New research published in Biology Letters indicates that real efforts must be made to maintain green space in our towns and cities as human society becomes ever-more urbanised.

Researchers Richard Fuller, University of Queensland, and Kevin Gaston, University of Sheffield, examined data on urban land cover from the European Environment Agency, selecting 386 cities across Europe as the focus of their investigation, based on land area covered and population size. Cities in Europe tended to have a greater proportion of green space than those in the South. The researchers found that the amount of green space contained within a city varied enormously: from 3 – 4 square metres per person in Cádiz, Fuenlabrada and Almería in Spain and Reggio di Calabria in Italy, to more than 300 square metres per person in Liège in Belgium, Oulu in Finland and Valenciennes in France.

The UK bucked a trend found across Europe: in 67 UK cities selected for the study, the amount of green space did not increase with increasing population size, but with overall city area.

The study suggests that residents will have less access to green space as cities grow, with consequent effects on health and well-being, unless measures are taken to actively preserve and maintain this. The researchers recommend that systematic conservation planning should be built into development plans for cities and that tools should be developed which balance benefits to biodiversity, human well-being and economic growth, when designing urban areas fit for the 21st Century.

Access full paper: Fuller, R. A. and Gaston, K.J. (2009). The scaling of green space coverage in European cities. Biology Letters. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2009.0010.

The Natural Capital Initiative, supported by the Science Council and British Library, is holding an event on 15th June focused on ‘Sustainable Cities’. All are welcome. Click here for further information.

Barack Obama may be forced to delay signing up to a new international agreement on climate change in Copenhagen in December 2009, due to the level of opposition in the US Congress. The Copenhagen Summit is a crucial date for the international community. The talks are expected to determine the future possibilities of global cooperation against climate change and produce the successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

Unfortunately, senior figures in the Obama administration are warning that the president may need at least another six months to win domestic support for any new proposal regarding climate change. This delay could prevent a global agreement being reached in time for countries and economies to adopt it before the Kyoto treaty runs out in 2012. The Obama administration is reluctant to sign any international agreement without the support of Congress, fearing that it will result in a serious domestic backlash.

Stephen Byers, co-chairman of the International Climate Change Taskforce, and former cabinet minister said: “The timing couldn’t really be worse for the Obama administration… If need be, we should be prepared to give them more time – not to let them off the hook and escape their responsibilities, but ensure they are politically able to sign up to effective international action which reflects the scale of the challenge we face.” “A delay (into 2010) would be a price worth paying to bring the United States into the global effort to tackle climate change.” He added.

However, it has been reported that the opposition within America is potentially substantial, and there is, of course, the possibility that this opposition might become hardened over time, making it increasingly difficult for Obama to secure support in the future.

Read more about this story on the Guardian News Website

Last night saw the Policy Team attend a discussion organised by the Science Policy Centre at the Royal Society, bringing together: Prof. Harold Varmus, Nobel Prize winner and Co-Chair of President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST); Dr Mark Walport, Head of the Wellcome Trust, and Prof. John Beddington, Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government. The event was chaired by Susan Watts, Science Editor for the BBC’s ‘Newsnight’.

During the course of a very interesting 90 minutes, Professor Varmus spoke on the theme of ‘restoring science to its rightful place’, contrasting the approach of the new Obama administration with that of President George W. Bush. Obama has made it clear, from his inagural address to his willingness to meet with Professor Varmus and others, to his appointment of key scientific figures to his team, that science and technology will be at the heart of his term of office.

President Obama wants to make PCAST an integral part of the process whereby he receives information aboutt key issues in science and technology. He has produced a series of directives setting out how scientific advice to the US Government should proceed in the future; from the selection of advisors based on their scientific competence, to protection from reprisal for whistleblowers and the transparent publication of documents into the public domain, without tampering from policy-makers. All this has contributed to a positive and optimistic feeling amongst the scientific community in the States.

However, threats remain. As part of the President’s fiscal stiumulus package, designed to lift the US out of recession and combat the global economic downturn, the National Institutes of Health has been awarded 29 billion dollars, which must be spent quickly.

Mark Walport signalled his concern over such a short, sharp injection of funding, saying that science must be funded in a sustainable way over the long-term, and that researchers should not see such a boom, as has been experienced in the UK, with the doubling of science spend in the past 10 years, as an inalienable right. The successes experienced due to an increase in the public funding for science should lead scientists to recognise their responsibility to communicate the results of their research to society. Equally, the case for sustained funding must still be made to government.

Professor Beddington signalled that the UK Government is keen to put science, engineering and technology at the heart of plans for economic recovery on this side of the Atlantic. He said that although it could not be guaranteed that the science and technology allocation would be secure in the next budget, he very much hoped it would be and it was his view that the Government was taking science and technology seriously as a foundation on which economic recovery could be built, given that financial services could no longer remain this cornerstone.

Professor Beddington also highlighted his concerns that science advice to the European Commission remains sorely lacking. Of 27 member states, only the UK and Northern Ireland have a Chief Scientific Advisor. A lack of scientific advice at the European level is a hindrance to sensible, progressive and evidence-based policy-making, and as such will ultimately effect the ability of the EU to compete with North America in science and innovation.

Find further details about the work of the Royal Society’s Science Policy Centre online.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has called for a significant increase in the number of wind farms in the UK, after a new study found far more turbines could be built onshore without harming wildlife.

The RSPB has campaigned against wind farms in the past, because of the potential threat to birds, and helped prevent the biggest onshore wind farm in Europe being built on the Isle of Lewis because of the risk to sea eagles.

However, a new study, commissioned by the organisation and written by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), has found wind farms pose no threat to birds and other animals if they are put up in the right area.

Experts at the charity said that, in addition to this, they would support the development of more wind farms because of the “truly terrifying” impact that global warming was having on birds. Ruth Davis, head of climate change policy at the charity, stressed that there was an urgent need to significantly increase sources of renewable energy to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. “Left unchecked, climate change threatens many species with extinction.” She said.

The study also revealed that the UK is trailing behind the rest Europe in building wind farms because of its bureacratic planning process, despite having abundant natural wind resources. Wind turbines generated just 2% of the UK’s energy in 2007, compared with 29% in Denmark, 20% in Spain and 15% in Germany.

Ruth Davis said: “We need a clear lead from government on where wind farms should be built and clear guidance for local councils on how to deal with applications. We must reduce the many needless delays that beset wind farm developments”.

“This report shows that if we get it right, the UK can produce huge amounts of clean energy without time-consuming conflicts and harm to our wildlife. Get it wrong and people may reject wind power. That would be disastrous.”

Read more about this story on the BBC News website and the Telegraph News Website

More information can be found on the RSPB wesite

The Secretary of State for the Environment, Hilary Benn, has announced (19 March) that next year will see the implementation of the first stage in Defra’s plan to vaccinate badgers against bovine TB. The disease costs the farming industry millions of pounds each year and results in thousands of cattle infected with the disease going to slaughter.

Six areas, precise locations to be announced after consultation with the farming industry, will be the focus for the first stage of the vaccination scheme, which will begin in summer 2010 and continue for at least five years. The Conservatives have challenged the Government’ focus on vaccination, calling for a badger cull. The UK Government’s plans are also at odds with those of the Welsh Assembly Government, which is expected to announce further details of its plan to instigate a large-scale badger cull in Wales, later this month.

Defra will begin to train farmers and vets, who will be responsible for trapping and vaccinating the badgers, later this year.

See more at the BBC Website

The House of Lords will today hold a debate focused on the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth.

Watch today’s debates in the Lords from 11am on Parliament.Tv

Last night, the Policy Team attended a fascinating discussion at the British Library, considering ‘Taxonomy in Crisis’. The evening was organised by the research and information team as part of the ‘Talk Science’ programme; a series of informal, public, discussions bringing researchers together to consider key hot topics in science.

Prof. Rod Page led the discussion, highlighting the importance of taxonomy as the ‘bricks’ of the ‘house’ of biology, with systematics as the mortar binding them together. Without taxonomy, he said, little in biology would make sense. He highlghted key issues for taxonomists and systematists: the nomenclature system leading to confusion if an organism’s position in the tree of life is altered by an advance in knowledge – all published literature relating to that species suddenly becomes detached from it. Would it be better to move to a numerical system of naming organisms? Does the potential to provide a ‘barcode’ for a species, based on its DNA, provide a threat or an opportunity for taxonomy?

Conflicting views then flowed from the audience during the discussion session. Some felt that taxonomy in fact didn’t matter that much to modern biology and that perhaps taxonomy was creating too much information: yes, it’s useful to know how many species we have and catalogue these, but the limited resources and time of scientists could be better spent in other biological endeavours. If taxonomy had died in 1900, would today’s biology look very different?

Others in the audience felt strongly that taxonomy was fundamental to conservation science. A taxonomist from Columbia highlighted the recent discovery of two new species in that country, the direct result of which was increased government interest in conservation and the formation of two new national parks to safeguard these natural resources. If all taxonomy had ceased in 1900, Prof. Page commented, our way of looking at the natural world, and our understanding of our place in it – and potentially our behaviour towards it because of this – would be fundamentally different.

Discussion highlighted the threat to taxonomy and systematics posed by the current model of supporting and funding science in the UK. Taxonomic studies simply did not attract large grants or publications in high-impact journals: therefore scientists were driven away from these studies by lack of cudos or lack of money. Another question was raised over whether this really mattered. Is it so important that our taxonomists are ‘home grown’ in the UK, when areas of high biodiversity are actually in the developing world, where many countries, such as Brazil, are investing in their taxonomists.

Overall, a very interesting discussion which brought out a variety of different viewpoints. You can find out more about the Talk Science initiative at the British Library website.

Experts from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research have announced that the climate change reports used to set Britain’s first carbon budget is “naïvely optimistic”. They have warned that the advised target to cut UK carbon emissions 34% by 2020 will not be strict enough to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

This comes after 2,500 climate change experts from 80 countries attended a 3-day conference on global warming in Copenhagen last week. At the conference, experts agreed that both the rate and severity of climate change was much greater than previously thought. They also expressed frustration at politicians for failing to take on board the seriousness of the problem.

The Tyndall Centre report analyzed the conclusions of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which said in December that ministers should aim to cut UK carbon emissions 34% by 2020, as part of worldwide efforts to limit temperature rise to 2C.

The Tyndall scientists said the committee’s report is “inevitably and significantly compromised” and claimed that the committee was forced to use “highly optimistic and sometimes unclear assumptions” to hit the 2C target.

The Tyndall scientists have called for the UK government to aim to cut emissions 42% by 2020 and stressed the need for cuts come from the economy, rather than buying offsets abroad. These proposals were backed by more than 90 Labour MPs – including four ministerial aides – in a parliamentary petition.

Ministers are due to announce Britain’s first legally binding carbon budget next month.

Read more about this story on the Guardian News Website and the BBC News Website

Information can also be found on the The Friends Of The Earth Website, who commissioned the study with the Co-op Bank.

Legislation regulating the hunting of polar bears is to be reviewed at an international summit in Norway tomorrow. A reduction in hunting quotas is thought to be vital for the continued existence of the species as an increasing number of individuals begin to suffer from starvation.

Polar bears feast in spring, using sea ice as a hunting platform to hunt seals. However, the rising temperatures and earlier spring melts caused by climate change is reducing the bears prey availability and hunting success. Consequently, an increasing number of individuals are undernourished and suffer from starvation because they do not have enough fat reserves to see them through the winter months. Considering the effect climate change is having on the species, the scale of hunting by sportsmen and native Inuit people is no longer seen as sustainable.

Hunting is currently permitted in four out of the five states inhabited by polar bears: Canada, Greenland, Alaska in the US, and Russia. Norway is the only state where stalking is banned. Hunting is responsible for as many as 700 polar bear deaths every year, 3 per cent of the entire population.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) will present a ‘Species Action Plan’ for the polar bear at the summit. Geoff York, polar bear conservation co-ordinator for WWF’s Arctic Programme said:

“Climate change impacts are not formally taken into account with any of the polar bear populations which are harvested. We’re asking the parties who manage polar bears to incorporate climate change science into their management regimes… If we don’t do something meaningful soon, it will be very difficult for them to survive in the long run.”

Read more about this issue at the Independent News Website and the New Scientist Website

New research from scientists at the University of East Anglia suggests that large-scale geo-engineering projects are not a viable alternative to carbon reduction strategies in the fight against global warming. However, the researchers conclude that certain geo-engineering schemes could compliment activities aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The researchers examined a number of geo-engineering proposals, calculating their potential to cool the planet to pre-industrial levels by 2050. Those schemes with the largest cooling potential were sunshades in space and the injection of aerosols into the stratosphere – 10 – 50 km above the Earth’s surface.

Despite the potential for sunshades and aerosols to be used, the continual increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would call for the constant addition of aerosols or areas of sunshades to counteract this. In the case of sunshades, 4 million square km would have to be launched into space initially, followed by 31,000 square km each year thereafter, to keep pace with continual carbon emissions at current rates.

Researchers suggest that schemes to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are more realistic, and less risky. Seeding the oceans with iron or phosphorus fertiliser were predicted to have little or no effect on cooling, and with a damaging effect on marine wildlife. Similarly, biological pumps, bringing nutrient rich water from the deep to the surface oceans, to be used by organisms to produce more carbon, would have little impact. However, the researchers suggest that planting a large area of forest, producing charcoal and burying it in the soil as ‘biochar’ and the application of carbon and capture and storage technology to biofuels could reduce the temperature to pre-industrial levels by 2300.

Overall, the researchers conclude that no one geo-engineering scheme can be successful on its own, and no combination of schemes can be adopted in the absence of measures to curtail the carbon emissions we produce.

Original text from: Science for Environment Policy

Lenton, T.M. and Vaughan, N.E. (2009). The radiative forcing potential of different climate geoengineering options. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions. 9:2559-2608.