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Historic Climate Change ruling that puts ‘all world governments on notice’

Dutch appeals court upholds landmark climate change ruling | Environment | The Guardian

Campaigners celebrate at the Hague after the court of appeal upheld the historic climate ruling on the Dutch Government. Photograph: Chantal Bekker Chantal Bekker/GraphicAlert/Urgenda Foundation

A court in The Hague has upheld a historic legal order on the Dutch government to accelerate carbon emissions cuts, a day after the world’s climate scientists warned that time was running out to avoid dangerous warming.

Appeal court judges ruled that the severity and scope of the climate crisis demanded greenhouse gas reductions of at least 25% by 2020 – measured against 1990 levels – higher than the 17% drop planned by Mark Rutte’s liberal administration.

The ruling – which was greeted with whoops and cheers in the courtroom – will put wind in the sails of a raft of similar cases being planned around the world, from Norway to New Zealand and from the UK to Uganda.

Marjan Minnesma, the director of the Urgenda campaign which brought the case, called on political leaders to start fighting climate change rather than court actions.

She said: “The special report of the IPCC emphasises that we need to reduce emissions with much greater urgency. The Dutch government knows that as a low-lying country, we are on the frontline of climate change. Our own government agencies recently concluded that in the worst case scenario sea levels might rise by 2.5 to 3 metres by the end of the century. The court of appeal’s decision puts all governments on notice. They must act now, or they will be held to account.”

Jesse Klaver, the leader of the Dutch Greens welcomed the decision as “historic news”. He told the Guardian: “Governments can no longer make promises they don’t fulfil. Countries have an obligation to protect their citizens against climate change. That makes this trial relevant for all other countries.”
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A Global Action Plan of Climate Restoration

A GLOBAL ACTION PLAN OF CLIMATE RESTORATION

NATURAL FOREST: USA- State of New Hampshire-Forested areas provide excellent shading, infiltration, and transpiration to regulate small water cycles in the landscape.

A global plan of climate restoration of the “small water cycle” (1) of regional landscapes, with a goal of decreasing floods, drought, natural disasters, and other undesirable climate changes, and increasing the biodiversity and production potential of all continents, through the introduction of various measures of rainwater retention suitable for all areas of human habitation and usage.

Please download full article here: https://goo.gl/FMB9z3

1. WHY IS A GLOBAL ACTION PLAN (GAP) NEEDED?

Water management policies worldwide are typically based on the principle of what can be termed the “old water paradigm,” which assumes among many other considerations, that surface waters are the main source and reserve of fresh water supplies. Global legislation and investment therefore tend to be oriented toward protecting, developing, and utilizing surface waters with infrastructure such as large reservoirs for water collection and distribution. Although rainwater is the cyclical source of all fresh- water supplies, it is nonetheless often considered to be waste product to be drained away quickly into streams and rivers.

There is a need to perceive by way of a “new water paradigm,”(1) that in natural ecosystems, water is integrated into small, regional water cycles, which supply vapor to the atmosphere to condense and form rain, the sun being the driving force of the circulation of water in small water cycles. We also need to appreciate the thermoregulatory processes provided by the movement of water between the surface of the earth and the atmosphere, which maintains the proper temperatures for life on earth.

There needs to be increased attention on the gradual, sometimes almost imperceptible impacts of human activities that have led to the reduction of continental freshwater stocks. There is often a misconception that human activities have no direct effect on water cycles, and that temporal and spatial changes are either part of natural, evolutionary processes, or caused by global climate change. Therefore we tend to underestimate the influence of continental freshwater reserves on global energy and thermoregula- tory processes, as well as the degrading effects of climate change related to excessive drainage of ecosystems. These human impacts can detrimentally affect extensive territories; these include not only traditionally arid landscapes, but also areas of higher rainfall where human infrastructure drains water away from the land, ultimately to accumulate in the oceans.

PORTUGAL-TAMERA – Bernd Mueller is a permaculture and water specialist, and head of Tamera’s ecology project. The focus of the ecological work of Tamera is on building the Water Retention Landscape as a far-reaching approach to healing the land, and regenerating water supplies, topsoil, pasture and forest, and greater diversity of species. See http://www.tamera.org.

It is necessary to retain about 100m3 of rainwater for every inhabitant on the planet. This means that, if every person on earth implemented measures to retain 100m3 of rainwater in their area within one year, enough water retention measures would be achieved to retain more than 760 km3 of water, which would in turn replenish the small water cycles in the atmosphere above land. This aforementioned rainwater, returned to the small water cycles, would lead to a decrease in ocean levels by 3 mm. Even if some doubts exist about the global program’s ability to reduce ocean levels, renew the climate or revive the small water cycles, it is nevertheless legitimate to initiate such a program, based on increased water resources such as that evidenced from an experimental program in the nation of Slovakia. Based on the findings of the Slovakian model, it can be expected that, at the global level, the retention of rainwater on land will result in the increased yield of water resources by more than 30 000 m3 per second and there- fore will kickstart the process of decreasing the production of sensible heat into the atmosphere, with an expected yearly reduction by 500 000 TWh. This will effectively lower the risks of natural disasters as well as occurrences of extreme weather events. More