Environment | guardian

Patricia Espinosa says success of talks should not be measured by whether countries agree on a new legally binding text

Mexico's foreign minister today dampened hopes of a breakthrough deal at the Cancun climate change talks in November, saying negotiators are focusing on making progress on smaller issues before perhaps seeking a comprehensive agreement in 2011 or later.

Speaking after a two-day meeting in Geneva that dealt with how to pay for carbon-cutting projects in developing countries, Patricia Espinosa said the public should not measure the success of the Cancun talks by whether countries agree on a new legally binding text to combat global warming.

"I don't think this is the right approach under the current circumstances," she told reporters. "Throughout the world there are really very different needs and interests."

Organisers of the Cancun meeting, including the United Nations and the Mexican government, are trying to inject a sense of optimism and trust among negotiators after the last major round of talks in Copenhagen ended in failure last year.

Swiss environment minister Moritz Leuenberger, who hosted the closed-door talks in Geneva, insisted countries are "no longer fixated" on agreeing on a successor to the 1997 Kyoto protocol, which scientists say does not go far enough in requiring countries to reduce their carbon emissions.

Delegates traveling to Cancun, a Mexican resort city, should consider it a "unique opportunity to consolidate a cooperative framework that can allow us to move to immediate action," said Espinosa.

Rich countries like the United States, which rejected the Kyoto protocol, want rapidly developing nations such as China and India to join in the effort to cut pollution. Poor countries say they will agree to a deal only if it includes significant financial aid to help them make their economies more green.

Espinosa says such a "green fund" might be agreed in Cancun.

But, according to Wendel Trio, climate policy coordinator at Greenpeace International, big differences remain over where the money should come from, who should get it, and how it would be controlled.

"Given that climate finance is definitely one of the issues that will need to be solved, the fact that we haven't seen progress in the last two days is an indication that governments are not yet willing to move forward," said Trio.

The sums involved are vast – $10bn annually for the next three years, $100bn a year starting in 2020 – and both sides are insisting on transparency to ensure commitments are kept and funds are not wasted.

On Friday, the Dutch government launched a website aimed at tracking pledges made by rich countries and the programmes toward which they go.

Meanwhile, US climate envoy Todd Stern told reporters that failure of a climate bill in the US Senate need not mean the end of attempts to introduce legal restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

"I am in no sense writing off legislation over time and I'm quite sure the president isn't either," he said.

But he rejected any suggestion that the United States might sign up to the Kyoto protocol if no other agreement is agreed to replace it.

• Cancun climate change conference 2010 | COP16
• Climate change
• Kyoto protocol
• Global climate talks
• Mexico

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Fast Start Finance website to provide information on industrialised nations' climate funding commitments

The UN has today launched a new website designed to track climate funding commitments from industrialised countries in a bid to boost confidence that developed economies are delivering on their commitment to provide $30bn in " fast start" funding to help poorer nations combat climate change.

The Netherlands-hosted website, titled FastStartFinance.org, was unveiled at a meeting of around 45 nations in Geneva where environment ministers are discussing climate funding proposals.

The site will allow industrialised countries to provide data on their climate funding initiatives. So far six European donors, including the UK and Germany, have detailed their fast start funding commitments, providing information on 27 recipient nations.

Dutch Environment Minister Tineke Huizinga urged other countries to provide information on how much money they will provide over the next three years to help developing countries cut carbon emissions and adapt to climate change.

Christiana Figueres, head of the UN's climate change secretariat, welcomed the new initiative, arguing that it would help to boost confidence in the negotiations ahead of the crucial UN climate change summit in Mexico in November.

"I have always called this short-term financing the golden key to Cancun," she told reporters. "It is particularly urgent and important to have clarity about the source, the allocation and the disbursement of the short-term funds."

The $30bn fast start funding was one of the central commitments of the agreement hammered out at last year's Copenhagen Summit and its delivery is being seen by developing countries as a key test of industrialised nations' commitment to the deal.
Diplomats hope that the provision of $30bn of "new and additional" funding will help to boost trust between the two parties and may serve to break many of the deadlocks that continue to mar the negotiations.

However, concerns remains amongst poorer countries over the extent to which the funding committed to date has been diverted from other aid budgets.

A recent analysis from Reuters suggested that industrialised countries had already pledged funding equal to the $30bn target, but it is unclear how much of the funding is new.

Huizinga admitted the new website would not address such concerns as countries will be allowed to submit their own information, which will not be subject to checks.

In an interview with Reuters, Figueres called on developing countries to show some flexibility when deciding where funding is genuinely new, noting that the Copenhagen Agreement was reached after many government's had completed their budgets for 2010 and as a result it was difficult for the them to deliver genuinely additional funding at short notice.

• Global climate talks
• Climate change
• Cancun climate change conference 2010 | COP16

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Wine, beer or spirits: which has the biggest environmental impact? And would you pass on your favourite tipple if it was shown to damage the environment?

Which alcoholic beverage is the most eco-friendly?

Tracey Tatty Yappa, via Facebook

After reading through the comments below, it seems we have a consensus view that cider has the least environmental impact of all the alcoholic drinks, and spirits the worst. This stance is largely based on the proposition that the most significant impact - in terms of energy use, at least - is caused by the manufacturing stage, as opposed to the packaging or transportation phase of a drink's lifecycle. I would agree with this argument in most cases, but it does seem there are some massive variables between the various types of alcoholic drinks.

For example, beer seems to get a fairly bad rap from readers because its production requires plenty of heating, cooling and water, not to forget the often agriculturally intensive ingredients. There are some excellent inputs from ColdRiverBrewing and bobinfrance on the specific issue of how much water is required to produce beer. "A rule of thumb is that breweries use 5-10 times more water than actually leaves the premises as beer," says ColdRiverBrewing. According to an article earlier this year in the brewing industry trade press, SABMiller (Nastro Azzurro, Peroni, Grolsch, Miller, among other brands) has now vowed to cut its use of water to 3.5 litres of water per litre of beer brewed by 2015, a reduction of 25% on its 2008's figure. But SABMiller claims to have among the best environmental record in the business, so maybe the industry average is higher?

Sustain, the "alliance for better food and farming", agrees with the point made by Waterlizard and others about the need to support local producers in an effort to reduce the amount of energy used to ship our alcohol across the globe:

It has been calculated that the ingredients in locally brewed, locally drunk beer could, taken together, travel as little as 600 miles. A major brewer, exporting to the UK from, say, Germany, could accumulate 24,000 miles of transport for the ingredients and the product. Environmental costs could also be reduced if we followed the Danes' example, where 99% of all glass bottles are re-used. Only about 2% of UK beer was sold in returnable bottles in 1997.

It does seem to be a rather sensible conclusion that importing fewer liquids around the world wherever possible is a good thing from an environmental point of view. The same argument applies to bottled water, but I suppose many people in the world would be deprived of wine, for example, if you didn't allow the odd shipment of wine to leave the regions where vines can be commercially grown. (Imagine the rioting in wine-deprived nations!) Leadballon makes a valid point about this, though:

A reasonable strategy for the more distant wine sources is to look for locally bottled wine that has been transported in bulk. Unfortunately bulk transport is usually only the most generic varietal and origin available, Cabernet/Shiraz from South East Australia is about as specific as it gets. Light weight containers such as boxes are similarly restricted to the generics.

I'm not a big fan of cider myself (I'm not sure I've even ever tried perry), but I'm persuaded by the enthusiasm shown here for it. Cade, smartse, Mentalfloss, Titaflan, and andreakkk all put forward the case for why we should order a local cider at the bar over all other forms of merriment. Cade probably says it the simplest: "Cider is just about as green as you can get. Mash up some apples, squeeze the juice out, barrel it up then just leave it."

I'm also persuaded by smartse's argument that apple orchards provide a more sustainable habitat for wildlife than, say, a field of barley or hops. But surely it all comes down to how intensively the farmer manages that acre of land.

The obvious alternative to all this, though, is producing your own alcohol at home. As roolbg and rashomonuk state, homebrewing can be a rewarding hobby. What's more, you can control exactly what goes into your brew as well as greatly minimising the packaging and transportation required. I'll certainly drink to that.

On 31 August, Leo originally wrote:

Vodka, wine, beer, whisky, sherry, gin: the drinks cabinet is well stocked, but which of these alcoholic refreshments causes the least damage to the environment during its production? Alternatively, is there any alcoholic drink you would argue provides environmental benefits? And would you - unlikely, I know - ditch your favourite tipple if it was shown to have a poor environmental record?

Please share your thoughts below and, as ever, I will return on Friday to join the debate.

• Please send your own environment question to ask.leo.and.lucy@guardian.co.uk.
Or, alternatively, message me on Twitter @leohickman

• Food & drink
• Carbon footprints

Leo Hickman
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

No future chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can ever feel safe if Dr Pachauri is driven out

• George Monbiot: Pachauri innocent but smears continue
• KPMG review of Pachauri's personal financial records

When it first emerged in India that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had made a major blunder about the date the Himalayan glaciers were predicted to melt, the sceptics predictably called for the head of Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC's chair. There followed a series of malicious falsehoods and disinformation from journalists and bloggers about his business interests.

Without waiting for retractions or the evidence of any inquiries or investigations, leading western environmentalists and other commentators shamefully rushed in to say he should resign. And now, following the InterAcademy Council (IAC) report into the IPCC's processes earlier this week (which also found Pachauri not guilty of any misconduct), commentators and editorials in the Times, Financial Times, Time, New Scientist and Telegraph have called for his resignation. The BBC's Roger Harrabin has also suggested that Pachauri's "time appears to be running out". The reason most given? That by staying, Pachauri would give the sceptics more ammunition.

This is almost certainly sloppy group-think rather than a co-ordinated attack on Pachauri, but a pattern is emerging of IPCC chairs being shamefully hounded from office by powerful forces in rich countries.

Back in 2002 the previous chair, Bob Watson, fell victim to the oil company Exxon and the Bush administration after just three years in office. Corporate America regarded the British-born scientist as far too outspoken and potentially too dangerous to industry, and a stitch-up by the US administration and a few friendly developing countries saw Pachauri replace Watson. Western environmentalists leapt to defend Watson, many implying in a disturbing way that the new chair was inferior. What Bush and his friends did not anticipate was that Pachauri would be just as outspoken about the perils of climate change, and was no patsy when it came to politics.

If Pachauri goes – and the decision can only be taken by governments – two years into his second six-year term, then no future IPCC chair can ever feel safe. No decent candidate will ever be appointed again because the job – which involves no salary – will rightly be seen as impossible to do. The next IPCC report, the fifth assessment, will be finalised in 2014 and it can be guaranteed that the newly empowered sceptics will redouble their efforts to pick the most minute of holes in the vast swaths of scientific evidence that it will contain.

If a chair must go every time the sceptics and the press attack, then every IPCC chairman will be mercilessly hounded on a personal and political level. Hunting the chair will become a destructive sport not unlike vilifying football managers, guaranteed to destroy continuity, undermine trust, and encourage uncontroversial science. Ousting the IPCC chairman mid-term again would be the ultimate victory for scepticism of the wildest kind.

The absurdity of the latest attack is that Pachauri himself called on the IAC report specifically to improve IPCC procedures. If the plenary session of the IPCC does pass the recommendations made, then it will be up to Pachauri to implement them. The report suggested that in future one term only should be served, but it did not suggest that the man who implements reform should have to step down immediately.

Pachauri, in fact, has been a rare find and a staunch defender of international science. As the first chair of the IPCC from a developing country he has not just succeeded in engaging Africa and the poorest countries in the climate debate, but has given them a voice. It is quite possible that it is exactly this loud, uncompromising voice from the south demanding justice and compensation from the polluters, that so offends the western press and its commentators.

• Rajendra Pachauri
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• United Nations
• Global climate talks
• Climate change

John Vidal
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The annual wildlife spectacle is under a cloud thanks to plans to construct a road across the Serengeti

Housing development threatens greenfield site adjacent to a small, quiet cul-de-sac

Name of project

Describe the site currently, including details of protected or threatened habitat or species
Victoria Way is a small cul-de-sac comprising of approximately 72 dwellings. The cul-de-sac was built in approximately 1965, so roads and pavements are narrower than current recommended guidelines. There have been many previous investigations into this site and all have been rejected due to 'insurmountable access issues'. Most residents of Victoria Way are retired and many have lived on the estate for more than 40 years.

What development is proposed?
The recently agreed proposal by Wakefield Metropolitan District Council is to build 98 houses on a greenfield site adjacent to a very small, narrow quiet cul-de-sac. All construction traffic will use this cul-de-sac as an access point for 3 years and all subsequent residential traffic from then onwards.

Local opposition to the proposal is extremely high with 350 letters of objections. There has been high local media coverage, support by local councillors and has involved Ed Balls.

What one thing would help you or your group protect this site?
This proposal has been passed by the Planning Committee and as residents are retired they cannot afford the cost of a judicial review. They would like any information or assistance to help stop this proposal becoming reality.

Exact location
53.70504, -1.506822

Developer
Taylor Wimpey/Spawforths, Junction 41, Business Court, East Ardsley, Leeds, West Yorkshire WF3 2AB

Planning authority, and reference number of planning application
Wakefield Metropolitan District Council

Contact details for campaign group
Victoria Way Residents Committee
victoriaway@richardwakefield.org
Facebook Group: Wakefield. Save Our Streets

• If you are the developer and would like to respond to this campaign, please email piece.by.piece@guardian.co.uk

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

A diverse habitat with deer, amphibians and birds of prey could be threatened by new housing

Name of project

Describe the site currently, including details of protected or threatened habitat or species
Very diverse habitat with deer, amphibians, birds of prey. Very varied flora due to the land be "unimproved" or intensively farmed.

What development is proposed?
The currently "abandoned" regional spatial strategy (RSS) was proposing development across the Green Belt in the parish of Siston in South Gloucestershire. This could lead to thousands of very high density housing and the destruction of wild life habitats.

What one thing would help you or your group protect this site?
Write to the government to ensure that the RSS is abolished.

Exact location
51.459363, -2.467449.

Developer
Not yet named.

Planning authority, and reference number of planning application
South Gloucestershire District Council.

Contact details for campaign group
www.saveourgreenspaces.org

• If you are the developer and would like to respond to this campaign, please email piece.by.piece@guardian.co.uk

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

As solar photovoltaic panels go mainstream, Eric Gies looks at the environmental impact of making and disposing of them

In recent years the electronics industry has gained notoriety for creating an endless stream of disposable products that make their way at life's end to developing countries, where poor people without safety gear cut and burn out valuable materials, spilling contaminants into their water, air, and lungs.

Solar modules contain some of the same potentially dangerous materials as electronics, including silicon tetrachloride, cadmium, selenium, and sulfur hexafluoride, a potent greenhouse gas. So as solar moves from the fringe to the mainstream, insiders and watchdog groups are beginning to talk about producer responsibility and recycling in an attempt to sidestep the pitfalls of electronic waste and retain the industry's green credibility.

Solar modules have an expected lifespan of at least 20 years so most have not yet reached the end of their useful lives. But now, before a significant number of dead panels pile up, is the perfect time to implement a responsible program, according to Sheila Davis, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

The nonprofit environmental group has been a leader in recognizing the problems of e-waste, including hazardous disposal sites in the Bay Area left by the semiconductor industry. Now it is focused on the solar boom in Silicon Valley. Last year the group published a report calling for a "just and sustainable" solar industry, and this year it issued a scorecard of solar companies. The scorecard evaluates recycling and extended producer responsibility for the product's end of life, called takeback; supply chain and green jobs; chemical use and lifecycle analysis; and disclosure.

Solar energy is the most widely available resource we have. Every hour, enough solar energy strikes Earth to meet human energy needs for more than a year, according to NASA. Now the solar industry is poised for huge growth in the United States, thanks to policy changes, incentives, technological improvements, and economies of scale. Solar photovoltaics have recently become less expensive than nuclear energy on a per-kilowatt-hour basis, according to a new report from Duke University. Also, solar is widely expected to reach cost parity with fossil fuels in most markets by 2013.

In 2009, Greentech Media estimated that U.S. solar demand will continue to increase about 50 percent annually through 2012. The report said the US capacity installed during 2008 was about 320 megawatts, and it predicted that about 2,000 megawatts would be installed during 2012. Such growth would put US capacity ahead of solar leader Spain and potentially Germany as well.

While most of the new modules will likely have a long, productive life, factory scrap, transport breakages, and field failures are ready for recycling now. Jennifer Woolwich is collecting these broken solar modules in a warehouse near Phoenix.

She founded her company PV Recycling in February 2009 after estimating that she could harvest 500 panels a week from these sources. She is not yet collecting at that capacity, nor does she have enough panels to begin recycling them, but she is talking with solar manufacturers in an effort to win their recycling business.

"Of those we interviewed, 100 percent want recycling," she said. "Eighty percent want an independent third-party doing the recycling."

Woolwich said she has seen a quick evolution in solar manufacturers' attitudes toward recycling: "Last year, there was kind of a 'wait and see, we're not sure how this is going to work' attitude. Over the past 12 months, I've seen a 180. I've seen companies who are hiring consultants to research their whole value chain to identify waste, including the end of life of modules. We've received calls from consumers asking us which companies have takeback programs in place."

Solar companies tend to be secretive about their product recipes, making some manufacturers cautious about, yet conceptually open to, third-party recycling.

"We guarantee that intellectual property will not be put at risk," Woolwich said. "We're not interested in reverse engineering or selling company secrets. We have certificates of destruction that we provide."

For now, though, some companies are doing their own recycling.

SolarWorld, which received an 88 out of 100 on the toxics coalition's scorecard, has been recycling its own panels since 2003 at its main factory in Freiberg, Germany. That factory now receives broken panels from its U.S. plants in Cabrillo, Calif., Hillsboro, Ore., and Vancouver, Wash.

"The fact is, there isn't much to recycle," said Ben Santarris, a spokesman for SolarWorld. "In the future we might expand recycling to our U.S. plants or contract with a third-party recycler."

First Solar earned a rating of 67 on the scorecard. Headquartered in Tempe, Ariz., it has recycling facilities at its manufacturing sites in Perrysburg, Ohio; Frankfurt (Oder), Germany; and Kulim, Malaysia. Lisa Krueger, vice president of sustainable development, said that so far the company is primarily recycling manufacturing scrap.

"It's our intention that there would be other recycling facilities worldwide as you get into those volumes," she said.

Solar modules employ a variety of technologies, and even models within the same technology can have different ingredients. These materials may or may not be classified as toxic depending on who is regulating them.

Dustin Mulvaney is a scientist who works on solar issues at the University of California, Berkeley, and serves as a consultant to the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. He has analyzed solar modules currently on the market and has outlined for each its key ingredients, including potentially toxic elements and materials that would be valuable to recover in recycling.

Used in SolarWorld modules, crystalline photovoltaic is the oldest and most widespread solar technology in the United States, holding 57 percent market share in 2009, according to Greentech Media. "As far as hazardous materials go, you're primarily talking about lead," Mulvaney said.

A thin film technology called cadmium telluride makes up about 21 percent of the U.S. market. First Solar panels use this technology.

Cadmium may be carcinogenic. Exposure affects the lungs and kidneys and can be fatal. "It's gene toxic and a mutagen, so it has the ability to affect DNA, meaning it could affect reproduction and future generations' DNA," Mulvaney said.

Cadmium is technically banned by the European Union's Restriction on Hazardous Substances directive, although the policy currently allows an exemption for its use in solar modules.

Still, there's not a lot of data about whether cadmium is toxic in the alloy form in which it's used in thin film. And cadmium isn't likely to go away anytime soon, as it is uniquely efficient at absorbing light.

Another thin film material, copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), also has a cadmium layer. Indium is a potentially hazardous substance, too, particularly in the form of indium tin oxide, Mulvaney said. Studies have linked it to pulmonary disease in flat-screen TV recycling facilities. And selenium has been documented to be a hazardous material.

While CIGS currently has a market share of just 6 percent, amorphous silicon, which also has an indium tin oxide layer, holds 16 percent.

California's Department of Toxic Substances Control has taken note of the European Union's concern about cadmium and is researching the chemical and physical makeup of various types of modules.

"We think some solar panels, probably the cadmium thin film type, might be hazardous waste when shredded or disposed of in a landfill," said Charles Corcoran, a hazardous substances scientist at the department.

Only panels classified as hazardous would fall under the jurisdiction of the department. It is considering regulatory options to try to steer end users toward recycling rather than disposal.

"That gets a little complicated because California and U.S. regulations aren't necessarily in sync," Corcoran said. "An option might be to transport it out of state where disposal is legal."

Today California has no solar module recycling facilities. But recycling locally is an important tenet of an ethical, sustainable industry, said the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition's Davis. Recycling locally reduces the process' carbon footprint.

"It would also make people more conscious about what goes into the products," Davis said. "And it would create local jobs."

Extended producer responsibility, including module recycling, is currently an expense rather than a source of profit for companies, including Solar World and First Solar.

"As we get to scale, we hope those costs will come down," Krueger said.

A dedicated recycler like Woolwich is counting on economies of scale. Her business plan also includes various revenue streams, including reclaiming and selling materials and providing a service of managing manufacturers' collection and recycling systems.

Davis said recycling costs could be reduced if manufacturers would take the notion of extended producer responsibility to the next level: the design phase.

"If you don't look at the recycling when you're designing the product, then it's really, really difficult to recycle," Davis said. "But if you know you're going to have to pay for the recycling at the end of life, you might make the necessary design changes in your product now to reduce that cost."

Mulvaney said that if the government were to set a price on carbon emissions, that would also help make solar recycling more affordable. Because turning sand into crystals takes 70 to 80 percent of the energy used to make crystalline photovoltaics, he said recycling silicon would "save so much energy in production, it could become a money saver."

Still, most companies that are beginning recycling programs today are proceeding under the assumption that recycling will be a cost. They are preparing for that expense by creating a variety of funding mechanisms based on the principle of producer responsibility.

Via her surveys, Woolwich has found that solar companies are using an annuity program, escrow, maturity bonds, annual fixed contracts, and pay as you go.

Krueger said First Solar uses a trust: "First Solar doesn't have access to those funds except for collection and recycling," she said. "It's designed that way because of the long product life. If something happens to First Solar, the industry won't have to deal with orphan waste."

Some materials in solar modules such as silicon and rare metals could be more valuable in the future, providing an additional incentive to recycle. Material price spikes have caused industry turmoil in recent years. For example, polysilicon shot to $400 per kilogram between 2006 and 2008. It is now down around $55.

Krueger said First Solar currently harvests cadmium and tellurium from its recycling program to use in new modules, even though buying it from a supplier is currently less expensive. She said she expects harvesting costs to come down as recycling scales up.

Mulvaney said that the industry would do well to plan now for the recovery of rare metals such as indium and tellurium.

Of course, materials recovery has an environmental benefit as well. "We'll be able to reduce impact from mining and other environmental hazards by collecting a lot of the metals and other valuable minerals that are being used in panels," Davis said.

Being truly sustainable — and maintaining that green credibility — is a powerful motivator for renewable energy companies.

Santarris said the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition's scorecard was an "important step" toward figuring out which manufacturers are the most environmentally benign.

"There's not a lot of sophistication in the marketplace to differentiate among products and manufacturers of varying environmental performance," Santarris said. "Are solar modules all the same? They're not."

• Solar power
• Renewable energy
• Energy

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Mink set free by animal activists and salmon on their arduous journey upstream - the pick of this week's images from the natural world

Government's chief environmental scientist says emissions have actually risen, rather than fallen, because of carbon in imported goods

• West blamed for rapid increase in China's CO2

The UK's greenhouse gas emissions have risen in the past two decades rather than declined, because of the carbon "embedded" in imported goods, the government's chief environment scientist has said.

Speaking in a documentary to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 next week, Professor Bob Watson said there was a need to be more open about the rises in emissions generated by-products made in places such as China but destined for the UK market.

Under the current system of counting emissions, greenhouse gases created during the manufacture of goods are counted in the country where they are made, not used.

As a result, the true extent of the emissions caused by the UK is masked as many goods consumed here, from electrical products to clothes, are manufactured abroad and imported to this country.

Prof Watson said: "At face value UK emissions look like they have decreased 15% or 16% since 1990.

"But if you take in carbon embedded in our imports, our emissions have gone up about 12%. We've got to be more open about this."

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said: "Our position is that greenhouse gas emissions in the UK have been cut by 22% since 1990.

"While some emission reductions have resulted from the trend for manufacturing to move overseas, international rules state that emissions from manufacturing are counted by the country of production.

"Changing that would be very difficult. We don't have jurisdiction over emissions embedded in imports, they're difficult to calculate accurately and not easily verified."

He added the government believed the best way of getting an accurate account of global emissions was by reaching a global climate deal, building on last year's Copenhagen accord which he said included commitments by major manufacturers such as China.

The accord, in which countries put forward their pledges for national action on emissions, was the only agreement to come out of last year's UN climate talks - which were widely regarded as a failure.

• Carbon emissions
• Climate change

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Photography adds another dimension to wild food foraging – not just for identification purposes but as an art form

• Send your photos of nature's harvest to our Green shoots Flickr group

There are as many reason for the current resurgent rise in enthusiasm for all things wild food and foraging-related as there are wild foods themselves – from belt tightening austerity measures, to a desire to source local, sustainable food without the organic price tag and creativity in the kitchen. Some people choose to forage rather than shop in order to connect with seasonal rhythms instead of the discordant economic and clock-watching dictates of a mundane working week.

As a full-time forager – someone with an all-encompassing hobby that I sometimes try to pass off as work – all of the above, as well as deep-seated philosophical, psychological and spiritual reasons, have led me to an all-embracing commitment to wild food. It is a commitment that seeks to engage with – indeed even capture in some small way – the verdant, fleeting and ephemeral delights that nature exhibits.

As a child, the first books I encountered that seemed to capture in small part the magnificence of nature were Edith Holden's delightful 1906 The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady and Rev William Keeble Martin's exquisitely illustrated The Concise British Flora in Colour. Later, as a teenager, I came upon the book Wild Food by the now grand master of photographic guides, Roger Phillips. His superb photography seemed to truly capture the mysterious elements that made foraging for wild food so appealing - delightfully arranged rustic compositions showed tarte aux myrtilles on the banks of a woodland stream; blackberry pies, tarts and jams against a backdrop of stubble-burning field, and Carragheen soup precariously balanced on craggy waveswept rocks. These pictures were alive with the raw beauty, hinted dangers and creative promise of wild food.

Being neither well-suited to poetry nor painting, photography allowed me to add an engaging and enjoyable dimension to my wild food pursuits. The photographic dimension to foraging is wonderfully varied: plant portraits for identification; final dish shots; underwater photography of seaweeds resplendent in their natural element, or arty photos just for the creative and celebratory joy of it all.

In the UK, the changing seasons and varied habitats of specific wild plant foods offer endless scope for exciting pictures: nuts, berries, leaves, roots and fungi, their fascinating colours naturally juxtaposed against storm-leaden skies, misty rivers, and sun-baked earth. Raw settings and macro lens offer up the unique perspective of the intimate and super close-up view, revealing hidden details and mysterious patterns in seed husks and fruit skins.

The following list of wild foods available in September is in no way exhaustive. Apart from Hottentot figs and bilberries, that don't grow here, and truffles that I've never been lucky enough to find, these are all the things I regularly forage down in Kent:

Fruit: Elderberry, Juke of Argyle's "Goji" tea plant berries, black nightshade berry (some caution advised), dog rose hip, mulberry, wild service tree and other sorbus spp berries, Japanese rose hip, hawthorn berry (haws), staghorn sumac berries, blackberries, dewberries, bilberries, sloes, sea buckthorn berries, apples, crab apples, rowan berries, pears, figs, Hottentot figs, Himalayan honeysuckle berries (some caution advised), Yew berries (lots of caution advised), cherry plums, greengages, Juniper berries, hops.

Leaves: Watercress, sea aster, seabeet, sea purslane, perennial wallrocket, fat hen, water mint and other mints, Canadian fleabane, sow thistle, wood sorrel, common sorrel, ox-eye daisy, sea plantain, marsh samphire (tips), bristly ox-tongue.

Flowers: Yarrow, heather, common mallow.

Roots/bulbs: Burdock root, horse radish root, dandelion root, ramsons/wild garlic bulbs (and roots).

Nuts/seeds: Walnuts (soft - for making pate), beech nuts (mast), Himalayan balsam seeds, hazelnuts, great plantain seeds, wild carrot seeds, fennel seeds, poppy seeds, cabbage family plant seeds, common hogweed seeds.

Fungi: Giant puffball, summer truffle, chanterelle, parasol, fairy ring, jelly ear, penny bun and other boletes, fly agaric (caution advised, toxins must be leached out first before consuming) summer truffles, cauliflower fungus, beefsteak fungus, field and horse mushroom and other agaricus species.

Seaweeds: Dulse, laver, Carragheen, grape pip weed, oyster thief,

Wracks: Bladder, toothed, horned, egg, spiral, channelled,

Kelps: Oarweed, furbellows, sugar kelp, thongweed, sea lettuce, gutweed and other ulva species, dabberlocks, japweed, pepper dulse.

For those new to wild foods, apart from attending wild food or plant/fungi identification courses, I'd recommend Roger Phillips's Wild Food, The Wild Flower Key by Francis Rose and Clare O'Reilly, the photographic edition of Richard Mabey's classic Food for Free, Miles Irving's The Forager Handbook and the excellent web-based resource and database, Plants For A Future.

• Fergus Drennan is a broadcaster and writer.

• Send your photos of nature's harvest to our Green shoots Flickr group

• Ethical and green living
• Food
• Plants
• Food & drink
• Photography

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

A man has pleaded guilty after his bag containing snakes broke open on a luggage belt at Kuala Lumpur International airport

A Malaysian man has pleaded guilty to wildlife smuggling after his bag bursting with 95 live boa constrictors broke open on a luggage conveyer belt at Kuala Lumpur International airport, an official said.

Keng Liang "Anson" Wong, 52, who was previously convicted of wildlife trafficking in the United States, was charged on Wednesday in a district court for exporting the endangered boas without a permit, said Shamsuddin Osman, an official with Malaysia's wildlife department. The offence carries a penalty of up to seven years in prison and a fine, Shamsuddin said.

Wong was arrested on 26 August after airport authorities found the boa constrictors, together with a few other snakes and a turtle, when his bag broke open on a luggage conveyor belt. Wong was transiting from Malaysia's northern Penang state to Indonesia's capital Jakarta.

The court will reconvene Monday pending Wong's appointment of a lawyer, Shamsuddin said.

He said the criminal charges involve the boas only, because the other animals are not listed as endangered. All of the animals are alive and under the care of wildlife officials, Shamsuddin said.

A decade ago, Wong was sentenced to almost six years in prison in the US for running an animal-smuggling ring that prosecutors said imported and sold more than 300 protected reptiles native to Asia and Africa from 1996 until Wong's arrest in Mexico in 1998.

Activists say the illegal wildlife trade used to flourish in Malaysia until the country recently stepped up efforts to crack down on it. In July, parliament passed a new law to punish poachers and smugglers more severely, but the act has not yet taken effect.

Also on 26 August, customs officers at Bangkok airport in Thailand discovered a drugged tiger cub in a check-in bag filled with stuffed animal toys. An x-ray revealed the animal's beating heart inside the oversized luggage of a 31-year-old Thai woman who was due to board a plane to Iran.

In February, a report found that countries across south-east Asia are being systematically drained of wildlife to meet a booming demand for exotic pets in Europe and Japan and traditional medicine in China – posing a greater threat to many species than habitat loss or global warming.

More than 35 million animals were legally exported from the region over the past decade, official figures show, and hundreds of millions more could have been taken illegally. Almost half of those traded were seahorses and more than 17 million were reptiles. About 1 million birds and 400,000 mammals were traded, along with 18 million pieces of coral. The situation is so serious that experts have invented a new term – "empty forest syndrome" – to describe the gaping holes in biodiversity left behind.

• Endangered species
• Animal welfare
• Animals
• Malaysia
• Wildlife

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Louisiana coastguard confirms fire is out and all 13 workers are safe

Underwater images of the removal procedure

An oil platform explosion in the Gulf of Mexico forced the crew to jump into the sea and threatened further damage to waters still recovering from the BP disaster

No Impact Man is a film chronicling Colin Beavan and his 'retail-worshipping' wife Michelle's year-long experiment living a zero-waste lifestyle, during which they bought nothing, unplugged from the electrical grid, and created no rubbish

Why is human well-being improving globally when our environmental woes appear to be worsening all the time?

We hear lots of concerned chatter these days – not least, here on this site - about peak oil, peak water, deforestation, resource depletion and the like, but a popular riposte offered by those doubting such concerns is something commonly referred to as the "Environmentalist's Paradox".

The argument goes thus: "Why, despite resource depletion and the degradation of ecosystems, is average human well-being improving globally?"

People such as Matt Ridley, author of the Rational Optimist, argue that environmentalists are needlessly downbeat about humanity's prospects. After all, we are a resourceful, adaptable, highly intelligent species more than capable of riding out any current concerns (if only we would de-shackle ourselves from free-market constraints).

As a counterpoint, we have the likes of Jared Diamond, author of Collapse, arguing that we should heed the lessons provided by failed civilisations of the past who extinguished themselves by over-exploiting their available natural resources.

The latest edition of the journal BioScience includes a fascinating paper which examines just this paradox. (hat tip: Scientific American.) "Untangling the Environmentalist's Paradox" (the PDF is available here free until it disappears behind a paywall in a month's time), co-authored by a team of scientists led by Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne of McGill University, lays out in detail the conflicting indices which underpin the paradox. The editorial introducing the article sets the scene:

Studies including the influential Millennium Ecosystem Assessment have concluded that the capacity of ecosystems to produce many ecosystem services is now low. Depletion of ecosystem services is expected to mean fewer benefits to humans, thus decreasing human well-being. Yet the composite Human Development Index, a widely used metric that incorporates measures of literacy, life expectancy, and income, has improved markedly since the mid-1970s in both rich and poor nations. The index correlates strongly with other measures of prosperousness. Some measures of personal security buck the upward trend, but the overall improvement in well-being cannot, it seems, be denied. Does this paradox mean that concern about ecosystem services is overblown?

The authors then present four hypotheses that might help to explain the environmentalist's paradox. Here is their summary:

1. Critical dimensions of human well-being have not been captured adequately, and human well-being is actually declining. Measures of well-being that suggest it has increased are wrong or incomplete.
2. Provisioning ecosystem services, such as food production, are most significant for human well-being; therefore, if food production per capita increases, human well-being will also increase, regardless of declines in other services.
3. Technology and social innovation have decoupled human well-being from the state of ecosystems to the extent that human well-being is now less dependent on ecosystem services.
4. There is a time lag after ecosystem service degradation before human well-being is negatively affected. Loss of human well-being caused by current declines in services has therefore not yet occurred to a measurable extent.

The authors effectively dismiss the first hypothesis, arguing that there is a large body of evidence to support the notion that human wellbeing is, on average, improving. As might be expected, the authors support the second hypothesis. With the third, they conclude that the available evidence suggests that the "decoupling" argument can't be supported.

But perhaps the most intriguing hypothesis – for me, at least – is the fourth. Can the environmentalist's paradox be explained away by the fact that there is a time lag between when we degrade our finite natural resources and when our well-being begins to be negatively affected? If so, what is this period of time likely to be? And will the transitional descent - when/if it finally begins - be slow or rapid? The answers to these questions will surely be key to working out who will ultimately prove to be correct out of the Diamonds or the Ridleys of this world.

When I think about this time lag I can't help but be reminded of the set-piece scene from the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit cartoon, The Wrong Trousers. Gromit, Wallace's canny dog, finds himself having to lay track as fast as he can in front of himself to ensure the toy train he's riding on remains in hot pursuit of the jewel-thief penguin escaping with a diamond. (Go to 1:28 on this video.) Using this as a metaphor, can humans keep laying the train track in front of them fast enough to avoid a nasty derailment? Can we keep perpetually delaying our fall and decline? The authors of the paper seem to be suggesting that our chances of doing so are diminishing all the time as the world becomes increasingly globalised:

There is growing evidence of approaching resource collapses in certain regions of the world, but less is known about how system- or service-specific collapses may interact with one other and result in major impacts on global human well-being. Local or regional collapses may lead to cascading problems associated with forced human migration and resource competition, which could have global-scale effects on human well-being. Alternatively, market forces and trade rules could cause rapid destabilization in resource markets, leading to outcomes such as the multiple food, oil, and financial crises of 2008, which took the world by surprise. The global financial crisis of 2008 also demonstrates the connectivity of the global economy, and the capacity of globalized systems to undergo abrupt and surprising declines. Whether human well-being will suffer at the global scale will depend on how humans adapt to ecosystem degradation and its associated collapses over the next few decades…

Highly adaptable human societies have at times successfully staved off the effects of environmental degradation by importing ecosystem services from other regions, enhancing the supply of ecosystem services in some areas, exporting negative impacts to other locations, and making more efficient use of ecosystem services.
However, evidence suggests that future adaptation will be different and probably more difficult, as resources near depletion at the global scale. Previously available options for migration and translocations of resource use are increasingly constrained by the scope of human use of the biosphere.

As you might expect with any academic paper, there are the necessary caveats and calls for further research. As Timothy M. Beardsley, BioScience's editor in chief, says in his editorial:

"The authors' conclusions are limited by the geographically aggregated nature of their data, and BioScience will publish commentary on aspects of their analysis in a future issue. Yet the article clearly strengthens the case for research that integrates human well-being, agriculture, technology, and time lags affecting ecosystem services."

Agreed: it's certainly a subject that I for one would welcome much more nuanced, detailed research and discussion.

Leo Hickman
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

With Organic Fortnight starting today, join us at 1pm to discuss organic food, products and farming with Peter Melchett, policy director of the Soil Association

To mark the start of Organic Fortnight today and discuss everything to do with organics, we're joined between 1 and 2pm by Peter Melchett.

Melchett is policy director at the UK organic food and farming organisation, the Soil Association, which has organised the fortnight of events from a festival to farm visits. Whatever you want to ask on organic produce and issues, this is your chance.

Interested in Zac Goldsmith's idea that food for schools, hospitals and care homes should be organic? Want to quiz Melchett on a specific aspect of the Soil Association's work, such as how it certifies organic products? Got a question about organic food and climate change? Or do you want to ask about the recent decline of organic sales?

Just post your questions below. Melchett will be online from 1-2pm to do his best to answer.

• Organics
• Food
• Ethical and green living
• Food & drink

Adam Vaughan
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Oil giant hopes ruptured oil well in Gulf of Mexico will be sealed by mid-September, with clean-up bill now at $8bn

BP said today it is a fortnight away from sealing the ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico for good, as it revealed that the bill for containing and cleaning up the oil spill – the largest in American history – has reached $8bn.

Depending on the weather, the oil giant hopes to seal the well for good in mid-September. Since 15 July, no new oil had flowed into the gulf from the ruptured well, BP said. It continues to search for oil on the surface.

The bill has steadily risen since the 20 April oil rig explosion which triggered an environmental disaster in the region. In the aftermath, the oil company has been forced to abandon hopes of drilling in the Arctic due to its tarnished reputation, and BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, eventually bowed to pressure to resign.

Since the processing of claims by people affected by the disaster transferred to the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, led by Ken Feinberg under a deal with the White House, BP has paid out some $38.5m to 4,900 claimants. Before the transfer, it had made 127,000 claims payments, totalling approximately $399m.

Around 28,400 people, more than 4,050 ships and dozens of aircraft are still involved in the clean-up operation.

• BP oil spill
• BP
• Oil spills
• Oil
• Pollution
• United States

Julia Kollewe
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Intense harvesting of caterpillar fungus is damaging the Tibetan hillside and leading to violent land disputes

Jonathan Watts