More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, based on measurements of ice weight by NASA's GRACE satellite, said NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke. The water melting from Greenland in the past five years would fill up about 11 Chesapeake Bays, he said, and the Greenland melt seems to be accelerating.

NASA scientists planned to present their findings Thursday at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. Luthcke said Greenland figures for the summer of 2008 aren't complete yet, but this year's ice loss, while still significant, won't be as severe as 2007.

The news was better for Alaska. After a precipitous drop in 2005, land ice increased slightly in 2008 because of large winter snowfalls, Luthcke said. Since 2003, when the NASA satellite started taking measurements, Alaska has lost 400 billion tons of land ice.

In assessing climate change, scientists generally look at several years to determine the overall trend.

Melting of land ice, unlike sea ice, increases sea levels very slightly. In the 1990s, Greenland didn't add to world sea level rise; now that island is adding about half a millimeter of sea level rise a year, NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally said in a telephone interview from the conference.

Between Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska, melting land ice has raised global sea levels about one-fifth of an inch in the past five years, Luthcke said. Sea levels also rise from water expanding as it warms.

Other research, being presented this week at the geophysical meeting point to more melting concerns from global warming, especially with sea ice.

"It's not getting better; it's continuing to show strong signs of warming and amplification," Zwally said. "There's no reversal taking place."

Scientists studying sea ice will announce that parts of the Arctic north of Alaska were 9 to 10 degrees warmer this past fall, a strong early indication of what researchers call the Arctic amplification effect. That's when the Arctic warms faster than predicted, and warming there is accelerating faster than elsewhere on the globe.

As sea ice melts, the Arctic waters absorb more heat in the summer, having lost the reflective powers of vast packs of white ice. That absorbed heat is released into the air in the fall. That has led to autumn temperatures in the last several years that are six to 10 degrees warmer than they were in the 1980s, said research scientist Julienne Stroeve at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

That's a strong and early impact of global warming, she said.

"The pace of change is starting to outstrip our ability to keep up with it, in terms of our understanding of it," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., a co-author of the Arctic amplification study.

Two other studies coming out at the conference assess how Arctic thawing is releasing methane — the second most potent greenhouse gas. One study shows that the loss of sea ice warms the water, which warms the permafrost on nearby land in Alaska, thus producing methane, Stroeve says.

A second study suggests even larger amounts of frozen methane are trapped in lakebeds and sea bottoms around Siberia and they are starting to bubble to the surface in some spots in alarming amounts, said Igor Semiletov, a professor at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. In late summer, Semiletov found methane bubbling up from parts of the East Siberian Sea and Laptev Sea at levels that were 10 times higher than they were in the mid-1990s, he said based on a study this summer.

The amounts of methane in the region could dramatically increase global warming if they get released, he said.

That, Semiletov said, "should alarm people."
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Plastic sacks are also taxed in Italy and Belgium. Grocery shoppers must pay for the bags in Switzerland, Germany, and Holland. Spain, Norway, and now the U.K. are considering a ban or tax as well.

The political action in the U.K. on single-use plastic bags follows similar gestures earlier this year in Australia.

There a national ban or tax is being hotly debated, though the state of South Australia, which includes the city of Adelaide, has promised a ban on free single-use bags by year's end no matter what.

The state's premier, Mike Rann, listed familiar reasons for the ban: The bags contribute to greenhouse gases, clog up landfills, litter streets and streams, and kill wildlife.

Banished Bags

Unsightly pollution appears to be behind China's January announcement of a countrywide ban on the thinnest totes and a tax on others. It begins June 1, two months before the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Taiwan taxes the bags, and the cities of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Mumbai, India, ban them to prevent flood-inducing storm-drain clogs during monsoon season.

Once jokingly called the "national flower," thin plastic bags have been banned in South Africa since 2003; thicker ones are taxed. Similar measures exist in Eritrea, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda.

In the U.S., the cities of San Francisco and Oakland, California, ban the bags and promote reusable and compostable sacks. Elsewhere in the state supermarkets are required to take back and recycle the bags.

Similar take-back and recycle initiatives are on the books or under consideration in New York, New Jersey, and Maryland.
And some sort of action is an agenda item in seemingly every boardroom and city hall across the U.S., according to Vincent Cobb, founder of Chicago, Illinois-based Reusablebags.com.

"We all have the tendency to buy too much stuff, and I think that symbolic nature is what has made this such a powerful thing," he said of the movement to cut down on plastic bags.

Good Riddance?

Lisa Mastny is the consumption project director for the Washington, D.C.-based Worldwatch Institute.

She said bans are generally meant to keep plastic bags from entering the environment as litter or landfill, but most legislation fails to promote environmentally sound alternatives such as cloth bags.

In the U.S., opposition to bans and taxes from retailers and the plastics industry has led to the take-back and recycling focus, which Mastny said is helpful but does little to change consumer behavior.

"There's nothing stopping [shoppers] from taking the bags in the same quantities that they were before," she said.

More effective measures, she said, are taxation schemes such as Ireland's so-called PlasTax. There carriers are now taxed at 22 euro cents (34 U.S. cents) each, and usage has dropped 95 percent.

In fact, she added, Ireland recently raised the tax to combat resurging plastic bag use. It appears to be working.

But Keith Christman, senior director of packaging at the American Chemistry Council and Progressive Bag Affiliates in Arlington, Virginia, said bans and taxes on plastic bags "are not the right approach."

He noted that such measures force retailers to switch to paper bags, which consume more energy and release more greenhouse gases to produce and supply than do plastic bags.

In addition, he said, 92 percent of consumers reuse their plastic bags to line garbage bins and pickup after pets, among other things. Without free bags from the grocery store, consumers are forced to buy them.

Ireland's PlasTax, Christman noted, has led to a 400 percent increase in plastic bag purchases.

"We think the right approach is to promote recycling of plastic bags, and we've seen much success in that regard," he said.

In 2006, according to the council, 812 million pounds (368 million kilograms) of plastic bags were recycled, up 24 percent from 2005. The bags are recycled into new bags and used for fencing and decking material.

Cobb, whose Web site sells reusable bags and serves as a clearinghouse for information on the single-use bag issue, agreed recycling is a good step but said a tax charged at checkout is needed to change consumer behavior.

"Plastic bags aren't inherently bad," he said. "It's the mindlessness and volume of consumption of plastic bags that occurs. As people wake up to that, I think we are going to see a shift."

Green Retailers

The U.S. grocery chain Whole Foods Market is not waiting for political mandates to cut down on plastic waste. The store recently announced a phase-out of all plastic bags from its stores by Earth Day, April 22.

"What we're really trying to do is encourage reusable bags being brought to the checkout," spokeswoman Ashley Hawkins said.

The store gives shoppers five to ten cents back, depending on location, for each reusable bag they bring. Recyclable paper bags made from recycled material will remain available at the store, she added.

In the U.K., supermarket chain Tesco has switched to biodegradable bags, and this May Marks & Spencer food stores will begin to charge 5 pence (10 cents) per plastic bag.

Mastny said such initiatives are partly an easy—and visible—way for companies to show they care about the environment.

"I'm not saying it's totally greenwash, but obviously there are PR benefits to doing something like this," she said.


John Roach
for National Geographic News
April 4, 2008
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080404-plastic-bags.html

Clean your windows. Don't ask why, but crumpled newspaper makes mirrors and glass shine. Just spray the surface with your favorite glass cleaner and use them as you would regular paper towels. One caveat: Since newspaper isn't terribly absorbent, it's best to use less cleaning spray. You won't need much, anyway.

Substitute shredded or crumpled paper for Styrofoam. Instead of using non-recyclable, petroleum-based Styrofoam peanuts to pack items for shipping, run sheets of newspaper through a paper shredder to create stuffing material, or just crumple them into loose balls for extra padding.

Store fragile dishware. When putting away fine china, place folded squares of newspaper between plates and bowls to protect them. Wrap the whole stack in another sheet before placing them in fabric cases or boxes.

Start a barbecue. Charcoal chimneys (like this one) are inexpensive and make lighting the grill a breeze. But instead of soaking the briquettes in chemical lighter fluid, as many do, try lighting them using newspaper instead. Just crumple a few sheets and stuff them in the bottom section of the chimney, then fill the top portion with charcoal. Light the paper and the briquettes will light themselves.

Make "tablecloths." Sloppy meals (in my house, boiled lobster makes a legendary mess) and kids' art projects call for casual table coverings. Just spread out a few sheets of the Sunday comics, set your fixings on top, and feel free to leave your manners behind.

© The Green Guide, 2008
By Donna Garlough
www.thegreenguide.com

A clump of legislative proposals and directives provided for steep increases in wind and solar power, improved energy efficiency, and higher costs for polluters to meet a challenge outlined last year and dubbed "triple 20."

The aim is to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent, boost renewable energy to 20 percent of supply, and improve energy efficiency by 20 percent – all by 2020.

The broader aspiration is to show the world that jobs and growth are not dependent on carbon. The challenge to the likes of China, India, and the United States is to join the effort, in which case the EU would raise its emissions-reduction target to 30 percent by 2020.

But there was skepticism and disappointment in equal measure. Industrial leaders warned that slapping a high cost on carbon would make Europe less competitive compared with countries that do not face such constraints. Green advocates expressed disappointment that the measures did not go far enough, particularly in light of commitments made at global talks in Bali last month.

"It's insufficient," says Stephan Singer of the WWF environmental group. "Europe was in favor at Bali of the declaration that in the future developed countries should cut by 25-40 percent," he says. "Now the ink of Bali is not even dry and they come out with a proposal for 20 percent."

"The key thing is for targets to be delivered on," said Antony Froggatt, a senior research fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank, noting that emissions are actually rising in some EU countries. "Unless we reverse this trend, the rest of the world will say 'good policy but you're not delivering on it.' "

"It's a pretty important, concrete package with some pretty tough demands," says Tom Burke, founding director of the sustainable development organization E3G. "The clear message from this is the seriousness of the EU's intent to do something about climate change."

"The reason Europe is doing this is that there is a really deep understanding of how important it is to the security and prosperity of ... Europeans," he says. Other countries, he added, may face different economic circumstances, "but they all face the same problem of climate change."

The overall impact on the average European consumer will be palpable, but not punitive. Electricity prices are expected to rise as much as 15 percent, while travelers could pay an extra ¤40 for a long-haul flight, and a premium for gasoline, which will have to contain a 10-percent biofuel contingency by 2020.

EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said it would cost each of the EU's 500 million people an average of ¤3 a week to implement the plan – a total of around ¤75 billion a year, or 0.6 percent of GDP.

But failure to act, he said, would cost "at least 10 times that and could even approach 20 percent of GDP." And the longer-term benefits of a low-carbon economy with prodigious supplies of renewable energy, efficient buildings, greener driving fuel, and industries that must factor a carbon cost into their bottom line would be enormous.

"Europe can be the first economy for the low-carbon age," said Mr. Barroso. "There is a cost, but it is manageable," he told the European Parliament, which has to vote on the plans. "And every day the price of oil and gas goes up, the real cost of the package falls."

The EU plan sets a framework that will be closely studied in Beijing, Washington, New Delhi, and elsewhere. Part of it revolves around targets for renewable energy imposed by Brussels on member states. To reach the overall goal of 20 percent across the EU, individual countries have been assigned their own goals.

Britain, for example, will have to implement a sevenfold increase in its renewable energy supplies, from about 2 percent currently to 15 percent. France must move from 10 percent to 23 percent; Sweden, from 40 percent to almost 50 percent.

The EU is also fortifying its market-based mechanism for getting industries to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has been criticized since it came into force three years ago for being ineffectual. It was meant to work by making polluters pay for permits to emit greenhouse gases; in fact, too many permits were handed out free of charge.

But under a revamped ETS, more permits will be auctioned, costing polluters more. Power companies will, for example, have to pay for all carbon emissions by 2013. Airlines will also be brought in for the first time. This, say experts, will set a higher "carbon price" that industry will have to factor in. The total cost to polluters by 2020 would be ¤50 billion a year – money governments could use to develop green technologies.

"It is clear that in some shape or form emissions must have a financial value," says Mr. Froggatt.

But industrial leaders have complained that the additional cost would place them at a disadvantage to rivals in the developing world, who face no such constraints.

The EU indicated that some industries may remain exempt, disappointing some environmental activists. It also said it would consider import tariffs on countries that do not match the EU's climate change efforts, a threat that has met with consternation from trading partners. One way of imposing this "carbon fee," Barroso said, would be to require importers to obtain the same permits that Europe companies must acquire under the ETS.

By Mark Rice-Oxley
http://news.yahoo.com

The venue for the 88th annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society could not have been more conducive to the discussion: The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center is where thousands of people waited for days during the storm to be evacuated from a city drowning in water and misery.

Although weather experts generally agree that the planet is warming, they hardly express consensus on what that may mean for future hurricanes. Debate has simmered in hallway chats and panel discussions.

A study released Wednesday by government scientists was the latest point of contention.

The study by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Miami Lab and the University of Miami postulated that global warming may actually decrease the number of hurricanes that strike the United States. Warming waters may increase vertical wind speed, or wind shear, cutting into a hurricane's strength.

The study focused on observations rather than computer models, which often form the backbone of global warming studies, and on the records of hurricanes over the past century, researchers said.

"I think it was a seminal paper," Richard Spinrad, NOAA's assistant administrator for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, said Wednesday.

"There's a lot of uncertainty in the models," Spinrad said. "There's a lot of uncertainty in what drives the development of tropical cyclones, or hurricanes. What the study says to us is that we need a higher resolution" of data.

Greg Holland, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said the new paper was anything but seminal. He said "the results of the study just don't hold together."

Holland is among scientists who say there is a link between global warming and an upswing in catastrophic storms. He said other factors far outweigh the influence of wind shear on how a storm will behave.

"This is the problem with going in and focusing on one point, a really small change," Holland said.

He had a sharp exchange Monday with Christopher Landsea, a NOAA scientist, during the AMS meeting.

While Holland sees a connection between global warming and increased hurricanes, Landsea believes storms only seem to be getting bigger because people are paying closer attention. Big storms that would have gone unnoticed in past decades are now carefully tracked by satellites and airplanes, even if they pose no threat to land.

The exchange, captured by National Public Radio, illustrates how emotional the global warming debate has become for hurricane experts.

"Can you answer the question?" Landsea demanded.

"I'm not going to answer the question because it's a stupid question," Holland shot back.

"OK, let's move on," a moderator intervened.

The passion was no surprise to the TV weather forecasters, academic climatologists, government oceanographers and tornado chasers attending the meeting.

"One thing I've learned about coming to this conference over the years is that very few people agree on anything," said Bill Massey, a former hurricane program manager at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"There's a legitimate scientific debate going on and a healthy one, and scientists right now are trying to defuse the emotion and focus on the research," said Robert Henson, the author of "The Rough Guide to Climate Change."

Whether global warming is increasing the frequency of major storms or reducing it, Henson said, lives are at stake.

"Let's say you have a drunk driver once an hour going 100 miles an hour in the middle of the night on an interstate," Henson said. "Say you're going to have an increase from once an hour to once every 30 minutes; that's scary and important. But you've got to worry about that drunk driver if it's even once an hour."

Massey agreed. "In 1992 we had one major storm. It was Hurricane Andrew. It was a very slow year. But one storm can ruin your day."

By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer
http://news.yahoo.com

These so-called microbial fuel cells can turn almost any biodegradable organic material into zero-emission hydrogen gas fuel, says Professor Bruce Logan of Penn State University.

This would be an environmental advantage over the current generation of hydrogen-powered cars, where the hydrogen is most commonly made from fossil fuels.

Even though the cars themselves emit no greenhouse gases, the manufacture of their fuel does.

"This is a method of using renewable organic matter, using anything that's biodegradable and being able to generate hydrogen from that material," Logan says.

In research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Logan and colleague Dr Shaoan Cheng used naturally-occurring bacteria in an electrolysis cell with acetic acid, the acid found in vinegar.

The bacteria slurp up the acetic acid and release electrons and protons creating up to 0.3 volts of electricity.

When a bit more electricity is added from an outside source, hydrogen gas bubbles up from the liquid.

Water is the only emission

This is far more efficient than water hydrolysis, where an electric charge is run through water to break it down into its constituent parts of oxygen and hydrogen.

"It uses about a 10th as much energy as water electrolysis," Logan says.

That is because the bacteria do most of the work, breaking the organic material into subatomic particles, so all the electricity does is juice these particles to form hydrogen.

The resulting fuel is a gas, not a liquid, but could still be used to power vehicles.


This microbial fuel cell generated 0.3 volts of electricity when the bugs fed on the acetic acid. Adding electricity from an external source generated bubbles of hydrogen (Image: Shaoan Cheng)
This process could be used with cellulose, glucose, acetate or other volatile acids, Logan says. The only emission is water.

Although it sounds futuristic, microbial fuel cell technology is available now. The researchers have filed for a patent on this work.

These cells are too large to be put into cars, so the gaseous hydrogen fuel they produce must be made in a factory.

"You could put one of these reactors at a food processing plant and take the waste water and make hydrogen out of it," Logan says.

"Or you could go to a farm, where there's lot of cellulose or ... agricultural cellulosic residues, take that and make hydrogen there."

This would be unlikely to work in big cities but might well be effective in rural areas.

"The first step is just to start using locations where we have waste waters that were spending money on treating, and turning those water treatment plants into hydrogen production plants," Logan says.
http://www.abc.net.au

"Liquid coal, for example, can produce 80% more global warming pollution than [petrol]," says the US non-profit environmental group, the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Some people have billed liquid coal, the name for petrol or diesel derived from coal, as a potential replacement to the oil on which countries rely heavily to fuel vehicles.

Likewise another alternative fuel, petrol from tar sands, is estimated to have 14% more global warming potential compared with standard petrol, says the union in its latest report Biofuels: an important part of a low-carbon diet.

"Corn ethanol, conversely, could be either more polluting or less than [petrol], depending on how the corn is grown and the ethanol is produced," the report says.

The analysis is based on replacing a fifth of all petrol used in the US with alternative fuels by 2030.

If most of these alternatives consist of liquid coal, the change could pump pollution into the atmosphere equivalent to 34 million more cars on the road, the report says.

But favouring cleaner "advanced biofuels" could cut harmful gases by a similar amount.

The cleanest alternative, the report says, is cellulosic ethanol, made from grass or wood chips. It could cut greenhouse emissions compared with petrol by more than 85%.

"We need to wean ourselves off oil, but we should replace it with the cleanest alternatives possible," says study author Patricia Monahan.

"Let's not trade one bad habit for another."
http://www.abc.net.au

The State Council, China’s cabinet, ordered strict regulation of the release of wastewater, the closing of heavily polluting factories near lakes, the improvement of sewage treatment facilities and strict limits on fish farms, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

The council also banned the use of pesticides with highly toxic residue near large lakes as well as detergents containing phosphorus.

While national leaders in Beijing have shown greater interest in recent months in cleaning up the environment, their efforts have frequently met resistance from provincial and local officials more interested in maximizing economic growth.

China’s three main lakes, Tai, Chaohu and Dianchi, have all had algae blooms in recent years. Stimulated by high levels of phosphorus and other chemicals, algae has blanketed large areas of water, killing fish and making the water undrinkable for large numbers of people living nearby.

An algae bloom that covered a large area of Lake Tai last spring was particularly severe and received national attention. The toxic cyanobacteria produced a choking odor up to a mile from the lake’s shores and prevented two million people nearby from drinking or cooking with the water.

Wastewater from fish farms has become another serious problem, and one that the State Council tried to address on Tuesday, ordering that all fish farms be removed from the three main lakes by the end of this year. Fish farms elsewhere are to be more tightly limited to certain designated areas within three years, Xinhua said.

The water cleanup effort will also include the lake behind the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. Environmentalists warned before the dam was built that it would be hard to prevent toxic pollution from building up in the lake once the river was no longer carrying pollution out to the ocean.

The NY times

Conservationists and scientists are now scrambling to figure out what killed the crocodilelike animals.

The bodies, measuring between 5 and 10 feet (meters) long, have been found on the banks of the Chambal River, one of the few unpolluted Indian rivers.

In early December officials found the bodies of at least 21 gharials over three days. The bodies continued washing ashore in subsequent weeks.

The precise number of gharials that have died remains unclear, with the nonprofit Gharial Conservation Alliance saying 81 bodies have washed up so far.

D.N.S. Suman, chief wildlife warden for the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, puts the number of dead animals at 50.

Parasite or Pollution

The gharial, one of the largest of the crocodilians, was on the verge of extinction in the 1970s.

An Indian government breeding program met moderate success by releasing several hundred into the wild.

But conservationists believe only about 1,500 gharials remain.

Many of the reptiles live in a sanctuary based along the Chambal, which contains the largest of three breeding populations in the world.

The latest possible clue to what's killing the gharials is an unknown parasite that scientists found in the dead animals' livers and kidneys, according to A.K. Sharma of the Indian Veterinary Research Institute.

"We can say that [the] liver and kidney of these gharials were badly damaged," Sharma said. "They were swollen and bigger than their usual size."

Other experts believe the gharials may have gotten sick and died after eating contaminated fish from the polluted Yamuna River, which joins the Chambal.

Pathological tests confirmed lead and cadmium in the bodies of the dead gharials, said Suman, the wildlife official.

"The Chambal River has clear water free from heavy metals," Suman said.

"The only possibility seems that these gharials might have migrated from heavily polluted Yamuna River, where they might have eaten fish."

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080123-AP-india-rare.html

As human population is significantly rising every year, people's requirements are increasing too. We need more food, more machines, more place to live. As a result of this people need more land to satisfy their requirements. We cultivate and irrigate more and more land to plant vegetables, build new buildings, airports, roads, etc. I think sometimes we forget that we are not alone on this planet. I have to disagree with those people who think that human needs are more important than saving land for endangered animals. I base my opinion on the following points.

First of all, as I already mentioned, we are not alone on this planet. A few centuries ago we were the part of wild nature. I think we need to remember this fact and respect all creatures around us.

Second of all, I believe that we all need to think of the problem of overpopulation. The human population is dramatically increasing and we have to do something about it. From my opinion, every family should have no more than two children. It will help to stop the growth of population, decrease human needs for farmland, housing and industry.

In conclusion, I think it is a very topical question nowadays. My point is that all people should answer this question and find the solution.

These biodiversity hotspots are home to more than half of all terrestrial plants and animals, as well as more than 1.8 billion people who are highly dependent on healthy lands for their livelihoods and well-being.

“The world's irreplaceable habitats, those which if lost locally will be gone globally, are mostly found in the biodiversity hotspots,” said Monique Barbut, CEO and Chairperson of the GEF. “This initiative is aggressively building the local institutions and the capacity of developing countries to manage and benefit from these high priority places.”

The funds will be made available as grants for projects undertaken by nongovernmental, community, and private sector organizations through the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), which is administered by CI. In its seven-year history, CEPF funding has enabled the protection of lands equal to an area the size of Portugal.

The new funding brings the total GEF commitment to the CEPF to $45 million. The money is pooled with contributions from CI and other global leaders in the partnership to create a biodiversity fund that unites expertise and resources to safeguard the hotspots. Other partners are the French Development Agency, the Government of Japan, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the World Bank.

“All species and their habitats are important,” said Warren Evans, World Bank Director of Environment. “But some areas are more richly endowed than others. These new funds will help us continue to find solutions that allow poor people in these hotspots to have a better way of life while at the same time conserving the biodiversity on which their long-term survival depends.”

Biodiversity hotspots where projects will be funded include fragile island ecosystems in the remote Pacific island nations of Micronesia, Polynesia and Fiji, and the diverse landscapes of the Caribbean Islands and Mediterranean Basin. The forests along the east coast of southern Africa, which harbor the highest diversity of tree species of any temperate forest on the planet, also will benefit.

At least 10 hotspots will receive CEPF funding for the first time, and grants also will help consolidate gains made in other hotspots that received previous CEPF investments.

“This new funding represents a significant opportunity to scale up conservation efforts and make a difference where it matters most,” said Jorgen Thomsen, CEPF Executive Director and CI Senior Vice President.

The CEPF strategy of enabling nongovernmental partners to participate in, and benefit from, conservation efforts in the hotspots has proven to be highly successful. CEPF support to more than 1,200 civil society groups in Africa, Asia, and Latin America has enabled these partners to help protect more than 24 million acres (10 million hectares) of the most important sites for conservation and to influence policies in dozens of countries.

worldbank
# # #

Contacts:
Conservation International:
- For U.S. news media, Tom Cohen at 1 (703) 341-2729, tcohen@conservation.org
- For international news media, Susan Bruce at 1 (703) 341-2471, sbruce@conservation.org

World Bank:
- Kristyn Schrader at 1 (202) 458-2736, kschrader@worldbank.org

Global Environment Facility:
- Maureen Lorenzetti at 1 (202) 473-8131, mlorenzetti@thegef.org

"Greece is the only country in the European Union not to have convinced the United Nations that it has a credible system (to measure greenhouse gases)," Dimas, himself a Greek, told Flash Radio.

"This has to be done under UN specifications... the (Greek environment) ministry assured me that it would be done," he said.

The environment commissioner also added that Greece's figures on carbon dioxide reduction estimates were different from those of the EU.

Greece said it would cut its emissions by 16.6 percent in the next four years but Dimas said the EU's estimate of the reduction was six percent, from 71 million tonnes in 2005 to 69 million tonnes in 2008-2012.

The EU's executive arm and environmental organisations such as WWF and Greenpeace routinely castigate Greece over its failure to tackle carbon dioxide emissions, one of the main contributors to global warming.

Dimas, who addressed Greece's parliamentary committee on the environment on Thursday, also questioned the unchecked construction of swimming pools and golf courses on Greek islands and the Peloponnese region as these areas face frequent water shortages.

"These activities must meet local conditions," Dimas said. "Building pools next to clean seas is not logical, also for hygiene reasons... and it makes no sense to build golf courses in arid areas."

Greek environment minister George Souflias said in a statement that the nation's monitoring system would be improved with an influx of scientists.
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