348 Forest-type / World-wide

–In regions known as Mediterranean Forests there is Prof. Phil Rundel. He recently was in Isreal talking about how threats to this type of forest is even greater than threats to tropical forest (27).

–In World Wide Tree news some calculations indicate that the 1.5 billion poorest humans get nearly half of all their needs met by still intact ecosystems (28). How many times has someone told you about the great deal they got on their new furniture? Now you can tell them about what a Furniture footprint is (29). As the Bidiversity Conference concluded 60 countries on “the sidelines” pledged to halt deforestation by 2020. The article also has some commentary on what to the pledge to stop deforestation by 2010 (30).

Mediterranean Forests:

27) Prof. Phil Rundel was speaking during a visit this week to Israel. Rundel visited nature sites here and came away quite jealous. The variety of plant species he saw far exceeds what there is in California. The rich variety reinforced the message Rundel brought with him: Mediterranean ecosystems are more diverse, but are severely endangered. International awareness must be raised to work on saving them. Rundel, who visited as a guest of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), researches Mediterranean-climate ecosystems. Apart from California and the Mediterranean basin, there are three other areas classified as Mediterranean: central Chile, western Australia (in the vicinity of Perth and Adelaide) and the area around Cape Town. These areas are classified as such due to the similarity in geographic conditions and share a mild winter and a very hot summer. The small area he visited had hundreds of species of wildflowers. Israel’s uniqueness recently also earned a notable ranking in the report on the status of the environment in the Mediterranean basin prepared by Eurostat, which gathers statistical information for the European Union. The report notes that in the Mediterranean basin, there are 25,000 species of flora; half of them have developed a unique ability to adapt to dry conditions and are not found in anywhere else in the world. According to this report, Israel has the largest number of plant species per square meter of all the countries in the Mediterranean basin. The report also highlights the large number of reptiles found in several Mediterranean countries, including Israel. So far 30,000 varieties of insects have been found in Israel. Rundel stresses that the tremendous plant diversity is typical of the entire Mediterranean region. “These areas represent just 2 percent of the earth’s area, but they contain 16 percent of the plant species,” he noted. “One of the reasons for this is the considerable differences in climatic and topographic conditions in the entire Mediterranean region. These differences encourage the development of many different species.” In the Mediterranean region, humans have had a major impact on diversity. Shepherding and working the land caused numerous changes in the conditions in which plants develop and created new habitats with plants that adapted themselves to the scorching conditions. “In California there was no shepherding of cattle and sheep, and this is one of the reasons that there are fewer varieties of flora,” noted Rundel. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/988204.html

World-wide:

28) Damage to forests, rivers, marine life and other aspects of nature could halve living standards for the world’s poor, a major report is to conclude. Current rates of natural decline might reduce global GDP by about 7% by 2050. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) review is modelled on the Stern Review of climate change. It will be released at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Bonn, where 60 leaders have pledged to halt deforestation by 2020. “You come up with answers like 6% or 8% of global GDP when you think about the benefits of intact ecosystems, for example in controlling water, controlling floods and droughts, the flow of nutrients from forest to field,” said the project’s leader Pavan Sukhdev. “But then you realise that the major beneficiaries [of nature] are the billion and a half of the world’s poor; these natural systems account for as much as 40%-50% of what we define as the ‘GDP of the poor’,” he told BBC News. The TEEB review was set up by the German government and the European Commission during the German G8 presidency. The two institutions selected Mr Sukhdev, a managing director in the global markets division at Deutsche Bank, to lead it. At the time, in an article for the BBC News website, Germany’s environment minister Sigmar Gabriel wrote: “Biological diversity constitutes the indispensable foundation for our lives and for global economic development. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7424535.stm

29) When you look to buying new furniture, do you ever consider it’s carbon footprint? What comprises the carbon footprint of, say a couch? You have to consider each component of the couch from the wood for the frame to the metal for the springs, bolts and nuts to the foam for padding and the fabric that comprises the outer covering. The wood that comprises your furniture is most likely going to have the largest footprint of the components second only to the foam padding. If the frame is totally interior to the couch, it’s more than likely going to be made of pine. Furniture with external wood showing is likely to be made of cherry, oak, teak, bamboo or walnut. Domestic woods (in the US) such as cherry, oak and walnut will have a lower footprint than teak or bamboo simply because the woods aren’t transported as far and also because US methods of harvesting wood is fairly efficient. Woods that come from third world countries such as teak and bamboo not only have the distance transported comprising their footprint, but may also come from sources where human rights issues come into play. Some teak comes from Miranmar which has so much been in the news lately with the attempts by humanitarian aid groups to get aid supplies to those hundreds of thousands of people left homeless by the typhoon of nearly a month ago. And it’s the deforestation caused by the harvesting of teak that created some of the terrain that contributed to the amount of devastation experienced by the Miramese people. Teak furniture is durable, beautiful and has many other properties that make it highly desirable. But at what cost to those who harvest it, to the countries that experience the issues surrounding deforestation of old growth forests. Before buying that lovely patio set, give a thought to those who are starving in Miranmar. http://eyespi20.com/whats-the-carbon-footprint-of-your-furniture

30) Ministers from nearly 60 nations pledged Wednesday on the sidelines of a UN biodiversity conference to support a global effort to halt deforestation by 2020. Top environment officials from every continent literally lined up to make the pledge, organised by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a highly influential environmental “Wildly successful” is how WWF International’s director general James Leape described the event, even as more ministers straggled in after the deadline. “We expected 20 countries, but we got more than 50,” he told AFP. Deforestation has emerged as one of the most pressing — and contentious — issues at the United Nation’s Conference on Biodiversity, a two-week conclave in Bonn of more than 6,000 representatives from 191 countries. The world’s primary forests, especially in the tropics, are the richest repositories of plant and animal species anywhere on land. They also soak up at least 20 percent of the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide — acting as an essential sponge for the greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet. Every year more than 30 million hectares (74 million acres) of forest are lost to largely illegal logging and slash-and-burn agriculture, but agreement on how to halt the devastation has proved elusive. On Wednesday, several heads of state and nearly 100 ministers arrived in Bonn for a three-day “high level” meeting to boost flagging negotiations on how best to craft a new global deal on preserving Earth’s wildlife. “The conservation of our forests is of primoridal importance,” German Chancellor Andrea Merkel told the assembly Wednesday. “The forests are the natural habitats of many species and the world’s lungs.” http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jatSjCFZLQodSfJHHsM15kK332dQ