Eco Minute 13:30

BULLETIN 9 January 1:30 pm

Good afternoon, here is your Eco Minute:

# The Green Connection says it is pleased that Turkey’s Karpowership has lost its grid space reserved by Eskom because it did not meet the deadline for financial close on 31st December last year. Karpowership were last year granted access to the three ports of Durban, Ngqura and Saldanha Bay for a period of 20 years as part of the solution to the country’s energy crisis. Green Connection’s, Liz McDaid, says Karpowership has been a costly and controversial project:

# Global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels, amplified by the naturally reoccurring El Niño climatic event, will by May push temperatures to as much as 1.7 Celsius above the average experienced before industrialisation. This is a warning by former National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist James Hansen. Governments meeting at the United Nations climate talks held in Dubai in December reaffirmed the previous commitment, made in Paris in 2015, to strive to restrain the global temperature rise to 1.5 Celsius. Hansen says there needs to be purposeful actions to affect the planet’s energy balance.

# And finally: Western Thailand conservationists are celebrating the success of their tiger conservation efforts. Authorities report the sighting of a mother tiger and her two cubs in the Salak Phra Wildlife Sanctuary, marking over a decade of meticulous monitoring. Conservation Programme Manager at the Thai chapter of Panthera, Rattapan Pattanarangsan, says Thailand is now in the position to breed tigers in the country. He says the country’s commitment to conservation is yielding results, with a notable rise in the tiger population over the past 12 years.

Stay tuned for more news………….