A report by the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year maintains that global warming and climate change are now irreversible.   The planet is set for serious environmental change for the foreseeable future – at least the next 1000 years.  http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.full.pdf+html.

What this means for communities is that it is not enough to reduce our carbon footprint – although that will help minimize future change -  we must do everything we can to anticipate change, prepare for it and adapt to it.  In planning terms, this means that, as much as possible, our policies and plans must anticipate and seek to forestall future disasters.  The changes we need to anticipate will be both bio-physical (weather and climate, landuse, coastal morphology and so forth) and social and economic. 

 Arecent study on global warming, published by the European Commission in its newsletter Science for the Environment Policy, suggests that planners need to give urgent consideration to the likely consequences of global warming....... 

Thuo is a PhD candidate from Kenya who is doing research on the dynamics of urban expansion into the peri-urban and rural hinterland of Nairobi.  He has written his reflections on the role of cities for an article in the East African (http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/) a newspaper with its headquarters in Kenya. 

These are my personal reflections on an article in the Inquirer http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/editorial/view/20090608-209290/Saving-our-river and http://blogs.inquirer.net/notjustforprofit/2009/05/17/cleaning-up-the-pasig-river/about a cleanup of the Pasig River in Manila.   The Pasig River is our version of the Waikato River. It's Manila's longest, and also currently the dirtiest. It wasn't always dirty; it used to be the Mutya (Beautiful Muse) of Manila, a paramount of cleanliness and sparkling radiance. That was in the 1800s and early 1900s, before populations grew to exponential proportions. Now, the Pasig is a big sewer canal littered with shanties and garbage on its banks.

Hello Folks!

I was checking news from the Philippines today and I came across three articles that I found relevant to my review of our class in Environmental Planning Theory. This is the first of the three (http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view_article.php?article_id=209329 .  This article is about Baguio City, the Philippines' summer capital.

 The islands of New Zealand are surrounded by deep, rich and complex ocean systems. Our Exclusive Economic Zone is the fourth largest in the world and home to over 15,000 marine species. The biogeography of the Islands and surrounding seas create conditions which are optimal for marine life, including a vast host of seabirds. http://www.fish.govt.nz/en-nz/Environmental/default.htm

The Action Plan for Seabird Conservation in New Zealand http://www.doc.govt.nz/upload/documents/science-and-technical/TSOP16.pdf records that more than 84 species of seabird breed in New Zealand, 42% of which breed nowhere else in the world. Most seabirds are long lived, have delayed reproduction and many have a tendency to mate for long periods with the same partners. Those birds with high reproduction rates are likely to be more successful than those with low reproduction rates such as the albatross.

At the beginning of May there was a rush of last-minute submissions to the United Nations Secretary of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.  Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), May 13 2009 was a deadline for countries to stake their claim to areas of continental shelf beyond the 200 mile limit.  Sixty nine countries had submitted claims by the time of the deadline, including New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Fiji, the Cook Islands and Tonga, to name a few (http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2009/090513_Sea.doc.htm )

Environmental effects not enough to rule out Waikato power upgrade
This NZ Herald article (27th May 2009, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10574888) involves the weighting of the various sections of the RMA.  It is an interesting case and discusses many of the adverse effects of the Transpower north Island grid update.

Noted by mbt7@students.waikato.ac.nz - Many thanks