New wave of planning for coastal zones

PhysOrg describes an event that had interesting material on Venice as well as San Diego: Among the traits they share in common -- proximity to the coast, popularity among tourists, renowned, painterly light -- Venice, Italy, and San Diego also share one all-too-disturbing similarity: They are both in considerable danger if climate change leads to a predicted rise in sea levels.

At the most recent installment of an ongoing series of Greenovation Forums at the University of California, San Diego, a panel of experts warned of the potential threats to both cities and discussed ongoing methods for mitigating and adapting to risks posed by climate change and rising ocean levels.

Titled "Rising Seas: Adaptation Strategies for Coastal Bays and Lagoons," the forum was held last week at the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and featured speakers Christina Nasci, a research associate with both the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) at UCSD and a marine biologist with the Environment and Territory Division at the Venice-based Thetis S.P.A.; Sam Iacobellis, a research specialist and senior lecturer at SIO; and Michelle White, manager of the Green Port Program for the Port of San Diego.

Nasci's presentation to a standing-room-only audience painted a disconcerting yet hopeful portrait of an ancient city under siege by its surrounding waters. She said that over time, changes in sea levels, land subsidence, erosion and wave motion have caused more frequent and intense floodwaters in Venice, resulting in near-daily flooding in the lowest-lying zones of the city during the autumn and winter months.

… the pace of adaptive measures has been stepped up, most recently with the creation of a major intervention plan by the Venice Water Authority that called for the restoration of wetlands using dredged sediments, as well as the construction of a Mose system of mobile flood barriers that can be activated for tides higher than 110 cm (and up to 2 meters). Nasci said that since the plan was established in 1992, 11 square kilometers of wetlands have been restored, and work on the Mose barriers (a system of submerged gates installed in the seabed along ocean inlets) will be complete in 2014….

A view from the San Marco tower, shot by Alex1011, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic

Taking disaster out of Ethiopian drought

IRIN: New automated weather stations could boost Ethiopia’s fledgling agricultural insurance schemes, expanding the use of payouts triggered by abnormally low rainfall and reducing costly visual verification of yield losses. Some 85 percent of Ethiopians farm for a living, mostly on very small plots. They have few options to mitigate the increasing crop failure brought about by climate change. With credit hard to come by, farmers may have to sell essential assets or dip into meagre savings to survive a poor harvest and pay for the next planting season.

Such a poverty trap, exacerbated when severe drought affects entire regions, undermining traditional risk management strategies, tends to rule out investment in improved seeds or other costly yield-enhancing inputs. Sometimes it prevents a farmer buying any new seeds at all.

Two insurance schemes have been set up recently in Ethiopia in an effort to break this vicious cycle – and to make a profit. For now, they only have a few thousand policy-holders between them – fewer than 1 percent of all farmers in Ethiopia, and well short of the critical mass required to ensure long-term viability.

The new weather stations could improve their chances. The National Meteorological Agency has just set up 20 (10 in the Somali Region, five in Eastern Oromia and five in Afar) - and another 30 are due to be installed by the end of 2010. The devices send real-time data to Addis Ababa via mobile phone and feed into the country’s national drought index.

"The stations will allow us to identify climate risks at an early stage and better protect vulnerable, food-insecure people in rural areas through innovative projects such as the weather risk insurance," said Felix Gomez, Ethiopia acting country director for the World Food Programme, which installed the stations….

Earth's lakes are warming

NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory: In the first comprehensive global survey of temperature trends in major lakes, NASA researchers determined Earth's largest lakes have warmed during the past 25 years in response to climate change. Researchers Philipp Schneider and Simon Hook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used satellite data to measure the surface temperatures of 167 large lakes worldwide.

They reported an average warming rate of 0.45 degrees Celsius (0.81 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, with some lakes warming as much as 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. The warming trend was global, and the greatest increases were in the mid- to high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

"Our analysis provides a new, independent data source for assessing the impact of climate change over land around the world," said Schneider, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "The results have implications for lake ecosystems, which can be adversely affected by even small water temperature changes."

Small changes in water temperature can result in algal blooms that can make a lake toxic to fish or result in the introduction of non-native species that change the lake's natural ecosystem. Scientists have long used air temperature measurements taken near Earth's surface to compute warming trends. More recently, scientists have supplemented these measurements with thermal infrared satellite data that can be used to provide a comprehensive, accurate view of how surface temperatures are changing worldwide.

The NASA researchers used thermal infrared imagery from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and European Space Agency satellites. They focused on summer temperatures (July to September in the Northern Hemisphere and January to March in the Southern Hemisphere) because of the difficulty in collecting data in seasons when lakes are ice-covered and/or often hidden by clouds. Only nighttime data were used in the study….

Lake Baikal taken at Bolshoi Koty 7/06 by InvictaHOG, released into public domain

Africa to take a "quantum leap" in forecasting

IRIN: Africa has struggled to make accurate and detailed predictions of the impact of climate change on its countries, but the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) which began earlier in 2010, will see the continent take a "quantum leap" in climate change projection, says Bruce Hewitson, the project’s Africa coordinator.

CORDEX, an initiative by the World Climate Research Programme, will help downscale the global climate model climate change projections being prepared for the next assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) so as to predict, for instance, what impact higher global temperatures might have on Lagos, Nigeria, until the end of this century.

This detailed information will feed into the IPCC's fifth assessment report, expected to be published in 2013 or 2014. "The priority area for CORDEX is Africa, as it is historically under-researched," said Hewitson, who is also the co-lead author of the chapter on regional contexts in the report by IPCC Working Group II, which will look at impact, adaptation and vulnerability.

Projecting the impact of climate change requires studying changes in the long-term averages of daily weather patterns and many other factors, and can be a tricky business. To make forecasting the possible effects of climate change as comprehensive as possible, and also make the connection between current events and future consequences clearer, scientists and academics have been expanding the list of variables to include sea level rise and even food price increases and malnutrition statistics.

…Fourteen climate modelling groups have already begun work, taking into account climate data from as far back as 1950 and looking beyond into 2100. Because of a lack of capacity in Africa, only two groups - one at UCT, led by Hewitson, and the other being the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria, South Africa - are based on the continent….

A 1689 map of Africa

Nigeria may face water scarcity in 2020

Tina A. Hassan in AllAfrica.com via the Daily Trust (Nigeria): Executive Director of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), Professor Emmanuel Obot, says Nigeria would be faced with the challenge of water scarcity in the next ten years except adaptation strategies are put in place to reduce the increasing impacts of climate change.

Speaking at a National Training Workshop on Ecosystem and Community Adaptation to Climate Change in Abuja yesterday, Obot said Nigeria is faced with three major challenges in the face of climate change and they include water shortages due to loss of biodiversity.

He said changing climate and rainfall patterns are expected to have significant impacts on agricultural productivity especially in arid and semi arid regions. "Climate change would lead to water scarcity, increased risk of crop failure, pest infestation and permanent degradation of grazing land and livestock deaths," he said….

Next climate warming report will be dramatically worse

Terra Daily via AFP: United Nations leaders will demand "concrete results" from the looming Cancun climate summit as global warming is accelerating, a top UN organizer of the event said Monday. Robert Orr, UN under secretary general for planning, said the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on global warming will be much worse than the last one.

Representatives from 194 countries are to meet in the Mexican resort city of Cancun from November 29 to December 10 for a new attempt to strike a deal to curb greenhouse gases after 2012. Orr told reporters that negotiators heading for the Cancun conference "need to remind themselves, the longer we delay, the more we will pay both in terms of lives and in terms of money."

He said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would make it clear to world leaders in Cancun "that we should not take any comfort in the climate deniers' siren call." "The evidence shows us quite the opposite-- that we can't rest easy at all" as scientists agree that climate change "is happening in an accelerated way. As preparations are underway for the next IPCC report, just about everything that you will see in the next report will be more dramatic than the last report, because that is where all the data is pointing."…

Cloud study predicts more global warming

Science Daily: Current state-of-the-art global climate models predict substantial warming in response to increases in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. The models, though, disagree widely in the magnitude of the warming we can expect. The disagreement among models is mainly due to the different representation of clouds. Some models predict that global mean cloud cover will increase in a warmer climate and the increased reflection of solar radiation will limit the predicted global warming. Other models predict reduced cloudiness and magnified warming.

In a paper that has just appeared in the Journal of Climate, researchers from the University of Hawaii Manoa (UHM) have assessed the performance of current global models in simulating clouds and have presented a new approach to determining the expected cloud feedbacks in a warmer climate.

Lead author Axel Lauer at the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) at UHM notes, "All the global climate models we analyzed have serious deficiencies in simulating the properties of clouds in present-day climate. It is unfortunate that the global models' greatest weakness may be in the one aspect that is most critical for predicting the magnitude of global warming."

To study the clouds, the researchers applied a model representing only a limited region of the atmosphere over the eastern Pacific Ocean and adjacent land areas. The clouds in this region are known to greatly influence present climate, yet current global models do poorly in representing them. The regional model, developed at the IPRC, successfully simulates key features of the region's present-day cloud fields, including the observed response of clouds to El Nino. Having evaluated the model's simulation of present-day conditions, the researchers examined the response of simulated clouds in a warmer climate such as it might be in 100 years from now. The tendency for clouds to thin and cloud cover to reduce was more pronounced in this model than in any of the current global models.

Co-author Kevin Hamilton concludes, "If our model results prove to be representative of the real global climate, then climate is actually more sensitive to perturbations by greenhouse gases than current global models predict, and even the highest warming predictions would underestimate the real change we could see."…

A sharp mountain peak with cloud formed by orographic lifting of the air. A view from Lynn Canal. Shot by Commander John Bortniak, NOAA Corps

A technical solution for Hungary's toxic spill

Terra Daily: Hungary's toxic sludge spill is being called one of Europe's top three environmental disasters of the past few decades. On October 4, an enormous chemical-filled reservoir maintained by an Alumina plant in Ajka, western Hungary, ruptured, inundating several villages with nearly 200 million gallons of toxic sludge. Immediately upon hearing of the spill, CBI Polymers, a Hawaii-based company that specializes in a unique decontamination product called DeconGel, began coordinating with US Department of Commerce representatives and the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, to assist with the disaster relief efforts.

Within hours of the toxic spill, the surge had killed four people, injured dozens more and left thousands homeless. In its wake remains a poisonous path of caustic alkali that can burn skin on contact, damage the lungs when inhaled, and can damage the digestive system, or be fatal if ingested. When news of the disaster reached CBI Polymers President Larry Stack, he responded immediately.

"As a company committed to environmental protection and humanitarian assistance, it was important for us to help with the Hungarian disaster," Stack said. "DeconGel was made specifically for this type of crisis and it was critical for us to be on the ground to assess the situation quickly." CBI Polymers' Vice President Robert Harrison was promptly dispatched to the affected regions.

…CBI's DeconGel, a high-tech decontamination solution that requires no water to use, has been shown to remove 99.7% of Alumina from bare concrete as determined by Inductively Coupled Plasma - Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) in laboratory analysis. DeconGel is also effective on contaminants such as arsenic, cadmium, mercury and chromium-all hazardous elements found in the sludge. Harrison and Papp met with the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Devecser, who approved a test-application of DeconGel. After the gel dried, the group returned to the test site and began the process of decontamination….

An aerial view of the sludge spill, from the Hungarian government

Organic farming mitigates counteracts climate change

Sakina Mohamad in Bernama (Malaysia): It is a tricky situation. The world's population is rising, so the pressure is on to produce more food. Developing countries scramble to ensure food security by prioritising agriculture in their economic agenda. Yet many agricultural practices contribute much to climate change, which in turn affects agriculture adversely and compromises food security.

…For example, in India, the use of hybrid varieties, chemicals and pesticides had increased agricultural output rapidly. Between 1965 and 1996, production had increased by 100 metric tonnes per decade. "However, those who have been practicing conventional agriculture one day found that they were facing all sorts of problems," says Manoj Kumar Menon, the Executive Director at the International Competence Centre for Organic Agriculture in Bangalore, India. He said this when speaking at the two-day International Conference on Climate Change, Agriculture and Related Trade Standards earlier this month.

Menon says conventional farmers found that the cost of cultivation kept rising because the price of chemicals and fertilisers were increasing. Yet food prices remained more or less the same, only shooting up over the last few years. However, it is still not commensurate with cultivation costs. "Farmers are also faced with the continual reduction in efficiency of their resources such as soil, water and labour," says Menon, adding that most of it was a result of the usage of chemicals in farming.

Another problem contributing to the farmers' dissolution is the unpredictable monsoon, rain and other weather patterns that are the result of climate change, which affects yield and undo months of hard labour. "As a result, farmers are no longer interested in farming as the activity is not sustainable. So how can we motivate them to get back into farming again?"

The answer, Menon believes, lies in organic agriculture. "But organic agriculture, in fact, reduces carbon emissions and there is a good market for organic products overseas. This is good news for farmers and the country," says Menon.

….For farmers who are uninitiated to venture into the sector of organic farming, Menon says there are three key benefits to going organic. The first is soil health. … Menon says organic agriculture mitigates [the ill effects of industrial agriculture] by restoring the ecosystem to a healthy one, improving soil condition.

…In India, 70 per cent of organic farmers are smallholders, largely because organic agriculture is less capital-intensive than traditional agriculture which requires expensive chemical fertilizer and equipment. In addition to that , organic farming ensures better return to smallholders, says Menon….

Organic combined growing, in which one species protects another from parasites, shot by Airelle, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Experts urge Philippine officials to emulate Dutch flood control model

Joel Catencio in AllVoices: A Filipino environment expert proposed to the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) on Monday to emulate the flood control system of the Netherlands to avoid flash floods near watershed areas throughout the country. Dr. EstebanEsteban C. Godilano, director of the Climate Change Conference of the Philippines (CCCP) said this during the “Summit on Climate Change Readiness” at the DENR Central Office in suburban Quezon City.

Godilano said the flood control system in the Netherlands is an important development project as about two-thirds of the Europen nation it is vulnerable to flooding while at the same time the country is among the most densely populated on earth.

“The Netherlands is just like the Philippines surrounded by bodies of water. It is a geographically low-lying country, with about 25 percent of its area and 21 percent of its population located below sea level, with 50 percent of its land lying less than one meter above sea level,” Godilano said. He noted that the Netherlands, also just like the Philippines, has significant land areas which have gained through land reclamation and preserved through an elaborate system of polders and dikes.

…He said river dikes prevent flooding from water flowing into the Netherlands by the major rivers Rhine and Meuse, while a complicated system of drainage ditches, canals and pumping stations (historically: windmills) keep the low- lying parts dry for habitation and agriculture….

Allianz warns climate change could hit harder than financial crisis

Insurance Journal: As the UN climate summit in Cancun approaches, the insurance industry is preparing to present its case to the poiticians, business leaders and scientists, who will be attending.

"As an insurer, we are the frontline industry to feel the heat of a changing climate," explained Allianz board member Joachim Faber. He also noted that in "our global industry insurance business alone, 40 percent of damages are due to storms and floods. Also, for our asset management entities, we have to watch rising temperatures. Governmental climate policies affect the value of companies and hence influence our investment decisions."

As a result Allianz, along with other re/insurers, are backing business leaders to ask "governments and policymakers to deliver significant progress in CO2 reduction.
Allianz noted that this appeal "is repeated annually, based on the lack of progress of both the world's major industrial powers and the emerging countries in the race against global warming."

…Armin Sandhoevel, CEO of Allianz Climate Solutions, added: "What is needed are binding worldwide targets for carbon emissions. To reduce CO2 emissions governments have to provide clear and predictable climate policies for the private sector to become active. Otherwise we'll inevitably see devastating impacts on the environment and society that will cause enormous costs for the global economy in the long run. Politicians need to take action, before it's too late.

New revelations in ammonia synthesis

University of Cambridge News: Scientists at the University of Cambridge are working on ways to improve the efficiency of the ammonia synthesis process. With between 3-5% of the world’s natural gas used to create artificial fertilizers, the new research could have major implications for both the agricultural and energy sectors.

Ammonia (NH3) is one of the most important chemicals in the modern world, due mainly to its use in the manufacture of artificial fertilisers. Ammonia synthesis (via the "Haber" or "Haber-Bosch" process) is vital to the production of 100 million tons of fertiliser per year, responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth's population.

In the natural world, ammonia is generated by plants (predominantly the legumes) and certain bacteria, which extract nitrogen from the atmosphere in a process known as nitrogen fixation. Natural nitrogen fixation occurs at ambient temperatures and pressures, but artificial nitrogen fixation via the Haber-Bosch process requires high pressures (150-250 atmospheres) and high temperatures (300-550 degrees Celsius) to produce the vast quantities of ammonia necessary to satisfy global demand. The 3-5% of the world's natural gas production referred to earlier is consumed in the Haber-Bosch process, amounting to around 1-2% of the world's man-made energy supply.

Dr Steve Jenkins, of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, one of the co-authors of the paper reporting the research, said: "The Haber-Bosch process was developed in the early twentieth century but has changed little since that time. Clearly, given the massive scale of worldwide ammonia production, even a tiny improvement in the efficiency of the ammonia synthesis process can have massive implications, not only for the economics of fertiliser production, but also for global energy demand."…

The setup used by Fritz Haber to create ammonia for the first time, at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, shot by JGvBerkel

Climate change puts tribal way of life at risk

Jennifer Cunningham in AOL News: …Native American tribes own and manage 5 percent of the land in the U.S. -- lands that are rich with renewable resources. But Native Americans are disproportionately affected by climate change. And droughts, temperature changes and altered animal behavior are just some of the ways climate change is being acutely felt on reservations in the West, putting tribal environments, identity and cultural traditions at risk, experts say.

…Many in the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes reside on the Flathead Indian Reservation, 1.3 million acres at the base of the Northern Rockies. Temperatures are rising in cold-water streams, creating perilous survival conditions for native fish such as trout. White said the land has become drier, more prone to wildfires and hospitable to several non-native plant species, triggering a decline in traditional ones. Members of the Tulalip Tribes, which own 22,000 acres in Washington, are facing similar problems.

The 4,000-member indigenous group is experiencing a winter season that now ends two months earlier than usual. The six weeks that it normally took for the snow to melt into waterways happens in two weeks. The rapid snowmelt has a knock-on effect. More water flows through the streams, scouring sediment and altering the habitats that salmon use to develop. That creates a schism between water flow and the salmon biology, and threatens the core of tribal identity, said Preston Hardison, a policy analyst for the Natural Resources Office of the Tulalip Tribes.

"For the survival of their culture, they need these ecosystems to be as secure from climate change as they can," he said. But the fear among experts isn't just for the future of the tribes. Lonnie Thompson, a leading climatologist, glaciologist and professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University, said the climate change impacts that Native Americans are experiencing on tribal lands is a harbinger of sorts of what the rest of the world will experience in later years because of climate change.….

A gathering of the Kootenai tribe, in the Pacific Northwest

Raging floods destroy houses in Zambia

Elias Mbao in Africa Review: Heavy rains have destroyed over 200 houses in Zambia’s Kitwe town, north of the capital, leaving hundreds of people homeless. Houses, vehicles, church buildings, commercial properties and roads were extensively damaged in the mineral-rich Kitwe town – about 350 km north of the capital, Lusaka.

“Most of our people are homeless. In areas I visited, people are just covering their homes with plastics and tents,” said Mr Elias Kamanga, mayor of Kitwe. The actual value of damage has not been determined. The head of government in the area said the “calamity was not anticipated” and the most affected were colleges and houses.

…Beginning March 2009, Angola, Zambia and Namibia have faced some of the worst flooding incidents in fourty years. According to weather experts, thee floods that have displaced hundreds are caused by climate change. Last February, hundreds of Zambians had to be rescued from the country's capital, especiall;y after cholera outbreak hit….

A cement-like substance could help the environment

Science Daily: A Temple University researcher has developed a cement-like substance that could help with stormwater management while potentially keeping millions of plastic bottles out of landfills. Naji Khoury, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Temple, uses a mixture of recyclable plastic bottles and soil to create "Plastisoil," a trademarked product he describes as an impervious cementing agent. When mixed with course aggregate and heated, it produces what Khoury calls "porous Plastisoil," which functions like pervious concrete and porous asphalt.

Khoury said that Plastisoil could help alleviate environmental problems created by stormwater run-off because stormwater can filter through it into the ground below. The material could be used to form sidewalks, bike/jogging paths, driveways and parking lots. "We are currently testing the porous Plastisoil to see if could also remove or reduce pollutants like motor oil from the water as it filters through," he said.

The product has an additional environmental benefit. Since it is made with polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles, it will help reduce the 200 billion plastic bottles that are sent to landfills each year. Khoury said that it takes 30,000 of the no. 1 recyclable bottles to make one ton of porous Plastisoil. He hopes to be able to use different types of recyclable plastic bottles in the future.

In addition, Khoury said that an energy analysis shows that it uses less energy to produce one ton of Plastisoil than one ton of cement or asphalt. He added that preliminary results also show porous Plastisoil to be cheaper to manufacture than existing technologies/products….

A cement mixer in Clausnitz, 1962, from the Bundesarchiv

Leaking Siberian ice raises a tricky climate issue

Associated Press: Gas locked inside Siberia's frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. But in the past few decades, as the Earth has warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane — a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — at a perilous rate.

Some scientists believe the thawing of permafrost could become the epicenter of climate change. They say 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, locked inside icebound earth since the age of mammoths, is a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere.

…Climate change moves back to center-stage on Nov. 29 when governments meet in Cancun, Mexico, to try again to thrash out a course of counteractions. But U.N. officials hold out no hope the two weeks of talks will lead to a legally binding accord governing carbon emissions, seen is the key to averting what is feared might be a dramatic change in climate this century.

…[G]lobal warming is amplified in the polar regions. What feels like a modest temperature rise is enough to induce Greenland glaciers to retreat, Arctic sea ice to thin and contract in summer, and permafrost to thaw faster, both on land and under the seabed.

Yet awareness of methane leaks from permafrost is so new that it was not even mentioned in the seminal 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned of rising sea levels inundating coastal cities, dramatic shifts in rainfall disrupting agriculture and drinking water, the spread of diseases and the extinction of species.

"In my view, methane is a serious sleeper out there that can pull us over the hump," said Robert Corell, an eminent U.S. climate change researcher and Arctic specialist. Corell, speaking by telephone from a conference in Miami, said he and other U.S. scientists are pushing Washington to deploy satellites to gather more information on methane leaks….

Sunset in Kuznetsk Alatau, South Siberia, shot by Dmitry A. Mottl, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Natural disasters since 1970 take heavy toll in Pakistan

Sify via IANS: A string of natural disasters, including floods and earthquakes, have left over 3.3 million people dead and caused a staggering loss of $2,300 billion between 1970 and 2008 in Pakistan, said a new book. The book 'Natural Hazards, UN-Natural Disasters: The Economics of Effective Prevention' said that a lot could be done to reduce the toll from such hazards even in the face of increased risk from climate change.

Daily Times reported Sunday that storms, floods, earthquakes, and droughts caused more than 3.3 million deaths and $2,300 billion in damage between 1970 and 2008. The World Bank-UN book said that natural hazards often turn into disasters as a result of poor policies and practices. 'A deeper questioning of what happened, and why, could prevent a repetition of disasters,' said the book.

It projected that damage from disasters was going to grow, making prevention all the more critical. The book went on to say that by the year 2100, financial damages from weather-related hazards may zoom up to $185 billion annually…

We've passed the point of no return

Peter Gleick in Alternet, from his blog, writes about our current Thelma and Louise moment: It's too late. The world has missed the opportunity to avoid serious, damaging human-induced climate change. For a variety of reasons ranging from ignorance to political ideology to commercial self-interest to inertia to intentional misrepresentations and misdirections on the part of a small number of committed climate deniers, the United States and the rest of the world have waited too long to act to cut the emissions of damaging greenhouse gas pollutants. We are now committed to irreversible long-term and inevitably damaging consequences ranging from rapidly rising sea levels, far greater heat stress and damages, disappearing glaciers and snowpack, more flooding and droughts, and far, far more.

…The new Congress will almost certainly see more science pushed out by ideology and hearings characterized by cherry-picking of witnesses and selective use of climate deniers rather than mainstream scientists. As a result, in twenty more years, the Earth will be even hotter, sea levels will be higher and rising faster, water and food resources will be increasingly stressed, extinction rates will accelerate, and our forced expenditures for climate adaptation will be far, far greater than they would otherwise have been.

For example, at the request of three separate California state agencies, the Pacific Institute recently completed a comprehensive assessment of the vulnerabilities of the California coast to accelerating sea-level rise (using scenarios of sea-level rise that may turn out to be far too low). There is already over $100 billion in infrastructure (housing, airports, wastewater treatment plants, schools, hospitals, roads, power plants) and a population of nearly 500,000 people at risk of increased coastal flooding, and we estimated that adaptation costs just to protect existing infrastructure will run around $15 billion, plus high annual costs to maintain these protections. Other major areas and populations simply cannot be realistically protected and will have to be abandoned, with people forced to move over time. And this is just one small piece of the coming threats for one small part of the country. How bad it ultimately gets depends on how much longer we fail to act and how much longer Congress and others hide behind ignorance, political ideology, and religion to deny the reality of climate change.

Dead Horse Point in Canyonlands National Park. Thelma and Louise drove off a cliff somewhere around here. Shot by Jim Gordon, Wikimedia via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

20 African countries to accelerate climate adaptation

TTKN News: Climate adaptation teams from all 20 countries participating in the Africa Adaptation Programme (AAP) will meet in Dakar next week (22-25 November) to step up efforts to make their countries more resilient to climate change.

Higher temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, more frequent and severe storms, less weather predictability, the influx of new pests and disease and rising sea levels are among the effects of climate change that threaten to derail development on the world’s poorest and most climate-vulnerable continent.

The week-long meeting will present the first opportunity for all 20 teams to share their experiences in climate adaptation, identify lessons learned, build on each other’s successes and agree on priorities for the AAP workplan for 2011 that will close knowledge gaps, build capacity and accelerate the transformation of their countries from climate vulnerability to climate resilience.

WHO: 20 Countries Participating in Africa Adaptation Programme: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Tanzania, Tunisia

WHAT: Africa Adaptation Programme Peer Evaluation and Planning Meeting
WHERE: Hotel des Almadies, La Pointe des Almadies, Dakar, Senegal
WHEN: Monday 22-25 November 2010, Official Opening: 13h00 to 14h30 (for full meeting agenda please visit: www.undp-adaptation.org/africaprogramme/)…

An old postcard of Dakar by François-Edmond Fortier (1862-1928)

Coral bleaching goes from bad to worse

Melissa Gaskill in Nature News: The year 2005 was devastating for coral, with unusually warm waters in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea causing one of the worst bleaching events on record. Researchers who monitored the event have now catalogued the full extent of the disaster — and they warn that 2010 is shaping up to be even worse.

Mark Eakin, coordinator of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch programme based in Silver Springs, Maryland, and his colleagues performed an extensive coral survey to record the effects of unseasonally high temperatures on reefs in 2005. The project involved more than 250 collaborators from 22 countries, and compared satellite data with field surveys to determine how heat stress affected the coral in different places.

In a paper published this week in PLoS ONE1, the researchers report the most severe coral bleaching ever recorded in the Caribbean: more than 80% of the corals surveyed were bleached, and at many sites more than 40% died. "Severe, widespread bleaching spells trouble for tropical marine ecosystems in general," says Eakin.

The researchers also saw bleaching in places where it hadn't been recorded before, for example at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico. They also saw the first mass bleaching of elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) in the Virgin Islands National Park. This coral was previously dominant in that reef ecosystem, but has been on the US Endangered Species Act list since 2006.…

A brittle star collecting coral eggs in the Flower Garden Banks, shot by Emma Hickerson

UK flood defence spending 'faces 27% cut'

Damian Carrington in the Guardian (UK): As Cornwall counts the cost of last week's widespread flooding, the government faces a storm of criticism over cuts to flood defence spending. The department for the environment has said that funding over the next four years would be "just 8% less than our average yearly spend".

But Lord Smith, the chairman of the Environment Agency, told the Observer that flood defence spending would be "cut in cash terms [by] about 27% and that will happen immediately".Smith said: "There will be communities that would – if funding had remained in place as at present – be starting flood defence work in a year or two years' time that will now be delayed."

Mary Creagh, the shadow environment secretary, said: "The devastation and anxiety that flooding causes is absolutely huge. We need the government to spell out which schemes are going to be postponed or cancelled as a result of this reduction."

"I am very angry," said Mary Dhonau, the chief executive of the National Flood Forum, a charity that represents more than 200 community flood prevention groups around the country. "Because of government cuts there could be more people dying as a result of floods. I don't think I am being alarmist, I'm just thinking of the worst-case scenario."

Caroline Spelman, the environment secretary, rejected Labour's attack: "Labour pencilled in massive cuts of 50% in capital spending across government, with the risk of devastating consequences for flood protection. The 8% reduction is a much better settlement than this. Until Labour care to share with us what they would cut, their attacks lack any credibility."…

That's the flag of Cornwall

Philippines gets grant from Australia to 'adapt to climate change'

Michaela P. del Callar in Investors.com via BBC: The Australian government will provide P720 million to the Philippines to help improve the country's capacity to adapt to climate change and bolster its disaster preparedness programmes. In the next three years, the Philippines will receive P360 million or about A$9 million to assess the country's vulnerability to disasters through preventive planning and action.

The Australian government, through the Australian Agency for International Development and Geoscience Australia (AAIDGA), will work closely with the Philippines National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), and technical agencies, such as the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa), the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (NMRIA), and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) on these projects.

Australia has also committed P260 million or A$6.5 million to help the Philippines generate digital information and maps for Metro Manila through a survey using state-of-the-art Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology…

Pelletized manure reduces toxic runoff

Seed Daily: There is considerable amount of uncertainty concerning the environmental impacts that animal hormones have on surface water. Higher concentrations of hormones in waterways have been found to cause physiological and sexual impairment in fish and other aquatic species. However, a study from the University of Delaware that examined estrogen concentrations runoff from agricultural fields fertilized with chicken manure found that it is as much about the application of the manure as it is about the measurement of the types of estrogen.

The study was conducted on the experimental plots on the Coastal Plain agricultural soils in Middletown, DE. It measured and compared the amounts of both toxic, free forms of estrogen hormones and less toxic species found in runoff. Corn was planted as a cover crop and chicken manure was applied in either a pelletized form or a raw litter form. Reduced tillage and no tillage treatments were also employed. Samples of surface runoff were collected after 10 rain storms during the 2008 summer growing season from April through July.

Sudarshan Dutta, the author of the study, found that the amounts of estrogen were lower in plots fertilized with pelletized manure and plots that received no-tillage treatments. Additionally, Dutta discovered the entire range of estrogen concentrations in the samples was significantly lower than those observed in other previous agricultural studies. Nevertheless, concentrations of the less toxic conjugate forms of estrogen were higher than the toxic, free forms….

Manure, a field in Randers in Denmark, shot by Malene Thyssen, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Climate resilient communities in the US

Sustainable Business: Eight cities will be the first to participate in Climate Resilient Communities (CRC), the nation's first comprehensive climate adaptation program for local governments, developed by ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA.

The program, launched this week, establishes the first standardized adaptation planning process for communities. The Climate Resilient Communities Program CRC provides local governments with a wealth of resources and trainings to undertake this process, including the advanced Adaptation and Database Planning Tool (ADAPT). ADAPT walks users through the process of assessing community vulnerabilities, setting resiliency goals, and developing effective strategies that integrate into existing local planning efforts. These wide-ranging strategies may include strengthening infrastructure, diversifying water supplies, and planting more vegetation to counteract the urban heat island effect.

All of ICLEI USA's 600 U.S. local government members will receive access to CRC resources, but the following eight "Inaugural Adaptation Communities" will receive additional technical support:

• Boston, MA
• Cambridge, MA
• Flagstaff, AZ
• Grand Rapids, MI
• Lee County, FL
• Miami-Dade County, FL
• San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC)
• Tucson, AZ

Boston's Back Bay, shot by Urban (I think), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

China defends Brahmaputra dam project amid Indian concern

Terra Daily via AFP: China on Thursday defended its decision to build a dam on the Brahmaputra river in Tibet, amid concerns it could disrupt water supplies downstream in India and harm ecosystems. "In the development of cross-border water resources, China has always had a responsible attitude and places equal emphasis on development and protection," foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters.

He added China took "full consideration of the potential impact on the downstream area." Chinese authorities officially started construction of the dam in Tibet last Friday, state media reported. The Global Times said it would be the first "mega hydroelectric power plant on the Tibetan plateau," and feature six 85-megawatt power-generating units aimed at curbing power shortages in Tibet. The project is expected to cost nearly 7.9 billion yuan (1.2 billion dollars), it said.

But it has stoked concern in India, which worries about the possible impact downstream if the annual flow of water is diverted or reduced. The project has also triggered fears over the environmental impact along the river, which starts high up on the Tibetan plateau and flows east and south in a wide arc before flowing into India, Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal….

The Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet. In India it becomes very wide and is called Brahmaputra. Photo by (Luca Galuzzi) * http://www.galuzzi.it, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

UK's Met Office warns of more torrential rain on the way for Cornwall

Steven Morris in the Guardian (UK): Forecasters have warned that torrential rain could sweep across Cornwall again this evening as householders and business owners continue to mop up after this week's floods. The Met Office warned that up to 20mm of rain could fall in many places, with as much as 50mm in some places – the same sort of deluge that caused the floods across parts of south-east Cornwall.

In its weather warning the Met Office said there could be "localised flooding", particularly where the ground is already saturated. David Cameron was in the county this morning to see for himself the extent of the damage. He met people driven out of their homes by the floods in the harbour town of Mevagissey before visiting Pentewan, near St Austell, one of the worst-affected areas.

The prime minister said he was keen to find if there were better ways of giving clearer warnings about the approach of torrential rain. He said: "You can never guarantee there won't be flooding. We do have these huge weather events that sometimes overcome communities but we can do better….”

The River Looe in Cornwall, shot by roger geach, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

High temperatures reduce the load of antibiotic resistance genes

Laura Cassiday in Chemical & Engineering News: Bacteria are evolving resistance to antibiotics at an alarming rate, fueled by decades of overuse of the drugs in medicine and agriculture. Now researchers have developed a method that could slow the spread of resistance genes in the environment by reducing their release through treated sewage (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es102765a).

When people take antibiotics, they can excrete resistant bacteria from their guts and flush them into the sewer system. The wastewater and associated solids then travel to a treatment plant. Farmers often apply treated wastewater solids, known as sewage sludge, to their fields as fertilizer. Bacteria in the sludge can share antibiotic resistance genes with other microbes in the environment. Yet according to Timothy LaPara, an environmental engineer at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, scientists lack a good method to remove antibiotic resistant bacteria during sewage treatment.

Most treatment plants incubate sludge in "digester" tanks at 37°C, where sewage bacteria decompose organic material and destroy pathogens, including other bacteria. Two types of digesters – aerobic digesters with added oxygen, and anaerobic without – select for different populations of bacteria. "A lot of these digesters are operated at our body temperature, which actually is a very good condition for resistant bacteria to survive," says LaPara.

…Quantitative polymerase chain reaction revealed that in the anaerobic reactor, the amounts of antibiotic resistance genes declined with increasing temperature. LaPara presumes that higher temperatures killed resistant bacteria or caused them to lose resistance genes. The effect was most dramatic for the integrase gene: At the highest temperature, the scientists could remove 99.99% of it, LaPara says. In contrast, during aerobic digestion, higher temperatures did not substantially change the prevalence of antibiotic-resistance genes. LaPara was surprised by the aerobic digestion results and plans further study.

Raising the temperature of anaerobic digestion at wastewater treatment plants should not be cost prohibitive, he says, because the digesting bacteria produce methane gas that can heat the reactor….

A schematic representation of how antibiotic resistance is enhanced by natural selection, by Wykis

Cholera could kill 10,000 in Haiti in the next year

Terra Daily via AFP: The cholera epidemic in Haiti could kill 10,000 people and cause 200,000 infections in the coming year, a doctor with the Pan-American Health Organization said on Wednesday. "Our projections show that we could have around 200,000 cases of infection in Haiti over the next six to twelve months," PAHO regional advisor Ciro Ugarte told AFP.

"If the fatality rate (of four to five percent) is maintained... we may have 10.000 dead," said Ugarte, describing this as "the worst case scenario." "The cholera epidemic cannot be stopped, especially in places where there is a lack of safe water supply, basic sanitation," he said. "The cholera could spread beyond Haiti, in the Dominican Republic and beyond."

More than 1,100 Haitians have died since cholera was first detected in the nation in mid-October. The number of people treated in hospitals and clinics has soared to 18,382. The PAHO, a regional office of the UN's World Health Organization, has warned that cholera has taken hold and the troubled Caribbean nation should now expect hundreds of thousands of case over the next few years….

Solid waste has been bought by the inhabitants of Petite Anse (Cap-Haitien, Haiti) to create a road and "soil", after it has decomposed. Shot by Rémi Kaupp, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

As Arctic temperatures rise, tundra fires increase

University of Illinois News Bureau: In September, 2007, the Anaktuvuk River Fire burned more than 1,000 square kilometers of tundra on Alaska's North Slope, doubling the area burned in that region since record keeping began in 1950. A new analysis of sediment cores from the burned area revealed that this was the most destructive tundra fire at that site for at least 5,000 years. Models built on 60 years of climate and fire data found that even moderate increases in warm-season temperatures in the region dramatically increase the likelihood of such fires. The study was published this October in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

After the Anaktuvuk fire, University of Illinois plant biology professor Feng Sheng Hu sought to answer a simple question: Was this seemingly historic fire an anomaly, or were large fires a regular occurrence in the region? … "If such fires occur every 200 years or every 500 years, it's a natural event," Hu said. "But another possibility is that these are truly unprecedented events caused by, say, greenhouse warming."

On a trip to Alaska in 2008, Hu chartered a helicopter to the region of the Anaktuvuk fire and collected sediment cores from two affected lakes. He and his colleagues analyzed the distribution of charcoal particles in these cores and used established techniques to determine the approximate ages of different sediment layers. The team found no evidence of a fire of similar scale and intensity in sediments representing roughly 5,000 years at that locale.

The researchers then analyzed 60 years of fire, temperature and precipitation records from the Alaskan tundra to determine whether specific climate conditions prevailed in years with significant tundra fires. They developed a model relating the tundra area burned in Alaska each year to the mean temperature and precipitation in the warmest period of the year: June through September.

This analysis uncovered a striking pattern, Hu said. "There is a dramatic, nonlinear relationship between climate conditions and tundra fires, and what one may call a tipping point," he said. Once the temperature rises above a mean threshold of 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) in the June-through-September time period, he said, "the tundra is just going to burn more frequently."…

The 2007 Anaktuvuk River Fire burned more than 1,000 square kilometers of tundra on Alaska's North Slope. It was the largest fire in the region since 1950, when record-keeping began. Photo courtesy Department of Land Management

Cornwall clean up begins

Alison Brown in edie.net: A massive clearing up operation has started in Cornwall after devastating floods hit the area yesterday. Hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes yesterday, which saw schools shut down, people trapped in their cars and train services suspended.

Reduced flood warnings are still in place today for rivers in the South West but the Environment Agency say the Met Office predictions should lead to a low risk of flooding from now on. The government has promised help but this will be of little comfort to those who are staying in temporary shelters and feel that not enough warning was given.

In a timely move, the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) today announced that it was funding £2million to improve flood rescue capability. Announcing the new funding, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman said: "We have learnt from the floods we have experienced in recent years that the emergency response is most effective when public, private and voluntary groups work well together - and we saw this week in Cornwall how important it is for these groups to have well rehearsed plans in place….

The river in Boscastle, Cornwall, shot by Martin Stewart, Wikimedia Commons via eograph.org.uk, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Norway unprepared for climate change

Michael Sandelson in the Foreigner (Norway): Norway’s infrastructure will not be able to tackle higher water levels due to future climate change, according to a new report. The expert panel fears today’s maintenance lag will be tomorrow’s financial and health headache. “[Our] natural environment, buildings, and infrastructure are particularly vulnerable to climate change. We currently have major maintenance lags for water and sewerage, structural, the roads, and railways. We are not even adapted to today’s climate,” says Oddvar Flæte, head of the panel and County Councillor for Sogn og Fjordane.

Wetter weather will threaten power supplies and cause major transport disruptions. The panel claims a 2-4 degree temperature increase by the end of the century will result in more storms, severe flooding, and slides. “Their severity depends on how much the temperature increases,” Mr Flæte says.

There could also be increased health problems, though experts believe there is little risk of a major outbreak. A warmer, wetter climate does mean more favourable conditions for mosquito and tick-borne infectious diseases, however.

…Inadequate drainage may also increase the risk of contracting an infection due to a decline in drinking water quality, according to the report. Norway’s water and sewerage pipes are already in a bad state of disrepair. “Contamination due to drainage and overflow problems could cause several health problems. The most common are gastro-intestinal infections [as well as] other illnesses such as jaundice, caused by Hepatitis A.”…

Patent grab threatens biodiversity and food sovereignty in Africa

Hope Shand in the Guatemala Times: A new report by ETC Group reveals a dramatic upsurge in the number of patent claims on ‘climate-ready’ genes, plants and technologies that will supposedly allow biotech crops to tolerate drought and other environmental stresses (i.e. abiotic stresses) associated with climate change. The patent grab threatens to put a monopoly choke-hold on the world’s biomass and our future food supply, warns ETC Group. In many cases, a single patent or patent application claims ownership of engineered gene sequences that could be deployed in virtually all major crops – as well as the processed food and feed products derived from them.

The patent grab on ‘climate-ready’ crops is a bid to control not only the world’s food security but also the world’s yet-to-be commodified biomass. In the fog of climate chaos, the ‘Gene Giants’ hope to ease public acceptance of genetically engineered crops and make the patent grab more palatable. It’s a fresh twist on a stale theme: Crops engineered with ‘climate-ready’ genes will increase production and feed the world, we’re told. Plants that are engineered to grow on poor soils, with less rain and less fertiliser will mean the difference between starvation and survival for the poorest farmers.

To gain moral legitimacy, the Gene Giants are teaming up with high-profile philanthro-capitalists (Gates and Buffett Foundations), big governments like the USA and UK and big-box breeders (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) to donate royalty-free genes and technologies to resource-poor farmers – especially in sub Saharan Africa. The quid pro quo is that African governments must ‘ease the regulatory burden’ that might hinder the commercial release of transgenic crops and embrace biotech-friendly intellectual property laws….

An image of a tobacco plant which has been genetically engineered to express a gene taken from fireflies (specifically: Photinus pyralis) which produces luciferase. TIt is the first representation of a transgenic multicellular organism expressing bioluminescence. This image was first published in a November 1986 issue of the journal Science in a paper titled "Transient and stable expression of the firefly luciferase gene in plant cells and transgenic plants". Image taken by Keith Wood (of DeLuca lab) for Science Magazine. Permission to use on Wikipedia has been granted by Science Magazine, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Engineering conglomerate studies adaptation for Pacific Island nations

From the KBR Newsroom: KBR today announced that its Australian-based Infrastructure and Minerals (I&M) business unit has been selected by the Asian Development Bank to execute a climate change adaptation study. KBR will work to identify the risks of potential climate change to five Pacific island nations, enabling the countries to better plan for and respond to related climatic risks.

KBR's Australia-based project team will work with the governments of East Timor, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Palau and Solomon Islands. The goal of KBR's work is to provide tools that enable better identification and mitigation of possible environmental threats. KBR will study the countries' existing and planned infrastructures, examine how they might be affected by climatic events such as a rise in sea levels, and recommend how they might best be protected from such events.

"This project will use an innovative new adaptation model developed by KBR in Australia, which places us at the forefront of the newly-emerging field of climate change adaptation," said Colin Elliott, President, KBR Infrastructure and Minerals. "Being selected to perform this work, is recognition of KBR's expertise and exemplifies the company's commitment to sustainability."

KBR is a global engineering, construction and services company supporting the energy, hydrocarbon, government services, minerals, civil infrastructure, power and industrial markets…

Mekong Delta faces long floods

Viet Nam News: Thirty-eight per cent of the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta could be under water for six to eight months each year by 2020 as the climate changes, warns deputy Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Dao Xuan Hoc. Ministry measurements showed the sea could inundate 90 per cent of the delta with about 8.5 million local residents driven from their homes, he told a high-ranking conference, a response to climate change, in HCM City last week.

The Mekong was one of the world's three deltas most vulnerable to climate with 93 per cent of the 840-kilometre coast below sea level, said the deputy minister. Sea water had already encroached land; caused difficulties for flood discharge and prolonged droughts. Hydropower dams also affected water flow and reduced alluvia in river-beds.

The deputy minister said climate change was responsible for the high tides in HCM City and the sea encroaching southern Ben Tre, Ca Mau and Soc Trang provinces. The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry had forecast that about 70 per cent of the delta could be inundated and 2 million hectares of rice crop threatened if the sea rose one metre. The deputy minister argued for the building of more dykes and the planting of more trees to mitigate against climate change.

Former Dutch Water Resources Minister said Professor Cees Veerman said the private sector could play an important role in reducing the damage. The Viet Nam Government, scientists, academics and domestic and international specialists as well as business should co-operate to provide an effective response, he said….

The Mekong Delta from space, via NASA

Donors failing to deliver aid for climate adaptation

Laurie Goering in Reuters AlertNet: A promised $30 billion in "fast-start" climate change aid will go largely to emissions-curbing projects rather than efforts to help vulnerable nations adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas, new research suggests.

Only between 11 and 16 percent of the money promised so far by wealthy countries will go to support climate adaptation actions such as building sea walls and promoting new farming practices, according to a report published on Wednesday by the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

Just $3 billion of the $30 billion pledged for the period 2010 to 2012 at last December's Copenhagen climate negotiations has been clearly allocated for adaptation projects in the world's poorest countries, and some of the commitments are in the form of loans rather than grants, the report said. It noted that this estimate was "very rough and perhaps low", partly due to a lack of information from donors. Under the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, donor nations agreed that their "fast-start" funding would be split in a balanced way between adaptation and mitigation projects.

But David Ciplet, a researcher at Brown University and one of the report's authors, warned that, so far, "the big promises for adaptation funding made at Copenhagen are not being met. Adaptation is absolutely crucial for the billions of people who face the rising intensity of climate disasters," he said…