Industry hails chopper service as greens fume

UDHAGAMANDALAM: While tourism and trading sources welcomed the project to introduce chopper service in Ooty, environmentalists and the common man opposed it.

Motilal Kataria, president of the Citizen’s Forum of Ooty, said ‘‘It would be helpful especially during medical emergency and bring Ooty under the air-map which would certainly attract tourists in a big way.’’

‘‘One of the long pending demands of the Ooty public, especially the trading community, is going to be fulfilled. But the fare which is fixed for the chopper service from Ooty to Coimbatore is too high. They should introduce 15 to 20-seater chopper with reduced fares.

Otherwise, the project would become nonviable,’’ said Heeralal, president of the Nilgiris Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

N Chandrasekar, secretary of the Nilgiris Hotels and Restaurants Association, said ‘‘It would be a boost to tourism industry. Many foreigners and IT professionals would certainly avail this opportunity.

Even the common man would like to fly, at least once, over the hill. It would help in case of emergencies. We hope the bookings in hotels would go up once the chopper service comes into being.’’

Jayachandran, joint secretary of Tamil Nadu Green Movement, differed. He said regular chopper service over the thick forest areas would be a threat to wild animals as the heavy noise of the chopper may cause abortion in wild animals.

As forest clearance is needed for laying roads, chopper service should be dealt under forest and wildlife law. Moreover, if something bad happened to environment or wild animals, the chopper company should be held responsible, he added.

Mohan, a toda tribesman of Muthanadumund, too had his reservation on the project. He wondered in what way it was going to help poor men like him.

Would the government bear the expenses or give concessions in flying for the poor people during emergency, he asked.

Praveen, a tourist from Chennai, said the project was a good idea but it would not be economical to tourists belonging to middle class families।

UNEP launches 2010 Biodiversity initiative

The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) has inaugurated a multi-million dollar effort to track the fate and fortune of the world's biological diversity, the UN agency said in a media communiqué is

sued here Wednesday.

Funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), The 2010 Biodiversity Indicator Partnership aims to complete a set of indicators that will allow the international community to better assess whether conservation efforts are succeeding towards the target of “reducing the rate of loss of biodiversity by 2010”.

Under the new US$8.8 million partnership, which has secured over US$3.6 million from the GEF, a wider range of existing and new indicators will be brought together to gain greater and deeper insight into whe

ther the 2010 Biodiversity Target is on course.

"This new partnership helps ensure that the bar is raised around the globe for accounting for biodiversity loss," GEF chief executive officer, Monique Barbut, said in the communiqué.

The official said the biodiversity challenge was "no less urgent a public issue than the climate change crisis", adding that the move would "help move biodiversity to the front burner and help ignite policy makers to take informed action."

"It is more important than ever for the biodiversity community to elevate its discourse and to reinforce the relevance of biodiversity conservation to sustainable economic development in the 21st Century,"

she a

dded.

Several indicators already exist which are giving an insight into how well the world is addressing the biodiversity challenge.

According to the UNEP, The Red List of Threatened Species, compiled by IUCN- the World Conservation Union- estimates that nearly one in four mammals, one in three amphibians, and one in eight birds is threatened with extinction.

The main d

riving force is human impact ranging from deforestation and pollution to over-exploitat

ion for food and as part of the illegal wildlife trade.

Protected areas, consider

ed an important strategy for conservation of plants and animals, also contribute to another of the biodiversity indicators while at the same time forming part of assessment of the success of the UN's Millennium Development Goals.

The Goals, due to be met by 2015, cover poverty eradication up to the provision of safe and sufficient drinking water.

The indicator of P

rot

ected Areas shows that around 12 percent of the Earth's land surface is currently covered by more than 105,000 protected areas.

However, the area of

sea and ocean under protection is relatively tiny: just 0.6 percent of the ocean's surface area and 1.4 percent of coastal shelf areas are protected.

Other existing indicators include forest cover and the generation of nitrogen from sources such as fossil fuel burning

, industry and fertilizer, which can impact on biodiversity and wildlife habitats.

Some of the new indicators, emerging from a list chosen by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), inclu

de threats to biodiversity; the degree to which forests, farmlands and fisheries are managed in a way that protects biodiversity; the extent to which people are affected by changes in biodiversity and the contribution of traditional knowledge to the biodiversity target.

There will also b

e a focus on the components of biodiversity including genes, species and ecosystems.

Several of the new indicators will require a comprehensive gathering of data exercise including trends in the spread of invasive alien species and trends in the health and well being of communities dependent on the goods and services provided by local ecosystems.

Nairobi - 18/07/2007

Temperature is rising highest at the highest elevations

The Tibetan plateau is heating up by 0.3°C each decade, more than twice the worldwide average, according to a new study from the Tibet Meteorological Bureau.

The findings, reported by the official Chinese news agency Xinhua, underscore a growing understanding that high elevations in tropical regions are experiencing dramatic temperature increases similar to those seen at the poles.

"Whether you are in the Himalayas, the Andes, or Africa, the temperature is rising highest at the highest elevations," says Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at the Ohio State University (See Interview: The Ice Man cometh). "They are seeing an acceleration in temperature rise that is very consistent with the high-elevation glacial retreat we are seeing."

Over the last 50 years, temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctica have risen by 0.2°C and approximately 0.5°C per decade, respectively, according to data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Warming waters

The reason surface temperatures at the poles are warming so quickly is because the seawater temperature around them has risen faster there than anywhere else on Earth.

In the tropics, warming waters also play a role. When the already warm tropical waters heat up further, due to global warming, they evaporate even more moisture, which rises straight to the upper atmosphere.

"That is latent heat that is rising from the sea and released back to the atmosphere in the mid to upper troposphere," says Thompson. "And that's where the Tibetan plateau weather stations are located."

In 2000, researchers published a study looking at temperature changes on the Tibetan plateau since the 1950s. They found that temperature was not only increasing with time, but also with elevation across the plateau, concluding the data suggests the plateau is "one of the most sensitive areas" in the world in its response to global climate change.

A study published in 2006 in Science found similar increases in air temperature at high-elevation weather stations in the Andes.

Previous studies have found that all glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035 at their present rate of decline. The melting glaciers threaten to unleash massive flooding followed by severe droughts across South Asia.