FOREST FIRES IN THE AMAZON: EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH IN 2015

It's not just Indonesia's forests and peatlands that are burning - the Amazon is suffering almost as badly, with over 18,000 fires last month in Brazil alone, write Jos Barlow & Erika Berenguer. The future is looking hot and fiery.

As reported in theecologist

Watch the video https://youtu.be/k6f9YJLEiPI

As world leaders meet in Paris to tackle carbon emissions, here in the Amazon we are watching forests burning unchecked, releasing carbon into the atmosphere, destroying sensitive ecosystems and making breathing difficult.

There are forests fires in the Amazon every year, but 2015 is exceptional. We've been investigating the issue in the rainforest around Santarém, a city on the south bank of the Amazon, 800km from the sea.

For the past five weeks we have woken up under a thick veil of smoke. For days we are barely able to see the sun. On many days last week visibility was less than 50 metres and the sun, once yellow, would rise red - if at all.

Even our clothes and our hair smell constantly of smoke. We have been living in the middle of a 24-hour barbecue in the middle of the world's largest tropical forest.

The El Niño phenomenon is contributing to this year's increased temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns, which means a more intense dry season across large swathes of the usually-humid tropics.

Widespread fires in south-east Asian peatland forests have released huge amounts of smoke and made the air so polluted that Indonesia set up evacuation ships for affected people. These fires are estimated to have emitted more carbon in just a few weeks than the entire German economy over a whole year.

Rainforests aren't used to fire

Although fires in the Amazon region have attracted much less attention than in Indonesia the situation is still alarming. In November alone, the Brazilian Amazon experienced 18,716 fires according to satellite data.

They are are mainly started by farmers to clear areas of fallow or to get rid of weeds in pastures. However, planned fires often escape the targeted area, invade surrounding forests and burn the vegetation.

These escaped fires may appear small and harmless but rainforests, unlike savannahs or temperate forests, have not co-evolved with periodic fires. This makes them particularly vulnerable. As a result, human-induced fires can kill up to 50% of the larger trees and most of the small-stemmed ones.

We still don't know how long it takes for a tropical rainforest to recover from fires, both in terms of biomass and biodiversity - they might never be able to regain their former glory. This is exactly one of the aims of the joint UK-Brazil research project that has brought us to the Amazon.

What we do know is that all those dead trees open gaps in the forest canopy, which allow more light and wind to reach the forest floor. The forest then becomes hotter and drier and more prone to burn once again.

Fires are also used to burn the downed forest, so newly deforested areas can be cleared of all remaining vegetation and used for agriculture. When only one hectare of forest, an area equivalent to that of a football pitch, is chopped down and burned, roughly 300 tonnes of carbon are lost.

In terms of carbon dioxide emissions, this is the same as a new car going around the world 61 times. This all adds up. In the past year, 583,100 hectares of the Brazilian Amazon were deforested. That's a lot of cars.

Almost all fires are left to burn themselves out

The smoke and fires have made life very uncomfortable. Yet for local people there is no escape. The smoke cloud that daily covers the region has serious consequences for human health, which led 12 Amazonian cities to declare a state of emergency back in October.

Task forces have been assigned to combat fires, but resources are thin and the region is too vast. Almost all fires are left to burn themselves out.

This year's El Niño has shown how vulnerable the world's largest tropical forest can be to extreme droughts. And recent forecasts have shown that such events are likely to triple by 2100. If 2015 can be used as an example, we are to expect more forest fires and much greater carbon emissions from tropical forest countries.

If world leaders at the UN climate conference are serious about limiting global warming to 2C, they must learn from this hazy present, acting immediately to protect the remaining forested areas in the humid tropics. Otherwise, we can expect a fiery future.

COP 21: JUST A PREPARATION FOR THE NEXT COP!?

Paris climate talks are doomed to failure - like all the others

Steffen Böhm, University of Essex

1st December 2015

The most significant feature of COP21 is the topics that never even made it onto the agenda for discussion, writes Steffen Böhm. And the biggest of all the growth-driven economic system that ultimately thwarts all efforts at sustainability, as it drives ever increasing consumption of energy and resources.

Reproduced from www.theecologist.org

The most significant feature of COP21 is the topics that never even made it onto the agenda for discussion, writes Steffen Böhm. And the biggest of all the growth-driven economic system that ultimately thwarts all efforts at sustainability, as it drives ever increasing consumption of energy and resources.

Even if the world celebrates a Paris climate deal on 11th December, the process will still have to be regarded as failure. Let me explain why.

The basic reason is that the unequal distribution of carbon emissions is not even on its agenda. The historical responsibility of the West is not on the table, nor is a method of national carbon accounting that looks at how the emissions a country consumes rather than produces.

Instead, what is on the table are expanded and new mechanisms that will allow the rich, Western countries to outsource their emission cuts so they can paint themselves green.

When the figures are in, 2015 is likely to be the warmest year on record and we've just reached 1C temperature rise since the industrial revolution, halfway to the 2C widely agreed to be the upper safe limit of global warming. It's the fastest surface temperature increase in the world's known geological history. We are now entering "uncharted territory".

The dangers of global warming have been known - even to oil company executives - since at least the early 1980s. Yet, despite 25 years of UN-led climate talks, the world is burning more fossil fuels than ever.

This is not simply the fault of big emerging economies such as China, India or Brazil. Instead, what we are dealing with is the fundamental failure of neoliberal capitalism, the world's dominant economic system, to confront its hunger for exponential growth that is only made possible by the unique energy density of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.

Historical responsibility forgotten

A glance at global history reveals how closely energy is linked to economic growth. The Netherlands was the first country to get a taste for exponential industrial growth back in the 16th and 17th centuries - and the Dutch empire was built on the availability of cheap domestic peat as well as timber from Norwegian and Baltic forests.

One reason the British took over the Netherlands' imperial leadership was its vast reserves of cheap coal, which started to be burned at the end of the 18th century, exponentially growing in the 19th century. Then came oil and gas, which helped make America the imperial master from the early 20th century onwards.

So there are more than 300 years of massive fossil fuel burning by the so-called West to account for. And while this historical responsibility still played a significant role at Kyoto in 1997 - resulting in emissions cuts that were only legally binding for industrialised countries - it has gradually been pushed into the background.

Now in Paris it seems almost forgotten. But the fact that about 80% of historical carbon emissions have to be attributed to the developed countries cannot simply be wished away.

The rapid rise of emissions, particularly in China and India, is often cited as reason for why these rapidly industrialising countries now also have to curb their emissions. I'm not saying that they shouldn't. Both countries clearly have their own imperial ambitions, which they hope to achieve by stimulating massive industrial expansion.

But let's bear in mind that India's carbon emissions per capita are still 10 times lower than those of the US. And China's rapidly rising emissions are to a great extent driven by export-driven industries, producing consumer goods for the West.

Creative carbon accounting for business as usual

In fact if a consumption-based approach to carbon accounting is taken, the UK's national carbon emissions would be twice as high as officially reported.

This is also true for most Western European countries and the United States, which have experienced increasing rates of deindustrialisation over the past two decades with not only jobs but also carbon emissions being offshored to developing countries.

In return the West is receiving cheap consumer goods without recognising the responsibility for the embedded carbon emissions that come with them. A clear form of carbon colonialism.

Of course, some of the exponential growth in carbon emissions by India and China is also due to increases in home-grown consumption. China apparently now has the largest middle class in the world. However, if we take a consumption-based view, then even China's emissions per capita will not reach the US's current rate for a long time - and India's lag further behind.

Yet rich countries continue to be eager to outsource their responsibilities. Carbon offsetting will see an unprecedented growth in the coming years. Countries such as Norway and Switzerland will continue to strike bilateral deals with poor nations desperate for cash. Emissions trading systems (ETS) will allow maximum flexibility for companies to offset their emissions.

These are all mechanisms designed to cement the status quo. The EU ETS has not made a significant impact on the trading bloc's carbon emissions since its inception in 2005, allowing Shell's chief executive, Ben Van Beurden, to insist even in 2015 that "The reality of demand growth is such that fossil fuels will be needed for decades to come."

Nothing significant has changed since Rio 1992 or Kyoto 1997. Paris 2015 will be no different. The talking will continue until we realise climate change is a failure of a system, which - on the back of fossil fuel - is geared towards exponential economic growth.

Nobody who sits at the negotiation table in Paris has the mandate nor inclination to ask fundamental, systemic questions of the logic of the dominant economic system and the way we consume the resources of this planet.

 

---

 

Steffen Böhm is Professor in Management and Sustainability, and Director, Essex Sustainability Institute, University of Essex.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

ZIKA FEVER AND BIRTH DEFECTS IN NORTHEASTERN BRAZIL

Brazil links Zika fever to birth defects

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-34956646

The mosquito-borne virus from Africa has been linked to a spike in birth defects across the country. 

Pernambuco has around two thirds of the cases of micro-encephalitis - an inflammation of the foetal brain that can stunt growth of the baby's head.   

A World Health Organization team is due in Brazil this week.

On Saturday, the Brazilian health ministry said the link between Zika and birth defects was unprecedented anywhere in the world.  

It said it had recorded two adult deaths and 739 cases of micro-encephalitis.

THE MUD CONTAINS MERCURY, ARSENIC, CHROMIUM...ABOVE TOLERATED LEVELS...BUT THE BRAZILIAN-AUSTRALIAN ENTERPRISE SAY IT IS 'HARMLESS'

Reproduced from BBC News

The waste has travelled more than 500km (310 miles) since the dam at an iron mine collapsed two weeks ago.  

Samarco, the mine owner, has tried to protect plants and animals by building barriers along the banks of the river.

Workers have dredged the river mouth to help the mud flow out to sea fast.

The contaminated mud, tested by the water management authorities, was found to contain toxic substances like mercury, arsenic, chromium and manganese at levels exceeding human consumption levels. 

Samarco has insisted the sludge is harmless.

In an interview with the BBC, Andres Ruchi, director of the Marine Biology school in Santa Cruz in Espirito Santo state, said that mud could have a devastating impact on marine life when it reaches the sea. 

He said the area of sea near the mouth of the Rio Doce is a feeding ground and a breeding location for many species of marine life including the threatened leatherback turtle, dolphins and whales. 

"The flow of nutrients in the whole food chain in a third of the south-eastern region of Brazil and half of the Southern Atlantic will be compromised for a minimum of a 100 years," he said.

23 MILLION CUBIC KM: NEW ESTIMATE OF TOTAL GROUND WATER IN OUR PLANET

The total amount of groundwater on the planet, held in rock and soil below our feet, is estimated to be 23 million cubic km.

As reported in BBC News

Published in 

Nature Geoscience

 

(2015)

 

doi:10.1038/ngeo2590

If this volume is hard to visualise, imagine the Earth's entire land surface covered in a layer some 180m deep.

The new calculation comes from a Canadian-led team and is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Significantly, little of this water - just 6% - is the kind of bankable resource that is most useful to people.

That small fraction is referred to as "modern" groundwater: it is extractable because it is near the surface, and can be used to supplement above-ground resources in rivers and lakes.

"It's the groundwater that is the most quickly renewed - on the scale of human lifetimes," explained study leader Tom Gleeson from the University of Victoria.

"And yet this modern groundwater is also the most sensitive to climate change and to human contamination. So, it's a vital resource that we need to manage better."

Finite resource

To quantify just how much water is stored in the top 2km of the Earth's surface, Dr Gleeson's team had to combine large data sets with an element of modelling.

They included information on the permeability of rocks and soil, on their porosity, and all that is known about water table gradients, which tell you about inputs from precipitation.

Key to determining the age of all this stored water is a collection of thousands of tritium measurements.

Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen that spiked in the atmosphere 50 years ago as a result of thermonuclear bomb tests.

It can therefore be used as a tracer for all the rain that has made its way underground ever since.

The map above shows the distribution of this modern groundwater around the globe.

Dark blue shows where it is very quickly renewed. Light blue shows the older groundwater, which is mostly stagnant and non-renewable. 

"Old water is highly variable," Dr Gleeson told BBC News.

"Some places it is quite deep, in some places not. In many places, it can be poor quality. 

"It can be more saline even than ocean water and it can have lots of dissolved metals and other chemicals that would need to be treated before it could be used for drinking or agriculture."

This puts further emphasis on the modern reserves and the need to manage them in a sustainable way. The study underlines just how unevenly they are spread around the globe.

The next step, Dr Gleeson said, was to try to work out just how fast some water stores were being depleted.

Also writing in Nature Geoscience, Ying Fan, from Rutgers University, US, commented that "this global view of groundwater will, hopefully, raise awareness that our youngest groundwater resources - those that are the most sensitive to anthropogenic and natural environmental changes - are finite".

"VALE" + "BHP" = ENVIRONMENTAL TRAGEDY IN BRAZIL CAUSED BY THIS 'JOINT VENTURE'

Today, 17th November/2015, Brazilian media has informed that the mining enterprise will pay (initially) R$1 billion ("reais" = U$250 million) for damages they caused.

Brazilian experts estimate the costs as, at least, R14 billion ("reais"= U$3.5 billion)

It is important to say that about 400  million metric ton of iron are still in Minas Gerais state to be mined.

See below, as reported on The Guardian

As despair turns to anger over a deadly dam burst at a Brazilian mine, lawmakers pushed on Tuesday for tougher regulations in a new mining code, as iron ore giant Vale SA came under pressure to help mourning families and contain the environmental impact. 

In five days of rescue efforts in towns ravaged by the massive mudflow, six bodies have been found and 22 people are still missing, making it one of the worst mining disasters in Brazil’s history. Rescuers abandoned a search for seven-year-old Tiago Damasceno in the muddy aftermath of the dam collapse on Tuesday, as hope for survivors diminishes five days after the disaster.

The tragedy in the mineral-rich south-eastern state of Minas Gerais has displaced hundreds of residents, triggered investigations by prosecutors and spurred calls for stricter oversight of the mining industry, a huge provider of jobs and government tax receipts. No cause has been identified for the dams’ failure, which left about 750 people homeless.

The chief sponsor of a new mining code in congress, Leonardo Quintão, told Reuters on Tuesday that he planned to add measures to tighten regulation of tailings dams like the two that collapsed on Thursday. 

Minas Gerais’ governor, Fernando Pimentel, acknowledged state mining regulations are not enough and his aides said they may need to rethink their efforts to fast-track licensing. 

Public criticism fell first on mine operator Samarco, but the spotlight has turned to the big names behind the 50-50 joint venture: Australia-based BHP Billiton Ltd, the world’s largest mining company, and Brazilian partner Vale, the biggest iron ore miner.

“Samarco is just a name they made up. We need BHP and Vale to take responsibility for this tragedy,” said Duarte Junior, mayor of the town of Mariana, who has coordinated relief efforts. 
BHP’s public response has been rapid, but Vale, which accounted for more than 10% of Brazil’s total exports in 2013, has so far appeared aloof. 

BHP chief executive Andrew Mackenzie held a news conference in the hours following the disaster and the company announced he would travel to Brazil to survey the damage. It has also splashed almost daily updates on the tragedy in English and Portuguese across the top of its website.

By contrast, Vale released a five-sentence statement some 24 hours after the dams collapsed and referred questions to Samarco. Vale’s chief executive, Murilo Ferreira, made an unannounced visit to Mariana on Saturday, which the company revealed two days later. 

Mariana’s mayor has worked closely with Samarco, but he said on Monday that no senior executives from Vale or BHP Billiton had contacted him. 

Influential columnist Miriam Leitão excoriated the company on Tuesday for its “absolutely insufficient” response. 

“Vale has been drilling and dumping around Minas Gerais for 70 years,” Leitão wrote in the newspaper O Globo. “After a disaster of this scale, it can’t issue a laconic statement as if it weren’t obliged to act immediately.” 

She called on Ferreira to explain how Vale will compensate displaced families, contain the environmental damage and monitor the ongoing effects of the spill downstream.

Asked for a response, Vale representatives reiterated that Ferreira had met with Samarco executives and offered helicopters and other equipment for the rescue efforts.

Leitão also pilloried the federal government for leaving state authorities to sort out the environmental impact of the collapsed dams and 60m cubic meters of wastewater contaminating rivers and coastline more than 300 miles (500km) away. 

Biologists warn that the environmental impact may be permanent, devastating local fisheries and farms. 

The destruction reached as far as about 60 miles (100km) from the burst dams, with dozens of houses now little more than bare walls. Firefighters have managed to open one street in the worst-affected village of Bento Rodrigues, but for many there is no home to go back to.

Tourism and other industries are already suffering. Wood pulp maker Cenibra suspended operations at two production lines due to the mudflow threatening its water source. 

President Dilma Rousseff has not traveled to the disaster area, although she said in at a speech on Tuesday that she is “very worried” about the mud and waste from the burst dams making its way downstream. She said her government was ready to help state and local authorities. 

HOSTILE LOGGERS AND FARMERS WILL DESTROY INDIGENOUS RESERVES IN THE AMAZON...IF ...

Brazilian legislation with respect to such crimes makes Amazonian reserves liable to those disasters!

As reported on BBC News

Some 12,000 indigenous people live in the Arariboia reserve, in the state of Maranhao. 

Their leaders say the fires were started more than a month ago by hostile loggers and farmers who want exploit the area's natural resources. 

Hundreds of firefighters and soldiers had been trying to put out the blazes.

Their work has been helped by recent heavy rains, which extinguished 90% of the fires in the state, a local official told the AFP news agency.

An additional 10% of fires were under control, said Luciano Evaristo, regional director of the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama).

Loggers started the fires to intimidate the tribes and undermine their projects to boost surveillance programmes in the Arariboia reserve, said environmental group Greenpeace.

Some 12,000 ethnic Guajajara indigenous people live in the area.

Among them is a small vulnerable group of about 80 members of the Awa-Guaja tribe, who have chosen to live in isolation deep in the forest.

Brazilian environmental officials say there has been a record number of fires throughout the Amazon as the result of exceptionally dry weather. 

More than 13,000 forest fires have been recorded in the Brazilian Amazon since the beginning of the year.