Friday 14 September 2007
London - Scientists have urged the first world nations to help Third World countries preserve their rainforests.
Poor nations must be rewarded for resisting economic pressure to clear rainforests, they said.
Oxford zoologist Andrew Mitchell said the Forests Now declaration by the Global Canopy Programme - a group of 38 scientific institutions in 19 countries have called for implementation of a carbon market policy.
Under this, states and organizations that generate the most carbon dioxide will pay governments to preserve their tropical forests instead of cutting them down for timber, to grow crops or to support livestock.
"This is a declaration of hope. Halting deforestation is an opportunity to score a big win against climate change. These forests support 1.4billion of the world's poorest people and offer services critical to humanity's survival, such as rainfall generation. These are benefits we all need but do not yet pay for," said Mitchell.
He said the forests contained 60 per cent of the world's stored carbon and although they covered less than seven per cent of the world's surface area they provided a home for half of all known species.
"Deforestation in the tropics and sub-tropics causes up to 25 per cent of carbon emissions, second only to that of fossil fuels," the Daily Mail quoted Dr Mitchell as saying.
Climate campaigner Kevin Conrad said: "Global markets for cows and coffee have been driving-deforestation. The measures called for in the declaration-offer an opportunity to compete head to head with the money a country can make elsewhere while protecting forests".
The declaration states that governments should ensure that the need to maintain forests is written into to all international carbon-trading agreements and that carbon-market rules should encourage the planting and development of more forests.
It adds: "Deforestation and forest degradation are driven by external demands for timber, beef, soya and biofuels which destroy trees for land, raising the stakes of global warming".
"Yet tropical forests continue to be excluded from carbon markets that could provide the alternative strategies needed".
Eating Less Meat May Slow Climate Change
By Maria Cheng
The Associated Press
Thursday 13 September 2007
London - Eating less meat could help slow global warming by reducing the number of livestock and thereby decreasing the amount of methane flatulence from the animals, scientists said on Thursday.
In a special energy and health series of the medical journal The Lancet, experts said people should eat fewer steaks and hamburgers. Reducing global red meat consumption by 10 percent, they said, would cut the gases emitted by cows, sheep and goats that contribute to global warming.
"We are at a significant tipping point," said Geri Brewster, a nutritionist at Northern Westchester Hospital in New York, who was not connected to the study.
"If people knew that they were threatening the environment by eating more meat, they might think twice before ordering a burger," Brewster said.
Other ways of reducing greenhouse gases from farming practices, like feeding animals higher-quality grains, would only have a limited impact on cutting emissions. Gases from animals destined for dinner plates account for nearly a quarter of all emissions worldwide.
"That leaves reducing demand for meat as the only real option," said Dr. John Powles, a public health expert at Cambridge University, one of the study's authors.
The amount of meat eaten varies considerably worldwide. In developed countries, people typically eat about 224 grams per day. But in Africa, most people only get about 31 grams a day.
With demand for meat increasing worldwide, experts worry that this increased livestock production will mean more gases like methane and nitrous oxide heating up the atmosphere. In China, for instance, people are eating double the amount of meat they used to a decade ago.
Powles said that if the global average were 90 grams per day, that would prevent the levels of gases from speeding up climate change.
Eating less red meat would also improve health in general. Powles and his co-authors estimate that reducing meat consumption would reduce the numbers of people with heart disease and cancer. One study has estimated that the risk of colorectal cancer drops by about a third for every 100 grams of red meat that is cut out of your diet.
"As a society, we are overconsuming protein," Brewster said. "If we ate less red meat, it would also help stop the obesity epidemic."
Experts said that it would probably take decades to wane the public off of its meat-eating tendency. "We need to better understand the implications of our diet," said Dr. Maria Neira, director of director of the World Health Organization's department of public health and the environment.
"It is an interesting theory that needs to be further examined," she said. "But eating less meat could definitely be one way to reduce gas emissions and climate change."
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