U.N. urban plan needs targets to measure success: environment head

A major summit on cities taking place in Ecuador this week must consider setting targets to measure progress on an ambitious 20-year plan for urban development, the United Nations' environment chief said on Monday.

In Quito, some 140 governments are expected to sign up to a non-binding vision for sustainable cities that includes multiple pledges, but analysts have criticized it for lacking specific goals or timelines.

More than 45,000 government leaders, academics, planners and campaigners have gathered for the U.N. Habitat III conference which is tasked with working out how the "New Urban Agenda" will be put into practice over the next two decades.

Erik Solheim, who took the reins as executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) in August, said targets would be needed so that cities could see whether their efforts were successful, and learn from one another.

Read the Reuters story - “U.N. urban plan needs targets to measure success: environment head.”

Ecuadoran visitor finds her country in the news for all the wrong reasons

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Isabel", who has a special interest in the environment and the state of the world, came from Ecuador to study at the University of Melbourne.

Nearly two years ago she became a friend of Beneath the Wisteria, but several months ago returned home and now her home country is in the news, for all the wrong reasons.

A story on Business Insider Australia - “Ecuador To Sell A Third Of Its Amazon Rainforest To Chinese Oil Companies” – would undoubtedly frustrate Isabel.

The story says, “Ecuador is planning to auction off three million of the country’s 8.1 million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies, Jonathan Kaiman of The Guardian reports.

“The report comes as oil pollution forced neighbouring Peru to declare an environmental state of emergency in its northern Amazon rainforest.

“Ecuador owed China more than $7 billion — more than a tenth of its GDP — as of last summer.

“In 2009 China began loaning Ecuador billions of dollars in exchange for oil shipments. It also helped fund two of the country’s biggest hydroelectric infrastructure projects, and China National Petroleum Corp may soon have a 30 per cent stake in a $10 billion oil refinery in Ecuador.”

Ecuador plants its way to tree-based Guinness Record

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n Saturday, in often sweltering heat, more than 44,000 people in Ecuador reportedly sowed their way into the Guinness Book of World Records by planting 647,250 trees of over 200 species in one day.

Planting trees in Ecuador - an
example we should all follow.

The effort was organized by the Ecuadoran government under an initiative called “Siembratón.”

Ecuador’s record was set based on the number of species of trees planted. “There is no record in history of similar events involving over 150 species,” a Guinness Records adjudicator told AFP.

Volunteers reportedly sowed an estimated 216 species of trees across some 2,000 hectares of land in 150 locations ranging from the Pacific coastal region to the Amazonian basin to the high Andean mountains. The diverse climatic terrain likely helped in the small country plant so many different species. Trees included alder, wild cherry, willow, cedar, rosemary, lignum vitae, myrtle, podocarpus, carob, cholan, laurel silk guarando, eugenia, mahogany, paper tree, walnut, fig tree and arabisco.

Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s president, participated by planting a tree in the parish of Pifo, in the capital of Quito. “Today Ecuador is making history again,” he said in a press release. “We are a green country.”

Read the ClimateProgress story - “What Every Country Can Learn From Ecuador”.