10A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2007
>> GLOBAL WARMING
Latin America unprepared
U.N. report details projected effects of climate change
BY JULIE WATSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEXICO CITY — Rising global temperatures could melt Latin America's glaciers within 15 years, cause food shortages affecting 130 million people across Asia by 2050 and wipe out Africa's wheat crop, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.
The report, written and reviewed by hundreds of scientists, outlined dramatic effects of climate change including rising sea levels, the disappearance of species and intensifying natural disasters. It said 30 percent of the world's coastlines could be lost by 2080.
Scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlined details of the report in news conferences around the world Tuesday, four days after they released
a written summary of their findings. The report is the second of three being issued this year; the first dealt with the physical science of climate change and the third will deal with responses to it.
In Mexico City, scientists predicted that global warming could cost the Brazilian rain forest up to 30 percent of its species and turn large swaths into savannah.
They said ocean levels are projected to rise 4.3 feet by 2080 and flood low-lying cities including Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Polar ice caps will likely melt, opening a waterway at the North Pole and threatening to make the Panama Canal obsolete, IPCC member Edmundo de Alba said. Warmer waters will spawn bigger and more dangerous hurricanes that will threaten coastlines not traditionally
affected by them.
Latin America's diverse ecosystems will struggle with intense droughts and flooding and as many as 70 million people in the region will be left without enough water, according to the report.
Many Latin American farmers will have to abandon traditional crops such as corn, rice, wheat and sugar as their soil becomes increasingly saline, and ranchers will have to find new ways to feed their livestock, scientists said.
"What's clear is places suffering from drought are going to become drier, and places with a large amount of precipitation are going to see an increase in precipitation," de Alba said.
They warned that governments are doing too little to prepare for the changes.
"We don't have medium- or
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long-term plans in Latin America. Governments look the other way $ ^{a} $ IPCC member Osvaldo Canziani said in Buenos Aires.
The report said Africa is most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.' The fallout from a swiftly warming planet — extreme weather, flooding, outbreaks of disease
will only exacerbate troubles in the world's poorest continent, said Anthony Nyong, one of the lead authors.
Wheat, a staple in Africa, may disappear from the continent by the 2080s, the report said.
Africa has "the least responsibility for climate change and yet it is per-
versely the continent with the most at risk if greenhouse gases are not cut," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program.
in China. In Bangladesh, rice production may fall by just under 10 percent and wheat by a third by the year 2050.
But Nyong said African governments cannot rely on outside aid to fix problems from climate change.
The report suggests that a 3.6-degree increase in average air temperature could decrease rain-fed rice yields by 5 percent to 12 percent
In Asia, nearly 100 million people will face the risk of floods from seas that are expected to rise between 0.04 inches to 0.12 inches annually, slightly higher than the global average.
The drops in yields combined with rising populations could put close to 50 million extra people at risk of hunger by 2020,132 million by 2050 and 266 million by 2080,the report said.
"It is absolutely vital that international action is taken now to avoid dangerous climate change." Steiner said. "Otherwise the consequences for food and water security in Asia, as for many other parts of the world are too alarming to contemplate."
NORTH KOREA
Disarmament deadline nears
BY FOSTER KLUG ASSOCIATED PRESS
PYONGYANG, North Korea — A U.S. nuclear negotiator expressed hope Tuesday that North Korea could still meet a weekend deadline for taking initial steps toward dismantling its nuclear program as a Bush administration official warned that time was running out.
The optimism from Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill comes after the U.S. Treasury Department said authorities in the Chinese-administered region of Macau are prepared to unblock the frozen funds that North Korea says are the reason it has refused to implement a disarmament agreement.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Tuesday that Macau authorities have made the funds available for withdrawal, citing remarks by a spokeswoman for the Monetary Authority of Macau.
A call to a spokesman of Banco Delta Asia, where the funds are being
held, was not immediately returned Tuesday. The bank had been blacklisted by Washington for allegedly helping the North launder money and its North Korean accounts were frozen. The bank has denied any wrongdoing.
"It's obviously a big step that I think should clear the way for the (North) to step up the process of dealing with its obligations within the 60-day period," Hill said in Seoul, referring to a Saturday deadline under a February agreement where North Korea pledged to shut down its main atomic reactor in exchange for energy aid and political concessions.
South Korean nuclear envoy Chun Young-woo, speaking with Hill, said all North Korean accounts at Banco Delta Asia had been unblocked.
"This means North Korean account holders can withdraw the money in all of the accounts;" Chun said.
He added later that the hold on the accounts would be lifted Wednesday morning.
The Macau monetary authority spokeswoman, Wendy Au, told Kyodo News that the funds had been unblocked.
"The account holders or authorized parties can go to the bank and withdraw or deal with their deposits." Au said.
Later, McCormack referred to the Kyodo report and said: "We don't have any doubts that this is, in fact, what they have done."
After meeting in Seoul with China's nuclear envoy, Chun said China also believed the move would help advance the disarmament process.
If North Korea follows through with its promises, it would be the first moves the communist state has made to scale back its nuclear development since it kicked out international inspectors and in 2003 restarted its sole operating nuclear reactor.
The hard-won agreement, was reached four months after North Korea rattled the world by testing a nuclear device.
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