Climate Change & Biodiversity (A Pakistan case study): Impact of Climate Change on biodiversity of Butterflies in Northern coniferous forests of Punjab,Pakistan

Climate change is an established fact but the way and the intensity in which the climate has been changing since 1975 has created an alarming situation in Pakistan .

The last decade was the warmest since instrumental records have been kept in the nineteenth century. Climate change is a major threat to biodiversity by causing changes in plant phonologies and a poleward shifts in birds and butterflies. In terrestrial ecosystem 28,586 significant biological changes are related with climate change. With a relatively short life-cycle and host-plant reliance, butterfly communities show quick response to climate change. Punjab has few coniferous forests which are home to many exotic species. Twenty two years climate analysis shows reduction in precipitation and an increase in extreme weather events. In short span of just twenty years 14 butterfly species have disappeared from very rich forests of Murree. The species which are present are also on the verge of extinction as with climate change the number of invasive species is coming upwards.

by Hassaan Bin Saadat (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Change-Biodiversity-Pakistan-study/dp/3659244716

 

© Climate War Room

A Fork in the Road by Dr. James Hansen

We stand at a fork in the road. Conventional oil and gas supplies are limited. We can move down the path of dirtier more carbon-intensive unconventional fossil-fuels, digging up the dirtiest tar sands and tar shales, hydrofracking for gas, continued mountain-top removal and mechanized destructive long-wall coal mining. Or we can choose the alternative path of clean energies and energy efficiency.

The climate science is crystal clear. We cannot go down the path of the dirty fuels without guaranteeing that the climate system passes tipping points, leaving our children and grandchildren a situation out of their control, a situation of our making. Unstable ice sheets will lead to continually rising seas and devastation of coastal cities worldwide. A large fraction of Earth's species will be driven to extinction by the combination of shifting climate zones and other stresses. Summer heat waves, scorching droughts, and intense wildfires will become more frequent and extreme. At other times and places, the warmer water bodies and increased evaporation will power stronger storms, heavier rains, greater floods.

The economics is crystal clear. We are all better off if fossil fuels are made to pay their honest costs to society. We must collect a gradually rising fee from fossil fuel companies at the source, the domestic mine or port of entry, distributing the funds to the public on a per capita basis. This approach will provide the business community and entrepreneurs the incentives to develop clean energy and energy-efficient products, and the public will have the resources to make changes.

This approach is transparent, built on conservative principles. Not one dime to the government.

The alternative is to slake fossil fuel addiction, forcing the public to continue to subsidize fossil fuels. And hammer the public with more pollution. The public must pay the medical costs for all pollution effects. The public will pay costs caused by climate change. Fossil fuel moguls get richer, we get poorer. Our children are screwed. Our well-oiled coal-fired government pretends to not understand.

Joe Nocera is polite, but he does not understand basic economics. If a rising price is placed on carbon, the tar sands will be left in the ground where they belong. And the remarkable life and landscape of the original North American people will be preserved.

Joe Nocera quoted a private comment from a note explaining that I could not promise I would be back in New York to meet him. But he did not mention the contents of the e-mail that I sent him with information about the subject we were to discuss. The entire e-mail is copied below.

Jim Hansen

_______

Joe,

Here are some relevant words from the draft of a paper that I am working on:

Transition to a post-fossil fuel world of clean energies will not occur as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy. Fossil fuels are cheap only because they are subsidized and do not pay their costs to society. Air and water pollution from fossil fuel extraction and use have high costs in human health, food production, and natural ecosystems, with costs borne by the public. Costs of climate change and ocean acidification also are borne by the public, especially young people and future generations.

Thus the essential underlying policy, albeit not sufficient, is for emissions of CO2 to come with a price that allows these costs to be internalized within the economics of energy use. Because so much energy is used through expensive capital stock, the price should rise in a predictable way to enable people and businesses to efficiently adjust lifestyles and investments to minimize costs.

An economic analysis indicates that a tax beginning at $15/tCO2 and rising $10/tCO2 each year would reduce emissions in the U.S. by 30% within 10 years. Such a reduction is more than 10 times as great as the carbon content of tar sands oil carried by the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (830,000 barrels/day). Reduced oil demand would be nearly six times the pipeline capacity, thus rendering it superfluous

A rising carbon price is the sine qua non for fossil fuel phase out, but it is not sufficient. Investment is needed in energy RD&D (research, development and demonstration) in new technologies such as low-loss smart electric grids, electrical vehicles interacting effectively with the power grid, and energy storage for intermittent renewable energy. Nuclear power has made major contributions to climate change mitigation and mortality prevention, and advanced nuclear reactor designs can address safety, nuclear waste, and weapons proliferation issues that have limited prior use of nuclear power, but governments need to provide a regulatory environment that supports timely construction of approved designs to limit costs. etc.

Jim Hansen

 

© 2014

Assured Mutual Dependence

LONDON – During the Cold War, the certainty of “mutually assured destruction” steered the nuclear arms race away from catastrophe: a would-be attacker would face immediate retaliation, inevitably ending in both sides’ annihilation.

Today, a very different race is taking place – a race for the earth’s vital resources, and it threatens to undermine stability in key regions of the world. The growing dependence of countries on one another’s food, water, and energy requires that the global response to sustainability is taken to the highest political level.

Unlike the nuclear arms race of the twentieth century, the resource-security agenda is not linear. Mutually assured destruction was explicitly acknowledged during the Cold War in statements from both sides. In the race for resources that defines the twenty-first century, no actor is directly or indirectly threatening other players to curtail food or energy exports, but all bear the systemic risks.

Countries have become unavoidably interdependent, and climate change, water stress, and the loss of ecological resilience all increase the volatility of this mutual dependence. In a world of limited and scarce resources, countries and companies will be forced to make decisions that affect one another’s security.

In order to navigate this interdependence, the Earth Security Index 2014, produced by the Earth Security Initiative, shows countries’ combined vulnerabilities that might increase the risk exposure of governments and companies, unless more strategic approaches and sustainable investments are put in place. The ESI identifies four areas of mutual dependence that will likely shape global security in the coming decades:

· Choke points. Countries’ growing demand for energy, water, food, and land cannot be satisfied without incurring tradeoffs among limited available resources. Choke points are reached when the available resources are insufficient to satisfy demand. In China and India, for example, this means that in certain regions there may not be enough water in the short term to run coal-fired thermal power stations and irrigate large fields to grow crops. In China, 60% of planned coal-fired power plants will be built in water-stressed regions.

· Food. The growing dependence of many countries on food, water, and energy imports creates new opportunities for trade and investment, but it also exposes countries to critical vulnerabilities. Australia, for example, is a large coal exporter but imports most of its refined fuels and holds just three days of fuel stockpiles. The challenges of mutual dependence are particularly acute with respect to food. As the ESI shows, some countries – including Egypt, Peru, and the United Arab Emirates – are heavily dependent on cereal imports from a small number of suppliers. Moreover, grain suppliers’ exposure to extreme weather may compromise their ability to sustain supplies, with knock-on effects for import-dependent countries. In 2010, for example, Russia imposed an export ban on wheat, following a severe drought. The resulting food-price increases are believed to have played a role in Egypt’s revolution.

· Teleconnections. Anticipating systemic ecological risks will be increasingly important for sectors such as reinsurance and infrastructure investments. “Teleconnections” refer to weather events that are related to one another over large geographic distances. They are well known to science but not properly discussed by the industries, investors, and governments whose security depends on environmental stability. For example, tropical rainforests play a crucial function in maintaining stable weather and rainfall, acting as a “pump” that helps moisture travel between different regions. Deforestation can thus have a destabilizing effect on weather patterns, amplifying the frequency and severity of extreme events such as floods and droughts. The resulting liabilities to key industries and the financial sector are clear. In Brazil, for example, deforestation in Amazonia has slowed significantly over the last five years, but Brazil has already lost more than 11 million hectares of rainforest; its exposure to extreme weather has also steadily risen, with floods causing $4.7 billion in losses in 2011 alone.

· Land productivity bottlenecks: Agriculture systems are reaching resource limits, and persistent governance gaps compromise their ability to ensure food security, dignified livelihoods, and ecological stewardship. Companies, investors, governments, and communities confront a series of critical barriers to increasing the food availability that the world needs: Local populations’ insecure land ownership; receding water tables, owing to unsustainable extraction rates; inefficient use of pollution-causing inputs like fertilizers and pesticides; the loss of vital ecosystems, affecting the resilience of food production; and certain areas’ inability to cope with extreme weather. In some regions of India, for example, these issues are playing out in tandem. Insecure land tenure acts as a disincentive for smallholder farmers to commit to productivity-enhancing investments; water extraction rates are depleting aquifers as a result of permissive policies; and food security remains out of reach for millions of people, despite rapid economic growth in urban areas. Countries and companies will increasingly need to invest in sustainable land in order to hedge their resource risks.

In 2015, global frameworks are due to be agreed to address climate change, coordinate responses to natural disasters, and guide the world’s development agenda. Some of these multilateral processes – in particular, those seeking an ambitious global climate agreement – appear to be moving in slow motion and against the grain of geopolitical interests.

In the past, the case for high-level nuclear governance was urgent and clear, but required processes for creating a common understanding of risks and opportunities across national borders. Successful multilateral responses, like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, continue to be supported by more flexible global platforms, such as the Nuclear Threat Initiative, based on relationships and trust established outside the box of formal multilateralism.

This year, as world leaders discuss the next generation of sustainability, development, and climate frameworks, they will need to put their security and mutual dependence at the heart of the responses. Here, too, the world will need to create informal platforms that supplement traditional multilateralism.

In particular, the outdated divisions between rich and poor countries and their responsibilities must be revised. As new powers like China, Brazil, India, and other G-20 economies bid to reform global governance systems, their vulnerability to resource security must invigorate these processes. Only then will the world be on track to improve the security of all. More

 

As Sea Waters Rise, Costal Communities in Pakistan Suffer

As global warming causes ocean water to creep farther up the Indus Delta, communities in Pakistan's coastal areas are suffering. A recent report from the World Wildlife Fund Pakistan highlights these challenges.

One farmer told WWF Pakistan he had to start fishing:

“Over the last few years, I sowed seeds in over 200 acres. But now my hands are empty. Only 15 acres is still fertile while the rest has become plagued by the problem of water-logging and salinity.”

Dawn.com reports over half of the population's livelihoods are threaten by climate change:

The majority of the people in Pakistan (between 60 to 70 per cent) depend on the eco-system to survive. A shepherd in Balochistan, a farmer in Punjab or a fisherman from Sindh — all rely directly on the environment for their livelihood. Unfortunately, the livelihood of these people is at risk due to climate change. More

Report from WWF Pakistan

 

Pathways into the Future - Triggers of Change

The 2013 Earth Dialogues will attract leading figures of international politics, science, business and civil society in the search for solutions to resolve the most pressing and interconnected challenges of insecurity, poverty and environmental degradation.

The event is open to members of the public, who register with Green Cross following the guidelines found here.

The 7th edition of the Earth Dialogues will be held at the United Nations Office at Geneva, Switzerland, on 3 September, 2013. The day-long event, titled Pathways into the Future - Triggers of Change, comes at a time of deep crisis in multilateralism, hallmarked by a lack of consensus, and coordinated international action, to respond to rampant ecological breakdown, globalization and disparities between rich and poor.

The UN says clean energy funding too low to address climate change. http://buswk.co/12KfhH0 Clean energy is the future solution to our energy needs, and will be a key topic at the upcoming Earth Dialogues conference in Geneva on 3 September: http://bit.ly/15G7H2W

How can gains in human development be sustained, climate change controlled and sustainability ensured in the absence of a strong multilateral system that all decision-makers are party to?

The conference's objective will be to demonstrate how multilateralism can – and must – be recalibrated to meet these challenges. The event will provide a launching pad for initiatives to bolster effective multilateral action, and Geneva, the cradle for international modern consensus and cooperation, offers a perfect platform.

Five panels will be held during the Earth Dialogues conference on:

• Lessons learned (from Rio 1992 to Rio+20)
• Inclusive and Circular economy based Growth (In Search of a New Development Model)
• Reinventing Multilateralism (Climate, Water/Energy/Food, Security) - two panels
• Preparedness for the Future – Global and Local Resilience – Ability to Overcome and Reconsolidate Societal Functions after Major Shocks

The event will enable rich, valuable discourse and exchanges on critical issues and agendas facing the world today.

Discussions and decisions will go towards developing the “Geneva Appeal”, which will outline a road map of specific acitons and “tipping points” needed to launch the Future We Want movement, as outlined in the outcoome documentof the United Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).

For more information: Please email earthdialogues@gci.ch or click here for registration details

The Great Transition, Part I: From Fossil Fuels to Renewable Energy

The great energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy is under way. As fossil fuel prices rise, as oil insecurity deepens, and as concerns about pollution and climate instability cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new world energy economy is emerging.

The old energy economy, fueled by oil, coal, and natural gas, is being replaced with an economy powered by wind, solar, and geothermal energy. The Earth’s renewable energy resources are vast and available to be tapped through visionary initiatives. Our civilization needs to embrace renewable energy on a scale and at a pace we’ve never seen before.

We inherited our current fossil fuel based world energy economy from another era. The 19th century was the century of coal, and oil took the lead during the 20th century. Today, global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2)—the principal climate-altering greenhouse gas—come largely from burning coal, oil, and natural gas. Coal, mainly used for electricity generation, accounts for 44 percent of global fossil-fuel CO2 emissions. Oil, used primarily for transportation, accounts for 36 percent. Natural gas, used for electricity and heating, accounts for the remaining 20 percent. It is time to design a carbon- and pollution-free energy economy for the 21st century.

Some trends are already moving in the right direction. The burning of coal, for example, is declining in many countries. In the United States, the number two coal consumer after China, coal use dropped 14 percent from 2007 to 2011 as dozens of coal plants were closed. This trend is expected to continue, due in part to widespread opposition to coal now being organized by the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

Oil is used to produce just 5 percent of the world’s electricity generation and is becoming ever more costly. Because oil is used mainly for transport, we can phase it out by electrifying the transport system. Plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars can run largely on clean electricity. Wind-generated electricity to operate cars could cost the equivalent of 80-cent-per gallon gasoline.

As oil reserves are being depleted, the world has been turning its attention to plant-based energy sources. Their potential use is limited, though, because plants typically convert less than 1 percent of solar energy into biomass.

Crops can be used to produce automotive fuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel. Investments in U.S. corn-based ethanol distilleries became hugely profitable when oil prices jumped above $60 a barrel following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The investment frenzy that followed was also fueled by government mandates and subsidies. In 2011, the world produced 23 billion gallons of fuel ethanol and nearly 6 billion gallons of biodiesel.

But the more research that’s done on liquid biofuels, the less attractive they become. Every acre planted in corn for ethanol means pressure for another acre to be cleared elsewhere for crop production. Clearing land in the tropics for biofuel crops can increase greenhouse gas emissions instead of reducing them. Energy crops cannot compete with land-efficient wind power. More

 

Earthships: Sustainable and naturally temperature controlled homes

The arid New Mexico desert is home to a cluster of unusual buildings called 'Earthships' -- environmentally-sustainable, self-sufficient homes made using recycled and natural materials.

An earthship is a type of passive solar house made of natural and recycled materials. Designed and marketed by Earthship Biotecture of Taos, New Mexico, the homes are primarily constructed to work as autonomous buildings and are generally made of earth-filled tires, using thermal mass construction to naturally regulate indoor temperature. They also usually have their own special natural ventilation system. Earthships are generally off-the-grid homes, minimizing their reliance on public utilities and fossil fuels. Earthships are built to utilize the available local resources, especially energy from the sun. For example, windows on sun-facing walls admit lighting and heating, and the buildings are often horseshoe-shaped to maximize natural light and solar-gain during winter months. The thick, dense inner walls provide thermal mass that naturally regulates the interior temperature during both cold and hot outside temperatures.

Internal, non-load-bearing walls are often made of a honeycomb of recycled cans joined by concrete and are referred to as tin can walls. These walls are usually thickly plastered with stucco. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship

More information:

This type of construction would be perfect in any desert climate. For example in Pakistan where temperatures are hitting 49 degrees celcius. Editor

Pakistan's climate change challenge

Last month, an avalanche on the Siachen glacier in Kashmir killed 124 Pakistani soldiers and 11 civilians. The tragedy has intensified debate about the logic of stationing Pakistani and Indian troops on such inhospitable terrain. And it has also brought attention to Pakistan's environmental insecurity.

Siachen is rife with glacial melt; one study concludes the icy peak has retreated nearly two kilometers in less than 20 years. It has also been described as "the world's highest waste dump." Much of this waste-generated from soldiers' food, fuel, and equipment-eventually finds its way to the Indus River Basin, Pakistan's chief water source.

Siachen, in fact, serves as a microcosm of Pakistan's environmental troubles. The nation experiences record-breaking temperatures, torrential rains (nearly 60 percent of Pakistan's annual rainfall comes from monsoons), drought, and glacial melt (Pakistan's United Nations representative, Hussain Haroon, contends that glacial recession on Pakistani mountains has increased by 23 percent over the past decade). Experts estimate that about a quarter of Pakistan's land area and half of its population are vulnerable to climate change-related disasters, and several weeks ago Sindh's environment minister said that millions of people across the province face "acute environmental threats."

Pakistan's environmental insecurity is not merely a matter of nasty weather. In three specific ways, it also threatens the country's fragile stability.

The last two years have provided ample proof of Pakistan's climate-change vulnerability. According to climatologists, the devastating floods of 2010-which submerged a fifth of the country and displaced millions-constituted "the worst natural disaster to date attributable to climate change" (a judgment rendered in 2010). They argued that a combination of high temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and lower ones in the Pacific "created the perfect conditions" for the deluge.

The floods' destructiveness was exacerbated by Pakistan's rampant deforestation. UN data andPakistani media reports paint an alarming picture of this emissions-releasing scourge: Pakistan suffers from the highest annual rate of deforestation in Asia (the nation lost 33 percent of its forest cover between 1990 and 2010), with barely 2 percent of the country's total area remaining forested today. One of the prime perpetrators is the Pakistani Taliban, which has long recognized the revenue-generating potential of logging. During its rule over Swat in northern Pakistan, the Taliban's timber sales eliminated up to 15 percent of the picturesque region's forest cover. Separately, back in the 1990s, wealthy landowners in Sindh ordered laborers to clear forestland for crop cultivation; one small village alone lost 10,000 acres of forest. In both Swat and Sindh, the loss of forestland has facilitated riverbank erosion and deprived the country of a natural bulwark against raging floodwaters. More

 

SAARC Summit Focuses on Climate Change

29 April 2010: The Sixteenth Meeting of the Heads of State or Government of the Member States of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was held in Thimphu, Bhutan, from 28-29 April 2010, around the theme of climate change.

SAARC leaders adopted the Thimphu Statement on climate change, which contains commitments to: review and ensure timely implementation of the Dhaka Declaration and SAARC Action Plan on Climate Change; plant ten million trees over 2010-2015 as part of a regional afforestation and reforestation campaign, in accordance with national priorities and programmes of Member States; develop national plans and regional projects on protecting and safeguarding the archeological and historical infrastructure of South Asia from climate change adverse effects; stress the imperative of biodiversity conservation and monitoring of mountain ecology in the region; and complete the ratification process for the SAARC Convention on Cooperation on the Environment at an early date to enable its entry into force. More >>>

Global Environmental Change and Human Security Conference

More than 150 experts from around the world are assembled this week in Oslo, Norway, for the capstone conference of the Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) Project.