Protection of the Cayman Islands Exclusive Economic Zone

As a Maritime Nation it is perhaps time that the Cayman Islands / Cayman Islands Government acquires a Marine Patrol Vessel capable of patrolling our Exclusive Economic Zone [EEZ] to ensure decimation of shark and over-fishing of Pelagic and other spicies is brought under control.

Preservation of the environment is crucial and funding could be available for this purpose, as was demonstrated by the Seychelles, who was given a debt writedown in return for protecting their EEZ in their i.4 million square kilometers of the Indian Ocean. The Western Indian Ocean Coastal Challenge (WIOCC)
Key Facts
More than 30 million people in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) islands and East African coastal communities rely on the coastal environment for goods and services and as a source of livelihoods and income
* The economic value of ecosystem goods and services is estimated to be over US$25 billion annually
* Tourism is the largest source of income directly linked to the coastal and marine environment, the region attracts over 20 million tourists that inject US$6 billion+ into economies annually
* Fisheries play an important role in WIO national economies providing from 5.0% to 99.1% of national agricultural exports as well as sources of employment, income and animal protein
* The natural resources that fuel the WIO regions economic activity are under pressure from issues such as overfishing, overdevelopment, pollution and environmental degradation.
* Climate change is exacerbating these problems and present mounting challenges to the sustainable development of the region. In 1998, coral bleaching at an unprecedented scale caused widespread coral mortality across most of the western Indian Ocean, altering the goods and services provided by these reefs .
* There is urgent need for governments and stakeholders to come together and take action to combat climate change, conserve biodiversity and promote sustainable livelihoods to build resilience.

The natural resources that fuel the WIO regions economic activity are under pressure from issues such as overfishing, overdevelopment, pollution and environmental degradation. Climate change is exacerbating these problems and present mounting challenges to the sustainable development of the region. In 1998, coral bleaching at an unprecedented scale caused widespread coral mortality across most of the western Indian Ocean, altering the goods and services provided by these reefs . There is urgent need for governments and stakeholders to come together and take action to combat climate change, conserve biodiversity and promote sustainable livelihoods to build resilience. GLISPA.ORG

Seychelles Climate Change Ambassador Jumeau at "Sustainability Conference

Ambassador Ronny Jumeau said, "Each island has it's own specificity but common problems we all face are climate change, sea level rise, problem with coral reefs, diminishing fisheries. We have food security problems, especially in low lying islands. You have water security problems on islands. We have all sorts of problems that are similar because we are islands."

Jumeau continued on to say the common mistake islands make is looking towards bigger countries for help instead of helping one another. He said the days of reaching out with a begging bowl are over and islands should come out and say "come help us help ourselves" instead. With Guam having a university and sustainability center, Jumeau added that we already have knowledge we can share.

"We are all trying to find solutions and very often one mistake we made over the many years, we tend to look towards bigger countries because they're richer or more powerful for the solutions but they don't think like us. The best thing is for us to talk before we reach out so we find out what we want to do on our islands and how do we solve these problems," he said.

Jumeau advised Guam to engage the whole community in educating ourselves about climate change because only a few things about climate change is new. He expained that it's great to have the youth interested but also to look towards our elders who have already been through many natural disasters and have more knowledge about our island.

 

© 2014

ENERGY DARWINISM The Evolution of the Energy Industry

The global energy industry has been transformed in the last five years in ways and to an extent that few would have thought credible.

Of the $9.7 trillion of global investment in Power Generation, 71% will be in renewables or clean technologies.

The emergence of shale gas has transformed the U.S. energy market while Germany has seen some gas-fired power stations running for less than 10 days a year due to the impact of solar leading utility owners to issue profit warnings. Developed markets now spend more on renewable capital expenditures than they do on conventional generation, largely due to uncertainty over commodity pricing and likely future utilisation rates, while the legacy of Fukushima has seen Japan burning gas at $16-17/mmbtu while the U.S. basks in $3 shale, driving the introduction of the world’s most attractive solar subsidy scheme and catapulting Japan to be the world’s second largest solar market.

Conversely, the intermittency of renewables has led to the greater demand for the flexibility of gas-fired power plants in some markets. So, fuel and technology substitution is happening – and not just in developed markets. The shift in emerging markets is less marked, but is nonetheless there. The voracious appetite for power displayed by emerging markets will engender a higher level of new conventional generation (in particular coal), though gas is gradually taking demand from coal and renewables are forecast to represent 10% of new installed power generation capacity in China over the next two years. Despite these shifts, the analysis of individual fuel and technology cost curves – a key determinant in setting the market price – has continued largely on a standalone basis, with limited emphasis on the risks of substitution.

Accordingly, in this report we have combined the work of our alternative energy oil & gas, mining (coal), utility and commodity research teams to create an integrated energy cost curve, which allows us to assess the impact and risks of this substitutional change across all fuel and technology types. Importantly, this integrated curve looks at incremental energy demand and supply, meaning relatively small changes in the mix can have a material impact on the returns of projects, particularly those at the upper end of the cost curve. More

 

©

Utilities Feeling Rooftop Solar Heat Start Fighting Back

If you wonder why America’s utilities are rattled by the explosive growth in rooftop solar -- and are pushing back -- William Walker has a story for you.

Ewa Beach Oahu.

A flip-flop wearing Walker stands in his driveway pointing to a ubiquitous neighborhood feature – solar panels on the roofs of five of six houses nearby. He lives in Ewa Beach, a development on the sultry leeward coast of the Hawaiian island of Oahu built on land cleared of sugar cane fields.

Shade is scarce and residents here call their homes “hot boxes,” requiring almost round-the-clock air conditioning. Hawaii, which imports pricey oil to power its electricity grid, has the highest utility rates in the nation -- at 37 cents a kilowatt-hour, they’re more than double California and triple the national average.

With bills for 1,600 square foot houses like these running as high as $400 a month, solar is seen as less a green statement than an economic no-brainer given state and federal tax credits for as much as 65 percent of installation costs. Almost every day since Walker and his wife Mi Chong moved in last April, solar installers came rapping on the door, hawking a rooftop system.

They finally bought one: an 18-panel, $35,000 installation producing 5.9 kilowatts of power financed for $305 a month. It would be connected to the grid under a system known as net metering that essentially lets residents deduct the value of their solar-produced electricity from their power bill and even be paid for electricity in excess of that.

Paying for Itself

Walker estimates his bill would have dropped most months to an $18 service charge -- offsetting that $305 loan payment. Anticipating his power bills would continue to rise, he figured the system could pay for itself in as little as five years; his electricity after that would be free.

That is until his utility, a subsidiary of Honolulu-based Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc., told the Walkers they couldn’t connect their system to the grid. They aren’t alone. Solar installers here estimate that hundreds if not thousands of the state’s residents are being put in solar limbo by a virtual moratorium on new connections in many parts of the company’s service area.

America's Power Machine

The reason, according to the Hawaiian Electric Co.: so many Hawaiians are stampeding to solar that circuits may become oversaturated, causing voltage spikes, damaging appliances, electronics and even the utility’s equipment. The company needs more time to study the matter.

The Walkers, who say they got no advance notice of the shutdown, are now paying both their power bill and their monthly rooftop loan. HECO, as the utility is known, recently told them they will eventually be allowed to join the grid without having to pay for expensive equipment upgrades. It still can’t say when.

‘Profit Motivation’

“Everyone is on board with getting solar and HECO has now put up a wall,” Walker said. “The only thing we can see is profit motivation.”

Spurred by a drop in panel prices, robust government subsidies and a technology that no longer appears experimental to mainstream America, rooftop photovoltaic solar is bursting out everywhere. About 200,000 U.S. homes and businesses added rooftop solar in the past two years alone – about 3 gigawatts of power and enough to replace four or five conventionally-sized coal plants.

The U.S. set a single-quarter record with 31,000 residential rooftop installations in the three months through Sept. 30. Solar represented 72 percent of all power added in the U.S. in October.

Connection Slowdown

Utilities, seeing a threat to about $360 billion a year in power sales and a challenge to the hegemony of the conventional grid, are feeling the heat and fighting back. HECO, despite criticism from Hawaii’s solar industry, denies the moratorium is anything more than an honest effort to address the technical challenges of integrating the solar flooding onto its grid.

The slowdown comes in a state where 9 percent of the utility’s residential customers on Oahu are already generating most of their power from the sun and where connections have doubled yearly since 2008.

In California, where solar already powers the equivalent of 626,000 homes, utilities continue to aggressively push for grid fees that would add about $120 a year to rooftop users’ bills and, solar advocates say, slow down solar adoptions.

Similar skirmishes have broken out in as many as a dozen of the 43 states that have adopted net-metering policies as part of their push to promote renewable energy. In Colorado, Xcel Energy Inc. has proposed cutting the payments it makes for excess power generated by customers by about half, because it says higher payouts result in an unfair subsidy to solar users.

Arizona Protesters

It faces a fight from solar advocates who are circulating a petition that has attracted 30,000 signers.

In Arizona, 1,000 protesters last month swarmed the state capital while local and national solar advocates lobbied against an effort by utility Arizona Public Service to impose a $50 monthly fee on new solar adopters. Solar advocates said the charge would have crippled the state’s 10,000-worker solar industry and thwarted the desire of residents to have a choice in the power consumption.

State regulators, after two days of often contentious debate, voted to allow the state’s largest utility to charge customers about $4.90 a month for solar connections after Dec. 31 -- less than 10 percent of what it was asking for.

Falling Short

Don Brandt, chief executive officer of APS and its parent company Pinnacle West Capital Corp., panned the deal, saying that while it nods to the impact that net metering is having on utility operations and revenues, it “falls well short of protecting the interests of the 1 million residential customers who do not have solar panels.”

Lyndon Rive, CEO of SolarCity Corp., said it was “crazy for a utility to charge for services they didn’t deliver.

‘‘Why not tax energy efficient homes, or small homes that consume less than average?’’ said Rive, whose company is the nation’s second-largest rooftop solar installer. ‘‘APS just doesn’t want to lose control.” More

 

OTEC pilot plant built in Okinawa Prefecture

This month, Japanese engineering companies IHI Plant Construction Corporation, Xenesys Incorporated and Yokogawa Electric Corporation announced their collaboration in building a 50kW OTEC demonstration plant in the waters of Kumejima Island, located in the very south of Japan and part of the Okinawa Islands.

Kumejima Island

The OTEC plant will be integrated in the Okinawa Prefecture Deep Seawater Research Center, which is the largest of four deep seawater pumping systems in Japan. The companies aim to have the OTEC plant up and running in March 2013.

Regarding the roles in this project: Xenesys will design and manufacture the power generation unit and the heat exchangers; Yokogawa will design, manufacture and do the engineering of the monitoring and control system for the generation unit and the electronics for the interconnected power schemes; and IHI will develop and construct the entire facility.

Kumejima Island deep seawater research station

Okinawa Research Center is active in deep seawater utilization for over 10 years. The center established several deep seawater projects, including local area cooling services, water desalination, aquaculture and agriculture. Next year the OTEC demonstration plant will be added and connected to the deep seawater infrastructure. The OTEC plant will be used for practical testing and optimization of the output. It is an important step in the commercialization following the 30kW demonstration unit at Saga University in Saga, Japan.

The current capacity of the Okinawa Research Center is about 13,000 tons of seawater per day, pumped up from a depth of 612 meter where the water is between 6 and 8°C. The temperature of the surface seawater is around 26°C annual average, providing stable production possibilities.

Regarding future scale-ups, Xenesys estimated that it is possible to increase the intake of deep seawater to 100,000 tons per day and install 1.25MW OTEC power capacity. This would supply 10,600 MWh of electricity per year, which accounts for 10% of Kumejima’s total annual consumption.The island of Kumejima, which entered into a Sister City Relationship with the county of Hawaii last year, aims to become a self-sustaining community and model for other small islands in the Okinawa Prefecture. More

September 2013 This plant is now operational and is producing hydrogen. Editor

 

Pacific islands look for model to combat changes due to global warming

With islands and atolls scattered across the ocean, the small Pacific island states are among those most exposed to the effects of global warming: increasing acidity and rising sea level, more frequent natural disasters and damage to coral reefs.

These micro-states, home to about 10 million people, are already paying for the environmental irresponsibility of the great powers.

"Pacific islands are the victims of industrial countries unable to control their carbon dioxide emissions. The truth of the matter is that we have no option but to accept this and adapt," says Dr Jimmie Rodgers, the head of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), a regional development organisation. At the initiative of France's Research on Development Institute (IRD) and New Caledonia University, 30 or so scientists from the Pacific basin spent a week at the end of April discussing the design of asustainable development model suited to local conditions – in particular, pressure from the climate on ways of life that reach back several millennia.

In a study published by the journal Nature Climate Change, the SPC and IRD draw attention to the considerable impact of global warming on food security on these islands. Fish stocks, the main source of protein for islanders and the basis for development, will be particularly affected. Currently about 1m tonnes of tuna and tuna-like fishes are caught every year in the region.

For the Kiribati group of islands, fishing accounts for 40% of GDP, whereas on the Marshall Islands fisheries and fish processing represent a quarter of overall revenue. "The rising temperature of surface waters, which is greater in the western part of the ocean basin, will encourage tuna to migrate east towards Polynesia," says Johann Bell, principal fisheries scientist at SPC and one of the authors of the study.

Melanesian countries, such as Papua New Guinea or the Solomon Islands, will suffer most. "PNG has a large canning industry, but in a few decades it will have to import tuna to keep it running," Bell adds. "Fortunately it can count on favourable international agreements to buy [fish] wherever it likes, with low customs duty." But the disappearance of the tuna shoals could mean major financial losses for smaller economies such as Tuvalu or Kiribati.

The effects for coastal fisheries are likely to be even more dramatic, due to damage to the coral reefs. The population density of live reefs is expected to drop from 40% at present, for the Pacific as a whole, to 10% or 20% by 2050, the scientists explain. The decrease in the fish stocks in the lagoons coincides with high population growth, particularly inMelanesia.

With an increase in rainfall, the SPC is advocating the development of fish farms and freshwater fisheries. On Fiji, Vanuatu and Samoa, farms have recently started raising Nile tilapia, an alien species. To reduce pressure on the reefs and allow coastal residents to catch tuna, there are also plans to build floating pontoons to attract the fish.

On land, life must adapt to the changing conditions too. On Fiji, the Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees has set up a department to focus on adapting staple crops.

"Climate change brings new constraints for crops, which are subject to unpredictable ecological pressures such as drought, higher salt concentrations, extreme temperatures and erosion," a representative explains. Thousands of varieties of manioc, taro, sweet potato and banana have been screened in order to offer farmers new, more robust varieties. "We are promoting these seeds," says Henry Puna, prime minister of the Cook Islands (population 12,200), which have been hard-hit by coastal erosion. More

 

Permaculture Design Course for International Development & Social Entrepreneurship

June 24 – July 7, 2013

Convened by Quail Springs Permaculture and True Nature Design

Lead Instructors: Warren Brush with Quail Springs and True Nature Design and Joseph Lentunyoi of the Maasai people, Permaculture Research Institute of Kenya and Nyumbani Village

Guest Instructors include:
Jeremiah Kidd, Global Permaculture Designer and Educator
Cathe’ Fish , Founder of Practical Permaculture Research Institute
Lyn Hebenstreit, Co-Founder of Global Resource Alliance
Tara Blasco, Co-Founder of Global Resource Alliance
Loren Luyendyk, Co-Founder of Surfer’s Without Borders
Alissa Sears, Global Betterment Director at Christie Communications
Jeannette Acosta, Indigenous Permaculture Designer and Educator
Daniel Parra-Hensel, Permaculture Designer and Educator
Brenton Kelly, Principle Farm Educator for Quail Springs Permaculture
Tom Cole, Principle Agricultural Advisor with Save the Children

“My learning journey at Quail Springs helped to nurture my presence of mind to be a better and more active listener – a vital trait for the international development professional. The coursework was incredibly pertinent to my work in Uganda and without a doubt made me more aware, more compassionate, and more focused in my role as a project manager and human being.” - Grant Buhr, Project Focus, Quail Springs’ PDC graduate

Permaculture is an integrated design system that provides a framework for consciously designed landscapes that provide diversity, stability, and resilience for individuals and communities. Permaculture is in 160 countries with many thousands of grassroots projects on-the-ground.

This course will assist you and your organization with integrating into your projects:

• Increased Food Security
• Community-Based Development
• Waste Cycling
• Sustainability Education
• Clean Water and Drought Proofing
• Health and Nutrition
• Sustainable Vocations & Enterprise

Topics include: Integrated Design, Composting, Water Harvesting, Compost Toilets, Waste Cycling, Earthworks, Rocket Stoves, Design Priorities, Ecological Building, Aquaculture, Bio-Sand Filtration, Broad Acre Applications, Food Forestry, Bio-Engineering, Resilient Food Production, Greywater Systems, Livestock Integration, Soil building, Watershed Restoration, Integrated Pest Mgmt, Biomimicry, Appropriate Technology, Peacemaking, Conflict Resolution, Community Organizing, Drought Proofing Landscapes, Rebuilding Springs, Refugee Camp Strategies

During this specialized course we will be offering the participants direct hands-on learning experiences that include:

• Making a simple and effective solar cooker
• Creating a thermophyllic compost system
• Building a BioSand water filter
• Building a water harvesting bio swale
• Constructing an earthen rocket stove

This course is designed for people who work with non-government organizations or government agencies, community organizers working in international development and/or social entrepreneurship, as well as volunteers and students with dedicated interest in the subject matter.

View of Download COURSE CURRICULUM OVERVIEW here

View or Download COURSE BROCHURE here

Teaching Team

Our instruction team is comprised of a diverse mix of special guest instructors led by Warren Brush and Joseph Lentunyoi.

Warren Brush is a Permaculture designer and teacher as well as a mentor and storyteller. Warren is co-founder ofQuail Springs Permaculture, Regenerative Earth Farms, Sustainable Vocations, Wilderness Youth Project, and his Permaculture design company, True Nature Design. He works in Permaculture education and sustainable systems design in North America, Africa, Middle East, Europe, and Australia.

Joseph Lentunyoi is from the Maasai tribe, and is co-founder of the Permaculture Research Institute of Kenya, to which he brings extensive practical knowledge of sustainable farming as well as teaching experience. Joseph is the Sustainability Director for Nyumbani Village, where over 900 children live who have been orphaned by HIV related diseases, alongside teaching and designing with permaculture techniques extensively in East Africa.

Registration

Cost includes instruction, certification, catered meals, and camping accommodations.
Cost: $1,650 (a deposit of $300 reserves your space with the full balance due by June 10)
Early Bird: $1,450 for payment in full by April 15

Discounts
Early Bird – $200 discount, course payment in full by April 15, 2013
PDC Refresher – $200 discount, participants with a previous 72-hr Permaculture Design Certification
Couples – $300 discount, applies to your joint total for couples registering, paying and traveling together
Check or Money Order – $25 discount, payment by check or money order

How to Register

1. Fill out Online Pre-Registration – Click Here
2. Receive confirmation, orientation, program and payment details to your email address
3. Make payment to formally reserve your space

Contact with questions: Kolmi Majumdar – email info@quailsprings.org, phone 805-886-7239

 

 

UN and Samoa: 2014 Small Islands Sustainability Conference

United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Wu Hongbo is leading a UN planning mission to Samoa to prepare for the 2014 Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States. Mr. Wu is also Secretary-General of …UN and Samoa Launch Preparations for 2014 Small Islands Sustainability Conference

Apia, Samoa, 1 April 2013 – United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Wu Hongbo is leading a UN planning mission to Samoa to prepare for the 2014 Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States. Mr. Wu is also Secretary-General of the Conference.

Countries agreed at last year’s Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development that greater efforts were needed to assist small island developing States and called for convening a conference in 2014. The General Assembly has accepted Samoa’s offer to host the Conference.

Mr. Wu will meet with Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sa’ilele Malielegaoi on 2 April and will tour the proposed conference site.

The Samoa Conference will follow up on the outcomes of the two previous international conferences on small island developing States held in Barbados in 1994 and Mauritius in 2005.

“Small island developing States are on the frontlines of sustainable development and despite their unique vulnerabilities, they never shy away from tackling head-on the social, economic and environmental challenges facing their communities”, says Mr. Wu. “The world should take notice how these countries are dealing with a range of economic, social and environmental issues, including the impacts of climate change, such as rising sea levels and extreme weather events. The Samoa Conference will help guide us all toward a sustainable future.”

“The decision to hold a small island developing States review meeting in 2014 is important and timely,” Samoa Prime Minister Malielegaoi told the General Assembly in September. “Coincidentally, 2014 holds special significance for Samoa. Barring any natural catastrophes, we will graduate from the category of Least Developed Countries on 1 January that year.

“We want to underscore that through genuine partnerships with development partners our Small Island Developing State, also a least developed country, is able to markedly lift the socio-economic situation of our country and the standard of living for our people.” He added the success of meetings “should be measured on the quality of the decisions and commitments agreed to, not just on costs and number of participants considerations only.”

At Rio+20, countries agreed that small island developing States remain a special case for sustainable development because of their small size, their remoteness, small natural resource base and because they are especially vulnerable to extreme weather events and the impacts of climate change. More

 

The 2013 Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit and Expo

About the Summit

The 2013 Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit and Expo will be held jointly with the 2013 Islands & Isolated Communities Congress at the Hawai‘i Convention Center, September 9 - 11.

The event is the preeminent meeting place for international leaders and energy experts at the forefront of the clean energy movement. Securing energy independence and developing a clean energy industry that promotes the vitality of our planet are two reasons why it is critical to reaffirm already established partnerships and build new ones throughout the Asia-Pacific region and the world. The Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit and Expo and the Islands & Isolated Communities Congress provide a forum for the high-level global networking necessary to advance this emerging clean energy culture. Read our 2012 attendee testimonials at right. More

 

Small Island States (SIDS) in 2014

Antigua St. John’s - In keeping with the request of Antigua & Barbuda Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer; the United Nations has officially dedicated 2014 as the International Year of Small Island Developing States.

Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer

Prime Minister Spencer tabled the request at the UN General Assembly in September 2012, where he also pointed to Antigua and Barbuda’s role on behalf of the region, in sending a strong message of awareness to the international community on the need for bold action and support for sustainable development, and the pervasive issue of climate change.

“We cannot wait for our lands to disappear before we act. We must act now to respond to the climate crisis, and ensure that not a single country is sacrificed, no matter how small.

“The threat is real, our sea-levels are rising, there is coral bleaching beyond the depths of our shores, and hurricanes are becoming more recurrent and severe,” the Prime Minister told the United nations General Assembly.

National Information Officer with the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) for the Caribbean Area, Amanda Laurence, currently in Antigua, confirmed to local journalists on Tuesday that the year has indeed been delegated as the International Year of Small Island Developing States, and has been added to the UN Calendar for 2014.

She noted that the UN seriously considered Antigua & Barbuda Prime Minister Spencers’ proposal, and agreed that “the focus would be on them (the Caribbean) as requested.”

“I don’t have information on all the activities that will be rolled out for it next year but as those events are identified, the information would sent out,” Laurence said.

Antigua and Barbuda joined with the Small Island Developing States(SIDS) to point out to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) the need for concrete steps in order to protect these, and other exposed countries from the threat of climate change.

“The responsibility to mitigate climate change should be a collective consciousness for both developing and developed countries; however, developed countries should accept their responsibilities as the leading contributor in emitting extremely high levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which are now threatening the welfare of the present and future generations,” Antigua’s Prime Minister said. More

 

The Open and Rocky Road Post-2015

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 31 2013 (IPS) - What values does a Yemeni journalist who fuelled the Arab Spring hold in common with a former principal of the U.S. National Security Council? And how in turn will they see eye to eye with a Jordanian queen, or the president of Indonesia?

The subjects of this riddle are meeting in Monrovia as part of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s 27-member High Level Panel of Eminent Person’s on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP).

The purpose of the HLP is to lead the discussion around a new framework, the post-2015 development agenda, to replace the expiring Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The HLP’s work will culminate with an advisory report to Ban in May 2013.

The meeting, which takes place between Jan. 30 and Feb. 1, is the third in a series of four. Previous meetings took place in London and New York, and the forthcoming one will take place in Bali.

“This (meeting in Monrovia) is the HLP’s chance to hear the perspectives of a wide range of organisations and individuals in Africa about their priorities for a post-2015 agenda,” said Claire Melamed, head of the Growth and Equity Programme at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

“It’s important those perspectives are reflected in the final report,” Melamed told IPS.

ODI, in partnership with the World Wide Web Foundation and the U.N., developed an online survey to gauge the priorities of the world’s citizens. The survey, conducted through myworld2015.org, inspired a running Twitter conversation on the topic (#post2015). The online platforms sparked international chatter that was absent during MDG discussions.

“As we witnessed in the historic events of 2011 – from the Arab spring to the rise of Occupy – the possibility of mobilising public opinion on a global scale is becoming ever-more urgent and realistic,” Rajesh Makwana, director of Share the World’s Resources (STWR), told IPS.

The airing of new voices does pose a challenge: how will 27 panellists harbour the hopes and concerns of so many people?

“My apprehension is that this process is moving in so many levels (that) there’s no priority on how these different conversations (will) come together in one place,” said Radhika Balakrishnan, executive director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and professor of women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University.

“There’s consultations happening all around the world… There’s not a clear way to see how these are going to come to fruition at the end,” Balakrishnan told IPS, noting that she is still hopeful, despite the challenges.

More

 

Taking Stock: World Fish Catch Falls to 90 Million Tons in 2012

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects that the world’s wild fish harvest will fall to 90 million tons in 2012, down 2 percent from 2011. This is close to 4 percent below the all-time peak haul of nearly 94 million tons in 1996.

The wild fish catch per person has dropped even more dramatically, from 17 kilograms (37.5 pounds) per person at its height in 1988 to 13 kilograms in 2012—a 37-year low. While wild fish harvests have flattened out during this time, the output from fish farming has soared from 24 million tons in the mid-1990s to a projected 67 million tons in 2012.

Over the last several decades, as demand for fish and shellfish for food, feed, and other products rose dramatically, fishing operations have used increasingly sophisticated technologies—such as on-vessel refrigeration and processing facilities, spotter planes, and GPS satellites. Industrial fishing fleets initially targeted the northern hemisphere’s coastal fish stocks, then as stocks were depleted they expanded progressively southward on average close to one degree of latitude annually since 1950. The fastest expansion was during the 1980s and early 1990s. Thereafter, the only frontiers remaining were the high seas, the hard-to-reach waters near Antarctica and in the Arctic, and the depths of the oceans.

The escalating pursuit of fish—now with gross revenue exceeding $80 billion per year—has had heavy ecological consequences, including the alteration of marine food webs via a massive reduction in the populations of larger, longer-lived predatory fish such as tunas, cods, and marlins. Unselective fishing gear, including longlines and bottom-scraping trawls, kill large numbers of non-target animals like sea turtles, sharks, and corals.

As of 2009, some 57 percent of the oceanic fish stocks evaluated by FAO are “fully exploited,” with harvest levels at or near what fisheries scientists call maximum sustainable yield (MSY). If we think of a fish stock as a savings account, fishing at MSY is theoretically similar to withdrawing only the accrued interest, avoiding dipping into the principal.

Some 30 percent of stocks are “overexploited”—they have been fished beyond MSY and require strong management intervention in order to rebuild. The share of stocks in this category has tripled since the mid-1970s. A well-known example of this is the Newfoundland cod fishery that collapsed in the early 1990s and has yet to recover.

This leaves just 13 percent of oceanic fish stocks in the “non-fully exploited” category, down from 40 percent in 1974. Unfortunately, these remaining stocks tend to have very limited potential for safely increasing the catch.

These FAO figures describe 395 fisheries that account for some 70 percent of the global catch. Included are the small minority that have undergone the time-consuming and expensive process of formal scientific stock assessment, with the remainder being "unassessed" fisheries. There are thousands more unassessed fisheries, however, that are absent from the FAO analysis. In a 2012 Science article, Christopher Costello and colleagues published the first attempt to characterize all of the world’s unassessed fisheries. The authors report that 64 percent of them were overexploited as of 2009.

The top 10 fished species represent roughly one quarter of the world catch. Nearly all of the stocks of these species are considered fully exploited (most of these fish have more than one geographically distinct stock), including both of the major stocks of Peruvian anchovy, the world's leading wild-caught fish. Stocks that are overexploited and in need of rebuilding include largehead hairtail—a ribbon-like predator caught mainly by Chinese ships—in its main fishing grounds in the Northwest Pacific. (See data.)

Despite the unsustainable nature of current harvest levels, countries continue to subsidize fishing fleets in ways that encourage even higher catches. Governments around the world spend an estimated $16 billion annually on increasing fleet size and fish-catching ability, including $4 billion for fuel subsidies. Industrial countries spend some $10 billion of that total. More than $2 billion is spent by China, whose 15-million-ton catch is nearly triple that of the next closest country, Indonesia. More

 

Will President Obama Seize the Moment for Action on Climate Change?

Superstorm Sandy changed the U.S. political zeitgeist on climate change virtually overnight.

When BusinessWeekruns a cover blazoned with "It's Global Warming Stupid" and politicians start breaking their "climate silence," you know the jig is up. President Obama acknowledged as much in his acceptance speech, when he said he wanted to "pass on a country that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet."

The question is, where we go from here. Are Americans now prepared to accelerate action to slow climate change? Or will a new fortress mentality take hold? And I mean that quite literally. One commentator recently suggested surrounding lower Manhattan with retractable walls, begging the question of where all that displaced water would go.

As the dust settles from the election, the president will come under increasing pressure to make good on his promise, through both domestic action as well as taking a more cooperative stance at the UN climate negotiations. Much will be written about this in the weeks to come.

In the meantime, he might take some inspiration from some of the many transformative solutions being put into practice elsewhere. The good news is that there are many such examples, so many that the United Nations climate agency launched an initiative to celebrate some of the most exciting, inspiring stories they could find. "Momentum for Change" is a platform for encouraging and celebrating innovative action -- designated as "lighthouse" activities -- either to reduce climate change, or to reduce its impacts.

In 2012, the initiative focused on the urban poor. To qualify as lighthouse activities, projects needed to not only address climate change, but also to improve the lives - both socially and environmentally - of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the community. They also had to demonstrate their catalytic potential for long-term transformational change, which meant that they had to be capable of being repeated elsewhere, and could be scaled up over time. More

 

Ecosystem-Based Adaptation to Climate Change in Caribbean Small Island Developing States

Ecosystem-Based Adaptation to Climate Change in Caribbean Small Island Developing States: Integrating Local and External Knowledge

Abstract: Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are vulnerable to climate change impacts including sea level rise, invasive species, ocean acidification, changes in rainfall patterns, increased temperatures, and changing hazard regimes including hurricanes, floods and drought. Given high dependencies in Caribbean SIDS on natural resources for livelihoods, a focus on ecosystems and their interaction with people is essential for climate change adaptation. Increasingly, ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) approaches are being highlighted as an approach to address climate change impacts. Specifically, EbA encourages the use of local and external knowledge about ecosystems to identify climate change adaptation approaches. This paper critically reviews EbA in Caribbean SIDS, focusing on the need to integrate local and external knowledge. An analysis of current EbA in the Caribbean is undertaken alongside a review of methodologies used to integrate local and external expertise for EbA. Finally key gaps, lessons learnt and suggested ways forward for EbA in Caribbean SIDS and potentially further afield are identified. Download

Many Strong Voices Releases Paper on Ecosystem-based Climate Change Adaptation in Caribbean SIDS

August 2012: Many Strong Voices (MSV), a collaboration between coastal communities in the Arctic and small island developing States (SIDS) that seeks to promote action on climate change, has released a paper titled “Ecosystem-Based Adaptation to Climate Change in Caribbean Small Island Developing States: Integrating Local and External Knowledge.”

The paper underscores that Caribbean SIDS are vulnerable to climate change impacts, such as: sea level rise; invasive species; ocean acidification; changes in rainfall patterns; increased temperatures; and changing hazard regimes including hurricanes, floods and drought. Noting the high dependency in Caribbean SIDS on natural resources for livelihoods, it calls for a focus on ecosystems and their interaction with people in order to adapt to climate change.

The paper reviews ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change in Caribbean SIDS, focusing on the integration of local and external knowledge. It highlights key gaps, lessons learned and suggests ways forward for ecosystem-based adaptation in Caribbean SIDS, and potentially further afield.

Partners of MSV include: the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC); the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP); the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)/GRID-Arendal; the Organization of American States, Department of Sustainable Development (OAS DSD); UNEP Regional Office for North America (RONA); the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC); as well as NGOs and indigenous peoples organizations. [Publication: Ecosystem-based Adaptation to Climate Change in Caribean SIDS. More

 

SIS Officials Discuss Climate Change and the Pacific Plan

Senior officials from the Smaller Island States (SIS) within the Pacific Islands Forum will discuss a regional technical support mechanism for SIS to access and manage the expected increased flows of climate change resources.

This is one of the issues being discussed at the one-day 2012 SIS Officials Meeting held at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Suva, Fiji today. The meeting is one of a series of Forum officials meetings which will be held at the Secretariat this week in preparation for the 43rd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders' meeting which will be held in the Cook Islands 27 - 31 August. SIS countries include the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Federated States of Micronesia and Tuvalu.

In his opening remarks at the meeting, Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Tuiloma Neroni Slade said: "Climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and well-being of SIS."

"SIS Leaders emphasised the need to address the significance of current impacts of climate change on the SIS as urgent, requiring immediate resourcing and support. As you know, CROP agencies are developing a regional technical support mechanism for SIS to effectively access and manage the expected increased flows of climate change resources," said Mr Slade

The ongoing work on climate change finance (CCF) is being undertaken in line with the Forum Compact, as part of a region-wide effort to strengthen coordination and better use of development resources.

Forum Secretary General Mr Slade also reaffirmed the Pacific Plan as the master strategy for strengthening regional cooperation and integration for the region including the special needs of the SIS.

Mr Slade said: "The affirmation of sustainable development at the Rio +20 conference reinforces our Leaders' Vision in the Pacific Plan. Of particular importance to this meeting is the recognition of the 'special case' of Small Island Developing States which echoes our Leaders own due recognition of the special place of SIS as the most vulnerable amongst out Pacific community."

He told delegates at the meeting that as an integral part of the Pacific Plan process, the review of the Pacific Plan will be conducted in 2013. More