Psst! Love your tuna sashimi? Well, eat up because they may not be around much longer. The World Wildlife Fund has a dire report saying that unless current fishing practices are changed, tunas will be wiped out by 2012:

The population can only be saved by a complete halt to fishing in May and June, when the fish swim to the Mediterranean to spawn, the WWF says. The call comes as the two month tuna fishing season begins.

‘Bluefin tuna is collapsing as we speak and yet the fishery will kick off for business as usual,’ said Sergi Tudela, of WWF. ‘It is absurd and inexcusable to open a fishing season when stocks of the target species are collapsing.’

Warming in the Arctic could lead to flooding affecting one quarter of the world’s population, substantial increases in greenhouse gas emissions from massive carbon pools, and extreme global weather changes, according to a new WWF report.

The Arctic Climate Feedbacks: Global Implications report, released today, outlines dire global consequences of a warming Arctic that are far worse than previous projections. The unprecedented peer-reviewed report brings together top climate scientists who have assessed the current science on arctic warming.

“What they found was a truly sobering picture,’ said Dr Martin Sommerkorn, senior climate change advisor for WWF’s Arctic programme. ‘What this report says is that a warming Arctic is much more than a local problem, it’s a global problem.

“Simply put, if we do not keep the Arctic cold enough, people across the world will suffer the effects.”

The report shows that numerous arctic climate feedbacks – negative effects prompted by the impacts of warming — will make global climate change more severe than indicated by other recent projections, including those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 assessment.

The dramatic loss of sea ice resulting from the Arctic warming at about twice the rate of the rest of the world will influence atmospheric circulation and weather in the Arctic and beyond. This is projected to change temperature and precipitation patterns in Europe and North America, affecting agriculture, forestry and water supplies. Read the full story

Yolandi Groenewald M&G

South Africans should brace themselves for a severely water-stressed future, a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report on the world’s ecological footprint warned this week.

The influential international report has been released every two years for the past decade.

In 1996 it warned that the world was heading for ecological disaster. The latest report paints an even bleaker picture of the future if consumers cannot curb their hunger for resources.

A new feature is the inclusion of a water footprint. The report finds that about 50 countries face moderate or severe water stress and that the number of people suffering from year-round or seasonal water shortages is likely to increase because of climate change.

“South Africa will be one of the countries hardest hit by water scarcity in 2025,” said Deon Nel, WWF Sanlam Living Waters Partnership manager. “A shortage of water will not only affect economic growth — there won’t be enough water for some people to live on.” Read the full story