With tensions high, long-simmering disputes between rich and poor countries erupted time and again in Durban
which would come into force in 2020.""These really were very high-stakes negotiations over competing visions of the world,
"India will never be intimidated by threats or any kind of pressure like this. After objecting to stronger wording,
India finally agreed to pursue talks towards a"protocol, legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force.
Economic woes have diverted certainly attention from the climate threat and, in the United states, emboldened right-wing politicians who have blocked President Barack Obama s climate agenda.
 They re very sensitive and they re under risk. The bill s critics argued that it could
Flooding is the United kingdom's biggest climate threatsevere flooding that could affect millions of people is the United kingdom's most pressing climate-change risk,
 The first Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA), published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs (Defra), examines 100 potential consequences of climate change for the United kingdom. The study
said in a statement that the study demonstrates the need for urgent action to reduce risks.
But the most pressing risks laid out by the study concern water, with droughts and shortages in the summer and winter flooding all expected to affect the country more.
Flooding currently costs the United kingdom around £1. 3 billion (US$2. 04 billion) per year, presents a serious threat to buildings and infrastructure and contributes to costal erosion.
In 2010, the UK government allocated £2. 1 billion to flood defence throughout the country over a four-year period 8%less than was allocated by the previous government.
says that part of the challenge in prioritizing risks was to quantify or assign a number value to the consequences of different future scenarios,
whether the public-health benefits of the work outweigh the risks of a potential pandemic if the virus escaped from the lab. For the scientists who have created the mutated strains of the H5n1 virus,
Surveillance of flu viruses could, they argue, allow health organizations to monitor birds and other animals for the mutations that would provide an early warning of a pandemic
That tips the balance of risk-benefit assessment in favour of a cautious approach, says Michael Osterholm,
in order to limit the risk that uncontrolled proliferation of such research might lead to accidental or intentional release of similar mutant viruses.
Yet surveillance of H5n1 in poultry worldwide is patchy, particularly in poorer countries, where the virus is prevalent.
Last year, global surveillance resulted in partial sequences from just 160 H5n1 isolates being submitted to Genbank,
"Not with the surveillance we have now. Source: Genbankmoreover, if H5n1 surveillance in poultry is poor,
the situation is far worse in pigs, where there is almost no systematic surveillance, even in richer countries.
H5n1 infections in pigs are uncommon and cause only mild illness, creating little economic incentive to monitor them4.
The relative ease of making H5n1 transmissible between mammals in the lab should now prompt the world to address these glaring inadequacies in surveillance
Molecular technologies need to be made more easily available and affordable to countries at risk, and genetic surveillance more comprehensive and timely.
But building such systems would require sustained political will, financial resources, and overcoming major logistical hurdles in the field.
H5n1 is far from being the only flu virus that poses a pandemic threat. But he believes that more extensive genetic surveillance could eventually pay off."
"The research points us to where we need to go, rather than where we are today,
the immediate benefit would be in surveillance. But from a logistics standpoint, in the world we live in,
For methane, the study identified 14 control measures that would target leakage from coal mining and oil and gas operations, emissions from landfills, wastewater systems, livestock manure and rice paddies.
Anastas, a pioneer of green chemistry, spent much of his time reforming the agency's programme for assessing the risks of individual chemicals,
and this is a major risk to animal and human health
Canadian oil sands: defusing the carbon bombenvironmentalists and many politicians have called the oil sands a planetary-scale threat as they fight to prevent further development of the resource.
Andrew Weaver and Neil Swart, both climate scientists at the University of Victoria in British columbia, listened to the rhetoric and decided to run some calculations.
"We wanted to address the carbon-bomb question, Weaver says.""And frankly, these numbers aren t as big as
Her research requires the highest level of biological security containment BSL-4 but no BSL-4 labs in the United states can accommodate horses,
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has broken ground for a facility that would have allowed researchers such as Bossart to work closer to home.
The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kansas, is designed to provide BSL-4 containment for large-animal studies
Last week, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) convened a closed meeting to review a revised risk assessment from the DHS,
Beef producers have been alarmed particularly that the 2010 assessment put the cumulative risk of foot-and-mouth disease escaping from the NBAF over the facility s projected 50-year lifespan at 70%(see Fear factor.
whether current disease threats justify the facility, which could cost up to $1 Â billion to build."
but given the importance of the NBAF to national security and to protecting our agricultural economy,
"We are working with Homeland Security and the US Department of agriculture on Plum Island to develop the workforce that will ultimately work at the NBAF,
What happens next will depend, in part, on the NAS s judgement of the facility s risks and benefits.
The DHS says that the NBAF is needed to develop countermeasures against bioterrorism a threat that resonates less now than it did immediately after the anthrax attacks on the United states in 2001.
But the department also cites three threats that receive far less public attention. One is the growing likelihood of foreign animal diseases entering the United states as a result of international animal movement from commerce and smuggling.
A second is the risk of animal-borne diseases spreading to humans as population growth and dispersal puts people into greater contact with wild animals.
as well as the size of individual ash particles, suggest that the volcanic blast occurred more than 100 kilometres away.
Nuclear cleanup The Japanese government has threatened to withhold about ¥1 trillion (US$12. 8 billion) in rescue funds for the private company that runs the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,
See page 289 for more on the flu-virus debate. go. nature. com/pf7bwv20-24 february Marine scientists'responses to the Gulf of mexico oil spill in 2010 are discussed among topics at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Salt lake city, Utah
groups displaced by conflict, and modern markets for food and other forest products, he says
Mccomas presented the results today at NASA s headquarters in WASHINGTON DC, to coincide with the publication of a suite of papers detailing the results in the Astrophysical Journal.
three-quarters of Africa s population and two-thirds of the landscape are at risk, says Andy White,
"The footprint of a mine might be small, but the road to the mine will slice
and dice rural ecosystems, says White. Â But international efforts at sustainable development are also threatening these areas.
A Dutch firm s carbon-offset project in Uganda s Mount Elgon National park became unmarketable after sustained conflict with local farmers who contest the group's right to the land.
Africa is most at risk because governments fail to acknowledge pre-colonial private ownership of land by villages and communities.
and protection for the lands that they manage.""Rio was about devolution of governance but communities need ownership to protect their resources,
Flu surveillance lackingin addition, the surveillance is sustained typically not, but instead is ad hoc and reactive,
Timely global surveillance of animal flu viruses is crucial not just for identifying pandemic threats,
understanding risk factors that enable them to spread and keeping animal vaccines and diagnostics up to date.
To assess trends in global genetic surveillance, Nature analysed the records of nonidentical sequences from all subtypes of avian
That s important, says Malik Peiris, a flu virologist and surveillance expert at the University of Hong kong,
The older sequences can inform surveillance by showing how the viruses have evolved, says Peiris, but contemporary data are important"for real-time surveillance,
such as spotting changes that might herald dangerous strains. Many years can pass between the collection
but it is aimed at increasing the genomic knowledge base, rather than real-time surveillance. Researchers, too, are contributing to the lag
and Surveillance a network created by the NIAID in 2007 to boost flu surveillance which has a policy of releasing all sequence data within 45 days of its collection.
Almost all come from just a handful of countries most countries have little or no genetic surveillance in place.
Surveillance of avian flu viruses is bad, but that of pig viruses is worse. Yet pigs are a serious pandemic risk:
they can be infected co with both human and avian flu strains, which means that they provide ample opportunity for gene swapping and, thereby,
so there is little economic incentive for surveillance. Moreover, the pork industry often doesn t want the negative image of having swine flu detected in its farms.
which means that data can be collected for routine surveillance while leaving the source farm anonymous.
The pandemic risk posed by pigs has risen also since 2009. The 2009 pandemic H1n1 virus,
as is sustained surveillance. This results in large gaps in data, she says, because"many consecutive years of surveillance are needed to see trends (see page 535).
Poorer countries tend to have inadequate surveillance resources, and farmers often have little incentive to report outbreaks
because they will not receive any compensation for culled livestock. Countries sometimes also fail to look for,
Flu experts say that the dire state of surveillance could be turned rapidly around by, for example, creating a network of sentinel sites,
focusing on the countries and regions most at risk, that would collect isolates and sequence them in real time.
Such a network would probably even cost less than the fragmented and uncoordinated surveillance efforts in place today
says Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford university Clinical Research Unit in Ho chi minh city, Vietnam (see page 534).
The problem is that no global body has overall responsibility for flu surveillance. The World health organization (WHO) runs a global network of labs for human flu surveillance
and selects human strains to be included in vaccines for seasonal flu. Monitoring animals falls to the FAO,
surveillance could probably be done much more systematically and efficiently
Ancient Swedish farmer came from the Mediterraneangeneticists analysing DNA from Neolithic burial sites in Sweden have made a surprising discovery.
who is science director of the CSIRO Flagship research programme Water for a Healthy Country, a group of hydrologists, ecologists,
The plan would mean fewer blooms of blue-green algae and less risk of acidification of the Lower Lakes.
However, my impression is that we are a very long way from instilling proper science into this area such that patients are not at risk of either direct harm
An analysis from CIFOR, published last October, found that 42.5 million hectares of forest covered by the moratorium are protected already under Indonesian law, with only 22.5 million hectares receiving extra protection.
and so is in imminent danger, he adds. Laurance does commend the Indonesian government for protecting 11.5 million hectares of forests growing on carbon-rich peatland.
If deforested, these areas could release up to eight times more carbon into the atmosphere than would dryland forests growing on mineral soil.
and switched to the much faster method of whole-genome shotgun sequencing. In this technique, large chunks of DNA are sequenced separately
War on weeds loses groundwith its jumble of leaves and pointy, green, flower spikes, the plant known as pigweed or palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri) isn t much to look at.
North carolina, part of the US Department of agriculture (USDA), who notes that 383 known weed varieties have the genetic defences to survive one or more herbicides."
(although not the most toxic) in the defoliant Agent orange, used during the Vietnam war. Researchers are also wary of engaging in a continuing arms race with nature."
"A number of analysts feel that such an approach is sighted short and doomed to fail, says agronomist Matt Liebman of Iowa State university in Ames.
The threat of multiresistance has prompted a return to older methods of weed control. Stanley Culpepper, a weed scientist at the University of Georgia in Tifton
The USDA and the agrochemical industry are looking into the use of the natural chemical defences of plants and microbes to control weeds.
"The reality of weed management without the silver bullet of glyphosate is need that we to revert to a many-hammers approach crop rotations, cultivations, tillage,
Malaria surge fearedthe war to bring malaria to heel has made slow but steady progress during the past decade,
To help combat this threat, on 15 Â May the World health organization (WHO), based in Geneva,
But the two largest players in malaria aid the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria,
and the US President s Malaria Initiative (PMI) have not yet pledged additional money to fight resistance.
But some African countries lack the surveillance needed to spur such an approach. To address that deficiency,
and hired at surveillance stations. That could prove the most challenging goal of all.""Nobody wants to fund capacity building,
By contrast, the US Renewable Fuel Standard, part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, mandates the United states to produce increasing volumes of cellulosic biofuels each year, until it reaches a target of 60.5
But last week, the lower house of Brazil s National Congress passed a bill that observers say could drastically reduce forest protection.
scale back forest protections along rivers and hills, give state and local governments more authority over forests,
says Steve Schwartzman, director of tropical forest policy at the Environmental Defense Fund in WASHINGTON DC.""But the changes proposed in what passed the House are fully capable of reversing that trend.
a dozen social and environmental groups warned that Brazil is in danger of being"both host and villain at Rio+20
Ancient text gives clue to mysterious radiation spikean eerie red crucifix seen in Britain's evening sky in ad 774 may be unrecognized a previously supernova explosion
the only known causes of such radiation are supernova explosions or gigantic solar flares, and the researchers knew of no such events in ad 774 or 775,
or heard of were religious texts and'chronicles'that listed kings and queens, wars and things of that nature.
The Takarkori shelter and others nearby are home to vivid and colourful rock art depicting cattle, some with full udders,
to increase protection to regions such as the Coral sea. The government expects the reserves to become law at the end of this year, after a public consultation.
Scientists and conservationists are alarmed by the damage that mining is causing to the land and its people.
what to do with the mines once they are exhausted, and they leave behind mountains of sand and rock,
Now the government is tightening the screws on illegal mining, and scientists monitoring its impacts are on the front lines of a battle between miners,
environ  mental campaigners and the authorities. In February the Peruvian government banned mining in Madre de dios outside a designated 500,000-hectare corridor (see map)
and ordered that all miners must formally register a yearlong process that requires the mine operators to produce a work plan, an environmental-impact assessment and a cleanup strategy, among other requirements.
By setting aside a specific area for mining, the govern  ment hopes to regulate the industry more effectively
and to protect parks and the territories of indigenous people. But miners who have worked outside this newly designated corridor for decades with the government s tacit approval fear for their livelihoods
and the Madre de dios Mining Federation in regional capital Puerto Maldonado has campaigned strongly against the legislation.
The government began raiding mining camps outside the corridor in late March, but in many of those areas miners have returned
Only around 4, 000 miners in the region have met the government s deadline of 13 Â June to register their mining activities,
But mining is already beginning to encroach on these areas, and was threatening to become more widespread.
2011) showed that mining is deforesting Madre de dios faster than any other activity. Using satellite imagery,
the study s authors found that deforestation in two prominent mining zones increased sixfold between 2003 and 2009,
including many of the mining hotspots. Most previous mapping studies have assigned land to only two categories  forested
towns and mining areas together, and making it difficult to track the impact of the gold rush.
including mining, agriculture and five different classes of forestry. Scullion says that there is a misconception among locals that researchers are against mining.
Not so, he says  he just wants it to be done in a more sustainable way,
whether land should be used for logging, mining or conservation. The data could also help to guide where Â
Mining is also taking its toll on local people. An estimated 45-50 Â tonnes of mercury are used each year in Madre de dios to extract the prized gold,
2012) to show the scale of the health threat from mercury in Madre de dios. She found that in mining zones,
The global gold-mining industry, including leading mines in Peru, has switched mostly to an extraction process that uses cyanide,
The decision marks the latest chapter of an epic legal battle, in which millions of Brazilian farmers are trying to recover payments made to the company over the past decade.
Risk assessment of US agro-biosafety lab found wantingan independent panel reviewing the dangers associated with establishing a high-security laboratory for studying animal diseases in the heart of US cattle country has found that the government
has underestimated the risk that livestock will be exposed to microbes escaping from the facility. The largely critical review suggests that the proposed National Bio-and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF),
scheduled to open in 2020, continues to face significant hurdles, even as another committee explores whether it is needed at all.
The following year, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is overseeing the project with the Department of agriculture,
issued a risk assessment that drew criticism after it projected a 70%chance of escape for foot
and tied the NBAF s funding to a revised risk assessment which the DHS made public in February.
The updated assessment drastically downgraded the risk of foot and mouth disease escaping, to 0. 11%over 50 years.
a panel convened by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concludes that the risk estimates are based on"questionable and inappropriate assumptions says Greg Baecher, an engineer from the University of Maryland in College Park and chairman
It also takes into account environmental factors such as damage caused by tornadoes a real possibility in Kansas and one that the first risk assessment overlooked.
and on the statistical uncertainties associated with the risk calculations, the NAS reviewers found. In particular, they say,
and calls the"DHS out on its underestimates of risks. Although the concern has focused on foot
Manney sees zoonotic diseases those that can spread to humans as posing an even greater source of risk and uncertainty.
From the review panel s perspective,"a valid scientific and technical risk analysis is quite possible for this facility.
and processes of operating the NBAF as part of the iterative risk process, DHS spokeswoman Nicole Stickel says.
and understand the risks involved and the kinds of mitigation strategies like vaccines that are said available
and absent that capability we face other sorts of risks, says Baecher.""So, the question of the safety of the NBAF is a question of balancing different kinds of risks
China's emissions estimates don't add upthis week in Nature Climate Change, Guan, an expert in sustainability science at the University of Leeds, UK,
Last week the country s Ministry of Environmental Protection and the National Development and Reform Commission released data showing that
because regional data compilers are under pressure from two forces: local officials, whose performance evaluation depends on economic growth
China is stepping up its efforts to combat climate change. This week, it launched the National Climate Change Strategy Research
Resistance is always a danger when drugs are taken as a prophylaxis, which is why THE WHO requires that people on SP-AQ take different medications
President prunes forest reformsbrazil s vast forests lost some legal protections last week, but less than environmentalists had feared.
They also eliminate protections for steep slopes and allow landowners to meet some of their obligations to restore forest with permanent plantations of exotic trees,
The two sides are bracing for another battle as the reviews move forward. nature. com/rio20the politicized dispute is precisely
increasing the tension in a fierce struggle over political power in Bucharest. Ponta is accused of copying large sections of his 2003 Phd thesis on the International Criminal court (see Nature 486
Some Galapagos tortoises could have their threat categories downgraded. But the Pinta tortoise  still listed as Extinct in the Wild  will be recategorized as Extinct.
but without tortoises  once the island s dominant herbivore  there is a danger that some plant species could be choked out and lost.
and environmental security through enhancing the pipeline of a well-educated and trained workforce. Â Â I doubt there is an interest in increasing funds for research infrastructure.
"Zoonoses present a major threat to human and animal health. The burden for poor farmers is big,
a finding that conflicts with the idea held by many scientists that the crucible of disease emergence is biodiversity hotspots,
Patchy surveillance and under-reporting is a huge problem in developing countries, where farmers fear they will lose their livestock without receiving compensation
and surveillance networks and training for farmers and veterinarians in spotting and reporting incidents of disease,
director-general of the World organisation for Animal health (OIE) in Paris. The OIE is pushing for the World bank to establish a fund to compensate poor farmers in the case of large-scale disease outbreaks,
Everything except the location of the patent court for ruling on disputes was agreed last year,
Health act upheld The US Supreme court on 28 Â June voted narrowly in favour of upholding the Patient Protection
which could increase public uncertainty and run the risk of confusing policy-makers. At the same time, she says,
With no vaccine or cure for the disease, mass culls and vigilant hygiene offer the main defence.
China also risks importing the virus through its growing trade with African nations. Europe s large pig farms are buffered by better biosecurity and hygiene practices.
and Europe, pose a transmission threat that is harder to control.""Boars don t require visas to move across borders,
African swine fever was especially costly in South Ossetia during a 2008 conflict with Georgia,
Companies set to fight food-label plansource: California Secretary of Statethose in favour of labelling argue that the public has the right to know what is in their food,
stoking consumer hostility to genetic engineering. They also argue that the move would raise food costs,
Those early models predicted no threat to between 47%and 83%of all mammal populations in the northeastern forests
did not fare any better than would have been expected had forest fragments of the same size lacked such protection.
after years of pressure from the powerful agricultural lobby to weaken forest protection. The bill was vetoed partially by President Dilma Rousseff,
Agent orange The United states launched an effort on 9 august to clean up dioxin-contaminated soil left over from the Vietnam war at a former American airbase near Da Nang city, Vietnam.
a military satellite in February 2011; a telecommunications satellite that August; and the Phobos-Grunt mission to the Martian moon Phobos in November.
Battery rescue A123 Systems a leading US manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, may have found a solution to its financial woes.
and found that in most cases the emissions savings were much lower. Gernot Pehnelt and Christoph Vietze, economists at Globecon, an independent research institute in Jena
Germany, calculated the greenhouse-gas savings of rapeseed biofuel in several different situations. They looked at factors such as variations in soil quality and fertilizer application during crop production,
the team found greenhouse-gas savings of 29.7%for rapeseed, well below the commission's 38%estimate.
and Vietze s conclusion that the actual greenhouse-gas savings of rapeseed biofuel are much lower than those estimated by the commission.
A. DI MEO/EPA/CORBISITALIAN dog-breeding facility at risk One of the largest suppliers of beagles (pictured) for mandatory drug testing in Europe could struggle to survive after an Italian court ordered its temporary closure
GM patent win One of the largest ever US patent settlements saw biotechnology giant Monsanto awarded $1 Â billion on 1 Â August in a dispute with chemical company Dupont
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