http://www.ingafoundation.org/

http://www.apeuk.org/inga-foundation/project

By Guillaume Chapron and George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 4th October 2010

In less than a month, unless we can rouse sufficient public indignation to avert it, a widespread suspicion that humanity is incapable of looking after this planet will be confirmed. The world’s governments will meet at Nagoya in Japan to discuss the catastrophic decline of life on the planet. The outcome is expected to be as tragic and as stupid as the collapse of last year’s climate talks in Copenhagen.

We cannot accept this. We cannot stand back and watch while the wonders of this world are sacrificed to crass carelessness and short-termism. So, a few weeks ago, the Guardian launched the Biodiversity 100 campaign to prod governments into action. We asked the public and some of the world’s top ecologists to help us compile a list of 100 specific tasks that will show whether or not governments are serious about protecting biodiversity. Each task would be aimed at a government among the G20 nations, and they would be asked to sign up to it at Nagoya.

The threat hanging over these talks is not the same as in Copenhagen. We anticipate no high drama, no ultimata or walkouts. The danger is not that the governments discussing the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will fail to agree, but that they will agree all too easily: to a set of proposals so vague, so lacking in either content or ambition that they can do nothing to address the extinction crisis facing animals and plants all over the world.The result will not just be the loss of species but also the “work” they do for the environment — cleaning water, absorbing carbon and improving soils.

Unless something changes, governments intend to decide that wild species and wild places will not be allowed to compete with special interest groups or industrial lobbyists, however narrow their interests or perverse their desires. Wildlife doesn’t fund political parties, control newspapers or threaten to take its business elsewhere. As soon as money can be made from its destruction, it goes.

Governments’ complacency about biodiversity is matched, so far, by the public’s. Perhaps it’s issue fatigue, perhaps there’s a sense — as the topic doesn’t receive much coverage — that someone, somewhere must be taking care of it. Well they aren’t. Last week Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, admitted that the 2010 deadline for reducing the rate of biodiversity loss has been missed. In fact, as a study in Science earlier this year suggested, the commitment governments made in 2002 appears to have had no significant impact at all.

Instead of learning from this failure, they seem intent on repeating it. At last week’s UN General Assembly they discussed a set of unenforceable good intentions. In effect, the new plan shifts the 2010 targets to 2020, without proposing any better means of meeting them. The world’s wildlife is being washed away on a tide of platitudes.

Our campaign aimed to be a catalyst for a more effective approach. The response was big and enthusiastic, but not always relevant. The first thing we discovered was how difficult it is to identify the kinds of specific, practical solutions we were asking for. Many suggestions, such curbing human population and over-consumption, are relevant to biodiversity loss but too general for the CBD to tackle. The second was the weakness of the connection between science and policy. Those who document the decline of wildlife haven’t given much thought to government action; while governments are often shockingly ignorant of what scientists are saying.

We set a high standard. We would not accept a proposal unless it was well supported by scientific evidence, made a powerful contribution to conservation and required real political commitment. We decided to prioritise quality over quantity, so we have so far chosen only 26 actions. We intend to complete the list over the coming months, so please keep sending in proposals.

We hope that reading this list has the same effect on you as it has had on us: simultaneously to boil with anger over the fact that destructive behaviour so stupid and avoidable has been allowed to continue, and to feel inspired to demand that governments act. Here are a few examples of the actions we want them to take.

• We’re calling on the UK government and the three devolved administrations to create a series of new marine reserves, to reverse the shocking decline in sealife caused by industrial fishing. Despite repeated warnings, political leaders have failed to prevent the collapse of marine ecosystems, or to introduce more than three very small marine nature reserves where fishing is prohibited.

• We’re asking the governments of India and Indonesia to ban the finning of sharks at sea. Huge numbers of sharks are being caught by their fleets or in their waters solely for their fins. These are often removed while the shark is alive: the mutilated animal is then thrown overboard. Finning – most of the fins are sold as gourmet meat in China – is having a devastating impact on shark populations.

• We’re calling on the Russian government to change the law that it passed last year that makes it almost impossible to prosecute poachers killing tigers. They cannot be charged unless the gun is loaded – even when they are caught with a gun and a dead tiger. It could scarcely be better designed to ensure the extinction of the world’s largest remaining tiger population.

• We are asking the government of Brazil to block a proposed new law that would remove the obligation to restore illegally cleared forests, and which would reduce the areas which must be set aside for conservation. Brazil has been making good progress recently on reducing forest destruction. This law would reverse it.

• We’re asking the Australian government to stop dingos from being killed. At the moment, farmers there are obliged by law to kill them, even though they are a protected “native” species. This has serious impacts for the conservation of other wildlife, as dingos suppress the populations of invasive cats and foxes that destroy native fauna. Sheep and cattle can be protected from dingos without the need to kill them.

• We’re asking France to take seriously its obligations to protect the brown bear population in the Pyrenees. It has allowed numbers to drop below 20 individuals – a population so small it is not viable – because of complaints by a small number of sheep farmers. Unless more bears are introduced to the mountains, the species will soon become extinct there. Again, there are well-tested means of protecting sheep from the bears.

Our list is by no means a complete answer to the biodiversity crisis. We do not claim that it is the definitive tally of the world’s most important or pressing conservation problems. For a start, we restricted ourselves to signatories of the CBD so there are no actions for the US, for example. But all the actions have scientific support and, while significant in themselves, they are also an important symbolic test of governments’ resolve. We have written to each government’s environment minister to request that they make the changes we suggest.

Biodiversity conservation is, or should be, all about specific action. It cannot be achieved by vague commitments. As the celebrated British ecologist Professor Sir John Lawton says: “Politicians keep talking about the threat of the loss of biodiversity. But nothing happens. Those of us who care have got to put pressure on the world’s governments to stop saying one thing and doing something completely different. This campaign will make a real contribution.”

We hope he’s right. And we see no reason why he shouldn’t be, given recent conservation successes – Montenegro’s decision to postpone its dam-building programme; Russia’s vast new national parks; Ecuador’s determination not to allow new oil drilling in its rainforests. But to make this campaign work, you have to get behind it. That means pestering your MP, bothering your environment minister, demanding that your government stops hiding behind platitudes and starts talking about specifics. It means insisting that they treat the world’s natural wonders not as a disposable asset but as a precious charge.

• Guillaume Chapron is assistant professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. He can be contacted on guillaume.chapron@biodiversity100.org

Copyright: The Guardian invites other media and bloggers to reproduce these articles in whole or in part free of charge to spread the word about this campaign. A link must be provided online back to the original article. here is the link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/04/back-biodiversity-100-save-wildlife

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Secret files on solar energy collaborator, Part 1: Dave Hampton

EVIDENCE

9-panel, 1.66KWpeak, photovoltaic (PV) solar panel installation

LOCATION
on the Carbon Coach’s home in Marlow, Bucks

COST
£10,000 all inc

SUPPLIER
Freesource, Good Energy’s chosen renewable energy installation partner

ACCOMPLICES
Transition Town Marlow 100 Solar Panel project:http://www.transitionmarlow.org/index.php?p=1_2_Solar

The low-carbon detectives are on my trail. Here’s my review of the installation.

I am delighted to report that my PV panels are up, on the roof, and generating much clean raw power, plus useful cash. The panels are of course being very closely watched and monitored, by me, and by my friends and Marlow neighbours.

They make me feel deeply and inordinately happy. I get waves of pleasure just to see my powerful panels and to witness their production of sustainable energy.

They look good, feel good, are in good taste, and, by golly, they do you good!

Hi-visibility roof coat

My installation is on the side roof, the exposed side of our house which is on a corner plot. The nett (curtain) effect of which is that my panels are quite noticeable to passers by. I view my panels with as much awe and admiration as I would a Picasso original. They are both a work of genius.

The elegant clean lines, the silver and dark blue crystalline refraction/reflection effect, the large-tile-upon-small-tile pyramid cubist design. The light and shade, the diametric composition of juxtaposition and orthogonality…

None of my neighbours seems unhappy about the installation. One said he didn’t exactly find them attractive, but neither did he notice them much. Most neighbours are interested in how we get on with them.

One household is having a survey, and is currently deciding if they want to go solar. I hope they will.

Local nuclear – or new clear vision

If some people insist they really ‘don’t like the look’, then I suppose I could ask them if they would prefer a small local nuclear power station – somewhere near them – in Marlow on (cooling water) Thames instead?

Some of my friends are positive or neutral about nuclear, but I don’t think any would welcome it within 50 miles of their home town, let alone bolted onto their roof. Like my micro ‘nuke’ is…

My solar PV installation is in effect a local nuclear power harnessing plant, human scale, with the core reactor located a nice, safe distance away. (93 million miles: The Sun.)

The waste trail you don’t see
Upstream in the supply chain, to make my solar panels and kit, if you think about it, is an alarming trail of waste, mining, manufacturing and energy use, from all over the world. Long before they generate their first unit of clean power in Marlow, my beloved panels have left some sort of trail of pollution behind them. But here’s the deal. It’s not big.

In ball park terms, the upstream damage, the ‘eco-baggage’ that my panels arrived with from day one, amounts to some 1000kg of greenhouse gas equivalent impact. They will pay that back in full within two years. They will sweep up all their own eco-mess, their footprint in manufacture etc, during the first two years of operation. Thereafter, for the next 20 years or more, they will be sweeping up other people’s pollution – and fully be in (planetary) credit, increasingly so, for each year they keep on keeping on.

In carbon terms, my panels weigh less than minus 10 tons – over their lifetime!

This thought gives me a little lift. Like the balloons in the movie ‘UP’, my panels uplift me.

In less than 20 years, well before my 70th birthday, my panels will have saved a nett 10 tons of CO2, after taking into account the CO2 involved in manufacture and transport. And they will have saved, at a power station, over their lifetime, the equivalent of around 20 barrels of oil being burnt as well. Picture all that fossil fuel being left in the ground.

The whole process of old-fashioned power generation, from the oil well, coal mine, fuel extraction, fuel intake, the waste streams (heat, smoke, spent fuel) and all the risks, is fully concealed from us. It takes place many miles away, behind concrete walls, with coal trucks, smoking chimneys and warmed up local rivers the only tell-tell signs. In contrast, PV panels are open, transparent, risk free and locally autonomous. Also, the more they generate, the more they don’t pollute, whereas the more power old-fashioned fossil or nuclear plants generate, the more they pollute, and the higher the bill, until eventually they cost us the Earth.

Each PV panel ever made has effectively a negative legacy footprint on the world. It is also carbon quids-in, providing it is given a nice roof to sit on, and a nice home to power for life. The technology is ecologically restorative, when it displaces dirtier generation.
The more PV we use, the less CO2 we put into the atmosphere overall.
In this sense, planting PV panels on your roof is almost as good as planting a tree.

Put your money where your roof is

Despite knowing all this, it still took me five years to take the PV plunge. And to save up the money. When we eco-refurbished our entire house five years ago, we satisfied ourselves with just a solar hot water panel (and a small token PV panel for the pump for the solar system.) But I had set aside an area of south-facing roof. It was designated for PV one day.

£10,000 is a shed-load of money

Let’s get the big, scary number out of the way.

£10,000 (fully inc).
£10,000 is a shed-load of money. It’s a roof-full of PV. It’s also on a par with an ISA, or a slice of pension fund, going without a new car for a few years, or missing out on a family foreign holiday or two. I appreciate it is still a shed-load of money, and I know I was lucky to be able to do it, and not everyone can.

If you are a homeowner, the ‘asset value of the home’ is a moot point, as no-one really knows what the asset value is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if our home would raise £10k more on the open market than a similar property without the PV panels. So you can view it as home improvement.

And Home improvement too – with a capital H.
Sooner or later we need to start living on our HOME planet as if we intend to stay here forever. See ‘HOME’ the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

It is possible my kids will benefit more from the legacy of millions of solar panels than they ever will from the legacy of £1000s in my will. Is PV making my WILL POWER-ful? Globally, there need be no shortage of will power.

Rent
“No generation has a freehold on this Earth. All we have is a life-tenancy—with a full repairing lease.” Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher MP
If you rent your home, there is every reason to lobby your landlord or the council to fit PVs. Many landlords are already considering doing this. Your voice in support could tip them into action. You may even be able to help educate them about the grants, Feed in Tariffs (e.g. http://www.fitariffs.co.uk , business benefits, etc. Don’t assume they know all about how good it can be.

PV is a well-kept secret that the nice fossil companies don’t really want people to discover…yet…

The Numbers
I don’t want to throw too many numbers at you, but here is the deal. Depending on the weather, rain, cloud or shine, my panels generate about 10 to 70 pence an hour during daytime.

On a bright day, and averaged over 24 hours, my nine panels supply ALL my electricity needs. Over an entire year, I expect them to generate around a THIRD of all that we use.
Over a year we expect the savings, plus the Feed in Tariff income, to be worth £800.

Our energy provider, Good Energy, won’t be sending us bills. They will be sending us cheques! Cheques for the (government enhanced) value of all the FiT power we generate, less the small cost of the energy we import.

Next week I will be reviewing the highly acclaimed ‘Wattson’ remote energy display meter which is the perfect accompaniment to a PV installation.

Dave Hampton

The Carbon Coach

http://www.carboncoach.com/

Our experience tells us that schools can play a key role in any plan to restore biodiversity in this country and can do this in both an inspiring and cost effective way. With schools cooperating and working together a realistic national programme can be established to address habitat destruction head on.

The “green” issues we hear more about today, are what I would call the grey – solar panels and windfarms – its all very sweet; but the environment should not stray too far from green to grey, it also needs to focus on its origins; James Lovelock when interviewed on BBC said how it is Life that created the atmosphere, the future of our planet and its life carrying capacity, will depend on how we can live with nature, being mutually inclusive, with our urban designs. Active restoration and gardening into nature’s mosaics can stem the flow of habitat destruction, it can undo the damage of the past, and lastly open up another vision for the future, which is not only Lady Gaga, parking lots and shopping malls.

Florida bonneted bat – Eumops floridanus was thought to be extinct until 2002, when a small colony was discovered in a North Fort Myers suburb of Florida, US.

Saola – The cow-like Pseudoryx nghetinhensis, which occurs only in the Annamite mountains of Vietnam and Laos is in protracted decline.

Kakapo or owl parrot – In 2008, the total population of this large, flightless nocturnal parrot (Strigops habroptila) from New Zealand was 93, including the seven hatched that year.

Golden arrow poison frog – With the chytridiomycosis epidemic spreading from west to east through Panama, populations of Atelopus zeteki are now at severe risk.

Jamaican iguana – There may be no more than a hundred adult Cyclura collei remaining in the wild, and juvenile recruitment appears to be minimal.

Chinese paddlefish – Only two adult specimens of Psephurus gladius (both females) have been recorded since 2002. It is expected there are fewer than 50 adults left in the wild.

Chinese giant salamander – The largest of all amphibian species, sometimes growing to more than 1m long, Andrias davidianus is widespread in southern China, but its range is very fragmented

Sicilian fir – Abies nebrodensis trees are presently limited to the steep, dry slopes of Mt. Scalone in the Madonie Mountains of Sicily.

Sumatran orang-utan – The majority of surviving Pongo abelii live in the province of Aceh in northern Sumatra, Indonesia.