Carbon farming schemes should consider multiple cobenefits

Seed Daily via SPX: Carbon markets and related international schemes that allow payments to landholders for planting trees, sometimes called carbon farming, are intended to support sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere.

But they will have harmful effects, such as degrading ecosystems and causing food supply problems, if other benefits and disbenefits from revegetating agricultural landscapes are not also taken into account in land-use decisions, according to an article published in the October issue of BioScience.

Brenda B. Lin of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and her colleagues assessed a variety of ways that people have attempted carbon farming. Simple maximization of profit can lead landholders accessing carbon markets to create monoculture plantations, which do not support biodiversity and provide few environmental benefits to local inhabitants.

But alternatives such as planting strips of trees on farms, agroforestry-integrating trees into cropping systems-and revegetation of marginal or crop land can sequester carbon while also yielding a broad spectrum of environmental benefits. These benefits may include, for example, reduced pollution outflow and erosion, and better wind protection, pest control, and pollination....

A christmas tree farm, public domain

How plants respond to water shortages

European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Grenoble): Much as adrenaline coursing through our veins drives our body’s reactions to stress, the plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA) is behind plants’ responses to stressful situations such as drought, but how it does so has been a mystery for years. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Grenoble, France, and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) in Valencia, Spain discovered that the key lies in the structure of a protein called PYR1 and how it interacts with the hormone. Their study, published online today in Nature, could open up new approaches to increasing crops’ resistance to water shortage.

Under normal conditions, proteins called PP2Cs inhibit the ABA pathway, but when a plant is subjected to drought, the concentration of ABA in its cells increases. This removes the brake from the pathway, allowing the signal for drought response to be carried through the plant’s cells. This turns specific genes on or off, triggering mechanisms for increasing water uptake and storage, and decreasing water loss. But ABA does not interact directly with PP2Cs, so how does it cause them to be inhibited? Recent studies had indicated that the members of a family of 14 proteins might each act as middle-men, but how those proteins detected ABA and inhibited PP2Cs remained a mystery – until now.

A group of scientists headed by José Antonio Márquez from EMBL Grenoble and Pedro Luis Rodriguez from CSIC looked at one member of this family, a protein called PYR1. When they used X-ray crystallography to determine its 3-dimensional structure, the scientists found that the protein looks like a hand. In the absence of ABA, the hand remains open, but when ABA is present it nestles in the palm of the PYR1 hand, which closes over the hormone as if holding a ball, thereby enabling a PP2C molecule to sit on top of the folded fingers. As these features seem to be conserved across most members of this protein family, these findings confirm the family as the main ABA receptors. Moreover, they elucidate how the whole process of stress response starts: by binding to PYR1, ABA causes it to hijack PP2C molecules, which are therefore not available to block the stress response.

“If you treat plants with ABA before a drought occurs, they take all their water-saving measures before the drought actually hits, so they are more prepared, and more likely to survive that water shortage – they become more tolerant to drought”, Rodriguez explains. “The problem so far”, Márquez adds, “has been that ABA is very difficult – and expensive – to produce. But thanks to this structural biology approach, we now know what ABA interacts with and how, and this can help to find other molecules with the same effect but which can be feasibly produced and applied."

To determine the structure of PYR1, the scientists made use of the infrastructure of the Partnership for Structural Biology, including EMBL Grenoble’s high-throughput crystallisation facilities and the beamlines at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, located in the same campus as EMBL Grenoble….

This image shows the structure of PYR1 (coloured ribbons) in its open, unbound state (light green loops) and how it folds around ABA (white rods) when it binds to this hormone (turquoise and purple loops). Image credit: Márquez/EMBL

The Netherlands respond to flooding with swimming homes

Deutsche Welle: Dutch architect Koen Olthuis says it's better for a country that's threatened by water to learn how to live with it than fight against it - an approach that is central to his work. The Netherlands are one of the most densely populated yet also flattest countries in Europe. The offices of Olthuis' firm are beneath sea-level, as is about a third of the terrain in the Netherlands. Water must constantly be pumped back into the sea.

"We pump away about as much water daily as Tokyo and its surroundings use in a year - an incredible amount," said Olthuis, who decided to specialize in water architecture. The architect and his team have developed a concept for their country's future: If the Dutch eventually have to allow water to take over some of the nation's coastal land surface, the wet area should be used for houses and apartments.

Areas threatened by flooding account for about five percent of the Netherlands' surface. Currently, they are protected from being overtaken by the sea through the use of dams. Keeping this land dry costs the nation billions annually.

Near The Hague, a joint public and private project called "Het Nieuwe Water" is underway, which foresees building 1,200 new buildings within the next eight to ten years. Some of these are to be floating luxury apartments. At present, though, there is little to be seen in the area - just a 2.5-kilometer (1.5-mile) slushy field occupied by a few homes, greenhouses and a pond.

"First we will build, then we will allow the area to be flooded," explained Paul van Zundert, an engineer, who will ensure that the residents do not encounter any problems once building begins. "That will be the biggest challenge that arises from this new dual approach to using the water."…

Sea level rise quickening along US east coast

Sandy Bowers in the Philadelphia Inquirer: Looking deep into the geologic past, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have learned that along the Atlantic Coast, including New Jersey, sea level rose three times faster during the 20th century than it did during the previous 4,000 years.

At one location in North Carolina, they fixed the date of the rapid acceleration to between 1879 and 1915, after the Industrial Revolution had taken deep hold, lending credence to the connection between the rising temperatures that occurred then and rising sea levels.

"If that happened in the past, it gives you strong confidence that the predictions of increased sea-level rise in the 21st century are true," said lead researcher Benjamin P. Horton, a professor in Penn's sea-level research laboratory.

Scientists predict sea levels will rise as a result of global warming, "but by how much, when, and where it will have the most effect is unclear," Horton said. "Lots of people are looking at the future," he said. "The problem is, they've been looking at the future without having the information to understand the past."

Horton also can't predict the rise in particular Jersey Shore towns. Still, he and others said the studies suggested a strong acceleration in overall sea-level rise along the U.S. Atlantic Coast, including in New Jersey and Delaware. Levels there are rising not only because of higher water - due to melting polar ice and expansion of a warmer ocean - but because the land is sinking.

…The rate in New Jersey is about one inch every 10 years, faster than anywhere along the coast from Maine to South Carolina and double the rate in Boston or Charleston, S.C., Horton says. "The important thing to realize," Horton said, "is that sea level is going up due to two factors." Not just because the ocean is rising, but also because the land is subsiding…

A 1944 aerial view of New Jersey from Cape May to Normandy Beach. Approx geographic coverage: South: 38.93 deg. N, 74.98 deg. W North: 39.98 deg. N, 74.07 deg. W Aerial flight service: Flight A, 16th Photo Squadron, US Army.

Tighter, costlier water shifting focus to curbing demand

Shaun McKinnon in the Arizona Republic: About 25 miles west of Yuma, across the Colorado River in California's sand-dunes country, construction crews work day and night on two gaping basins that will, inside of a year, add another piece to Arizona's increasingly complex water future.

The Drop 2 Reservoir, a name befitting the project's utilitarian purpose, will collect the dregs of the Colorado, billions of gallons of water that seep through the cracks of an imperfect system. The water now flows south into Mexico if it can't be used immediately, written off as a loss for U.S. users.

For its $28.6 million investment in Drop 2, about 16 percent of the total cost, Arizona will receive a small share of the water saved, to be taken in even smaller increments over 20-some years. California and Nevada will split the rest based on their contributions.

The water saved - up to 70,000 acre-feet each year - will amount to barely one-half of 1 percent of the river's annual flow. Arizona's share, 100,000 acre-feet by 2036, is a few drops in the bucket for a state that in a year uses 7 million acre-feet. (An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons, enough to serve two average households for one year.)

But as demand for water creeps steadily past the supply available, no drop is too small, even if capturing it requires a giant hole in the desert. The question is whether that solution - spending millions of dollars to squeeze more water from a finite resource - is still the right one…

Yuma, Arizona from space, courtesy of NASA. That green surrounded by brown illustrates the problem

$4.3m for Jordan's adaptation to climate change

Jordan Times: The Ministry of Environment has launched a $4.3 million programme to develop the Kingdom's adaptation to climate change and sustain its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) achievements. The programme, financed by the UNDP-Spain MDG Achievement Fund, seeks to identify loopholes in the country's climate change adaptation process and assess the phenomenon's direct and indirect effects on health, nutrition and human security, according to ministry officials.

In 2000, the UN adopted eight goals to be met by all the world's countries by 2015. They include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating diseases such as HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating global partnerships for development.

…The Kingdom has progressed in achieving the MDGs, but some of these achievements are being jeopardised in light of the country's water shortage, which could threaten public health, food security, productivity and human security, the programme's coordinator, Munjed Sharif, said recently.

…The programme will assist Jordan in addressing strategic issues, including health and water, by ensuring a sustainable and improved water supply in light of a water shortage blamed on climate change. So far, climate change has caused a 30 per cent reduction in the Kingdom's surface water resources, as well as a decrease in the volume of rainfall and agricultural production, both of which the country and the Arab world rely on heavily….

Dated to the Roman period at the end of the 2nd century AD, the South Tetrapylon in Jordan is the intersection of Jerash's Cardo with the first cross street. Shot by David Bjorgen, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

Venice underwater

Focus Information Agency: More than half of Venice was under water Wednesday as two days of driving rain helped push the acqua alta (high water) to 143 cm above sea level, a record for the year and the 11th-biggest since records began, Rai Radio 1 reported.

Venetians were getting about on pontoon walkways in the estimated 56% of the city that was flooded, including St Mark's Square and the historic centre. "As well as the rain, which played a big part, strong sirocco winds swelled the flood tide, combining to bring one of the biggest recent events", experts said. The first big tide of the year was on November 30 when the water rose 131cm above normal. When the waters get that high some 43% of the city surface is under water.

Next month, experts say, forecast bouts of more heavy rain could push the sea level to 150cm above normal, the highest acqua alta since 156cm last December, 158cm in December 1986 and 166cm in December 1979. The record acqua alta was in the great flood of 1966, at 194cm, when flood waters caused huge damage. Levels of 120-140 cm above sea level are quite common in the lagoon city, which is well-equipped to cope with its rafts of pontoon walkways.

But anything much higher than 150cm risks swamping the city and washing the walkways away. The high-water threat has been increasing in recent years as heavier rains have hit northern Italy due to climate change, weather experts say. Scientists have conceived various ways of warding off the waters since the catastrophic 1966 flood and a system of moveable flood barriers called MOSE is being installed after years of polemics. Experts say there are three main reasons for high water in the city: the rising floor in the lagoon caused by incoming silt; the undermining of the islands by the extraction of methane gas in the sea off Venice; and the overall increase in sea levels caused by global warming….

High tide in Venice, shot by Paolo da Reggio, who has generously released the image into the public domain

Stormwater success stories on EPA website

Environment News Network: A collection of stormwater success stories on a new U.S. EPA website are intended to inform and educate stakeholders about the benefits of developing pollution reduction budgets, called total maximum daily loads, TMDLs, to protect and restore water quality in their own watersheds. The site provides both sound byte fact sheets that are one to two pages long, as well as technical fact sheets of four to five pages, that are representative of TMDLs prepared by states around the country.

For example, oyster lovers and residents near Virginia Beach, Virginia remember a time when oysters from the Lynnhaven Bay watershed were a delicacy served to dignitaries. But high bacteria levels in the Lynnhaven Bay watershed forced the Virginia Health Department to shut down almost all of the shellfish areas for decades, until recently.

Implementing the Lynnhaven Bay, Broad Bay, and Linkhorn Bay fecal coliform TMDL for shellfish areas has helped to reduce bacteria levels. Management actions targeted sources of bacteria such as boating activities, on-site sewer systems, agricultural areas, and pet waste to slash bacteria levels. As a result, Lynnhaven Bay watershed shellfish areas are reopening and Lynnhaven oysters are returning as an edible, marketable natural resource on local restaurant menus.

The new website offers fact sheets illustrating how stakeholders can get involved in identifying and cleaning up waters that fail to meet their state's water quality standards. The fact sheets show what benefits people can enjoy with cleaner waters, such as enhancements to recreation or better quality drinking water supplies….

Map of the Lynnhaven River area of northern Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States. Map from United States Geological Survey

Early flood warning system for Himalayan states

Rina Saeed Khan in Dawn.com (Pakistan): The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) tried to bring together the various Himalayan countries (India, China, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh) on one platform at the recently concluded COP 15, although it has not been easy given their history of conflicts instead of cooperation. Pakistan is a member country and its villages in Chitral and the Northern Areas face increasing threats from climate change in the years to come.

They are particularly vulnerable to glacier outburst flooding and river/stream flooding as snow and ice melt faster than before. ICIMOD’s attempts to draw attention to this remote region have resulted in some positive actions and on Tuesday ICIMOD and the government of Finland announced that they had signed an agreement (dated 15th December) on a collaborative project to establish a regional flood information system in the Hindukush-Himalayan region.

Finland is providing a maximum of 2 million euros over three years (2009-2012) for the project which will be implemented by ICIMOD in close collaboration with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the six regional partner countries. The long-term goal is to minimise the loss of lives and livelihoods by providing timely warning of floods and thus reduce flood vulnerability in the region, which includes the Indus river basin….

The Indus River in flood, shot by Deeptrivia, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

The connection between dams and precipitation

At the ASCE Research Library, you can find a recent piece from the Natural Hazards Review called “On the Empirical Relationship between Large Dams and the Alteration in Extreme Precipitation”: This study looks at the empirical relationship between the presence of large dams and the potential alteration in extreme precipitation patterns in their vicinity. The global analysis indicates that extreme precipitation has altered considerably more than mean precipitation during the last century. We found this alteration to be more pronounced during the postdam period where the 99th percentile of precipitation experienced an average of 4% increase per year in magnitude. While the density of dams within a given radius did not correlate tangibly with the change in the percentile value, the frequency of rain (average number of rainy days per year) was found to have twice as much correlation during the post-dam period than during the pre-dam period.

In general, dams in the regions of Southern Africa, India, Western US and Central Asia were found to have increased extreme precipitation more than other regions. It also appeared that large dams alter extreme precipitation patterns more in the arid/semi-arid regions more than other places. The study confirms that the impact of large dams on extreme precipitation is clearly a function of surrounding meso-scale and land-use conditions and that more research is necessary to gain insights on the physical mechanisms of precipitation alteration by dams.

What is needed hereafter to understand how a reservoir triggers changes in precipitation patterns and affects dam safety is a coupled land-atmosphere modeling approach. Due to the interactions of the atmospheric processes with surface water, understanding and predicting the effect that human-modified, flood-frequency behavior has on sustainable dam design and reservoir operations cannot be achieved by stand-alone hydrologic-hydraulic models as has been historically pursued by the engineering profession….

Glen Canyon Dam , Lake Powell, Arizona, shot by PRA, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Chile’s glaciers at center stage in climate change research and adaptation

Jeremy Valeriote in the Santiago Times via El Mercurio (Chile): Chile will be the focus of international attention in February when Valdivia’s Center for Scientific Studies (CECS) hosts an international conference of more than 150 experts on glaciers and climate change. Glaciers provide a first line for monitoring the effects wrought by climate change and there are some 4,000 glaciers in Chile.

Chilean glaciologist Andres Rivera – from CECS - was one of a team of scientists to publish findings this month confirming that the volume of ice in the Andes, the Alps and Alaska is decreasing, and that very few mountain glaciers in these areas will remain at the end of the century.

While not entirely new, the report helped consolidate previous data and was presented along with confirmation of decreasing ice volumes in the Arctic and Greenland contributing to faster-than-predicted sea level rise. Rivera’s work has helped put Chile at the forefront of climate change study. He is co-author of the chapter on global mountain glaciers for a report presented last week at the Copenhagen climate change summit entitled “Melting Ice and Snow: A Call to Action”.

In related news from the north, a new study revealed a surprise number of rock glaciers in the northern Chilean Andes. Over 1500 rock glaciers, 628 in the Aconcagua basin alone, have been confirmed by Catholic University geographers. The study was commissioned by the government’s water oversight agency – the DGA - to better understand water supply issues during Chile’s dry season.

Rock glaciers are difficult to identify visually because they are often below the ground surface and consist of more than 60 percent broken rock and other debris. They also move more slowly than normal ice glaciers, of which there are 3500 in Chile, and do not present the telltale crevasses that form in faster-moving ice.

Rock glaciers have a distinct advantage: because they are buried and less exposed to changing climate, they provide a protected source of reliable base water flow downstream during the dry season….

From NASA Earth Observatory: This detailed astronaut photograph shows the merged outlet of Penguin Glacier and HPS 19 into a fjord carved into the snow-covered mountains of the southern Andes.The large ice masses visible at image centre have a coarse granular appearance due to variable snow cover, and mixing and refreezing of ice fragments prior to floating free.

How little water is enough in Colorado?

Vincent Carroll in the Denver Post has a few sour thoughts at the expense of environmentalists, but he sees the issues the American west faces, even if he doesn’t like the likely outcome: Denver Water has this quaint idea that it should prepare for droughts. During the last one in 2002, after all, the agency watched as supplies for some customers in the northern suburbs nearly dried up.

So Denver Water has proposed expanding Gross Reservoir above Boulder — raising an existing dam by 125 feet, not building a new one — in order to provide a cushion for dry years and to meet future demand.

Naturally, some green critics are appalled by this prudent planning, and they are turning out at public hearings to denounce the project. Denver Water spends millions of dollars every year on programs to reduce consumption, but it's never enough for those who believe that "conservation" is the one-word answer to every resource question.

… Those who regularly oppose new supplies rarely get around to describing the ideal state of water conservation, and for good reason. In theory, we could squeeze urban water use by a staggering amount if we were willing, say, to charge exorbitant rates for lawn watering or simply ban watering altogether and force all homeowners to Xeriscape. ….Trouble is, while most of us don't mind being nudged into using somewhat less water, we don't want to be bludgeoned in that direction to satisfy the agenda of those who consider our urban oasis a sin against nature.

….With or without global warming, we're going to experience future droughts. Ironically, given that certainty, it actually would be foolish to wring every drop of conservation from the system now because then we wouldn't be able to adapt by cutting back in the face of impending shortages. The tool shed would be empty. Unless, of course, you consider a mass migration from the Front Range an acceptable coping strategy for a water shortage.

Blue Mesa Reservoir in Colorado, shot by Sascha Brück, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Food security in Bangladesh imperiled

Athar Parvaiz in IPS/TerraViva: Unless the world comes to its aid, Bangladesh says the vulnerability of its agriculture sector to climate change could spell severe consequences for its millions of people, who stand to lose their main source of livelihood.

"As a poverty-stricken and densely populated country, we cannot cope with these challenges unless we have a proper financial and technological support from the developed world," said Sabir Hassan Chowdhary, one of the delegates from Bangladesh to the Copenhagen climate talks, in an interview with IPS.

Describing Bangladesh as the most vulnerable country in the world to the impacts of the global environmental phenomenon, delegates from the country are making fervent appeals for international help to prevent further deterioration of its food and livelihood security in the face of frequent droughts, erratic rainfall patterns, cyclones and floods.

The low-lying riverine South Asian country, one of the poorest in the world, lies between the foothills of the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean. "Over the last few days in Copenhagen itself, a number of research organisations have declared us the most vulnerable country in the world to the impacts of climate change. Therefore we want the world to stand behind us to meet the challenges we are facing," said Bangladesh’s environment and forest minister Hassan Mamud.

…"We desperately need the world community to come forward and help us in adapting to the changing climate. And we would like to maintain that the adaptation funds, committed by the developed world, should be in the form of grants, not loans," he said. Mamud said 70 percent of such funds should be specifically allocated to the Least Developed Countries, including Bangladesh. "The whole population in Bangladesh is vulnerable to climate change impacts."…

Fishing in the Sundarbans, Bangladesh, shot by joiseyshowaa, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License.

Earth's vital signs soon to go unmeasured as satellites fail

Lisa Palmer in Scientific American reports on a dreadful situation in space: Satellites aren't built to last forever, so it's not a big surprise that the third and last laser on NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) quit working on October 11, outlasting its designed mission length by three and a half years. Since its launch in 2003 ICESat has been a critical instrument for continuously monitoring how much ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland are contributing to the rise of the world's oceans and how much the swath of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is thinning—both of which are occurring faster than projected.

The loss of ICESat, however, is a signal of what the future holds for NASA's ailing Earth Observing System (EOS), which is dying just as it is most needed to inform decisions and policy on climate change. Today, 14 of the 15 satellites currently making climatic observations on Earth are far beyond their designed life-expectancies, with the exception being the Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM):

* Landsat 7
* Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM)
* Quik Scatterometer (QuikSCAT)
* Terra
* Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor Satellite (ACRIMSAT)
* Earth Observing 1
* Jason 1
* Aqua
* Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat)
* Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)
* Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE)
* Aura
* CloudSat
* Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO)
* Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)

Several of these are expected to "go dark" in the next two years, robbing scientists of critical data needed for monitoring climate change and verifying international agreements, just as a critical mass of global players is agreeing that such agreements are essential to the future health of the world's people and economies.

…Planned replacements for Earth-observing satellites are inadequate, too. The various airplanes that carry the instruments for ICE Bridge, a stopgap measure until ICESat's successor is launched five years from now, have limited coverage. So, consecutive measurements for tracking global ice patterns will not resume until 2015, after ICESat 2 enters orbit….

An image of the Landsat 7 satellite from NASA

New study recommends climate adaptation policies for transportation infrastructure

PR Newswire: A new white paper released today asserts that short-term efforts to increase the transportation system's resilience will reduce long-term costs from climate change and proposes federal policy options for the Administration and Congress to address the impacts of climate change on the transportation sector. A significant amount of the nation's roads, rail lines, and airports are located in coastal zones most vulnerable to climate change. As the world community gathers at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to discuss climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, the study highlights needed research on the predicted impacts of climate change on transportation to address this growing problem.

The paper, prepared by Cambridge Systematics, Inc. for the Bipartisan Policy Center's National Transportation Policy Project, identifies principles and key areas for federal policy action, including climate impacts and adaptation research, transportation planning processes, project development, design and engineering considerations, and federal programs and funding. The paper proposes three main vehicles for implementing adaptation policy: the anticipated surface transportation authorization, climate and energy legislation, and Executive actions. ….Recommendations to Congress include:

* Fund climate research. Authorize funding for the U.S. DOT and its Climate Center to fully participate in a multi-agency, interdisciplinary, climate adaptation research program. …
* Require climate adaptation to be addressed in the transportation planning and project development processes, including: Making changes to the transportation planning factors, supporting longer planning timeframes, and providing guidance on the incorporation of quantitative and qualitative climate considerations and how to address uncertainty. …
* Authorize capital and planning funding support to enhance transportation resiliency, including funding states to conduct inventories of their transportation assets and locations that are vulnerable to climate change. ….

Claude Monet's "Highway Bridge Under Repair," from 1872

Adaptation funds must reach Africa's women farmers

Mantoe Phakathi in AllAfrica.com, via IPS: One of the key components of global action on climate change will be measures to adapt to changes that are already unavoidable. The Global Gender and Climate Alliance argues that specific attention be paid to the needs of women. "With climate change taking away their source of livelihood because of the erratic weather patterns preventing them from farming, women must find another means of making a living," said Rachel Harris, the media coordinator for GGCA.

Women make up a majority of smallholder farmers in Africa and in other developing countries. In contrast to the options open to many men, few women can respond to drought, for example, by relocating to cities or other rural areas in search of work. Women are often tied down by the need to care for children, or social obstacles to mobility; they are also frequently without even the smallest cash savings of their own or assets to sell to bridge hard times.

Rodney Cooke, the director of the Technical Advisory Division at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), admitted that previous funding mechanisms overlooked women farmers. â-¨ â-¨"We've made mistakes before," said Cooke. "Women make up 70 percent of smallholder farmers, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, but somehow funding targets were disproportionately directed towards men."

Cooke's employer, IFAD, is the U.N. agency charged with financially supporting rural livelihoods; the organisation was set up in response to a crisis of food security in the 1970s. â-¨Cooke said there were no clear guidelines attached to previous funding on how women would benefit.

The alliance isn't waiting for a deal to be reached to complain that gender blind funding is failing the women who may need it most. Instead they are initiating proposals that will ensure women are the agents of change, able to create and adopt new agricultural options and explore other entrepreneurial ventures as a way of adapting to climate change….

Farmland in Rwanda, shot by not not phil, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License

Pressures on water supplies make metering essential , says UK environment agency

Sam Bond in edie.net: Even notoriously wet and rainy England will face severe water shortages as it feels the bite of climate change and a growing population. This is the message of the Environment Agency as it backs calls for widespread water metering and water efficiency measures.

The agency has published its response to the independent review of water pricing and metering undertaken by Anna Walker. Unsurprisingly, the agency backs the report's position that most households and businesses should pay for water according to how much they use.

Households with a water meter use between 10 and 15 per cent less water than those without and businesses that pay for what they use also tend to be more thrifty with their water use. The UK is one of the few industrialised countries that have low levels of metering; currently only one third of households in England and Wales are metered.

An Environment Agency statement said: "Widespread water metering implemented by water companies, including safeguards to protect vulnerable groups, would provide a fairer charging system and is vital to help reduce water consumption and avert future severe shortages."…

A garden hose, shot by Nandhp, Wikimedia Commons, nder the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Rise in sea levels threatens California ports

Ronald D. White in the Los Angeles Times: Global warming and a resulting rise in sea levels present a direct threat to the world's seaports -- and many of California's harbors are nowhere near ready, state officials say. Sea levels in California are expected to increase 16 inches over the next 40 years, causing flooding and endangering facilities throughout the state, according to a report by the California State Lands Commission. By 2100, the ocean could rise as much as 55 inches, the report said.

Most of the 40 ports and shipping hubs surveyed by the state said they were not prepared for the rise in sea levels. At the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, rising water could damage ground-level facilities and toxic-waste storage sites, said Geraldine Knatz, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, the state's largest.

In Oakland, the site of the state's third-biggest port, higher water could cause flooding and impede the movement of goods on highways and by rail, officials said in response to questions in the survey. "We need to start planning for these things now, so that we're not caught having to do a lot of remedial repair work 15 years to 20 years into the future," Knatz said in an interview Wednesday….

Port of Oakland, from Alameda, California, shot by Eugene Zelenko, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

New Orleans a test case for global warming

Tom Darden, executive director of Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation, has some pertinent comments on CNN’s website: …Working with the Lower 9th Ward community, with families who lost everything in Katrina, with cutting-edge architects and inventive builders, we learned some truths and made some discoveries we would like to share with the climate change negotiators in Copenhagen:

…It is not enough to attack what causes global warming; we also must prepare to live with it. We must reduce carbon emissions and adapt to the changing climate.

…People will go home, even if home is in harm's way. The pull of family, friends and happy memories proved irresistible for many in the Lower 9th Ward. The common history and culture of any community will keep people living in flood plains, along earthquake faults, and on shorelines, if those places are home.

More people are moving into harm's way. The number of people who live at the water's edge will continue to grow. The Lower 9th Ward is not unique -- more than 50 percent of America's population lives within 50 miles of a coast, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The same percentage applies to the world's population.

…Solutions exist to protect people and allow them to live safely in their homes. The consequences of climate change require every community to make changes that will increase safety and survivability. In post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, we are building affordable homes designed to use less energy, reduce carbon emissions and run on solar power, as well as weather the next storm.

Our storm-resistant features include high foundations to keep homes well above base flood levels; hurricane-resistant fabric to protect windows; increased structural durability to withstand 130-mph or higher winds; and access to the rooftop -- because so many of Katrina's victims died trapped in their attics. This approach should be adopted by coastal-area builders around the globe.

Government has a unique and powerful role to play. Individual actions add up, but they pale compared to the reach and resources of government. We saw firsthand after Katrina how deadly and devastating it can be for a government to fail its citizens.

…It is time for the world's governments to step up. We are facing the most serious challenge to the health and well-being of the world since World War II. But instead of putting shoulders to the wheel, the leaders of the world are busy lowering expectations and tempering outcomes....

Damage in the Lower Ninth Ward, after Katrina, shot by a FEMA employee

NASA Global Precipitation Measurement mission passes major review

NASA: NASA's effort to deploy the first satellite mission to advance global precipitation observations from space moved closer to this goal when agency officials approved critical elements for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission on Dec. 2. NASA gave GPM the green light to proceed to the mission implementation phase in a review meeting chaired by NASA’s Associate Administrator Christopher Scolese.

Building on the success of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), a joint project between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), GPM will usher in a new generation of space-based observations of global precipitation, a key element of the Earth’s climate and also the primary source of freshwater. GPM is an international collaboration that currently includes NASA and JAXA, with anticipated contributions from additional international partners.

"This joint NASA/JAXA mission is scientifically important and stands as a prime example of the power of international cooperation in Earth observations," said NASA’s Earth Science Division director Michael Freilich. "GPM's global precipitation measurements will advance our abilities to monitor and accurately predict precipitation on a global basis. GPM builds on the strong scientific and technical collaborations developed between NASA and JAXA. GPM instruments will also provide key calibration references to allow measurements from a wide variety of other satellite missions, including those from other U.S. and international organizations, to be combined to provide accurate predictions and global data sets."

The heart of the GPM mission is a spaceborne Core Observatory that serves as a reference standard to unify and advance measurements from a constellation of multinational research and operational satellites carrying microwave sensors. GPM will provide uniformly calibrated precipitation measurements globally every 2-4 hours for scientific research and societal applications. The GPM Core Observatory sensor measurements will for the first time make quantitative observations of precipitation particle size distribution, which is key to improving the accuracy of precipitation estimates by microwave radiometers and radars….

Some rainfall measurements over the US taken from NASA's TRMM satellite