Climate talks fail to set post-Kyoto timetable Updated 18:56 18 November 2006 NewScientist.com news service Fred Pearce, Nairobi
In the final hours of the UN climate conference in Nairobi, Kenya, due to end Friday evening, delegates failed to set themselves a deadline for reaching agreement on new targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions after the Kyoto Protocol ends.
The delay threatens to leave the world in climatic limbo after 2012. Key economic instruments for tackling climate change, such as carbon trading, could collapse without a firm timetable, according to environmentalists and industrialists at the conference.
Delegates from 174 governments have not responded to strictures from UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, who on Wednesday scolded them for failing to respond to the warnings of scientists that "global warming trends are perilously close to a point of no return". He added: "The Nairobi conference must send a clear, credible signal that the world's political leaders take climate change seriously."
"What has been startling here is the lack of urgency from ministers. There is little collective spirit or common agenda," says Catherine Pearce of Friends of the Earth International.
Some government delegates have defended events, pointing out that the conference is early in a cycle of negotiations to produce a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, so big breakthroughs are not to be expected.
Burying carbon
Delegates have, however, agreed to launch a scientific assessment of new technology for capturing and burying carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Britain and Norway are currently trialling a scheme to bury liquefied gas in old oilfields beneath the North Sea.
"Carbon capture and storage technologies will reduce the need for increasing international expenditure on renewable energy since it will provide clean and environmentally sound oil supplies," says Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali Ibrahim Naimi, who backs the assessment.
The technology could in future qualify for carbon credits that companies could offset against increased emissions. But the UN's top climate official Yvo de Boer warns that it is unknown how permanently carbon can be buried. "Who would be responsible if it escapes?" he asks.
In another initiative, Brazil and Papua New Guinea won support for a similar scientific assessment of the potential for rewarding developing countries that acted to halt deforestation.
Focus on Africa
The first climate conference in sub-Saharan Africa spent most time discussing how to help the continent. It formally established an Adaptation Fund to help poor countries cope with climate change through work like developing drought-tolerant crops and protecting coastlines from rising sea levels. But currently there is only $3 million in the fund.
New plans were also announced to help African countries benefit from the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism. This promotes carbon-saving technologies by allowing rich-world corporations to gain carbon credits by investing in those technologies in the poor world. But applying for project approval is cumbersome, and while Brazil has 193 projects, the whole of Africa has just four.
Many rural parts of Africa without access to electricity grids could use the CDM to develop local solar, wind or micro-hydro electricity, said de Boer. But such gains will mean little if the big industrial emitters do not accept their responsibilities.
In the final session, the meeting agreed to conduct a review of the Kyoto Protocol at its next meeting. Some delegations, including the European Union, saw this as a back-door way of eventually introducing emissions targets for developing countries. But in the end this was excluded by a clause debarring the review from introducing any new commitments.
...and another article. A little dated but I also thought was interesting...
Fish farming: the downside of shrimp cocktails
BY MARK SHWARTZ
Smoked salmon, garlic prawns, grilled seabass.
Our insatiable appetite for such delicacies has contributed to a sharp reduction in ocean fish populations. Throughout the world, a growing number of commercial boats are returning with empty nets -- unable to find enough catch to keep pace with the international demand for seafood.
But while ocean fisheries are in decline, commercial fish farming -- or aquaculture -- is booming. Farmers now produce more than one-fourth of all the finfish and shellfish directly consumed by people worldwide.
An aerial photograph of a typical Atlantic salmon farm along the coast of Norway. Farmed salmon are supposed to spend their entire lives in these floating net cages, but millions have escaped into the North Atlantic Ocean where they compete with wild salmon stocks. (courtesy Nils Kautsky)
This rapid rise in aquaculture production "is a mixed blessing, however, for the sustainability of ocean fisheries," according to a new study by economist Rosamond L. Naylor and biologist Harold A. Mooney.
Writing in the June 29 issue of the journal Nature, Naylor and Mooney point out that, "on balance, global aquaculture still adds to world fish supplies."
But, they warn, the growing demand for farm-raised salmon, shrimp and other commercially valuable species actually threatens the world's supply of fish.
The "underlying paradox," write the authors, is that "aquaculture is a possible solution -- but also a contributing factor -- to the collapse of fisheries stocks around the world."
Carnivorous fish
"The industry is growing so rapidly that it's important that people start looking at the future," says Naylor, a senior research scholar at Stanford's Institute for International Studies and lead author of the Nature study.
She and Mooney write that "global production of farmed fish and shellfish has more than doubled during the past 15 years. While many people believe such growth relieves pressure on ocean fisheries, the opposite is true for some aquaculture practices."
Naylor says the greatest potential threat to the environment comes from farms that raise carnivorous species -- fish that eat other fish. These include marine shrimp and popular finfish such as salmon, trout and seabass.
Most carnivorous fish are sold to lucrative markets in the United States, Europe and Japan.
This Atlantic salmon was raised on a fish farm along the coast of New Brunswick, Canada. The average farmed salmon is more than 20% bigger than a decade ago, thanks to the increased use of feed made from herring and other small fish. But harvesting wild fish to feed farmed fish threatens ocean fisheries around the world. (courtesy Rebecca J. Goldburg)
To maximize growth and enhance flavor, shrimp and salmon farmers use processed food made from less valuable fish species harvested from the sea -- herring, mackerel, anchovy, sardine and other relatively small varieties.
The problem, explains Naylor, is that it takes a lot of mackerel and herring to feed farmed fish. As a result, the average farmer ends up using about three pounds of wild-caught fish to grow a single pound of salmon or shrimp.
About 29 million tons of finfish and shellfish were farmed worldwide in 1997 -- a significant contribution to world fish supplies until you subtract the additional 10 million tons of wild fish harvested for feed that year.
In other words, says Naylor, 10 million tons of herring, mackerel and sardine that could have been directly consumed by people or wildlife ended up as processed fishmeal instead.
Another 22 million tons of wild fish also were used for pig and cow feed in 1997.
If that rate of harvest continues, then some populations of herring, mackerel and other fish low in the food chain could virtually disappear from the world's oceans, according to the Nature study. That, says Naylor and Mooney, would have a direct impact on humans as well as seabirds and marine mammals that depend on these wild fish populations.
"The growing aquaculture industry cannot continue to rely on finite stocks of wild-caught fish, a number of which are already classified as fully exploited, overexploited or depleted," warn the authors.
"What our study demonstrates is that you don't get something for nothing," adds Mooney, the Paul S. Achilles Professor of Environmental Sciences.
"It takes a lot of protein to produce protein," he explains. "We're calling upon the aquaculture industry to create a better feed, one that uses fewer fish."
Mooney says that researchers are trying to develop substitutes for fishmeal, including soybeans and other plants. But fish oils, unlike vegetable oils, contain essential amino acids that carnivorous fish need to survive.
Vegetarian fish
It's a different story for fish that eat plants.
According to the Nature study, the vast majority of animals grown on fish farms thrive on diets consisting primarily of plant food. These include vegetarian finfish -- such as carp, catfish, tilapia and milkfish -- as well as scallops, oysters and other filter feeders.
These species, which are popular in many cultures around the world, require only minimal amounts of fishmeal in their diet and consequently do very little damage to wild fish stocks -- unlike carnivorous shrimp or salmon.
Therefore, according to Naylor and Mooney, species raised on vegetarian diets actually contribute to the world's supply of fish.
But that could change dramatically, warn the authors, if certain trends continue -- especially in Asia, which accounts for roughly 90 percent of global aquaculture production.
Asian farmers produce more than 10 million tons of carp and tilapia every year.
But as human populations increase and land becomes scarce, there is less space available to build ponds for carp, tilapia and other popular plant-eating fish. So Asian farmers have decided to grow bigger fish by adding extra amounts of fishmeal to existing ponds.
The result, say the authors, could mean a dramatic increase in the demand for fishmeal, putting even more pressure on herring and other ocean fisheries.
Indirect costs
In addition to depleting wild fish populations, aquaculture also causes indirect harm to the environment, according to the Nature study.
"Many fish farms damage coastal ecosystems through habitat destruction," says Naylor.
She notes that hundreds of thousands of acres of mangrove forests and coastal wetlands throughout Asia have been transformed into milkfish and shrimp ponds. The consequence has been a devastating loss of nursery habitat for indigenous species of finfish and shellfish that people have long depended on in countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines.
Another problem, says Naylor, is that farmed fish sometimes compete with native species and spread exotic diseases.
She points out that farmed Atlantic salmon often escape from net pens and invade wild populations. Today, an estimated 40 percent of all salmon caught in the North Atlantic originated in farms.
More than 255,000 Atlantic salmon also have escaped into the Pacific Ocean since the early 1980s and are routinely caught by fishing vessels from Washington to Alaska.
But the problem is especially acute in the Atlantic Ocean.
"Increasing evidence suggests that farm escapees may hybridize with and alter the genetic makeup of wild populations of Atlantic salmon," write the Nature authors.
"Such genetic alterations could exacerbate the decline in many locally endangered populations of wild Atlantic salmon," they predict.
Aquaculture also has been linked to the spread of disease.
"Since the early 1990s, the Whitespot and Yellowhead viruses have caused catastrophic, multimillion-dollar crop losses in shrimp farms across Asia," according to the Nature report.
The Whitespot virus, which has caused high mortality rates in shrimp farms along the Texas coast, may have been introduced there by the release of untreated waste from nearby plants processing imported Asian tiger shrimp.
Global solutions
The authors say that, while there is no evidence that aquaculture can restore ocean fisheries, the industry does play an important role in feeding a hungry planet.
But if it wants to sustain its positive contribution to the world's supply of fish, major changes must take place in the way the industry does business, the authors conclude.
They recommend that governments offer financial incentives that encourage farmers to use less fishmeal and to raise species that thrive on vegetarian diets.
Agencies like the World Bank also should provide funding to rehabilitate ecosystems degraded by aquaculture and to locate fishponds away from fragile mangroves and other coastal wetlands.
The authors suggest that fish farmers adopt "polyculture systems," in which different species are raised in the same facility. In Chile, for example, farmers grow salmon and red algae together. Body wastes produced by the salmon help fertilize the algae, which is then sold as a separate cash crop.
According to Naylor, consumers in the United States and other industrialized countries can do their part by ordering fewer shrimp cocktails and more oysters or grilled tilapia.
"People can still buy Pacific salmon, as long it comes from wild places like Alaska's Copper River area," she adds.
"We want people to understand the farming process so they can make better choices at the market," notes Mooney. "We're not saying, 'Stop aquaculture!' We just want the industry to be more careful and help sustain the resource we're all dependent on."
In addition to Naylor and Mooney, the Nature study is co-authored by Rebecca J. Goldburg, Environmental Defense Fund; Jurgenne Primavera, SEAFDEC Aquaculture Department, Philippines; Nils Kautsky, Carl Folke and Max Troell, Stockholm University and the Beijer Institute, Sweden; Malcolm C. M. Beveridge, Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, Scotland; Jason Clay, World Wildlife Fund; and Jane Lubchenco, Oregon State University. SR
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