Only Engines can Guzzle Oil; Man Requires Water

Iran’s Environment: Greater Threat than Foreign Foes

October 28, 2013 | 10:30am

David Michel

      Iran faces growing environmental challenges that are now more perilous to the country’s long-term stability than either foreign adversaries or domestic political struggles. More than two-thirds of the country’s land—up to 118 million hectares—is rapidly turning into desert, Iran’s Foreign Range and Watershed Management Organization reported in mid-2013. “The main problem that threatens us [and is] more dangerous than Israel, America or political fighting… is that the Iranian plateau is becoming uninhabitable,” presidential adviser Issa Kalantari warned in the newspaper Ghanoon. “If this situation is not reformed, in 30 years Iran will be a ghost town.” He described an alarming future of desiccated lakes and depleted groundwater, potentially driving millions of Iranians from their homes.

            Iran now ranks 114of 132 countries evaluated on 22 environmental indicators, including water resources, air pollution, biodiversity and climate change, according to the 2012 Environmental Performance Index compiled by Yale and Columbia Universities.

 

Water

            Iran’s fresh water supplies are now under unsustainable strains. Ninety percent of the country—which is slightly smaller than Alaska—is arid or semi-arid, and an estimated two-thirds of its rainfall evaporates before it can replenish rivers. As a result, Iran provides more than half of its water needs by drawing from underground aquifers, but public usage is rapidly draining the subterranean reservoirs. At current rates of overuse, twelve of Iran’s thirty-one provinces will exhaust their groundwater reserves within the next 50 years.

            Iran’s economic policies have exacerbated the problem. Groundwater is free to well owners and, due to government subsidies, users pay a fraction of the actual energy costs for pumping water to the surface.  Iran annually pumps 4 billion cubic meters of groundwater that nature does not replenish. 

 

      Iran’s surface waters face similar pressures. Most of Iran’s rivers are hydrologically closed or nearly so, meaning their renewable water supply is already committed. So they have little spare capacity for regularly recurring dry years – when precipitation falls below the average – much less to meet the demands of a growing population. Water use upstream also increasingly impinges on water needs downstream. In the northwest, Iran’s dams (such as the Karun-3, left), irrigation systems, and drought have so diminished the 13 rivers feeding into Lake Urmia that the Middle East’s largest lake has shrunk more than 60 percent since 1995. In the southwest, Lake Bakhtegan, once Iran’s second largest lake, has dried up completely under the combined impacts of prolonged drought and damming on the Kor River.

 

Agriculture Imperiled

            Iran’s water problems now risk undermining the national economy. The agricultural sector produces 10 percent of Iran’s GDP and employs a quarter of the labor force. It also supports national food security, a top priority since the 1979 revolution was carried out in the name of “the oppressed.” Indeed, Tehran subsidizes producers and consumers alike in a dual strategy to promote self-sufficiency in staple crops by bolstering both supply and demand.

 

      Yet Iran’s food security is now imperiled because agriculture accounts for more than 92 percent of the country’s water use but only produces about 66 percent of the food supplies for 79 million people. Tehran has to import the rest. And the intensifying “water stress” threatens to further sap agricultural output, increase import bills and aggravate fiscal burdens. Agricultural demands are even subverting food security. Some areas, such as the central Kashan plain, have been rendered unfit for farming because of soil salinity, as groundwater overdrafts sink water tables.

 

Tough Choices

             Competition over scarce water has already fueled conflict both within Iran and with its neighbors.  In early 2013, farmers outside Isfahan destroyed a pump that diverted water from a local river to the city of Yazd some 185 miles away. Outraged at the loss of water, protestors refused to allow authorities to repair the pump, sparking  week-long demonstrations, armed clashes with police, and water shortages and rationing in Yazd.  In 2011, Iranian border guards exchanged fire with Afghan forces after crossing into Afghanistan to release water from an 18-mile irrigation canal from the Helmand River. And in the 1980s, the longest modern Middle East war was ignited by rival claims of control over the strategic Shatt-al Arab waterway between Iran and Iraq.

            The escalating pressures on Iran’s water resources raise difficult choices for competing consumers. In the Karkheh Basin, water managers have to decide what to do about lower river flows—whether to retain water in the Karkheh Dam to build reserves for hydropower or whether to release water downstream for irrigation to a region considered to be Iran’s food basket. 

 

Pollution

            Iran faces other serious environmental risks. According to the World Health Organization, Iran has three of the world’s five most polluted cities—Ahwaz, Kermanshah, and Sanandaj—that are choked by levels of air pollution four to seven times higher than WHO’s maximum guidelines. Because of its poor air quality nationwide, Iran ranked 86 out of 91 countries surveyed. In Tehran (see below) alone, contaminants in air pollution cause more than 5,500 deaths each year from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

 

      Global climate change is also expected to worsen Iran’s environmental woes. Changes in temperature and precipitation will lessen access to clean water, especially in rural areas, in turn generating more water-borne diseases, according to Iran’s Department of Environment. Higher temperatures and lower rainfall could cut cereal yields up to 30 percent by 2050. Climate change could reduce Iran’s total renewable water resources 15 percent to 19 percent by 2040-2050, according to a Dutch analysis. Iran’s annual water demand would then exceed its renewable supplies by more than 40 percent.

 

The Toll

            The damage – from water stress, desertification and pollution--could impose debilitating burdens long-term. The annual cost of Iran’s environmental degradation already amounts to a whopping 5 percent to 10 percent of GDP, according to the World Bank.  In contrast, tough U.S. and international sanctions shrunk Iran’s GDP by some 1.4 percent in 2012, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Over time, valuable resources will be further depleted, productivity diminished, and public health damaged. 

            Mismanagement has contributed to Iran’s environmental problems.  Its cities lose one-third of their water supplies in leaky pipes. Irrigation is also highly inefficient; more than half of Iran’s renewable water used in agriculture is lost. Surmounting Iran’s environmental challenges will require serious reorientation of policies and resources. The cost of new technologies, conservation practices and other measures to meet projected water needs in 2050 could top $3 billion a year, experts say.

            Iran has recently taken important steps in the right direction. Subsidy reforms initiated in 2010 will gradually require consumers to absorb the actual costs of water supplies, enhancing the incentives to be efficient. Revenues saved from cutting back energy subsidies are intended to support initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. But the subsidy reforms stalled after phase one. They were also not designed or intended to deal with environmental challenges.  Iran’s looming environmental crisis will require a comprehensive green revolution in national policy-making.

 

courtesy : David Michel 

David Michel is director of the Environmental Security Program at the Stimson Center, a non-partisan think tank in Washington D.C.

 

Online news media are welcome to republish original blog postings from this website in full, with a citation and link back to The Iran Primer website (www.iranprimer.com) as the original source. Any edits must be authorized by the author. Permission to reprint excerpts from The Iran Primer book should be directed to permissions@usip.org

 

Photo credits: 

Maranjab desert in Iran by by Siamaksabet (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia 

Eat the Dead to be Alive

VULTURES ARE ALSO PART OF OUR ENVIRONMENT CULTURE.

Just three decades ago as we were going to school, we would observe vultures  enjoying a feast on the carcasses. Normally a flock of 10-20 would be together to taste and rest.  We would be scared much on seeing those big monstrous looking wingers and the foul smell filling the area would hasten us to cross the farm bunds in the quickest time possible. 

But later on I learnt their population has come down due to various reasons.
1. Their habitats were destroyed as more and more lakes became concrete jungles and the lake    bunds lost their trees
2. The vultures which took the dead rats as their food were poisoned as the rats were killed by the farmers using poison.
3. The cattle population has come down drastically and hence the  dead cattle population too is low and the vultures left with nothing to feed on.

Rarely I notice such vultures today. However the fear of vultures formed in the child hood scares me still. An eerie feeling and strange emotions overflow in me.  What can these harmless creatures do? Just the world can't be of peacocks alone.

• Vultures are crucial in our ecological cycle as they are scavengers. With their robust digestive system they digest disease-causing pathogens found in rotting meat of dead animals. In this way they help man prevent outbreak of infectious diseases such as anthrax, rabies, etc.
  
  At the centre here, few kms away from Alipurduar, captive breeding of the vultures have already been successful for the slender-billed and white-backed species.
  
  As vultures take 4-5 years to reach breeding stage, it is hoped that more vultures would be breeding at the centre in near future.
  
  Built on an area of 5 acre land, the conservation centre, started in 2005, keeps the birds in natural surroundings but under full safety.
  
  The centre has quarantine, hospital nursery and holding aviaries and a small laboratory. Also two large colony aviaries which are open to sky but with a mesh to cover the top and keep it safe from attack by wild animals and monkeys.
  The endangered birds, which are monitored through CCTV cameras, are fed on diclofenac-free goat meat. "These are social birds and they even eat together. There are complex social relations among the flock- members and hence are kept together in a colony," pointed out Chakraborty.
  
  The centre already has the distinction of being the first one in the world to have bred the slender-billed vulture in captivity in 2009. Now they are hoping to breed the long- billed species also.
  
  
  

Colossal waste for India - The Hindu

Colossal waste for India - The Hindu

DREAM LEADS TO DREAMS

India - a land of old ...no doubt... but still they are in search of gold. Last week a sadhu's dream led to the digging up of a fort. The digging is on... yet there is no trace of gold. Long live India.


UP: Hunt for 1000 tonnes of gold treasure in Unnao begins today 

Unnao: Uttar Pradesh will witness it's very own gold rush on Friday. A team of the Archaeological Survey of India is all set to begin excavations at a Unnao fort of former king Raja Ram Bux Singh on Friday after a sadhu dreamt about 1,000 tonnes of gold buried under it. 

However, it needs to be seen whether the excavations strike gold. But the man who dreamt about it is confident. "There is a huge amount of gold buried under the fort. I believe we will find more treasure than we have space for in Unnao," said Sant Om ji Maharaj. Shobhan Sarkar reportedly convinced Union minister Charandas Mahant of his dream, who then convinced a team of ASI and GSI officials to survey the area and begin excavations. "We had been given proposal by the gram sabha. They think gold is buried there," said VK Anand, DM, Unnao. Unmindful of the end result, villagers are already discussing how to put the treasure to use. "If we find treasure then Raja Bux Singh's name should be added to Daundia Kheda village and an airstrip should be opened in this village," said village headman Ajay Pal. 

Why should I bat for 'bats'?

                                                                                                               

Today only I understood the phrase ‘batman’ in its entirety. Though my village home  used to accommodate hundreds of bats, I was never aware of the phrase.  In the cities citing ‘a bat’ is very rare. By evening,  today a single bat entered my home and I thought of driving it away. But to my surprise it entered into one of the living rooms and started flying like a supersonic jet.  I tried my level best to send the uninvited guest out of my home. But to no avail. I used flat pillows and thick bed sheets and books to bat with the bat. The winged creature made me play for more than half an hour. At last I threw a blanket at the bat and to my happiness the bird was trapped. I held it tight for a pose of photograph and let it fly in the wilderness immediately after.

But I have to recollect my village experience I had with my guests’ ilk in the yesteryears. Ours was a home made of lake grass and without windows. Darkness would be omnipresent and hence these blind creatures chose my house as their home.  We had yet another home with a roof of burnt tiles for our stay. The ‘bat house’ was used only for storage purposes (of grains and mostly paddy)  and hence visited by us less and haunted by these birds more. They made little noise and occupied the unreachable space and were not known for spread of any diseases. Really they are harmless but for they were known for their droppings of identical sizes all over the house. The entire floor, the attic, the lids of earthen pots …every item would be filled with the bats’ black, tiny droppings. At lease once in a week we have to clean the house and it would be a tough task.   Other than this harmless harm, nothing they did us to our dislike. Like mad men in anger, they would be flying out and in - umpteen times. I have to tell you that this was long before our JK Rowling’s arrival.

   Once we wanted to get rid of these bats and hence my father asked my farm hand to spray the  pesticides that we spray on our farm lands. It was a mechanized one and the friend who was pointing the hose at the roof accidentally lowered it and the very heavy poisonous spray entered my father’s nose. He became sick and could recuperate only after a week.  Meanwhile the bats became stronger and none of them perished. The bat story came to an end only when we demolished the house.

At this juncture I have to tell you all that the house’s ground area were occupied by the cunning rats. These lovers of grains made my home their habitat for decades. As usual the efforts to kill them or catch them would be tough.  However I was considered lucky by my family and was given the task of mixing the poison with any attractive food and place them at vantage points. Invariably my hands lived up to their expectations and at times they would be lying dead in scores the next morning.

 Once a kind rat pressed her teeth on me and I have to be taken to a hospital nearby and I had my first injection of my life.  I don’t know the reason why these two creatures –the rat and the bat – rhyme with each other. May be they are so close in their facial appearances but for the thin fragile wings of the bat. The bats will be hanging always upside down.  I don’t know who gave them such punishment for its life. (Life  sentence!)

"Bats represent about 20% of all classified mammal species worldwide, with about 1,240 bat species divided into two suborders: the less specialized and largely fruit-eating megabats, or flying foxes, and the highly specialized and echolocating microbats.^[5]About 70% of bats are insectivores. Most of the rest are frugivores, or fruit eaters. A few species, such as the fish-eating bat, feed from animals other than insects, with the vampire bats being hematophagous.

Bats are present throughout most of the world, performing vital ecological roles of pollinating flowers and dispersing fruit seeds. Many tropical plant species depend entirely on bats for the distribution of their seeds. Bats are important, as they consume insect pests, reducing the need for pesticides. "

PEACE TIME EXPLOSIONS

     Headlines Continued to Scream on the Explosions in the Cracker Industries

An explosion at a fireworks factory in southern China killed 11 workers and injured 17 others, state media and a local official said on Saturday.

8 killed in Kumbakonam crackers' blast

• Blasts were triggered by raging flames that engulfed two fire cracker units on Thursday near Sivakasi town in Tamil Nadu, authorities said. There were immediately no reports of casualties.

• Sep.5 2012            Thirty-eight persons, including two women, most of them believed to be villagers who rushed to the site of an explosion at a cracker unit, were killed when a large stock of explosives blew up on Wednesday afternoon. Thirty-three persons were wounded and have been admitted to government hospitals in Virudhunagar district and Madurai.

• Three persons were killed and 21 others were injured in an explosion at a cracker unit at at Chithanayakanpatti near here on Wednesday. The accident happened when workers were involved in the process of filling chemicals for crackers at a room in Meenakshi Fireworks.

• SIVAKASI: In a major fire accident, at least 52 people were dead, while 50 more injured in an explosion in a fireworks manufacturing unit in Sivakasi in Virudhunagar district in south Tamil Nadu. While police confirmed that 10 bodies were pulled out of the debris, they say the number of deaths could be higher. The accident occurred around 12.15 pm at Om Sakthi Fire works in Mudhalaipatti located in the fireworks manufacturing hub of Sivakasi. About 40 rooms in the manufacturing unit collapsed trapping many of the employees.

• January 12, 2013 14:39 IST In the second fireworks unit mishap this month in Tamil Nadu, three men were killed in a blast in their factory at a remote village in Virudhunagar district, police said on Saturday.The workers were mixing chemicals for making some fancy firework when the blast occurred due to friction at the unit in Sindapalli village near Sattur, about 80 km from in Madurai, last evening, they said.The intensity of the blast was so powerful that the bodies of the workers were blown to pieces and flung several feet away. The shed where they were working was razed to the ground, District Collector T N Hariharan said.

• May 15, 2013 - Police said the fire also resulted in a series of explosions in the unit. ...Tags: fireworks factory Sivakasi Sivakasi explosion Tamil Nadu. Sivakasi: Three persons were killed and 13 seriously injured in a blaze that swept through a private fireworks factory after an accidental explosion at Singampatti today.
  
  
  
  At least  500 million people will celebrate the festival of lights during the week end in India. Good. But please look at the casualties list. Are we into the preparation of nuclear bombs or chemical weapons? Simple crackers! Can't we import technology from outside? should we lose our brethren in hundreds for the momentary happiness of  some people? Can't we celebrate Diwali without crackers? Can't we manufacture these crackers under safer conditions?  Can't we ensure safety of the employees?   Is not bursting crackers in billions cause immense pollution?
  
  My simple suggestion is to employ  at least one ammunition expert, who must be an ex-serviceman. If such persons  happen to be the safety officer of  each factory, there would be definitely a decrease of these cruel incidents.  But who will listen to me?
  
  
  After every accident, compensations are announced and tears shed for a day or two. O.K. Let us celebrate Diwali and pollute the atmosphere as usual.
  
  

SAVE NATURE CAMPAIGNS ARE NOT NEW

"Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!"

Ode to the West Wind
  by Percy Bysche Shelley

BLIND MEN WITH BRIGHT EYES!

DON'T BE IN A HURRY TO SPOIL

GO GREEN TO AVOID GREEN HOUSE GASES

Direct greenhouse gases:

CO₂ - Carbon dioxide
CH₄ - Methane
N₂O - Nitrous oxide
PFCs - Perfluorocarbons
HFCs - Hydrofluorocarbons
SF₆ - Sulphur hexafluoride


 Indirect greenhouse gases :  SO₂, NOx, CO and NMVOC.


Societies can respond to climate change by reducing GHG emissions and enhancing sinks and reservoirs. The capacity to do so depends on socio-economic and environmental circumstances and the availability of information and technology. To this end, a wide variety of policies and instruments are available to governments to create the incentives for mitigation action. Mitigation is essential to meet the UNFCCC's objective of stabilizing GHG concentrations in the atmosphere. Among others, the Convention:

• Requires all Parties, taking into account their responsibilities and capabilities, to formulate and implement programmes containing measures to mitigate climate change
• Also requires all Parties to develop and periodically update national inventories of GHG emissions and removals
• Commits all Parties to promote, and cooperate in, the development, application and diffusion of climate friendly technologies
• Requires developed countries to adopt national policies and measures to limit GHG emissions and protect and enhance sinks and reservoirs
• States that the extent to which developing countries will implement their commitments will depend on financial resources and transfer of technology

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Action on mitigation: reducing emissions and enhancing sinks. A range of policies and various economy-wide packages of policy instruments have been effective in reducing GHG emissions in different sectors and many countries. According to the IPCC AR4, there is substantial technical and economic potential for the mitigation of global GHG emissions over the coming decades, that could offset the projected growth of global emissions or reduce emissions below current levels. Changes in lifestyle and behaviour patterns and management practices can contribute to climate change mitigation across all sectors.

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Reporting on national implementation and MRV. Parties to the Convention have agreed to submit to the Conference of the Parties (COP) national reports on implementation of the Convention which include commitments and activities relating to mitigation. The required contents and level of details of national reports and/or the timetable for their submission are different for developed and -developing countries. This is in accordance with the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" enshrined in the Convention

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BLOODLESS BLOOD RELATION TO THE GRASS

Grasshopper

UNFCCC Executive Secretary outlines expectations for COP 19, key milestones towards 2015 agreement

Chatham House
London, 21 October 2013
Statement by Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Dear friends and colleagues,
I’m delighted to see you all.

Before I start, I want to invite you to do something that we do every day without noticing. Would you please all take one deep breath…Now I’ll tell you what just happened here. We are the first humans in the history of the world to breathe 400 parts per million of CO2 with every breath we take. That is a daunting fact.
It is also daunting that 400 ppm is 100 ppm more than the last ice age, it is the variation that occurs normally – if anything is normal anymore – over 100,000 years and we have accelerated it 100 times.
We have just had an excellent exposé of the first working group of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Because of that, I will not go into any of the science, but none of us should ever make any presentation in public or in private without starting with the basic facts of science.
Let me quickly move into the other areas. It seems to me that the Fifth Assessment Report actually ends at least two debates. It ends the debate on science because we have 200 lead authors putting together the work of 600 scientists who went through 9,000 peer-reviewed publications and answered 50,000 queries. The statistics speak for themselves. There is no longer a question on the science.
And that working group report ends the debate on “should we act?” There is no doubt that we have to act and that we have to act now. Now is the time. It is not tomorrow. It is not the day after tomorrow. It is now. Now is the time.
There are two other debates lingering out there. One is: will the outcome actually be any different if we have climate-friendly policy in place? And the second is: are the challenges that we are facing so complex that we are unable to effectively address them?
Those two debates have also ended thanks to the overwhelming consensus of the major financial and energy institutions of the world.
The World Bank has put out its report saying that if we continue what we’re doing, we’re going to go to 4C degrees of warming, which would wipe out all the development gains of the past 25 years. But, we can still put policy in place to get to our vital 2 degrees Celsius goal. They have also announced they will no longer finance new coal plants except in extenuating circumstances. This has been echoed by the European Investment Bank, and by the European Construction Bank and the Ex Im Bank.
The IMF has come out and said that subsidies on fossil fuels can and must be decreased while moving towards renewables. It emphasised that this can be done without jeopardizing or threatening low-income populations. The IMF has analysed the situation of each country with fossil fuel subsidies, and stands ready, willing and able to assist any country that wants to start decreasing fossil fuel subsidies.
The OECD has recently come out with the call for zero-net emissions by the second half of the century, a target we can reach if we have the right policies in place.
The IEA too has, very clearly, said that emissions continue to rise, but that we can curb those emissions with the right policies. They put out four choice sectors in which policy can be implemented without harming economic growth and functioning.
I recently came back from the World Energy Congress meeting in Korea, where the World Energy Council put out its Energy Trilemma report. They state that we must move toward an energy model that is reliable, affordable and environmentally responsible and they put out a clear 10 step agenda to take us there.
I was impressed that the conversation in Daegu at the World Energy Congress was not about whether, but rather about how we are going to move towards a reliable, affordable and environmentally responsible energy model. This is very encouraging. What is not encouraging is that the conversation does not yet reflect the urgency of the challenge.
Yes, policy matters; no, it is not so complex that it cannot be addressed, and yes, the time is now.
The next step in the global response to climate change is COP 19 in Warsaw and I will briefly give you our sense of what needs to be delivered in Warsaw because the incoming COP President will surely go into more detail.
First, the world is eagerly waiting for the ratifications of the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. Second, we must take the institutional arrangements that have already been agreed to and move them from the design phase into the operational phase. That includes all the institutional arrangements to support developing countries in both finance and technology. All of this is already agreed.
Then we have the issues that are still under negotiation and which Warsaw must move. There, Warsaw needs progress in 3 major areas:
First: finance. We must be able to move the Green Climate Fund into its operational phase. The board is getting ready for an initial capitalization in next year. One goal of the GCF will be to help to de-risk and leverage private capital.
The annual $100 billion that has been committed to, as climate finance needs to be understood in the context of real need. The IEA says we will need a yearly investment of $1 trillion into clean energy and resilient infrastructure to transform in order to transform the economy. The $100 billion is then basically the tail that needs to wag the dog: that funding needs to point the dog in the direction of green capital flows. It must move because we know the financing is not $100 billion per year, it is $1 trillion. That is what needs to be mobilized.
Second: loss and damage. Progress on this is incontrovertible. We know that we had, at the last COP in Doha, a starting decision. But we are far away from where we have to be on both adaptation and the next phase on loss and damage, so we need very clear progress on the mechanism to support loss and damage.
Third: the ADP. We need to further clarify the elements to be included in a draft agreement. Countries need to consider an ambitious and clear draft in Lima in 2014. Such a draft needs to include two difficult, but absolutely crucial points of progress from Warsaw.
Number one, governments have to walk out of Warsaw knowing their next step is to go home and do the necessary internal analysis, so that they are in a position to put their national contribution on the table towards a global solution.
Number two, Warsaw must figure out how the process is going to recognize all of the other actions, activities and initiatives that are going on outside the formal process.
The climate change negotiating process is the centre, but certainly not the circumference of climate action. The point of the formal process is for governments to point in the right direction and then all the sectors and initiatives actually provide the speed and action that is necessary.
Warsaw needs to change the narrative that we have created over time. We need to leave Warsaw with a dominant narrative of constructive engagement on climate action. That is why the secretariat is using Warsaw as a platform to showcase action that is already occurring. To this end we have chosen three areas: women, the urban poor, and innovative financing. On their side the COP presidency will be offering Warsaw as a platform for cities and businesses to show what they’re doing.
Warsaw needs to be a resounding response to the call for action that has been put out by the first IPCC Working Group.
My friends, now is the time and Warsaw needs to show that we have understood that now is the time.
I very much appreciate the agenda and work that you will be doing over the next two days, because you’re going to be focusing on what is the challenge that we
are all moving into as we get closer and closer to 2015. But before we get to 2015, I would like to very clearly underline that 2014 is the critical year. In 2014, we must enlarge the space for action and prepare not only for an agreement, but for a meaningful agreement.
There are a couple of events which we can use as milestones. In January, we are grateful to have the World Economic Forum devote one of the days in Davos to climate change. We are working with them on that agenda to be able to identify a handful of climate change game-changing opportunities in the climate agenda that can be moved forward and truly make a difference.
In May, we have the Clean Energy Ministerial in Korea, where I expect ministers of energy to come together to constructively discuss how the energy model is going to move forward under the circumstances that we now understand.
In September – as you all very well know – the Secretary-General of the United Nations has called for a summit for both heads of state as well as heads of corporations. He is calling for them to come with their bold commitments on climate finance as well as on their emission reductions.
Why? Because now is the time.
I do not exaggerate when I say that 2014 needs to be the year in which every government, every organization, every business, every individual needs to ask themselves, “How am I going to contribute to solving climate?” If 2014 emerges as the year in which we have mounting evidence not just of severe weather events but also mounting evidence of bold action and bold commitment, then we stand the best chance of having a strong draft agreement in Lima. This will enable us to then move to Paris with a universal framework for climate action that is anchored in reality and that is powerful enough to transform our reality.
If 2014 yields strong answers from every government, organisation, business and individual, we will be able to go to Paris and get a climate framework that both harvests everything we’re doing now and that will be accelerating in 2013-2015, as well as catalyzing further action. This is so important because it is the only way that we will achieve low global emissions in this decade and zero-net emissions in the second half of this century.
So my friends, this is my bottom line message to you today. Now is the time and all of your work is needed. I know all of you are here because you have a contribution to make. Do not peg that contribution to 2015, it will be one year too late. Peg that contribution on 2014 because that is the only way you’ll be able to influence the meaningfulness of the agreement of 2015.
Thank you.
- - - - -

Pack everything and carry nothing.

It is amusing to see that man who has started to replace a few parts inside his human body talks of ending consumerism. Convenience and comfort - that is ultimate comfort he wants. Machines have to do all works for him. Even for eating  he is thinking of an assistant robot as we saw in a Chaplin movie decades back.

Every milligram of food and every milliliter of liquid is getting packed today. The colorful dress the things wear are for  attracting us. Unless we stop this 'packaging culture' , the world would pack us back somewhere.  

Redeem the earth

Today we are in an environment where everyone talks of ‘environment’. Is it enough if we keep talking alone? Has it become a fashion to talk on this topic?

Should we care for man alone or the things and beings that keep him alive? First of all man should realize he is not the sole authority or owner of this blue planet. He is one of the species who is a co-occupant of this planet as a tenant and he can never become an owner. Having said this is he the only one who has to care for the earth and no other beings have a responsibility to care and share for this earth? Yes, MAN alone has to take care of this planet because he is the sole species that has spoiled the earth beyond redemption.