Shell's dirty business in Nigeria

God help Africa. I don't know who else ever will ...

A victory in the battle against pesticides

An environmental campaigner yesterday won a landmark victory against the government in a long-running legal battle over the use of pesticides. The high court ruled that Georgina Downs, who runs the UK Pesticides Campaign, had produced "solid evidence" that people exposed to chemicals used to spray crops had suffered harm.

The court said the government had failed to comply with a European directive designed to protect rural communities from exposure to the toxins. It said the environment department, Defra, must reassess its policy and investigate the risks to people who are exposed. Defra had argued that its approach to the regulation and control of pesticides was "reasonable, logical and lawful".

Downs, who lives on the edge of farmland near Chichester, West Sussex, launched her campaign in 2001. The judge described how she was first exposed to pesticide spraying at the age of 11 "and began to suffer from ill health, in particular flu-like symptoms, a sore throat, blistering and other problems".

Downs said the government had failed to address the concerns of people living in the countryside "who are repeatedly exposed to mixtures of pesticides and other chemicals throughout every year, and in many cases, like mine, for decades". People were not given prior notification about what was to be sprayed near their homes and gardens, she said.

In his ruling, Mr Justice Collins highlighted that the 1986 Control of Pesticides Regulations states that beekeepers must be given 48 hours notice if pesticides harmful to bees are to be used. The judge said: "It is difficult to see why residents should be in a worse position."

Speaking after the ruling, Downs said her seven-year battle was over "one of the biggest public health scandals of our time". She called on Gordon Brown to block any Defra appeal. "The government "should now just admit that it got it wrong, apologise and actually get on with protecting the health and citizens of this country".

The case centred on the way the government assesses the risk posed by pesticides. The current method is based on occasional, short-term exposure to a "bystander" and assumes that individuals would be exposed to an individual pesticide during a single pass.

Downs said: "The judge has agreed with my long-standing charge that this bystander model does not and cannot address residents who are repeatedly exposed." The model does not account for rural residents exposed to mixtures of pesticides and other chemicals "throughout every year and, in many cases like my own, for decades".

She said: "The fact that there has never been any assessment of the risk to health for the long-term exposure for those who live, work or go to school near pesticide-sprayed fields is an absolute scandal, considering that crop-spraying has been a predominant feature of agriculture for over 50 years."

Downs' campaign has collected evidence from other residents who report health problems including cancer, Parkinson's disease, ME and asthma, which they claim could be linked to crop-spraying.

The judge said "defects" in Defra's approach to pesticide safety contravened a 1991 EC directive. He said Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, "must think again and consider what needs to be done".

A Defra spokesman said: "The protection of human health is paramount. Pesticides used in this country are rigorously assessed to the same standards as the rest of the EU and use is only ever authorised after internationally approved tests ... We will look at this judgment in detail to see whether there are ways in which we can strengthen our system further and also to consider whether it could put us out of step with the rest of Europe and have implications for other member states."

The European parliament's environment committee last week approved new ways of assessing the risk of potentially hazardous sprays to protect crops and plants. The new criteria are part of an attempt to halve the use of toxic products in European farming by 2013. A final vote on the proposals is due next month or in January.

"Campaigner wins seven-year battle to force rethink on use of pesticides", The Guardian, 15 November 2008.

Breathe in breathe out

Barcelone ou la mort

Excellent documentary (in French) on what is behind the faceless figures of immigrants you read about in the news ...

They have two options: dying the slow death inflicted by chronic unemployment, hunger, disease and idleness or risking their lives trying to reach European soil on board a flimsy pirogue. These are no "economic migrants" ... For them it's Barcelona or death ...

The smell of death is everywhere

British birdwatchers trying to stop the illegal killing of some of Europe's rarest birds in Malta have become embroiled in an increasingly tense standoff with local hunters and say they have recovered unprecedented numbers of carcasses of protected birds.

Thirty British volunteers and a delegation of five staff from the RSPB have spent the last two weeks documenting the shooting of birds of prey such as osprey, honey buzzards, and marsh harriers as they fly over over the Mediterranean island on annual migratory routes. The volunteers estimate scores of rare birds protected by EU laws have been killed this year and claim the shootings have reached a new high.

The carcasses of dead raptors are not usually recovered as hunters tend to take them as prizes and are anxious to hide the evidence. But in just eight days the camp recovered 17 shot raptors this year - more than double the total number recovered by similar-sized groups of volunteers in the previous two years put together.

This year the birdwatchers, who say the hunting is threatening British conservation projects, also claim they have faced increasing verbal abuse, intimidation and sabotage. Their camps have been vandalised, tyres on their vehicles have been punctured and they are regularly told to "fuck off back to England".

The standoff threatens to escalate into a minor diplomatic incident after the hunters, who claim they are merely exercising an ancestral tradition, complained to the RSPB's patron, the Queen. They also plan to complain to the European commission about invasion of privacy.

They accuse the RSPB of "dishonest" campaigning designed to "undermine Maltese culture". And they say there is no proof that hunting on the island threatens endangered species.

Malta and the neighbouring island of Gozo are a key stopover point for hundreds of thousands of migratory birds as they make the journey from Europe to spend winter in Africa.

But Malta is also home to the highest concentration of registered hunters anywhere in Europe. And at this time of year thousands engage in the island's popular pastime of bird shooting.

They say they are only hunting turtle dove and quail, which is legal during autumn. But each year local conservationists estimate that thousands of birds, from species protected under European laws, are also shot, in many cases deliberately.

Grahame Madge, an RSPB spokesman, said: "It's like a war zone, the smell of death is everywhere."

"The scale of the slaughter is unimaginable and it's a race against hunters every moment."

Few of the hunters are ever caught for illegal killings, and if they are, they typically escape with a €100 fine.

The RSPB has recruited volunteers to attend so called Raptor Camps over the island to monitoring migration and reporting illegal hunting. The camps are organised by the RSPB sister organisation Birdlife Malta and include volunteers from all over Europe. The camp's methods, which include filming illegal killing and posting the footage to YouTube, have enraged local hunters.

The more the group has recorded illegal hunting, the uglier the standoff with the hunters has become.

"We have had regular drive-by abuse from hunters shouting 'fuck off back' to England," said Nick Unwin, a teacher from Surrey.

"Every time we get into cars we have to look for nails, and in most places we have to have security guards with us," he said. Over the last week cars have been attacked and punctured, abusive graffiti has been sprayed on nature reserve signs and used car oil was poured over an observation tower.

"Intimidation and hostility is constant here," says Steve Bentall, a wildlife management masters graduate from Hampshire.

"We were at the side of a road and hunters in cars came down the road at about 70mph and started intentionally swerving into us to scare the life out us."

But Bentall's passion for birds of prey means he won't be put off. "Two mornings ago we saw a rare Eleonora's falcon. It was a fantastic spectacle and then it got shot. It breaks your heart."

He adds: "Some of these birds are down to there last few hundred pairs in Europe. If we don't tackle illegal shooting, we are going to lose more species."

"These are legally protected species and they have been for 30 years, and yet they are still slaughtering them. I just can't get my head round it."

Steph Charlton, a zoo keeper from the Isle of Wight, witnessed a honey buzzard and osprey being shot.

"In the UK we spend thousands of pounds on high profile osprey projects. Then they fly over here and are shot down. It's crazy. I didn't realize how blatantly they do it."

Dr Andre Raine, BirdLife Malta's conservation manager said: "This is the worst season that many local birdwatchers can remember. "If we can recieve 17 birds of prey with confirmed gunshot injuries in eight days, then the actual number of protected birds being shot must be very high."

The organisation's spokesman claims the abuse from hunters over the last two years has included drive by shootings, bird watchers being spat at, and car tyres being slashed. But he claimed the attacks over the last fortnight are "worse than usual".

He claimed backlash by hunters is being whipped up by "threatening and xenophobic" statements by islands' hunting lobby the Federation for Hunting and Conservation, or FKNK.

The federation condemns illegal hunting but it has taken a combative attitude to RSPB and its volunteers.

It claims the RSPB and Birdlife Malta exaggerates the extent of illegal shooting there is no hard evidence of a bird massacre.

It accuses the RSPB of conducting a "despicable and fictitious crusades against tiny Malta" and claims their conservationists are "foreign mercenaries".

It warns the RSPB against getting involved in "social hatred campaigns" aimed at destroying hunting which it describes as a "Maltese ancestral tradition".

The federation secretary Lino Farrugia refused to speak to the Guardian. But in a press statement he denied the federation had encouraged intimidation.

He said: "The RSPB have far better things to do than organise visits to the Maltese islands solely to pester, interfere and further antagonise Maltese law-abiding nationals."

He added: "Out of the odd 260 reports of illegal hunting that BirdLife alleged to have received, the police to date have only arraigned seven persons with hunting related offences, out of which only three refer to illegal hunting."

Birdlife Malta claims convictions are rare because there are so few police dealing with the problem as the Maltese government refuses to take it seriously.

Birdlife's president, Joseph Mangion, said: "As long as the police fail to take action and the government remains silent, the situation is likely to get worse."

The government of Malta has yet to respond.

The Guardian, 30 September 2008.

More on Raptor Camp here

21 September is CAR-FREE DAY in Belgium!

So grab your bike or catch a tram and join us at Bruxelles Champetre, a major slow food event, tomorrow 21 September from 10 am onwards. Check out the programme here

It's the only day in the year we can picnic at the Parc Royal without inhaling nasty fumes from busy Avenue Marnix and gritty Rue Beliard!

Environmental justice

Over the past months Greenpeace won a series of court cases that will hopefully create a strong legal base for civil society to take action in defence of its right to a clean and safe environment.

The trial of the six Greenpeace UK activists was the first case in which acting to prevent climate change causing damage to property formed part of a 'lawful excuse' defence

On 10 September six Greenpeace climate change activists were cleared of causing criminal damage at a coal-fired power station in a verdict that is expected to embarrass the government and strengthen the anti-coal movement.

The jury of nine men and three women at Maidstone crown court cleared the six, five of whom had scaled a 200m tall chimney at Kingsnorth power station at Hoo, Kent in October 2007.

The activists admitted trying to shut down the station by occupying the smokestack and painting the world "Gordon" down the chimney, but argued that they were legally justified because they were trying to prevent climate change causing greater damage to property around the world.

The court had heard from Prof James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, that the 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted daily by Kingsnorth could be responsible for the extinction of up to 400 species.

Earlier this week, in our own little Belgium, the court also cleared Greenpeace in one of the Electrabel trials. The electricity giant targeted by Greenpeace's shock-campaign on the illicit funding of its new fleet of power stations filed several cases against Greenpeace on charges of "criminal assocation to commit a terrorist act" (association de malfaiteurs). So far two courts have ruled in favour of Greenpeace, ordering Electrabel to pay thousands of euros to cover the legal expenses.

It was the Erika oilslick trial that set the "ecological prejudice" precedent in January 2008. In a landmark decision, the Criminal Court of Paris condemned the world's fourth largest oil group Total SA to a fine of €375,000 – the maximum allowable penalty for maritime pollution – claiming "ecological prejudice" caused by the sinking of the Erika. It was the first time that a French court handed down a conviction for environmental damage.

Let justice be done.

Lazy Sunday kiwi humour

The Climate Countdown: 100 months to go

Excellent article in The Guardian yesterday by Andrew Simms, policy director and head of the climate change programme at NEF (the New Economics Foundation, UK). A must read!

If you shout "fire" in a crowded theatre, when there is none, you understand that you might be arrested for irresponsible behaviour and breach of the peace. But from today, I smell smoke, I see flames and I think it is time to shout. I don't want you to panic, but I do think it would be a good idea to form an orderly queue to leave the building.

Because in just 100 months' time, if we are lucky, and based on a quite conservative estimate, we could reach a tipping point for the beginnings of runaway climate change. That said, among people working on global warming, there are countless models, scenarios, and different iterations of all those models and scenarios. So, let us be clear from the outset about exactly what we mean.

The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere today, the most prevalent greenhouse gas, is the highest it has been for the past 650,000 years. In the space of just 250 years, as a result of the coal-fired Industrial Revolution, and changes to land use such as the growth of cities and the felling of forests, we have released, cumulatively, more than 1,800bn tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Currently, approximately 1,000 tonnes of CO2 are released into the Earth's atmosphere every second, due to human activity. Greenhouse gases trap incoming solar radiation, warming the atmosphere. When these gases accumulate beyond a certain level - often termed a "tipping point" - global warming will accelerate, potentially beyond control.

Faced with circumstances that clearly threaten human civilisation, scientists at least have the sense of humour to term what drives this process as "positive feedback". But if translated into an office workplace environment, it's the sort of "positive feedback" from a manager that would run along the lines of: "You're fired, you were rubbish anyway, you have no future, your home has been demolished and I've killed your dog."

...

Today is just another Friday in August. Drowsy and close. Office workers' minds are fixed on the weekend, clock-watching, waiting perhaps for a holiday if your finances have escaped the credit crunch and rising food and fuel prices. In the evening, trains will be littered with abandoned newspaper sports pages, all pretending interest in the football transfers. For once it seems justified to repeat TS Eliot's famous lines: "This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper."

But does it have to be this way? Must we curdle in our complacency and allow our cynicism about politicians to give them an easy ride as they fail to act in our, the national and the planet's best interest? There is now a different clock to watch than the one on the office wall. Contrary to being a counsel of despair, it tells us that everything we do from now matters. And, possibly more so than at any other time in recent history.

It tells us, for example, that only a government that was sleepwalking or in a chemically induced coma would countenance building a third runway at Heathrow, or a new generation of coal-fired power stations such as the proposed new plant at Kingsnorth in Kent. Infrastructure that is fossil-fuel-dependent locks in patterns of future greenhouse gas emissions, radically reducing our ability to make the short- to medium-term cuts that are necessary.

Deflecting blame and responsibility is a great skill of officialdom. The most common strategies used by government recently have been wringing their hands and blaming China's rising emissions, and telling individuals to, well, be a bit more careful. On the first get-out, it is delusory to think that countries such as China, India and Brazil will fundamentally change until wealthy countries such as Britain take a lead. And it is wildly unrealistic to think that individuals alone can effect a comprehensive re-engineering of the nation's fossil-fuel-dependent energy, food and transport systems. The government must lead.

Continue reading here

A ray of hope: Harnessing the Sahara

A tiny rectangle superimposed on the vast expanse of the Sahara captures the seductive appeal of the audacious plan to cut Europe's carbon emissions by harnessing the fierce power of the desert sun.

Dwarfed by any of the north African nations, it represents an area slightly smaller than Wales but scientists claimed yesterday it could one day generate enough solar energy to supply all of Europe with clean electricity.

Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf Jaeger-Waldau of the European Commission's Institute for Energy, said it would require the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts to meet all of Europe's energy needs.

The scientists are calling for the creation of a series of huge solar farms - producing electricity either through photovoltaic cells, or by concentrating the sun's heat to boil water and drive turbines - as part of a plan to share Europe's renewable energy resources across the continent.

A new supergrid, transmitting electricity along high voltage direct current cables would allow countries such as the UK and Denmark ultimately to export wind energy at times of surplus supply, as well as import from other green sources such as geothermal power in Iceland.

Energy losses on DC lines are far lower than on the traditional AC ones, which make transmission of energy over long distances uneconomic.

The grid proposal, which has won political support from both Nicholas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, answers the perennial criticism that renewable power will never be economic because the weather is not sufficiently predictable. Its supporters argue that even if the wind is not blowing hard enough in the North Sea, it will be blowing somewhere else in Europe, or the sun will be shining on a solar farm somewhere.

Scientists argue that harnessing the Sahara would be particularly effective because the sunlight in this area is more intense: solar photovoltaic (PV) panels in northern Africa could generate up to three times the electricity compared with similar panels in northern Europe.

Much of the cost would come in developing the public grid networks of connecting countries in the southern Mediterranean, which do not currently have the spare capacity to carry the electricity that the north African solar farms could generate. Even if high voltage cables between North Africa and Italy would be built or the existing cable between Morocco and Spain would be used, the infrastructure of the transfer countries such as Italy and Spain or Greece or Turkey also needs a major re-structuring, according to Jaeger-Waldau.

Southern Mediterranean countries including Portugal and Spain have already invested heavily in solar energy and Algeria has begun work on a vast combined solar and natural gas plant which will begin producing energy in 2010. Algeria aims to export 6,000 megawatts of solar-generated power to Europe by 2020.

Scientists working on the project admit that it would take many years and huge investment to generate enough solar energy from north Africa to power Europe but envisage that by 2050 it could produce 100 GW, more than the combined electricity output from all sources in the UK, with an investment of around €450bn.

Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK's chief scientist, welcomed the proposals: "Assuming it's cost-effective, a largescale renewable energy grid is just the kind of innovation we need if we're going to beat climate change."

Jaeger-Waldau also believes that scaling up solar PV by having large solar farms could help bring its cost down for consumers. "The biggest PV system at the moment is installed in Leipzig and the price of the installation is €3.25 per watt," he said. "If we could realise that in the Mediterranean, for example in southern Italy, this would correspond to electricity prices in the range of 15 cents per kWh, something below what the average consumer is paying."

The vision for the renewable energy grid comes as the commission's joint research centre (JRC) published its strategic energy technology plan, highlighting solar PV as one of eight technologies that need to be championed for the short- to medium-term future.

"It recognises something extraordinary - if we don't put together resources and findings across Europe and we let go the several sectors of energy, we will never reach these targets," said Giovanni de Santi, director of the JRC, also speaking in Barcelona.

The JRC plan includes fuel cells and hydrogen, clean coal, second generation biofuels, nuclear fusion, wind, nuclear fission and smart grids. De Santi said it was designed to help Europe to meet its commitments to reduce overall energy consumption by 20% by 2020, while reducing CO² emissions by 20% in the same time and increasing to 20% the proportion of energy generated from renewable sources.

Backstory

High voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines are seen as the most efficient way to move electricity over long distances without incurring the losses experienced in alternating current (AC) power lines. HVDC cables can carry more power for the same thickness of cable compared with AC lines but are only suited to long distance transmission as they require expensive devices to convert the electricity, usually generated as AC, into DC. Modern HVDC cables can keep energy losses down to around 3% per 1,000km. HVDC can also be used to transfer electricity between different countries that might use AC at differing frequencies. HVDC cables can also be used to synchronise AC produced by renewable energy sources.

Taken from The Guardian, 23 July 2008

Tricastin spews more poison

About 100 employees were exposed to radiation at Tricastin earlier this week while working on a reactor. Yes, that's the same nuclear power station that leaked liquid uranium into the environment last week. Of course, it was just a "light" exposure. Just as the leak "did not damage the environment".

The contamination of 15 employees at the nuclear power station of Saint-Alban-du-Rhône (Isère) and the two Tricastin incidents this month have stirred debate on the state of these power stations and the stringency of the safety precautions imposed and applied.

The irony is that in the wake of all this, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced his intention to commission at least 8 new nuclear stations in the UK. And President Sarkozy, of course, is far from admitting that most nuclear plants in France are dysfunctional and derelict. Of course not. For guess who is about to buy British Energy and take control of most of the UK's new stations? French energy giant EDF! And who is going to design the new British reactors? The French nuclear group Areva! Isn't this a Brave New World indeed?! Business is business. So let's just go on sitting on this time bomb while the money pours in. Welcome to Springfield!

As The Guardian's Jeremy Legett says, the unfolding nuclear rennaissance suggests ... that God has a sense of humour. The question is: does anyone feel like laughing at Tricastin?

You can get it if your really want!

This month's New Yorker features a very interesting article on the victory of a Danish community over carbon emissions.

According to a local farmer, once people on the island of Samsø began thinking about energy, it became a kind of sport. The island sits in what is known as the Kattegat, an arm of the North Sea. For the past decade it has been the site of an unlikely social movement. From a conventional attitude towards energy, Samsingers deliberately switched to a green mindset and formed energy cooperatives and organised seminars on wind power. They removed their furnaces and replaced them with heat pumps. By 2001 they had cut fossil-fuel use in half. By 2003 instead of importing electricity the island started exporting it! And by 2005 Samsø was producing more energy from renewable resources than it was using.

Samsø has eleven large land-based turbines and a dozen additional micro-turbines. Of course the island is aided by its geography and the fact that the wind blows practically continuously. Still, Denmark's renewable energy island is not inhabited by a community of do-gooders, intellectuals or hippies for that matter. Its people are mostly conservative farmers. They did not receive a prize or special tax breaks or even government assistance for their voluntary investment in wind energy. They simply opted for the turbines because the project made sense to them and protected their environment and their health. Of course in 1997, when it all started, many people were skeptical about the project's cost-effectiveness, but little by little nearly all the residents got bitten by the energy bug!

Each land-based turbine cost the equivalent of $ 850,000. The offshore turbines cost about $ 3 million each. Some of them were erected by a single investor, others were purchased collectively. At least 450 residents on the island own shares in the onshore turbines and a roughly equal number own shares in those offshore. Shareholders, who also include nonresidents, receive annual dividend cheques based on the prevailing price of electricity and how much their turbine has generated. People care about the production because they own the turbines.

"Being part of it we also feel responsibile."

All told, the Samsø initiative has a minimal effect on global CO2 emissions of course, but it is an example of what a community can do to make use of its natural, eternally renewable resources to ward off climate change.

Even without investing in our own turbines, most of us Europeans can do our bit for the environment by opting for green energy. With the EU-wide liberalisation of the energy market, most of us can tear up our contracts with coal-fired providers and sign up to 100 % green energy providers without incurring any penalties or paying heftier bills.

Belgian residents can check out Greenpeace's recommendations here. By switching from Electrabel (watch this video to see how Electrabel has been ripping us off!) to a green energy provider, you will also stop funding the nuclear sector. All it takes is a phonecall!

For more information on the Samsø initiative, refer to Elizabeth Kolbert's article "The island in the wind", The New Yorker (July 7 and 14 2008).

You've been swindled by The Great Global Warming Swindle

Channel 4 misrepresented some of the world's leading climate scientists in a controversial documentary that claimed global warming was a conspiracy and a fraud, the UK's media regulator will rule next week.

In a long-awaited judgment following a 15-month inquiry, Ofcom is expected to censure the network over its treatment of some scientists in the programme, The Great Global Warming Swindle, which sparked outcry from environmentalists.

Complaints about privacy and fairness from the government's former chief scientist, Sir David King, and the Nobel peace prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be upheld on almost all counts, the Guardian has learned.

But it is understood that Channel 4 will still claim victory because the ultimate verdict on a separate complaint about accuracy, which contained 131 specific points and ran to 270 pages, will find that it did not breach the regulator's broadcasting code and did not materially mislead viewers.

The detail of the ruling is expected to criticise Channel 4 over some aspects of the controversial programme, made by the director Martin Durkin, but executives will argue that the key test of whether or not it was right to broadcast the programme has been passed. (...)

The programme was criticised by scientists, who claimed it fundamentally misrepresented the evidence about global warming, that it rehashed discredited old arguments and manipulated data and charts to make its case.

The IPCC, King and other scientists including Dr Carl Wunsch, a climate expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, complained to the regulator over the way they were represented. Ofcom is expected to find in favour of King's complaint and three out of five of the IPCC's. One is expected to be thrown out and the fifth will be partially upheld.

In its judgment on King's complaint, Ofcom will say: "Channel 4 unfairly attributed to the former chief scientist, David King, comments he had not made and criticised him for them and also failed to provide him an opportunity to reply".

In the programme, the concluding voiceover from the climate change sceptic Fred Singer claimed "the chief scientist of the UK" was "telling people that by the end of the century, the only habitable place on Earth will be the Antarctic and humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic ... it would be hilarious if it weren't so sad".

King has never made such a statement and it is believed Singer confused his views with those of the contrarian scientist James Lovelock. King did once say that "the last time the Earth had this much C02, the only place habitable was the Antarctic".

Addressing the IPCC's complaint over 21 pages, Ofcom will rule that the programme "made significant allegations ... questioning its credibility and failed to offer it timely and appropriate opportunity to respond". (...)

After the broadcast, Wunsch said the programme was "masquerading as a science documentary when it should be regarded as a political polemic" and was "as close to pure propaganda as anything since world war two".

He claimed he had been duped into appearing and his comments had been misleadingly edited.

The Ofcom ruling is expected to find that Wunsch was misled about the tone and content of the programme, but that his views were accurately represented within it. Durkin, who had previously made other controversial documentaries, including Against Nature and the Rise and Fall of GM, vigorously defended the broadcast.

"The death of this theory will be painful and ugly. But it will die. Because it is wrong, wrong, wrong," he wrote.

Channel 4 justified the broadcast by saying it was a useful contribution to a timely debate, arguing that it had a tradition for iconoclastic programming and had also aired programmes supporting the case for man-made climate change.

The producers claimed that after it was broadcast, Channel 4 received a record number of phone calls that were six to one in favour of the arguments made. The film was subsequently sold to 21 other countries. A global DVD release went ahead despite protests from scientists. (...)

The Guardian, 19 July 2008

No more nuclear, no more lies!

French Minister of the Environment Borlo today told preoccupied residents in the Vaucluse, a popular southern French tourist destination, that groundwater would be analysed to see whether it had been contaminated by the untreated liquid uranium that spilled from the Tricastin nuclear power station in Bollene ten days ago. There's no reason to panic, he told us all, beaming, on TV. Well, what would you feel like doing if you had been drinking radioactive water for decades, poisoned by your own government? Panic I would, hell yes! Indeed, Vaucluse residents hardly feel like smiling, nor do people feel reassured in other areas of France whose nuclear power plants date back to the 1970s and are feared to have been leaking into the water table for years now.

After the Tricastin leak, that last week was graded one on the one-to-seven scale of nuclear accidents, an embarrassed government banned drinking well-water and swimming or fishing in two of the region's rivers.

The leak occurred when a tank was being cleaned between Monday night and Tuesday morning but was not detected until yesterday. Around 30 cubic metres of liquid containing uranium, which was not enriched, leaked out of a tank. Of this, 18 cubic metres poured on to the ground and into the nearby Gaffiere and Lauzon rivers, which flow into the Rhone. The plant has been operational since 1975.

Officials from the Socatri safety agency, a subsidiary of nuclear giant Areva, said groundwater, wells and rivers had shown no effects yesterday. The nuclear safety authority said radioactive levels detected in rivers and lakes in the region were decreasing.
-The Guardian, 10 July 2008.

No effects on groundwater, says nuclear giant Areva. Are people, particularly leukaemia patients, supposed to believe that? As Greenpeace International nuclear campaigner, Aslihan Tumer, said: "Given the restrictions on the consumption and use of water in the area, it is clear that the leak poses a risk to the local population and to the environment."

The French environmental group, the Committee for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity, said that the radioactivity released into the environment was at least 100 times higher than the fixed limit for that site for the entire year. This Committee has been ringing alarm bells with regard to certain derelict power stations in Fessenheim (Strasbourg) and the Cote d'Or, among others, for 20 years. Up until the Tricastin accident, its pleas went unheeded. Will the government finally bother to pull the Committee's reports out of that dusty drawer and take action?

With 87 % of France's electricity coming from the nuclear sector, the chances of this happening or of people being told the truth about the potential decade-long contamination of drinking water seem very meagre indeed.

More information for French speakers here and here

More information on similar recent leaks in Spain here and No es el arranque de los Simpson ...

A musical break

Soul Sundays ...

Who Murdered the Virunga Gorillas?

Here's another excellent National Geographic article on Congo's gorillas. You'll be warned: it is yet another terribly sad insight into human greed, corruption and cruelty. With a few dim rays of hope here and there ...

Heavily armed militias shatter the stillness in this central African park. Desperate refugees crowd park boundaries. Charcoal producers strip forests. Then, last summer, someone killed seven of these magnificent creatures in cold blood.
By Mark Jenkins
National Geographic, July 2008

The killers waited until dark.

On July 22 of last year unknown assailants crouched in the forest, preparing to execute a family of gorillas. Hidden on a side slope of the Mikeno volcano in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, armed with automatic weapons, the killers had hunted down the twelve-member Rugendo family, well-known among tourists and well loved by the rangers of Virunga National Park. The patriarch of the gorilla family, a 500-pound silverback named Senkwekwe, would have sensed that the assailants were near, perhaps wrinkling his wide, black nose at their unfortunate smell, but he would not have been alarmed. Senkwekwe had seen thousands of people and had come to accept their proximity as irritating but unavoidable. So habituated to humans was the Rugendo family that the gorillas would occasionally wander out of the forest into cornfields for an impromptu picnic, angering local farmers.

Park rangers at the nearby Bukima barracks said they heard shots at eight that night. On foot patrol the next morning they found three female gorillas—Mburanumwe, Neza, and Safari—shot to death, with Safari's infant cowering nearby. The following day Senkwekwe was found dead: blasted through the chest that same night. Three weeks later the body of another Rugendo female, Macibiri, would be discovered, her infant presumed dead.

Just a month earlier, two females and an infant from another gorilla group had been attacked. The rangers had found one of the females, shot execution style in the back of the head; her infant, still alive, was clinging to her dead mother's breast. The other female was never found.

All told, seven Virunga mountain gorillas had been killed in less than two months. Brent Stirton's photographs of the dead creatures being carried like royalty by weeping villagers ran in newspapers and magazines around the world. The murders of these intelligent, unassuming animals the park rangers refer to as "our brothers" ignited international outrage.

Continue reading here

If you can't fix it don't break it!

Yes, it all sounds very cliche and it probably is, but then it's a child speaking. And in reality things could be as simple as Stop making war and fix the planet instead ...

Alas ... faites de beaux rêves ...

Malta bottom of class on environment

Malta has broken more environment rules than any other new EU member state, according to a report card issued yesterday by the European Commission.

Brussels is not at all pleased with the way the environment is being handled by Malta and is expecting various initiatives to be taken in order to come closer to EU standards.

The report analyses the country's progress on environment policy in 2007. It shows Malta is a laggard on a number of counts including the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, measures on climate change, halting biodiversity and recycling of waste.

Until the end of last year, Malta was facing the highest number of infringement procedures for breaking EU environmental rules among the 12 new EU member states. Half of the infringements (12 out of 26) related to air legislation.

The report acknowledges the fact that Malta needed to start almost from scratch in the environment sector when it joined the EU and has already started putting in place important policies and infrastructure, such as sewage treatment plants, energy efficient incentives and new waste policies. However, much more needs to be done, the report insists.

One of the areas in which Malta has to work much harder is greenhouse gas emissions. As the EU works towards a reduction, Malta is moving in the opposite direction by registering rapid increases in emissions, caused by a higher energy demand.

"Greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise in recent years and reached 3.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2005, an increase of 6.1 per cent compared to 2004. Under its existing policies, emissions are projected to more than double between the base year (1990) and 2010," the report says.

According to the Commission, most climate-related action last year addressed energy consumption with subsidies for more efficient household appliances and renewable energy while the possibility of an offshore wind farm and a connection to the European energy networks to buy renewable-sourced electricity are being investigated. The Commission commented positively on these initiatives stating that, if implemented, they would "serve to diversify the energy mix".

Protecting nature and biodiversity is also seen as another hurdle for Malta.

Apart from stressing the fact the Malta is the only EU member state still permitting spring hunting, which this year forced the Commission to take Malta to the European Court, the Commission states that it seems unlikely that Malta will meet its target of halting the decline in biodiversity by 2010.

"As part of Natura 2000 network, by the end of 2007 Malta had proposed 12 Special Protection Areas (SPA) and 27 Sites of Community Importance (SCI) covering respectively 4.5 per cent and 12.6 per cent of its area. The present coverage of SPAs in particular is insufficient and the European Commission has launched legal proceedings to require further sites to be designated."

The same criticism applies to waste issues, particularly the need of recycling and reducing waste production.

The report states that in 2006, Malta produced an average of 652 kilos of municipal waste per capita, way above the EU average. "Malta performs badly in terms of municipal waste recycling: 86 per cent was landfilled (more than double of EU average) with only 13 per cent recycled or composted. Significant efforts need to be undertaken in order to change the situation and allow the country to comply with the targets of the Packaging Directive, the Landfill Directive and the requirements of the revised Waste Framework Directive."

Malta has never reported data on the recycling rate of packaging waste and the European Commission has launched an infringement procedure for not respecting this mandatory reporting.

The EU executive said that all of these problems are accentuated by the fact that Malta is the highest breaker of EU environmental rules when compared to its new counterparts.

Source: Times of Malta, 4 July 2008

Of garbage and other demons

Dashed hopes

Britain will find it 'impossible' to meet its target as part of the world's battle to ensure temperatures do not rise more than 2C - a key threshold for dangerous climate change, according to a study by a panel of leading experts.

The report 'Carbon Scenarios' by the Stockholm Network thinktank says that if existing policies and hopes of international agreement on reducing emissions were implemented, there would still be a 90 per cent chance the temperature rise would reach about 3C, a level that experts fear would provoke 'feedback' of more carbon by melting permafrost, threatening the world's forests.

If governments let policies 'stall and backslide' - as many appear to be doing - the rise would be 4.8C, says the study, to be published tomorrow. 'The two-degree target is impossible, and [a] three-degree target is implausible,' said Paul Domjan, energy fellow at the London-based European thinktank and an author of the report.

Domjan said the modelling, done by the world-renowned Hadley Centre at the Met Office but using emissions calculated by the Stockholm Network, highlighted three problems: 'Current policy comes in too slowly, it internationalises too slowly and it binds developing countries too late.'

Privately, many climate scientists believe it will be impossible to meet the 2C target, but they are reluctant to say so because they do not want to discourage moves to cut emissions.

The report says dangerous temperature rises could be avoided by a 'step change' in emissions reductions. To do this, the thinktank advocates a global cap on production of fossil fuels which would be auctioned to energy generators to raise money to compensate producers and pay developing nations to help adapt. 'Wealth transfer isn't an addendum, it's the most important part of carbon policy, because without it the developing world won't introduce emissions reductions and without emissions reductions we won't have lower temperatures,' Domjan added.

The report comes as Environment Secretary Hilary Benn prepares to announce tomorrow whether the government will increase its pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions from 60 to 80 per cent when it begins the second reading of the historic Climate Change Bill.

The bill was welcomed as the world's first binding targets for carbon reductions, but criticised as too weak, leading to amendments in the Lords, including a commitment for Britain to pursue policies consistent with an increase of only 2C and to include aviation emissions at a later date. Most experts agree that to hit a rise of 2C, Britain and other developed countries would have to slash emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. Benn must respond to those amendments when the second reading is introduced, either by accepting them or explaining why the government has changed or rejected them.

Department for the Environment officials said the bill had been 'strengthened quite significantly' by the amendments, but 'remains largely unchanged', both raising and dashing hopes that they have accepted some or all the changes. Some campaigners fear the government, under pressure over rising oil prices not to introduce what are seen as expensive 'green' policies, are not ready to bow to the demands in full.

Juliette Jowit, The Observer, 8 June 2008.

Nothing comes for free, alas ...

Britain's £800m international project to help the poorest countries in the world adapt to climate change was under fire last night after it emerged that almost all the money offered by Gordon Brown will have to be repaid with interest.

The UK environmental transformation fund was announced by the prime minister to international acclaim in November 2007, and was widely expected to be made in direct grants to countries experiencing extreme droughts, storms and sea level rise associated with climate change.

But the Guardian has learned that the money is not additional British aid and will be administered by the World Bank mainly in the form of concessionary loans which poor countries will have to pay back to Britain with interest.

A letter signed by two government ministers and seen by the Guardian shows that Britain has been pressing other G8 countries to also give money to the new fund, which will be launched in July in Japan at the G8's annual meeting.

"UK contributions from the environmental transformation fund ... will need to be primarily concessional loans. We will also talk to other donor countries about the possibility of grants," the letter, signed by environment minister Phil Woolas and international aid counterpart Gareth Thomas, said.

The letter shows that the US has resisted the idea of loans, preferring to give developing countries grants. "We understand that grants would be the US preferred approach," the British ministers say. Both their departments are understood to have argued strongly that the money should be in direct grant form on principle, but were overruled by the Treasury.

Last night several countries joined environment and development groups to condemn the loans. "We need urgently to prepare for climate change, but we are not in a position to pay back loans," said a spokesman for the Bangladesh high commission in London.

"The climate situation has not been created by us. The money should come spontaneously from rich countries and not be a loan." Bangladesh expects up to 80 million people to be displaced by climate change within 50 years.

A senior Brazilian diplomat was "indignant" that poor countries should have to borrow the money to prepare their populations for climate change. "It is not nearly enough money to tackle the problem, but I am not surprised. Increasing the debt of countries is not a good idea."

Development groups said they were dismayed that climate adaptation funds would be funded by any sort of loan. "The money should be additional to aid," said Toby Quantrill, head of international government at WWF.

"It should be grants and not loans, otherwise developing countries will have to pay twice, once for the emissions that caused the problems and then again to clean up the mess," said Tom Sharman, a policy adviser with ActionAid in London. "This is not money that is additional to Britain's aid budget. It seems strange to be cancelling debt and then inviting poor countries to take on new debt."

The fund will be promoted as the G8's showpiece contribution to developing countries at the next meeting of the organisation, in Japan in July. The US and Japan are understood to have agreed to contribute but figures have not yet been decided. Britain hopes that the fund will attract more than £1.5bn.

The principle of a major fund to help poor countries adapt has been widely welcomed because the international community has so far contributed very little. The World Bank administers 10 climate funds but the majority have little money available.

Concerns were also expressed that the World Bank, to which Britain is now the largest contributor, is now becoming the main disburser of international money for climate change as well as a major funder of climate change emissions.

"Between 2005 and 2007 the Bank financed greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuel projects from coal, oil and gas to the tune of $1.5bn (£767m). At the same time the Bank acts as trustee to 10 greenhouse gas-reducing funds, pocketing an average 13% 'overhead' in the process", said Janet Redman, an analyst with Washington thinktank Foreign Policy in Focus.

According to the government, the £800m will be spent over the next three years, focusing on projects that support development through environmental protection and which help poor countries to tackle climate change. Of the money, £50m has been earmarked for helping 10 countries in central Africa to tackle deforestation in the Congo basin.

In a statement placed on the Department for International Development (Dfid) website, a government spokeswoman said: "A number of details are still under discussion, including the structure of the funds, how they are governed, which countries are prioritised for funding, and how much money different donors will commit.

"The World Bank is currently consulting widely on the proposals. Dfid, Defra [the environment department] and other Whitehall departments will continue to participate in further consultation discussions with the World Bank, other multilateral and bilateral donors, developing countries, the UN system and civil society with the aim of launching the funds at the G8 summit in July.

"Funding should support country-owned action plans and must be consistent with wider poverty reduction activities at a country level."

Taken from The Guardian, 17 May 2008, UK demands repayment of climate aid to poor nations, by John Vidal.

It's getting late ...

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high, according to new figures that renew fears that climate change could begin to slide out of control.

Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.

The figures, published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on its website, also confirm that carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than expected. The annual mean growth rate for 2007 was 2.14ppm – the fourth year in the past six to see an annual rise greater than 2ppm. From 1970 to 2000, the concentration rose by about 1.5ppm each year, but since 2000 the annual rise has leapt to an average 2.1ppm.

Scientists say the shift could indicate that the Earth is losing its natural ability to soak up billions of tons of carbon each year. Climate models assume that about half our future emissions will be re-absorbed by forests and oceans, but the new figures confirm this may be too optimistic. If more of our carbon pollution stays in the atmosphere, it means emissions will have to be cut by more than currently projected to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

Martin Parry, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's working group on impacts, said: "Despite all the talk, the situation is getting worse. Levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise in the atmosphere and the rate of that rise is accelerating. We are already seeing the impacts of climate change and the scale of those impacts will also accelerate, until we decide to do something about it."

Taken from The Guardian, 12 May 2008, World CO2 levels reach record high, scientists warn by David Adam.

Water Stress

According to the IPCC, 75-250 million people will be exposed to "increased water stress" (i.e. will have trouble accessing water) by 2020.

Alas, water stress is not a futuristic concept. It is probably at the root of one the ugliest, most tragic and longest-lasting conflicts in the world. Drying up Palestine is an eye-opening documentary by Rima Essa and Peter Snowdon (screened at last year's Festival des Images de la Mer in Brussels) that sheds light on the stresses and strains imposed on Palestinian society by Israel’s almost total control over access to water and sewage facilities in the Occupied Territories.

Click here to watch it and glean an insight into this climate-related problem that is bound to grow in frequency and intensity in the coming years.

Favourite pic of the month

Taken from The Guardian's The Week in Wildlife
London, UK: Conchita, a three-week-old white-naped mangabey with its constant teddy bear companion. The monkey is currently being hand reared while its mother recuperates from a caesarian.

More sci-fi?

Blue Alert – Climate Migrants in South Asia: Estimates and Solutions is a paper authored by Dr Sudhir Chella Rajan, professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Madras, and a climate expert. She estimates the number of people who could be displaced from their homes as a result of climate change at 125 million in India and Bangladesh alone.

Blue Alert warns that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow under the business-as-usual scenario as projected, leading to global temperature rise by 4-5°C , the South Asian region could face a wave of migrants displaced by the impacts of climate change, including sea level rise and drought associated with shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability. Dr. Chella Rajan recommended that “India should seek policy options that are proactive in terms of developing international strategies to reduce the risk of destructive climate change. We cannot wait for the inevitable to happen and hope to adapt to it.”

For more information, click here

Photo: Courtesy of Dino Mangion

The palm oil tragedies

Greenpeace is urging its members and society at large to petition Unilever (the company that, among other things, produces the Dove cosmetics range) for buying palm oil from suppliers who are rapidly destroying Indonesia's rainforests. If you are concerned about multinationals burning up Borneo, please send a letter to Unilever now!

Besides being treasures of biodiversity (the orangutan, for instance, can only be found in Borneo and as a result is critically threatened by the destruction of its habitat), tropical forests are essential carbon sinks and therefore instrumental in keeping global warming at bay. Forest destruction is responsible for approximately 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Destruction of Indonesia’s peatland forests alone accounts for 4% of global annual emissions, placing the country 3rd in the global rankings behind the US and China. The tiny province of Riau, on the island of Sumatra, already holds 25% of the country’s palm oil plantations and there are plans to expand these by 200%. This would have devastating consequences for Riau’s peatlands, which store a massive 14.6 billion tonnes of carbon - equivalent to one year’s global greenhouse gas emissions.

Indonesia’s Government and the palm oil industry should heed the growing European rejection of Indonesian palm oil. Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Italy have all recently taken measures to limit destructively sourced Indonesian palm oil from getting onto their markets. Only in the last few weeks Belgium’s Antwerp Province has refused to grant environmental permits for the construction of at least one palm oil power plant on the grounds that they would be ‘unsustainable’.

Unilever claims that it is leading the search to find solutions to achieving sustainable palm oil. However, when asked how many sustainable palm oil plantations existed in Indonesia today, the embarrassed answer was - None.

Partial victory

The European Court of Justice has decided to uphold a request by the European Commission to ban spring hunting this year until a final decision is taken by the court on the future of spring hunting. To date Maltese hunters had been allowed to hunt for Turtle Dove and Quail.

The decision was welcomed by BirdLife Malta.

"The overwhelming majority of the Maltese are against spring hunting and they want to see their government protect our common European natural heritage. It is now time for law enforcement against illegal bird shooting and trapping to be stepped up so that this ban will be effective," BirdLife president Joseph Mangion said.

The court, headed by President of the Court, Vassilios Skouris, had been deliberating on the interim measure since April 2, when the last oral submissions by lawyers for the Maltese government and the Commission were made behind closed doors.

The Maltese government had argued that spring hunting should be allowed in terms of a derogation negotiated as part of the EU accession package.

Malta's team of lawyers included a Belgian lawyer specialising in the environment and in the Birds Directive.

Hearings before the court for a final decision on the future of spring hunting have not started yet.

The Commission is asking the court to declare that, by failing to meet the conditions set out in Article 9 of Council Directive 79/409/EEC on the conservation of wild birds, the Republic of Malta has failed to fulfill its obligations under Article 7 of the Directive forthe hunting of quail and turtle dove during spring migration.

Since accession to EU on May 1, 2004, the Maltese authorities have exercised the right to apply the derogation in Article 9(1) of the directive for the hunting of quail and turtle dove during the spring migration period when they return to their nesting ground.

The question raised in the proceedings is whether the Maltese authorities fall within the scope of the derogation in Article 9 (1) which would permit the hunting of the species in question in spring on the basis that there is no other satisfactory solution.

Taken from The Times of Malta, 24 April 2008

Greenpeace at the European Seafood Fair, Brussels

The guys at the Azzopardi Fisheries (Malta) stand weren't amused!

Read this to understand why Malta is so strongly criticised with regard to the tuna issue. More information on the Greenpeace website.

Climate Wars

It may sound like science-fiction but it is not. Climate change may very well be one of the causes of bloodshed in the Sahel and elsewhere. A good science-based explanation of what may have triggered the Darfur crisis, for instance, can be found on pp. 47-48 of Gabrielle Walker and David King's The Hot Topic: How to Tackle Global Warming and Still Keep the Lights On, an interesting read that led me on to revisiting this excellent article by Julian Borger (The Guardian, 28 April 2007).

***

In the relief camps scattered around the Chad-Sudan border, the refugees from Darfur tell the same story - of an ancient shared way of life catastrophically lost.

Less than a generation ago, Arabs and Africans coexisted peacefully and productively in Darfur, Sudan's arid western province which is more than twice the size of the United Kingdom. African farmers had allowed Arab herders to graze their camels and goats on the land, and the livestock had fertilised the soil.

The coexistence was so natural, in fact, the tribes of Darfur did not even think of themselves as Arab or African. It is only now, in light of the bloodshed of the past four years, that they look back and affix ethnic titles to the protagonists in their story, with all non-Arabs claiming the title African. Only a few years ago, it was just nomads and farmers.

"There was never any big problem between the livestock herders and the people living in the village," Yacoub Adam Omar, a 38-year-old refugee from Darfur, told me.

"Some of my own tribe would even travel with the Arabs when they went north into the desert in the rainy season and back in the dry season. And if the Arabs had heavy baggage they would leave it with us until they came back."

But here was Omar sitting in a refugee camp along with two million of his fellow Darfurians after being ethnically cleansed from their homes by Arab militia, the Janjaweed. UN officials now believe 400,000, mostly African civilians, have been killed.

Something fundamental has changed in this part of Africa, and it happened within a generation. From a state of sectarian innocence in which the dividing line between Arab and African was meaningless, something made people pick sides, and hardened their new sense of identity into ethnic hatred, all in the past two decades. What changed, the evidence suggests, was the climate.

The current conflict began in 2003. It was triggered when Darfurians launched a revolt against the central government, which fought back by unleashing the Janjaweed.

But the real roots of the disaster stretch back to the mid-1980s when a ferocious drought and famine transformed Sudan and the whole Horn of Africa. It killed more than a million people and laid waste livestock herds. Whether they maintained their way of life or tried to take up settled cultivation, the pastoralists of Darfur clashed repeatedly with its farmers. A string of conflicts broke out as both sides armed themselves, and those conflicts created the template for today's disaster.

Alex de Waal, a researcher and writer on Darfur, tells the story of meeting a nomadic leader, Sheikh Hilal Musa, in 1985, at the height of the drought. The desert was visibly advancing as the Saharan winds blew sand into the more fertile hills where the sheikh's clan, the Jalul, were grazing their camels. He tried hard to keep up appearances but it was clear his world was falling apart. Many Jalul who had lost their camels and goats tried their hands at farming, but as latecomers with no ancestral land rights, they had to make do with rocky semi-barren terrain, and could only look with envy towards the rich alluvial soil belonging to the long-established African tribe, an offshoot of the Fur people. Darfur means literally the Land of the Fur.

De Waal recalls: "Sheikh Hilal's moral geography had been disturbed: the cosmic order had given way to chaos."

Two decades later, the sheikh's son, Musa Hilal, is the supreme leader of the Janjaweed - and he is also top of the US state department's list of war crimes suspects.

There are, of course, other factors in this transformation from peaceful nomad to war criminal in the space of one generation. Leaders in the region have sought to turn hardship to their advantage. Libya's Muammar Gadafy formed an Islamic Legion out of West African Tuareg nomads and disgruntled Arabs from across the Sahel, and used them to try to carve out an "Arab belt" across Chad and into Sudan under his sway. His forces were soundly beaten by the Chadian army in 1987, but numbers of the legionnaires hung around the area - armed, trained and imbued with ideas of Arab supremacism, looking for the next fight. Many are now leading Janjaweed raiders into battle. There is an unpleasant sense of irony to Gadafy's recent insertion of a token "observer" force along the Chad-Sudan border, as the Libyan leader plays the role of regional peacemaker.

When it comes to manipulating ethnic frictions to cynical political ends, however, no one can outdo the government of President Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum. After years of neglect in which the central government starved the region of funds, Darfur erupted in a revolt in 2003. At the time, Sudan's army was exhausted from 20 years of war in the south, and rather than embark on a separate power-sharing venture with the people of Darfur, Khartoum opted for a cut-price means of suppressing the rebellion - subcontracting it to the Janjaweed. The Bashir government armed the militia, reinforced them with Arab convicts and pumped them up with a booster shot of Arab supremacist ideology.

But Khartoum would never have found willing partners in Darfur if the conflict over land had not been made so acute by the drought. Tellingly, those Arab tribes who had land ownership rights - mostly in the south of Darfur - chose not to join the government's counter-insurgency. Those who were prepared to kill, rape and pillage were drawn from the ranks of the desperate, ripped from their traditional way of life by a catastrophic change in the weather. Global warming created the dry tinder. Khartoum supplied the match.

Back in the 1980s, the failure of the rains was widely blamed on the people who lived in the region. Their over-grazing, it had been thought, had led to soil erosion, replaced green cover with bare rock and sand, reflecting more heat into the atmosphere and diminishing the chance of rain.

More recent computer modelling has suggested that rain patterns over Africa are influenced rather by ocean temperatures, and those in turn reflect global warming, and the rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In other words, droughts in Africa may be caused less by its hapless inhabitants and more by oversize cars and cheap flights in Europe and the US.

The implications are far-reaching. On top of all the economic and ecological implications of global warming, there is the very real prospect it will lead to more conflicts like Darfur, as groups who have coexisted until now begin to feel a sense of urgency over the diminishing resources of water and land.

The conflict has already shown its capacity to spread. Over the past year, it has colonised eastern Chad, where it has inflamed a struggle inside that country's ruling elite over staggering new revenues from oil exports. The Sudanese and Chadian governments suspect each other of destabilisation - a self-fulfilling fear as they are both hosting, training and arming anti-government rebels in each other's countries in a bid to pre-empt the threat. In these circumstances, long-festering antipathy between the Tama and Zaghawa tribes - who have been pushed together at the border by the instability all around them - has the potential to ignite into an extremely bloody brawl.

At the same time, Arab raiding parties have made an appearance in the northern tip of the Central African Republic, which also accuses Sudan of sponsoring the attacks.

There is endless potential for more climate-driven conflicts all across the broad Sahel region that stretches from Sudan to Senegal, where the competition between herder and farmer is often reinforced by more entrenched tribal differences, as well as the fault line between Muslim and Christian. In decades to come, Darfur may be seen as one of the first true climate-change wars, and those wars to come may be every bit as vicious because the adversaries will be fighting for their lives in a suddenly unfamiliar world.

It is a doom-laden scenario but it is not inevitable. Most scientists agree that climate change, of one degree or another, will happen, and that it will diminish the amount of fertile arable land and pasture across vulnerable regions like the Sahel. What is not inevitable is the descent from competition to armed conflict. That is a political leap. It requires that national governments choose to exacerbate conflicts rather than resolve them, and it requires that the international community fails to act when national governments do not protect their own citizens.

"The real problem here is moral, it is not a question of climate," Said Ibrahim Mustafa, the sultan of the Chadian border region of Dar Sila, says. "It's not just a lack of water that makes a man kill his brother."

At the moment, people such as Mustafa are losing the battle. After criticising the N'Djamena government for handing out guns rather than attempting to defuse border tensions with Sudan, he was obliged to hand over formal authority to his less outspoken son.

But there are still some reasons for hope in such a dismal environment. Some of the Arab groups, such as the northern Rizigat, who have hitherto ridden in the Janjaweed, are showing signs they are fed up with fighting, particularly since the Sudanese army withdrew to barracks in 2005 - its generals had begun to fear that they would be convicted of war crimes, and so left the Janjaweed to fight Darfurian rebel groups on their own. In some areas, Arab tribes have even mutinied. In late 2005, they occupied government buildings in the western town of El Geneina and, according to a western official in the country, told a provincial government representative: "You have led us on the path to destruction."

The fragmentation of the Janjaweed will make Khartoum nervous, and more likely to bow to international pressure to accept a substantial UN peacekeeping force. That force would bolster a small ineffectual African Union contingent that has served as an international figleaf until now. The trouble is any UN force now will arrive too late to save many lives. The crime has already been committed.

UN peacekeepers, however, would be useful if they were sent in to implement a real peace agreement, in which Khartoum agreed to share power and the Sudan's unexploited oil reserves.

The rebels and the government came close to a deal last year but by the time a deadline for the negotiations expired, only one rebel faction had accepted the terms Khartoum was offering. The Darfur groups are in disarray, but if they were to reassemble around a common platform they may find Khartoum - facing mounting sanctions - willing to make a better deal.

While that inevitably slow process is underway, the best place for UN peacekeepers to save lives would be around the outer edge of the crisis, in eastern Chad. Efforts are being made to convince the Chadian government of President Idriss Deby to host that force. That may in turn open the way to negotiations with Chadian rebels.

There are ways that Darfur's tragedy can be contained and mitigated before its neighbours are pulled into the downward spiral. The alternative could be a chain of conflicts across the continent and beyond, in the struggle for survival on a changing planet.