Good news about cow poop. Good news (?) about Copenhagen. Good news for those of you who’ve always dreamed of a dress made of LED lights. Happiness is the smell of a new Cool Green Morning, to paraphrase Don Draper…

1. The rehabilitation of poop continues: The Netherlands has opened its second cow-dung power plant, reports CleanTechnica — to make biogas that will heat more than 1,000 homes.
2. In case you missed it yesterday, President Obama has endorsed a plan to push an ultimate climate change agreement sometime beyond December’s UN meeting in Copenhagen, reports The New York Times. Grist’s Dave Roberts says that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
3. Charlie the Tuna muzzled? Dot Earth says last week’s meeting among fishing countries to reach an agreement on restoring depleted numbers of tuna, shark, turtles and other marine life was missing one thing — a basis in science.
4. Count on Inhabitat to render us speechless — with a dress made of 24,000 LED lights (plus “4,000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals and 40-layers of pleated silk organza crinoline.” When’s it going to hit the shelves at Target?!)
5. Always like to end on good news — this time from the Brazilian Amazon, where deforestation dropped nearly 46 percent from August 2008 to July 2009, says AP. But the “why” is a chicken and egg problem — is it because of the Brazilian government’s promotion of sustainable livelihoods in the region (coupled with enforcement of laws against deforestation), or just a drop in ag commodity prices worldwide?

This Eastern kingbird looks like he’s contemplating his next move …perhaps a trip to South America for the winter? If you’re a bird fanatic — and who isn’t? — you’ll love this incredible shot by Flicker user naathas, shared through The Nature Conservancy’s Flickr Group.

Check out all The Nature Conservancy’s featured daily nature images, submitted to the Conservancy’s Flickr group by people like you — at my.nature.org.

1. How are things in Barcelona (aside from the shocking underperformance of its namesake soccer team this year)? For the climate talks now underway there, Climate Feedback’s Jeff Tollefson reports there’s some optimism that the world can reach political agreement on a climate deal in Copenhagen, with a binding legal agreement following in 2010.
2. We’re #1! (in funding for geothermal R&D, that is!) EcoGeek says the United States government has announced $300 million in such spending — putting it ahead of every other country and Google.org (which is its own planet, isn’t it?)
3. Another, not so nice kind of #1 — the  2009 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is out, and Ecoworldy says Ecuador tops the list of countries with the most such imperiled fauna (2,211).
4. Great white sharks aren’t such sociopathic loners, after all — the Washington Post says they like to hook up in a spot halfway between Hawaii and California that researchers are calling “the cafe.”
5. Noah’s Ark Deux? A team of scientists is proposing an effort to sequence the genomes of 10,000 vertebrate species in an effort to aid their conservation, says a report in the Journal of Heredity. (No talk of cloning…yet. Hat tip: Journal Watch Online.)

Ecotourism is often presented as the savior for wildlife and wild places — providing local communities with financial incentives to preserve nature while also reducing poaching and development pressure.

But, lately, others question whether rich Westerners jetting around the world really help much at all: They disturb animals, create demands for new development and only employ local people in low paying jobs.

Some conservationists even consider tourism to be a significant threat to natural areas.

Which view is correct? Is ecotourism a problem, or a solution?

My biases up front: I’d rather travel for the purpose of seeing wildlife and enjoying various outdoor activities than just about anything. My wife has remarked it’s my drug of choice.

That aside, I still think the issue of ecotourism defies easy answers. Problem or solution?

It depends.

Certainly, the ecological havoc wreaked by tourists in places like the Galapagos is well documented. A fragile ecosystem, animals unafraid of humans and an increasing number of cruise ships has been a recipe for disaster.

One doesn’t have to look hard to see tourists behaving badly in nature.

People harass and feed wild bison, leave trash strewn across the Himalayas, demand resorts in places they shouldn’t be — the list is long.

And then there’s the whole carbon footprint issue. We all know that flying has tremendous impacts, so can we really justify flying off to some far-off corner of the world to see animals or scenery?

These are important concerns. Without a doubt, ecotourism can be a threat. But is it always?

After all, would there even be a Galapagos left as we know it if it wasn’t for tourism? Really?

Consider other island ecosystems and how difficult it is to conserve native island wildlife. If it wasn’t for those tour boats, the Galapagos would likely be a highly developed, rat-infested island devoid of wildlife.

Yellowstone may at times be crowded with tourists behaving badly, but would there still be herds of bison and packs of wolves and grizzly bears without those tourists?

The Serengeti faces issues, to be sure, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the wildebeest population there continues to migrate, during a period of time when so many other large mammal migrations have disappeared.

Private ranches in places like Brazil’s Pantanal and Namibia still have large populations of wildlife, in part because many ranchers here now attract tourists. It seems naïve to expect that they will keep conserving wildlife if visitors quit showing up.

Ecotourism, ultimately, is a complicated issue. And in that way, it’s not so different from most other conservation issues.

Some conservationists have the tendency to declare activities as simply “good” or “bad” — whether it’s ecotourism, ranching, timber harvest, invasive species, hunting, fire, or agriculture. All have their proponents and detractors.

However, we should make decisions based on the reality of our world, not on utopian fantasies where humans no longer have any impacts on nature.

We can work to make sure that ecotourism is done in appropriate ways that benefit wildlife and local communities.

And as the saying goes, conservationists can’t “let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Ecotourism isn’t perfect.

In many cases, though, it’s the best solution we have.

(Photo: Caimans draw tourists to Brazil’s Pantanal. Credit: Matt Miller/TNC.)

Naturally we in the Cidade Maravilhosa are delighted to have beaten out the Windy City and snatched the 2016 Olympics from under the nose of the not-quite-glamorous-enough First Couple of the United States: even Obama can’t compete with Copacabana when it comes to wowing Olympic committees.

But now that the cheering has died down along with the hangovers, a sober consideration of what the Olympics will mean for the world’s most interesting and biodiverse urban environment is in order.

You don’t normally associate biodiversity and conservation with cities, but Rio de Janeiro is an exception. Its extraordinary topography means that steep hill slopes and mountainsides are still forested: not the least of the issues associated with the growth of favelas, Rio’s hillside slums, is that their expansion corrodes this green mantle.

Rio’s forests are a remnant of the Atlantic Forest that once covered most of coastal Brazil and stretched as far inland as Paraguay. Only 7 per cent is left, making it much more threatened than the Amazon and even more biodiverse, since the surviving fragments act as refuge areas for species that once had much wider ranges. This makes what survives of the Atlantic Forest extraordinarily important. One of Latin America’s oldest national parks, Tijuca National Forest, lies entirely within the city’s boundaries, a natural treasure greater than any of its beaches. What does the Olympics mean to all this? In short, a mixed bag.

There will be big environmental benefits. The thing that first strikes visitors arriving at Rio’s international airport, after the dilapidation of the airport itself, is the stench when you step outside the terminal. This toxic olfactory cocktail comes from the chemical plants and oil refineries that line Guanabara Bay, together with the sewage produced by the 5 million inhabitants of the Zona Norte, where tourists never go but half Rio’s population lives. Gagging on your way into town is an appropriate introduction to the contradictions produced by our glamorous international profile.

With the eyes – and, more to the point, the noses – of the world upon us, something will finally be done: serious sewage treatment and pollution control is coming. Maybe by 2016, for the first time in generations, it will even be possible to swim in the bay. One shudders to think what will happen to the yachting crews otherwise.

But beyond the bay, things are more ambiguous. The coming construction boom will provide alternative employment to the young men in the favelas who would otherwise move into our biggest growth industry after oil: narcotráfico. This boom will damp down violence from criminals and the police (there’s a big overlap between the two). The easy headlines about the risks posed by violence in Rio are misleading: nobody, from the drug lords down, has any interest in choking off the multidimensional bonanza the Olympics promises to be.

And therein lies a problem: after having been stable for 20 years, the city’s population is likely to jump again as the boom attracts migrants from all over Brazil, which means expanding favelas and more human pressure on that precious Atlantic Forest.

This will be most acute in the southern beachside neighbourhoods of Barra, Recreio and Vargem Grande, which were booming for years even before the Olympics. Many of the new sporting facilities in Rio’s bid, including the Olympic village, will be built here. As recently as the 1970s this area was still largely undeveloped, the stupendous beach of Barra fringing an unspoiled expanse of mangroves, coves and headlands ending in Barra da Sepetiba, a scalloped and shifting promontory of dunes and beaches pointing twelve miles into the Atlantic and the glorious (now rapidly overdeveloping) coastline south of Rio.

This oasis of nature so close to a megacity couldn’t last. From the late 1970s, a gigantic real estate boom saw Barra transformed into a depressingly Americanized complex of malls, highways, condominiums and apartment blocks. As the only reasonably flat area with land available anywhere in the city, it was inevitable this area would be earmarked for Olympic development, but the key issue is what impact this will have on the coast’s surprisingly strong zoning and development controls.

Rio’s governments, appalling as they often are, occasionally get some things spectacularly right – the 40% drop in driving deaths since a well-enforced ban on alcohol and driving began last year is a current example. In the late 1990s, in the nick of time, a municipal park called Prainha put the coast immediately south of the real estate boom off limits to developers, preserving the two stunning beaches of Prainha and Grumarí and linking them up to the still pristine coastline around and including Barra da Sepetiba, long preserved by the Brazilian Navy, to whom the promontory belongs. Ironically, a few months before the success of the Olympic bid, the developers had managed to get the zoning laws in Prainha relaxed. Now, with blood already in the water, the level of development is about to spiral. It could well spiral out of control — and if it does, the last piece of properly preserved coastline within the city’s boundaries will go.

Those of us who know and love Rio feel torn. On the one hand, there’s no denying this is a great city with a great talent for spectacle, and it has all the potential to stage a great world event like the Olympics, perhaps more memorably than has ever been done before. But Rio is a memorable place in other, less positive ways. Many local politicians would shock even Tony Soprano, and their corruption and incompetence has mismanaged the city into the ground. Many of its well-known problems are directly traceable to the city’s dreadful politics. With Brazil’s international image on the line, the federal government may have to step in.

The stakes for Rio’s environment are even higher. An image taking a hit is, in the final analysis, a trivial thing –  but once a coast or a forest goes, it almost never comes back. Fingers crossed.

(Image: Prainha, Rio de Janerio, Brazil. Credit: Rodrigo_Soldon/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

My husband returns to the same reefs every year in the Bahamas, where he has been teaching a coral reef ecology class for the last 14 years. On his 2008 trip, he noticed that the reef fish were missing. The culprits were quickly identified — and during his 2009 course, he and his students were eating them.

Lionfish.

Lionfish do not belong in the Caribbean. They are native to the South Pacific and Indian Ocean and made their way into the Caribbean through the release (the exact event is unknown) of aquarium fish. Some say they were in a tank that was destroyed in Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Others say it was a release of just 3 or 6 specimens. Whatever the case, lionfish are now spotted as far north as Rhode Island, and are popping up all over the Caribbean, from Colombia to the Virgin Islands to the Bahamas.

The Bahamas‘ marine ecosystem has already been hard hit. The people that know these reefs well are witnessing a rapid decline in reef fish thanks to these voracious predators, which have an appetite for juvenile reef fish. Their method of attack is particularly unique. Instead of an ambush attack or high-speed chase, lionfish make their presence known and confuse their prey by displaying their beautiful fins like a peacock, slowly dancing towards their prey and then rapidly sucking the prey into their mouths like a vacuum. This technique is so effective because no other predator in the Caribbean uses it — so prey are not adapted to avoid it.

Lionfish have no natural predators in Caribbean waters and are thriving on the tasty but already dwindling choice of baby reef fish. Some think that native grouper might have preyed on lionfish — but because grouper are overfished in the Caribbean (and in most parts of the world), the options beyond human predators are few.

As the distribution of lionfish in the Caribbean expands and the severity of this invasion is becoming more apparent, managers are trying to figure out what to do before the adult populations of reef fish are seriously affected. In the Bahamas, they have issued a “kill on sight” directive. The Caribbean Fisheries Management Council has even developed a Most Wanted Poster to encourage removal of these fish.

The best way to get rid of them? Put them on the menu! In Asia, lionfish are a popular menu item. That’s not yet the case in the Caribbean, so folks are working to change the culture of fear that surrounds lionfish (they have toxic spines that really hurt when they touch you) into a culture of desire for a delightful bite of this light and tasty fish. There are even websites that are collecting lionfish recipes — everything from sushi to Bahamian style fritters to smoked lionfish dip (yum!).

The hope is that people will be motivated to hunt and remove these fish, taking advantage of the existing tradition of artisanal fishing in the Caribbean and turning fishers toward this undesirable species and perhaps away from dwindling populations of grouper and snapper.

An additional approach to this problem — and one that would benefit the reef in multiple ways as well — would be to beef up protection of large predators such as grouper and sharks so that they can work to keep this ecosystem in balance and potentially keep the lionfish population in check.

My husband’s students decided to do a small research project to examine the gut contents (i.e., what is in the bellies) of lionfish they found on the Bahamian reefs, and discovered that their bellies were quite full of baby reef fish. The reward for their efforts was a yummy dinner of fried lionfish…and my husband assures me that in terms of flavor and texture, they compete with any flakey white fish you can think of or catch in the Caribbean. So…

This is probably the only time you’ll hear me advocating for people to eat fish. If you want to eat fish, I’d usually refer you to Monterrey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch — a guide that helps diners make decisions about the most sustainable and healthy options for seafood. However, when it comes to lionfish in the Caribbean, I say chow down to your heart’s content!

1. We’ve been talking a lot about the term “green” lately (see yesterday’s blog post), and here’s another green question to ponder (from Green Inc., of course): Do green jobs create greener Americans?
2. Do you know who the world’s top 3 carbon polluters are? The United States and China are pretty obvious, but the The Vine points out that few people know what the third country on the list is. And this third little country makes it all the more important that world leaders come up with an agreement to curb deforestation at Copenhagen.
3. Speaking of keeping forests intact, Ecuador is hoping its plan to stop drilling for oil in the Amazon will get global support before Copenhagen. The plan hinges on countries coming forward to fund Ecuador the money it would have made from the oil.
4. Scientific American showers a little optimism on us this morning: Even if Copenhagen isn’t fruitfull, 2009 has been a year of great progress toward increasing global support and addoption of renewable energy sources.
5. Scientists have a new piece in the puzzle of how birds migrate. A study of European robins found that light-sensing cells in the eyes are responsible for the birds’ ability to find north and migrate – not magnetic-sensing cells in the beak, as hypothesized.

Thirteen years ago, The Nature Conservancy teamed up with Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza, American Electric Power Company, BP America and Pacificorp to buy out four logging concessions adjacent to Bolivia’s Noel Kempff Mercado National Park.

In addition to protecting almost 832,000 hectares of forest habitat and doubling the size of the national park, this purchase (which became known as the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project) aimed to test an idea that was appealing in principal but not yet tested in practice — that saving trees could reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Today, there is broad agreement among businesses, environmentalists, local communities, and government leaders that forest protection must be part of the solution in the global fight against climate change.

That consensus was most recently highlighted at the Governors’ Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles and in the findings of the bipartisan Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests.

Why such broad consensus? Because deforestation accounts for about 17 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions — more than from all the planes, trains and automobiles on Earth.

Slowing — and eventually stopping — that deforestation is one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. And it is something we can do right now.

But in 1996, discussions about how to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) were in their infancy.

Trees obviously store carbon as they grow, but there were outstanding questions about how to measure the emissions reductions and to assure that saving trees in one place would not just displace logging elsewhere.

A report from Greenpeace being issued today revisits some of those old questions in an attempt to criticize the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project and to discredit emissions offsets that businesses might claim by supporting such efforts in the future.

The Nature Conservancy respectfully disagrees with Greenpeace’s assertions – a disagreement based on our experience working on the ground for more than a decade to develop high quality forest carbon projects, and on the documented accomplishments and lessons learned from the Noel Kempff project.

As the world’s first project of its kind, the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project was a pioneer project that tested and refined the science of forest carbon accounting and monitoring. It is the first — and still only — REDD project to have its carbon benefits verified by an independent third party.

The Noel Kempff project also serves as an example of how well-designed forest carbon projects can result in real, scientifically measurable and verifiable emissions reductions with important benefits for biodiversity and local communities. These benefits and reductions include:

• Avoiding 1,034,107 metric tons of verified CO2 emissions — emissions that would have been caused by logging and deforestation between 1997 and 2005;
• Preserving a rich and biologically diverse forest ecosystem that was chosen as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its outstanding biodiversity value;
• Helping local indigenous communities achieve legal status as “Communities of Native Peoples” and obtain official land title;
• Providing alternative, environmentally sustainable economic opportunities for the local communities, especially via community forestry, and jobs in park monitoring;
• Establishing an endowment which is used to fund project activities and preserve the park for future generations.

The Nature Conservancy and other organizations are now building on the experience and lessons learned in Noel Kempff to inform scientifically rigorous methods and standards for other forest carbon projects, and we are undertaking REDD projects that span entire political jurisdictions in Berau, Indonesia and Para, Brazil.

Projects like these are critical stepping stones that can help inform development of national-level programs and build up the capacity and expertise that countries will need to protect their forests on a national scale.

Getting REDD right and doing it at national scales is essential for making forests a part of the climate solution.

The Nature Conservancy is proud to have had the courage to take the first steps with the Noel Kempff Climate Action project.

We remain steadfastly committed to working with partners from all sectors to learn from, improve on and share the lessons of our experience in Noel Kempff and other forest carbon projects around the world.

(Image: Arcoiris waterfall at Noel Kempff Mercado National Park in Bolivia, South America. Credit: Hermes Justiniano.)

Mark Tercek is president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy.

Over the last few months, I have been participating in a bipartisan commission — The Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests — that is focused on the connections between climate policy here in the United States and protecting tropical forests. The commission comprises some of the country’s leading government, business, conservation, science and national security experts, and is co-chaired by former Senator Lincoln Chafee and John Podesta, the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress and former White House chief of staff.

Today, the commission unveiled our report highlighting a cornerstone of the policy debate: We cannot win the battle against climate change without protecting our forests.

Destruction of the world’s forests each year produces 17 percent of all carbon emissions released into the atmosphere. Each year, roughly 50,000 square miles of forest — an area larger than the state of Pennsylvania — disappear.

Today’s report calls on Congress to pass legislation that will help cut emissions from tropical deforestation in half within a decade and achieve zero net emissions from the forest sector by 2030.

While this sounds like an ambitious goal — and it is — forest protection requires no technological breakthroughs and is one of the most cost-effective strategies we have to address climate change.

Currently, cash-poor but forest-rich nations can earn more money by destroying their forests than by conserving them. But the United States can lead in the global climate battle by providing the incentives and support developing countries need to protect their forest resources and lower emissions.

The report is particularly timely now, because the Senate is considering a climate change bill that offers a significant opportunity to implement a number of these recommendations. And by offering to partner with developing countries to reduce emissions from forest destruction, the United States could help other countries undertake more ambitious efforts to reduce emissions as the countries of the world head into climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

The commission calls for the United States to mobilize $14 billion each year by 2020 to protect the world’s forests, largely from private funds. This mobilization could be accomplished by enacting comprehensive climate policy legislation that caps and steadily reduces U.S. carbon emissions and provides incentives for U.S. companies to invest in forest conservation. In this way, such a program would create a win-win opportunity for businesses, consumers, forests and the people who inhabit them.

In the global effort to contain climate change, it is important to take steps to reduce all major sources of carbon emissions. Yet a ton of carbon emissions reduced through forest protection is just as important for our atmosphere as a ton of carbon reduced from a tailpipe or a smokestack.

The commission also recommends that the United States commit to early and sustained public investments — starting with $1 billion by 2012, and increasing to $5 billion annually by 2020 — to unlock these cost savings and begin to reduce deforestation in nations that cannot initially attract sufficient private capital. A well-designed cap-and-trade program, supplemented by bold commitments through the appropriations process, would provide an effective mechanism for providing this sustained public financing. (See a recent speech I gave at Yale University to learn more.)

At the Conservancy, we have seen first-hand how forests can be a powerful tool against climate change. For more than 10 years, the Conservancy has worked with some of the country’s leading businesses to launch programs that protect threatened forests, lower emissions, benefit local communities and fight climate change.

Our Noel Kempff project in Bolivia is the world’s first — and only — forest carbon project to have its emissions reductions verified by a third party. By bringing together AEP, PacifiCorp, BP, the Bolivian government and local communities, the project is protecting 1.5 million acres of tropical forest and will prevent the release of 5.8 million tons of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

In Indonesia, The Nature Conservancy is currently working with government agencies, private businesses, local communities and other partners to launch a massive forest carbon program that will span the entire governmental district of Berau – equal to the size of the country of Belize.

And in the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Para, which account for 70 percent of Brazil’s deforestation, we are moving forward with two large-scale reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) pilot projects that have the potential to halt millions of acres of deforestation and reduce emissions of millions of tons of carbon dioxide. These programs will demonstrate to U.S. and international climate change policymakers how REDD can work in practice.

Along with reducing emissions, stopping deforestation protects biodiversity as well as the food, water and economic resources communities rely upon for survival.

Halting the destruction of the world’s forests is within our grasp. The United States can and should lead in this effort, and the report released today shows the path forward.

(Image: Arcoiris waterfall at Noel Kempff Mercado National Park in Bolivia, South America. Credit: Hermes Justiniano.)

Are practical solutions to climate change within reach? Based on what I saw at the Governors’ Global Climate Summit, yes we can.

The Governors’ Global Climate Summit wrapped up last Friday with governors and other subnational leaders from around the world signing a declaration to work together toward effective climate solutions — including creation of climate policies, clean technologies, green jobs, forest conservation programs and adaptation activities.

They hope that their commitment, leadership, and initiative will motivate national leaders to succeed in reaching a new climate change agreement in Copenhagen. But can we be more than just hopeful? Here are some of the details of what came out of the summit — and why I think they demonstrate a solid basis for action on the international level:

Ahead of the closing ceremonies, forests featured prominently in two important events. Late Thursday night, governors from eleven states in Brazil, Indonesia and the United States signed a letter to their heads of state calling for a task force to develop effective policy on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) that could be included in the international climate treaty to be negotiated in Copenhagen. Together, Brazil and Indonesia represent about one-half of the world’s tropical forests.

On Friday, governors from Wisconsin, the Indonesian state of Aceh and the Brazilian states of Para, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Acre spoke directly to the opportunities they see in making forest protection, restoration and management a win-win solution for stopping climate change and creating more sustainable economies for their people.

Leaders from the Brazilian rubber tappers’ union, private timber and investment companies, and conservation organizations also spoke about the opportunities for launching partnerships to build capacity and contribute the funding needed to protect forests, support communities and fight climate change.

At least 17 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions come from forest loss around the world — more than from all the Earth’s automobiles, trucks, trains, planes and ships combined. Halting and eventually reversing deforestation trends promises to be one of the most cost-effective and immediate solutions to stopping climate change.

The world’s attention now turns to Copenhagen where international leaders will meet in December to hammer out a new global climate agreement. The negotiators still have a lot of work to do before they can reach an agreement. The stakes are high: Failing to act on climate change risks catastrophic impacts on people, economies, and the natural world.

But the Governors’ Global Climate Summit in California last week demonstrated that practical solutions are in reach, and that subnational leaders are ready to lead the way with real action to reduce emissions and to help those communities most vulnerable to climate change.

(Image: A log yard fills a large field near the village of Long Gi, East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Credit: Mark Godfrey/TNC.)