This exciting project, led by Carlton Ward Jr.– photographer and friend of WILD– is now on its 17th day in the field. The team has made it through some of Florida’s wildest areas, biking, hiking and kayaking roughly 10-30 miles a day. The goals of the Florida Wildlife Corridor are to:

• Protect and restore habitat and migration corridors essential for the survival of Florida’s diverse wildlife, including wide-ranging panthers, black bears and other native species
• Restore water flow to the Everglades and sustain water supply to southern Florida
• Continue to safeguard the St. Johns River and water supply for central and north Florida
• Sustain the food production, economies and cultural legacies of working ranches and farms within the corridor
• Bolster local economies through increased opportunities such as hunting, fishing, birdwatching and other forms of eco-tourism
• Give wildlife and plants room to adapt to a changing climate and sea level rise

Stay up-to-date with the expedition!

>>Follow the story on National Geographic’s Explorer’s Journal

>>Read the Florida Wildlife Corridor Expedition Blog

Chasing Ice is the story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of our changing planet. Within months of that first trip to Iceland, Balog conceived the boldest expedition of his life: The Extreme Ice Survey. With a band of young adventurers in tow, Balog began deploying revolutionary time-lapse cameras across the brutal Arctic to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers.

In the spring of 2005, National Geographic photographer James Balog headed to the Arctic on a tricky assignment: to capture images to help tell the story of the Earth’s changing climate. Even with a scientific upbringing, Balog had been a skeptic about climate change and a cynic about the nature of academic research. But that first trip north opened his eyes to the biggest story in human history and sparked a challenge within him that would put his career and his very well-being at risk.

Chasing Ice heads home to Boulder, Colorado to close out the 8th Annual Boulder International Film Festival on February 19th. Tickets are $35 and available through the Boulder Theater…they’re going fast!

>>Read more about the Extreme Ice Survey

>>Chasing Ice

To promote the preservation of the species and provide a moving, educational polar bear experience online, explore.org, a philanthropic media organization, Polar Bears International, a leading organization focused on preservation and education surrounding the threatened species, and adventure company Frontiers North will be delivering live video feeds via the Web. To bring the bears to life online and in real-time, the groups have affixed high-definition cameras onto a roving Tundra Buggy® and along the edges of the Tundra Buggy® Lodge situated directly in the path of the age-old migration.

Charles Annenberg Weingarten, filmmaker and founder of explore.org, said in a press release, “The polar bears are among the most magical of our planet’s endangered species, and much like the lions of Africa, have come to represent the many consequences of global warming and industrialization.” He added, “By providing a window into their worlds, we are giving people a chance to come together to cherish the bears and an opportunity to share their plight in a compelling way.”

The bears travel through the small town each October and November and then wait for the Hudson Bay freeze-up, when they can get out on the ice and hunt for seals. Krista Wright, executive vice president of Polar Bears International, says it is “unseasonably warm” in Manitoba for this time of year. This means there’s a good chance that the ice may not start forming until later, and the bears are basically fasting because the time they are spending on land is longer. Last year’s freeze came a month late, in the middle of December.

This change of climate is damaging the bears’ habitat. Like many other species, the lives of these megafauna depend on large interconnected lands and seas–without the formation of the ice, the bears have little to no food to eat. This specific effort to help protect the polar bear is one among many great examples of WILD’s commitment to Nature Needs Half.

>>Read the full press release

>>Watch the Tundra Buggy Cam

At the same event, hosted at the Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco, David Breashears, mountaineer and renowned filmmaker, will pay tribute to his friends Galen and Barbara Rowell and discuss his work in film-making, mountaineering and climate change.  More details on the event >

Did you know that more than 2 million hectares of the Amazon under private ownership is protected by some form of conservation effort?  It’s a pretty amazing fact — and the Amazon is a pretty amazing place.   One in ten known species in the world live in the Amazon Rainforest.  The Amazon is under great threat from deforestation, destruction and development, which not only destroy the forest and the animals and plants living there, but also releases stored carbon into the atmosphere.  Since the industrial revolution, at least 25% of all all emissions have come from destroying wild nature - destroying forests and other natural land, such as the Amazon, is a huge component to global climate change. 

Bruno Monteferri (Peruvian Society for Environmental Law), a friend of WILD’s and WILD9 delegate, recently published a book highlighting the private conservation efforts in the Amazon.  Private Conservation in Amazonian Countries presents how private, voluntary initiatives are being promoted and the obstacles and challenges faced in these initiatives.

The book is a great resource for furthering conservation efforts in the Amazon.  It contains country reports from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, French Guiana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela, and a comparative analysis on the state of private conservation in Amazonian countries – providing an overview of the legal and economic incentives of conservation efforts in the Amazon.  You can download the comparative analysis (English) and the complete book (Spanish) online.  To learn more about this book, you can contact Bruno (bmonteferri (a) spda.org.pe).

There was a time when people gave no thought to wilderness; when our connection to the natural world was a guaranteed issue of food, shelter and avoidance of pain. Given the 120,000 odd years of our position in the global coordination of species and the toll of our behavior, we have come a long ways, to be sure, from that innocent past, as we approach the staggering 7 billion number of individuals. Typically, such numeric prodigiousness would be construed as a biological success, but we know it is not. As Marilyn Hempel, editor of the Population Press recently pointed out, “if fertility remains constant at the levels of 2005-2010, the population of the less developed regions will increased to 9.8 billion in 2050 instead of the 7.9 billion projected by assuming that fertility declines [those projected by the most recent United Nations Population Prospects publication].”

Indeed, says Hempel, “without further reductions of fertility world population could increase by nearly twice as much as currently expected!”

Given that slightly less than 13% of the terrestrial planet and 1% of the world’s marine areas are so far protected under any of the more than thirty standard protection indicators, particularly those designated by the IUCN, this consumptive species of ours faces a daunting dilemma that every working conservationist is more than familiar with. The corridors and parks set aside for the sole benefit of the Other-Nature; or those areas explicitly recognized as protected for habitat, sustainability and development – often driven by the needs of indigenous human habitants, as well as the integrity of the ecosystems they are dependent upon – leaves much doubt as to our willingness or ability to concede something beyond ourselves, those of us who comprise the majority of human denizens, living in urban environments across the planet.

Factoring in the increasing levels of animal consumption by humans and the equation becomes yet more murky, in a world of dramatic climate shifts.

Back in November, 1979 author/naturalist John Fowles wrote a cover story for Harper’s Magazine entitled “Seeing Nature Whole” which began with a kind of heresy, as Fowles thought of it, namely, the realization that Carl von Linné, best remembered as Linnaeus, had exploded the unity of humanity and nature by forging ahead with a binomial nomenclature that would ensure a complete dissociation of feelings and needs, deep urgings and instincts from that which could be defined, and set in concrete: the natural world, and our place within it. Instead of a deep immersion in nature that could be described as metaphysical, Linnaeus had set about to define everything by a Latin, mechanistic hierarchy, as Darwin and scientific method would continue to do. The Victorian work ethic, and its immense hegemony, abetted by iron and steel, coke ovens and steam engines, as well as the obsession with collecting specimens and stuffing them for museums, could not be more at odds with today’s realities. Fowles wrote, “I do not dispute the value of the tool he gave to natural science (speaking of Linneaus)-which was in itself no more than a shrewd extension of the Aristotelian systemŠ.but I have doubts about the lasting change it has effected in ordinary human consciousness.”

The question of consciousness begs an even deeper issue, namely, human conscience. For all of the practical antidotes that conservation biology and sustainability thinking have come up with to protect remaining habitat and species, the matrix of “pain” as a primary qualifier seems to have been lost in the scientific, political and economic shuffle. The pain to individuals meted out by ecologists and non-ecologists alike. By that I refer to the long-overdue recognition that an enormous gulf exists between animal rights considerations and those of large-scale habitat protection. Humans are somewhere caught out in the middle of this debate; a seasoned, churning cauldron that-for many- poses no interest or discussion whatsoever, but is self-evident.

Whereas the majority of humans carry on as if they are the only species dwelling on the Earth, the others -perhaps 100 million species of more- being merely scientific white noise that occasionally delight our children seated in movie theatres or in front of their computers where a digitized lion, or shark or penguin can satisfy their thirst for entertainment, temporarily.

This is more than mere dilemma: it is core to the ethical basis of conservation that continues to elude us: how to minimize pain amongst individuals of all species whilst optimizing every hope of securing those safeguards necessary to ensure a free and future lineage of biodiversity.

ABOUT THE DANCING STAR FOUNDATION

The Dancing Star Foundation works to sensitize people throughout the world to the critical importance of biodiversity, animal protection and conservation; and to instill a respect for all life, which can be demonstrated by even the most modest gestures of kindness, compassion and love in our everyday lives. DSF was created by the late Sue Stiles in 1993, and is based in California. Learn more >

American adults under the age of 35 have come of age in the decades since the “discovery” of man-made climate change as a major societal problem. The oldest of this cohort was twelve in 1988, when NASA climate scientist James Hansen testified at a Senate Energy Committee hearing that global temperature rise was underway and that human-produced greenhouse gases were almost certainly responsible. For this reason, the conventional wisdom holds that young Americans, growing up in a world of ever more certain scientific evidence, increasing news attention, alarming entertainment portrayals, and school-based curricula, should be more engaged with and concerned about the issue of climate change than older Americans.

However, contrary to this conventional wisdom, Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are, for the most part, split on the issue of global warming and, on some indicators, relatively disengaged when compared to older generations.

Overall, the survey data offer no predictable portrait of young people when it comes to global warming: While less concerned about and preoccupied with global warming than older generations, they are slightly more likely to believe that global warming is caused by human factors and that there is scientific consensus that it is occurring. They are also somewhat more optimistic than their elders about the effectiveness of taking action to reduce global warming. And, while they are less open to new information about global warming than older generations, they are much more trusting of scientists and President Obama on the issue. However, they also share older generations’ distrust of the mainstream news media.

Of note, young evangelicals, an increasingly important group politically, place strong levels of trust in religious leaders as sources of information about global warming, though they are also trusting of scientists and President Obama.

Nationwide, liberals and conservatives exhibit wide differences in their beliefs about global warming, with conservatives more skeptical and less engaged than liberals, and this ideological divide is no different among young Americans.

Members of the current college-age generation (18-22 year-olds), who have grown up with even less scientific uncertainty about climate change, are somewhat more concerned and engaged than their slightly older 23-34 year-old counterparts; however, this does not hold across the board. Still, the data suggest untapped potential to engage young Americans on the issue of global warming.

Two important caveats, however:

1) These results are limited to Americans 18 years or older. We are currently collecting data on teenagers aged 13-17, but won’t have this analysis completed for a while.

2) It is also possible that there has been a surge in young people getting politically involved in climate action, but this has not (yet) translated to the entire age cohort. I’ve certainly heard (and seen) anecdotal evidence to support this hypothesis, but we wouldn’t be able to observe such a trend in our national survey data.

Download the full report >

Over the last few months, hopes that a breakthrough in UN negotiations might be forthcoming by next year’s meeting in Mexico have begun to fade. First, Senator Lindsey Graham, a key Republican vote for energy legislation, withdrew his support for passing energy legislation in the U.S. this year. This of course delays progress domestically in the U.S., and it also severely hampers the U.S.’s ability to negotiate effectively at the international level. The decision by a number of moderates in the U.S. Congress (most recently Evan Bayh) not to run for reelection weakens prospects for any meaningful energy legislation. And this is probably why BP, Conoco Philips and Caterpillar announced they were not renewing their participation in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a business and NGO coalition advocating for legislation to reduce carbon emissions. They see no reason to bother.

On the 18th of February Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change announced he’d be resigning later in the year, a strong sign that chances for an imminent breakthrough by the next meeting in Mexico were slim. Then Connie Hedergaard, the former minister for energy and climate in Denmark and president of the UN negotiations in Copenhagen, now European Commissioner for Climate Action, said she didn’t feel an outcome would be reachable by the next UN climate meeting in Mexico. In her view, a new treaty would probably have to wait until the following meeting in 2012 to be hosted by South Africa, one of the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), a coalition widely which is viewed as a lynchpin in the talks.

What about forests and wilderness? The forests debate did gain prominence and momentum in Copenhagen and in particular in the Copenhagen Accord: there is now broad recognition that forests need to be a part of the climate change solution. At the same time, the forests debate continues to be plagued with problems, including the recurring issue of distinguishing between natural forests, which are valuable in sequestering carbon and in climate change adaptation (and provide many other benefits, social and biodiversity related) – and plantations, such as oil palm plantations, which have very few carbon or biodiversity benefits.

Common sense would require safeguards to prevent valuable natural forests from being converted to vast, monoculture palm plantations, but to date it has not been possible to reach agreement on language that will prevent this absurd outcome. A recent draft EU biofuels and bioliquids sustainability scheme includes language that would recognize industrial plantations, including oil palm as forested areas. This demonstrates once again how hard it is to achieve the right result on this issue, despite broad agreement from the scientific and conservation community – as reflected in the Mensaje de Merida – that converting natural forests to plantations is an extraordinarily bad idea. Getting oil palm plantations off the table for carbon credits will be an important sign that countries are finally getting serious about protecting forests.

The question on everyone’s minds now, after emerging from the Copenhagen whirlwind is where are we exactly? Achieving consensus in Copenhagen would have meant finding some way to reunite, or at least establish coherence between the two UNFCCC negotiating “tracks”, which have been in place since the climate talks in Bali over two years ago. But bringing the two tracks together turned out to be a bit more elusive than anticipated.

What are the two tracks? One negotiating track is for countries that have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and believe the way forward is to extend the Protocol for another five year “commitment period” after the first commitment period ends in 2012. In essence that would mean that developed countries would sign up for new emissions reductions targets and developing countries would continue to be off the hook – free of any binding emissions reductions commitments. They didn’t cause this crisis: in their view the developed countries that got us where we are now should hurry up and put money on the table to fix the mess.

A second negotiating track is for countries that have not signed Kyoto – i.e. the U.S. – or countries that believe that a new protocol replacing Kyoto is the way forward. The catch in this second negotiating track is that developed countries are arguing for a new protocol that includes binding and verifiable emissions reductions commitments for fast-developing countries that are major carbon emitters e.g. China and India. This is something that countries like India and China have adamantly refused to consider, especially in light of the very weak emissions reductions targets and financial commitments that developed countries have put on the table.

But after two weeks of furious negotiations in Copenhagen, the tracks did not come together. The fundamental impasse over money and who would have binding emissions reductions targets remained and the talks were gridlocked. Anyone who has ever harbored conspiracy theories about UN power grabs would have been immediately reassured by the intense dysfunction in Copenhagen. The UN does not work without consensus.

And so the result at the end of the two weeks was the Copenhagen Accord, a last minute rabbit pulled out of a hat, apparently in large part by President Obama’s refusal to just let things be. Only a handful of countries negotiated and signed onto the Accord, and it emerged as something of a red-headed step child of the climate negotiations. Many countries complained the Accord was not negotiated in a transparent way and boycotted it, and so the UNFCCC was left to politely “take note” of the document at the end of the conference. Then, with only partial endorsement of the Copenhagen Accord, the UNFCCC had no choice but to announce that it was extending the two tracks for another year. So now, in effect, there are three tracks. And no one is quite sure which train to board.

One feature of the Copenhagen Accord is that it set a date of January 31 for countries to consider the Accord, and decide whether they wanted to sign on and pledge their emissions reductions commitments in the Accord’s annexes. The UNFCCC issued a release yesterday announcing that 55 countries, representing 78% of global emissions and including most major economies, had signed on and pledged emissions reductions. Of course, the pledges (which are non-binding anyway) don’t get emissions down to a level necessary to avoid a 2°C as the Accord calls, for even if all the countries lived up to their commitments. That awkward reality aside, Yvo de Boer the UNFCCC Executive Secretary characterized the pledges as an important development newly invigorating climate negotiations.

So is the Copenhagen Accord the right train to board? There are certainly those who see no reason why the stalemate over money and emissions targets won’t play out exactly the same way in Mexico at the next UNFCCC meeting as it did in Copenhagen. Informal talks will continue in the coming months in different venues, for example at G8 and G20 meetings, so we may get a better gauge of what to expect from world leaders soon. But if that reasoning is correct, and the completely non-binding Copenhagen Accord is currently the only viable track, then prospects for a strong, new climate agreement in the near future are dim. That also means that prospects for a big boost to wilderness conservation from a new climate agreement won’t be forthcoming any time soon. It’s still far too early to give up on that possibility. But it’s an important reminder that we need to push the wilderness agenda at all levels and in all venues. National and State/Provincial level efforts are crucial, as is the Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP 10 this fall in Nagoya, Japan.

Even the handful of countries that engineered the Copenhagen Accord acknowledged that the Accord was only one step in a still unfolding process. Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, looking not very pleased at his press conference after spending much of the last ten hours in a “stuffy” room, called the Accord a “letter of intent.” So what actually happened at COP 15, and just as importantly what comes next?

One of the core issues before delegates at COP 15 was what constitutes a safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations: 450 parts per million or 350 ppm? On this central point, the Copenhagen Accord is silent, missing a golden opportunity to establish 350 ppm as the objective. Maybe silence on was the best that could be done – at least the Accord didn’t set the level at 450ppm, which would have been a disaster.

The Accord states that its objective is to keep global temperature increases below 2°C – and holds open the possibility that a future review of the Accord will indicate the need to set the bar at 1.5°. That would be encouraging except for the fact that the review isn’t until 2016.

To stay below the 2°C threshold the Accord says that industrialized countries will reduce emissions by at least 80% by 2050. But 2050 is a long way off, and the Accord doesn’t say precisely when global emissions must peak. The science tells us that emissions must peak between and begin to decline between 2013-2017, but the Accord’s standard is simply “as soon as possible”.

On the critical question of which countries must reduce their emissions in the short term – and by how much – the Accord is as vague and non-binding as could be: it merely invites countries to inscribe their pledges of emissions reductions in the Accord’s annex by the end of January 2010. It will be interesting to see which countries do so, and what they sign up for. The good news is that for the first time, most countries, including the U.S. and many developing countries that have no obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, are willing to make public commitments to targets – these commitments won’t be binding even if they are added to the Annexes, but they will have at least symbolic value. The bad news is that analyses indicate that the commitments on the table won’t keep us below 2°C…

On finance, the accord confirms $30b in funding for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries over the next three years, pledges to raise $100bn annually for climate change mitigation by 2020, and calls for a High Level Panel to assess possible sources for adaptation funding. It also calls for a Copenhagen Climate Fund will be established under the Convention’s Secretariat. These sums are inadequate, but at least they represent movement towards something concrete.

On the issue of forests, the Accord recognizes the “crucial role” of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries, which is good, strong language. A decision by the COP specifically on REDD+ provides an additional ray of hope, making it clear that conservation must be part of the solution for climate change. The decision also mentions the importance of promoting activities that benefit biodiversity because those activities “may complement the aims and objectives of national forest programmes and relevant international conventions and agreements.”

That language is a far cry from the Mensaje de Merida, which calls for close integration in the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework on Climate Change. But it is the first time that this language has crept in to the UNFCCC’s decisions. Despite the somewhat convoluted articulation, it is a minor concession to common sense: the door has opened a tiny bit more to acknowledging the close link between biodiversity, wilderness and climate change.

That said, despite some encouraging language, REDD+ still has deep flaws: weak protections for the rights of indigenous peoples, no safeguards against logging in intact ecosystems, insufficient funding, and a high level of complexity which could delay implementation in many if not all countries. Nor did the Copenhagen Accord or COP 15 succeed in promoting protection of forests and wilderness areas in developed countries. In fact, had it not been for the heroic efforts of the NGO community, in particular WILD’s friends in the Ecosystems and Climate Alliance, the current perversities in the way developed countries deal with emissions from their forests would have been extended and even worsened.

So the Copenhagen Accord is a very, very weak document – extraordinarily weak for a Convention that has been in place for 17 years, and for a two year process that had such a strong mandate after the climate talks in Bali.

To make matters worse, the Copenhagen Accord is entirely non-binding, and despite its somewhat grand title, the Accord is not even a full COP 15 decision. The preamble merely states that the COP “takes note” of the Accord, which means that the Accord, as vague and non-binding as it is, doesn’t even represent a consensus view of the Conference of the Parties. It’s hard to imagine a UN body expressing its deep ambivalence on a given subject more clearly than that.

The Copenhagen Accord doesn’t quite represent a total collapse of the climate negotiations – but it’s close. The core objective of the UNFCCC – reaching a legally binding agreement that commits the entire global community to drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to bringing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to safe levels – remains a distant goal.

With no agreement within reach, COP 15 had only option available, which was to mandate the continuation of the two track negotiating process in place since Bali: one track working on an extension of the Kyoto Protocol (under which developing countries have no obligations, and which does not include the U.S.) and one track for an alternative climate agreement that would complement or maybe even supersede Kyoto. No one has found a way forward to bridge the developed country – developing country divide and merge these two tracks. Tuvalu and its partners in the Association of Small Island States that are so vulnerable to rising sea levels had the moral leverage to do so, and they gave it their best shot, but they failed. So the unsuccessful two track approach continues: deadlocked and in a weird state of suspended animation.

With Copenhagen ending in near disaster, it’s difficult to imagine how, in a mere 12 months, and with only one inter-sessional negotiation, this stalemate will be resolved. It’s even harder to see how the international community will find the conviction it needs to move beyond sterile language and cumbersome bureaucratic mechanisms, and towards a bold vision where the full power of nature and wilderness is harnessed for both mitigation and adaptation.

The Mensaje de Merida attracted as many signatories as it did – over 80 NGOs and counting, including most of the largest in the world – not to mention some of the world’s leading conservationists – precisely because it attempts to carve out a space for a straightforward idea in a negotiating environment where clarity of vision is too often absent from the agenda. The message is not complicated: we cannot reduce our carbon dioxide emissions fast enough and avert dangerous climate change unless we protect our planet’s wilderness areas. But it has not yet been heard. WILD and its partners need to keep promoting the Mensaje.

Maybe our leaders will go home and reflect over the winter holidays about the fact that 45,000 people registered to attend COP 15, and another 100,000 demonstrated in the streets. Maybe the stunningly bad news on melting ice sheets and arctic sea-ice decline will begin to sink in. Maybe now that they have a little more time on their hands they’ll think about the fact that despite the Kyoto Protocol, global emissions are over 40% higher today than they were in 1990, that the Copenhagen Accord is weak, and that a radical new approach is now necessary.

We should not give up hope that a new way forward will somehow emerge from the wreckage of COP 15. Political will can be unpredictable and the politicians are surely aware that after Copenhagen public opinion is not on their side and the news on climate change is only getting worse. President Calderon of Mexico came to WILD9 and spoke with conviction of the clear linkages between wilderness and conservation. He also has reportedly expressed his desire for a different kind of process than the one we witnessed careening out of control in Copenhagen.

But nor should we count on COP 16 in Mexico to provide the solution: COP 16 may go the way of COP 15, and if it does so, absolutely no one will be holding their breath until COP 17. Maybe the most important lesson from Copenhagen for our leaders is that they shouldn’t be waiting for a new climate agreement to protect wilderness areas around the world. With or without a climate agreement, the time for leadership on climate change and wilderness conservation is now.

But on the two most important points, the amount of emissions reductions countries will commit to, and the amount of finance that will be made available to developing countries, progress has been insufficient, and the hope of a last minute breakthrough was fading. A leaked document from the UNFCCC’s Secretariat indicated that the level of emissions reductions promised by countries in these negotiations wouldn’t prevent a dangerous rise in average temperature of 2°C – in fact, it would lead to an average increase in temperature of 3°C, a social and environmental disaster. And although the $100 billion USD in funding per year from 2020 onwards that developed countries are offering to raise for developing countries is a major step in the right direction, even that sum would fall well short of what’s needed.

Of course, there has been progress in Copenhagen, and if this had been a negotiating session with less lofty expectations, participants would probably be fairly happy with the results. One area of progress has been on a mechanism for protecting forests in developing countries, referred to as “reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation” or “REDD+”. This mechanism will likely generate agreed upon text, and just as importantly, some financial commitments. It will likely be presented as one of the key outcomes of the sessions in Copenhagen.

But even the $3.5 billion USD in fast-start financing over three years that has been pledged for this mechanism by developed countries is far below what it should be – at least $10 billion USD and ideally in the $25 billion USD range. And much more could have been done to protect forests immediately without waiting for a REDD+ mechanism to be implemented. Peru’s commitment to end deforestation by 2020 provides the kind of leadership and vision that have been sadly lacking until now in Copenhagen. And the fact that developed countries are manipulating the accounting rules for emissions from their own forests, while asking developing countries to submit stringent verification procedures on REDD+, is deeply disappointing. It’s fair to say the hypocrisy of this approach has not gone unnoticed.

The sad truth from a wilderness perspective is that right now, the Copenhagen outcome seems to be a partial success for forests and other ecosystems in developing countries, combined with a very unsatisfactory result for wilderness areas in developed countries. And if we don’t get an aggressive set of global emissions reductions targets, it won’t matter anyway because many of the forests and other intact ecosystems we should be protecting will likely dry up and burn, or otherwise deteriorate.

Copenhagen was a step forward, and the 110 or so politicians lining up to take the stage today will have some good news to share. But unless a miracle takes place over night, Copenhagen will not produce the hoped for historic breakthrough, and the overall result will be disappointing. What needs to happen on the last day in Copenhagen is one of two things. A commitment by negotiators to work through the weekend and into next week until they can hammer out a better result. Or a commitment to regroup and reconvene in six months to finish the job. Greenwash and hyperbole from the politicians are unacceptable, and most people who care about the planet’s future will find any attempt at greenwash deeply insulting and inflammatory.

“I am profoundly honored to participate in this landmark climate change conference and to share our work with government officials, policymakers and concerned citizens from all over the world,” Balog says. “NASA’s sponsorship is a tremendous vote of confidence in EIS and its mission.”

En route to COP 15, at the invitation of the Alaska Conservation Foundation, Balog spoke at an event in New York City at the home of Susan and David Rockefeller, Jr. and made a live appearance on CNN Newsroom. Since arriving in Copenhagen, Balog has appeared in footage shown on CNN’s American Morning and was featured Tuesday on CNN.com’s Opinion section.

To keep up with James Balog in Copenhagen, click here.

Tuvalu is a small island nation in the South Pacific. No part of Tuvalu is more than 4 meters above sea level. For Tuvalu there is nothing remote or theoretical about climate change. Rising sea levels aren’t something they can adapt to – it’s something that simply wipes the country out. And so, exasperated by the horrifyingly slow pace of negotiations in Copenhagen, Tuvalu decided to take matters into its own hands.

One of the key questions before negotiators in Copenhagen is the “legal form” of the outcome. Will an entirely new climate agreement be generated, or will the existing Kyoto Protocol simply be extended?

This legal form issue has far reaching implications because large developing countries, such as China and India, have no obligations to reduce their emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Developed countries want a new agreement specifically because they want to see India and China included; they argue (correctly) that solving climate change isn’t possible without them.

China and India are willing to make emissions reductions, but don’t want to be legally bound to do so – at least not until industrialized countries make deep emissions cuts of their own and provide the funding necessary for developing countries to deal with climate change. They argue (also correctly) that the US is not bound in any way to reduce emissions because it hasn’t even bothered to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and Canada, which did ratify Kyoto, made a mockery of its obligations (Canada is supposed to be 6% below 1990 emissions levels by 2012 but is currently 29% above). As a result, they are waiting for leadership and financial commitment from industrialized countries.

Until now, neither side has been willing to back down in this elaborate game of chicken, and with the clock ticking away in Copenhagen and no one blinking, Tuvalu decided it couldn’t wait any more. It forced the “legal form” issue into the open by making a proposal for a new climate treaty that would encompass everyone, while at the same time preserving much of the structure from Kyoto. Then it courageously insisted that its proposal be officially considered. Because Tuvalu’s proposal suited neither side, proceedings in the plenary sessions of the two “tracks” of the negotiations ground to a halt. Technical deliberations in working groups and subsidiary bodies continued, and eventually Tuvalu allowed the plenaries to restart. But Tuvalu is still insisting that its proposal be considered, a ticking time bomb in these negotiations which could bring about a total collapse of the talks.

What does this have to do with forests and wilderness? While Tuvalu was making desperate pleas for progress in the plenary sessions, work was ongoing on a deal to provide funding to developing countries for protecting their tropical forests. The terms of that deal are not complete, but the language on tropical conservation (under the REDD+ mechanism) looks promising. Much work remains, and many questions are yet unanswered, but there is real enthusiasm that protecting tropical forests could be one of the positive outcomes of Copenhagen.

At the same time, everyone is keenly aware that the impasse between developed and developing countries has not yet been resolved. And it has escaped no one’s notice that Obama has made encouraging comments on tropical forest conservation from Oslo. Will conservation of forests become a bargaining chip as a result of its new-found political significance, and if so, will it be bargained away or hopelessly watered down in the interests of a larger deal?

For now, nobody knows. On Saturday negotiators agreed that they had done all they could and had not been able to resolve their differences . It is now up to the ministers who are rushing to Copenhagen for the second week of the talks to try to salvage the negotiations and preserve the deal on tropical forests and wilderness. If they don’t succeed, it will be up to the heads of State a few days later to do their best.

The planet desperately needs the world community to reach an agreement, and forests, both in developed countries and developing countries must be part of the deal. We cannot avert dangerous climate change without protecting the planet’s remaining wilderness areas.

WILD has been doing its part as a voice for wilderness in Copenhagen. The Mensaje de Merida, launched at WILD9, has been sent to dozens of government Parties, and WILD has been holding meetings with government delegates all week to review the Mensaje. WILD’s partners at the Ecosystems Climate Alliance and Conservation International, both of whom were well represented at WILD9 have been very instrumental in helping us get this statement in front of government officials. NGOs viewing the Mensaje in Copenhagen are also adding their names as sponsors.

In a hard-nosed, high-stakes, and often deeply cynical negotiation process in Copenhagen, maybe some negotiators will seek a little inspiration from the wilderness. As they are saying here in Copenhagen – there is no plan(et) B.

“Wilderness protection on land and sea is key to both of these missions and the UNFCCC and CBD must work in a coordinated and urgent manner to facilitate protecting wilderness around the world,” said WILD9 Chairman Exequiel Ezcurra.

The Mensaje is available for download in ENGLISH, FRENCH, and SPANISH. To sign the Mensaje as an organization, please send your organization name, logo and the name and title of your organizational representative to Emily Loose (Emily@wild.org). To sign the Mensaje as an indiviudal, you can reply to this post with your name, country and affiliation, or send this information to Emily.

WILD’s just signed on to Make Forests Count, adding our name to the growing list of global citizens who are asking their governments to include emissions caused by cutting forests and draining wetlands in the upcoming UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December.  You can sign too!

Forest and wetland destruction account for 20% of the world’s carbon emissions. It’s time to take this threat more seriously and Make Forests Count in Copenhagen.  Read more about wilderness and climate change >

Take action and make forests count in the global climate agreement!

Trista Patterson, Senior Scientist with the US Forest Service, writes about her experience at the 8th World Wilderness Congress, Anchorage, Alaska (2005).

I feel deeply that participation in the 8th WWC challenged me to develop my speaking style. The resulting growth in my work and ability to ‘reach’ people is something I’m so deeply grateful for, and I’m not sure how to express it. My work as a scientist was very influenced by my participation in the 8th WWC, in understanding how to communicate science differently and more effectively, using images and ideas, rather than statistics and tables.

In 2005, during the sessions of the International League of Conservation Photographers at the 8th WWC, Tui De Roy did this wonderful presentation on albatross, and she explained how its possible to intentionally use imagery to lead an audience through emotionally difficult territory. Basically, it has to do with using images/information of things that leave the heart closed, and balancing it with images/information that help the heart open- take in more, imagine potential, imagine the future, imagine ‘pitching in’, etc. This is incredibly important in my work right now because one of the greatest barriers to reaching people about issues of urgency, is that fear shuts them down. Imagine climate change, or ocean acidification. If we want people to be able to cope, understand and change, we have to learn how to keep them open. As a scientist, for me that means going further than banging the audience over the head with that oft-used CO2 hockey-stick graph, or a ‘sad polar bear on iceberg’ shot.

Also, at the writers guild at the 8th WWC, David Quammen described a second thing that really has influenced my work- that it’s possible to give someone something through your work, that doesn’t make an immediate impression on them… they take it away, and then some time in the future it ‘pops open inside of them’. I think of this often because it helps me become more strategic in my work.

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Our photo of the week was taken by James Balog, iLCP member and our photographer of the month.

This photo was taken in Disko Bay, located off the western coast of Greenland. It shows ice drifting in the North Atlantic Ocean that had broken off of the Greenland Ice Sheet. These ice pieces melt and contribute to the rise of sea level.

Balog will be one of the many premier photographers presenting during the WILD9 plenary presentation and also participating in the many events planned by the iLCP for WILD9 (WiLDSpeak). WILD9, the 9th World Wilderness Congress, will convene from 6-13 November, Merida Mexico.

Our photo of the week was taken by James Balog (iLCP member and our photographer of the month). The image is of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The meltwater lakes and streams shown on the glacier, located east of Kangerlussuaq, are believed to be extremely important in understanding how large amounts of ice have disappeared in the past.

One of the missions of Balog’s current project, the Extreme Ice Survey, is to show the effects of melting glaciers on global sea level. This photo of the partially melted Greenland Ice Sheet is a great representation of the ice that is melting.

Balog will be one of the many premier photographers presenting during the WILD9 plenary presentation and also participating in the many events planned by the iLCP for WILD9 (WiLDSpeak). WILD9, the 9th World Wilderness Congress, will convene from 6-13 November, Merida Mexico.

This is not to say that offsets are entirely a bad thing, or should be taken off the table. The fact remains that we need to make deep cuts in emissions quickly and one way to make deep cuts quickly and in a cost effective manner is to use offsets, including protecting large wilderness areas in the tropics. However, the point is how, or more precisely when offsets are used: they should only be available to developed countries after those countries have achieved deep reductions in domestic emissions. In other words, if a country successfully reduces its carbon emissions below an aggressive initial target, making offsets and trade-able permits available to help it reduce emissions even further would seem to be an acceptable approach. But offsets should not be the starting point.

So what does that mean for wilderness protection? Reducing and eventually eliminating the roughly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions that come from tropical forests is still an urgent priority, but it will be necessary for the global community to find some additional financial mechanisms beyond market mechanisms to make this happen, at least in the short term. Fortunately, there are a number of options for filling the funding gap.

One option is to use a “hybrid” mechanism, i.e. auction revenues from cap and trade systems to pay for wilderness protection – an approach several countries have already taken or plan to take (Germany and the US for example), and one which could produce billions of dollars. Another is to use a fund-based system, increasing bilateral and multilateral development assistance. This would certainly help, and is especially important for the institution and capacity building necessary to protect tropical forests. But traditional overseas development assistance is unlikely to provide funding at the necessary scale. Another is a proposal to use taxes on international aviation and maritime industries, which also has good potential, but which of course will be fiercely opposed by those industries.

It’s not yet clear exactly what the mix will be. But there is no question that there are ways to make funding available. We absolutely need to act quickly, and wilderness protection must be part of the solution – we can’t avoid dangerous temperature increases unless we protect wilderness. But the need to act quickly should never be used as an excuse to make developing countries bear the brunt of emissions reductions.

The key conclusion of the report is that human induced climate change is already impacting the United States, and that our early actions today are critical to reduce the severity of the changes we will experience in the future. The longer we wait, the harder it gets, and the worse off we are. The list of impacts predicted in the report by the end of the century under worst case scenarios is all too familiar – we’ve seen it in the IPCC reports and we’ve heard it from Al Gore: expanding dead zones in coastal marine areas, flooding, more droughts, threats to agriculture from changes in temperature and precipitation patterns, and also from disease pathogens, pests and weeds expanding their ranges, fisheries shifting northwards, decreases in freshwater availability, increases in wildfires etc. etc. Maybe one of the more dramatic pieces of information was that under the “higher emissions scenario” large parts of Texas, Arizona and California could experience over 100 days over 100 degrees by 2080. The drastic implications for wilderness and wildlife – and definitely not just polar bears – are very troubling.

We can only hope that the release of this report, along with the threat of having the Environmental Protection Agency regulate CO2 as a pollutant, is part of a concerted strategy to place increasing pressure on Congress to pass climate change legislation by the end of the summer – and for the Senate to support the new climate agreement that the U.S. will negotiate in Copenhagen this December.

Unfortunately, to date the signs are very mixed for strong climate legislation. Under H.R. 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act (or “ACES”) proposed by the House, the U.S. is targeting emissions reductions of 17% by 2020. By contrast, the European Union is targeting a reduction of 20% by 2020, and is willing to up that to 30% if other developed countries follow suit. The difference between 17% and 20% doesn’t seem too bad – until you consider that the EU is aiming for reductions below 1990 emissions levels, while the U.S. is only aiming for reductions below 2005 levels. Those inclined to see the glass half full argue that while the U.S. target is too low, the activities called for in the bill will in fact lower emissions considerably more – maybe to as much as 17% below 1990 levels, which would be much better, and they also point to commitments to much deeper cuts by 2050.

From a wilderness standpoint, the U.S. legislation does a good thing – it recognizes that protecting forests around the world is a great way to fight climate change. So ACES sets up an auction system for emissions permits and uses 5% of the revenue from these permits to help fight deforestation internationally. Given auction revenue is expected to be in the 60 billion dollar range, this would amount to roughly 3 billion dollars – a significant ratcheting up of the U.S. has contribution to international conservation efforts. 1% of auction revenues (scaling up to 4%) would go to helping countries adapt to the impacts of climate change, which could also involve conservation benefits if these measures involve nature-based adaptation projects.

But the U.S. is only auctioning 15% of its emissions permits. 85% will be given out for free, greatly reducing the incentive for emissions reductions. It may not be realistic politically to ask for more. But think of how much more we could do for our wilderness areas around the world, for all the people who depend on them, and to fight climate change if we set more aggressive targets and auctioned even just 30% of the emissions permits. Based on the report just released by the White House, it turns out we would benefit here in the United States as well.