e360 Video Report

When The Water Ends:
Africa’s Climate Conflicts

As temperatures rise and water supplies dry up, semi-nomadic tribes along the Kenyan-Ethiopian border increasingly are coming into conflict with each other. A Yale Environment 360 video report from East Africa focuses on a phenomenon that climate scientists say will be more and more common in the 21st century: how worsening drought will pit groups — and nations — against one another.
Watch the video

26 Oct 2010: Leading Scientists Accuse
Think Tanks of Close Ties to Logging Firms

Twelve top experts on biodiversity and rainforests have accused two think tanks of acting as mouthpieces for the global logging and palm oil industry and of promoting “distortions, misrepresentations, or misinterpretations of fact” in their analyses of tropical forests and logging. The scientists, including the former head of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the biodiversity adviser to the president of the World Bank, sent an open letter to the Guardian alleging that the two think tanks — Washington-based World Growth International (WGI) and Melbourne-based International Trade Strategies Global (ITS) — have essentially been lobbying for logging and palm oil companies. These include Sinar Mas, a conglomerate of mostly Indonesian logging, wood pulp, and palm oil companies that has been repeatedly criticized for illegal deforestation and human rights violations. William Laurance, a leading tropical forest expert at James Cook University in Australia, said that while WGI and ITS portray themselves as independent think tanks, they are funded by logging and oil palm companies “playing a major role globally in the rapid destruction of tropical forests.” WGI and ITS have attacked conservation groups, including WWF and Greenpeace, working to slow rainforest destruction.
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26 Oct 2010: More than 1,200 New Species
Discovered in Amazon Over Last Decade

Researchers discovered more than 1,200 new species of plants and animals in the Amazon during the last decade, a rate of about one new species every three days, according to a new report. Those discoveries, compiled by the conservation group WWF to coincide with the ongoing UN summit on biodiversity in Japan, have included 637 new plant species, 257 fish species, 216 amphibian species, and 39 mammal species. At least 10 percent of the species on the planet are found in the Amazon, said Meg Symington, a tropical ecologist with the group. “We think when all the counting is done, the Amazon could account for up to 30 percent of the species on Earth,” she said. According to the group, the rapid pace of discovery in the Amazon shows just how much science is still learning about the region and underscores the importance of preserving the Amazon’s forests, which store vast amounts of carbon and have provided many new species used in pharmaceuticals. In the past five decades, settlers, farmers, and loggers have destroyed at least 17 percent of the Amazon rainforest — an area twice the size of Spain.
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25 Oct 2010: Island Nation Will Create
Extensive Marine Mammal Sanctuary

The Pacific Island nation of Palau has announced the establishment of a 230,000-square-mile marine mammal sanctuary that will protect whales, dolphins, and the endangered dugong — a relative of the manatee — from hunting and fishing. Harry Fritz, Palau’s Minister of the Environment, Natural Resources and Tourism, announced the creation of the Mongolia-sized sanctuary at a meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan. He said that the sanctuary will protect as many as 30 species of whales and dolphins that either breed inside Palau’s 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) or travel through it. In addition to protecting the rare dugong, the sanctuary also will promote whale-watching tourism in Palau’s waters, Fritz said. Last year, Palau declared a sanctuary for sharks inside its EEZ in an effort to slow the booming global trade in shark fins, used in soups in China and Asia. The Convention on Biological Diversity has set a goal of preserving 10 percent of the world’s oceans as marine sanctuaries by 2012. Currently, only 1.17 percent of marine waters are protected, according to the Nature Conservancy.
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Interview: A Landmark Agreement
To Protect Canada’s Boreal Forest

Canada’s boreal forest stretches from British Columbia to Newfoundland, covering 2.2 million square miles, an area nearly 60 percent the size of the United States. Much of that forest is intact, making it — along with Russia’s northern forest and portions of the Amazon — one of three great tracts of forest on the globe. In recent years, however, industrial activity, including Alberta’s massive tar sands mines, has been nibbling away at the Canadian boreal forest. In an effort to preserve it, nine environmental groups and 21 forest products companies have signed the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, which calls for a suspension of logging on 70 million acres of boreal forest and the introduction of improved logging practices on an additional 106 million acres. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Steven Kallick, director of the Pew Environment Group’s International Boreal Conservation Campaign, which brokered the accord, explains that it is part of a much larger effort to fully protect 50 percent of Canada’s boreal forest from industrial development.
Read the interview

25 Oct 2010: New Gas-Powered Mazda
Will Get More than 70 Miles Per Gallon

Mazda will introduce a subcompact gas-powered vehicle in Japan next year that gets 70.5 miles per gallon, a model automakers say shows that combustion-powered cars can deliver fuel efficiency similar to hybrid vehicles. With a more efficient engine and transmission, and a frame and suspension system produced with lighter, high-tensile steel, the new Demio (called the Mazda 2 outside of Japan) is 30 percent more fuel efficient than similar models now produced by Mazda. Models produced for the U.S. market will have a lower fuel economy rating because of different manufacturing requirements, but the vehicle will still use the same amount of fuel as a Toyota Prius, without the added costs of an electric motor and accompanying battery. The Demio represents a new class of gas-powered vehicles that automakers say can cut fuel consumption globally even more quickly than hybrids or electric vehicles since changes to the engines tend to be less expensive and can be implemented rapidly. Ford recently announced innovations that will improve the fuel economy of its Focus model by 17 percent, to about 40 miles per gallon.
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22 Oct 2010: Plants More Crucial to Reducing
Air Pollution Than Previously Believed

Plants play an even more critical role in keeping the atmosphere clean than previously believed, according to a new study. Using observation, gene expression studies, and computer models, researchers found that deciduous plants absorb a common class of pollutants known as oxygenated volatile organic compounds (oVOCS) as much as four times more quickly than expected. Those chemical pollutants, which can have significant health and environmental impacts, are released into the atmosphere by various natural and human-caused sources, including power plants and vehicles. The rate of intake was especially rapid in dense forests and most evident at the tops of forest canopies, where about 97 percent of the absorption was recorded. And trees under stress, either because of physical wounds or exposure to chemical irritants, tended to absorb oVOCS at an increased rate, according to researchers. The study, which was led by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., will be published in the journal Science Express.
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