Poorer countries overtake rich world's consumption carbon footprint | Duncan Clark | Environment. The carbon footprint from consumption in the developing world has overtaken that of the developed world, according to research published on Monday. The change happened years earlier than expected due to the fact that the developing world's emissions were largely unaffected by the global financial crisis. Emissions within the borders of developing countries outstripped those emitted in developed countries (as defined by the Kyoto Protocol's 'Annex B') in around 2005. But the rich world still accounted for the majority of the carbon footprint of consumption due to the goods it imports from China and other developing economies.
Experts expected this situation to remain unchanged until around 2015, but the research in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that developing nations came to represent the majority of the carbon footprint of global consumption in around 2009, years earlier than expected. Peruvian Amazon could become global centre of 'carbon piracy': report | Environment. The Peruvian Amazon could become the global centre of 'carbon piracy' a report warns.
Photograph: Ricardo Beliel/Alamy The Peruvian Amazon is the new global centre of "carbon piracy", as banks, conservationists and entrepreneurs rush to snap up the legal rights to trade carbon, according to a report published today at the UN climate talks in Durban. More than 35 major projects covering around 7m hectares of Peruvian rainforest have been set up to profit from the global voluntary carbon offset market and a proposed UN forestry scheme, say the report's authors, Peruvian group Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP). A UN scheme called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (Redd) allows countries that can reduce emissions from deforestation to be paid for doing so. World leaders hope to conclude Redd negotiations at Durban next week, potentially opening up a vast new global carbon market for forest-rich countries. UN: failure to reduce environmental risks will set back human development | Environment.
Unchecked environmental destruction will halt – or even reverse – the huge improvements seen in the living conditions of the world's poorest people in recent decades, a major new UN report warned on Wednesday. The 2011 Human Development report, from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), concludes that problems such as worsening droughts in sub-Saharan Africa and rising sea levels that could engulf countries like Bangladesh, could send food prices soaring by up to 50% and reverse efforts to provide access to clean water, sanitation and energy to billions of people. "Continuing failure to reduce the grave environmental risks and deepening social inequalities threatens to slow decades of sustained progress by the world's poor majority," said the UNDP administrator, Helen Clark. The report is centred on the new national rankings of the UNDP's human development index (HDI), which combines measures of health, education and income.
Warning over endangered tuna trade | Environment. The amount of Atlantic bluefin tuna traded on the global market last year was more than double the quota set for the endangered fish, conservationists have warned. The Pew Environment Group said that after a decade of heavy overfishing of the tuna in the Mediterranean, the body governing the fishery took action in 2008 to impose much lower quotas on catches in a bid to conserve the fish. But analysis by Pew revealed that while the quota in 2010 was within the recommendations made by scientists for the first time, the amount traded on the market was 141% higher than the limits set. The figure does not include black market sales of Atlantic bluefin tuna, which would push up the total catch of the fish even higher, Pew warned.
The total quota set by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) between 1998 and 2010 was 378,698 tonnes, while the official catch reported by the body was 395,554 in that time. Shark massacre reported in Colombian waters | Environment. Colombian environmental authorities have reported a huge shark massacre in the Malpelo wildlife sanctuary in Colombia's Pacific waters, where as many as 2,000 hammerhead, Galápagos and silky sharks may have been slaughtered for their fins. Sandra Bessudo, the Colombian president's top adviser on environmental issues, said a team of divers who were studying sharks in the region reported the mass killing in the waters surrounding the rock-island known as Malpelo, some 500 kilometres from the mainland.
"I received a report, which is really unbelievable, from one of the divers who came from Russia to observe the large concentrations of sharks in Malpelo. They saw a large number of fishing trawlers entering the zone illegally," Bessudo said. The divers counted a total of 10 fishing boats, which all were flying the Costa Rican flag. "When the divers dove, they started finding a large number of animals without their fins. They didn't see any alive," she said. Whale survives harpoon attack 130 years ago to become 'world's oldest mammal' A giant bowhead whale caught off the coast of Alaska had a harpoon point embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt – more than a century ago.
Biologists claim the find helps prove the bowhead is the oldest living mammal on earth. They say the 13-centimetre arrow-shaped fragment dates back to around 1880, meaning the 50-ton whale had been coasting around the freezing arctic waters since Victorian times. Scroll down for more... Because traditional whale hunters never took calves, experts estimate the bowhead was several years old when it was first shot and about 130 when it died last month. "No other finding has been so precise," said John Bockstoce, a curator at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts. Calculating a bowhead whale's age can be difficult, and is usually gauged by amino acids in the eye lenses. It is rare to find one that has lived more than a century, but experts now believe the oldest were close to 200 years old. to stay warm as efficiently as possible.