Friday, 28 Jan 2000

Frank Bean-Counters

The World Bank has admitted in a new internal report that its nine-year-old forest strategy has been a failure and that the bank has succeeded neither in protecting forests nor in helping the poor communities that depend on them. In 1991, the bank adopted a new strategy to deflect criticism that its activities were abetting deforestation; the policy directed the bank to conserve tropical moist forests, plant trees to meet the needs of the poor, and monitor the impacts of its overall lending on forests. The new report found that the 1991 policy neglected some threatened, biodiversity-rich forest areas, and that it was only partially implemented. The unusually frank internal evaluation, commissioned by World Bank Pres. James Wolfensohn to help him develop a new forest strategy, was conducted by the bank's Operations Evaluation Department, an autonomous group that reports directly to the bank's board.

Cap'n Crunchy

Captain Climate, outfitted in a red cape and leotard, and his sidekick Boy Atmosphere have been trailing the presidential candidates around New Hampshire, trying to get them to explain what they plan to do about global warming. The Captain tells reporters he has time-traveled back from 2050 and a world nearly destroyed by climate change, with the aim of helping us avert disaster. (Actually, he's just a recent Dartmouth grad, but you didn't hear it from us.) In other campaign news, eight environmental and human rights activists were arrested this week for staging a sit-in at the New Hampshire campaign headquarters of Vice Pres. Al Gore. The demonstrators were urging Gore to use his close ties to Occidental Petroleum to persuade the corporation not to drill for oil on the ancestral lands of the U'wa Indians in Colombia.

Salmon in Hot Water

Canada's largest salmon fishery, on the Fraser River, could become the first tangible casualty of climate change, according to a new report prepared for the Canadian government by a group of scientists, academics, and bureaucrats. Temperatures in the Fraser River have been gradually rising for years, and if temperatures rise even a degree or two more, most spawning fish could be killed, the report predicts. The Fraser River fishery, which accounts for 60 percent of commercial fishing revenue in British Columbia, was closed for the first time last summer after only 3 million salmon made the run, down from an expected 8.2 million. Auditor-General Denis Desautels warned in a separate report last month that the Fraser fishery may have to be shut down to ensure its long-term survival, and he cited global warming as one of the factors threatening the fishery.

Gore's Warm-up Act

In his State of the Union address last night, Pres. Clinton called global warming "the greatest environmental challenge of the new century," and said that "if we fail to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, deadly heat waves and droughts will become more frequent, coastal areas will be flooded, economies disrupted." He stressed that cutting emissions doesn't mean slowing economic growth, and proposed tax incentives for clean energy and efficient cars, appliances, and homes. And he called on Congress to make U.S. clean-energy technologies available to the developing world. Clinton also proposed a permanent Lands Legacy conservation fund for protecting land and restoring wildlife. Twice he praised Vice Pres. Al Gore for his initiatives to create liberal -- oops, he meant livable -- communities by preserving open space and tackling sprawl.

Pump and Circumstance

Enviros in New England worry that the region's ski resorts are disrupting ecosystems by pumping large amounts of water from rivers and ponds to make snow for their slopes. The region now has plenty of natural snow, thanks to recent storms, but earlier this season New England had a glaring lack of the white stuff and many resorts are believed to have pumped more water than usual to make snowy trails. Enviros say snowmaking, which the ski industry has practiced for some 30 years, is imperiling river and pond habitats for fish and wildlife at a time of year when they are particularly vulnerable, and putting people at risk by reducing the capacity of rivers to dilute the municipal and industrial wastes that are dumped in them. Enviros complain that state agencies have little oversight of the resorts and are unaware of how much pumping has occurred and whether it has caused any problems.

The Missing Lynx

Many species are under threat across Europe, and governments are not taking the necessary steps to ensure their survival, according to a new report from the World Wildlife Fund. WWF lists 10 specific species that are in decline in most European Union countries, including the Iberian lynx, brown bear, monk seal, and loggerhead turtle. WWF is calling on European governments to implement the EU's habitats directive, which calls on them to designate special areas of conservation (SACs) to protect all species at risk. EU nations should have complied with the directive by 1995, but no country has yet done so, and the European Commission has begun legal action against several nations for failing to designate enough SACs.