Sandbag strategy leaves an Australian beach's future living on the edge

Kelsey Munro in the Sydney Morning Herald: Emergency work to prevent further coastal erosion at the northern NSW town of Kingscliff has been stalled by red tape, with council staff warning many more seaside communities will face the same problem unless the complex coastal protection laws are streamlined.



Kingscliff has lost an estimated 40 metres of beach to the sea in less than two months, leaving the surf club and cabins at a caravan park dangling at the edge of the water. But protection works must stop by Friday because NSW legislation requires the council to go through a public tender process to procure more sandbags.



The council-owned Kingscliff Beach Holiday Park has already spent $800,000 on temporary protection works, and is building a four metre-high sandbag wall along the most damaged sections of beach. Phase two, for which they have environmental approval, requires larger, more durable sandbags but the council must cease work for at least a week for the procurement process.



Richard Adams, who runs the park for Tweed Shire, said the situation was ''frustrating''. ''In an emergency event like this, where clearly there is an extenuating circumstance, it would be great if we could go to the government and say let's look at some way to relieve us from some of the more protracted planning consent and procurement issues,'' he said....



A view of the Cocked Hat Rocks at Broken Head (NSW, Australia)

Fudging in greenhouse gas stats?

EMPA, which is part of ETH (Switzerland): Fluorinated hydrocarbons are potent greenhouse gases, emission of which must be reduced under the Kyoto Protocol. If you rely on the official reports of the participating countries, the output of trifluoromethane (HFC-23) in Western Europe is indeed significantly decreasing. However, pollutant measurements carried out by Empa now reveal that several countries under-report their emissions. For instance, Italy emits 10 to 20 times more HFC-23 than it officially reports.



International agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) basically have one snag: it is almost impossible to independently verify whether participating countries abide by the agreement. Thus the evaluation of whether or not the countries have achieved their reduction targets is based on the official reports by the countries that are signatories to the UNFCCC (‘United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’). If they report reduced emissions they're sitting pretty; if not, they are pilloried.



This could change soon. Pollutant analyses by Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, – at the Jungfraujoch research station at 3580 metres above sea level, among others – using a special gas chromatograph mass spectrometer called ‘MEDUSA’ not only enables the emission levels of more than 50 halogenated GHG to be quickly and precisely evaluated; they also make it possible to identify the emission sources regionally, thanks to atmospheric and meteorological computer models. The sobering result: Western Europe emits around twice as much HFC-23 as officially reported. A corresponding study was recently published in the journal ‘Geophysical Research Letters’.



“Our results show that these types of measurements really are suitable for checking compliance with international agreements on air pollution control”, says Empa researcher Stefan Reimann from the ‘Air Pollution/Environmental Technology’ laboratory. It is true that the Kyoto Protocol did not specify any independent control mechanisms; this could, however, be of central importance in subsequent agreements with binding emission targets...



The Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps, where the atmospheric measurements in this study were taken, shot by Peter Alder, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

GM corn being developed for fuel instead of food

Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian (UK): US farmers are growing the first corn plants genetically modified for the specific purpose of putting more ethanol in gas tanks rather than producing more food. Aid organisations warn the new GM corn could worsen a global food crisis exposed by the famine in Somalia by diverting more corn into energy production.



The food industry also opposes the new GM product because, although not inedible, it is unsuitable for use in the manufacture of food products that commonly use corn. Farmers growing corn for human consumption are also concerned about cross-contamination. The corn, developed by a branch of the Swiss pesticide firm Syngenta, contains an added gene for an enzyme (amylase) that speeds the breakdown of starches into ethanol. Ethanol plants normally have to add the enzyme to corn when making ethanol.



The Enogen-branded corn is being grown for the first time commercially on about 5,000 acres on the edge of America's corn belt in Kansas, following its approval by the US Department of Agriculture last February. In its promotional material Syngenta says it will allow farmers to produce more ethanol from the corn while using less energy and water.



Meanwhile, campaigners say the corn will heap pressure on global food supplies and contribute to environmental degradation. They argue Enogen will lead to an increase in the amount of food crops going to fuel, leaving less for human consumption and leading to food price rises. That will lead to food price rises on the global market. "The temptation to look at food as another form of fuel to use for the energy crisis will exacerbate the food crisis," said Todd Post of Bread for the World, a Christian anti-hunger organisation....



From the pre-GMO era, over time, selective breeding modifies teosinte's few fruitcases (left) into modern corn's rows of exposed kernels (right). Shot by John Doebley, from a PLoS One Journal, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license

Climate change: learning the lessons of the past 50 years

Stephen P. Groff in the PovertyMatters blog at the Guardian (UK): Few would dispute the need to mobilise funds to support developing countries in dealing with the effects of climate change. At last year's UN climate change conference (COP16) in Cancun, Mexico, world leaders agreed to a set of "new and additional" pledges amounting to $30bn in fast-start finance between 2010 and 2012. An additional long-term goal of $100bn a year by 2020 was also agreed.



This is good, but not good enough. The past 50 years of experience with development co-operation have shown that finance alone is not sufficient. Ensuring funds are used as cost effectively as possible is essential for both providers and recipients.



...What should we be thinking about in the runup to COP17 in Durban, South Africa? One of the first lessons we draw from the past 50 years is that greater volumes of development finance do not automatically translate into better development results. Externally-led activities that do not build national capacity have proved unsustainable and ineffective. Over the past decade, the principle of locally led development has been confirmed and endorsed as the linchpin for improving impact from aid resources. In 2005, the Paris Declaration secured commitment from developed and developing countries on a country's control over its aid programme, as well as four more basic principles central to better results.



...These lessons must inform our efforts as we design instruments for climate change finance. In preparation for COP17, negotiations are under way on a "green climate fund" and other global instruments. They should ensure that external finance is driven by national strategies, and channelled through recipient countries' institutions and authorities....



A US Food Administration poster from 1917