news20091204jt

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Friday, Dec. 4, 2009
Futenma goes or we exit ruling bloc: SDP
No new base in Okinawa, says Fukushima
By JUN HONGO
Staff writer

The Social Democratic Party may leave the three-party ruling bloc if U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma remains in Okinawa as agreed to under a 2006 relocation accord between Tokyo and Washington, SDP President Mizuho Fukushima indicated Thursday.

If the pacifist party breaks with the coalition, it could destabilize the government because the ruling bloc, led by the Democratic Party of Japan, would lose its majority in the Upper House.

The SDP has five seats and the ruling bloc, not counting the SDP, has 120 seats in the 242-seat chamber.

"This issue touches on the foundation of the SDP," Fukushima said during a meeting of party executives Thursday, according to SDP officials.

"If this Cabinet decides to build a base over the sea in the coastal area of Henoko, the SDP and I will have to make a grave decision," she reportedly said, hinting her party may leave the coalition if the pact goes ahead.

Under the 2006 Japan-U.S. accord, the two governments agreed to relocate Futenma to the U.S. Marine Corps Camp Schwab in Henoko in the northern part of Okinawa Island, by 2014. Residents near Futenma complain of noise pollution and have dealt with accidents in the densely populated area.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's administration has been talking to the U.S., with an eye to revising the accord in order to transfer the base outside Okinawa, but the U.S. considers the matter settled. The SDP is meanwhile pressuring the DPJ to get tougher with the U.S.

"This is not an easy issue to begin with. But with regard to the sentiment of the people of Okinawa, we must remove the risk as soon as possible," Hatoyama said Thursday, hinting Tokyo and Washington may fail to reach a new agreement over the relocation issue by the end of the year.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano was more direct, telling reporters he "never said the issue must be resolved within the year," adding the prime minister shares that view.

Although Washington has pushed for a quick decision, Hirano maintained that failure to reach one within the year "would not mean everything will be over." He also said ties with the United States will stay strong even if the base issue remains unresolved into next year.

Fukushima, who has served as SDP president since 2003, announced Wednesday she will run for a fourth term in this month's party election. She is expected to be reinstalled without a vote since Lower House member Kantoku Teruya, whom the Okinawa labor union was pushing as next leader, announced Thursday he will not run.

The SDP draws support from labor unions and left-leaning pacifist groups, both of which are calling for Futenma to be moved outside Okinawa.

Touching on Fukushima's comments, Hatoyama told reporters his administration doesn't take its coalition partners lightly.

"We want to take the opinions of the SDP and Kokumin Shinto (People's New Party) seriously, because this is a three-party coalition," Hatoyama said.


[BUSINESS NEWS]
Friday, Dec. 4, 2009
MMC in tieup talks with Peugeot
Capital alliance with French automaker would bring 'green' car, emerging market benefits
Compiled from Kyodo, AP

Mitsubishi Motors Corp. is in talks with PSA Peugeot Citroen on a major capital tieup, including possibly making the French automaker its top shareholder, with both firms standing to benefit from developing environmentally friendly cars and manufacturing in emerging economies, sources said Thursday.

Peugeot Citroen also said from Paris it is in talks with MMC that could lead to a "strategic partnership."

The reported tieup talks sent MMC shares soaring. They closed up 13.4 percent at \135 in Tokyo after earlier soaring nearly 20 percent. On Wednesday, Peugeot Citroen shares closed up 1.3 percent at 24.59 euro.

Peugeot may invest up to hundreds of billions of yen in Mitsubishi Motors, Japan's No. 6 automaker based on consolidated net sales, the sources said.

Such an alliance would form one of the major automaker groups in the global market.

Negotiations are under way on the premise that Peugeot will buy new shares of MMC through a third-party allocation, with the exact amount of investment and timing to be determined, the sources said.

Another major capital alliance between Japanese and foreign carmakers was created in 1999 between Nissan Motor Co. and Renault SA.

MMC incurred a group net loss of \54.88 billion in fiscal 2008 through March this year on sales of \1.97 trillion, down 26.4 percent from a year earlier, as the carmaker was hit by a sales slump and the higher yen.

Mitsubishi Motors and Peugeot agreed in March to develop an electric car for Europe based on MMC's i-MiEV electric car for the French automaker's brand. It will be put on the European market next year.

Under their latest partnership, the two firms are considering jointly developing next-generation environmentally friendly cars, according to the sources.

MMC signed a capital tieup with DaimlerChrysler AG in 2000. They terminated their ties in 2005.

Mitsubishi Motors sold 1.19 million vehicles in 2008.

The automaker has been undergoing rehabilitation with support from other Mitsubishi group companies due to its deteriorating business in recent years following a series of vehicle-defect coverups and recalls.

These will involved a range of passenger models and sport utility vehicles, including the Pajero.


[BUSINESS NEWS]
Friday, Dec. 4, 2009
Battle for JAL heats up as bids top $1 billion
Compiled from AP, Kyodo

The tug of war over Japan Airlines intensified Thursday as both American Airlines and rival Delta Air Lines upped their offers of financial aid.

At a Tokyo news conference, American, a member of the oneworld alliance, vowed to lead a $1.1 billion investment in JAL — bigger than the $1 billion aid package Delta and its SkyTeam partners have offered so far — to prevent JAL from falling into Delta's orbit.

In a separate statement, American, a unit of AMR Corp., and private equity firm TPG Inc. said that considering the revenue to be generated by the investment, "the total incremental financial support from American, oneworld and TPG is in excess of $1.8 billion and far exceeds any other available proposition."

American Chief Financial Officer Tom Horton said in Tokyo the offer is "far superior" to the $1 billion proposal from Delta.

He refused to describe the composition of the offer or say how much of the money would come from American. But he said the proposal by American, its oneworld partners and TPG is part of a larger restructuring plan to get JAL back on solid footing.

Delta struck back, saying at a separate news conference in Tokyo that SkyTeam carriers were ready to offer third-party additional funds to JAL on top of the $1 billion package.

"If there was interest by the government in raising more money than that ($1 billion package) by introducing outside, third-party investors, we would be happy to support that effort as well," Delta President Edward Bastian said, suggesting the additional funds may come from venture capital.

Bastian said the $1 billion offer by his airline and its SkyTeam partners to get JAL to join their alliance is still on despite the dollar's recent weakness. He expressed confidence the deal will get clearance from regulators.

"The offer was stated in dollars," Bastian said. "That's not enough to change our offer," acknowledging the dollar's recent weakness.

American, based in Fort Worth, Texas, has said if JAL switches from the oneworld alliance it will cost the Japanese flag carrier up to $500 million in lost revenue in the first two years after the changeover.

The airline has argued that if JAL sticks with oneworld, it and American could both apply for antitrust immunity from U.S. and Japanese regulators and bring in up to $100 million a year in additional revenue.

Such a tieup depends on the U.S. and Japanese governments striking an open skies agreement that would reduce barriers to airlines from one country operating in the other.

A Delta lawyer said if JAL decides to join the SkyTeam alliance, they could also win antitrust immunity.

news20091204gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environmnt > Carbon offsetting]
Rich nations to offset emissions with birth control
Radical plan to cut CO2 argues that paying for family planning is developing world is the best bet
John Vidal, environment editor
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 December 2009 09.51 GMT Article history

Consumers in the developed world are to be offered a radical method of offsetting their carbon emissions in an ambitious attempt to tackle climate change - by paying for contraception measures in poorer countries to curb the rapidly growing global population.

The scheme - set up by an organisation backed by Sir David Attenborough, the former diplomat Sir Crispin Tickell and green figureheads such as Jonathon Porritt and James Lovelock - argues that family planning is the most effective way to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic global warming.

Optimum Population Trust (Opt) stresses that birth control will be provided only to those who have no access to it, and only unwanted births would be avoided. Opt estimates that 80 million pregnancies each year are unwanted.

The cost-benefit analysis commissioned by the trust claims that family planning is the cheapest way to reduce carbon emissions. Every £4 spent on contraception, it says, saves one tonne of CO2 being added to global warming, but a similar reduction in emissions would require an £8 investment in tree planting, £15 in wind power, £31 in solar energy and £56 in hybrid vehicle technology.

Calculations based on the trust's figures show the 10 tonnes emitted by a return flight from London to Sydney would be offset by enabling the avoidance of one unwanted birth in a country such as Kenya. Such action not only cuts emissions but reduces the number of people who will fall victim to climate change, it says.

"The scheme, called PopOffsets, understands the connection [between population increase and climate change]," says the trust director Roger Martin. "It offers a practical and sensible response. For the first time ever individuals, companies and organisations will have the opportunity to offset their carbon voluntarily by supporting projects to provide family planning services where there is currently unmet demand."

In papers released with the launch of the offset scheme, the trust claims that reducing CO 2 by 34 gigatonnes would cost about $220bn with family planning, but more than $1tn with low carbon technologies. The 34 gigatonnes is roughly what the world emits in a year, and would be achieved by cutting the projected global population in 2050 by 500 million.

The world's population, presently 6.8 billion, is increasing by nearly 84 million a year. The growth is equivalent to a new country the size of Germany each year, or a city the size of Birmingham every week. It is expected by the UN to peak at about 9 billion people in 2050. By this time, UN scientists say global carbon emissions must have reduced by at least 80% to avoid dangerous rises in temperature, meaning the carbon footprint of each citizen in 2050 will have to be very low.

"The current level of human population growth is unsustainable and places acute pressure on global resources. Human activity is exacerbating global warming, and higher population levels inevitably mean higher emissions and more climate change victims," said Martin.

The giant carbon footprints of developed countries mean prevented births will save far more carbon than those in developing nations.

However, some development groups opposed the plan. "We are keen that any money raised [from offsets] help the poorest who are most vulnerable to climate change. [But] it would be misleading if it was spent in this way. It should go to [immediate] things like disaster risk reduction, food security and water," said Paul Cook, advocacy director of Tearfund, a faith-based development group.

Population control is highly contentious in rich and poor countries alike Some, such as Jonathon Porritt, the former Sustainable Development Commission chair, have said promotion of reproductive health is one of the most progressive forms of intervention. "Had there been no 'one child family' policy in China there would now have been 400 million additional Chinese citizens," he has said.

But other thinkers, such as the Guardian columnist George Monbiot, say global population increase pales into insignificance when compared with the effect of increased consumption and economic growth.


[Environmnt > Climate change scepticism]
Senior civil servant to investigate leaked emails between climate scientists
Investigator appointed by University of East Anglia to examine whether hacked exchanges suggest wrongdoing
Adam Vaughan
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 December 2009 16.12 GMT Article history

A senior civil servant has been appointed to conduct an independent review by next spring into emails hackers stole and published from the University of East Anglia's climate research unit (CRU). The announcement that Sir Muir Russell will investigate allegations of wrongdoing on the behalf of the CRU came as Saudi Arabia's lead climate negotiator said the emails would have a "huge impact" on UN climate talks starting in Copenhagen next week.

Announcing Russell's appointment, the university said the inquiry would look at four key allegations including examining whether the leaked exchanges between climate scientists demonstrated any manipulation or suppression of data. The review will also look at the CRU's approach to assembling and presenting research findings, assess whether the department complied with freedom of information requests and investigate the security of data held by the university.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research at LSE and one of the prominent voices who called for a review, welcomed the news. "This appears to be a very good appointment and the terms of reference look right. One concern is that the results may not be published until the spring. This is probably necessary to allow a thorough investigation, but it does mean that those who are using 'climategate' as a propaganda tool for their own political ends might be able to enjoy many more weeks of mischief-making," Ward said.

The University of East Anglia's vice-chancellor, Professor Edward Acton, said: "The reputation and integrity of UEA is of the upmost importance to us all. We want these allegations about CRU to be examined fully and independently. That is why I am delighted that Sir Muir has agreed to lead the independent review and he will have my and the rest of the university's full support."

Russell is a science graduate with a long history in the civil service, including roles in the home affairs secretariat of the Cabinet Office and the Scottish Executive. He is not a climate scientist and has no previous association with UEA.

However, Ward warned that the review, which is to begin soon, was unlikely to silence campaigning by climate sceptics. "The big question is whether so-called 'sceptics' will complain because the investigation will not be headed by one of their own, and whether they will suspend their campaigns of disinformation about this affair until the investigation is completed," he said.

Separately today, Saudi Arabia's lead climate negotiator Mohammed al-Sabban told the BBC that the leaked emails would have a "huge impact" on the Copenhagen summit starting on Monday. He said the emails cast doubt upon man's influence on global warming and could deter countries from offering emissions cuts at the conference. Saudi Arabia, on of the world's biggest oil producers, has long taken a sceptical view of climate change.

On Tuesday, the head of the CRU, Phil Jones, said he would be standing down while an inquiry was carried out. "After a good deal of consideration I have decided that the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the director's role during the course of the independent review and am grateful to the university for agreeing to this. The review process will have my full support," Jones said.

The emails were obtained by hacking a server at the university and critics claim they show evidence of collusion between climate scientists. A police investigation is also under way into the source of the theft.

news20091204gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environmnt > Carbon emissions]
Global emissions only 'few billion tonnes' short of targets, says Stern
Leading economist says world leaders are more than halfway towards pledges needed for effective deal at Copenhagen
Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 December 2009 10.58 GMT Article history

Offers on the table ahead of the Copenhagen climate change talks are only "a few billion tonnes" short of the scale of annual CO2 emission cuts required to meet 2020 environment targets, Lord Stern said today.

He acknowledged there was a "significant way to go" but insisted: "It is possible to get there."

The economist and global warming expert was speaking in Brussels after breakfast talks with European commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Yesterday in London he said world leaders were more than halfway towards the kind of promises needed to save the planet at Copenhagen.

His latest report says global emissions are currently 47bn tonnes of greenhouses gases a year, and could rise to 58bn tonnes in 2020.

To keep global warming to no more than a 2C, says his report, emissions should be held at about 44bn tonnes in 2020.

Today, stopping off in Brussels on the way to Copenhagen, he praised the "vital lead" taken by the EU, and went on: "If you look at the kind of offers that are now on the table we are just a few billion tonnes short per annum of the kind of emission cuts we need to get on target for 2020.

"That means there is a significant way to go but it is possible to get there."

Lord Stern said a "strong, outline, political agreement" at Copenhagen could lead to a dynamic industrial revolution. He said the "extra bit" that needed to be done would require increased commitments from some countries which had already made emissions-cutting offers, as well as a bigger fight against deforestation. "Both those things could take us there and I trust they are both possible."

Dr Pachauri said: "If we are serious about taking action then 2020 is clearly the date by which we must commit ourselves to reduce emissions substantially."

President Barroso repeated the EU's pledge to increase to 30% its current commitment to cut CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020 - but only when there are significant equivalent commitments from the rest of the developed world and "adequate" responses from poorer countries."We have set a unilateral, unconditional target of 20%: we cannot commit to more if others do not do so as well," he said.

In the last fortnight, India revealed a carbon intensity cut of 24% by 2020, China pledged an intensity reduction of 40-45% by 2020 and the US offered to cut total greenhouse emissions 17% by 2020. Carbon intensity is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of economic growth.


[Environment > Nuclear power]
Sellafield faces fine for exposing staff to radioactivity
Substantial penalty expected to be handed down to the operators of Cumbrian plant
Terry Macalister
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 December 2009 17.30 GMT Article history

The safety record of Britain's nuclear industry will be tarnished tomorrow when managers at the Sellafield complex in Cumbria are fined for exposing staff to radioactive contamination.

A substantial penalty is expected to be imposed by Carlisle crown court following a successful criminal prosecution brought by the Health and Safety Executive.

Concerns about conditions at the plant come just a week after an eminent group of scientists and military experts described as "ludicrous" the manner in which 100 tonnes of plutonium was stored at Sellafield – and at a time when the wider nuclear industry is trying to build public support for a new generation of reactors.

Sellafield, now owned by Amec, Areva of France and URS Washington of the US, pleaded guilty this summer to failing to discharge its duties under section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Two contractors were exposed to danger while they were refurbishing a concrete floor at the plutonium storage plant.

A spokesman for Sellafield declined to comment but industry executives said the company was braced for a financial hit. The Cumbrian facility was fined £500,000 plus costs of more than £50,000 three years ago following the discovery of a large leak of highly radioactive materials at its Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (Thorp).

The incident dated back to April 2005, and although no one was injured there was concern that the leak had continued for eight months before it was detected.

Sellafield was then under the control of the British Nuclear Group – an arm of the state-owned BNFL – which has since ceded control to the private sector consortium Nuclear Management Partners, which is made up of Amec and its two partners.

BNFL was itself fined £30,000 and ordered to pay £21,000 costs in January 2004 after a diving accident when the company was checking underwater outfall pipes.

Tomorrow's court appearance follows safety concerns raised by anti-nuclear campaigners the British Pugwash Group in a report on Britain's plutonium stockpile, which is centred on Sellafield. Retired general Sir Hugh Beach, one of the report's authors, told the BBC: "It's a total absurdity that we should have 100 tonnes of separated plutonium sitting up at Sellafield in tin cans ... that is manifestly ludicrous."

The BPG, named after the venue of a 1957 nuclear safety conference in Nova Scotia, fear the nuclear stockpile could become a target for terrorists.These difficulties are highlighted as the government and industry try to move ahead with plans to build more than half a dozen new nuclear plants to generate low carbon electricity.

The Health and Safety Executive has already taken a tough line on the designs for new reactors by telling Areva and Westinghouse of the US that it needs much more work to be done before it could give the green light to the plants they have proposed for construction here.

news20091204nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 3 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1121
News
Deep structure imaged under Hawaii
Seismic experiment gives best evidence yet for mantle plumes.
Brendan Borrell

Geologists have obtained the best image yet of a plume of hot rock that rises from Earth's deep mantle and fuels the volcanoes of the Hawaiian islands.

{{A hot spot from the deep mantle fuels the growth of the Hawaiian island chain.}
P. Johnson/University of Hawaii}

The study, led by geophysicist Cecily Wolfe at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, reveals the structure of the plume down to at least 1,500 kilometres. Critics have questioned in recent years whether such plumes even exist.

"This is a spectacular experiment that succeeded in getting data for putting the plume theory to the test," says Wolfe. The results are published this week in Science¹.

Pretty plumes

The plume hypothesis, first proposed by geophysicist Jason Morgan in 1971, provides an explanation for the volcanic hotspots in Hawaii, Yellowstone and other regions that lie at the centres of tectonic plates. Theoretical models and studies of Earth's temperature and chemistry over the past 30 years seemed to support the idea, but direct measurements of the deep mantle remained out of reach.

So in 1999, Wolfe and her colleagues began to plan a US$4.5-million seismic experiment called the Plume-Lithosphere Undersea Melt Experiment (PLUME) to measure the velocity of earthquake waves using ocean-bottom sensors around Hawaii. Because waves move more slowly in hotter materials, researchers could use the data to visualize the structure of the plume. In 2005, the team tossed 36 seismometers off the side of a ship for their first one-year deployment. The following year they deployed a broader array.

Wolfe's team found that as the plume rises it gets squashed into a pancake shape at 200 kilometres beneath Earth's crust, where it melts and expands upward into fractures. The team also identified structures predicted by computer models, including a cold, downwelling curtain on the edges of the pancake and a tilt to the plume that is consistent with the northwest movement of the tectonic plate.

"Technically, this is a major accomplishment," says geophysicist Guust Nolet of Géoazur laboratory at the Côte d'Azur Observatory in France.

In 2004, Nolet published a paper² that visualized at least half a dozen deep mantle plumes using global tomography, which integrates seismic data from around the world but lacks the high resolution of Wolfe's study. "If people are objective," he says of the new data, "there shouldn't be any more sceptics."

Still unconvinced

In fact, there's at least one remaining sceptic. Long-time plume critic Gillian Foulger, a geophysicist at Durham University, UK, remains unconvinced. "The present paper suffers from being obliged to find a plume when it can't really," she says.

Foulger says that, among other things, Wolfe's team released only one set of data — on shear waves — and not the data on pressure waves. By themselves, she says, the shear-wave data could be interpreted as meaning the changes in the mantle below Hawaii reflect not a plume but variations in melt or chemical composition.

Wolfe stands by the paper and says that the pressure-wave data will corroborate the current data set. Similar data are also coming from a group running a seismology array in Yellowstone.

In February, the PLUME data will be publicly available and researchers can decide for themselves whether plumes really exist. Accepting the new results is "going to take time for people," Wolfe says. "I'm optimistic, but in science you never know."

References
1. Wolfe, C. J . et al. Science 326, 1388-1390 (2009).
2. Montelli, R. et al. Science 303, 338-343 (2004).


[naturenews]
Published online 3 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1122
News
Ships provide insight into ocean carbon
Pilot study shows how the seas soak up carbon dioxide.
Quirin Schiermeier

{{Container vessels can help to monitor carbon dioxide uptake by the oceans.}
Atlantic Container Lines Inc.}

Ocean liners can help keep track of one of the most elusive climate variables, a pilot study suggests. Using data collected by commercial ships, scientists have accurately mapped the carbon dioxide absorbed by the North Atlantic Ocean, and found that it varies enormously from one place to another, and from year to year.

Only about half of the CO2 emissions from human activity stay in the atmosphere, and these greatly enhance the natural greenhouse effect. The rest is absorbed — in roughly equal measure — by plants and by the oceans.

Without these powerful natural sinks, atmospheric CO2 concentrations would be rising at more than twice the rate they actually are.

But as oceans become increasingly saturated with CO2, some have become concerned that they may function less efficiently as carbon sinks. These worries have been fuelled by reports suggesting that the fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions that stay in the atmosphere rose from 40% to 45% between 1959 and 2006¹. However, a more recent study failed to find evidence for a trend in the airborne fraction of CO2 emissions².

"This precisely illustrates the vast uncertainty surrounding this important question," says Andrew Watson, a carbon-cycle scientist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, and leader off the carbon-mapping research, which is published in Science this week³.

The survey is the most comprehensive assessment yet of the way that CO2 moves from atmosphere to ocean. The results should enable a more detailed assessment of how changes in oceanic CO2 uptake might affect planetary climate and the acidity of the oceans.

Up and down

The team equipped four container ships and one cruise liner serving North Atlantic sea routes with chemical sensors — known as equilibrators — which measure the abundance of CO2 in the surface waters of the ocean and in the surrounding air. The data can be used to infer overall air-to-sea CO2 transfer in the North Atlantic.

The CO2 uptake of the region as a whole seems to change considerably from year to year, probably in response to natural climate oscillations. Uptake of CO2 also seems to vary between locations, and annual fluxes depend strongly on seasons. This variation makes it difficult to discern any trend in the data.

"We saw no substantial decline in sink strength, but we did see very pronounced fluctuations," says Watson. "Whether the ocean CO2 uptake is systematically weakening and, if so, what the mechanisms might be, is an open question."

The study, which is funded by the European Union (EU) and forms part of the EU's ongoing CarboOcean project, has been in the making for almost 10 years. A prototype chemical sensor was fitted onto a cargo ship in 2002, but failed to work properly. After further testing, the main study was conducted in 2005, involving around 125,000 ship-based measurements.

The scientists then compared their observations with data gathered from more sporadic coverage in adjacent years, and found that in 2005 the ocean's CO2 uptake was higher than in other years between 2002 and 2007. In the absence of more systematic observations, other climate data had previously been used to infer a continued decline in the CO2-absorbing capabilities of the North Atlantic since the mid-1990s.

"There is no unique way of determining something as complex as a regional carbon balance," cautions Philippe Ciais, associate director of the Laboratory for Climate Sciences and the Environment in Gif-sur-Yvette France, who coordinates the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS), a planned pan-European facility for monitoring greenhouse gases. "But the good news is that you can beat uncertainty with a clever sampling strategy and relatively cheap means."

The study is a showcase for how the ICOS might work, he adds. "It will definitely guide us in designing an efficient ocean-observing system."

References
1. Canadell, J. G. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104, 18866-18870 (2007).
2. Knorr, W. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L21710 (2009).
3. Watson, A. J. et al. Science 326, 1391-1393 (2009).

news20091204nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 3 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1113
News
Amazon is best site for forest carbon investments
Forest Carbon Index maps climate opportunities.
Anjali Nayar

{{The Amazon offers the best carbon investment opportunity.}
BRAND X}

Amazon nations will be the early winners in a future market for forest carbon credits, which could grow to US$20 billion annually by 2020, according to a new report.

It is estimated that deforestation accounts for around 12% of the greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change¹ and there is general agreement that the next global climate deal – under negotiation next week in Copenhagen – should include a forest protection plan.

The plan would let rich nations meet their emissions targets in part by investing in forest preservation in developing countries. If the plan goes through, governments will then have to work out where to put their money.

The Forest Carbon Index, released by the environmental think tank Resources for the Future and consultancy firm Climate Advisers, both based in Washington DC, aims to help investors and policy-makers choose between forests around the world.

The index is calculated based on an area's biological potential to store carbon and the local opportunity costs of protecting forests rather than cutting them down for timber, or to clear land for agriculture and grazing. The index also takes into account the investment risk based on each country's capacity to monitor and market its forests, the ease of business, the political stability and local governance conditions.

It's the first study of its kind to display the best places to enter the forest carbon market in such a comprehensive way, says Nigel Purvis, the head of Climate Advisers and director of the project.

South American winners

According to the study, the Amazon-Andes, Central America, the Congo Basin, Madagascar and southeast Asia are all experiencing enough deforestation to capitalize on the carbon market. But the earliest opportunities will go to the countries that have a safer investment environment.

The report suggests that 85% of the best places for forest carbon returns are in the greater Amazon, particularly in Brazil and Peru, where there is a high rate of deforestation, inexpensive land, existing market capacity and political will to save the forests. The Congo Basin — with its carbon-rich forests and rock-bottom prices — contains around 75% of the potentially high-profit locations. But relatively low deforestation rates, political instability and lack of capacity to bring carbon credits to market mean that the region is unlikely to garner much investment in the next decade.

The index ratings reflect what analysts in the field have suspected, says Doug Boucher, who directs the Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, DC.

Boucher adds that actual future investment will depend on more than just ratings. Brazil, for example, has said that it won't sell its emissions savings on the offset market because it wants developed nations to concentrate on reducing their own carbon emissions (although this position may soften in the Copenhagen talks, see 'Brazil mulls major climate action'). Instead Brazil has created a fund, allowing rich nations to donate money to help the country meet its goal to reduce deforestation by 80% by 2020 (see 'Paying to save the rainforests'). "So much of the investment depends on national policies," says Boucher.

Work in progress

Leo Bottrill, who is mapping drivers of deforestation in the region for the conservation group WWF in Washington DC (see 'Model predicts future deforestation'), says that although the index is a good overview of forest carbon opportunities, some of the global and national datasets used "should be treated with caution".

"Areas that are currently identified in the Congo Basin as low cost forest carbon may actually lie over valuable mineral concessions or in the path of future transportation routes," says Bottrill. "It will be important to complement the index's information with finer on-the-ground data of planned developments."

"If you were really looking to make a specific investment, you would have a much more detailed list of criteria," adds Jan Fehse, head of forest services at carbon-trading company EcoSecurities, based in Dublin, Ireland.

Fehse would like the index to be expanded to track progress in developing policy, legal and social systems for the carbon market in the years to come. "As layers of information are added, it may become much more useful than it is already," he says.

Purvis expects that his group will come out with a more detailed version of the index next year. "This is an attempt at compiling the best available global data sets," he says. "It is a start of the discussion, rather than the end point."

References
1. van der Werf, G. R. et al. Nature Geosci. 2, 737-738 (2009).