Gaia partners fighting global warming

A number of our partners over the years are actively fighting global warming and climate change through mitigating activities – activities that reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses that lead to global warming – and adaptation activities in order to minimize the impact of global warming.

The Gaia-Movement has been involved in many of these activities of our partners by helping to start them up, by helping to obtain funding for these and by directly donating funds to these. Find examples of this at the top menu under “Gaia Projects” and find a link to older projects at our projects page.

The following powerpoint pages tell about various mitigating and adaptation activities of our partners within The Federation of Associations connected to the International Humana People to People Movement – in short HPP – and how these activities help in the fight against global warming.

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Mitigating Activities

 

1 Reuse of second-hand clothes

 

 

 

 

2 Reducing emissions by reducing waste2

 

 

 

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3 Storing carbon in soils

 

 

 

4 Planting trees

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5 Using carbon-neutral energy5a

 

 

 

Adaptation Activities

6 Improving crop diversity6a

 

 

 

 

7 Preparing for more irregular weather8

 

 

 

8 Caring for water resources8a

 

 

 

 

9 Teaching in schools9a

 

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Trees Are My Best Friends, India

Here is another example of Gaia funding that has led to a much greater result.

In 2013, the Gaia-Movement’s Tree-planting Fund supported a number of associations with funds for tree planting campaigns, among them Humana People to People India. Much came out of this directly in the form of trees planted  in many of the Indian states, and it led to more funding with many more people involved and many more trees planted.

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Read here the beautiful book made by Humana People to People India called Trees Are My Best Friends – a book on Environment, Art and Education (4.7 MB).

Climate Compliance, St. Vincent

St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a small nation in the Caribbean. The Gaia-Movement has previously worked together with the institution Richmond Vale Academy on a tree planting project on St. Vincent, and has recently given a loan for a solar energy system to support the institution’s efforts to make the whole nation Climate Compliant.

Such an endeavour starts by setting up good examples of what can be done.

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Open or download a presentation about how the people at Richmond Vale Academy work with renewable energy – Changing-the-World HiRes (11MB). In low resolution (0.5 MB), Changing-the-World LoRes

Watch the Youtube movie about Richmond Vale Academy working to become climate compliant – Making RVA Climate Compliant

Firewood saving stoves, Mozambique

This is an example of how the Gaia-Movement has helped an organisation start an environmental activity which has then opened up for such activities on a larger scale.

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Read here how the 2012 Trial Stove Project in Mozambique started up exactly as a trial.

It then developed into an actual production and sales of firewood saving stoves, which you can read about in this report from ADPP Mozambique – Firewood_saving_stoves_project (1.5 MB)

Movie on “Biofuels for Local Development”

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Read about the project in Guinea Bissau, “Biofuels for Local Development”, where small-scale farmers have been trained and helped to expand their jatropha fences, and use the nuts to produce oil.

Or watch the movie “Our Climate, Our Challenge. Guinea-Bissau” made by Humana People to People. Parts of this film is about the people and the issues targeted by the “Biofuels for Local Development” project.

Extreme weather could become norm around Indian Ocean

One more example of how countries in the poor part of the world will be hit by extreme weather and natural disasters as the globe heats up.

This study shows that there is a great likelihood that the weather in countries around the Indian Ocean is becoming more extreme due to cyclical changes in the ocean temperatures and the impact these have:

What do the torrential rains that swept across a swathe of East Africa in 1997 have in common with the record-breaking drought that Australia has just emerged from? Both can be blamed on El Niño’s Indian Ocean sibling.

A study looking at how climate change will affect this ocean oscillation pattern has predicted that if the world is allowed to warm uncontrollably, these kinds of extreme events will become the norm by 2050.

The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is an oscillation of warm water across the equator. In the oscillation\’s positive phase, sea surface temperatures in the Arabian Sea rise whereas temperatures around Sumatra, Indonesia, fall. In the negative phase, it’s the other way around.

As well as being blamed for Australia’s recent dry spell and the 1997 East African storms, the IOD\’s positive phase has been linked to droughts in Australia and dry weather in Indonesia over the last 6500 years, according to a 2007 study of fossilised coral. The study also concluded that positive events are becoming more frequent, with an unprecedented 11 occurrences over the past 30 years.

via Extreme weather could become norm around Indian Ocean – environment – 29 November 2013 – New Scientist.

Floating Offshore Wind Turbines Could Drive Japan’s Renewable Energy Future

From Renewable Energy World:

Chris Rose

Less than three years after the disaster at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, a hotly-anticipated floating offshore wind turbine began operating 20 kilometres from the damaged site on Monday.

A number of news organisations reported that Yuhei Sato, governor of Fukushima, said that the floating turbine could become a symbol of the region’s desire to become a green energy centre.

“Fukushima is making a stride toward the future step by step,” Bloomberg quoted Sato saying at a ceremony marking the project’s initiation. “Floating offshore wind is a symbol of such a future.”

The experimental project is funded by the government and led by Marubeni Corp. It requires approval from local fishermen before becoming a commercial operation. The 2-megawatt turbine from Hitachi Ltd. was nicknamed “Fukushima Mirai,” the Bloomberg report said, adding a floating substation has also been set up and bears the name “Fukushima Kizuna.” Mirai means future, while kizuna translates as ties.

Two more turbines by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., with 7 MW of capacity each, are expected to also be installed. Bloomberg noted the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has said the floating offshore capacity may be expanded to 1,000 MW.

“For Japan, which is surrounded by deep oceans, floating wind turbines hold the promise of opening up large areas to produce clean energy,” the Bloomberg story added. “The technology involves attaching turbines to structures that float in areas too deep for traditional towers fixed to the seafloor.”

via Floating Offshore Wind Turbines Could Drive Japan’s Renewable Energy Future.

Recharged Japan Solar PV Industry Hits 10 GW of Installed Capacity

Read here a report on how Japan, by establishing government subsidies and by ensuring a fixed high price for solar energy has managed to install solar systems corresponding to two nuclear power stations after the Fukushima disaster.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in Japan have now reached the 10 gigawatts (GW) milestone for cumulative PV capacity. Japan is only the fifth country to reach this mark, after Germany, Italy, China and the U.S. Both the U.S. and China reached 10 GW of solar PV within the past few months, according to new research featured in the NPD Solarbuzz Asia Pacific PV Market Quarterly Report.

The First GW PV Country in 2004

This new landmark for the Japanese solar industry comes nine years after Japan was crowned the first country to break through 1 GW of cumulative solar PV, back in 2004.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) launched a subsidy program for residential PV systems as far back as 1994. Initially, the subsidy covered 50 percent of the cost of PV systems. The budget for FY 1994 was 2 billion Yen.

Until 2005, Japan had the largest installed PV capacity of any country in the world. This early leadership position was achieved through a well-managed set of programs, coupled with attractive market incentives.

The early growth of the Japanese PV market was a strong factor in establishing Japanese manufacturing as the first dominant force in the solar PV industry. Manufacturers that benefited from the first phase of government initiatives include several of the companies that are now leaders in the domestic PV industry revival: Sharp, Sanyo and Kyocera.

via Recharged Japan Solar PV Industry Hits 10 GW of Installed Capacity.

Tibetan glaciers are shrinking at their summits

Read here, from Nature, about how the glaciers high in the Tibetan Plateau are melting. They are at such altitudes, that such melting should not take place.

The Tibetan glaciers are shrinking. Most of the retreat is thought to be taking place at low elevations, but research now shows that the glaciers may also be losing ice at altitudes up to 6,000 metres.

“The glaciers are virtually being decapitated from the top by a warming climate,” says Kang Shichang, a glaciologist at Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in Beijing.

His team looks at signals left in ice by environmental incidents that changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere. “When air bubbles were trapped in glacial ice, so were chemical compounds” in the air, says Kang.

Among those incidents are nuclear tests that were especially frequent between 1952 and 1963, releasing radioactive compounds such as tritium. “This left a distinctive signature in glaciers around the world,” says Kang.

He got a gloomy feeling when examining ice cores drilled from two Tibetan glaciers at about 6,000 metres, he explained at the 28th Himalayan Karakoram Tibet Workshop and the 6th International Symposium on Tibetan Plateau Joint Conference in Tubingen, Germany, last month.

A core from the Lanong glacier in southern Tibet shows neither the tritium peak associated with nuclear testing nor any trace of radioactive compounds from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine in 1986. This suggests that ice layers laid down on the glacier from the 1950s onwards have melted or sublimated away.

The second ice core, from the Guoqu glacier in central Tibet, has the chemical fingerprints of the nuclear tests and the Galunggung volcanic eruption in Indonesia in 1982, but not the Chernobyl signal. Moreover, the core’s mercury content, which tracks well with global and regional emission trends, ends abruptly in the 1980s. “The glacier has been losing ice in the past three decades,” says Kang.

via Tibetan glaciers are shrinking at their summits : Nature News & Comment.