Nagoya

In the period 18th-29th October representatives of 192 countries met at Nagoya in Japan to make a treaty about saving  Biodoversity, (about saving our Life Support systems.)

A treaty had been made in 2002 with aims to reduce biodiversity loss by 2010 and all countries had failed in these targets. 2010 had been planned then to be the International year of Biodiversity.

In December 2009 there had been a similar international meeting at Copenhagen to make a treaty about Climate change but no agreement had been reached, which was disappointing. There had been lots of media publicity about this.

There has been disappointingly  little media publicity about the Nagoya Convention.

CEL made posters and invited churches to display them.

Now people are asking what were the results of the conference?

Well there was an agreements and there are results!!
There was a lot of brinkmanship - not agreement had been reached by 28th. The last day on the 29th the meeting was extended into the early hours of the 30th.

The sticking point had been the third aim of the process:- The Nagoya Protocol on genetic resources. This  has taken nearly 20 years to agree and sets rules governing how nations manage and share benefits derived from forests and seas to create new drugs, crops or cosmetics.


Once that was agreed then the other decisions could be agreed too.


 In the Strategic Plan there are 20 targets arranged under 5 goals and 3 0bjectives:


Objectives:-

1. Conservation of biodiversity itself
2. Sustainable use of the components of that biodiversity
3. The fair and equitable sharing of benefits from using genetic resources (So if a plant is discovered that is a good medicine the pahrmacutical company would have to share the profits with the country and the local people where the plant came from.

Some of the targets:
Most interesting:) By 2020 at the latest, people should be aware of biodiversity and the steps they can take to conserve it and use it sustainably - that's a huge educational programme that is going to have to be done - It's about making sure governments are aware and the people that elect them about the value of biodiversity.





I am hapy they have come to some agreements at Nagoya. It is a beginning. We will have to see how the countries implement the decisions they have made.

The most understandable comments were from the BBC radio programme "Saving Species"
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/nathistory/nathistory_20101102-1644a.mp3 - if you download this fast forward to 4/5 of the way through the programme to 23 minutes

Three objectives:

1. Conservation of biodiversity itself
2. Sustainable use of the components of that biodiversity
3. The fair and equitable sharing of benefits from using genetic resources (So if a plant is discovered that is a good medicine the pharmaceutical company would have to share the profits with the country where the plant came from.

the whole of the rest of the agreements depended on number 3 being agreeed.

5 goals

20 Targets within those goals

The most interesting target 1. By 2020 at the latest - people are aware of biodiversity and how they can use it sustainably.

Target 3: Incentives including subsidies harmful to biodiversity should be illuminated, phased out, or reformed (Amazing - it includes subsidies  on fisheries, subisidies to forestry, to biofuels - politaically it is a hot potatoe )

Number 5. By 2020 the rate of loss of all natural habitats will be significantly reduced.

17% of land habitats and 10% of marine habitats should be protected . (The conservation agencies wanted these figures to be much bigger - we already have 12% of terrestrial and well, only 1% of coastal/marine habitats. e.g. Greenpeace is campaigning for 40% of the world's oceans to be protected). But these figures are a start.

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/10/negotiators-agree-on-biodiversity.html

reuters:

Delegates agreed to a 20-point strategic plan to protect fish stocks, fight the loss and degradation of natural habitats and to conserve larger land and marine areas.

They also set a broader 2020 "mission" to take urgent action to halt the loss of biodiversity.

Nations agreed to protect 17 percent of land and inland waters and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas by 2020. Currently, 13 percent of land and 1 percent of oceans are protected for conservation.

The third part of the deal, the Nagoya Protocol on genetic resources, has taken nearly 20 years to agree and sets rules governing how nations manage and share benefits derived from forests and seas to create new drugs, crops or cosmetics.

http://boingboing.net/2010/11/03/the-nagoya-protocol.html
to at least halve and where feasible bring close to zero the rate of loss of natural habitats including forests (by 2020) - 
good list of references


http://www.scq.ubc.ca/dnghub/?p=450 humerous article trying to explain all the terms - worth reading.




http://www.cbd.int/doc/press/2010/pr-2010-10-29-cop-10-en.pdf for use by the media

http://www.cbd.int/cop/cop-10/songs/welcome-to-cop10.mp3


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11655925

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/29/nagoya-biodiversity-summit-deal :-
Some key goals have been set, including a plan to expand nature reserves to 17% of the world's land and 10% of the planet's waters.


http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6169314,00.html :-
The eventual success of the summit came down to three pieces of legislation: a strategic plan for reversing the decline of the world's species by 2020; the finance for that plan; and what proved the thorniest problem of all – a deal to prevent the misappropriation of genetic resources.

The ABS protocol, now renamed the Nagoya Protocol, was not the only qualified success of the night. The strategic plan for 2011-2020 set out goals for the preservation and protection of nature, even though many of the goals from the previous plan were not met.

The new plan contains both new targets, like stopping the extinction of known endangered species by 2020, and old, unfulfilled promises, like such as the aim of designating 10 percent of all oceans as protected areas.

Delegates also agreed on a plan to set up an international body to provide governments with better information for making decisions that can impact on the environment.

The body is to be called the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and will serve a similar function to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It only awaits approval by the United Nations General Assembly.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/Statement-on-Close-of-UN-Biodiversity-Summit-in-Nagoya-Japan/

“Greenpeace welcomes the beginning of the end of bio piracy through the adoption of the Aichi-Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefits Sharing, and a moratorium on strange climate techno-fixes called geo-engineering. Nagoya is not another Copenhagen.”

I put our posters up on the Church Hall Wall  - and also put up posters about Crayfish

I

Methodist Recorder, Nagoya and Biodiversity Targets

The Methodist Recorder featured an article on the upcoming conference at Nagoya on 7th October. Here is a copy of the article:-

www.christian-ecology.org.uk/nagoya.htm

..The importance of this issue has been highlighted by CEL team member Judith Allinson who, along with a group at Settle Methodist Church and Settle Churches Together, has been raising money for three habitat conservation charities. She said "Christians have sometimes tithed their money and given one tenth to the church. Should we not also consider giving one tenth of our money to conservation charities to protect habitats for future generations?

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We have given posters to most of the churches in Settle. Here is the prayer:-

A quarter of the world's mammals, and one fifth of the world's plants are under threat of extinction.

Lord we thank you for this beautiful world with its amazing variety of animals and plants.

Be with those meeting at the Nagoya Conference in Japan, 18-29 October as they seek to find ways of preserving your world . . ..

 . . ways of preventing the destruction of habitats and soil, and of saving species from extinction.

Please help us to understand your world more - to appreciate the beauty of nature.

Encourage us to make wildlife conservation areas in our churchyards, gardens, parks and farms and to take part in local nature surveys.

Help us to support wildlife conservation charities with our money and our words.

May we never forget that we are stewards of your creation and that we hold it in trust for future generations.

Arrhenatherum elatius - False Oat-grass

Arrhenatherum at Langcliffe churchyard 2009 late Sept

I have a love-hate relationship with Arrhenatherum elatius

Sometimes I feel like instead of calling it "Arrh  enatherum,", I could call it "Arrh anathema"
(Anathema means detested person or object).
"Arrh...". anyway.

On the other hand elatius (which means "tall" in Latin) sounds like "elated" . Hey, I feel elated and happy!

Read on to find out about the dilemma with this plant,

Before nearly every course I teach, I search for its big, jolly spikelets, easily recognisable by their one long awn per spikelet. I am so grateful when I find them.
It is easy for students to open the big spikelets and find the different parts of the grass flowers.


It is a very common grass - If you live in the UK I am sure some will grow very near you



This article will help you to learn to recognise it.
It is a tufted plant.
It is growing at the edge of my garden - in full flower. I have just been weeding it on 6th October!. Here is the root.. freshly picked from the garden 30 minutes ago..
Note how knobbly the shoot base is. And at the point where the roots emerge there is a rusty orange colour. 90% of Aarrhenatherums have this rusty orange colour at the shoot base.

 Arrhenatherum elatius spikelet

Labelled Arrhenatherum spikelet

Here is a spikelet open, with the translucent paleas back to back, the white feathery stigmas poking out, and a dark purple anther visible.

I now paste the article I wrote last October in the North Ribblesdale Parish Magazine -comprising three parishes - Langcliffe, Stainforth and Horton in Ribblesdale

October’s grass:  False Oat-grass Arrhenatherum elatius

Did you know that you can still see a big grass in flower in each of our three churchyards in October?

Yes – have a look for a tall grass at the borders of Horton, Stainforth and Langcliffe churchyards and you’ll find a few flowering shoots of False Oat-grass – Arrhenatherum elatius. Its Latin name “elatius” mans tall.

Arrhenatherum at Stainforth 

I have a “love-hate” relationship with this grass -. First the bad bit – it grows well when there is no or little mowing or grazing. So we see it on our road verges and on the railway. It can start to swamp out smaller species. I used to carry out botanical surveys of grasslands in Humberside and sometimes I found small fields – that still had some traditional hay meadow meadows flowers - but which were being taken over by this grass as they were being neglected and not both cut for hay and grazed by cattle.


On the positive side, False Oat-grass has big flowers that are easy to dissect and it can be found in flower from early May to (at a stretch) December – so it’s an excellent plant to show people.

Arrhenatherum at Horton in Ribblesdale

In grasses, if the flower-head is branched it is called a panicle, and the “blobs” on the panicle are called spikelets. In False Oat-grass the spikelets have two flowers and they are big - 1.5cm long. You can recognise false oat grass because it is the only common grass with one long bristle (awn) per spikelet. The papery scales on the outside of a spikelet are called glumes. If you pull these off, then you are left with the two flowers. The individual spikelets only open for a few hours as in the pictures below when conditions are right, and then you can see the beautiful feathery stigmas.





The awns have a kink/sharp bend in them when they are dry and the awns arise in the middle of the back of the lemma. this is a feature of a group of grasses known in English as "Oat grasses" or as subtribe Aveninae


The emerging leaf is rolled. the bases of the leaf blades are slightly uneven.

Tussock in early morning

What vegetation type does abundant Arrhenatherum indicate?

If the verge/railway/field has Arrhenatherum growing nearly everywhere, the vegetation type in the National Vegetation classification is MG1 - Mesotrophic Grassland number 1.- Which is a very common grassland type usually of low conservation value.

The picture on the right was taken in early morning in late August 2010 in a field that has had very low grazing over the past few years. The leaves die an orangy brown

It can be found in well lit areas at the edge of ungrazed woodlands.

If the same grass is found growing on ledges on our limestone cliffs with other rare plants it then counts as a rare community of high conservation importance  MG2.

Go out for a walk and check if you can find a tall grass still flowering on waste ground with big spikelets - and if you suspect it is Arrhenatherum, check the root shoot junction for the rusty orange colour.

Well, go out for a walk anyway.

          

Prayer for Biodiversity and Nagoya

Through the organisation Christian Ecology Link, over the past week I have been helping publicise a prayer about the upcoming conference at Nagoya in Japan:-

" In 2002, countries round the world made a treaty which 192 countries signed to protect biodiversity by 2010 - all countries have failed. There is a conference in in October to make a new treaty. Is your church praying about this or publicising it?
Christian Ecology Link has made a prayer poster about this www.christian-ecology.org.uk/nagoya.htm  -we encourage you to use and display this prayer.

Here is a good explanation of Nagoya http://bit.ly/b8UWPr -

The  prayer started
One quarter of the world's mammals and one eighth of the world's plants are under threat of extinction.

On the radio this morning Kew Royal Botanic Gardens announced that one fifth of the world's plants are under threat of extinction - that is one in five. So here is the prayer modified:

A quarter of the world's mammals, and one fifth of the world's plants are under threat of extinction.

Lord we thank you for this beautiful world with its amazing variety of animals and plants.

Be with those meeting at the Nagoya Conference in Japan, 18-29 October as they seek to find ways of preserving your world . . .
. . . ways of preventing the destruction of habitats and soil, and of saving species from extinction.

Please help us to understand your world more - to appreciate the beauty of nature.

Encourage us to make wildlife conservation areas in our churchyards, gardens, parks and farms and to take part in local nature surveys.

Help us to support wildlife conservation charities with our money and our words.

May we never forget that we are stewards of your creation and that we hold it in trust for future generations.

Amen

 Download the above poster from this page or better go to www.christian-ecology.org.uk/nagoya.htm where there is background material and also similar posts with gannets and zebras as background

How Bad are Bananas

Buying the trout pate earlier in the afternoon at Kilnsey Trout Farm a

On Thursday 23rd Sept  Bentham Local Food Week had organised a talk by Mike Berners-Lee based on his book "How bad are bananas? - the carbon footprint of everything". I think this is a great book and had bought it when it first came out in May.
It has lots of useful facts to quote (if only one can remember them).

Here I am holding the book and next to it the trout pate  I bought at Kilnsey Trout Farm in the afternoon.



 The Bentham Environmentally Sustainable Town group had a competition in our Jacob's Join Meal to see who could produce food with the lowest footprint. I contributed the trout pate.

Mike was asked to be the judge. He wanted to give the first prize to the delicious apple - danish pastry that someone had made but she had gone home. So then he gave joint first prize to the two breads, one made from a mill at Grewelthorpe near Ripon.. Wheat has a low carbon footprint - only 1 kg CO2 produced per Kg of wheat. (I need to check that)




I won't give his talk - you can read the book.


But he did emphasise that we should work out which things had a big effect on carbon footprints (e.g. flying, or buying a new car, buying tomatoes gown in this country in heated green houses in January) and which things had only a tiny or lesser effect - e.g. plastic bags, buying food that has been shipped to this country..


He also told us how important it is to make our views know to supermarkets. They are more likely to do "Green things" if they think we care. He does research for Booths.

I asked "If Booths do this "green" research, why don't we know about it?" His reply - "The press release only came out two days ago.." I have searched and found a press report on 21st Sept  - Well that is NEWS.-- Ah I've now found the page on BoothsWebsite - here's the link to the short report- http://bit.ly/93zAys

We had some discussion on meat sheep and cattle.- Mike was very diplomatic. Meat has a huuuge carbon footprint . But Bentham is a livestock area. The chairperson had a copy of Carbon Fields by Graham Harvey which praises the carbon storing capacity of unploughed fields.

I said how I had appreciated the fact that he says that if one wants to invest money to save carbon then investing it in "Save the Rainforest" schemes is one of the best ways- that for £3-00 one can save a ton of CO2.

.... and that would anyone like to buy some of our "Rainforest-save" greeting cards?. One friend kindly bought two.. Well that  is £3-00.  !!!!!  (I'm not sure if the charities we give our money to have quite that rate of saving carbon..)

I also raised the topic of COP10 Nagoya Japan- The Biodiversity Conference that is taking place 18-29 October, and tell people how important it is..

Zea mays - Maize (Corn)

(Sentence added on 16 Sept: Today I saw corn on the cob for sale in Booths our local supermarket - 65p or three for a pound!. I wonder if it is local?)

Pictures taken on 2nd September in a field near Gargrave

Maize Zea mays 
Grass of the Month - September
1: January - Reed Canary Grass - Phalaris arundinacea 
2: February - The Common Reed - Phragmites australis
3: March - Blue Moor-grass - Sesleria caerulea
4: April - Sweet Vernal Grass - Anthoxanthum odoratum
5: May - Meadow Foxtail - Alopecurus pratensis 
6: June - Quaking Grass - Briza media 
7: July- Timothy Grass - Phleum pratense
8: August - Common Bent - Agrostis capillaris
9. September - Maize - Zea mays

We think of maize / corn on the cob as yellow grains in a tin at the grocers / supermarket -

Yet did you know that:
The great majority of the maize grown in USA and Europe is grown as cattle feed (the whole plant is harvested)
The three cereals Maize, Wheat and Rice supplyalmost two thirds of the worlds calories
Although a cultivated plant, maize can grow as a garden escape so is now included in flower books such as Stace

My memories of maize:-

1. In a little patch in our Yorkshire suburban garden, in July and August, hoping the summer would be long enough for the cobs to ripen.
2. In A level biology classes -genetics- of us being shown colourful cobs with grains of different colours
3. As a student worker at the Grassland Research Institute, Hurley:- taking some cobs away at the weekend to boil and share with relatives. Cobs from maize growing as cattle feed.
4. In West Africa including Sierra Leone, there was a season when maize was for sale, roasted at roadsides for passing travellers. It was grown intercropped on sandy soil in Niger. In fact it was about the only plant I recognised when I first went to Sierra Leone.
5. I once found some young leaves growing on the harbour at Watchet in Somerset, and puzzled what grass it could be. It has wide leaves and a ligule with hairs along the edge of the ligule.
6. We see it in the UK occasionally in farmers fields in the UK - and say "Look - there's some maize"

Much of the maize imported as cattle feed to the UK is GM maize.

There is much to learn about maize. e.g.:-
http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Ca-De/Corn-or-Maize-Based-Diets.html
Facts and figures on Food and Biodiversity http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-31631-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

Here is another big grass:-  Miscanthus near Copt Hewick near Ripon, in the last week of August. It is used for biofuel.

"This is really not very good for biodiversity- there are no plants growing underneath it." I thought.

But then  looking at the maize, there are no other plants under that ..

and under wheat and barley there will be no other plants.  That is why the RSPB is so keen on having wide field margins that allow other species to grow, to provide food for insects and birds.

Miscanthus

At least there is a wide filed margin here.

Agrostis capillaris - Common Bent

Common Bent  Agrostis capillaris

Grass of the Month - August

1: January - Reed Canary Grass - Phalaris arundinacea 

2: February - The Common Reed - Phragmites australis 

3: March - Blue Moor-grass - Sesleria caerulea 

4: April - Sweet Vernal Grass - Anthoxanthum odoratum

5: May - Meadow Foxtail - Alopecurus pratensis 

6: June - Quaking Grass - Briza media  

7: July- Timothy Grass - Phleum pratense 

8: August - Common Bent - Agrostis capillaris

I chose to put Common Bent in August because it does not start to flower until well into July, so it fully out by August. Patches of ground that just have Common Bent can stand out in early summer - May, June and early July - because they are green and flowerless then, compared to surrounding areas with other grass flowers.

And where do you find Common Bent?

Common Bent ( Agrostis capillaris ) – small, delicate and inconspicuous - is one of the commonest grasses. Remember running barefoot on the garden lawn as a child? You were probably running on Common Bent, along with needle-leaved Red Fescue. It grows in nutrient poor lawns, acid grassland pastures, sandy soils and in heather moorland.

Heath Bedstraw, Tormentil,  Betony, and Bitter Vetchling are some of the prettier wildflowers that can be found on more interesting Common Bent grassland

Up at Winskill which is on limestone rock, Common Bent is only a very minor component of the limestone grassland, but it is the major plant in the hollows that are filled with loess (soil made from dust blown up from surrounding areas at the end of the last ice age)  - see below

The light green area with no purple Knapweed is an area with little else except Common Bent - this is where loess is deposited

Its inflorescence is like a spreading Christmas tree with many hundreds of tiny spikelets – tiny because each spikelet contains only one flower. Bents ( Agrostis ) have only one flower per spikelet, Meadow grasses ( Poas ) have several flowers per spikelet

The plants are small and so nondescript – no hairs, no big leaves, no stolons. The emerging leaf is rolled and hairless, and the short narrow 2mm-wide blades come away from the sheath at a wide angle. The ligule is very short. It grows in little tufts and these are linked by rhizomes, but you can't see these as they are underground.

Common Bent becomes much more exciting on metal ore spoil heaps such as at Pikedaw above Malham, where it is one of the very few higher plants that can tolerate the metal pollution. Since nothing much else will grow, a delightful pattern of small tufts arranged within bigger patches can be seen.

Bentham is a small  town ten miles from Settle.

Could Bentham mean land of Common Bent?

The word Bentham ( Benetain in the Doomsday book) comes from the word meaning rough grass or reeds.

So I like to think it could refer to Common Bent. However other grasses were once called bent – including. Purple Moor ( Molinia caerulea ) once known as White Bent which grows in abundance in white sheets on damp parts of Newby Moor and the moor south of Bentham.

I hope you found this useful - Why not come on a Grass Identification course? And have fun learning about grasses with other people. J.A.