Baltic Sea Almost Ice-Free

Baltic Sea is still almost ice-free and sea waters are unseasonably warm. According to the Finnish Institute of Marine Research, waters around Finland are one or two degrees above the long-term average.

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Baltic Sea Map / en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Baltic_Sea_map

Normally, the northern parts of the Gulf of Bothnia are iced over in January. However, actually, ice is only to be found in the most northern areas of Kemi and Oulu.

In southerly areas ice has formed only in some sheltered bays of the Gulf of Finland, like the Bay of Vyborg and near St Petersburg. In winter, under normal conditions, ice would also be found in the open sea, between Helsinki and Tallinn. It is likely ice will form along the coast of Helsinki no earlier than in mid-February, officials are saying.

There is less ice in the Baltic at present, than even at mid-January during the winters of the periods between 1988-1989 and 1960-1961. which showed the least ice cover during 300 yrs of recorded measurements.

Second to the Finnish Institute of Marine Research, weather and ice conditions development during the winter of 1929-1930 (the 3rd most-free on record) were very similar to present sea conditions.

The winter of 1930 was followed by a decade of low ice, which in turn was followed by a decade during the 1940s when the entire Baltic Sea froze over during the winter.

Baltic Sea/Google Earth

yle.fi/uutiset/24h [YLE]

Ice situation – maps (21.01.2008) [itameriportaali]

Ice situation and sea surface temperature (21.01.2008) [fimr]

Finnish Institute of Marine Research's Polar View site [haavi.fimr]

High resolution true color satellite image of Scandinavia & Baltic Sea (Image taken by the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite at 11:20 UTC April 2, 2004.) www.truecolorearth.com/tce-Scandinavia

Switzerland Tops 2008 Environmental Performance Index

Yesterday was released the 2008 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which tracks national environmental results on a quantitative basis, measuring proximity to an established set of policy targets using the best data available.

The 2008 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) represents the result of extensive consultations with subject-area specialists, statisticians, and policymakers around the world, and was released by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy from the Yale University and by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network from the Columbia University.

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According to the ranking, Switzerland is the world's greenest country, followed by 3 Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland) and Costa Rica. Mali, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Angola, and Niger occupy the bottom five positions.

Top-ranked countries have all invested in water and air pollution control and other elements of environmental infrastructure and have adopted policy measures to mitigate the pollution harms caused by economic activities.

Environmental Performance Index – Rankings & Scores / 2008 EPI - Summary for Policymakers

US placed 39th in the rankings

The United States placed 39th in the rankings, significantly behind other industrialized nations like the United Kingdom (14th) and Japan (21st). The United States ranked 11th in the Americas, and 22 members of the European Union outrank the United States.

The U.S. score reflects top-tier performance in several indicators, including provision of safe drinking water, sanitation, and forest management. But poor scores on greenhouse gas emissions and the impacts of air pollution on ecosystems dragged down the overall U.S. rank.

“The United States’ performance indicates that the next administration must not ignore the ecosystem impacts of environmental as well as agricultural, energy and water management policies,”(...)

“The EPI’s climate change metrics ranking the United States alongside India and China near the bottom of the world’s table are a national disgrace.”

Gus Speth, Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

Wealth is a major determinant of environmental success

Analysis of the drivers underlying the 2008 rankings suggests that wealth is a major determinant of environmental success. At every level of development, however, some countries achieve results that far exceed their peers, demonstrating that policy choices also affect performance.

For example, Costa Rica (5th), known for its substantial environmental efforts, significantly outperforms its neighbour Nicaragua (77th). Nicaragua’s history of poor governance and political corruption, violent conflicts, and budgets skewed towards the military instead of environmental infrastructure no doubt adds to the disparity.

Low-ranked countries typically have not made investments in environmental public health and have weak policy regimes.

“At a time when so much scientific evidence is telling us that the Earth's ecosystems are in crisis, it is inexcusable that our collective investment in environmental monitoring is so low. For some critical issues such as water it is actually decreasing. When a hospital patient's health worsens, doctors increase their monitoring, and we need to do the same for the planet,”

Marc Levy, Deputy Director of Columbia’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network and one of the EPI project leaders.

Importance of incorporating rigorous foundations into decision-making

“Policymakers in the environmental field have also begun to recognize the importance of incorporating analytically rigorous foundations into their decision-making. However, while policymakers are calling for increased intellectual rigor in environmental planning, large data gaps and a lack of time-series data still hamper efforts to track many environmental issues, spot emerging problems, assess policy options, and gauge effectiveness. The EPI seeks to being to fill these gaps and, more broadly, to draw attention to the value of accurate data and sound analysis as the basis for environmental policymaking.”
2008EPI_PolicymakerSummary_final.pdf

2008 EPI ranks 149 countries on 25 indicators tracked across 6 established policy categories

Environmental Performance Index Framework / 2008 EPI - Summary for Policymakers

The EPI focuses on two overarching environmental objectives:

• reducing environmental stresses to human health;
• promoting ecosystem vitality and sound natural resource management;.

These broad goals also reflect the policy priorities of environmental authorities the world and the international community’s intent in adopting Goal 7 (*) of the Millennium Development Goals.

The two overarching objectives are gauged using 25 performance indicators tracked in 6 well established policy categories, which are then combined to create a final score - Environmental Health, Air Pollution, Water Resources, Biodiversity and Habitat, Productive Natural Resources, and Climate Change.

source: Information for the Media


(*) Goal 7 of the Millennium Development Goals - Ensure environmental sustainability:

Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources.

- Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss.

- Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation,

- By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers.

5 Blogs That Really Get You Thinking

Conceptisaddict blog rewarded me with the Thinking Blogger Award! Thank you so much, Lekahe. Kiitos paljon. I am very honoured.

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

Here are the top 5 blogs that get me thinking:

allsux.com by Allsux
Inventorspot by Steve Levenstein
Mundo da Teea by Teea
The Remodeled Blog by Lauren
Velvet Verbosity by Velvetverbosity
Congratulations, you won a

Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking!

Paz, Pão, Saúde, Educação

image by by Thanos K & Asa B - Ovimagazine

O início de 2008 tem sido marcado pelo encerramento de vários serviços de saúde por todo o país, gerando protestos das populações contra estas medidas governamentais. Num país desequilibrado, que ainda sofre de grandes desigualdes sociais e territoriais, medidas vergonhosas como o encerramento de centros de saúde e de maternidades causam a mais viva repulsa a qualquer cidadão com um mínimo de sensibilidade.

Em Portugal, o direito à protecção da saúde é constitucionalmente garantido por meio de um serviço nacional de saúde (SNS) universal e geral, tendencialmente gratuito, que tenha uma racional e eficiente cobertura de todo o país em recursos humanos e unidades de saúde e uma gestão descentralizada e participada.

Continue a ler
Assim, o Estado é obrigado a garantir o SNS. Se não o fizer através da administração central ou desconcentrada, terá de criar as condições económicas e políticas necessárias às autarquias locais e regionais. Recentemente, tem estado a decorrer um processo de transferência de competências da administração central para a local. No entanto, na área da Saúde parece estar em “stand-by”.

No âmbito da transferência de competências para os municípios, ( artº 22º da Lei do Orçamento de Estado para 2008), foi proposta a concessão ao Governo de autorização para transferir para os Municípios dotações inscritas nos Ministérios respectivos, relativas a competências a descentralizar nos domínios da educação, acção social e saúde. Segundo a ANMP, este processo de negociações avançou alguns passos nas áreas da Educação e da Acção Social, mas foi suspenso na área da Saúde, tendo sido a área do Ambiente e Ordenamento do Território excluída das transferências propostas.

Tendo em consideração as vantagens da descentralização de competências para o Poder Local:

Vantagens [1]

- Vantagem em adaptar os serviços à procura local e às condições locais.

- Oportunidades para inovação, com riscos localizados, mas com potenciais benefícios nacionais.

- Aumento de responsabilidade dos funcionários locais, com um melhor atendimento às populações locais.

- Potencial para coordenação de serviços e investimentos que lidam com problemáticas comuns .

- Eficiência governativa local incrementada pela partilha de serviços comuns.

- Capacidade de aproveitar recursos locais, tais como impostos, “know-how” e responsabilidade social.

E tendo em conta que as desvantagens poderão ser minimizadas por várias medidas, no sentido de superar a falta de recursos humanos e materiais locais:

Desvantagens

- Disparidades no nível de serviços prestados ao longo do território, sendo desejável uniformidade e igualdade de oportunidades, particularmente no sector da educação.

- Excessiva interferência política em processos em que é necessária imparcialidade e visão de âmbito nacional.

- Excessivos interesses corporativos, para os quais os políticos locais poderão não ter o “peso político” necessário.

- Jurisdições das autarquias locais poderão ter uma dimensão demasiada pequena para viabilizar serviços ou para conseguir atrair profissionais especializados.

Formas de superar as desvantagens

- Cooperação inter-municipal (no sentido de superar as dificuldades das entidades locais de menor dimensão).

- Atribuição de funções a níveis de poder mais elevados (no sentido de superar as dificuldades das entidades locais de menor dimensão).

- Contratação externa de serviços (no sentido de superar as dificuldades das entidades locais de menor dimensão).

No entanto, esta prática pode tornar-se inadequada no âmbito de serviços de carácter social, para os quais o sector privado pode não estar especialmente vocacionado.

- Equalização financeira, no sentido de superar as desigualdades regionais.

- A descentralização de competências para o Poder Localdeverá ser acompanhada pelo desenvolvimento de sistemas de audição e inspecção eficazes.

Parece-nos ser, no mínimo, surpreendente a suspensão deste processo. A transferência de competências do Estado para o Poder Local não significa abdicação de responsabilidades - implica uma intensa cooperação entre todos os níveis de governo democrático. O governo e os municípios têm de ultrapassar eventuais desentendimentos e desconfianças mútuas e chegar a uma solução que garanta a prestação de cuidados de saúde às populações. Os cortes orçamentais não deveriam ser realizados nesta área essencial para um desenvolvimento humano harmonioso.

"A paz, o pão habitação saúde, educação" da composição "Liberdade" de Sérgio Godinho
Palavras de esperança, mas tambem de desilusão por promessas que ficaram por cumprir desde 25 de Abril de 1974.

Referência:
[1] Davey, Kenneth, Division of reponsibility between levels of power, 2003

The New Wars of Climate Change

Conflict syndrome

In the year of 2005 the first Human Security Report documented a decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuse over the past decade. However, in the 2008 edition of the biennial report Peace and Conflict, new evidence suggests that if there was a global movement toward peace, since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s and early years of the 21st century, it has stalled. New challenges point to a conflict syndrome - a sum of factors that often operate in conjunction to undermine the stability of states and the foundations of human security.

In fact, human-induced climate change is already taking place and it’s not very difficult to find press warnings of climate change causing violent conflict. The question is: is the world facing a new era of war?

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The Past

Researchers from the Department of Geography at the University of Hong Kong reported, in July 2007, that cool periods in China and the resulting scarcity of resources, such as shrinking agricultural output, are closely linked with a higher frequency of wars over the past 1000 years.

The research Climate Change and War Frequency in Eastern China over the Last Millennium, which compared variations in climate with data from 899 wars in eastern China between 1000 and 1911, was published in the journal Human Ecology and can be resumed in the following way:

- War frequencies showed a cyclic pattern that closely followed the global paleotemperature changes.

- Reduction of thermal energy input during a cold phase would lower the land carrying capacity in the traditional agrarian society, and the population size, with significant accretions accrued in the previous warm phase, could not be sustained by the shrinking resource base.

- War frequencies varied according to geographical locations (North, Central and South China) due to spatial variations in the physical environment and hence differential response to climatic change.

The research shows that human population increases and collapses were correlated with the climatic phases and the social instabilities that were induced by climate changes during the last millennium. The findings proposed a new interpretation of human-nature relationship in the past, with implications for the impacts of anomalous global warming on future human conflicts.

The Future

A 2003 report prepared for Pentagon years ago explored the potential consequences of an abrupt climate change and concluded that it would create serious food shortages due to decreases in global agricultural production, decreased availability and quality of fresh water and disrupted access to energy supplies. This would result in large population movements and an escalation of global conflict.

The “Abrupt Climate Change Scenario” report warned of the need to strengthen US defenses against "unwanted starving immigrants" from the Caribbean, Mexico and South America. Such kind of strategies usually claiming their pragmatism and appealing, intentionally or not, to security, fear and other emotional or irrational issues , can have negative consequences, undermining the role of civilian institutions in the search of democratic and sustainable solutions.

The Present

Google Earth: Crisis in Darfur
This unprecedented online mapping initiative from the USHMM and Google Earth lets you visualize, better understand, and respond to the genocide in Darfur.

The conflict and resulting tragedy that have unfolded in Darfur since 2003 have taken the world headlines. The most common way of explaining the context was in terms of ethnic differences between Arabs and Africans. Actually, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki- Moon, believes that we are already seeing in Darfur a violent conflict caused by climate change - "the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change".

No conflict ever has a single cause. In the case of Sudan, the escalation of violence has been attributed to such factors as:
historical resentments and local perceptions of race;
demands for a fair distribution of power between dissimilar groups; unfair distribution of economic resources (Sudan is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with wealth and power concentrated in the capital);
disputes over access to and control of increasingly scarce land, livestock and water between pastoralists and agriculturalists;
small arms proliferation and youth militarisation; bad government agricultural policies and weak state institutions.

Thus climate change alone (or drought and land degradation caused by it) does not explain either the outbreak or the extent of the violence in Darfur. The other 16 countries in the Sahelian belt have felt the impact of global warming (including Mali and Chad), but only Sudan has experienced such devastating conflict. Darfur is, in fact, an exemplary case showing how the physical consequences of climate change interact with other factors to trigger violent conflict, like the nature of power structures at the local, regional, national and international levels.

Climate scare stories don’t take into consideration the forms used by many poor communities to peacefully manage their affairs. Generally, violent conflicts in the South are more related to resource abundance than resource scarcity. An example is the competition over rich mineral reserves in the Congo or diamonds in Sierra Leone.

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report of 2007 shows that global warming will have global effects, varying in both kind and degree. Second the research for this report, the consequences of consequences of climate change include a high risk of armed conflict in 46 countries with a total population of 2.7 billion people, and a high risk of political instability in a further 56 countries with a total population of 1.2 billion - a total of 102 countries as being at risk of significant negative knock-on socio-political effects.

The 46 countries identified as facing a high risk of armed conflict have current or recent experience of armed conflict and additionally, particularly weak institutions of government and very poor economic performance.

Another example showing that environmental scarcities and massive population movements do not always result in violent conflict was Malawi, which has been suffering from massive famine but no war has followed. Also, the Asian tsunami of 2004 created huge refugee problems but did not lead to violent conflict. Why not?

Climate change - violent conflict [1]

The answer lies in “intervening variables”. Environmental scarcities do not directly cause violent conflict, but the outcome depends on social and political factors that impact on the potential for violent conflict - some variables increase and others decrease conflict probability.

Actually, we don’t know exactly what these factors are and how they influence the capacity to adapt to climate change. But the current understanding is that we are talking about 3 political and social characteristics:

1 - the deeper the divisions between ethnic and religious groups or between classes are, the more likely it is that environmental scarcity causes violent conflict.

2 - states with weak political institutions are particularly vulnerable, since they find it difficult to manage the social tensions caused by climate change.

3 - democracies are better able to protect the environment and manage peacefully the consequences of environmental degradation.

A better understanding of climate change requires an interdisciplinary knowledge in astronomy, physics, geology, chemistry and biology. The observations from Space are crucial for this, but the economic and social sciences also play a fundamental role. And effective solutions to this urgent problem only can be obtained in peace by international collaboration.

REFERENCES:

[1] Tapani Vaahtoranta, The wars of climate change, OSCE review 3/2007, The Finnish Institute of International Affairs

[2] David D. Zhang, Jane Zhang, Harry F. Lee and Yuan-qing He; Climate Change and War Frequency in Eastern China over the Last Millennium, Human Ecology, Springer Netherlands, Volume 35, Number 4 / August, 2007

[3] Dan Smith, Janani Vivekananda, A Climate of Conflict: The Links Between Climate Change, Peace and War, International Alert, London UK, 2007-11

[4] Betsy Hartmann, War Talk and Climate Change , t r u t h o u t | Perspective, 26 November 2007