Around Brazil: Crazy Town

Uncle Mad lives in Crazy Town. When you have somebody who lives on the edge of the Amazon Jungle and thinks he owns it all, it would be stupid not to pay him a visit. It sounded like it could be an adventure. The journey there from Manaus was either a six-day boat trip sleeping with the goats, or a flight for about R$80 more. Cowards that we are, we flew.

Money well spent. Flying over the Amazon Rainforest is special. It ain´t called the rainforest for nothing though, but when all those clouds clear the view of nothing but green trees all the way to the horizon, very occasionally slashed by a winding silver river can´t be described in any lesser terms.

Coming in to land at Crazy Town, it seemed like we were dropping onto the tree-top. Like the rest of Crazy Town, the runway has been cut from the trees that used to cover the area. The furthest navigable point on a major tributary of the Amazon, the town used to be on the part of the South American map that had the giant word ´Jungle´ across the middle and no more details. It started with the crazy idea of having a train station that was supposed to bring rubber down the line from deep in the interior, avoiding rapids and waterfalls, to send it all the way to Europe. Henry Wickham put paid to that idea.

Like thousands of the people who worked on the line, the train died a slow death. The road that connected the Mato Grosso plantations to the wood river in the 1980´s has had more success, if success is the correct word. A wave of loggers, ranchers, chancers, gangsters and traffickers flooded the area, arriving on the newly paved road, while hardwood trees, cattle, soya and cocaine flooded out. Many people believe that cocaine comes from Bolivia, but they´re mostly wrong. Coca leaves come from Bolivia, form an important part of the cultural fabric of the High Andes (especially with regards to altitude sickness) and are generally farmed by poor Bolivians such as President Evo Morales once was. With US DEA officials burning and bombing the farms, it makes no sense to produce cocaine in the same place. The leaves are taken away and formed into a paste which is then shipped secretly down empty Amazonian rivers and across unmarked borders to end up in factories hidden around Crazy Town and such places. Only here is it processed in the powder, which in turn heads along that paved road to favelas in cities around Brazil, and from there - the world!

There are risks to be run, fortunes to be made and lives to be lost in trafficking as well as the other legal and illegal trades of the area. Crazy Town and its airport might not be on the edge of the shrinking Amazon Jungle for much longer, but it will likely remain at the front edge of a few of Brazil´s internal battles in the coming years.

One of the battles involves the Movimento Sem Terra group, which fights for land and rights for those who have neither (http://www.mstbrazil.org/). A part of the group won land concessions on the outskirts of the expanding town back in the 1980´s. He wasn´t connected to the group in any way but, chancer that he is, Uncle Mad joined the scramble and he´s been there ever since. He doesn´t have a crocodile in his swimming pool any more though.

http://www.gringoes.com/articles.asp?ID_Noticia=2064

Brazilian coffee – A heady brew of higher standards

Brazil produces about a third of the world’s coffee.

Ethical certification means more of it now commands a premium

Neat rows of coffee bushes cover the rolling hills surrounding Estancia Lecy. Dotted around the plantation are attractive copses of natural forest, recently renovated workers’ cottages and a lake brimming with fish.

About 250km north-east of São Paulo, in the heart of Brazil’s coffee-growing country, Estancia Lecy is at the forefront of the country’s gradual take-up of ethical certification.

“It has taken us just under a year to meet all the necessary social and environmental requirements,” says João Carlos Gabriel, manager of workplace safety at Estancia Lecy.

The farm, which produces 9,000 100kg sacks of coffee a year, received formal certification for 812 hectares of its coffee plantation in January. Work is still being carried out to certify the farm’s remaining 500 hectares.

Brazil is the world’s largest coffee producer. Most of its vast crop is destined for the low-grade, low-value end of the market. But certification is changing this.

“Before, we used to sell everything though an exporter,” Gabriel explains. “Now, with the stamp of certification, we are in a position to negotiate directly with our buyers as well.”

The company supplies US-based food manufacturer Kraft and restaurant chain McDonald’s and has already struck a deal with one of its main buyers for a $12 per sack premium. At current prices, that’s roughly 10 per cent more than its coffee was previously worth.

Costs and benefits

On the social side, the company was required to refurbish the accommodation for its 143 permanent employees, as well as build a health centre and dental surgery. It also had to invest in ongoing health and safety training for its workers. As for mitigating its environmental impacts, it installed a new sewage treatment facility and reduced the amount of chemical fertiliser it uses.

Usually certification takes longer, but in this case the farm already met many of the certification criteria, explains Eduardo Trevisan, a project co-ordinator at Imaflora. Estancia Lecy, for example, already ran a school for workers’ children and paid above Brazil’s minimum wage.

“Becoming certified does require an up-front investment, but it quickly pays off,” Trevisan says. “Because certified coffee is relatively new, though, many producers still need convincing.”

Confusion over different certification standards also remains a barrier to faster market take-up. Agricultural commodities, such as coffee, are now advertised under a range of different labels, all of varying standards.

At one end of the spectrum, there are rigorous, independently verified schemes such as Rainforest Alliance’s. At the other end, there exist broad policy commitments with little or no assurance, such as the “4Cs” protocol recently introduced by Cecafé, the Council of Brazilian Coffee Exporters.

Low-quality soil and other technical restrictions make shade-grown and chemical-free production methods difficult. This exempts most Brazilian coffee from environmentally-specific coffee labels, such as Organic and Bird-Friendly.

Rush to certify

Supply outstretching demand can also represent a potential problem, according to Augusto Souza, quality manger at Sumatra, one of Brazil’s top 15 coffee exporters.

A case in point is Utz Kapeh (now rebranded Utz Certified), a certification scheme aimed at the mainstream coffee market that emphasised traceability, Souza says. “Initially, the scheme had a good premium because there were few farms certified under the scheme. Now that there are more, the premium has dropped drastically,” he explains.

Ethically certified coffee in Brazil does not face that problem yet. Imaflora currently counts 22 farms among those certified according to Rainforest Alliance standards. That could change, however. The first coveted certification of a Brazilian farm came only four years ago.

All depends on consumer demand. The market for certified speciality coffee in Brazil grew 30 per cent between 2006 and 2007, according to figures from Imaflora.

Bom Dia, for example, one of Brazil’s few roasters with organic, Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance certifications, recently signed a deal to supply the US supermarket giant Wal-Mart.

Sumatra has also struck a deal with Kraft to provide 5,400 sacks of certified coffee in the coming year for the company’s Kenco Sustainable Development brand. The exporter, in turn, is now pushing more of its suppliers to become certified.

“The final consumers are asking the manufacturer, who then asks the seller, who then asks the producer. The push for more ethical coffee is all part of a chain,” Souza says.

Tchibo in Germany, Italy’s Lavazza and Japan-based UCC Ueshima Coffee are among the international importers now also sourcing certified beans from Brazil. Certified coffee still remains only a tiny percentage of the country’s total coffee crop of 46 million sacks per year. The price Brazilian coffee farmers can expect depends on the speculation of futures markets, global production rates and a multitude of other factors.

In an uncertain market, however, one constant appears to be the premium that consumers – and subsequently manufacturers – are increasingly prepared to pay for a cup of ethically certified coffee.

http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=5693

VeeV, the World's First Acai Spirit, Announces Carbon Neutral Certification

VeeV is the first U.S. alcohol company to achieve this distinction

VeeV, the World's First Acai Spirit, announced today that they have become certified carbon neutral by Climate Clean LLC, making them the first U.S. alcohol company -- and one of the first consumer product companies -- to fully offset the carbon footprint of their business activities.

"Since VeeV's inception in 2007, our effort has consistently been to provide consumers with a better way to drink: both literally, as a product, and environmentally, as a company fully committed to protecting the planet. We have always strived to minimize our carbon footprint, and are proud to become the first spirits company to achieve carbon neutral certification," said VeeV founding partner Courtney Reum.

VeeV offsets its carbon emissions via the Climate Clean Offset Portfolio, which creates a "global forcing signature model" designed to address the earth's imbalance of all six greenhouse gases. Rather than CO2 alone, the Climate Clean LLC Verified Emission Reduction Facility works to mitigate the entire mix of greenhouse gases that cause global warming. While it's imperative to reduce atmospheric CO2, positive impacts from CO2 offsets alone may not be realized for as long as 100 years. Offsetting a mix of all six harmful greenhouse gases allows for positive impact in the near, as well as, long term.

A pioneer in the growing luxury-eco market, VeeV is also the first and only spirits company to donate $1 per every bottle sold towards green initiatives. "Partnering with Sambazon on The Sustainable Acai Project in Brazil ensures the money goes right back to the Rainforest where Acai comes from," explains Reum. "The goal is to provide sustainable, organic Acai through our farming partnerships, and to promote the alignment of corporate and governmental policies with conservation efforts."

In addition, VeeV's distillery is the only one in America to receive a portion of its power through renewable wind generation, VeeV's 4-column fractional distillation process uses 200% less energy than a traditional pot still, and all of VeeV's marketing and sales materials are printed with soy ink on recycled paper. VeeV is the only alcohol brand that is a member of Business for Social Responsibility, as well as other leading green organizations.

About VeeV:

Founded in Los Angeles in May 2007 by twenty-something brothers Courtney and Carter Reum, VeeV is the World's First Acai Spirit, and is simply a better way to drink. Acai is the exotic-tasting, Brazilian national fruit containing 57% more antioxidants than pomegranates or blueberries, and 30 times more heart-healthy anthocyanins than red wine. VeeV fuses this exotic berry with 100% all-natural ingredients, fulfilling consumers' desire to enjoy the night without losing the next day. VeeV is the first alcohol company to become certified carbon neutral, and also the first spirits company to donate $1 per bottle sold towards green initiatives that protect the Brazilian Rainforest (specifically The Sustainable Acai Project). VeeV has been recognized in publications such as The New York Times, Fast Company and Men's Health, and has been written up alongside eco-friendly celebrities including Matthew McConaughey, Adrien Grenier and Drew Barrymore.

http://www.sunherald.com/447/story/361661.html

Author in Brazil pens biography of Dorothy Stang

Binka Le Breton is a statuesque blonde with fiercely intelligent features and a striking resemblance to Vanessa Redgrave. She looks as if she should be declaiming Shakespeare rather than ranching in a remote corner of Brazil.

But the British-born author has lived in Brazil for the past 18 years — one of several similarities that prompted her to write a biography of Dayton-born Sister Dorothy Stang. "Like Dorothy, I found myself working on new ways of caring for forests and forest people, and like Dorothy, I believe that God is good," Le Breton writes.

On Tuesday night — the third anniversary of the murder of the 73-year-old nun in the Amazon rainforest — Le Breton will appear at 7 p.m. at Books & Co. at The Greene. She'll be speaking about "The Greatest Gift: The Courageous Life and Martyrdom of Sister Dorothy Stang," recently published by Doubleday.

Although both women were deeply involved in the struggle to preserve the Amazon rainforest, they talked on the phone only a few times and never met in person. The town of Anapu, where Stang lived and worked, is several days' rugged travel from Le Breton's home in the Atlantic rainforest in southeastern Brazil. She serves as director of the Iracambi Research Center, which promotes biodiversity conservation, sustainable farming and human rights.

"The book makes no pretense of being a definitive biography," Le Breton writes. The archival material at the Sisters of Notre Dame motherhouse in Cincinnati, she said, would fill several books. She focused instead on Stang's life in the context of the violent land struggles in the Amazon. Readers looking for insights into her early life, however, won't come away disappointed. Chapter Two features a 14-page description of Stang's early life in Dayton, where she was born the fourth of nine children in a devout German Catholic family.

Dorothy's oldest sibling, well-known Dayton Realtor Jim Stang, died last Sunday, at 82, after a long illness. At his funeral, Le Breton's book was proudly displayed along with photos from Stang's service in the Navy during World War II.

The book has garnered enthusiastic praise from the extended Stang family. David Stang of Palmer Lake, Colo., has traveled extensively to Brazil to serve as the family's spokesman. He said the book benefits greatly from Le Breton's mastery of Portuguese, as well as her knowledge of the Brazilian class system and political situation. "She has a real feel for the people of Brazil," Stang said. "She captured the sense of loss that the people felt."

Le Breton has written extensively about human rights violations in Brazil in her previous books, including "A Land to Die For and Trapped: Modern-Day Slavery in the Brazilian Amazon."

"Binka has written about other martyrs," David Stang said. "She understands the pain and suffering of the powerless. That's important, because that's what Dorothy felt every day."

http://www.daytondailynews.com/o/content/oh/story/opinions/columns/2008/02/09/ddn021008mary.html

Focus - Soft drinks makers reap superfruit dividend

Growing consumer interest in the health-enhancing properties of previously unknown fruits has proved a significant boon for the soft drinks industry. Most of these superfruits end up in juice form, writes Shane Starling, providing soft drinks producers with a constant stream of new product opportunities at premium price points.

The term 'superfruit' is relatively novel, describing as it does the stream of new fruits now flooding western markets. Yet the first commercially successful 'superjuice' was a cranberry/apple blend offered by Ocean Spray way back in 1963.

Cranberry juice has now become mainstream and is the third highest selling juice behind orange and apple in many markets including North America, many parts of Europe and elsewhere. And cranberry is showing no signs of age fatigue, as sales continue to grow in most markets where it has an established presence. Indeed, cranberry sales are being boosted by the increased interest in superjuices generated by the new wave of antioxidant and nutrient-rich superfruits. Moreover, market researchers and industry pundits are forecasting that superfruits and superjuices will attract an increasingly broader audience in the coming year and beyond.

"Superfruits haven't been defined scientifically, but it's generally agreed that they're valued in their native country for their medicinal or health-enhancing properties and that they have a high antioxidant content - usually double, triple or more than that of other fruits - as defined by their ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) score," notes Dr Wayne Geilman, a senior research officer at Utah-based Pure Food Technologies.

With an international public more interested in healthy foods and beverages than ever before, the exotic, nutrient-boosted cachet of superfruits is highly appealing, so much so that they can command significant price premiums. Superfruits from all over the world have poured into the market in recent years with most of them ending up in juice form.

The appeal of perceived health benefits also appears to outweigh environmental concerns such as food miles, in the eyes of consumers, say researchers.

Explicit health claims are not yet ratified in most jurisdictions but the healthy press antioxidants have garnered in the past ten years has created a strong link in consumer minds with heart health and free radical control.

But claims abuse remains a concern as some Australian juice makers discovered when marketing was highlighted by the consumer watchdog there recently. "It is a breach of the Food Standards Code to make health and therapeutic claims for food, but it is clear from marketing hype around superfruits that these regulations are not being effectively enforced," the watchdog, Choice, stated.

Açai, pomegranate, blueberry, goji, mangosteen, noni, tamarind, gac-chi and lychee are just some of the 'superfruits' beverage makers large and small have incorporated into various juice, soda, water, dairy and other products. More 'regular' fruits such as plum, watermelon and blueberry are also benefiting from the trend.

The unique thing about superfruits is that they are almost exclusively consumed in a processed format. In their whole state, there is usually little demand for them as they tend to taste bitter or can be fiddly and difficult to eat. As Karl Crawford, food business development leader at New Zealand-based fruit science company HortResearch, notes, pomegranate was an obscure fruit before its juice-based ascendance into the superfruit limelight. "There are five key criteria for superfruit success: novelty, health benefits, convenience, controlled supply and promotion," Crawford adds.

Research suggests these attributes appeal to under-50s, among whom fresh fruit sales are falling in many developed markets.

"Superfruits are the product of a strategy, not produce you find growing on a tree," writes Julian Mellentin, business editor of New Nutrition, in his Report, 'Ten Key Trends in Food, Health and Nutrition 2008'. "They are the result of a bringing together of science and marketing in order to create a new, value-added niche in the nutrition market. Crucially, a successful superfruit strategy is about creating niche, very low volume, very high-value brands. It is a salutary fact that in the US market, to take one example, sales of three brands of superfruit juices - mangosteen, goji and pomegranate - between them account for a massive 45% of the sales value of the mainstream brand Tropicana Orange Juice by selling just 1.5% of its volume."

Brands such as US-based PomWonderful (pomegranate), UK-based PomeGreat (pomegranate) and US-based Sambazon (acai) have quickly established healthy sales that are growing at often double-digit rates. PomWonderful has pushed through the $100m mark in swift time, selling at $8.60 a litre, while US-based mangosteen specialist, Xango, has achieved sales of about $300m and sells at $50 a litre, about 25 times the price of chilled orange juice.

US-based Brandstorm's Himalayan Goji Juice has yearly sales of about $60m, mainly through multi-level marketing. It has also launched the US's first not-from-concentrate organic goji juice, called Gojilania, which has achieved nationwide retail distribution.

Mainstream beverage giants like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola have climbed onboard with acquisitions of fruit juice startups and launches of juice lines and line extensions.

PepsiCo has been particularly active in the area, with acquisitions such as California-based Naked Juice at the end of 2006. At around the same time, it launched a new brand, Fuelosophy, which includes a pomegranate/berry blend. Pepsi-owned Tropicana has launched a pomegranate-blueberry juice in the US and Dole Sparklers, a sparkling juice range including a Blueberry Pomegranate flavour.

Coca-Cola released an energy_drink in Australia called Mother, which contains açai, and recently acquired Fuze Beverages in the US. The Fuze range is infused with a weight management ingredient from an Asian berry called garcinia cambogia. Coke also launched a line of pomegranate-based juices called PomeGrand under its Odwalla brand in the US. Cadbury_Schweppes also recently launched Pomegranate Pear under its Nantucket Nectars brand in the US.

UK retailer Marks & Spencer has an own-label pomegranate drink retailing for about GBP2.65 (US$5.17) while other UK supermarkets, such as Tesco and Sainsbury's, have launched smoothies, juices and other products incorporating superfruits.

This is all good news for superfruit suppliers. As Jon Wisniewski, managing director of New Zealand-based açai supplier and product maker, Nu Fruits, notes: "The fact that the bigger drinks companies are showing an interest in açai indicates it could make it through to the mainstream. Things are going well. There are a large number of new products coming out and a lot of NPD pipeline work being done."

Sceptics remain, however, such as Arizona-based beverage specialist Jim Tonkin, who wonders if the antioxidant sell may begin to fatigue consumers. "People are buying them now because they are new and they are intrigued," Tonkin says, "but time will tell how many of these products stay the distance, especially as science, health-claim and formulation issues remain problematic."

http://www.just-drinks.com/article.aspx?id=92940

Cash payoffs pitched as way to help preserve trees

For decades, a flood of aid and an army of conservationists couldn't save Indonesia's rain forests from illegal loggers, land-hungry peasants and the spread of giant plantations. Now the world is looking at a simpler approach: up-front cash.

Whether it was arming forest police or backing schemes to certify legal logs, no tactic could silence the chain saws or douse the intentional fires that each day destroy 52 square kilometres more of Indonesia's rain forests and an estimated 285 square kilometres elsewhere in the world's tropics.

The problem was pure economics. Neither local authorities nor the rural poor, in Indonesia and elsewhere, have a material incentive to keep their forests intact.

That could now change because of a decision at December's UN climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate a deal, as part of the next international climate agreement, under which countries would be rewarded for reducing their galloping rates of deforestation, a big contributor to global warming.

The cash might come directly from a fund financed by richer northern nations, or through "carbon credits" granted per unit of forest saved. The credits could be traded on the world carbon market, where a northern industry can buy such allowances to help meet its own required reductions in emissions of global-warming gases.

Indonesia and other tropical countries backing the "avoided deforestation" concept hope this carbon price will outpace what landowners could get from logging the forests or clearing them for palm oil, rubber, soybean or other plantations.

"For the next decade, the international community and countries that negotiate this convention have tremendous potential, tremendous power in their hands," said Benoit Bosquet, head of a World Bank project to prepare poorer countries to take part in the new initiative, known as REDD, for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation.

"There will be a lot of money going in there," he said. "You will see actors currently converting forest to plantations and cattle ranches saying, 'Wait a minute. If I get more money to preserve my forest than to produce beef, then of course I will keep my forest standing.' "

But turning REDD into reality is far from guaranteed, given competing interests among tropical countries, the world's growing demand for plantation products, and its poor track record in controlling deforestation.

The tangled question of forests has dogged climate negotiations for years.

Deforestation was left out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol because of concerns that tradable credits for saving forests would take pressure off northern nations to reduce their own industries' greenhouse-gas emissions as required under that accord. But scientific uncertainty also muddies the picture.

The carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by the burning and rotting of deforestation is estimated to account for 20 per cent of manmade greenhouse-gas emissions. But from Brazil's mahogany trees to Papua New Guinea's thick-trunked kauri, how much carbon is stored in which of the world's forests? How much carbon dioxide is absorbed by which trees?

How will the world fix baselines, judging what a country's "usual" deforestation rate is, in order to gauge rewards for a lower rate? And who's to verify the numbers?

A technical body under the UN climate treaty is collecting proposals from governments on how to address such issues. It's the first step toward negotiating a deal by 2009, as part of an overall agreement on deeper emissions cuts to succeed Kyoto when it expires in 2012.

Beyond the technical, however, political disputes will complicate the UN talks.

The focus may be on today's deforestation, but India, Costa Rica and others believe they should get credit for having been "good" - protecting their forests over the years. Some rain-forest governments, meanwhile, want commercial tree plantations counted in the mix, a move environmentalists oppose.

Some fear "avoided deforestation" credits flooding the market will drive down the carbon price. That's why REDD's advocates want the next round of emissions reductions to cut much deeper than Kyoto, raising demand for credits.

Brazil, whose energy projects already make it a big player in carbon credits, has opposed extending that market to trees, favouring instead a global fund to compensate rain-forest nations directly for income lost when land sits undeveloped.

The British government's Stern Review of climate economics argued that targeting deforestation is among the cheapest ways to reduce greenhouses gases. It estimated halting 70 per cent of rain-forest destruction would cost $5 billion a year in compensation.

Some rain-forest nations, on the other hand, calculate REDD could generate as much as US$23 billion a year.

Whatever the amount, into whose pockets would these credits or cash flow?

Over the years, in Indonesia and elsewhere, many initiatives - from arresting illegal loggers to promoting sustainable logging operations - have failed because of widespread corruption. Bribed officials look the other way. Politically connected elites often reap the profits from deforestation. Such problems remain.

Few governments have the means or money to monitor their deforestation. Land-rights disputes leave ownership of much forested land in question. Some environmentalists fear governments might push indigenous people out of newly protected forests - as they did when many national parks were created.

"We need to have clear property rights so we know who owns these forests that we're paying not to convert," said Frances Seymour, head of the Center for International Forestry Research in Indonesia. "We need mechanisms to get (the funds) down to the local level so they are not just skimmed off at the top."

Powerful interests have much at stake. European money is bringing pressure on Malaysia and Indonesia, for example, to clear land to produce biofuels, and Brazil faces demands from China to plant soybean to feed their growing middle class.

"It doesn't stop at national borders," said the World Bank's Bosquet. "What Brazil is doing is supplying more beef and soy to the outside world. You don't control that within Brazil."

The challenge in the Amazon became clear again in late January, when Brazil's government met in emergency session to deal with a sudden burst of deforestation after three years of decline.

Two months earlier, visiting the Amazon, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon learned how dying rain forests will feed global warming and he went on to Bali to urge the world's nations to act. "It is time to wake up," he said.

Cutting through the political tangle to produce the grand plan called REDD - money for doing nothing to forests - will itself prove a challenge.

"There is a hell of a lot to negotiate and many controversial issues," said Christoph Thies, a Greenpeace forest campaigner who observed the Bali talks. "It's a long and difficult road ahead. To be honest, there is quite a good chance of failure."

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080206/forests_payout_080206/20080206?hub=SciTech

Climate experts sound grim warning

Scientists have long agreed that climate change could have a profound impact on the planet; from melting ice sheets and withering rainforests, to flash floods and droughts.

Now a team of climate experts has ranked the most fragile and vulnerable regions on the planet, and warned they are in danger of sudden and catastrophic collapse before the end of the century.

In a comprehensive study published on Tuesday, the scientists identify the nine areas that are in gravest danger of passing critical thresholds or “tipping points”, beyond which they will not recover.

Though the scientists cannot be sure precisely when each region will reach the point of no return, their assessment warns it may already be too late to save Arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet, which they regard as the most immediately in peril. By some estimates, there will not be any sea ice in the summer months within 25 years.

The next most vulnerable area is the Amazon rainforest, where reduced rainfall threatens to claim large areas of trees that will not re-establish themselves. The scientists also expressed concerns over the Boreal forests in the north, and have predicted that El Nino, the climate system which has a profound impact on weather from Africa to North America, will become more intense.

The scientists are so concerned they have called for an early warning system to monitor each of these fragile ecosystems.

The international team, whose study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, represents some of the world’s most prestigious organisations, including the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, the University of East Anglia and Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.

The scientists polled 52 environmental experts and combined their responses with discussions among 36 leading climate researchers at a workshop at the British embassy in Berlin. Each was asked to rank regions at greatest risk of climate change in the next century.

“There’s a perception that global warming is something that will happen smoothly into the future, but some of these ecosystems go into an abrupt decline when warming reaches a certain threshold,” said Tim Lenton, an environmental scientist at the University of East Anglia and lead author of the study.

“If we know when the different tipping points are, we can use them to inform targets to limit global warming. It gives us something to aim for,” he added.

Last year, the U.N.’s expert panel of climate scientists warned average temperatures could increase by as much as 6.4C by the end of the century, with a rise of 4C most likely. Such a rise would bring food and water shortages to vulnerable parts of the world, displace millions of people and wipe out hundreds of species. In the latest study, the scientists calculate Arctic sea ice will go into irreversible decline once temperatures rise between 0.5C to 2C above those at the beginning of the century, a threshold that may already have been crossed. There is already a 50 per cent chance that the Greenland ice sheet will soon begin melting unstoppably, though it could take hundreds of years to melt completely.

The meltwater would raise global sea levels by seven metres.

A temperature rise of 3C could see more intense El Ninos, with profound effects on the weather from Africa to North America.

Warming of 3C to 5C could reduce rainfall in the Amazon by 30 per cent, lengthening the dry season. The Boreal forests could also pass their tipping point, with large swaths dying off over the next 50 years. In Africa, more rainfall may regreen the Sahel region, but the west African monsoon could collapse, leading to twice as many unusually dry years by the end of the century.

The Indian summer monsoon is predicted to become erratic and in the worst case scenario, begin to flip chaotically, unleashing flash floods one year and droughts the next.

Measurements of the western Antarctic ice sheet show the balance of snowfall and melting has shifted and it is now shrinking. According to the study, a local warming of more than 5C could trigger uncontrollable melting, adding five metres to sea levels within 300 years. Under the same warming, Atlantic currents that power the Gulf Stream could be severely disrupted.

“If you can get some warning that you’re nearing one of these thresholds, you can get to work on adapting to it. You could work harder on reducing emissions, or you might use it as impetus to try other options,” said Mr. Lenton.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/02/06/stories/2008020653252000.htm