[News] from [guardian.co.uk]
[Environment > Marine life]
Conservationists urge Gordon Brown to create 'Britain's Great Barrier Reef'
This week the 10,000th person joined a campaign to create the Earth's biggest marine protected area in the Chagos archipelago
Jessica Aldred
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 January 2010 00.05 GMT Article history
A coalition of conservationists is calling on the British public to urge Gordon Brown to create "Britain's Great Barrier Reef" by designating its territory in the Indian Ocean as the biggest protected marine area on Earth.
The Chagos archipelago (map here), part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, is a group of 55 tropical islands over half a million square kilometres of Indian Ocean that have belonged to Britain since they were captured from France in 1814 during the Napoleonic Wars. The islands include Diego Garcia, the site of a controversial joint British-American military base.
The archipelago boasts the world's largest coral atoll and the world's cleanest, most pristine waters, that are home to at least 220 coral species and more than 1,000 species of fish. The underwater landscape of 6,000m deep trenches, oceanic ridges and sea mounts, is also a refuge and breeding ground for large and important populations of sharks, dolphins, marine turtles, rare crabs, birds and other vulnerable species. It is Britain's greatest area of marine biodiversity.
Nine conservation and scientific organisations including the Marine Conservation Society, the RSPB, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew have formed the Chagos Environment Network (CEN), which is campaigning to protect the biodiversity of the Chagos islands and surrounding waters alongside a three-month public consultation (pdf) launched by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in November 2009. This week the 10,000th person signed up in support of the campaign. With 554,000 sq km of reef, the territory would become the largest protected marine area on Earth.
Rachel Jones, the deputy team leader of ZSL London zoo's aquarium, said: "If Gordon Brown declares the Chagos archipelago a marine protected area it will be one of the biggest conservation breakthroughs for 100 years.
"This underwater Garden of Eden could be a legacy that Gordon Brown will really be proud of."
"If done in the right way, the Chagos protected area could be as important as the reserves which protect the Galapagos islands and Great Barrier Reef. Indeed, it would protect one of the world's most resilient coral reefs and some of the finest coral habitats remaining in the Indian Ocean," said Tony Juniper, green party candidate and campaigner.
Pollutant levels in Chagos waters are exceptionally low because of minimal human influence. Since the 1960s the islands have been set aside for defence purposes, with no inhabitants except for the military personnel and civilian contractors at the US military base on Diego Garcia.
As a result, the ecosystems of the Chagos have so far proven resilient to climate change and have been lagely immune from threats to other reefs worldwide.
But the Chagos Conservation Trust, a member of the CEN, says legal and illegal fishing has impacted the area despite regulations, with sharks, sea cucumbers, turtles and fish known to have declined. "An increased level of environmental protection and enforcement is now urgently required," said William Marsden, the chairman of the trust. "A protected area in Chagos would contribute to a richer Indian Oceans and would benefit people living in and around it."
The consultation, which ends on 12th February, is examining three options for protection. One is to declare a full "no-take" marine reserve for the entire territory; a second is the creation of a marine reserve of the same size but one that would allow some deep-sea fishing in certain zones at certain times of the year, and a third, to establish no-take reserves to protect only the vulnerable reef systems.
However the creation of a protected area could be complicated by the ongoing court case brought by relocated Chagossians at the European Court of Human Rights, which is expected to be decided later this year.
Between 1967 and 1971 an estimated 2,000 Chagossians were evicted from the archipelago to make way for the Diego Garcia military base. The islanders were taken to Mauritius and the Seychelles, more than 1,000 miles away, where many have lived in poverty ever since.
In 2008 the islanders lost a long-running battle when the House of Lords, as the final court of appeal in the UK, ruled in favour of the British government by overturning the lower court rulings and finding no right of return on the part of the Chagossians.
Jeremy Corbyn, a Labour MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group for the Chagos islands, said he was "concerned" that the marine protection consultation had not sought the views of exiled islanders. "The FCO is completely at variance with UK marine conservation policy that seeks to involve the local community," he said.
Corbyn also said there was concern among Chagos island groups over media reports that portrayed their return as a negative for the environment, that would mean the construction of an airport and town and increasing tourism.
"You will get a small number of people living [in the Chagos] who will support sustainable fishing and ecotourism. If the 'ultras' in the marine reserve brigade get their way they will have to have people there to protect the environment. It's extraordinary that islanders are not trusted but the marine community is. Wealthy people land there in yachts and stay on the islands all time. They are trusted but the islanders are not. I find it patronising and extraordinary."
[Environment > Climate change]
UK's top scientist urges care in presenting results of climate change
> Be frank on degree of uncertainty, but as such it is no excuse for inaction
> John Beddington responds to scepticism after melting glaciers mistake
Haroon Siddique
The Guardian, Wednesday 27 January 2010 Article history
A failure by some scientists to be candid on the uncertainty of predicting the rate of climate change is to blame for fuelling scepticism about such predictions, according the government's chief scientific adviser.
John Beddington's comments come in the wake of an admission by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a claim in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 was unfounded. The admission has been used as ammunition by climate change sceptics, who say the public is being misled.
Beddington said scientists should give a caveat to their predictions where there was uncertainty, and release source data "wherever possible" – but added that uncertainty was no excuse for inaction. "I don't think it's healthy to dismiss proper scepticism," he tells the Times newspaper today. "Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can't be changed."
He said the false claim in the IPCC's report was symptomatic of a wider problem with the way evidence was presented in the field of climate science. "Certain unqualified statements have been unfortunate," he said. "We have a problem in communicating uncertainty. There's definitely an issue there. If there wasn't, there wouldn't be the level of scepticism. All of these predictions have to be caveated by saying, 'There's a level of uncertainty about that'."
He explained that large-scale climate modelling using computers meant "quite substantial uncertainties" which needed to be communicated. While it was unchallengeable that burning fossil fuels released CO2 that warms the Earth, "where you can get challenges is on the speed of change".
He acknowledged that where source data was released there was a danger it could be manipulated, "but the benefits from being open far outweigh that danger".
The head of the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit, Professor Phil Jones, stepped down last year while an investigation was conducted into emails leaked from the unit and seized upon by climate change deniers as alleged evidence that scientists had been hiding and manipulating data to support the view that the world is warming up. Shortly after the row, the Met Office released data which showed a rise in the global temperature.
Beddington said the fact that scientists were not 100% certain about every aspect of climate science did not make ignoring the phenomenon a risk worth running.
The IPCC and its head, Rajendra Pachauri, have also come under fire for another claim in its 2007 report – that the cost of natural disasters had risen gradually since 1970 due to climate change. But the IPCC released a statement yesterday saying that the Sunday Times report which carried the allegation was incorrect, insisting that the IPCC had provided a "balanced treatment of a complicated and important issue". While the IPCC admitted that it was wrong about the Himalayan glaciers, scientists maintain that glaciers are melting at historically high rates.
[Environment > Marine life]
Conservationists urge Gordon Brown to create 'Britain's Great Barrier Reef'
This week the 10,000th person joined a campaign to create the Earth's biggest marine protected area in the Chagos archipelago
Jessica Aldred
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 January 2010 00.05 GMT Article history
A coalition of conservationists is calling on the British public to urge Gordon Brown to create "Britain's Great Barrier Reef" by designating its territory in the Indian Ocean as the biggest protected marine area on Earth.
The Chagos archipelago (map here), part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, is a group of 55 tropical islands over half a million square kilometres of Indian Ocean that have belonged to Britain since they were captured from France in 1814 during the Napoleonic Wars. The islands include Diego Garcia, the site of a controversial joint British-American military base.
The archipelago boasts the world's largest coral atoll and the world's cleanest, most pristine waters, that are home to at least 220 coral species and more than 1,000 species of fish. The underwater landscape of 6,000m deep trenches, oceanic ridges and sea mounts, is also a refuge and breeding ground for large and important populations of sharks, dolphins, marine turtles, rare crabs, birds and other vulnerable species. It is Britain's greatest area of marine biodiversity.
Nine conservation and scientific organisations including the Marine Conservation Society, the RSPB, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew have formed the Chagos Environment Network (CEN), which is campaigning to protect the biodiversity of the Chagos islands and surrounding waters alongside a three-month public consultation (pdf) launched by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in November 2009. This week the 10,000th person signed up in support of the campaign. With 554,000 sq km of reef, the territory would become the largest protected marine area on Earth.
Rachel Jones, the deputy team leader of ZSL London zoo's aquarium, said: "If Gordon Brown declares the Chagos archipelago a marine protected area it will be one of the biggest conservation breakthroughs for 100 years.
"This underwater Garden of Eden could be a legacy that Gordon Brown will really be proud of."
"If done in the right way, the Chagos protected area could be as important as the reserves which protect the Galapagos islands and Great Barrier Reef. Indeed, it would protect one of the world's most resilient coral reefs and some of the finest coral habitats remaining in the Indian Ocean," said Tony Juniper, green party candidate and campaigner.
Pollutant levels in Chagos waters are exceptionally low because of minimal human influence. Since the 1960s the islands have been set aside for defence purposes, with no inhabitants except for the military personnel and civilian contractors at the US military base on Diego Garcia.
As a result, the ecosystems of the Chagos have so far proven resilient to climate change and have been lagely immune from threats to other reefs worldwide.
But the Chagos Conservation Trust, a member of the CEN, says legal and illegal fishing has impacted the area despite regulations, with sharks, sea cucumbers, turtles and fish known to have declined. "An increased level of environmental protection and enforcement is now urgently required," said William Marsden, the chairman of the trust. "A protected area in Chagos would contribute to a richer Indian Oceans and would benefit people living in and around it."
The consultation, which ends on 12th February, is examining three options for protection. One is to declare a full "no-take" marine reserve for the entire territory; a second is the creation of a marine reserve of the same size but one that would allow some deep-sea fishing in certain zones at certain times of the year, and a third, to establish no-take reserves to protect only the vulnerable reef systems.
However the creation of a protected area could be complicated by the ongoing court case brought by relocated Chagossians at the European Court of Human Rights, which is expected to be decided later this year.
Between 1967 and 1971 an estimated 2,000 Chagossians were evicted from the archipelago to make way for the Diego Garcia military base. The islanders were taken to Mauritius and the Seychelles, more than 1,000 miles away, where many have lived in poverty ever since.
In 2008 the islanders lost a long-running battle when the House of Lords, as the final court of appeal in the UK, ruled in favour of the British government by overturning the lower court rulings and finding no right of return on the part of the Chagossians.
Jeremy Corbyn, a Labour MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group for the Chagos islands, said he was "concerned" that the marine protection consultation had not sought the views of exiled islanders. "The FCO is completely at variance with UK marine conservation policy that seeks to involve the local community," he said.
Corbyn also said there was concern among Chagos island groups over media reports that portrayed their return as a negative for the environment, that would mean the construction of an airport and town and increasing tourism.
"You will get a small number of people living [in the Chagos] who will support sustainable fishing and ecotourism. If the 'ultras' in the marine reserve brigade get their way they will have to have people there to protect the environment. It's extraordinary that islanders are not trusted but the marine community is. Wealthy people land there in yachts and stay on the islands all time. They are trusted but the islanders are not. I find it patronising and extraordinary."
[Environment > Climate change]
UK's top scientist urges care in presenting results of climate change
> Be frank on degree of uncertainty, but as such it is no excuse for inaction
> John Beddington responds to scepticism after melting glaciers mistake
Haroon Siddique
The Guardian, Wednesday 27 January 2010 Article history
A failure by some scientists to be candid on the uncertainty of predicting the rate of climate change is to blame for fuelling scepticism about such predictions, according the government's chief scientific adviser.
John Beddington's comments come in the wake of an admission by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a claim in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 was unfounded. The admission has been used as ammunition by climate change sceptics, who say the public is being misled.
Beddington said scientists should give a caveat to their predictions where there was uncertainty, and release source data "wherever possible" – but added that uncertainty was no excuse for inaction. "I don't think it's healthy to dismiss proper scepticism," he tells the Times newspaper today. "Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can't be changed."
He said the false claim in the IPCC's report was symptomatic of a wider problem with the way evidence was presented in the field of climate science. "Certain unqualified statements have been unfortunate," he said. "We have a problem in communicating uncertainty. There's definitely an issue there. If there wasn't, there wouldn't be the level of scepticism. All of these predictions have to be caveated by saying, 'There's a level of uncertainty about that'."
He explained that large-scale climate modelling using computers meant "quite substantial uncertainties" which needed to be communicated. While it was unchallengeable that burning fossil fuels released CO2 that warms the Earth, "where you can get challenges is on the speed of change".
He acknowledged that where source data was released there was a danger it could be manipulated, "but the benefits from being open far outweigh that danger".
The head of the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit, Professor Phil Jones, stepped down last year while an investigation was conducted into emails leaked from the unit and seized upon by climate change deniers as alleged evidence that scientists had been hiding and manipulating data to support the view that the world is warming up. Shortly after the row, the Met Office released data which showed a rise in the global temperature.
Beddington said the fact that scientists were not 100% certain about every aspect of climate science did not make ignoring the phenomenon a risk worth running.
The IPCC and its head, Rajendra Pachauri, have also come under fire for another claim in its 2007 report – that the cost of natural disasters had risen gradually since 1970 due to climate change. But the IPCC released a statement yesterday saying that the Sunday Times report which carried the allegation was incorrect, insisting that the IPCC had provided a "balanced treatment of a complicated and important issue". While the IPCC admitted that it was wrong about the Himalayan glaciers, scientists maintain that glaciers are melting at historically high rates.
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