Na semana passada foi realizada, em Londres, uma conferência mundial sobre o ambiente. Deixo-vos dois artigos que encontrei sobre esta conferência intitulada "planetunderpressure2012" e o respectivo site, para os qual remeto para mais informações: http://www.planetunderpressure2012.net/

Nota : os dois artigos que se seguem encontram-se em inglês porque não encontrei nenhum artigo ou notícia sobre esta conferência em português.

Artigo retirado do "environment news service":

Planet Under Pressure: 'a Much Hotter Planet':

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LONDON, UK, March 26, 2012 (ENS) - Scientists at the Planet under Pressure conference in London today added their stern warning to others issued over the past several weeks - time is running out to minimize the risk of irreversible, long-term climate change and other dramatic changes to Earth's life support system.

The 2,800 scientists, policymakers and business representatives opened their four-day conference with a reading of Earth's vital signs and an ominous prognosis, "without immediate action, societies everywhere face an uncertain future on what may become a much hotter planet."

Hosted by The Royal Society UK's Living with Environmental Change program, this is the largest gathering of experts in global sustainability ahead of the UN Rio+20 summit in Brazil in June and the largest gathering ever of such a group of experts.

To Professor Will Steffen, a conference speaker, there are several potentially dangerous environmental "tipping points," among them the melting of the polar ice sheets and the thawing of perennially frozen northern permafrost soils.

Steffen, a global change expert from the Australian National University, says, "The last 50 years have without doubt seen the most rapid transformation of the human relationship with the natural world in history."

Steffen calls the "explosion in human activity" over the past several decades, "The Great Acceleration."

"Many human activities reached take-off points sometime in the 20th century and sharply accelerated towards the end of the century. It is the scale and speed of the Great Acceleration that is truly remarkable," Steffen said. "This has largely happened within one human lifetime."

"Where on Earth are we going?" he asks.

Key indicators of the planet's state, conference speakers agreed, include growing consumption of freshwater supplies and energy by swelling numbers of people worldwide, even as billions of people lack even the most basic elements of well-being.

There are higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Phosphorus extraction and fertilizer production send nutrient runoff into the sea, causing huge dead zones in coastal areas.

Then the scientists report, we have rising air and ocean temperatures, melting sea ice, polar ice sheets and Arctic permafrost, rising sea levels and ocean acidification, biodiversity loss and land use changes.

At a planetary level, humanity is altering the global carbon cycle, water cycle and nitrogen cycle, warns Steffen. He worries about the release of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from melting permafrost because it stores the equivalent of twice the carbon in the atmosphere.

Steffen warns about the "compost bomb," another potential contributor to a hotter Earth. The microbial respiration in thawed soils, he says, are "leading to a tipping point where heat is produced more rapidly than it can be dissipated."

"All these environmental tipping point phenomena are part of a single system," that Steffen says becomes clear, "when we look at how the Earth has behaved in the past."

"The key point is," he said, "we may reach a threshold for the Earth as a whole this century. Either we turn around a lot of these trends - the carbon dioxide trend, deforestation and so on - or we allow them to continue and push the Earth as a whole across a threshold whereby a lot of these tipping elements are activated and the world moves into a new, much warmer state."

"There are signs that some drivers of global change are slowing or changing," said another conference speaker, Professor Diana Liverman, co-director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona and visiting Oxford University academic.

Liverman says Earth has entered a new geological epoch hallmarked by the profound ecosystem impacts of one species - humans - so much so that it marks an entirely new geological timespan that she calls the "Anthropocene."

Pressure will ease off the planet somewhat, says Liverman. "Population growth is slowing and will level off; the intensity of energy and carbon required for a unit of production is declining; agricultural intensification is slowing and forests are starting to expand in some regions."

"On the other hand," she said, "average resource consumption per person, already high in some regions, is growing steeply in emerging economies even as many poor people cannot meet basic human needs. In some countries people are consuming far too much, including carbon, water and other resources embodied in trade. We have a long way to go to turn things around."

Artigo retirado do "environment news network":

Sustainable Cities: Meeting the Challenge of Rapid Urbanization the Focus of “Planet under Pressure 2012″:

Addressing the social, environmental and economic challenges associated with rapid and growing urbanization is bringing some 3,000 experts from around the world together in London this week for the “Planet Under Pressure 2012″ conference.

With world population forecast to increase from 7 billion today to more than 9 billion by 2050, humanity’s urban footprint will take up 1.5 million more square kilometers of land by 2030 at current rates, an area comparable to that of France, Germany and Spain combined. That translates into an average 1 million more city dwellers every week for the next 38 years, with the world’s total urban population forecast to increase from 3.5 billion today to 6.3 billion by 2050, according to Planet Under Pressure 2012conference organizers.

These trends are impossible to stop, practically speaking, which means that the question is not whether or not urbanization should take place, but how best to urbanize, states Dr. Michael Fragkias of Arizona State University, one among nearly 3,000 conference participants.

“Today’s ongoing pattern of urban sprawl puts humanity at severe risk due to environmental problems,” Fragkias adds, issues that conference attendees intend to discuss, debate and offer solutions to. “Dense cities designed for efficiency offer one of the most promising paths to sustainability, and urbanization specialists will share a wealth of knowledge available to drive solutions.”

Cities place tremendous strains on natural resources and the environment. New ways of thinking about how to make cities more self-sufficient and sustainable, along with advances in a wide range of technologies and heightened environmental awareness is leading to a reformulation of urban planning and development, however.

Cities, CO2 and climate change:

Cities are responsible for more than 70% of global CO2 emissions, with urban area greenhouse gas emissions increasing in recent decades. Urban-area CO2 emissions were estimated at about 15 billion metric tons in 1990. That increased to 25 billion metric tons in 2010, with forecasts of that growing to 36.5 billion by 2030 given a “business-as-usual” scenario.”

Focusing on “urban efficiencies,” such as using weather conditions and time of day-adjusted tolls stems to reduce traffic congestion, is essential if the world’s societies are to address climate change, according to Shobhakar Dhakal, executive director of the Tokyo-based Global Carbon Project.

Vehicle traffic congestion not only wastes fuel and causes pollution, but also time. People wasted an estimated 4.2 billion hours sitting or moving slowly in traffic in the US alone in 2005. The estimated cost of traffic congestion in lost productivity in New York City has been estimated to total $4 billion a year.

Despite being faced with urbanization at a scale never experienced before, emerging cities do have advantages compared to earlier times.

“Re-engineering cities is urgently needed for global sustainability,” says Dr. Dhakal, adding that emerging urban areas “have a latecomer’s advantage in terms of knowledge, sustainability thinking, and technology to better manage such fundamentals as trash and transportation.”

A smart, interconnected “internet of things”:

In addition, smart buildings, cars, transportation, power, water and waste systems are examples of an emerging “Internet of things,” Dr. Dhakal points out, offering “a fast-growing number of high-tech, artificially intelligent, Internet-connected cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines and more – in total about one trillion in use worldwide today.”

Among the digital computing and telecommunications that can be employed to improve the sustainability of cities and better cope with urbanization are:

High-tech ways to improve the efficiency of urban operations and human health and well-being, according to Planet Under Pressure 2012 participants include:

• Rapid patient screening and diagnostics with digitalized health records;
• Utility meters and sensors that monitor the capacity of the power generation network and continually gather data on supply and demand of electricity;
• Integrated traveler information services and toll road pricing based on traffic, weather and other data;
• Data gathering and feedback from citizens using mobile phones.

“Our focus should be on enhancing the quality of urbanization – from urban space, infrastructure, form and function, to lifestyle, energy choices and efficiency,” according to Dr. Dhakal. Care also needs to be taken to avoid the myriad potential problems that may come with dense urbanization, such as paralyzing traffic congestion, pollution, crime, the rapid spread of infectious disease and other societal problems.

“The way cities have grown since World War II is neither socially or environmentally sustainable and the environmental cost of ongoing urban sprawl is too great to continue,” adds Prof. Karen Seto of Yale University, who with colleagues is organizing four of the 160 conference sessions at Planet Under Pressure 2012.

“The planet can’t afford not to urbanize,” Seto continues. “People everywhere, however, have increasingly embraced Western styles of architecture and urbanization, which are resource-intense and often not adapted to local climates. The North American suburb has gone global, and car-dependent urban developments are more and more the norm.”

Water, food, energy, environment - looking beyond city limits:

The best ways to address urbanization is one of several broad, increasingly pressing topical areas on the conference agenda. Former UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) chairman Yvo de Boer will be among those leading a discussion on Green Economic Development. Director of Delhi University’s Institute of Economic Growth will lead a panel discussion to do with providing access to clean water and healthy food for the poorest segments of national populations, while Imperial College Professor Georgina Mace will lead a discussion of risks, challenges and opportunities related to planetary stewardship.

Planet Under Pressure 2012 attendees will also examine discuss these issues beyond city limits. “A more general theme of the conference is underlined by the urbanization issue – that much of the planet’s future is tied up in interconnected issues – climate change and city design, city resource demands and impacts on rural areas, rural food and water productivity and the ability of cities to continue functioning,” explains Dr. Mark Stafford Smith, Planet Under Pressure co-chair. ”

The deep intensity of interconnectedness of these issues requires an integrated approach, tackling challenges together rather than each individually, one at a time.”