World Leadership Conference 2011 - Update Day 02

Day 02.

The second day was dedicated towards negotiation of the proposed amendments on the first day. Task forces were established under the three themes to re-structure the content of the policy paper and the delegates were working in small groups to make the process more efficient. Several amendments were made and approved by the house and some of the amendments were not negotiated and are still open for further discussion.

I was able to present the Action Based Change Declaration of South Asian Youth Conference. The presentation was focused on Importance of Peace under the following sections of peace within us, peace with others and peace with the environment. I believe that peace is the solution for most of the burning problems in our society including Sustainable development challenges and Climate Change. Ms. Clara M. Nobbel, the associate programme officer of United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) was also present and gave a presentation that highlighted the importance of Sustainable Governance, emphasizing mainly on the governing aspect.

Day-03

The first day of the Knowledge Track was dedicated for “Green Economy for Poverty Eradication” with the Keynote Address presented by Dr. Stefanos Fotiou, Regional Coordinator of UNEP Resource Efficiency Programme. He emphasized how Green Economy will eradicate poverty, and added that “investing just 2% of global GDP in key sectors can kick start a transition from Brown Economy to Green Economy”. The Opening Sharing by Mr. Nicolo Wojewoda, the Director of Road to Rio+20, Peace Child International, focused on how youths can engage with Rio+20 Campaign and how youths can make an impact on their community and government on sustainable development initiatives. An interesting panel discussion was carried by Dr. Chris Margules, Senior Scientist, Conservation International; Dr. Jung Tae-Yong, Deputy Executive Director, Global Growth Initiatives; Mr. Maran Gopalakrishnan, Communication Manaer, VESTAS; and Mr. Stevan Tan, Executive Secretary, Young NTUC. The panel addressed on the emerging challenges, benefits and implementation of Green Economy followed by several workshops on thematic sessions. As the previous day evening time was dedicated for policy delegates for amendments and discussion followed by networking sessions.

The World Leadership Conference 2011 is an Asia Pacific youth regional meeting for the Earth summit/Rio+20 due to be held in July 2012 on which the whole global community is focused on at the moment. Yet major climate change negotiations are still pending. The WLC have brought together over 21 countries in Asia and the Pacific to do a consultation towards the UN Rio 2012 summit. This will be a part of a buildup consultation for the region, targeting young people. It is also being endorsed by UNEP with its regional director attending the event amongst many other UN and regional Governmental officials. More details online at http://www.worldleadershipconference.org

The position paper will be brought to UNEP RIM process as the Asia Pacific position paper under Major Group for Children and Youth (MGCY). The WLC identified three key themes namely, Green Economy to Eradicate Poverty, Energy for a Low Carbon Future, and Institutional Framework on Sustainable Development, which co-relates with the UNCSD Rio+20’s major two themes.

Regards

Sri Lankan Delegation (Green Lanka Youth Platform)

South Asian Youth Conference Delegation

World Leadership Conference 2011

World Leadership Conference 2011

Day-01

The World Leadership Conference 2011 is an Asia Pacific youth regional meeting for the Earth summit/Rio+20 due to be held in July 2012 on which the whole global community is focused on at the moment. Yet major climate change negotiations are still pending. The WLC will be bringing together over 21 countries in Asia and the Pacific to do a consultation towards the UN Rio 2012 summit. This will be a part of a buildup consultation for the region, targeting young people. It is also being endorsed by UNEP with its regional director attending the event amongst many other UN and regional Governmental officials. More details online at http://www.worldleadershipconference.org

The position paper will brought to UNEP RIM process as the Asia Pacific position paper under Major Group for Children and Youth (MGCY). The WLC identified three key themes namely, Green Economy to Eradicate Poverty, Energy for a Low Carbon Future, and Institutional Framework on Sustainable Development, which co-relates with the UNCSD Rio+20’s major two themes.

Today, delegates from approximately 10 nations sat for round table negotiations. The combined paper was made by the WLC organizers using the Consultation Papers submitted by each country and it was circulated among delegates prior to the 1^st reading. The opening session of the policy track begun with an energetic activity called “World Café”. All the delegates were given the opportunity to get to know each other and this activity emphasized on the importance of this summit.

The 1^st reading of the combined paper involved 'amendments' from each delegation from each country was added to the text. All amendments were allowed and no decision to finalize the amendments took place in this 1st reading. The discussion of the policy paper amendments will take place on the second day, which will involve discussion among the concerned parties. Apart from proposing amendments, delegates gave brief reasons for the amendments which was added as a 'comment' to text. Delegates can elaborate further on the reasons in 2^nd reading. The first day was ended with a colorful cultural show.

Sri Lankan Delegation.

Green Lanka Youth Platform

Sri Lanka manufactures first carbon-free bra

Marks & Spencer has made ‘going green’ even easier as it has launched the high street’s first ever carbon neutral bra, manufactured at the M&S eco-model factory in Thurulie, Sri Lanka.

Part of the new Autograph Leaves lingerie collection, the retail chain has calculated the footprint of the entire range, which includes four styles of bra, three knickers and a set of suspenders.

‘As a result of this project we know raw material production, such as lace manufacture, is a major contributing factor to the bra’s footprint, so we’re now working with our suppliers to find better alternatives for the future,” Paschal Little, Head of Lingerie Technology at M&S said.

The factory’s local community is also benefiting from this initiative. M&S has purchased offsets through a carbon credit project run by Conservation Carbon Company.

.............

http://print.dailymirror.lk/business/127-local/41329.html

http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2011/04/14/sri-lanka-mas-thurulie-made-word%E2%80%99s-first-carbon-neutral-bra-sale

Why link Poverty and Environment?

http://www.povertyandconservation.info/docs/20080524-UNDP-UNEP_Poverty_Environment_Initiative.pdf

Poverty and environment are inter-linked through four

main dimensions: livelihoods, resilience to

environmental risks, health and economic development.

Livelihoods: Ecosystems -- a dynamic complex of plant,

animal and micro-organism communities and their

nonliving environment interacting as a functional unit --

provide goods and services (e.g. food, clean water, energy

and shelter) on which poor people rely disproportionately

for their well-being and basic needs. They also depend on

the environment to earn incomes in sectors such as

agriculture, fishing, forestry and tourism, both in formal

and informal markets.

Resilience to environmental risks: Poor people are more

vulnerable to natural disasters (e.g. flooding, drought), the

effects of climate change, and environmental shocks that

threaten among others their livelihoods and undermine

food security. Improving environmental management of

for example watersheds and mangrove forests increase the

resilience of poor people and their livelihoods to

environmental risks.

Health: Environmental conditions account for a

significant portion of health risks to poor people. On the

other hand, good health conditions are beneficial in terms

of resilience, livelihoods, productivity and economic

development.

Economic development: The environment contributes

directly and indirectly to the economic development and

level of employment, in particular in developing

countries, through sectors such as agriculture, energy,

forestry, fisheries, and tourism.

Poverty environment linkages are dynamic and context

specific reflecting both geographic location, scale and the

economic, social, and cultural characteristics of

individuals, households, and social groups. By addressing

the environmental issues it is possible for developing

countries to ensure a sustainable path to poverty reduction

and human development. .

Examples of poverty-environment issues include soil

degradation that affects nearly 2 billion hectares,

damaging the livelihoods of up to 1 billion people living

on drylands. Around 70% of commercial fisheries are

either fully or overexploited, and 1.7 billion people – a

third of the developing world’s population – live in

countries facing water stress.

There is an uneven geography of consumption,

environmental damage and human impact. Rich countries

generate most of the world’s environmental pollution and

deplete many of its natural resources. Key examples

include depletion of the world’s fisheries and emissions of

greenhous e gases that cause climate change, both of

which are tied to unsustainable consumption patterns by

rich people and countries. In rich countries per capita

carbon dioxide emissions are 12.4 tonnes while in middleincome countries they are 3.2 tonnes and in low-income

countries, 1.0 tonne. Poor people are most vulnerable to

environmental shocks and stresses such as the anticipated

impacts of global climate change.

How to Go Green Right Now© by Anoka Abeyrathne©

How to Go Green Right Now©

by Anoka Abeyrathne©

1. Skip bottled water! - Yep take your own bottle of water. It can save the piling up of over one million tons of plastic!

2. Buy quality electronic and household items - this way you use them for longer and don't dispose easily unlike cheap stuff that break real easy.

3. Recycle - seen the awesome trash bins in British Council? try it out at home, compost your bio-degradables, make gift wrap out of waste paper (contact

me for tips! ) and send only plastic in your trash.

4. Sell and earn - sell your old clothes to thrift stores and earn! also sell newspapers, glass bottles and metal to places who wiegh and Pay you! :D

5. Consume more native food - this helps to bring up the economy and put down exports which bring in loads of non-degradables to Sri Lanka.

6. Walk - quit taking that elevator, you are already getting flabby! try out some stretches and get your own personalized workout (yep, contact me again for

gym related stuff)

7. Light up - use LED bulbs or CFLs. The best ones is LEDs which consume way less than CFLs and safer that CFLs since CFLs contain Mercury!

8. Air dry - your clothes and your hair. Like kettles, hair dryers consume a lot of energy since they heat up in an instant.

9. Participate - in policy dialogues, forums, online. Voice out, use media effectively. Quit being apathetic and letting others decide (and ruin)

your future!

10. Go Organic - food, clothing, cleaning products, body products, everything can be bought or made. These lack killer chemicals that

cause cancer and other insane diseases. Kill two birds with one stone much? :)

to be continued later :)

Keep on participating in the GLYP movement. Do you part to make a change!

Green Policy - The Way Forward by Anoka Abeyratne

Green Policy is more commonly known as environmental policy. It is the type of governmental decisions to minimize the impact its citizens have on the environment, through direct or indirect methods. Thus

The goal is to understand the actual benefits of these statements and where they add value. In doing this we can leverage the most successful components and best practices used in the creation of new green policy statements.

In the long term, green policy is beneficial to us, as Earth has a way of dealing with ones who harm it.

Some key points of its strategy to achieve this are:

• Minimize waste by evaluating industrial operations and ensuring they are as efficient as possible.

• Minimize toxic emissions.

• Optimization of energy use by industries and households.

• Actively promote recycling.

• Promotion of a product range to minimize the environmental impact of both production and distribution.

• Meet or exceed all the environmental legislation that relates to the Company.

• Use an accredited program to offset the greenhouse gas emissions generated by industrial and home based activities.

However much more needs to be policy wise.

The Green Lanka Youth Platform addressed a key issue: “Awareness” through a workshop conducted in February. This gave a number of energetic youth, the opportunity to discuss an debate with like-minded youth regarding environmental policy and in Sri Lanka and the Globe while critically evaluating its overall impact on the environment and humans.

You might love to know about what was discussed and more importantly you may want to be part of this exciting and unique venture where youngsters get to Voice Out  Then mail us at glyplatform@gmail.com or contact us on the Facebook group Green Lanka Youth Platform to ensure that you are part of the workshop on the 19^th of March 2011! So come on board, get connected and Get Active! 

Recent News - by Sinduja Jayaratne

The Environmental Ministry of Sri Lanka has taken steps to formulate a National Climate Change Policy with the support of UN-Habitat. A Ministry spokesmen said to Sunday Observer that the main objective of the Climate Change Secretariat is to Facilitate climate change research and distribution of research results to trigger policy reforms and actions.Meanwhile, the nations of the SAARC have adopted a three year Action Plan on climate change. This plan was adopted at the SAARc Ministerial Meeting on Climate Change, which was held in Dhaka from July 1-2,2008.

Green Economy.. what does it mean?

Green economics is the economics of the real world—the world of work, human needs, the Earth’s materials, and how they mesh together most harmoniously. It is primarily about “use-value”, not “exchange-value” or money. It is about quality, not quantity for the sake of it. It is about regeneration---of individuals, communities and ecosystems---not about accumulation, of either money or material.

Green economics is not just about the environment. Certainly we must move to harmonize with natural systems, to make our economies flow benignly like sailboats in the wind of ecosystem processes. But doing this requires great human creativity, tremendous knowledge, and the widespread participation of everyone. Human beings and human workers can no longer serve as cogs in the machine of accumulation, be it capitalistic or socialistic. Ecological development requires an unleashing of human development and an extension of democracy. Social and ecological transformations go hand-in-hand.

Green economics and green politics both emphasize the creation of positive alternatives in all areas of life and every sector of the economy.

This definition of the Green Economy is one that is sadly, rarely accepted in today’s world, but is also one that may pave the way to a sustainable and brighter future. This topic will be discussed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (the Rio + 20 Conference), and hopefully, nations and representatives from all over the world will form a fixed, yet flexible definition to this topic, and action is taken.

If you have any information to share with us regarding this topic, or even anything regarding the environment, mail us at glyplatform@gmail.com, and it will be considered when future blog posts are made.

Thanks,

Darren.

Environmental Governance for aspiring leaders

As you know environmental governance is a major topic around the globe.
If I define it in a simple manner, its all about mechanisms and rules that conserve and protect the environment. Due to the rapid industrial growth and its unfavorable consequences all around the world, the concept of Global Environmental Governance has gained prominence in the recent years, as the effective handling of environmental issues and management of natural resources are important for the very survival of humanity.

This aspect has not been given a warm reception by many as it speaks of strict measures against ones who harm the environment.

We at the Green Lanka Youth Platform (GLYP) strive to synergise and promote the concept of Environmental Governance in a manner that will ensure the participation of Sri Lankan youth. For a long time the youth have aspired to lead and to make major decision concerning our lan, but were not given a proper platform.
GLYP strives to fill this void and encourage active participation that will include brain-storming sessions to make a policy paper to be presented at the EcoSingapore World Leadership Conference 2011.

As Margaret Mead said “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

So if you haven't signed up, hurry up! Its time for YOU to make a change.

Anoka

THE GREAT FOOD CRISIS OF 2011 By Lester Brown

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/10/the_great_food_crisis_of_2011

The Great Food Crisis Of 2011
By Lester Brown

As the new year begins, the price of wheat is setting an all-time high in the United Kingdom. Food riots are spreading across Algeria. Russia is importing grain to sustain its cattle herds until spring grazing begins. India is wrestling with an 18-percent annual food inflation rate, sparking protests. China is looking abroad for potentially massive quantities of wheat and corn. The Mexican government is buying corn futures to avoid unmanageable tortilla price rises. And on January 5, the U.N. Food and Agricultural organization announced that its food price index for December hit an all-time high.

But whereas in years past, it’s been weather that has caused a spike in commodities prices, now it’s trends on both sides of the food supply/demand equation that are driving up prices. On the demand side, the culprits are population growth, rising affluence, and the use of grain to fuel cars. On the supply side: soil erosion, aquifer depletion, the loss of cropland to nonfarm uses, the diversion of irrigation water to cities, the plateauing of crop yields in agriculturally advanced countries, and — due to climate change — crop-withering heat waves and melting mountain glaciers and ice sheets. These climate-related trends seem destined to take a far greater toll in the future.

There’s at least a glimmer of good news on the demand side: World population growth, which peaked at 2 percent per year around 1970, dropped below 1.2 percent per year in 2010. But because the world population has nearly doubled since 1970, we are still adding 80 million people each year. Tonight, there will be 219,000 additional mouths to feed at the dinner table, and many of them will be greeted with empty plates. Another 219,000 will join us tomorrow night. At some point, this relentless growth begins to tax both the skills of farmers and the limits of the earth’s land and water resources.

Beyond population growth, there are now some 3 billion people moving up the food chain, eating greater quantities of grain-intensive livestock and poultry products. The rise in meat, milk, and egg consumption in fast-growing developing countries has no precedent. Total meat consumption in China today is already nearly double that in the United States.

The third major source of demand growth is the use of crops to produce fuel for cars. In the United States, which harvested 416 million tons of grain in 2009, 119 million tons went to ethanol distilleries to produce fuel for cars. That’s enough to feed 350 million people for a year. The massive U.S. investment in ethanol distilleries sets the stage for direct competition between cars and people for the world grain harvest. In Europe, where much of the auto fleet runs on diesel fuel, there is growing demand for plant-based diesel oil, principally from rapeseed and palm oil. This demand for oil-bearing crops is not only reducing the land available to produce food crops in Europe, it is also driving the clearing of rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia for palm oil plantations.

The combined effect of these three growing demands is stunning: a doubling in the annual growth in world grain consumption from an average of 21 million tons per year in 1990-2005 to 41 million tons per year in 2005-2010. Most of this huge jump is attributable to the orgy of investment in ethanol distilleries in the United States in 2006-2008.

While the annual demand growth for grain was doubling, new constraints were emerging on the supply side, even as longstanding ones such as soil erosion intensified. An estimated one third of the world’s cropland is losing topsoil faster than new soil is forming through natural processes — and thus is losing its inherent productivity. Two huge dust bowls are forming, one across northwest China, western Mongolia, and central Asia; the other in central Africa. Each of these dwarfs the U.S. dust bowl of the 1930s.

Satellite images show a steady flow of dust storms leaving these regions, each one typically carrying millions of tons of precious topsoil. In North China, some 24,000 rural villages have been abandoned or partly depopulated as grasslands have been destroyed by overgrazing and as croplands have been inundated by migrating sand dunes.

In countries with severe soil erosion, such as Mongolia and Lesotho, grain harvests are shrinking as erosion lowers yields and eventually leads to cropland abandonment. The result is spreading hunger and growing dependence on imports. Haiti and North Korea, two countries with severely eroded soils, are chronically dependent on food aid from abroad.

Meanwhile aquifer depletion is fast shrinking the amount of irrigated area in many parts of the world; this relatively recent phenomenon is driven by the large-scale use of mechanical pumps to exploit underground water. Today, half the world’s people live in countries where water tables are falling as overpumping depletes aquifers. Once an aquifer is depleted, pumping is necessarily reduced to the rate of recharge unless it is a fossil (nonreplenishable) aquifer, in which case pumping ends altogether. But sooner or later, falling water tables translate into rising food prices.

Irrigated area is shrinking in the Middle East, notably in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and possibly Yemen. In Saudi Arabia, which was totally dependent on a now-depleted fossil aquifer for its wheat self-sufficiency, production is in a freefall. From 2007 to 2010, Saudi wheat production fell by more than two thirds. By 2012, wheat production will likely end entirely, leaving the country totally dependent on imported grain.

The Arab Middle East is the first geographic region where spreading water shortages are shrinking the grain harvest. But the really big water deficits are in India, where the World Bank numbers indicate that 175 million people are being fed with grain that is produced by overpumping. In China, overpumping provides food for some 130 million people. In the United States, the world’s other leading grain producer, irrigated area is shrinking in key agricultural states such as California and Texas.

The last decade has witnessed the emergence of yet another constraint on growth in global agricultural productivity: the shrinking backlog of untapped technologies. In some agriculturally advanced countries, farmers are using all available technologies to raise yields. In Japan, the first country to see a sustained rise in grain yield per acre, rice yields have been flat now for 14 years. Rice yields in South Korea and China are now approaching those in Japan. Assuming that farmers in these two countries will face the same constraints as those in Japan, more than a third of the world rice harvest will soon be produced in countries with little potential for further raising rice yields.

A similar situation is emerging with wheat yields in Europe. In France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, wheat yields are no longer rising at all. These three countries together account for roughly one-eighth of the world wheat harvest. Another trend slowing the growth in the world grain harvest is the conversion of cropland to nonfarm uses. Suburban sprawl, industrial construction, and the paving of land for roads, highways, and parking lots are claiming cropland in the Central Valley of California, the Nile River basin in Egypt, and in densely populated countries that are rapidly industrializing, such as China and India. In 2011, new car sales in China are projected to reach 20 million — a record for any country. The U.S. rule of thumb is that for every 5 million cars added to a country’s fleet, roughly 1 million acres must be paved to accommodate them. And cropland is often the loser.

Fast-growing cities are also competing with farmers for irrigation water. In areas where all water is being spoken for, such as most countries in the Middle East, northern China, the southwestern United States, and most of India, diverting water to cities means less irrigation water available for food production. California has lost perhaps a million acres of irrigated land in recent years as farmers have sold huge amounts of water to the thirsty millions in Los Angeles and San Diego.

The rising temperature is also making it more difficult to expand the world grain harvest fast enough to keep up with the record pace of demand. Crop ecologists have their own rule of thumb: For each 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature above the optimum during the growing season, we can expect a 10 percent decline in grain yields. This temperature effect on yields was all too visible in western Russia during the summer of 2010 as the harvest was decimated when temperatures soared far above the norm.

Another emerging trend that threatens food security is the melting of mountain glaciers. This is of particular concern in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau, where the ice melt from glaciers helps sustain not only the major rivers of Asia during the dry season, such as the Indus, Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers, but also the irrigation systems dependent on these rivers. Without this ice melt, the grain harvest would drop precipitously and prices would rise accordingly.

And finally, over the longer term, melting ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica, combined with thermal expansion of the oceans, threaten to raise the sea level by up to six feet during this century. Even a three-foot rise would inundate half of the riceland in Bangladesh. It would also put under water much of the Mekong Delta that produces half the rice in Vietnam, the world’s number two rice exporter. Altogether there are some 19 other rice-growing river deltas in Asia where harvests would be substantially reduced by a rising sea level.

The current surge in world grain and soybean prices, and in food prices more broadly, is not a temporary phenomenon. We can no longer expect that things will soon return to normal, because in a world with a rapidly changing climate system there is no norm to return to.

The unrest of these past few weeks is just the beginning. It is no longer conflict between heavily armed superpowers, but rather spreading food shortages and rising food prices — and the political turmoil this would lead to — that threatens our global future. Unless governments quickly redefine security and shift expenditures from military uses to investing in climate change mitigation, water efficiency, soil conservation, and population stabilization, the world will in all likelihood be facing a future with both more climate instability and food price volatility. If business as usual continues, food prices will only trend upward.

Report blames BP oil spill on 'systemic failures'

Washington - Last year's BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was "rooted in systemic failures" by the companies involved in the disaster, according to an advance portion of a report by a presidential commission.

The commission blamed BP plc, the oil company that owned and operated the well, in addition to Transocean Ltd, the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which exploded and sank. Halliburton Co, an oilfield services company which also worked on the project, also shares responsibility, the report said.

Managers from all three companies failed to take actions that could have prevented the April 20 blowout, the commission found.

The Deepwater Horizon burned and sank with 11 men on board in April. The well spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico for months before it could be capped and permanently sealed in mid-September.

"The blowout was not the product of a series of aberrational decisions made by rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again," the report says.

"Rather, the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur."

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/360932,oil-spill-systemic-failures.html

Scientists see climate change link to Australian floods

Dan Proud Photography/Getty Images

By David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Climate change has likely intensified the monsoon rains that have triggered record floods in Australia's Queensland state, scientists said on Wednesday, with several months of heavy rain and storms still to come.

But while scientists say a warmer world is predicted to lead to more intense droughts and floods, it wasn't yet possible to say if climate change would trigger stronger La Nina and El Nino weather patterns that can cause weather chaos across the globe.

"I think people will end up concluding that at least some of the intensity of the monsoon in Queensland can be attributed to climate change," said Matthew England of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

"The waters off Australia are the warmest ever measured and those waters provide moisture to the atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia monsoon," he told Reuters.

The Queensland floods have killed 16 people since the downpour started last month, inundating towns, crippling coal mining and are now swamping the state's main city of Brisbane.

The rains have been blamed on one of the strongest La Nina patterns ever recorded. La Nina is a cooling of ocean temperatures in the east and central Pacific, which usually leads to more rain over much of Australia, Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia.

Click image to see photos of the flooding in Australia

AFP/Torsten Blackwood

This is because the phenomena leads to stronger easterly winds in the tropics that pile up warm water in the western Pacific and around Australia. Indonesia said on Wednesday it expected prolonged rains until June.

WEATHER SWITCH

The Pacific has historically switched between La Nina phases and El Ninos, which have the opposite impact by triggering droughts in Australia and Southeast Asia.

"We've always had El Ninos and we've had natural variability but the background which is now operating is different," said David Jones, head of climate monitoring and prediction at the Australia Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne.

"The first thing we can say with La Nina and El Nino is it is now happening in a hotter world," he told Reuters, adding that meant more evaporation from land and oceans, more moisture in the atmosphere and stronger weather patterns.

"So the El Nino droughts would be expected to be exacerbated and also La Nina floods because rainfall would be exacerbated," he said, though adding it would be some years before any climate change impact on both phenomena might become clear.

He said the current La Nina was different because of the warmest ocean temperatures on record around Australia and record humidity in eastern Australia over the past 12 months.

Prominent U.S. climate scientist Kevin Trenberth said the floods and the intense La Nina were a combination of factors.

He pointed to high ocean temperatures in the Indian Ocean near Indonesia early last year as well as the rapid onset of La Nina after the last El Nino ended in May.

"The rapid onset of La Nina meant the Asian monsoon was enhanced and the over 1 degree Celsius anomalies in sea surface temperatures led to the flooding in India and China in July and Pakistan in August," he told Reuters in an email.

He said a portion, about 0.5C, of the ocean temperatures around northern Australia, which are more than 1.5C above pre-1970 levels, could be attributed to global warming.

"The extra water vapor fuels the monsoon and thus alters the winds and the monsoon itself and so this likely increases the rainfall further," said Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

"So it is easy to argue that 1 degree Celsius sea surface temperature anomalies gives 10 to 15 percent increase in rainfall," he added.

Some scientists said it was still too soon to draw a definite climate change link to the floods.

"It's a natural phenomena. We have no strong reason at the moment for saying this La Nina is any stronger than it would be even without humans," said Neville Nicholls of Monash University in Melbourne and president of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.

But he said global atmospheric warming of about 0.75C over the past half century had to be having some impact.

"It has to be affecting the climate, regionally and globally. It has to be affecting things like La Nina. But can you find a credible argument which says it's made it worse? I can't at the moment."

(Editing by Robert Birsel)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110112/wl_nm/us_climate_australia_floods

Sufficiency and Sustainability

by Dr. John Blewitt

Being based in a former manufacturing and engineering region of the UK where the automotive industry was once one of the largest, if not the largest, employer the industrial restructuring over the previous twenty years and the more recent economic downturn has given sustainability a greater urgency than ever before.

The ecological threats we are all facing such as climate change, resource depletion, biodiversity loss and so on are directly and indirectly our responsibility. These threats are worsening by the day but the very real economic difficulties seem more immediate, more pressing, more real. Infact, both are equally pressing and equally real and it is time for all of us, especially those working or directing big and small businesses, to do things differently. Clearly, it is important that a decent standard and quality of life is important and it doesn’t matter whether you are in Bangladesh, China, the UK, the US or anywhere else these things are important. However, we need to recognise that sustainability, living within the ecological carrying capacity of our planet, is linked to sufficiency. Surely, there is such a thing as enough. We should not just want new and more things because we can see them advertised on bill boards, on TV or on the internet. More does not necessarily mean a better life although for those who do live in poverty more does indeed mean that. We need to address sufficiency and sustainability, quality of life rather than standard of life, well being rather than growth and consumption.

For me, being socially and environmentally responsible is understanding that we are part of nature, that we are all on the planet together – for better or for worse. The important thing is that we need to make things better and Business and Higher Education can contribute immensely to make this happen. The problem is that for too long Business and Higher Education have not been as involved in promoting environmental sustainability and ethical business practices as they should have been. In many ways they have been part of the problem and a cause of our present ecological and economic crises. Hopefully, things are changing. They need to. And, fast.

http://www.greenconduct.com/blog/2010/11/30/sufficency-and-sustainability/