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Pachauri-led IPCC lauds initiative to build food security in face of climate change

May 7, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, May 7 (ANI): The Dr. R.K. Pachauri-led UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reportedly welcomed a new research initiative that focuses on how to build food security in the face of climate change.

One of the IPCC members, John R. Porter, said: “In the months and years to come, together with leading experts from the whole world, we will focus on developing tools to understand climate change with a view to making the world community ready to tackle the challenges we are facing. At the same time, Danish agricultural research will help contribute to solving the most important challenges in the future, climate change and food security.”

Porter’s views emerged after climate and agricultural researchers, policy makers, donors, and development agencies, both governmental and non-governmental, from all over the world met in Nairobi for a one-day conference, ‘Building Food Security in the Face of Climate Change’.

The conclusion reached at the event was that climate change represents an immediate and unprecedented threat to the food security of hundreds of millions of people who depend on small-scale agriculture and natural resource management for their livelihoods.

It was assessed that agriculture and forestry also contribute to climate change because of greenhouse gas emissions and alterations to the land surface.

To facilitate new research on the interactions between climate change, agriculture, natural resource management and food security, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP) have initiated a Mega Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). CCAFS will create unique possibilities in the search for solutions to climate change and food security problems.

“In order to secure better living conditions for the farmers, we need to find the right solutions to creating a stable food production that also takes into account the environment,” said Torben Timmermann, Deputy Director for administration and communication at the CCAFS.

Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) is a large-scale ten-year research initiative, which, from its start in 2010, will seek solutions to how to adapt the world’s agricultural areas to different climates. (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Agricultural Researchers, CGIAR, climate change, consultative group, Developing Tools, earth system science, Essp, food security, greenhouse gas emissions, international agricultural research, land surface, livelihoods, Nairobi, Natural Resource Management, Research Initiative, right solutions, scale agriculture, Science Partnership, security problems, Unprecedented Threat

Aquaculture accounts for 50 percent of fish consumed globally

September 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 8 (ANI): A new report by an international team of researchers has determined that aquaculture, once a fledgling industry, now accounts for 50 percent of the fish consumed globally.

The findings are published in the Sept. 7 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“Aquaculture is set to reach a landmark in 2009, supplying half of the total fish and shellfish for human consumption,” according to the authors.

Between 1995 and 2007, global production of farmed fish nearly tripled in volume, in part because of rising consumer demand for long-chain omega-3 fatty acids.

Oily fish, such as salmon, are a major source of these omega-3s, which are effective in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“The huge expansion is being driven by demand,” said lead author Rosamond L. Naylor, a professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Program on Food Security and the Environment.

“As long as we are a health-conscious population trying to get our most healthy oils from fish, we are going to be demanding more of aquaculture and putting a lot of pressure on marine fisheries to meet that need,” Naylor added.

To maximize growth and enhance flavor, aquaculture farms use large quantities of fishmeal and fish oil made from less valuable wild-caught species, including anchoveta and sardine.

“With the production of farmed fish eclipsing that of wild fish, another major transition is also underway: Aquaculture’s share of global fishmeal and fish oil consumption more than doubled over the past decade to 68 percent and 88 percent, respectively,” said the authors.

In 2006, aquaculture production was 51.7 million metric tons, and about 20 million metric tons of wild fish were harvested for the production of fishmeal.

“It can take up to 5 pounds of wild fish to produce 1 pound of salmon, and we eat a lot of salmon,” said Naylor, the William Wrigley Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

One way to make salmon farming more environmentally sustainable is to simply lower the amount of fish oil in the salmon’s diet.

According to the authors, a mere 4 percent reduction in fish oil would significantly reduce the amount of wild fish needed to produce 1 pound of salmon from 5 pounds to just 3.9 pounds. (ANI)

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Sea level rise to threaten 1 in 10 humans in low-lying coastal areas by 2100

March 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 11 (ANI): New research has indicated that rising sea levels due to global warming would have major impacts around the world, with a maximum rise of one meter by 2100 endangering one in ten humans in low lying coastal areas.

The research, presented at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen shows that the upper range of sea level rise by 2100 could be in the range of about one meter, or possibly more.

In the lower end of the spectrum, it looks increasingly unlikely that sea level rise will be much less than 50 cm by 2100.

This means that if emissions of greenhouse gases is not reduced quickly and substantially, even the best case scenario will hit low lying coastal areas housing one in ten humans on the planet hard.

New insights reported include the loss of ice from the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets.

According to Dr John Church of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, “The oceans are continuing to warm and expand, the melting of mountain glacier has increased and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are also contributing to sea level rise.”

“As a result of the acceleration of outlet glaciers over large regions, the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are already contributing more and faster to sea level rise than anticipated. If this trend continues, we are likely to witness sea level rise one meter or more by year 2100,” said Eric Rignot, Professor of Earth System Science at the University of California Irvine.

“Unless we undertake urgent and significant mitigation actions, the climate could cross a threshold during the 21st century committing the world to a sea level rise of meters,” said John Church.

The impacts of sea level rise, even in the lower ranges of the current predictions, looks to be severe.

Approximately ten percent of the world’s population – 600 million people – live in low lying areas in danger of being flooded.

A previously released study led by John Church, shows that even a modest sea level rise of 50 centimeters will result in a major increase in the number of coastal flooding events.

“Our study centered on Australia showed that coastal flooding events that today we expect only once every hundred years will happen several times a year by 2100″, said Church. (ANI)

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Controlling man made emissions may delay start of next ice age

February 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 11 (ANI): A new research from the Niels Bohr Institute at University of Copenhagen has determined that by controlling emissions of fossil fuels, we may be able to greatly delay the start of the next ice age.

From an Earth history perspective, we are living in cold times. The greatest climate challenge mankind has faced has been surviving ice ages that have dominated climate during the past million years.

Therefore, it is not surprising that back in the relatively cold 1970′s, prominent scientists like Soviet Union climatologist Mikhail Budyko, greeted man-made global warming from CO2 emissions as a way to keep us out of future ice ages.

Similar thoughts are still shared by many scientists who feel that continued high fossil fuel emissions are good for this reason.

In the new research, professor Gary Shaffer of the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and also leader of the research team at the Danish Center for Earth System Science (DCESS), outlines a way to keep the Earth out of both Hot- and Icehouses for a half a million years into the future.

Ice ages start when conditions at high northern latitudes allow winter snowfall to persist over the summer for enough years to accumulate and build ice sheets.

Such conditions depend mainly on summer solar radiation there and atmospheric CO2 concentration.

This radiation is modulated on time scales of 20.000, 40.000 and 100.000 years by changes in the Earth’s orbit and orientation.

Critical summer solar radiation for initiating ice sheet growth can be significantly lower for higher atmospheric CO2 with its greenhouse warming effect.

Professor Shaffer made long projections over the next 500,000 years with the DCESS Earth System Model to calculate the evolution of atmospheric CO2 for different fossil fuel emission strategies.

He also used results of a coupled climate-ice sheet model for the dependency on atmospheric CO2 of critical summer solar radiation at high northern latitudes for an ice age onset.

The results show global warming of almost 5 degrees Celsius above present for a “business as usual” scenario whereby all 5000 billion tons of fossil fuel carbon in accessible reserves are burned within the next few centuries.

According to Professor Shaffer, humanity has already increased atmospheric CO2 enough to keep it out of the next ice age for at least the next 55,000 years. (ANI)

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