WRI Stories

Mapping Ecosystems and Climate Change in Africa

Amy Cassara — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:49:00 -0400

Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, a new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, uses more than 300 satellite images to tell the story of Africa’s environmental transformation. The photographic evidence of degradation is stark and irrefutable, and it serves as a call to action for protecting the continent’s natural resources. The Atlas was officially released in South Africa in June and the U.S. release is today.

Many of the Atlas’ examples of change may be familiar to the public, such as Lake Chad’s receding water levels (seen in the image above) or the shrinking glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Others are new or lesser-known, such as the disappearance of Madagascar’s South Malagasy spiny forest or the explosive growth of Dakar, Senegal’s capital. (View more of the dramatic images here.)

The Atlas finds there are many reasons to be concerned about the state of Africa’s environment:

Africa’s deforestation rate (4 million hectares per year) is the highest in the world.
65 percent of the continent’s farmlands are degraded because of erosion and physical damage.
Water scarcity affects more than 300 million of the continent’s people.

Climate change is a major factor. “The Atlas,” says UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner, “clearly demonstrates the vulnerability of people in the region to forces often outside their control, including the shrinking of glaciers in Uganda and Tanzania and impacts on water supplies linked with climate change.”

Africa is responsible for only 4 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, but the continent’s people will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change—and they are ill-equipped to handle the enormous costs of adaptation.

The Atlas is not all doom and gloom. Rather, it contains many examples of how proper management can lead to positive results. A few success stories from the Atlas:

Sidi Toui National Park in Southeastern Tunisia: Action on overgrazing has produced a dramatic rebound in the natural ecosystem.
Itezhi-tezhi Dam in Zambia: A new management plan for the dam led to the restoration of the natural seasonal flooding of the Kafue flats.
Diawling National Park: A restoration projecting at the park expanded the wetlands and is helping to control flooding and improve livelihoods in Mauritania.

There is hope that the Africa Atlas will spur greater investment in ecosystem management and restoration to improve livelihoods across the continent.

The report draws on 35 years worth of imagery from the US Landsat satellite program. Amy Cassara, Crystal Davis, and Dan Tunstall of the World Resources Institute contributed to the report.

Download your own copy of the Africa Atlas here, or purchase a hardback version here.

How We Move: Sustainable Transport Around the World

Nancy Kete — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:19:03 -0400

When it comes to urban transportation, ingenuity is the key to cleaner, greener, and smarter cities.

Until recently, Bogotá, like many other cities around the world, was choking on its own growth. Fostered in part by inadequate urban and transportation planning, its streets were crowded and polluted, illegal settlements and uncontrolled sprawl were rampant, and community-oriented urban space, like public parks and walking paths, were disappearing fast. Reinforcing Bogotá’s other well-known problems, this chaotic environment helped perpetuate a vicious cycle of urban decay, social and economic inequality, and environmental degradation in the city.

Then Bogotá got smart.

MAP: Cities with Cutting-Edge Sustainable Transport Initiatives. Click here to view a larger version of this map.

Driven by a vision of a city built for people, not cars, in 1998 the city’s reformist mayor, Enrique Penalosa, began a massive urban renewal campaign. In just three years, he created or renovated hundreds of miles of bike paths and over 1,000 parks. He also erected 100 nurseries, 51 schools and 14 libraries. Most famously, he launched the TransMilenio Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system – a cutting-edge network of buses that by 2003 was carrying 750,000 passengers each day – a subsequent expansion of the system increased ridership to 1.4 million passengers per day.

Almost immediately, air and noise pollution began to ebb, traffic accidents became less common, and people started spending fewer hours stuck behind the wheel and more time enjoying the city’s new green spaces. Even crime, a previously constant scourge in the capital, responded to the reforms, falling 35%. Considering the magnitude of these changes, Penalosa’s reforms were remarkably rapid and inexpensive.

This type of bold vision can also be seen in a handful of other metropolises around the world, where dynamic leaders are launching sustainable, people-centered policies of their own. In doing so, they are creating a cadre of global “smart cities” that is proving municipalities can reduce traffic congestion, increase energy efficiency, and create more livable communities – all at a fraction of the cost and the time that many thought possible.

Paris is a perfect example. In the French capital you can now rent a bike at one of the new docking stations all over the city, ride it across town, and drop it off at your destination. In a few years you’ll be able to do the same with one of the 2,000 electric-powered cars Mayor Betrand Delanoe plans to provide. It’s all part of his program to reduce car traffic in the city by 40 percent by 2020.

In London, Mayor Ken Livingston worked hard to reduce traffic and air pollution through a system known as “congestion pricing,” which charges drivers a toll whenever they enter the ancient burg’s chronically snarled downtown streets. In addition, he launched an ambitious action plan to combat global warming that would encourage more energy efficient homes and offices, decrease reliance on cars, and promote the use of alternative energy to meet London’s needs.

Cities across the developing countries are also wising-up. Last year, Guayaquil, Ecuador was awarded an international sustainable transit award for its efforts to create a new Bogota-esque bus rapid transit system, refurbishing its public spaces and pedestrian areas, and launching “Car-Free Sundays” on its downtown streets.

Even Mexico City, long the epitome of a sprawling city, with legendary air pollution and traffic congestion problems, is entering an urban renaissance fueled by new, more sustainable urban development and transportation policies. Under the banner of his ambitious new “Plan Verde” (or “Green Plan”) Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has committed to creating and renovating numerous parks, expanding Metrobus (the city’s bus rapid transit system), and increasing pedestrian and bicycle paths to reduce dependence on private automobiles.

The examples above illustrate that changing a city’s “built environment” can have transformative effects on its overall quality of life. Crucially, decades of planning or billions of dollars of investment are not needed to start making cities more livable. This is because being ‘smart’ doesn’t necessarily mean adopting space-age technologies, or launching exorbitantly expensive infrastructure projects. Instead, it is about creating better systems, based on more people-friendly principles.

In particular, we have identified three key policies that municipal leaders can implement in order to quickly and inexpensively transform their cities into oases of sustainability and livability.

The first is an increased emphasis on public transportation. By getting people out of cars and into clean, efficient mass transit, cities can free themselves from the expensive and self-defeating race to build more and more highways. It is important to note that cost need not be prohibitive for these projects. For example, Mexico City, Bogota, and Guayaquil have all proven the worth of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), a new type of mass transit system akin to an above-ground metro. By using special lanes reserved exclusively for high-capacity buses, these cities have mimicked the speed and capacity of subways, but at fraction of the cost.

Cities should also vigorously promote biking and walking. Like public transit, these “non-motorized” modes of transport get people out of cars, increasing energy efficiency and reducing air pollution. In addition, a large number of studies have shown that even modest increases in bicycling or walking can significantly reduce the risk of obesity, heart disease and stress.

Finally, policymakers can create people-centered cities by using their existing land more wisely. Current zoning policies and transport systems often encourage mindless sprawl. But by changing the way that cities grow and function, cities can foster higher-density neighborhoods, and bring shops and offices closer to residential areas. These steps cut down on the need to travel, and create more vibrant communities where people can spend more time enjoying community spaces, and less time in front of the TV.

The three interrelated polices above are common-sense, cost-effective, and mutually reinforcing. Unfortunately, they also represent a marked departure from the way in which most of the world’s cities have operated over the last 50 years. Thus, even though the policies outlined above can be accomplished quickly and inexpensively, they do require courageous city leaders willing to make the politically difficult decisions necessary to ensure the long-term health of their communities. The mayors highlighted above have all proven themselves up to this challenge. As a result, their cities are best positioned to take advantage of the new economic, social, and environmental realities of the 21st century.

Cities that have yet to embrace this new way of thinking, on the other hand, are at a crossroads. They must decide, and decide soon, if they can muster the political will to ‘get smart’ and leave behind the failed, unsustainable policies of the past. Cities have faced such hard choices before. As recently as the 1800s, metropolises like Paris, London, and New York were plagued by epidemics and overcrowding. In each of these places, leaders looked beyond the immediate problems they faced and made decisions that would help them achieve a better future. New roads, parks, public transportation and sanitation systems made their cities more livable and turned them into engines of the economic growth for France, England and the United States. These cities became great because their leaders made the visionary, though difficult, choices that moved their cities forward.

Much like these disease-ridden cities of the past, many modern urban areas are now choking on their own growth, struggling with traffic jams, energy inefficiency, urban sprawl, and depleted social capital. As humanity for the first time has become urban – with half the world’s population living in cities - finding solutions to these problems becomes all the more urgent. It is clear that thoughtless, shapeless, sprawling cities are no longer tolerable. Instead, what cities need is a purposeful shaping of public space, like that being carried out by the cities and mayors profiled above. We urge other city leaders to learn from, and build upon their example, and take the small but challenging steps necessary to create healthier, happier, and more sustainable cities.

This article was originally published in Poder Magazine and EMBARQ.

Making High Gas Prices Less Painful

Dario Hidalgo — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:08:15 -0400

Learn more about three long-term, sustainable policy solutions that would help ease the pain of high gas prices.

With gas prices hovering around $4 a gallon, many Americans are feeling uneasy about the future. And for good reason. Higher prices at the pump channel money away from things that improve our quality of life, like health care, education, and leisure activities.

So far, the response from politicians on Capitol Hill has been anything but inspiring. Many politicians have disingenuously claimed that we don’t need to change our behavior and can “drill our way out of this problem.” Or that we can apply enough pressure on oil-rich countries, who will then turn against their own self-interests and ramp up production. Or that high fuel standards and alternative fuels like ethanol, which just suffered a huge setback with the Iowa floods, will make all our problems go away.

But there is a segment in Washington that gets it. Rep. Earl Blumenauer recently spoke out because he couldn’t find a parking spot in the garage of the Rayburn House of Representatives office building. So many Hill staffers now cycle to work that Mr. Blumenauer, for the first time ever, couldn’t find a space on the bike rack to lock his road bike.

Cycling to work is the type of small behavioral change that can shelter Americans from high fuel prices. But in addition to personal changes, we need a prescription of policies that have a large-scale, structural impacts that make American’s less vulnerable to the whims of OPEC and the global oil market.

The following three ideas, if implemented, will have the added value of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, improving public health, curtailing over-consumption, and providing a structural change that can be sustained over the long term.

Build high-density, mixed-use cities: The vast majority of American cities are built for cars, which creates a sprawling, low-density landscape where people spend too much time and money driving to conduct their daily activities. Cities built around people and walking as opposed to cars and driving have single-family housing, apartments, grocery stores, office space and shops all within walking distance, eliminating the daily need to get behind the wheel. The rise of “New Urbanism” in places like Kentlands, Maryland, and the revitalization of American inner cities in places like Chicago, New York, and Washington DC suggests that more and more Americans want a lifestyle that favors short walking trips over long car commutes.
Invest in Mass Transit: Americans are flocking to mass transit in ever greater numbers. At 10.3 billion trips last year, mass-transit ridership in the United States is at its highest level since 1957. To match this growing demand, cities should invest money to maintain and expand their mass-transit systems. One practical way to do this is to charge car drivers for using the most congested roads and use this revenue to fund mass-transit projects and operations. London, Singapore, and Stockholm all have wildly successful congestion-pricing programs that are, counter to conventional wisdom, popular among residents. Mass transit does not necessarily mean rail. Cities can also thrive with low-cost, fast implementation systems like bus rapid transit, which has been done in Los Angeles, Ottawa, Sidney, Mexico City, Curitiba, and Bogotá.
Invest in Cycling Facilities: Increasingly, cycling is becoming popular among commuters making short trips around cities. But the spike in the number of city cyclists has yet to be followed by a supply of cycling facilities like bike lanes and bike parking. In many cities, cyclists have to compete with cars for road space, a dangerous proposition that drives potential cyclists off their bikes and back into cars. By building special cycle lanes that are physically separated from traffic, cities can make cycling a viable, low-cost form of transit. Cycling can also be instrumental in countering chronic diseases like diabetes and obesity, which are now afflicting large swaths of the sedentary American population. Paris, among other cities, has taken cycling a step above the rest, creating a bike-sharing program with 15,000 bicycles available at a moments notice for anyone with a credit card. Cyclists and politicians in American cities should take note.

Building Laws That Work for the Poor

Remi Moncel — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:17:02 -0400

What is the link between the rule of law and poverty? A new report finds that billions of people “around the world are robbed of the chance to better their lives and climb out of poverty because they are excluded from the rule of law.”

According to the report, produced by the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, a commission hosted by UNDP, “more than seven in ten children in the world’s least developed countries do not have birth certificates or other registration documents,” and in India, there are only 11 judges for every million people.

But while the report focused on countries around the world, WRI convened an event earlier this week with influential leaders from government and civil society to put the spotlight squarely on the United States.

“I do think, and I will stand up for this, that U.S. law and U.S. democracy is better than anything else,” said Madeleine Albright, former United States secretary of state and co-chair of the Commission. “But clearly there are issues, and New Orleans is the best example of it.”

Dr. Beverly Wright, a New Orleans resident and founder and executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University, said this about the poor response to Katrina: “We were absolutely looking at a situation where a government as rich and as powerful and as knowledgeable as our government is, was absolutely unable to protect vulnerable populations.” Wright continued: “I still ask myself, ‘why?’”

Wright traces her family in New Orleans back many generations, and before the storm, she lived in a home she had inherited. She talked about what happened to her and thousands of others who had no voice in what happened to their property after the storm:

“I looked up on a map and I saw a green space, and I looked at where it was, I said, ‘Darn that’s where I lived.’ And my question was, ‘So who made this decision? Where was I?’ Somebody decided, ‘We’re going to make this footprint smaller, and your house is gone.’ Well, that happened to a whole lot of us.”

Her moving story shows that even in the United States, many people are excluded from the critical decisions that affect their environment. To exercise their right to participate in decision-making, citizens need access to the information that drives those decisions and the chance to voice their opinions and to influence choices.

“Despite robust social safety nets and legal protections available to Americans, millions of poor people in America continue to confront both formal and informal barriers to participation in civic and economic life,” said Jonathan Lash, president of WRI. “These barriers have denied them access to secure property rights, to the judicial system and to sustainable livelihoods and resilient communities.”

WRI contributed to the Commission report, which drew specifically on the work of The Access Initiative, a project of WRI and the world’s largest network of civil society organizations working to ensure that people have the right and the ability to influence decisions about the natural resources that sustain their communities.

And WRI’s new book, Voice and Choice: Opening the Door to Environmental Democracy, looks at the progress governments have made in providing access to environmental decision-making–-and with the hope of accelerating this progress, the book identifies hurdles and suggests how to overcome them.

At the WRI event, Dr. Naresh Singh, executive director of the Commission, focused on the key message of the report: legal empowerment. Singh noted that some nations may have an established rule of law, yet its citizens are not empowered to take action. Singh talked about the four pillars which must be central to national and international efforts aimed at the legal empowerment of the poor: access to justice and rule of law, property rights, labor rights and business rights.

The panel talked about how billions of people worldwide have no voice in the decisions that affect their environment. The United States is no exception. The consequences of environmental degradation and poor planning are harshest on poor communities.

“Obviously, [the report] has an environmental aspect to it because we know that poor people suffer the most, I think, in terms of land that has been deforested or lack of water. So there is, I think, a direct connection between empowering the poor, the legal empowerment of the poor and [WRI’s] agenda,” said Albright.

“We believe the report contains lessons for a new administration committed to helping the poor and disempowered in this country,” Jacob Werksman, director of the Institutions and Governance Program at WRI, said about the Commission report. “Too often we assume the rule of law functions equally for everyone. As a result, ill-crafted decisions and the lack of enforcement of environmental standards unfairly harm poor communities.”

With Global Warming, Delay is Not An Option

Debbie Boger — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:14:46 -0400

WRI’s Debbie Boger responds to Bjorn Lomborg’s faulty global warming conclusions. NOTE: This story first appeared on The Huffington Post.

After reading a transcript of Fareed Zakaria’s interview with Bjorn Lomborg on Global Public Square on CNN this past Sunday (June 15), my colleagues and I feel compelled to clarify several points which merit clarification as well as context.

WRI has rebutted Bjorn Lomborg’s logic and conclusions about global warming before (see here), and we will do so again.

Countless peer reviewed studies all indicate that the threat of climate change is real and that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities will change the climate in catastrophic ways if unchecked. Because greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere for many years, we do not possess the ability to fully avert climate change. However, we do have the ability to control our own destiny and avert the most serious consequences.

Despite Mr. Lomborg’s fatalistic outlook on the problem, we must address global warming now, and there are good ethical and economic reasons to do so. In stark contrast to the idea that simply adapting to global warming will be cheaper than preventing it, Lord Nicholas Stern did a comprehensive economic assessment of the costs of climate change in the Report on the Economics of Climate Change. In his words, he found that:

The overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more. In contrast, the costs of action - reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change - can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year.

Lomborg’s assertion that it will be easier to adapt to climate changes than to reduce emissions also ignores much of the science. The real issue is not so much the gradual changes that will take place, including sea level rise, the disappearance of glaciers that provide many countries with reliable water supplies, and so on. Rather, it lies in the potential for much more dramatic change as the climate reaches certain “tipping points”. If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt, a threat that looks increasingly possible, sea level rise would be measured in meters, not centimeters. Cutting emissions today is not just about tweaking sea level rise as Lomborg suggests, but about insuring against unpredictable but potentially catastrophic effects. Acting now allows us to avoid taking even more aggressive measures later.

The case for action is clear, and we are left to tackle the question of what is feasible and reasonable. Fortunately there are already a number of opportunities for greenhouse emissions reductions readily available, opportunities that can improve fuel diversity and security, and in the case of energy efficiency even save industry and consumers money. Furthermore, technologies like wind energy are highly evolved and already being deployed at high rates in many parts of the world. Mr Lomborg seems to see technology as something that turns up magically, but in fact it is climate policies that have been driving the innovation in many areas of energy technology. The German renewable energy support that Mr Lomborg derides does not merely postpone global warming for an hour: it creates the economies of scale that allow these technologies to be taken up around the world. Similar policies in his own country of Denmark have made his compatriots the world leaders in wind energy, and have underwritten the huge deployment of these technologies today in China, India and other countries. It is a fallacy to suggest that new technologies negate the argument for policy; they ARE the argument for policy. His reference to research and development as the means to reduce costs suggests a lack of awareness of where many of these technologies are today. It is not only R&D (though R&D is necessary), but deployment and economies of scale that are needed, and that are the main aims of climate policy. And solar will be competitive with fossil fuels long, long before “mid-century” thanks to these policies. To fully harness the creative minds of industry we must institute market-based programs that put a price on carbon and provide the regulatory certainty needed for private investment.

Mr. Lomborg also implies that China and India will not be ready to deploy clean energy themselves until that far distant date when the costs are at rock-bottom. He should perhaps visit China, where wind energy is being deployed faster than anywhere else in the world and has built one of the world’s leading solar industries. China has identified climate change as a key threat to its economy, and clean energy as a centerpiece of its development.

In closing, we believe that acting now to address climate change will not only (hopefully) avert catastrophic consequences, it will create jobs, improve energy security and improve people’s lives the world over. Let’s get started now.

Coastal Capital: Putting a Value on The Caribbean's Coral Reefs

Lauretta Burke — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:13:47 -0400

Coral reefs are a vital part of the Caribbean’s marine environment, and are integral to the economies of many of the region’s small island states. WRI’s economic valuation methodology can help decision-makers in the region better understand the enormous economic value the reef provides and use this data to make better-informed coastal policy.

Click here to view the full results.

Tourists flock to the region to see the beautiful beaches and marine life these biologically rich habitats support. Local fishermen rely on healthy reefs as a source of food and livelihood. In addition, reefs act as natural barriers to protect the islands from the worst ravages of tropical storms.

The proper management of the Caribbean’s Coastal Capital is essential for the region’s economic and environmental health.

Yet government officials, developers and the public often overlook or do not fully appreciate the harmful effects coral reef degradation, resulting in short-sighted decisions about coastal investment, development and land use. Knowledge of the economic values stemming from coral reefs supports sustainable planning which maximizes the long-term economic potential of coastal areas.

But a clear presentation of the economic value derived from coral reefs can guide the sustainable use of these resources.

The World Resources Institute, in collaboration with government and NGO partners in St. Lucia, Tobago and Belize, has developed an economic valuation methodology to quantify the value of coral reefs in the Caribbean more accurately. The methodology supports the evaluation of trade-offs, thereby highlighting the management and development paths which protect coral reefs, and maximize the economic contribution of coral reefs to the economy.

Our Excel-based Economic Valuation Tool guides users through a simple method that does not assess Total Economic Value (TEV), but instead focuses on three key goods and services: coral reef-associated tourism, fisheries, and shoreline protection services. Read more about the methodology (PDF, 59 Kb)

The tool evaluates the economic impact of both coral reef-associated tourism and fisheries with a financial analysis method that tracks the financial flows and wider economic impact these two industries generate.

Shoreline protection is the third aspect of the Economic Valuation Tool. WRI developed an innovative method for evaluating the role of coral reefs in protecting the shoreline. Using a modified avoided damages approach, the tool estimates the total value of reduction in wave-induced erosion and property damage due to coral reefs.

Countries across the Caribbean can use the methodology; and the hope is that its widespread use will support wise, forward-looking coastal policy throughout the region.

WRI has made lower bound (partial) estimates of the economic contribution of coral reefs to the economy of two pilot sites in the Eastern Caribbean: Tobago and St. Lucia. On these two small islands, coral reef tourism alone accounted for direct and indirect economic impact totaling US$101–130 million in Tobago and US$ 160–194 million in St. Lucia.

Ultimately, WRI hopes the project will:

Increase local capacity to perform ecosystem valuation and use the valuation results in planning and decision-making;
Make the economic case for better coastal and land management, as well as for increased investment in Marine Protected Areas, so that these are viewed as investments for the economic and societal benefits of the country;
Arm NGOs and marginalized resource users with powerful information, giving them a greater voice in local decision-making.

For a quick summary of the results, click here (PDF, 208 Kb). For the full Coastal Capital report, click here (PDF, 1,001 Kb). To view maps of the shoreline protection analysis, click here. Click here to learn more about one WRI’s project partners, Buccoo Reef Trust.

Charting a Path to Restore Nature's Capital

Karen Bennett — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:13:55 -0400

A new book, compiling the work of 18 global experts, lays out policy, institutional, and governance recommendations to respond to global ecosystem degradation.

Nature provides people with many services that underlie a healthy, secure, and fulfilling existence. Among the many benefits people receive from nature, or ecosystem services, are fresh water, food, protection from floods, and spiritual enrichment. In fact, it is hard to think of a part of human life that doesn’t in some way depend upon nature.

Unfortunately, the majority of the Earth’s ecosystems are not healthy. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the first-ever global look at ecosystem condition, found over 60% of ecosystem services to be in worse condition than they were 50 years ago. This large scale destruction is a result of humans having frequently treated many natural assets as if they have no value.

This scale of degradation and its implications for ecosystems’ capacity to support human well-being demands an urgent response from government, civil society, and the private sector at all levels. Ecosystems must be governed in ways that recognize their value to society.

In order to insulate the scientific findings from politics, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment by design stopped short of making specific policy recommendations. To figure out how to put society on a path toward restoring healthy ecosystem services, WRI invited 18 experts from diverse backgrounds to propose ideas for the key policy implications of the Assessment’s findings. Their only instructions were that all options should be on the table.

The resulting papers have now been published in the compilation Policies for Sustainable Governance of Global Ecosystem Services. This book presents the earliest concerted thinking about how to address both the stark realities and the enormous potential uncovered by the Assessment.

Based on this and other work, WRI has defined an action agenda for governments, business, and civil society designed to sustain ecosystem services. The action agenda focuses on governance—who makes decisions, how decisions are made, and with what information. It calls for increasing access to information on ecosystem services and for tipping the balance in favor of local rights to resources and local voices in decision making. It also calls for managing decisions across levels—local, regional, national, international—and increasing the use of accountability mechanisms and economic and financial incentives.

Nature’s benefits—both economic and social—could sustain many generations. But in order for that to happen, one thing is abundantly clear: “business as usual” is no longer an option. Humanity needs a new approach to managing the assets upon which all life depends. Business as usual will not move beyond protecting nature from development to investing in nature for development.

Contributors to the book:

Mark Bateman, IW Financial, USA;
Albert Cho, McKinsey & Co.;
Hernan Dario Correa, Colombia;
Robert Goodland, World Bank Group, retired;
Frances Irwin, WRI;
Anthony Janetos, Joint Global Change Research Institute, USA:
David Jhirad, Rockefeller Foundation, USA;
Karin Krchnak, The Nature Conservancy;
Antonio La Vina, Ateneo School of Government, Ateneo de Manila University, The Philippines;
Lailai Li, Stockholm Environment Institute, Sweden;
Nicolas Lucas, Secretaría de Desarrollo Sustentable y Ambiente, Argentina;
Mohan Munasinghe, Munasinghe Institute for Development, Sri Lanka;
Richard Norgaard, University of California, Berkeley;
Sudhir Chella Rajan, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras;
Janet Ranganathan, WRI;
Iokiñe Rodríguez, Venezuela;
Guido Schmidt-Traub, U.N. Millennium Project; and
Frances Seymour, Center for International Forestry Research, Indonesia.

The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:13:01 -0400

A majority of the Senate sent a message to Americans and the rest of the world that they believe the time is now to confront climate change. Statement by Jonathan Lash

If you’re looking for a better understanding of the Bill in particular—or the issues in general—these resources are a great start.

Summary of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act
Comparison of Legislative Climate Change Targets in the 110th Congress Updated

Key Climate Change Issues

More Resources

Can Capturing Carbon Become a Reality?

Hiranya Fernando — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:10:27 -0400

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is both hailed as a “silver bullet” for the coal industry, and reviled as a pipe dream. The reality is that the U.S. needs CCS, and a comprehensive policy framework for rapid development and deployment.

Undoubtedly, CCS has many detractors. Many are calling for investment in wind, solar and other renewable energies rather than in capture technologies.

Renewable energy will undoubtedly play a critical role in addressing climate change. But renewables currently account for only 2% of the U.S. electricity mix. By contrast, half of U.S. electricity supply comes from burning coal. Technology and the energy mix may look very different in several decades, but in the near and medium term, it is technically and politically impossible to eliminate coal as an energy source. Meanwhile, we need to start reducing carbon emissions today.

Given these realities, any solution that can reduce emissions from coal use—without eliminating coal as an energy source—merits serious consideration. Thus the current level of interest on CCS. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said CCS could contribute a bigger share of greenhouse gas cuts than energy efficiency, renewable energy, or nuclear power.

Yet there are considerable challenges to CCS, and they are the focus of WRI’s report Capturing King Coal: Deploying Carbon Capture and Storage Systems in the U.S. at Scale released this week.

According to our analysis, using CCS technologies to inject carbon dioxide from coal combustion into underground formations will require solutions to a host of technical, regulatory and financial challenges. And there needs to be simulataneous, rapid progress on all three of these fronts for CCS to become a feasible solution to climate change.

Among the challenges:

CCS is an extremely complex string of processes, each with its own technologies, having to operate in concert on a large scale. Massive amounts of CO2 have to be captured, compressed, transported by ship or rail and sequestrated in underground formations. This would require a fundamental transformation of our country’s energy infrastructure, BUT no more than would be required by a huge scale adoption of wind energy for example.
On the regulatory front, there are questions around long-term liability for underground sites where carbon dioxide will be stored. Since the gas must stay underground for centuries, there are liability issues around potential leakage 100 years into the future or more. This means we need to make sure that CCS is done right. To that end WRI is developing guidelines that will help ensure that CCS projects are safe and effective in the long term.
Unique financial and investment challenges will also have to be overcome in order to create a CCS infrastructure in the U.S. In addition to the large capital investment that will be required, a more immediate concern is that construction firms, already facing rising costs, may be reluctant to extend performance guarantees to coal plants built with untested technology.

These challenges are not reason to abandon CCS in the fight against climate change. Significant emission reductions simply cannot occur without a feasible option to coal-based emissions. Whatever its problems, CCS is likely part of the solution.

However, if these challenges are to be overcome within the timeframe needed, there must first be a price on carbon emissions, for instance, through an emissions trading system, that is high enough to make CCS technologies cost-competitive. There must also be immediate government support for large-scale demonstration plants, far beyond current efforts.

If we can get some “steel in the ground” in the form of running demonstration plants, the investment community will follow, and CCS technology will be on the road to cutting greenhouse gas emissions on a significant scale.

Statement on Senate Cloture Vote on the Climate Security Act

Jonathan Lash — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:58:51 -0400

Today a majority of the Senate sent a message to Americans and the rest of the world that they believe the time is now to confront climate change. Including statements of support from Senators unable to cast their votes, fifty four Senators went on record as believing this is too important an issue to ignore, and this is too important an opportunity for progress to refuse a serious debate.

These fifty four Senators rejected scare tactics from opponents of the bill and had the courage to insist that the nation confront energy security, climate security, and the economic opportunities that lie waiting for us in a transformed economy.

The policies contained in this bill will provide the incentives and resources for the American economy to engage our vast reserves of innovation, enterprise and hard work to thrive in tomorrow’s markets and tomorrow’s environment.