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October 26, 2007
The scale of the challenge is huge. We’ve got to act now - Times Online
Land, sea, air and rivers have all deteriorated so much in the past 20 years that scientists fear humanity’s very survival is now at risk
The environmental problems faced by the world are so extensive that they must
be treated as a top priority if they are to be solved, scientists have told
the United Nations.
A team of 400 researchers involved in putting together the fourth Global
Environment Outlook: Environment for development (GEO4) said that the “scale
of the challenge is huge”.
They assessed a range of environmental factors and concluded that the
condition of the land, sea, air and rivers have all deteriorated in the past
20 years.
Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP), said that the international community’s response to environmental
issues was at times “courageous and inspiring”, but all too often was
inadequate.
“The systematic destruction of the Earth’s natural and nature-based resources
has reached a point where the economic viability of economies is being
challenged and where the bill we hand to our children may prove impossible
to pay,” he said.
The report was critical of the lack of action by governments across the world
in protecting the environment from being degraded. The response to climate
change was described as “woefully inadequate” but it was only one of several
major problems that needed to be addressed effectively.
“We appear to be living in an era in which the severity of environmental
problems is increasing faster than our policy responses,” the report said.
“To avoid the threat of catastrophic consequences, we need new policy
approaches to change the direction and magnitude of drivers of environmental
change.”
Mike Childs, of the environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth, said:
“The steady degradation of the world’s environment threatens the wellbeing
of everybody on the planet.”
John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace UK, said the report
illustrated the importance of living sustainably. He said: “It is the only
way to improve global life expectancy and income inequality, beat climate
change, reduce deforestation and protect biodiversity.”
Population
Increases in world population, which has risen almost 34 per cent from 5
billion in 1987 to 6.7 billion today, were blamed for many of the pressures
on the Earth’s resources.
Consumption, heightened by a threefold increase in trade since 1987, means
that more is now being produced than can be sustained, especially as average
incomes have increased 40 per cent per person since 1987. Each person needs
21.9 hectares of the Earth’s surface to supply his or her needs whereas, it
was calculated, the Earth’s biological capacity is 15.7 hectares per person.
Atmosphere
Developed nations were found to have made significant achievements in cleaning
up air pollution but the problem has intensified in many poorer nations.
Changes in policy and legislation coupled with improvements in technology
reduced air pollution in some cities but was negated in other places because
of increased economic activity and a growth in the use of cars.
Richer countries were, the report said, responsible in some cases for shifting
their pollution to developing countries that were producing goods for export.
Climate change was regarded by the report as “visible and unequivocal” and
likely to have enormous impacts on the environment. Combating it should be
treated as “a global priority”, it said.
Researchers, in line with warnings from the UN International Panel on Climate
Change, said drastic steps were required by policymakers to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions from energy, transport and land use. “Fundamental
changes in social and economic structures, including lifestyle changes, are
crucial if rapid progress is to be achieved,” the report said.
Land
The output of an average farmer increased 40 per cent since 1987 as land use
intensified to keep up with the growth of the global economy and population.
Each person in the world was said, on average, to require a third more land to
supply individual needs than the biological capacity of the landscape.
“Unsustainable land use is causing degradation, a threat as serious as
climate change and biodiversity loss,” the scientists concluded.
“It affects human wellbeing, through pollution, soil erosion, nutrient
depletion, water scarcity, salinity and disruption of biological cycles.”
Of particular concern to the researchers was the increase in fertilisers
required to meet demands for food because of the contamination the chemicals
can cause.
Irrigation was said to be reducing the quantity and quality of water in
rivers. One in ten of the world’s main rivers now runs dry at some point
each year before it can reach the sea.
Genetically modified crops were regarded by the scientists as essential if
food demands are to be met because they can protect against disease and
pests. Insects were said to destroy 14 per cent of all crops. Rising
desertification and droughts were feared to be destroying soil quality.
Water
Overfishing was singled out as an issue that needed to be tackled as a
priority or else billions of people could face food shortages in the coming
decades.
“Marine fish catches are being maintained only by fishing ever further
offshore and at deeper levels, devastating some species very quickly, and
increasingly further down the food chain,” the authors said.
It was pointed out that 60 per cent of the world population live within 65
miles of the coast and that many are likely to be forced to move because of
sea level rises from global warming over the coming century.
Availability of fresh water was high-lighted as a rising problem. By 2025 1.8
billion people were forecast to be suffering from severe shortages.
Biodiversity
Measures to protect biodiversity, with species being forced into extinction at
a rate 100 times faster than any in fossil records, were regarded as urgent.
The rate of loss was considered so serious that it was described as the sixth
major extinction event in the Earth’s history.
“Human life and all other species depend on healthy ecosystems. But current
biodiversity changes, the fastest in human history, mean losses are
restricting future development options,” the report said.
About 60 per cent of ecosystems were described as degraded or used
unsustainably, with land-use change, habitat loss, overexploitation and
pollution all factors. Introductions of alien species were blamed for
widespread damage to habitat.
“Reducing the rate of loss and ensuring that decision-makers acknowledge
biodiversity’s full value to human wellbeing will go far towards achieving
sustainable development,” the authors said.
The researchers said agriculture depended on biodiversity but was the biggest
cause of reduced genetic diversity, species loss and habitat loss.
Scientists expressed concern for the future security of the supply of food
because of the narrow genetic base for agriculture. “Just 14 animal species
account for 90 per cent of all livestock production, and 30 crops dominate
global agriculture, providing an estimated 90 per cent of the world’s
calories,” they said.
Concern about diversity extended to human cultures. More than half the world’s
6,000 languages are under threat and some estimates put the likely loss this
century at 90 per cent.
“Increased understanding of how people relate to biodiversity and how to move
towards greater stewardship of biodiversity may be the biggest question the
world must still answer,” they said.
October 28, 2007 at 04:05 AM in World affairs | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
SAS raiders enter Iran to kill gunrunners - Times Online
Michael Smith BRITISH special forces have crossed into Iran several times in recent months as part of a secret border war against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Al-Quds special forces, defence sources have disclosed.
There have been at least half a dozen intense firefights between the SAS and
arms smugglers, a mixture of Iranians and Shi’ite militiamen.
The unreported fighting straddles the border between Iran and Iraq and has
also involved the Iranian military firing mortars into Iraq. UK commanders
are concerned that Iran is using a militia ceasefire to step up arms
supplies in preparation for an offensive against their base at Basra airport.
An SAS squadron is carrying out operations along the Iranian border in Maysan
and Basra provinces with other special forces, the Australian SAS and
American special-operations troops.
They are patrolling the border, ambushing arms smugglers bringing in
surface-to-air missiles and components for roadside bombs. “Last month, they
were involved in six significant contacts, which killed 17 smugglers and
recovered weapons, explosives and missiles,” a source said. It was not clear
if any of the dead were Iranian.
Last week, Bob Ainsworth, the armed forces minister, said the Ministry of
Defence was unable to say whether British troops had killed or captured any
Iranians in Iraq. The ministry declined to comment, but privately officials
insisted British troops never carry out hot pursuit across the border.
There have been persistent reports of American special-operations missions
inside Iran preparing for a possible attack. But the sources said British troops
were solely stopping arms smuggling.
The fighting comes amid an increase in US and British intelligence operations
against Iran. Britain’s forces have more than 70 Farsi experts monitoring
Iranian communications, and the intelligence is shared with the United
States.
Seven American U2 spy planes have passed through RAF Fairford in
Gloucestershire this year on their way to Akrotiri in Cyprus or Al-Dhafra in
Abu Dhabi, the bases for flights over Iran.
The Al-Quds force has been increasing its arms supplies to both the Shi’ite
militias in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Officially, Britain has
been careful not to blame the Iranian government.
But senior British officials have confirmed to The Sunday Times that it would
not happen without the backing of the Iranian leadership.
They pointed out that Gen Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Al-Quds force, has
direct access to Ayatollah Khamenei, supreme leader of Iran
Liam Fox, the Conservative defence spokesman, said: “Increasingly Iran poses a
direct threat to our armed forces and our wider interests . . . they are
playing a very dangerous game.”
October 20, 2007 at 10:08 PM in SAS | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
William Samuel Stephenson, who served as Britain's intelligence chief in the Western Hemisphere during World War II, was born 11 January 1896 at Point Douglas, Manitoba, Canada and died 31 January 1989 at Paget, Bermuda. The son of a lumber-mill owner, Stephenson left college to join the Royal Canadian Engineers (1914-1915) and fought with the British Royal Flying Corps in France (1915-1918). Stephenson's post-World War I business ventures in construction, real estate, and the steel industry, and inventions and manufacturing (radios, phonographs, automobiles, and airplanes) were highly successful. As a Canadian millionaire industrialist, his business contacts were valuable to the British war effort in the late 1930s. The new British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, dispatched Stephenson to the neutral United States on 21 June 1940 to establish a secret spy network in the Western Hemisphere. His official title was in New York City was British Passport Control Officer (PCO), a rather transparent cover for the local representative of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). The British Security Coordination (BSC) Office, headquartered in Rockefeller Center, became an umbrella organization that would, by the end of the conflict, represent MI5, SIS (Secret Intelligence Service), SOE (Special Operations Executive), and PWE (Political Warfare Executive) throughout North and South America and the Caribbean. In 1945 Stephenson received a knighthood in the New Year's Honours List for his service.
The final part of the book, "Part IX: Communications Network," has five chapters: Chapter 1: "Developing Speed and Security" (pp. 447-459); Chapter 2: "Hydra and the South American Scheme" (pp. 460-466); Chapter 3: "Illicit Wireless Intelligence" (pp. 466-477); Chapter 4: "Complexities of Traffic Exchange" (pp. 478-497); Chapter 5: "Purchasing Secret Equipment" (pp. 498-506); and "Conclusion" (p. 507). The BSC was facing a serious problem in communications because SIS messages exchanged between London and New York had to pass through an FBI channel in Washington, DC and a British Communications Centre (Whaddon, Buckinghamshire). The number and length of the messages was becoming a serious issue and would reach 50,000 encrypted messages per day by 1943. The report documents the development of Telekrypton cyphering machines, Transatlantic lines, Rockex I encyphering and decyphering, and its replacement by Rockex II beginning in March 1944.
October 8, 2007 at 10:44 PM in | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home