http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/155810/highway-threatens-killer-worm

Take a look at this article which raises classic planning issues in an unusual form.

What do you think?

Great Barrier Island - symbol of wild New Zealand; image of romance; a wild and beautiful place.  But after visiting the Island, I can't help thinking, it represents a post-peak landscape; a landscape recovering from human devastation; a landscape that will take centuries to return to its full ecological capacity.

Around the world prparations are already underway for the next great global environmental conference.  Rio+20 is the name of a conference to be held in 2012 to take stock of the changes and progress that has been made since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero in 1992.

http://www.earthsummit2012.org/index.php/news/331-uncsd-

In December last year the nations of the world met at Copenhagen to form global strategy and policy on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit predicted global warming.  The meeting, known as the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference ( en.wiipedia.org.wiki/2009_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference) was a disaster, as developed and developing countries faught about fundamentals.

A reconvening of the Copenhagen talks is happening this year, from 29th November to 10 December, known as the 16th session of the conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change.unfccc.int/2860.php  

2010 is the UN Year for biodiversity conservation.  From 18th to 29th October there was a meeting of the countries that have signed the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)  that aims to strengthen international initiatives to conserve the biodiversity of life on the Planet (see http://www.cbd.int/cop10/)

As a lead up to the meeting the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released the results of a study to investigate the status of the world mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes.  Not unexpectedly, the study has found that the decline in the world's biodiversity continues, with, on average, 50 species a year moving closer to extinction (i.e. from a category of lower risk of extinction, to a category of ciritically endangeeree, endangered (threatened) or near threatened.

But I was also heartened to read that conservation efforts ARE making a difference. 

Forests have been one of the most significant biomes in earth history.  They were the original source of the fossil fuels that we now burn as coal, oil and gas, while the tropical forests of the Amazon, West Africa and tropical Asia support the richest biodiversity on earth.  Forests help to reduce or prevent soil erosion and protect water resources.  The Amazon forest appears to have a role in the circulation of earth's atmosphere.  Since the rise of farming some 8 to 10,000 years ago, forests have been cleared for farmland and pasture throughout the northern hemisphere.  And within the last few decades millions of acres of tropical forests have suffered the same fate as  result of timber extraction or clearance for the plantation of tropical crops such as tea, coffee, cocoa or oil palms. 

Native New Zealand has shared the same fate.  85% of New Zealand was forested before the arrival of human beings.  With the arrival of human beings, New Zealand's forest cover has shrunk to 23% of land cover. 

However, the Economist, a well respected international magazine, recently published an interesting and heartening article on forests.  According to the Economist  the relative decline in forest destruction that has flattened in the past few years and there are signs that countries around the world are restoring forests (as in northern hemisphere countries such as Canada, the US, Sweden, Norway and Finland, or reducing the wholesale destruction of forests  (http://www.economist.com/node/17093495?story_id=17093495&fsrc=scn/tw/te/rss/pe ).

Several more books I can recommend for Christmas are:

Peak Everything, by Richard Heinberg, 2007

Climate Wars, by Gwynne Dyer, 2008

The world is blue, by Sylvia Earle

Conservation efforts often throw up difficult ethical questions and some are easier to answer than others. On a global scale the world is locked in arguments about climate change, tolerable levels of emissions, the extent of damage caused by human actions etc. On a regional scale we are facing additional crises in terms of resource and biodiversity depletion. We understand that human activity is responsible for many problems in the environment and we have many choices to make about resolution. At what point should human activity be constrained? Where should our efforts be focused and how strenuous should these efforts be? How do we make these choices and what principles should we rely upon to guide us?

Reflections on a report cited in Science for Environment Policy, Issue 165: A service from the European Commission

I have been musing on an article in the newsletter Science for Environmental Policy by the European Commission.  The article reports a study on the value and amount of carbon sequestration by natural ecosystems and natural areas within agricultural systems.  The article has relevance for farming in New Zealand.

According to the report, the ability of the Earth's living systems to store carbon could play a vital role in the mitigation of climate change. It suggests that, in coming decades, safeguarding and restoring carbon in ecosystems has the potential to prevent well over 50 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon entering the atmosphere.