The RSPB is calling for much tougher action to prevent the loss of wildlife due to accelerating climate change.
The wildlife charity is presenting a paper, setting out its concerns at a major climate conference being held at the Met Office in Exeter.
The conference, with more than 200 participants from all over the world, aims to answer two questions posed by Tony Blair: how to define the danger level for rising temperatures and what that danger level should be.
This, they hope, will lead to a better understanding of methods the world can employ to avoid catastrophic global warming.
A paper by the RSPB argues that climate change is already affecting wildlife and that it will take little further change to seriously affect some species and ecosystems. "The UN convention on climate change requires that greenhouse gases should be stabilised at a level which allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change," said John Lanchbery, author of the RSPB paper.
 | Black-tailed Godwit.
Photo courtesy: RSPB |
"Yet, there is substantial and compelling evidence that the degree of climate change which has already occurred is affecting both species and ecosystems, in many cases adversely.
"Some species are likely to become extinct and some ecosystems will be lost as a result of little further change in the climate." At the RSPB's Exe estuary reserves in Devon the charity is already battling against the effects of climate change.
Milder winters mean the grass at the site is growing too quickly for over wintering birds, such as black-tailed godwit, curlew and wildfowl, to feed.
The problem continues in the spring. With warmer weather arriving earlier, it encourages grass to grow sooner, therefore limiting the availability of suitable bare ground breeding areas for birds like the lapwing. To combat the problem on the Exe estuary, cattle employed in the spring and summer to keep grass short are now kept on through the winter. Mr Lanchbery added: "Some ecosystems are obviously not 'adapting naturally' to climate change, unless you count human-induced ecosystem loss as natural.
"Almost all countries in the world, including the USA, are members of the Convention. The scientific evidence is that they all need to act now to cut greenhouse gas emissions."
The conference, sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), was announced last September by the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair.
The European Union has said global average temperature should not rise more than 2C above its present level in order to avoid damaging climate change. Article first published: 30th January 2005
| 
