“At the 178-nation Convention in Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) meeting, Burkina Faso and Kenya cited the “merciless slaughter of elephants” in their attempt to extend to a wider group of nations a pledge from some countries not to sell ivory stockpiles before 2016.

But the proposal was seen as legally flawed by many delegates and failed to get support.

But Tom Milliken, head of the elephant and rhino team at wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic, said he was more optimistic than ever that tough action would still be taken. “This time people are listening because everything is pointing in the same direction: poaching is up to a record high, as is illegal ivory trading and elephants seem to be down,” he said. About 25,000 elephants were killed by poachers in 2012.

At the Cites talks, 19 nations face bans on all wildlife trade unless they crack down on the poaching, smuggling or sale of illegal ivory. The summit is also considering compulsory forensic testing of seized tusks, so the criminal chain can be traced and compulsory reporting of stockpiles of ivory, to prevent corruption or thefts.

Separately, Kenya attempted to prevent the export of trophy-hunted rhino horns from South Africa. Vietnamese and east European gangs use the practice as a cover to feed the illegal Vietnamese market with the 1,000 horns a year it is demanding. But Milliken said that South Africa had already put an end to the “pseudo-hunting”. There are 20,000 white rhinos at present, he said, and despite more than 600 being poached in 2012, the population is rising.

Milliken said: “It is probably a good idea to keep these [trophy-hunting] incentives for private wildlife reserve owners at a time when they are having to spend more on protection from poachers.” He said, in contrast, Vietnam was doing extremely little to tackle rhino sales.

The Cites meeting did, however, unanimously raise the protection of the west African manatee to the highest level, overriding advice from officials that “scant” scientific data did not support the move.

The slow-moving creature, which can measure up to 4.5m long and weigh 350kg, is found in the coastal lagoons and rivers of 21 states, and can reach as far inland as Mali, Niger and Chad.

Illegal kills can raise $4,500 per animal and less than 10,000 remain. They are hunted for meat and oil, killed as by bycatch by fishermen and also suffer as their habitat is destroyed by mangrove harvesting, pollution and dams. The Cites conference also bid farewell to a series of extinct animals by removing them from protection lists, including Australia’s dusky flying fox, crescent nail-tail wallaby, buff-nosed rat-kangaroo and the pig-footed- and rabbit-eared bandicoots.”

Via The Guardian

I’m so surprised by the depth of research and overall usefulness of the How Stuff Works website. This post on the North Pole covers how to prepare for an Arctic Expedition. It included this nice nugget:

From the 15th through the 20th century, the Doctrine of Discovery was recognized by European and American explorers as the go-to guideline for ownership of territory. The doctrine uses a basic “first-come, first-served” rule — a region belongs to whatever country got there first. Remember how the United States “won” the race to the moon in 1969 by planting a flag on the lunar surface?

Today, the United Nations has taken control of the issue. According to the U.N. Convention on the Laws of the Sea, claims to the North Pole are based on a country’s continental shelf (undersea extensions of land).

In 2007, Russian mini-submarines — on a mission to explore natural gas and oil deposits under the North Pole — planted Russian flags below the Arctic ice. The Canadians were not pleased, mostly because they claim that the North Pole is theirs. So do Denmark (via Greenland), Norway and the United States.

Via How Things Work (really great read)

Currently, climate change refugees have few rights. While international law provides protection for political refugees, climate and environmental refugees are inadequately covered. If they are taken in by a neighboring country, the support that they are supposed to receive is unclear.

Developing adaptation strategies

Still, the international community has been able to agree that countries, especially in the southern hemisphere, have to adapt to climate change and protect themselves against natural disasters. In 2011, a Green Climate Fund was set up at the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa, to help countries adapt to climate change. The fund was provided with 30 billion euros ($40 billion) of initial capital, which is now set to be increased to 100 billion euros ($134 billion) by 2020.

Via DW

Kyoto Protocol aimed for 5% cut in carbon emissions — instead, we got a 58% increase

The controversial and ineffective Kyoto Protocol’s first stage comes to an end today, leaving the world with 58 per cent more greenhouse gases than in 1990, as opposed to the five per cent reduction its signatories sought.

From the beginning, the treaty that was adopted in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, was problematic. Opponents denied the science of climate change and claimed the treaty was a socialist plot. Environmentalists decried the lack of ambition in Kyoto and warned of dire consequences for future generations.

But the goal of the treaty was simple.

“We hoped that we would be able to reduce greenhouse gases substantially, but that it was a first step,” explained Christine Stewart, the Liberal environment minister who negotiated in Kyoto on Canada’s behalf.

The Kyoto Protocol was an initiative that came out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. It recognized that climate change was a result of greenhouse gases created by human industrial activity. The idea was that rich nations, which had already benefited from industrialization, would reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the first part of the treaty and developing nations would join in later.

Although the protocol was adopted in 1997, it didn’t to come into force until 2005. In the intervening eight years, countries set reduction targets for themselves and ratified the agreement.

“At the time we didn’t realize how complicated it would be to get the Kyoto Protocol ratified and for it to enter into force internationally,” said Steven Guilbeault, co-founder of Equiterre, a Montreal-based environmental charity.

Problems from the beginning

Right off the bat, there were problems. The U.S., the world’s biggest emitter at the time, signed up but never ratified…

Via CBC

Michael Levi argues that “the fight over the future of the (UN climate) talks might be resolved… (and) that the UN climate talks still matter.”

Council on Foreign Relations

I’m digging around the Wikileaks cables for climate change nuggets and have found incredible diplomatic relations and global security issues. (Yes, this is what I do on Friday nights, and on one of my biggest birthdays).

I’ve found over 5,000 classified cables that deal with climate change, some of them jaw-dropping. The Saudi Arabia cables especially are stunning. 

My preliminary highlights:

• UK and Argentina are battling internally over drilling for oil in the Falkand Islands
• The United Arab Emirates secretly supported (and ostensibly still supports) the Copenhagen Accord
• China’s political party, the PRC, saw/sees climate change as a soft power bargaining chip (I’m not making this shit up!). China got worried when Obama became president, but countered this worry by pointing out its rising status as a super-power would mitigate negotiations with him. 
• French president Sarkozy renegotiated a security agreement with Djibouti (borders Somalia). Sarkozy insisted climate change policy remain on the table as part of the talks.
• Russia is unnecessarily “flaring” (eg burning) untold millions of tons of natural gas at oil wells and rigs, dumping millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Russia flares this extra natural gas because it does not have the infrastructure to pipe or contain the resource for its cities. For context, Russian burns over double the amount of natural gas that Turkey uses for fuel in one year.
• Saudi Arabia is internally panicked by Obama’s continued strong call for energy independence. This one is a block buster: “Senior officials have pointed out to us that oil is literally the lifeblood of the Kingdom, and that it is hard for them to react to statements about energy independence calmly.”

More soon from me. Cheers!

Geoengineering is, to my mind, an evil way to adapt to climate change. Geoengineering is a set of methods to artificially alter the earth’s climate. These include seeding the upper atmosphere with sulfer particles, creating artificial clouds to reflect the sun’s rays back into space, deploying sun shields in space, etc. It’s all very 1950s. Yet, researchers are taking it very seriously.

In fact, geoengineering programs at universities are on the rise around the globe. I read the geoengineering google group daily, and the technology and debates surrounding its uses have significantly advanced since the cloud seeding story from just a couple of years ago.

There are two core problems with geoengineering:

1. We don’t know if the technology works. The only way to know is to try it out. In other words, geoengineers would have to attempt to alter the earth’s climate by experimenting with it. NOT COOL MAN!
2. Who will hold the keys? It is unclear which country or block of countries would “control the weather,” so to speak. Should China do the geoengineering? The US? Should there be an international treaty? What if some nations object? What if a nation uses it as a weapon? See, here.

The Standford Journal of Law, Science & Policy has just published an issue dedicated to geoengineering. They’re online, free to download. And they’re pretty easy reads. I suspect these won’t be online for very long. Get em while they last!