracruz, according to environmental lawyers AIDA Americas.

Divers survey the extent of bleaching in the Chagos archipelago (Credit: Living Oceans Foundation)

Though the onset of monsoon season is causing concern as strong currents could break frail coral.

Report: Coral v coal: Is the Great Barrier Reef in danger?

NOAA doesn’t think this year will be as severe as 2010 due to a weaker El Nino. However some locations like the Caribbean and Hawaii may fare worse than before.

For both, the link with global warming is clear.

Changing water chemistry as oceans absorb more carbon dioxide make corals more sensitive to temperature shifts and slow regrowth. Ultraviolet radiation too has an impact as low wind speeds allow solar energy to penetrate the smoother surface.

Waters have warmed at an average of 0.13F a decade from 1901-2013.

Scientists posit the oceans have kept a lid on global warming during the ‘pause’ of the last 15 years – they are estimated to hold about 90% of the Earth’s heat due to the atmosphere’s weak storage capacity.

Though corals have historically adapted to climbing temperatures, says Bruckner. Chagos reefs are bleaching 1c higher now than in 1998 for example, he says.

Report: Global coral reef survey highlights climate threat

But a sudden temperature increase in a matter of weeks, rather than a prolonged  climb, can be fatal.

As almost 200 countries work to strike a global climate agreement in Paris in December to prevent dangerous climate change, the fate of corals hinging on holding down temperatures.

“Until we start to reduce the amount of CO2, corals are going to be hit like this,” Eakin said. “Paris needs to bring some real changes.”

The post World’s coral reefs face third major bleaching event on record appeared first on Climate Home News.

Many birds, amphibians and corals that will suffer the most as a result of climate change are not currently conservation priorities, according to a new study.

Over a period of five years, researchers at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) pioneered a new method to assess the vulnerability of species to climate change.

Up to 83% of birds, 66% of amphibians and 70% of corals were identified as highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change but are not currently considered threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. They are therefore unlikely to be receiving focused conservation attention, according to the study.

Up to 66% of amphibians were identified as highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. (Source: flickr/ggallice)

“The findings revealed some alarming surprises,” said Wendy Foden of IUCN Global Species Programme and leader of the study.

“We hadn’t expected that so many species and areas that were not previously considered to be of concern would emerge as highly vulnerable to climate change. Clearly, if we simply carry on with conservation as usual, without taking climate change into account, we’ll fail to help many of the species and areas that need it most.”

Results

The species are threatened by unsustainable logging and agricultural expansion but also need urgent conservation action in the face of climate change, according to the authors.

The study shows that the Amazon hosts the highest concentrations of the birds and amphibians that are most vulnerable to climate change, and the Coral Triangle of the central Indo-west Pacific contains the majority of climate change vulnerable corals.

“We had to systematically [look at] issues like sensitivity, habitat, diet,” Foden told RTCC.

The study’s novel approach looks at the unique biological and ecological characteristics that make species more or less sensitive or adaptable to climate change. Conventional methods have focussed largely on measuring the amount of change to which species are likely to be exposed. IUCN will use the approach and results to ensure the IUCN Red List continues to provide the best possible assessments of extinction risk, including due to climate change.

The extinction of these species also stretches to the people living in those regions.

“The study has shown that people in the region rely heavily on wild species for their livelihoods, and that this will undoubtedly be disrupted by climate change,” said Jamie Carr of IUCN Global Species Programme and lead author of the Albertine Rift study. “This is particularly important for the poorest and most marginalized communities who rely most directly on wild species to meet their basic needs.”

This new system covers a larger number of species than before because it also looked at environmental triggers that could lead to the extinction of a species, whether it is dependent of other living organisms in the area.

“This was not being addressed in the systems before,” said Foden.

The future

“This is a leap forward for conservation,” said Jean-Christophe Vié, deputy director, IUCN Global Species Programme and a co-author of the study. “As well as having a far clearer picture of which birds, amphibians and corals are most at risk from climate change, we now also know the biological characteristics that create their climate change ‘weak points’. This gives us an enormous advantage in meeting their conservation needs.”

Foden said: “Looking at the species that came out as most vulnerable to climate change – they’re not the species that were necessarily expected. What do we do about it? Obviously we have to reduce our emissions – that’s not rocket science but needs to be reiterated. The species we had been targeting before were quite different to the ones that climate change [will affect] so we need to re-strategise because of shifts in climate.

“The ones that are already threatened by other threats now are going to get hit by a new thing and we should be even more worried about those ones. There are so many species we weren’t focused on [previously] so they’re our new priority.”

Stuart Butchart, head of science at BirdLife International and a key investigator for the study said: “We cannot afford to be complacent about the study’s results. Highly climate change vulnerable species require targeted action to help them adapt to on-going and future climate. Those that already face high extinction risk from threats such as habitat loss, unsustainable use and invasive species are our most urgent priorities.”

RTCC Video: Nature knows best when it comes to climate adaptation, says IUCN

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– The day’s top climate change stories as chosen by RTCC
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– Updated from 0830-1700 BST (GMT+1)

Thursday 8 November

Last updated: 1800

Worldwide: The IEA energy watchdog has announced that it is to launch its first study into the effects of climate change on energy infrastructure. “Much has been said about the ways in which our energy system is affecting the climate, yet very little has been said about the opposite… We think it’s imperative to jump-start a conversation about this issue,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven.

US: The world’s least developed countries (LDCs) have written and open letter to Obama calling on him to remember the people who live in the world’s poorest regions when addressing climate change and to step forward at this year UN climate negotiations and make climate action his legacy.

“When you were first elected president, your words gave us hope that you would become an international leader on climate change,” said the letter. “But you have not lived up to this promise. The framework that you put in place sets the planet on course to warm dangerously, and delays action until 2020 – this will be too late.

“This year’s meeting in Qatar may be our last chance to put forward a new vision and plan to reverse this course. Your legacy, and the future of our children and grandchildren depend on it.” (LDC’s)

The letter also referred to researchers at Brown University’s climate and development lab whose research highlights the disproportionate affects of climate change felt by the world’s poorest nations.

The researchers produced a video to show what they refer to as the ‘paradox of climate change’

The Climate Paradox from Watson Institute on Vimeo.

Australia: It is rumoured that Australia will sign up to a second round of the Kyoto Protocol. Climate Change Minister Greg Combet is expected to announce the decision tomorrow in Melbourne saying that sufficient progress in international talk to make the commitment, with some conditions. They would be joining the EU and a handful of other emitters in recommitting to the treaty. (the Age)

UK: £330 billion of investment is needed in Britain’s energy sector, excluding network, by 2030 to meet carbon emissions reduction targets, according to a report from the London School of Economic. The UK aims to cut carbon emissions by 34% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. The report says investments will be needed to build new power plants, retrofit existing ones with carbon –reduction technology and limit energy demand. (Reuters)

EU: The European Union has stepped up its solar power trade battle with China this week as it launched an investigation into alleged state subsidies for Chinese solar power manufacturers. The EU’s executive body is already studying Chinese ‘dumping’ of solar panels – deliberately selling products for less abroad than at home. (Reuters)

Caribbean: The collapse of sardine fisheries in the southern Caribbean, seen over the past decade, may have been driven by climate change, a new study has said. The researchers found that changes in regional wind and seawater circulation patterns correlated with lower levels of plankton – a vital food source for the fish. (Guardian)

EU: The continent’s governments have abandoned plans to ban global warming fluorinated gases from Europe’s commercial and industrial refrigerators, opting for a ‘phase-down’ approach aimed to reduce the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions to a third by 2030. The announcement follows calls from EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard that these gases must be tackled in a bid to lower global emissions. (Euractiv)

UK: A community solar energy project in Newport, South Wales has announced it has raised £50,000 in just one week, after publishing proposals for the £1 million project. Generation Community plan to build a range of community-backed solar PV, wind and combined heat and power projects across the country, with the Newport project as the first. (BusinessGreen)

Oceans: Researchers from Australia and Saudi Arabia have launched a project aimed at understanding the genetic makeup of corals and how they react to climate change. Reefs are under threat from bleaching from warming water, ocean acidification, storms and predatory starfish, and the scientists aim to learn more about coral resilience and help prevent further destruction. (AFP)

COP18: UK Minister for Energy and Climate Change, Greg Barker has said Qatar will provide the Gulf nations the perfect opportunity to play a lead role in the climate negotiations.

Speaking on his current visit to the country, ahead of the meeting, Barker said: “Bearing in mind the importance of fossil fuels to the Qatari economy, Qatar’s decision to host COP18 is extremely significant. COP18 provides an opportunity for Qatar and its GCC partners to demonstrate how they will play their part in the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while continuing to deliver economic growth and prosperity to their people.” (Gulf Times)

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The researchers studies two fish species including the coral trout. (© Phil Woodhead, Wet Image Underwater Photography)

Marine reserves help to sustain fisheries on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, according to a new DNA study.

The study, published in the journal Current Biology, used DNA profiling of adult and juvenile fish to track the dispersal pathways of fish larvae within a network of marine reserves on the reef.

They estimated that while marine reserves make up just 28% of the reef area, around half of all juvenile recruitment to both reserves and fished reefs in the study area, came from the reserves.

“Until now, no one had been able to show that adequately protected reserve networks can make a significant contribution to the replenishment of fished populations,” said Geoff Jones, lead author of the study.

“The fate of the offspring of fish in the reserves has been a long-standing mystery. Now we can clearly show that the benefits of reserves spread beyond reserve boundaries.”

The researchers focused their attention on two commercially and recreationally targeted fish, taking samples from 446 adult coral trout and 1,154 adult stripey snapper across three marine reserves during the four weeks of the peak reproductive season.

They then examined both species over the next 15 months from 19 protected and fished areas around a 30 mile radius of the focal marine reserves.

The researchers said their estimate of 50% takes into account the expected contribution made by unsampled adults and additional reef area in unsampled reserves.

They also said they hope the latest results will push policymakers and governments to recognise the benefits of marine reserve networks for both conservation and fisheries.

“Most importantly, I hope that recreational, artisanal, and commercial fishers will no longer perceive marine reserves as the ‘fish that got away’ but rather as the ‘golden goose’ of sustainable fishing practices,” said the study’s co-author Hugo Harrison.

Read the full research paper here.

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Photographer: Martin Strmiska
Where: Bali
Publication: Rio Conventions Calendar

Ocean warming resulting from increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is threatening the health of the world’s coral reefs.

This week research published in Nature Climate Change found that the oceans could have been witnessing rising temperatures for the last 135 years.

However, another piece of research published by Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation found that come coral reefs could be better equipped to face these warmer temperatures than previously thought.

The biggest threat to coral reefs from rising temperatures is coral bleaching – the algae that coral feeds off begin to die away.

These fragile ecosystems are extremely important for biodiversity, providing a home to more than 25% of all marine life, and for support many people’s livelihoods, especially in developing countries.

The Rio Conventions Calendar is published annually by Entico in partnership with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

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