3. There obviously isn't any ONE answer to fixing our environment as it is today. When it comes to finding alternative power sources, I am under the opinion that we should find as many eco-friendly solutions as possible.
Here's another relatively 'safe' energy source besides solar and biofuels- tidal currents. Unlike those other sources, tidal currents are utterly predictable, which is a big plus for us: we can calculate when and how much energy we can harvest. However, one of the problems that's keeping us from harvesting this energy is money. Equipment for such an operation is of course very expensive. Money may be the root of all evil, but now we need lots of it to try and 'make good' our mistakes of the past (and present).
There's also the problem with gov't support- I quote: "More than a dozen federal, state and local-government agencies share control over the nation's tidal waters, which can make obtaining a permit a bureaucratic nightmare." It'll obviously take a whole lot of time until we are able to harvest that tidal energy. There is actually one such power plant in France- but it uses a system that involves damming water, which is not exactly eco-friendly. Tidal turbines would be a better way to harvest this energy, but again these are ridiculously expensive to make (according to the article, they must be practically 'hand-made').
Hmmm, tidal turbines... I like the idea of harvesting energy from tidal currents- it is very much like the way windmills work... only with water, but I am still a bit concerned about what these things may do to marine life (which is already being threatened by all kinds of other man-made problems). It is, in my opinion, a project that should definitely be pursued- let's just not overdo it. If every single available spot in the ocean were to be filled with these turbines... that'll probably lead to even more problems. Wars might break out over which country gets to use which spots (a bit like how Korea is fighting over its rights to Dok-do, that little island, against Japan).
Again, let's use our resources moderately. Tidal currents may never 'run out', but those available spots certainly will one day.
Tidal power isn't for the faint-hearted, as Verdant Power CEO William Taylor knows from experience. The first time Taylor's company sank an experimental turbine into New York City's East River, in late 2006, the powerful tidal currents — they can run up to 6 m.p.h. (almost 10 km/h) on a good day — smashed the device's fiberglass blades. Next they tried a turbine with rotors made of aluminum and magnesium, but after a couple of months the river won again. Finally, in the summer of 2008, Verdant sank a third design, with blades of tough aluminum alloy. These proved strong enough, and were soon generating sufficient electricity to power the lights at a nearby supermarket. That might seem like a small return for an operation that has cost millions of dollars, but Taylor isn't discouraged. "It's all part of the mantra — learning by doing," says the 61-year-old. "The potential of tidal can be just enormous."
Tidal power doesn't get the attention — or the venture capital — that higher-profile renewable energy sources such as solar or biofuels do, but there's a lot of energy waiting to be tapped in the motion of the ocean. Unlike the breeze or the sun, tidal currents are utterly predictable — sailors have charted them for centuries — which means engineers know exactly how much energy they'll get, and when they'll get it. The mechanics are physics 101 — at their most basic, tidal turbines act as underwater windmills, transforming sea currents into electrical current. And there is no shortage of potential sites around the world — a study by the Electric Power Research Institute estimated that as much as 10% of U.S. electricity could eventually be supplied by tidal, a potential equaled in Britain and surpassed in powerful coastal sites like Canada's Bay of Fundy.
But tidal power's takeoff has been held up by red tape, environmental concerns and the difficulties of building and maintaining infrastructure under the water. In the 42 years since the 240-MW Rance tidal plant was completed on the northern coast of France, not a single utility-scale commercial project has been built. "It will be viable, but I still think it will stay last on the list for a while," says Miriam Horn, a writer at the green group Environmental Defense Fund. "It will take a lot of [government] support."
That support has been largely missing in the U.S., where state aid for alternative energy that isn't grown by corn farmers is all but nonexistent. But that hasn't deterred start-ups like Verdant or Washington-based Oceana Power from investing in the technology. Verdant, launched in 2000, is expanding beyond its test in New York City and plans projects off the coast of Texas and in Canada, which has an estimated 15,000 MW of potential tidal energy. Oceana — which boasts environmental luminaries like Climate Institute president John Topping among its founders — has proceeded more slowly on actual projects, but through a network of regional subsidiaries it has staked out claims in tidal waters throughout the U.S., including beneath the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Competition has sometimes caused friction between the two companies, but they both agree that government red tape is hampering development of the nascent industry. More than a dozen federal, state and local-government agencies share control over the nation's tidal waters, which can make obtaining a permit a bureaucratic nightmare. "It will be one way in California and another way in Massachusetts," says Daniel Power, Ocean's CEO. "There's a lack of precedents here so everyone is getting their sea legs."
Things are slightly more advanced in Europe. The Rance plant in northwestern France is the only utility-scale tidal power system in the world — but it's a tidal barrage plant that involves damming water, a method that has more serious environmental impacts than the new generation of tidal turbines. The far northern town of Hammerfest, Norway, has hosted a 300 kW experimental tidal project for several years. The U.K., while hardly free from red tape, is also ahead of the U.S. That's partially a reflection of the British government's stronger stance on cutting carbon emissions, but also because tidal power has obvious appeal to an island nation. Bristol-based firm Marine Current Turbines (MCT), whose directors have been working in the field since the early 1990s, established a successful 300-kW turbine off Lynmouth, Devon, in 2003. Now MCT is developing a $20 million commercial-scale tidal-energy project in Northern Ireland's turbulent Strangford Narrows. Called SeaGen, the project has already broken records: last month it became the first tidal turbine to hit a capacity of 1.2 MW. The company next plans a 10.5-MW project off the Welsh island of Anglesey in partnership with npower renewables, part of utility giant RWE.
The chief obstacle these days is finance, not science, says Wright. Tidal projects have high initial construction costs — turbines are practically handmade — and that won't change until the market grows and developers can harness economies of scale. That requires subsidies. "This technology needs to be scaled up quickly," says Wright. "The government needs to believe this can happen." It might also require a streamlining of environmental regulations, according to Verdant's Taylor. Rules have already slowed several projects. Verdant had to spend $2 million on its New York operation just to ensure its turbines weren't making sashimi out of the local sea life. (They weren't.) Advocates argue that tidal power has enough potential advantages — unlike wind turbines, tidal generators are invisible, for instance — to be worth promoting. "It's going to happen," says Oceana's Power. "It's just a question of when and how quickly."
Go with the Flow
THEORY Like an undersea windmill, tidal-power plants use rotors to drive turbines. The density of water means a seamill can generate more power than a windmill of the same size
PRACTICE The SeaGen power plant, which began generating electricity off Northern Ireland last year, uses twin 600-kW turbines to develop 1.2 MW in a flow of 5 knots (2.4 m/sec.)
PROS AND CONS Tidal power is more predictable than solar or wind, and undersea machinery is less obtrusive than huge windmills. But start-up costs are still high and the ocean can be tough on equipment Source: Marine Current Turbines
3. (Oh my god...... I just blew up the review I wrote. I deleted it without previously saving the passages!! haha....I feel too miserable and frustrated to write this again...lol)
As Professor Whitaker stressed the importance of comprehending a certain phenomenon in diverse perspectives, I realized how intricate and convoluted the environmental problems actually are. I just saw the one factor that was supposedly known as a MAIN reason for the problem. So I attempted to find the article that can tell me how one problematic situation has induced by many different factors, and that is this article about soil. I chose this because in the class reading list, there was Daniel J. Hillel's article, 'Out of the Earth' which I think was highly informative and insightful. Having read the article, I could not believe how ignorant and negligent I was about the basic condition of human lives, the soil problem! We have called a land as the 'Mother God'. According to the Greek myth, the world was created by the goddess Gaia which means this healthy soil is what we must protect.
Here, I could know a correlation between soil degradation, strong wind, increasing precipitation, and biofuel. These various factors, all combinded, exacerbated the soil erosion. I found this article very informative and enlightening, and I hope it will be the same for other students^^
---------------------------------------- A harsh winter wind blew last night, and this morning the thin snow cover has turned into a rich chocolate brown. The dirt covering the snow comes from cornfields near my home that were ploughed following the harvest, a common practice in southern Ontario and in the corn-growing regions of the US Midwest.
A handful of this dirty snow melts quickly, leaving a thin, fine-grained wet mess. It doesn’t look like much, but the mucky sludge in my hand is the prerequisite for life on the planet.
“We are overlooking soil as the foundation of all life on Earth,” says Andres Arnalds, assistant director of the Icelandic Soil Conservation Service. Arnalds is an eloquent spokesperson for the unheralded emergency of soil erosion, a problem that is reducing global food production and water availability, and is responsible for an estimated 30 percent of the greenhouse gases emissions. “Land degradation and desertification may be regarded as the silent crisis of the world, a genuine threat to the future of humankind.”
Arnalds is dead serious when he calls soil erosion a crisis. Each year, some 38,000 square miles of land become severely degraded or turn into desert. About five billion acres of arable land have been stripped of their precious layer of topsoil and been abandoned since the first wheat and barley fields were planted 10,000 years ago. In the past 40 years alone, 30 percent of the planet’s arable land has become unproductive due to erosion, mainly in Asia and Africa. At current erosion rates, soils are being depleted faster than they are replenished, and nearly all of the remaining 11 billion acres of cropland and grazing land suffer from some degree of erosion.
Most of this erosion is simply due to plowing, removal of crop residues after harvest, and overgrazing, which leaves soil naked and vulnerable to wind and rain. It is akin to tire wear on your car — a gradual, unobserved process that has potentially catastrophic consequences if ignored for too long.
Arnalds has seen our perilous future crisis by looking into the past. Eleven hundred years ago, the first Icelandic settlers came to a cold island mostly covered by forests and lush meadows, and blessed with deep volcanic soils. In a pattern repeated around the world, settlers cleared the forests and put too many animals on the meadows, until 96 percent of the forest was gone and half the grasslands destroyed. By the 1800s, Iceland had become Europe’s largest desert; the people starved, and the once prosperous country became one of the world’s poorest. “Once soil is gone, you can’t get it back,” Arnalds says. “It’s a non-renewable resource.”
Nickel and Dimed to Death No one knows how much food-producing land will be left by 2050, when another three billion people are expected to join the current global population of 6.5 billion. What we do know is that right now, 99 percent of human food calories come from the land. Global food production has kept pace with population growth thus far thanks chiefly to the extensive use of chemical fertilizers. But food production per acre of land is starting to decline, primarily due to loss of productive land and water shortages. The latter is often the result of soil erosion because soil and vegetation act as a sponge that holds and gradually releases water. And that soil erosion, in turn, is exacerbated by chemical farming practices that over time break down soil structure.
Add to these challenges climate change’s impact on soil erosion and the competition between growing food and producing biofuels, and it’s frightening to consider the challenge of feeding nine billion people when nearly one billion go hungry right now. Arnalds summarizes the challenge: More food will have to be produced within the next 50 years than during the last 10,000 years combined. “Securing food in many places will become a crisis of rapidly growing proportions.”
Erosion largely goes unnoticed by farmers as it “nickels and dimes you to death,” says David Pimentel, an ecologist at Cornell University who has conducted extensive research on the subject. Even if there were no humans on the planet, soils would still erode. The soil formation from the weathering of rock and the breakdown of plants, however, would be faster than the erosion rate; it takes roughly 500 years to create one inch of soil. Once humans remove natural vegetation, soil is exposed to raindrops that easily dislodge it, washing soil particles into creeks, streams, rivers, and eventually into the ocean. One rainstorm will wash away .04 inches of soil. This may not seem like much, but over one acre of land that fraction of an inch adds up to tons of topsoil.
Wind also disrupts soil, and can transport dust huge distances. Dry and windy conditions blew nearly two inches of topsoil off Kansas farmlands during the winter of 1995–96. Contrary to common belief, the topsoil loss in Kansas didn’t end up being neatly deposited on farms in neighboring states. More than 60 percent ended up clogging ditches, streams, rivers, and lakes. That makes waterways more prone to flooding (further exacerbating erosion) and contaminates them with fertilizer and pesticide residues, Pimentel says.
Every rainy day or windy night steals a thin layer of soil from any exposed piece of ground until there is little left but sand and rock. “Iowa has some of the best and deepest soils in the world,” Pimentel says, “and they’ve lost nearly 50 percent in the last hundred years.”
Erosion’s potential threat to humanity remains largely ignored by the world community. When soil experts from around the world met in Selfoss, Iceland in August 2007, they concluded that an international treaty is needed to spur countries into taking action to protect their soils. The soil scientists proposed that, at the very least, soil ought to have its own year — “The International Year of Land Care” — to focus the world’s attention on soil stewardship.
But hold on a second. While politicians, CEOs, and autoworkers might not think much about soil, surely farmers, whose very existence depends on soil, don’t need a bunch of international lawyers and bureaucrats at the United Nations to tell them to protect their lands. After all, controlling erosion isn’t rocket science. By now it’s well known that agricultural practices such as protecting soil with cover crops when the land is not growing edible crops, keeping post-harvest plant residues on the land, and reducing overgrazing and forest clearance are some of the ways to protect soils.
“Farmers know their success depends on the soil, but they often have more immediate needs, such as feeding their families, paying school fees, or fleeing corrupt governments,” says Michael Stocking of the University of East Anglia in Britain, and one of the leading experts on agriculture in tropical countries. Most farmers face so many short-term challenges that it is difficult to invest in the long-term protection of the soil. Social and economic pressures force many farmers to “mine the soil” until the land is completely denuded and is turned into “badlands,” Stocking says.
Such badlands can be found in every country in the world, and are easy to spot. A more worrisome trend is the hidden danger of losing soil fertility on lands that appear healthy. “Fertility loss on good soils has a much bigger impact than further degradation of badlands,” Stocking says.
Healthy topsoil is a complex mixture of minerals, bacteria, fungi, microscopic invertebrates, and larger invertebrates such as ants and earthworms that break down nutrients and transfer them to the roots of plants. Degradation of soils diminishes this incredible below-ground biodiversity, reducing crop yield as well as soils’ ability to store and filter water and to regulate the global cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.
Edwin Remsberg In the past 40 years alone, 30 percent of the planet’s arable land has become unproductive due to erosion.While some American farmers control erosion using low- or no-till techniques for planting, the majority are mining the soil, according to Craig Cox, executive director of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, headquartered in Iowa. “Soil conservation has taken a back seat to maximizing production,” Cox says.
As Cox drives the rural roads of Iowa, he sees fresh signs of erosion on the world’s best farmland. “It’s amazing to see the extent of erosion here, mainly because of the absence of basic soil conservation techniques,” he says. Those techniques — such as planting grasses along the edges of waterways and leaving crop residues on the soil — are some of the hard lessons learned during the dust bowl years of the 1930s. But those lessons have been forgotten — or ignored. Driven by the high costs of fertilizer and fuel, and currently lucrative crop prices, farmers are planting rows of corn right to the edge of stream banks, and sometimes in the streams themselves. “It’s amazing and discouraging to see,” Cox says.
Bad News Biofuels It’s all the more discouraging because American farmers had reduced soil erosion by about 40 percent between 1985 and 1995, largely due to government policies like the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). But CRP programs are now taking a back seat to the desire to cash in on the biofuel bonanza. Erosion is ignored while the US government provides billions of dollars in subsidies for biofuels. “Biofuels and climate change are real threats to America’s soil health,” Cox says.
Farmers are eagerly plowing up CRP lands, pastures, and highly erodible land to grow corn — 12 million additional acres of corn in 2007 alone — so they can profit from the ethanol boom. Ethanol is mainly made from corn, and the federal government hopes the US will be producing 35 billion gallons of the stuff by 2017. Reaching that goal would turn much of the US into a giant cornfield and has already doubled the price of corn in the past two years. Corn is particularly hard on the soil, requiring plenty of fertilizer, water, and pesticides. Cox says ethanol has sparked a “gold-rush mentality” among farmers who are mortgaging the future health of their soils for short-term profits. “There’s no question that the ethanol boom is increasing erosion.”
Not surprisingly, land prices and rents in the corn belt have jumped upward, creating additional pressure to “mine the soil to pay the mortage.” Farmland has been a popular investment for many years, and in some states, half of all farmland is rented. This reduces the incentives for soil conservation, since the farmer who works the field is not the permanent caretaker of the land. Ethanol-driven land degradation will not disappear even if the much-touted cellulosic ethanol technology is commercialized. The cellulosic process uses crop residues like corn stalks and wheat straw (rather than grains like corn or soy) to make ethanol. While cellulosic ethanol won’t directly use food as fuel, the loss of crop residues would further expose soils to erosion. And it would also reduce organic matter in soils, greatly diminishing their fertility, Cox says. “I’m very concerned there will be serious consequences for soils if cellulosic ethanol goes forward.”
Hard Rains of Climate Change Strange new weather patterns linked to global climate change could further harm vulnerable soils. Increasing corn and soy production could expose soils to the hard rains that climate change is producing.
A number of studies have documented increased rainfall intensity in the US since 1970. In many regions, the amount of overall rainfall hasn’t changed, but the rain comes in shorter, more intense bursts, doubling the normal rates of erosion. This is particularly noticeable in the southern US, Cox says. A brand new computer climate model that uses data collected over the last decade reveals that soil scientists have substantially underestimated the amount of erosion from climate change’s hard rains. “It could be four times higher than we thought,” Cox says. And that rate appears to be accelerating as hard rains wash soil off the land, ruining streams and destroying aquatic habitat. The soil conservation techniques of yesterday may not be enough to keep soil healthy with climate change, he says. “There has been very little attention paid to the impact of climate change on soil conservation.”
“Soil is the connection to ourselves. … To be at home with the soil is truly the only way to be at home with ourselves, and therefore the only way we can be at peace with the environment and all of the earth species that are part of it. It is, literally, the common ground on which we all stand.” — Fred Kirschenmann There are some 2,300 billion tons of carbon locked in the world’s soils, far more than the 790 billion tons currently in the atmosphere. Land degradation, including deforestation of farmland and desertification, may account for as much as 30 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas releases, according to studies by Rattan Lal of Ohio State University. Aside from removing the natural vegetation, plowing the soil releases organic carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Conventional agriculture methods have already reduced soil carbon by 30 and 60 percent in much of the US, says Don Reicosky, a research soil scientist with the US Department of Agriculture who is based in Morris, Minnesota. Carbon is a key ingredient for plant growth and crucial for soil fertility. For Reicosky, carbon is the primary driver of the entire living soil ecosystem: “Carbon does great things for the soil but it takes a generation to see the impacts.”
Farmers have only been able to escape the impacts of this massive loss of organic carbon thanks to cheap chemical fertilizers made from fossil fuels. But that short-term solution is just making matters worse, according to a new study out of the University of Illinois. In examining crop records and soil samples from the Illinois Morrow Plots dating back 100 years, soil scientists were surprised to see corn yields falling on plots that had received the most chemical nitrogen fertilizers and crop residues. It turns out that even with additional crop residues, fertilized soils have much less soil carbon, likely resulting in higher releases of carbon into the atmosphere.
Keeping carbon in the soil may be one of the quickest ways to reduce global carbon emissions. And if that’s not enough reason to substitute carbon storage for crop yield as the ultimate goal of farming, then the improvements in soil fertility and declines in erosion that will give us a chance at feeding a crowded world ought to.
“Blaming the farmer for these problems is futile, since we’ve created the economic system they operate in,” says Fred Kirschenmann, a North Dakota organic farmer who works at Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. That system forces farmers to produce as much as possible no matter what the cost, Kirschenmann says.
A Different Way of Farming The Kirschenmann family broke out of that system in the late 1960s when Fred learned of organic farming around the same time that his father, a veteran grower, saw their farm’s soil quality deteriorating despite best efforts to protect it. Their primary objective was to rebuild the soil, and after years of trial and error, their 3,500 acres were certified as organic in 1976; they have never looked back. Today, about 1,000 acres are in native prairie and used for grazing livestock, and the rest is managed in a diversified operation with eight to nine crops each year in three different rotations. Being debt-free — a rare privilege in farming country — enabled the Kirschenmanns to take the economic risk of finding a way to farm that was environmentally sustainable.
While organic farmers eschew chemical fertilizers, they often use intensive tilling to eliminate weeds, which can break up soils. But most organic farmers are careful to maintain cover crops and add manures to keep the soil covered and well fed with organic matter. As a result, erosion is many times less than on conventional farms. And because organic soils are more fertile, they absorb more water deeper, further reducing erosion and allowing them to better withstand droughts. A USDA study using data collected between 1994 and 2005 confirmed that organic fields have much more living soil matter than those farmed by conventional methods that did not till the soil. Corn on the organic plots also produced 18 percent higher yields.
“Agriculture’s biggest problem is the health of soil; erosion is just a symptom,” Kirschenmann says. Overcoming that problem means fundamentally re-thinking our food production systems so that the first priority is to preserve the fertility and ecological health of the land. As to how this can be done, Kirschenmann refers to the writings of Sir Albert Howard, a British botanist who wrote in 1940 that farmers ought to farm as nature does in the forest. There should always be livestock and a multitude of plant varieties; all “wastes” should be returned to the soil so that growth and decay balance each other; great pains need to be taken to store rainfall. In such a system, Howard wrote, plants and animals protect themselves from disease.
That approach may seem quaint in our technology-driven industrial culture, but Kirschenmann points out that the cows on his farm no longer need visits from the vet. Soil considerations aside, Kirschenmann wonders why — if conventional agriculture is so effective — 62 percent of Iowa farm families have off-farm jobs.
“Our system is clearly dysfunctional, and in destroying soil, we are putting enormous burdens on future generations,” he says. “We need to start to be behave as members of the land community instead of continuing to act like conquerors.”
2. China's Problems of the Past, Growing Worse or Improving?
3. What I want to talk about is related to the past week's topic of "soil," not directly talking about the components of soil but more the the agricultural systems of China and the winds that blow the the dust toxins to as far as the U.S. Actually, for this article, I kind of used more than one source. The first article I had found, which is the one I will post below, is actually not talking about China's yellow dust storms. Rather, I surfed the net for dust storm information because I wondered if it was related to the first article I had found. This article is called "Environmental Problems Serious in China" and is dated 25 February 2009, so it is pretty recent. I don't know much about the Chinese governmental system, and this article is rather vague and simple, however it seems to me that it is saying that China has been trying hard to fix its environmental problems and attempt pollution control on a national scale through the environment laws and "[replacing] the environmental protection agency last year with greater powers"(NEWSADMIN). Despite these efforts, "China's airs, lakes, and rivers" are still in problematic conditions. Even with the laws, not much is getting fixed because the situation relies on the actions of local officials instead, who apparently are not enforcing the laws strongly. Zhang Lijun (whose identity I am sorry to say do not know of, nor is it mentioned in the article... but I assume to hold a high position) says that the problem is caused a lot by businesses that keep producing with technology that emits pollutants (which I'm thinking isn't soley a China problem, just larger there I suppose). They say that according to China's six level water scale, (six being the worst) the major bodies of water (including the Yangtze and Yellow) all scored 6. Also, the air quality in many major cities were deemed "hazardous" in a November survey. The article mentions how "In one of the latest reported incidents, hundreds of thousands of people in the eastern Chinese city of Yancheng had their tap water cut off over the weekend after a chemical company spilled their products into a local river" and how in 2005, one of their biggest catastrophes, a massive chemical spill in the Songhua river in northeastern China caused a tap water cut off for millions and had even affected Russia. If my interpretation of this article is correct, then it is sad to hear that things cannot be changed on a massive scale because of the individuals who choose to do nothing about it. Looking at it in a larger sense, I walk around streets and see people littering all the time, most of them very nonchalantly (even my younger cousin, which I was shocked to see). If something SO simple as throwing your own trash (not even other people's) in a bin designated to hold trash is that difficult, how difficult would it be for larger environmental choices, which (well for these businesses in China) probably are made due to reasons including monetary benefit, a personal goal in other words. If individuals don't paint the picture we are trying to create, then in the end nothing well happen, and the slate will remain barren. But back to dust storms. As mentioned above, I questioned whether dust storms were related, and I guess yes in a more general sense because it is also a cause for air pollution. My older cousin read in the news around a month ago how this month, March, would have a pretty severe amount of dust in the area, so I should go around wearing a mask. Even my parents in the U.S. warned me to wear masks going outside because of China's dust overflow. "China's killer "yellow dust" hits Korea and Japan" dated 3 March 2009 talks more in detail about the yellow dust that comes from China. The link is here: http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/32120
"The sand storms have been increasing in frequency and toxicity over the years because of China's rapid economic growth and have added to increased tensions with neighbors South Korea and Japan over recent years.
The dust picks up heavy metals and carcinogens such as dioxin as it passes over Chinese industrial regions, before hitting North and South Korea and Japan, meteorologists say.
Dry weather and seasonal winds in China hurl millions of tons of sand at the Korean peninsula and Japan from late February through April or May, turning the skies to a jaundiced hue"(Herskovitz).
Schools were closed down, people were advised to stay indoors more, and many had become ill or died because of these dust storms. It is not only a problem when these seasonal dust storms invade these countries, but it is also very costly to clean the areas after the event that continues to come and continues to grow in severity. This article, although older from 2001, "China's Dust Storms Raise Fears of Impending Catastrophe," shows how the dust storms even reached as far as the U.S. The link is here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/06/0601_chinadust_2.html This article also portrays the effects of these dust storms on China itself. A lot of this dust comes from the Gobi desert. High speed winds are carrying tiny grains of sand in large amounts. Actually, much of China's lands in the North are drying up into deserts. The article says how this desertification is caused by "overuse of land for farming and grazing"(Royston). This soil is eroding and thus being carried away by these highspeed winds, along with the agricultural toxins in it. The article says China is drying up at "an alarming rate" and say these dust storms may greatly affect the future of China itself. So, now exactly what is so horrible about these dust storms, besides the fact that it chokes people and hinders vision and breath? And where, how is it caused? So, I found some basic information about them on wikipedia, link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Dust Well, instead of explaining it, for those interested, please read, but I found that there are so many more pollutants than I expected, caused because of the industrial areas these dust storms pass over, and the health risks, as shown in the previous articles, are not minor.
Environment problems serious in China By newsadmin at 25 February, 2009, 6:09 am
SHANGHAI: China’s environmental problems remain serious with local governments not putting enough pressure on businesses to control pollution, the nation’s environment protection minister has said.
Efforts to toughen environment laws have not done enough to fix the widespread problems for China’s air, lakes and rivers, Zhang Lijun said on Tuesday, according to the official news agency.
“The general situation of environmental pollution does not allow us to be optimistic,” Zhang was quoted telling a national meeting on pollution control in Shanghai.
Zhang’s ministry replaced the environmental protection agency last year with greater powers, but enforcement still depends largely on local officials.
Zhang said environmental protection departments across the country needed to place greater pressure on businesses to contain pollution, according to the news agency.
“The fundamental way to overcome this is to continue to press enterprises to reduce pollution emissions through technology and management,” he said.
Nearly a quarter of the monitoring stations set up along major rivers, such as the Yangtze and Yellow, reported the worst water quality on China’s six-level scale, the report said, citing documents distributed at the meeting.
Nearly 40 percent of the water in 28 major lakes also registered level six ratings — meaning it was too polluted for even farm irrigation.
Meanwhile, the average air quality in two out of five Chinese cities ranges from “polluted” to “hazardous”, according to a survey conducted in November in 320 cities.
In one of the latest reported incidents, hundreds of thousands of people in the eastern Chinese city of Yancheng had their tap water cut off over the weekend after a chemical company spilled their products into a local river.
One of the most high-profile cases occurred in 2005, when a massive chemical spill into northeast China’s Songhua River resulted in tap water being cut for millions of people and pollution flowing into Russia.
3.It always makes me feel very depressed whenever I read a news article about environmental issue nowadays. And my greatest questions towards all these news is that why there is no action followed when problem is being appeared for such a long time? That is why I do not like environmental socialists, because from my understanding, they are just doing environmental analyzing every time but doing nothing to help the environment to progress in a better and effective way. It is really extremely sad to know that our earth is abandoned by us; there is not enough care from us toward our ‘Mother Earth’. Human never fail to try to dig their own graves because they did not seems to understand that although the nature could not speak but it could revenge. The rich in this world, they enjoy their life as they believe money could buy anything including life of human which according to them as the poor people. It is so ironic to say that the US run into a lot of fights with the nature too, but why they never reflect themselves and learn from their mistake. The selfish of people towards the earth and its citizen will end up in a huge tragedy; I am very sure saying that. In the article, it mentioned that people like Gaurpodomando have to move to India because their home is being flooded by the rise of sea water. And we have to always remember that there will be 250 million of Gaurpodomando by 2050. It is truly not too far from us. Not only caused by rising sea water also desertification. Small Island such as Maldives will sink into the sea. It is a pity to lose beautiful island like Maldives, the earth is willing to sacrifice its beauty to fulfill the wishes of people to relax and have fun. On the other hand, people never show respect and thankful to it. Sometimes I feel so speechless to this same environmental protect issue. Too many factors combined and created this result of environmental issue today, just like what we said in the class, it might be not the fault of citizens but the government. Majority of citizen cares about the environmental problems today but most of them could do nothing more than reading news. From the government point of view, in order for its citizen to have a safe and so call improved living, the government has to focus its spending on economic and security more than environment. At the end, there is no one we could blame to cause the sad stories of the earth. I want to say that everyone must build this sense as we are global citizens; we could only start from the 3Rs by ourselves, to wait for a better government policy is not a smart choice for our future. According to the article, the largest immigration in history is expected to cause by environmental problems. “We’re talking about people migrating from sensitive places into other very sensitive places.” If all people move towards the centre city of the nation, many problems might rise. The lack of infrastructures and an even crowed city life are problems in front of our eyes. In the article, it stated that the first shifts of environmental migration will start within countries and than cross boarder. Those wealthy nations have to open their doors for world’s displaced people because at the last, people have no choice and no place to go. And for people who could not move due to poverty, how are we going to treat them, how are we going to help them, and how are we going to save them out of the muddy land? We pray for the US president Barack Obama to convince the congress to pass the domestic cap-and-trade bill. We have to admit that not only American is going to pay for this bill, but all people who are living on the planet. Many governments like India has not prepared for the result of environmental migration, the illegal immigrants could create great conflicts to push environment issue to become a social issue. The environment and social problems never separated. What can we do by than?
-------------------------------------------- The spectre of climate migration Lisa Friedman
March 13, 2009 Scientists see Bangladesh as ground zero as the effects of global warming increase. By 2100, more than 25% of the country may be inundated, displacing 15 million people. Lisa Friedman reports. “This is not migration as we’ve known it before. We’re talking about people migrating from sensitive places into other very sensitive places.” One by one, the men in Gaurpodomando’s family walked out of this mud-caked village, Harinagar, and never returned. First, his uncles went. Both fishermen, they suffered as their catch declined year after year, before they crossed illegally into India to find work in construction. His brothers earned so little fishing that they braved tiger attacks in the nearby Sundarbans forest to forage for honey and timber. Finally, they left, too, and brought their father with them. Now, Gaurpodomando, who said he is about 35 years old and who goes only by his first name, is the last man in his family still living in the waterlogged village along Bangladesh’s Indian border. His brothers still don’t know about the angry tidal flood that burst through a dam and swallowed the family home and dozens of others in September. Those who live here say that between the disappearing fish, brackish flood waters destroying the rice fields and the ever-fiercer cyclones that seem to inhale entire villages, life is becoming almost unbearable. But Gaurpodomando, who earns the equivalent of US$1.50 a day standing hip-deep in the salty river, casting a net to collect shrimp fry, said he is doing everything he can to hang onto his way of life. “I do feel a little lonely and sad, but I don’t really want to go to India,” he said, squatting on the outdoor stoop of what was once the family kitchen but is now the only structure left to shelter him, his wife and their two children. His arms and bare feet are streaked with the slate-gray mud that covers the ground and seems never to dry. “I don’t want to leave this place,” Gaurpodomando said. “I don’t want to leave this country. I love this place.” One day soon, Gaurpodomando and an untold number of others in Bangladesh and around the world may no longer have a choice. A growing body of evidence, including analyses from military experts in the United States and Europe, supports the estimate that by mid-century, climate change will make vast parts of Africa and Asia uninhabitable. Analysts say it could trigger a migration the size of which the world has never before seen. Some of the big questions remain unanswered: How many people will really move? Where will they go? How will they go? Will they return? But experts estimate that as many as 250 million people -- a population almost that of the entire United States -- could be on the move by 2050. They will go because temperatures are rising and desertification has set in where rainfall is needed most. They will go because more potent monsoons are making flood-prone areas worse. They will go because of other water events caused by melting glaciers, rising seas and the slow and deadly seepage of saline water into their wells and fields. The worst migration cases will be nations like the Maldives and small islands in the Pacific. Their inhabitants will go because their homelands will likely sink beneath the rising sea. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a minimum of 207 million people in Latin America, Asia and Africa will not have enough water inside a decade. In Asia, an extra 130 million people will be at risk of hunger by the middle of the century. By 2100, crop revenues in Africa will drop 90%. And scientists see Bangladesh as ground zero. The country’s 150 million inhabitants live in the delta of three waterways, and the majority of the country sits less than six metres above sea level. According to the IPCC, rising sea levels will wipe out more cultivated land in Bangladesh than anywhere in the world. By 2050, rice production is expected to drop 10% and wheat production by 30%. By the end of the century, more than a quarter of the country will be inundated. About 15 million people in Bangladesh alone could be displaced. That’s the equivalent of every person in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. But while more climate migrants will come from Bangladesh than from any other country, scientists say that from Mozambique to Tuvalu, from Egypt to Vietnam, climate migration will change the face of the world. “This will be the largest migration in history. This is not migration as we’ve known it before,” said Edward Cameron, a former senior adviser to the government of the Maldives. “We’re talking about people migrating from sensitive places into other very sensitive places.” In some ways, large-scale migration is nothing new. Humans, after all, have been on the move since early man left east Africa. But these shifts will not be the migrations of pioneers or adventurers seeking opportunities in new lands. Rather, social scientists say, they will be the movement of people who are rushed, unwanted and unprepared, into unfamiliar and perhaps hostile new environments. Most of those who will be uprooted already are living on less than US$1 per day. The first shifts will start within countries. Scientists see families flocking from rural and coastal areas to cities where livelihoods are less tied to fickle weather patterns. It’s a pattern that is already happening against a background of rapid global urbanisation, in which the desperate rate of growth far outpaces jobs and infrastructure. Mohammad Ayub Ali, 40, is part of that mosaic. He left the central Bangladesh town of Sherpur because the failing crops couldn’t earn him a living. A ruinous flood in September was the final straw. Now Ali drives an eye-catching pink-and-orange rickshaw through the capital city Dhaka’s teeming streets, where he earns the equivalent of US$15 per month. He lives in a one-room metal shack with his mother, wife and two children. “It’s not that great over here, but it’s better than over there,” he said. Nearly 3.5 million people in Dhaka -- about 40% of the population -- live in slums, like Ali. The World Bank estimates that by mid-century, half of all Bengalis will live in urban centres. The next step in the migration pattern is across national borders. Military experts predict a downward spiral of violence and conflict as people desperate for food, water and jobs cross into neighbouring countries where resources may be only slightly less scarce. Wealthy nations like the United States and the European Union, meanwhile, could also be asked to take in millions of the world’s displaced people even as they negotiate international disputes. “Those people who are most vulnerable right now, and having a problem just surviving, and having the normal development challenges of clean water, fighting disease, getting an education -- those are the ones most affected,” said Koko Warner, who heads the environmental migration, social vulnerability and adaptation section at the United Nations University. In Bangladesh, the issues are magnified by the density of the population. Any climate-induced disaster “inevitably affects millions of people,” researcher James Pender wrote in a recent sweeping report on Bangladesh. He estimated that by 2080, almost all the 51 million to 97 million people currently living in coastal zones may have to leave. The worst off won’t even be able to do that. “If those who are causing the greenhouse-gas emissions are unable to control carbon emissions, the people in the vulnerable areas, many of the coastal areas, are going to be inundated,” said Khawaja Minnatullah, a water specialist at the World Bank’s Dhaka office. “The vulnerable, the uneducated, the lowest of the communities will never be able to migrate to the US, to Canada, to Australia. There will be pressure on the not-so-vulnerable part of Bangladesh,” he said. In the village of Gabura in south-west Bangladesh, 20-year-old Amina lives with the fractured collarbone she suffered when a tidal flood smashed a wall of her home, crushing her. She and her husband have no money for a doctor, much less a move. “Everyone who’s living here, we’re all poor people,” she said, sitting in front of her partially repaired mud and thatch house. “We don’t have anywhere to go.”
But in Gabura and other parts of Bangladesh where the land can become the sea in the blink of an eye, climate migration has already begun. Cities like Dhaka are bursting at the seams. Migration to bordering India appears to be occurring at a higher rate, as well, though government leaders are reluctant to acknowledge it. India, meanwhile, is wide awake to the possibility of migration from Bangladesh, and is building a fence much like the one along the US-Mexico border to keep illegal immigrants out. There is a human tendency to deny mind-numbing futures like this one, and Bangladeshi experts are positioned on both sides of this verbal fence. Some insist that climate migration is a reality that needs to be addressed sooner than later. Others say a large-scale migration out of the country will mean the world has failed to tackle global warming. It’s a prospect they don’t even want to acknowledge. “This idea of climate refugees takes up too much of our time. It’s an apocalyptic issue of the future,” said Omar Rahman, dean of the Independent University, Bangladesh, in Dhaka. Ainun Nishat, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) representative for Bangladesh, said he is sceptical of migration predictions. Even if they are true, he argued, Bangladesh’s needs are more immediate: infrastructure improvements, cyclone shelters, improved flood warning systems and a massive build-up of food security. “Will people leave? Maybe in a hundred years, but that’s not my priority now,” Nishat said. “People are living in areas that go underwater once in a fortnight in the coastal belt. The point is, they’re still there. They’re not migrating today. It’s not time to worry about it. My priority is the natural disaster that is happening now.” This year, the western world will continue to grapple with the issue. US president Barack Obama will try to convince the congress to pass a domestic cap-and-trade bill. Meanwhile, the European Union is struggling to implement a plan on reducing emissions. In China and India, which have the economic muscle to begin some actions, debates continue to rage over how much responsibility to bear for fast-rising emissions. There is little news about this in Harinagar, where men and women said they probably won’t be able to wait for politicians to agree on a global solution. Like the proverbial grains of sand that slowly assemble to make up a beach, individual families are making their painful decisions, creating the possibility of more cruel things yet to come. “The area is getting worse. I don’t think it’s going to get better,” Gaurpodomando said. His wife, Chorna, her face loosely framed by a red floral headscarf, bounced the couple’s three-year-old daughter on her hip and said she, too, wants to stay, but she’s also realistic about the family’s prospects. Maybe, she said, they’ll go to Khulna, a booming port city about two hours away by car. Gaurpodomando said his brothers living outside of Kolkata “say it’s good over there. They keep asking me to go, and they tell me there's good earning to be done there.” But Harinagar, where the thatched mud huts still look out over a lush countryside, and where a woman who lost everything in a recent flood will still offer a visiting stranger a plate of eggs, has been his family’s home for at least three generations. “I'll do whatever work I can find, but I might have to go outside,” Gaurpodomando said. “We might have to leave this village.”
A trail beyond the tears of the past Human beings have been on the move for centuries. But climate scientists say global warming will displace people faster and on a larger scale than ever before -- maybe 200 million people by mid-century. Here, for some perspective, are previous mass migrations.
• Slave traders transported 12 million to 20 million Africans to America. • About 17 million eastern and southern Europeans entered the United States between 1880 and 1910. • About one million Irish immigrants settled in America in the wake of the 19th-century potato famine. • Nazi Germany deported between seven million and eight million people from 1939 to 1945. • The 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent saw about 6.6 million Muslims moving to Pakistan and about 5.4 million Hindus and Sikhs migrating to India. • About five million people fled Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation in the early 1980s. • Ethnic cleansing in Rwanda displaced more than two million people in 1994.
Currently, the United Nations estimates that there are about 170 million international migrants worldwide.
Lisa Friedman is a reporter for E&E Publishing.
[Republished with permission. Copyright 2009, E&E Publishing, LLC.] Homepage photo by IRRI Images
3. Truthfully, as someone with very little knowledge about the current environmental controversies and issues, it was interesting to know the controversy behind the management of water. With the ongoing climate change throughout the world, it is hard to ignore the devastating consequences that shortages of water can have on the lives of people. I can't even begin to imagine what life would be like without clean drinking water and adequate sanitation, and the numerous health problems that this can bring. While this article shows that with the water forum, people are continuing to show their concerns to develope new strategies and policies to respond to the controversies regarding water shortages in an efficient manner, there is still a debate between the necessity to manage water publically or privately. While free water supply has created problems leading to huge waste, I think privatization of water also creates a big problem because private owners are more concerned with making profit then doing what is best for the environment and health of the people. It was quite shocking to find out that the private companies have only delivered less than 1% of their water to the poorest people in the world. It is pretty clear that continous efforts must be made in order to face the ongoing challenges that water shortages and climate changes will bring in the future.
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Controversy surrounds water forum as world's water woes multiply In the hustle and bustle of the 5th World Water Forum's ongoing preparations for a long week of activities, conferences, seminars and workshops starting tomorrow, it has been wet all over İstanbul, with more than a week of rain.
Despite the downpours in the city of about 15 million, İstanbul's residents constantly grapple with water shortages in summer months -- especially when winters pass with no snowfall.
The world has realized that what is important is not the amount of precipitation, but the net water supply available at the end -- meaning treated, potable water. But this realization has not been translated into practice in all parts of the world as 1.1 billion people live without clean drinking water and 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation, according to UN statistics.
"The management of water requires political will. Therefore, the importance of water and water management should be etched into the minds of decision-makers all over the world," said Professor Oktay Tabasaran, secretary-general of the World Water Forum, which is organized by the World Water Council (WWC) together with host country Turkey. How water should be managed is a contentious issue. Many governments and international lenders have been supporting the private sector's involvement in water management as public municipal systems in most parts of the developing world are hindered by corruption, bureaucracy and nepotism.
"We should have more community involvement in environmental issues," said Professor Tanay Sıdkı Uyar, coordinator for the Turkish Environmental Platform (TÜRÇEP).
He also noted that it is necessary for Turkey to adopt the Aarhus Convention, which was signed in 1998 and ratified by 41 countries, including most of the EU member states. The convention grants the public rights regarding access to information and public participation in governmental decision-making processes on matters concerning the local, national and trans-boundary environmental issues.
"Adoption [of the Aarhus Convention] would require indirect obligations on public and private enterprises to report on their activities," Uyar said, pointing out that civil society involvement and access to public records are key to making decision-makers liable for their actions, especially in consideration of the fact that public utilities are deliberately maligned to justify privatization.
"Instead of installing prepaid water meters at homes in urban areas, the public authorities should work on measures that will reduce water leaks by 40 percent," he said, adding that the work in Turkey contains contradictions that have a detrimental impact on its water resources.
"For instance, the agricultural and environmental impact of irrigation and dam projects is ignored and plans for irrigation investment in Turkey consider opening up new water resources to agricultural use."
In Turkey, of the total water consumed, 70 percent is used in agricultural production, 22 percent in industrial production and 8 percent as potable water.
Water for life or profit
The WWF5 takes place from March 16-22 and will be attended by representatives of various professional organizations, but TÜRÇEP activists are holding a demonstration today. Their campaign called "No to the commercialization of water" will continue until March 22 with various workshops on issues ranging from water management and pricing to relations between dietary habits and water.
Ten minutes away from the World Water Forum, "An Alternative Water Forum," attended by both local and international nongovernmental and opposition political party representatives, will be taking place from March 20 to 22 at Bilgi University's Santral İstanbul Campus.
Sunday's Zaman asked why the group does not raise its voice within the World Water Forum and Ercan Ayboğa, one of the activists, replied the WWC is skewed toward international lenders. "We are against public and private enterprise collaborations when it comes to water. There are so many bad examples, we don't need to repeat them," he said.
The bad examples Ayboğa refers to are Latin America's experiences in the mid-1990s, when international companies were involved in managing their water. Nobody knows better than the Bolivians what happens when water is mismanaged. As they took to the streets to protest steep price hikes and bad services, they suffered deaths, prison sentences and martial law before the World Bank-affiliated foreign companies were ousted from the country.
At the last meeting of the World Water Forum in Mexico City three years ago, the UN reported that privatization had not solved water problems as private companies had delivered water to less than 1 percent of the world's poorest people.
Civil society activists in Turkey have been further irked by a report from the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen's Association (TÜSİAD) on water utilities management that was released last September, suggesting public-private alliances in managing water networks.
"The report talks about privatization only after a strict regulation regime, legal framework and a competitive environment are assured. It does not suggest a transfer of ownership," said writer of the report Bülent Gökdemir, who is an anti-trust expert.
Pointing to the bad examples in Latin America and Africa where the poor segments of society were ignored, leading to catastrophe, he said privatization can work if access to water is guaranteed to low income groups.
Gökdemir added that there is a need for greater investment in water as it becomes scarcer and publicly managed networks are not effective, so there are more losses than gains. At the same time, he reiterated the civil society groups' demands that municipalities adopt a policy of transparency in order to pinpoint deficiencies in the system.
Citing a 2007 study conducted by the Competition Board, which has a legal right to access public records, he said it was revealed that the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality unfairly overcharged water consumers.
"Since it is only the municipalities that set price tariffs, they have a monopoly over the system," he said, adding that there is space for regulating it.
"Water is a critical product. Decisions over it should be made only after thorough work is done."
On Thursday, a report stressed by the UN that sustainable water management, with realistic pricing to curb waste, is important, giving the example of India where free or almost-free water had led to huge waste in irrigation, causing soils to be waterlogged and salt-ridden.
2. Yellow dust season arrives in Korea / Koreans plant forest in Mongolia to combat yellow dust
3. It has not been a long time ago, since I heard that the danger of yellow dust has increased dramatically. I guess... it's about 3or 4 year ago. As far as I know, yellow dust is substance that comes from gobi desert (china & migolia ) and land to korea, japan and also a little bit to America. As everybody knows it is bad for the respiratory organs. Especially for children and elder people, it is very dangerous. However I remember that I heard from somebody that yellow dust it good for the soil. (of course when it is not too much) The reason why the problem is getting worse is I think because of all kinds of human activities, which cause pollution. I think people deserves the situation. As I said before if proper amount of yellow sand arrives Korea, it would be benefitial. But people aggravate the situation because of their greed. Hundreds of factories, tons of garbage etc. has brought all the situation. But it is not late to make it right again. As the article reports (flower planting) people are trting to lessen the impact. Not only this but also there are things everybody can do. For example trying to lessen the garbage, not to leave foods over and so on...
Actually I wanted to end the comments... but~ while I typed the last word 'on', my mother said "tommorrow a heavy yellow dust come, so should I give you something to hand over?. " well...
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Yellow dust season arrives in Korea By Jimmy Norris, Stars and Stripes Pacific edition, Sunday, February 22, 2009 SEOUL — Yellow dust season started Friday, with some areas spiking at more than 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
Levels dropped back to under 400 by early evening.
The seasonal phenomenon, which typically takes place between February and June, brings dust laden with heavy metals from the deserts of Mongolia and China, causing health concerns for children under age 11, seniors over age 65 and people with heart and breathing conditions.
According to Maj. Clarence Thomas, an environmental science officer with the 65th Medical Brigade, levels above 800 micrograms per cubic meter of air call for a warning to the community.
"At over 800, you should avoid going out," he said.
At levels between 400 and 799, high-risk individuals should avoid outdoor activity, he said, and others should avoid physical training and strenuous outdoor labor.
He described yellow dust storms with levels over 1,000 as very rare.
He said most of the toxic industrial particles that get picked up by the winds are too heavy to make it to South Korea.
The 65th Medical Brigade’s Force Health Protection and Preventive Medicine office maintains yellow dust information, provided to them by the 607th Weather Squadron, online at http://www.seoul.amedd.army.mil/sites/yellowsand/default.asp.
E-mail Jimmy Norris at: norrisj@pstripes.osd.mil
Yellow dust storm tips
According to 65th Medical Brigade, during a yellow dust storm people should:
Avoid outdoor activities, especially the elderly, young children and people with lung diseases (such as asthma), heart disease or diabetes.
Keep windows and doors closed. Remove contact lenses and wear glasses. Brush your teeth and wash your hands, face and eyes with warm water upon returning indoors. Drink plenty of water to keep your tears flowing well. Use air filters to keep air clear and a humidifier to increase the indoor humidity level. Wash fruits and vegetables exposed to yellow sand before consumption. Wash hands carefully before handling food. Don’t burn candles and don’t smoke indoors.
Koreans plant forest in Mongolia to combat yellow dust News - Environment News Thursday, 05 March 2009 23:26 Residents of South Korea’s Kuyan will plant trees this spring to create Mongolia's Kuyan Grove in the town of Mandalgobi, Dundgobi aimag, a Gobi province.
The grove will cover about 100 hectares of area. This year, South Koreans are expected to plant trees on five hectares. This afforestation program will continue for 10 years.
The governor of Kuyan will arrive in Mandalgobi in May to take part in an opening ceremony of the afforestation campaign that will help to stop sand migration and decrease yellow dust storms in South Korea.
Yellow dust from Mongolia’s Gobi Desert has already begun settling in South Korea. During Korea’s yellow dust alerts, people with respiratory problems are urged to remain indoors and some contamination in high-tech environments occur.
2. Biofueled planes and Korea's deal in Madagascar
3. Although alternative energies for cars have been disputed for several years I have never heard of or thought about biofuels for planes. So I was surprised about finding lots of articles about this topic. There are already announcements of lots of airlines to have biofuel-only flights within the next 5 years. While the numbers of flights will ongoingly increase in the next decades, biofuels can reduce the negative effects. I also found another article about Korea's big company Daewoo that signed a deal with Madagascar to lease about 1.3 million hectares for farming mainly corn and palm oil. Since this area is said to amount to more than half of its arable land and might be almost free, this deal seems rather unfair.
-------------------------------------------- The Top 10 Biofuels Stories of 2008: #10, Airlines test biofuels Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand completed 747 biofuel tests this year, with Virgin testing a B20 blend using babassu palm oil and coconut oil in February while Air New Zealand used a B50 blend from jatropha in its December test. Continental and Japan Airlines announced early 2009 tests as well. British Airways announced future tests, but avoided the term “biofuels” in the announcement due to the controversy over indirect land-use changes. Not only are the airlines facing steep fuel charges, but airlines will now enter the European Trading Scheme for carbon emissions in 2012, and the industry is facing up to $10.5 billion in carbon charges unless it reduces its carbon footprint. --- Daewoo to pay nothing for vast land acquisition By Song Jung-a and Christian Oliver in Seoul and Tom,Burgis in Johannesburg Published: November 20 2008 02:00 | Last updated: November 20 2008 02:00 Daewoo Logistics of South Korea said it expected to pay nothing to farm maize and palm oil in an area of Madagascar half the size of Belgium, increasing concerns about the largest farmland investment of this kind. The Indian Ocean island will simply gain employment opportunities from Daewoo's 99-year lease of 1.3m hectares, officials at the company said. They emphasised that the aim of the investment was to boost Seoul's food security. "We want to plant corn there to ensure our food security. Food can be a weapon in this world," said Hong Jong-wan, a manager at Daewoo. "We can either export the harvests to other countries or ship them back to Korea in case of a food crisis." Daewoo said it had agreed with Madagascar's government that it could cultivate 1.3m hectares of farmland for free when it signed a memorandum of understanding in May. When the company signed the contract in July, it agreed to discuss costs with Madagascar. But Daewoo now believes it will have to pay nothing. "It is totally undeveloped land which has been left untouched. And we will provide jobs for them by farming it, which is good for Madagascar," said Mr Hong. The 1.3m hectares of leased land is more than half the African country's current arable land of 2.5m hectares. But Madagascar could also benefit from Daewoo's in-vest-ment in roads, irrigation and grain storage facilities. However, a European diplomat in southern Africa said: "We suspect there will be very limited direct benefits [for Madagascar]. Extractive projects have very little spill-over to a broader industrialisation." Asian nations havebeen looking more often in the past five years or so to Africa to meet their resource needs. China has been particularly aggressive in building up stakes in oilfields and mines on the continent, sometimes facing accusations of neocolonialism. But now the countries are moving from minerals and oil into food. Roelof Horne, who manages Investec Asset Management's Africa fund, said he expected to see more farmland investments on the continent. "Africa has most of the underutilised fertile land in the world," he said, though he cautioned that "land is always an emotive thing". Apart from Daewoo, an increasing number of South Korean companies are venturing into Madagascar, investing in projects from nickel mines to power plants. State-run Korea Resources recently signed a preliminary agreement with Madagascar to expand collaboration on resources development including mining projects for other metals. Daewoo plans to start maize production on 2,000 hectares from next year and gradually expand it to other parts of the leased land. The company plans to plant maize on 1m hectares in the western part of Madagascar and oil palm trees on 300,000 hectares in the east. The company plans to ship the bulk of the harvests back to South Korea and export some supplies to other countries. It is unclear if any of the production will remain in Madagascar, an impoverished nation where the World Food Programme provides food relief to about 600,000 people - about 3.5 per cent of the population. The WFP, the UN agency in charge of emergency food relief, said more than 70 per cent of Madagascar's population lives below the poverty line. "Some 50 per cent of children under three years of age suffer retarded growth due to a chronically inadequate diet," it said. The pursuit of foreign farm investments follows this year's food crisis, which saw record prices for commodities such as wheat and rice, and food riots in countries from Egypt to Haiti. Prices for agricultural commodities have tumbled by about half from such levels but nations are concerned about long-term supplies. Daewoo said it chose Madagascar because it is relatively untouched by western companies. "The country could provide bigger opportunities for us as not many western companies are there," said Mr Hong. Daewoo plans to develop the arable land in Madagascar over 15 years and intends to provide about half South Korea's maize imports. Heavily populated South Korea is the fourth largest importer of maize. -------
3. I chose an article about water shortage, one of serious global issues all around the world. The article talks about how rising populations and growing demand for water make our world a thirsty planet. David, the writer of the article, analyzed concurrent issues of population growth, lack o social infrastructures and incentives for water management in the 3rd worlds that had simultaneously huge impact on water crisis. Then, here comes my question; why is it that some areas use water carelessly and the others don’t. And why is it that the areas in much need of help for water supplies are considered ‘underdeveloped countries’. Do ‘designated areas’ have to do with our preconceived notions toward the third world?
Water woes turned out to be our problem here in Korea, too. Last January, my friends and I went skiing to Hiwon resort in Kangwon province. On the way there, we were told from a radio that lack of water supply in that region put local people in great pain. Literally, some of them were actually, though temporarily, living without water. However, resort seemed to have built up the water supply system that would never let resort facilities run out of water. The irony underlying the water issue would probably from the local government that made water management policy that way.
Going back to the article, here it says “US and Australia, annual per capita water storage in US and Australia is more than 4,000 cubic metres whereas, yet in much of sub-Saharan Africa it is less than 100 cubic metres” and “the industrialised world is quick to point its finger at agricultural producers, blaming them for water woes, but it is our food habits that drive the problem”
My thought on the statement above is that implementing US strategies for the hydraulic infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa doesn’t guarantee improved water control system in Africa communities. Let me put it this way; each country must have different yet successful development plans for resolving current issues. On the other hand, it is also feasible, no matter how advantageous the plan will be in sub-Saharan Africa, that water demand won’t be stabilized unless urbanites change their food habits. (Let’s acknowledge the fact that food chain and demand in water are so interconnected that they are inseparable.) _______________________________________
Today, one-third of the world's population has to contend with water scarcity, and there are ominous signs that this proportion could quickly increase.
Up to twice as much water will be required to provide enough food to eliminate hunger and feed the additional 2.5 billion people that will soon join our ranks.
The demands will be particularly overwhelming as a wealthier, urbanised population demands a richer diet of more meat, fish, and milk.
The water required for a meat-eating diet is twice as much needed for a 2,000-litre-a-day vegetarian diet.
Cities and industries will also demand more water. Ironically, even new endeavours pursued in the cause of environmental preservation, such as producing biofuels, will place even more pressure on dwindling water supplies.
Clearly, we are heading toward a tipping point that could soon bring us to a day of reckoning when we will have literally made one too many trips to the planetary well.
Given the current rate of development, we will not be able to provide water for producers to grow enough food and sustain a healthy environment.
The only solution is to learn how to live with less water by making much better use of what we have.
Better water management is good for farmers, good for the environment and good for all of us. We already know many of the ingredients to make this happen; the big question is why isn't it happening?
Trickle effect
The good news is that it does happen.
People are reaching for tools - new and old - to produce more food with less water. Rice farmers in the region are now also saving water by a practice known as 'wet and dry' irrigation
They are adopting more precise irrigation practices, such as drip and sprinkle irrigation.
For example, many farmers in Nepal and India now regularly use low-cost drip irrigation to grow vegetables.
In sub-Saharan Africa, just a little water - combined with improved crop varieties, fertiliser and soil management - can go a long way.
Farmers can double the yield per hectare they currently harvest, and double the amount of food produced per unit of water.
Over the last two decades in Asia, sales of pumps that allow farmers to more reliably and precisely apply water to their crops, have skyrocketed.
Rice farmers in the region are now also saving water by a practice known as "wet and dry" irrigation, rather than following the traditional practice of keeping rice fields constantly flooded.
Also, many farming communities are getting organised into associations for more effective irrigation management.
But the bad news is that change isn't happening fast enough.
For example, there are still far too many ill-maintained and poorly operated irrigation systems across Asia that use two times more water than is really needed.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the problem is not water being wasted, but the simple yet devastating issue of access.
Despite water being available in nature, many farmers routinely lack enough water to produce food to feed their families.
'Water miles'
Why is it that some areas use water so carelessly?
One problem lies with public policies that fail to connect the interests of different user groups. The industrialised world is quick to point its finger at agricultural producers, blaming them for water woes, but it is our food habits that drive the problem
For example, farmers may see little self-interest in being more conservative with water if the benefits flow to cities and not to them.
Although, broadly speaking, water is a precious commodity, for many users its costs are negligible, so there is no incentive to conserve.
Many countries do not invest enough in water to enable poor rural communities to grow more food.
In the US and Australia, annual per capita water storage is more than 4,000 cubic metres. Yet in much of sub-Saharan Africa it is less than 100 cubic metres; poor countries simply cannot afford investments in large hydraulic infrastructure.
Nonetheless, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and other research organisations have identified new and more affordable opportunities for low-cost water investment.
For example, resource-poor farmers can afford low-cost drip irrigation kits, whereas conventional irrigation, which costs more than $4,000 per hectare, is well beyond their means.
Unfortunately, while we think we know the answers, reality is more complex.
We have dramatically altered natural water systems in the quest for more water control.
Unwittingly, we have created salinity problems, dried up rivers and have caused groundwater tables to decline.
Institutions that govern water have not adapted to address these issues. Added to this is the fact that we don't fully understand what new water problems will result from climate change.
While we desperately need to know more about water resources, basic data and knowledge are hard to get because of a lack of investment.
The industrialised world is quick to point its finger at agricultural producers, blaming them for water woes, but it is our food habits that drive the problem.
When 50% of food is wasted after it leaves farmers' fields, it leads to an equivalent water waste of 50% because wasted food is also wasted water.
Action is urgently required on several fronts: we must continue to encourage the many local actions that are having a positive impact now; we must establish policies that create incentives for farming communities to invest in better water management; and we must invest in the infrastructure and the knowledge systems needed to manage complex water systems for the benefit of all.
Each of us can make a difference if we first consider the water implications of our lifestyles and the "water footprint" we are leaving behind.
3. I have always thought windmills or wind turbines were impressive, how the big blades spin and electricity could be produced by wind power. Wind turbines are environmentally friendly and can save money. There is no combustion of fuels including carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, mercury, and other substances discharged in the air like in the fossil fuel power. It is sustainable energy. Thus, I wanted to learn about the modern use of wind turbines. I found that in America, small wind turbines were becoming active in use. It says in the article that turbines are an investment in clean energy and one way to ease America’s dependence of foreign oil. The article talks about bringing wind turbines in the cities; however, it does not seem feasible. Then I realized that I have only seen the positive side of the wind turbines. Actually, wind power was a very controversial issue. There are many conflicting articles of wind power. The negative impacts are the noise caused by the turbines, no wind means no power, birds, bats and so on. Therefore, I conclude that wind turbines cannot be totally eco-friendly.
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The gale force of President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package could breathe new life into an emerging industry: small wind turbines. The bill provides a 30 percent investment tax credit to consumers who buy these turbines, which are typically used to help power homes or small businesses. Even amid a recession, this tax credit "is going to blow the top off the market," said Ron Stimmel, a "small-wind" advocate with the American Wind Energy Association. The association predicts the federal subsidy could help the small-turbine market grow by 40 to 50 percent annually, a boost that would parallel the growth of the U.S. solar photovoltaic industry after a similar 2005 initiative. Unlike the towering windmills sprouting en masse from the Western Plains, small wind turbines have a capacity of 100 kilowatts or less and are designed to operate on the consumer side of the power grid, often in combination with solar panels. According to the American Wind Energy Association, the United States is already the world's leading manufacturer of small-wind technologies, holding roughly two-thirds of the world's market share. Last year, American companies made 98 percent of the small wind turbines sold in the United States. To conservation-minded home or business owners, the turbines are an investment in clean energy and one way to ease America's dependence on foreign oil. In the right location, a 10-kilowatt turbine could supply the entire electricity needs of an average American household. The newly subsidized larger models can help power small businesses, farms and schools. The wind industry is governed by the laws of physics. The higher the wind speed, the faster the turbine spins and the more electricity is produced. Because the output of a wind turbine also tends to increase proportionally with its distance from barriers such as trees or buildings, the most productive -- and cost-effective -- turbines sit atop tall towers erected on an acre or more of open land. Despite this rule of thumb, there is a burgeoning movement to bring small-wind power to cities as well. In San Francisco, California, a volunteer organization called the Urban Wind Task Force has distributed 27 wind-monitoring stations throughout the city to survey sites for potential turbine installations. "It is true that doing wind in urban environments is a lot trickier than in rural environments," said Johanna Partin, San Francisco's Renewable Energy Program manager, who also coordinates the task force. "But the reason you rarely see [turbines in cities] may be that we just haven't figured out how to do it yet." New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg made headlines last August when he proposed installing wind turbines atop city bridges and skyscrapers. He later backtracked, saying he wasn't sure the project was feasible. Some experts, citing physical and regulatory hurdles, view the urban wind movement as misconceived. "When you get down around a house, or in and amongst a lot of trees, or around buildings, the wind resource is seriously compromised," said Mick Sagrillo, founder of Sagrillo Power and Light, a renewable energy consultancy firm. "All of the data that we've seen that's come out of any reporting or testing ... backs that up," said Sagrillo, a 29-year veteran of the field. Stimmel, of the small-wind industry association, agrees. "There are pockets of usable wind in cities," he says, "but they're very hard to find, and they're a lot more limited than you might think. It is most often not worth the time and expense." There are also zoning regulations and permitting requirements in many cities that pose serious challenges to wind installations. Most experts say that city dwellers should focus their energy conservation efforts on other renewable technologies or home efficiency improvements. San Francisco entrepreneur Todd Pelman has founded a small start-up company called Blue Green Pacific, which produces a corkscrew-shaped, roof-mounted turbine that is still in the development phase. Pelman hopes to produce competitive amounts of electricity by capturing slower, more erratic winds, such as those blowing between tall buildings or across roofs. He has an uphill struggle. Less than one percent of the 10,000 small wind turbines sold last year in the United States were of Pelman's rooftop variety. For Pelman, harnessing the wind is more about environmentalism than profit. "[If] the technology makes sense on a philosophical level, which ours will, then it is, at the very least, worthy," he said in an e-mail interview. "It should help us to recognize our involvement with materialism, energy and community." --- http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/09/small.wind.turbines/index.html Dangers of windmills outweigh benefits: http://batr.net/cohoctonwindwatch/2008/12/dangers-of-windmills-outweigh-benefits.html
1. Kyuhee Shim 2. Creating a World that can Feed Itself 3. Below is a link and summary of an interesting forum discussing the topic of “Creating a World that can Feed Itself”. Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant, Google’s head of global development Sonal Shah, and journalist Michael Pollan present their views on the causes and possible solutions to the current food crisis. Before watching this video I was not aware of the seriousness of the current situation pertaining to the food crisis. However this video made me how spiking food prices were threatening the lives of many people. Shah emphasized the impact of rising food prices on the lives of people living in poorer parts of the world, who are forced to sacrifice their children’s education, access to clean water, and even health because an increasing percentage of their small incomes are being spent on food. The food crisis is such an apparent threat. It attacks the very basic needs for survival. Yet the issue is easily ignored by lawmakers, governments, and the public, probably because the impact is less felt by those who are better off. This is a problem because the wealthy developed nations are the ones who actually have the money, power, and resources to solve the crisis. There are multiple causes that are contributing to this situation. In the forum it is described as three tiered; linking to food production, distribution, and information. An obvious solution would be to increase food production. In the 21st century the world population has reached 6 billion, and with increased urbanization and a larger proportion of that population migrating to the cities, farms must produce a lot more food in order to feed everyone. Against these facts, Monsanto claims that the world will be able to double crop yields in 20 years with improved irrigation practices and smarter use of fertilizers, and science. However this is challenged by Pollan, who says that current efforts are not radical enough. He says that we must invest in researching a variety of different projects in order to find the optimal solution. In other words, agriculture must be de-centralized. In a comment directly addressed to Monsanto, Pollan argues that farmers should be allowed to save seeds from their crop – a practice that is treated as seed piracy by Monsanto. There is a big divide in the debate on whether agriculture should rely on modern technology and science or return to organic practices. Personally I am against big corporations such as Monsanto, not because I oppose the use of technology and science, but because these corporations use technology to ensure their profit rather than helping farmers produce better crops. Their invention of the concept ‘seed piracy’ is a good example of that. I was curious how Grant might defend his company’s policy but unfortunately the Monsanto CEO did not give a response to the comment. Shah commented that in order to solve the food shortage, especially for starving populations in Africa, we needed to provide African farmers with market information. At the present farmers in Africa are largely cut off from the global market; dealing with one buyer to sell their crops. In addition farmers in Africa need to catch up with the Green revolution. The developed world must transfer modern agricultural skills and technology to poor farmers, for example how to better utilize water and fertilizers, and provide the infrastructure and better irrigation systems. Distribution is also an important issue. Half of the world is guilty of consuming more than they need while the other half is starving. I was surprised to hear that even in the United States there are 35 million food insecure people. Even in the same country there is such a wide gap between the rich and poor. Moreover many poor farmers are growing crops that they cannot eat. Cash crops that grow feed for animals mean that people are unable to live on the crops they grow. 4. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. From: , Organic Consumers Association, More from this Affiliate Published September 23, 2008 08:48 AM GM Watch: Michael Pollan and Monsanto CEO at Google on YouTube Straight to the Source What's quite shocking about Hugh Grant's contribution is the way that he uses the current food crisis to push for GMOs as a solution to "needing more food". But the reality, as Michael Pollan points out is that the food crisis has been driven more than anything by the ethanol led "biofuel" boom and nobody has lobbied harder to keep that boom going than Monsanto, which has profited hugely out of it while the food crisis has been ratcheted up. --- --- Michael Pollan and Monsanto CEO at Google on YouTube Here's a 36-minute video on YouTube featuring an unusual forum with Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant, talking with "In Defense of Food" author Michael Pollan and Google.org's head of global development, Sonal Shah, on the topic of "Creating a World That Can Feed Itself." (Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google.org, moderated the panel, telling the Google audience that he and Grant became friends when both visited the Doomsday seed vault in Norway.) The discussion was polite and humanizing and occasionally pointed, but held no breakthrough surprises. In just one snippet, Grant talked about the worldwide shortage of food and the dire problems of how to increase crop yields while lowering the use of water and fertilizer. Brilliant noted that Grant had sent him a copy of an article suggesting that, in a world facing a critical food crunch, we need to put aside our feuds and work on solutions -- the first part being a tough challenge in itself. Monsanto believes yields can be doubled over the next 20 years or so, and Grant thinks the science isn't the hardest part of the problem. The hard part, he said, is how to get NGOS ("because NGOs are in the villages, they literally hold the hand of a local farmer who's farming half an acre or an acre") linked up with local governments and a company like Monsanto, to transfer technology and manage the soil and manage irrigation and so forth. Grant commented, "Norman Borlaug, the architect of the Green Revolution and my personal hero, is 92, 93. Norm says, "Just get a move on. I don't have much time left." And I think a big piece of the secret the last time around was, this wasn't about either-or, this wasn't about big-small, it wasn't big-tech versus big-organic, it was about a group coming together... and truly joining forces with a common goal." Pollan advocates "a great many food chain experiments" and a willingness to fund them all, even those that produce less profit, noting the public component of the last green revolution. He found Grant's confidence about doubling yields "breathtaking," given that high yields have not historically been a strength of genetically modified crops. What the GMO crops are good at, he said, is allowing farmers to get bigger and take care of more land more conveniently. He challenged Monsanto to join the effort on terms that are ecologically and economically reasonable -- such as allowing farmers to save seed, which Pollan called critical to food security (Monsanto currently views seed saving as piracy). Increasing crop yields, Pollan said, is not the only answer. We keep talking about Africa, but we have 35 million "food insecure" people in the U.S. even as we've had an explosion in agricultural yields. "Producing enough food and getting it into the hands of people who need it, they're just two completely separate problems," he said. And, too, "yield of what?" -- He said he looks forward to Monsanto entering the realm of growing food people can eat, but their strength and history so far has been growing corn and soy as "raw materials," mostly animal feed. It'd be an interesting show to take on the road. At least we've got one of them coming to Seattle -- Pollan will speak at a Bastyr event on Oct. 30, and at Seattle Arts & Lectures at Benaroya Hall on Jan. 12. http://bastyr.edu/development/FoundersWeekend.asp Here's our interview with him on his last Seattle visit. http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/devouringseattle/archi... 6. ----------------------------- 7. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/commentary/38247 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9I1IkbcHNE
1. Yoon Hyesung 2. Global Water Supply Drying Up as Population Grows - Billions of People Lack Clean Water and Adequate Sanitation 3. As I read this article, I felt that it would be horrible to live without water. How can we live without water? Of course, we can't. Water is very crucial to everyone. But most people sometimes do not think of the importance of water, especially in Korea. I also forget about that and use much water unintentionally at times.... I was really ashamed while reading this article.. Actually, I've already heard about the fact that there would be a lack of water. I read some articles about this topic. In one article, the author says that the demand for fresh water is greater than the supply in roughly 80 countries around the world today... And he also says that 48 countries will have chronic shortages of water by 2025. And now, as we can see, "water scarcity" became a real and big problem... I'm afraid of imagining the future without fresh water.... We should take actions... We mustn't waste water any longer.... There should be stricter policies to conserve clean water resources..!!
----------------------- Dear EarthTalk: How could there ever be a “water scarcity?” Isn’t water the most plentiful thing on Earth? – Chris Carroll, Austin, TX Ocean water may cover more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, but thirsty humans rely on finite supplies of freshwater to stay alive. And with exploding human population growth, especially in poor countries, these finite supplies get quickly spoken for. Further, in places without proper sanitation, water can become tainted with any number of diseases and parasites.
Billions of People Lack Clean Water According to the World Bank, as many as two billion people lack adequate sanitation facilities to protect them from water-borne disease, while a billion lack access to clean water altogether. According to the United Nations, which has declared 2005-2015 the “Water for Life”1 decade, 95 percent of the world’s cities still dump raw sewage into their water supplies. Thus it should come as no surprise to know that 80 percent of all the health maladies in developing countries can be traced back to unsanitary water.
Water Scarcity Likely to Increase as Population Grows Sandra Postel, author of the 1998 book, Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity, predicts big water availability problems as populations of so-called “water-stressed” countries jump perhaps six fold over the next 30 years. “It raises tons of issues about water and agriculture, growing enough food, providing for all the material needs that people demand as incomes increase, and providing drinking water,” says Postel.
Developed Nations Using Disproportionate Amount of Water Developed countries aren’t immune to freshwater problems either. Researchers found a six-fold increase in water use for only a two-fold increase in population size in the United States since 1900. Such a trend reflects the connection between higher living standards and increased water usage, and underscores the need for more sustainable management and use of water supplies even in more developed societies.
Environmentalists Oppose Desalination Solution With world population expected to pass nine billion by mid-century, solutions to water scarcity problems are not going to come easy. Some have suggested that technology--such as large-scale saltwater desalination plants--could generate more freshwater for the world to use. But environmentalists argue that depleting ocean water is no answer and will only create other big problems. In any case, research and development into improving desalination technologies is ongoing, especially in Saudi Arabia, Israel and Japan. And already an estimated 11,000 desalination plants exist in some 120 countries around the world.
Water and Market Economics Others believe that applying market principles to water would facilitate a more efficient distribution of supply everywhere. Analysts at the Harvard Middle East Water Project, for example, advocate assigning a monetary value to freshwater, rather than considering it a free natural commodity. They say such an approach could help mitigate the political and security tensions caused by water scarcity.
Personal Action to Conserve Water Resources As individuals, we can all reign in our own water use to help conserve what is becoming an ever more precious resource. We can hold off on watering our lawns in times of drought. And when it does rain, we can gather gutter water in barrels to feed garden hoses and sprinklers. We can turn off the faucet while we brush our teeth or shave, and take shorter showers. As Sandra Postel concludes, “Doing more with less is the first and easiest step along the path toward water security.” ---------
3. I found this article on the website of a french journal dealing with international matters, and I got interested because the matter is quite puzzling to me. The article is about desalinating water to make it fit for domestic use, because the country involved (Algeria) is experiencing a water shortage. What shocked me in this is that we hare facing here a shortage of a most vital ressource : water. This shows how a society can grow to use away all of such a primordial ressource, and then have to devise such complicated ways of deriving it from elsewhere. As the process is very costly on energy I wonder how long they will be able to sustain that : water prices could go up or the energetic demand grow to important. I translated the article myself so there might be some strange parts...
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4. Algeria : Running for seawater desalination „Algeria took a big step these last years concerning seawater desalination”, reports the newspaper La Tribune. Facing rarefication of conventional water ressources, and shortage which can be felt, too production process exist : treatment of used waters and seawater desalination. Algerian leaders made their choice. Recycled used waters will be used for agriculture and industry, and seawater for domestical needs, „needs more and more important, namely because of population growth”. Algeria will double its efforts et plans on creation 13 desalination stations all along its costal zones. Algeria could thus come after Saudi Arabia, which is in the lead with 24% of world capacity, United Arab Emirates, and the United States. „In the years to come, the strongest growht will come from the costs of the Mediterranean sea”, predicts the newspaper. Besides Algeria, Israel and Lybia aim at doubling their capacity by 2015. But desalinated saewater has a costs, for the transformation process requires a lot of energy. The government promised to maintain the prices. „But until when ?” wonders La Tribune.
--------- 6. http://www.courrierinternational.com/article.asp?obj_id=95452 ALGÉRIE • La course au dessalement de l'eau de mer est lancée "L'Algérie a franchi un grand pas ces dernières années en matière de dessalement de l'eau de mer", rapporte le quotidien La Tribune. Face à la raréfaction des ressources en eau conventionnelles et la pénurie qui se fait sentir, il existe deux procédés de production : le traitement des eaux usées et le dessalement de l'eau de mer. Les responsables algériens ont tranché. Les eaux usées recyclées serviront à l'agriculture et à l'industrie, et l'eau de mer aux besoins domestiques, "des besoins de plus en plus importants en raison, notamment, de la croissance démographique".
L'Algérie va mettre les bouchées doubles et prévoit de créer 13 stations de dessalement tout le long de ses zones côtières. Elle pourrait ainsi se classer derrière l'Arabie Saoudite, en tête avec 24 % de la capacité mondiale, les Emirats arabes unis et les Etats-Unis. "Dans les années à venir, la plus forte croissance viendra des bords de la Méditerranée", prévoit le quotidien. Outre l'Algérie, Israël et la Libye comptent doubler leur capacité d'ici 2015. Mais l'eau dessalée a un coût, car le procédé qui permet de transformer l'eau de mer est très gourmand en énergie. Le gouvernement s'est engagé à maintenir les prix. Mais jusqu'à quand ?, se demande La Tribune.
2. Tuna spawning grounds can help Coral Triangle nations get better deal on fishing
3. Water seems to be the theme this week, and because I love Kimbap, it makes total sense to combine the two and research an article on Tuna. The article speaks about future plans for protecting tuna fishing, a multibillion dollar industry, and regulations. Overfishing has been a constant threat for tuna, causing the yellowfin tuna to reach an "overfished state." This is bad because yellowfin tuna is the most popular fish served in a sashimi fashion (amongst other reasons). Further investigation states that, "Japan's huge appetite for tuna will take the most sought-after stocks to the brink of commercial extinction unless fisheries agree on more rigid quotas". The article describes the Coral Triangle region making up 70% of the world's tuna catches, but it doesn't state what the other 30% is. I imagine much of that 30% is from Japan, which has overfished a lot of its surrounding waters. "The Australian government alleged in 2006 that Japan had illegally overfished southern bluefin by taking 12,000 to 20,000 tonnes per year instead of the their agreed 6,000 tonnes; the value of such overfishing would be as much as USD $2 billion."
Trade regulations and commercial fishing are very interesting topics. I hope to learn more about it and it would be great if there was a class that went over some of it (following the ongoing theme of water so far).
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Asia Pacific fishing nations could use the presence of tuna spawning grounds to negotiate better prices and fairer fishing arrangements with foreign fishing nations, WWF said today.
The proposal was put forward as ministers started meeting in the Papua New Guinea capital Port Moresby this week to finalise a plan to protect marine environments and food security in the Coral Triangle region, covering waters between Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Pacific.
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The area provides spawning grounds and migratory routes for tuna caught in the Indian, Pacific and Southern Oceans, which make up around 70 per cent of the world’s tuna catch.
“The region’s spawning grounds are essential to the world’s multi-billion dollar tuna industry and the world should be prepared to support their protection and effective management,”� said Dr Lida Pet Soede, leader of WWF’s Coral Triangle Program.
“This can help Coral Triangle countries negotiate fairer prices and fairer fishing arrangements with non-Coral Triangle nations, who also fish in these waters.”�
Dr Pet Soede said it was fitting the final meeting be held in Papua New Guinea as PNG has taken a leading role in efforts to bring more sustainability to the region’s tuna fisheries, which are critical to the food security of millions.
Managing Director of Papua New Guinea’s National Fisheries Authority, Sylvester Pokajam, warned of a collapse of the big eye tuna fishery unless fishing nations operating in the Coral Triangle introduced measures to make the fishery more sustainable.
“We can see a crash coming for tuna and this will be disastrous for many coastal communities in the Coral Triangle, where millions of people depend on healthy tuna stocks for food and livelihoods,”� Mr Pokajam said.
“Here in PNG we have introduced fishing measures within our own zones in an effort to address the issue of overfishing, in particular where it comes to overfishing big eye tuna, but the success of these measures depends entirely on the willingness of other non-Coral Triangle nations to introduce similar measures.”�
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste collectively make up the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI), introduced by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the APEC leader’s meeting in September 2007.
This week’s meeting is the final ministerial forum before Coral Triangle leaders gather in Manado, Indonesia on May 15 to announce details of a plan to protect marine ecosystems and food security in the region.
The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission will meet in Bali at the end of this month to consider among other things a set of recommendations by its scientific committee to reduce fishing pressure on yellowfin tuna, which it says is likely to have reached an overfished state.
The World Ocean Conference and the Coral Triangle Initiative Summit will be held from May 11 to 15 in Manado, Indonesia, and are expected to result in the Manado Ocean Declaration, a definitive statement on oceans and climate change.
“With climate change threatening to alter habitats in the region, it is even more critical to manage marine ecosystems for the ongoing food security of the region and for the survival of many species that depend on the Coral Triangle’s unique marine environment,”� said Dr Pet Soede.
1. Guirang Choi 2. Salt solution: Cheap power from the river's mouth 3. There is an simple idea long times ago. It could be disapear to the air with tapped. But somebody hung in there and keep improving, doubting, fixing and reversing, till it can be practise in reallity. It is very impressive whenever i find that there's certain people have enthusiasm of environmental solution- While most time I live without concerning this worlds getting lose the resources. I credit the bright side of the progress those believers have been and whould be acheive. Maybe there's no perfact conception, ideal system. As I doubt about this salt solution idea won't harm anenvironment at all- if the water salinated, some species whould get rid of the water. That will change the food chain and ecosystem which is very big finally.- But still, I think this effort is much more worth than do nothing, we can keep fixing and doing somthing to see the environmental pay off gradually. I hope this plant keep detected by goverment and society. Finding the substitude and improving it is happening and for sure it doen't just pop out solitarily, This is the result of fantastic collaboration with lab and supports.
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STAND on the banks of the Rhine where it flows into the North Sea, near the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and you'll witness a vast, untapped source of energy swirling in the estuary. According to Dutch engineer Joost Veerman, it's possible to tap this energy without damaging the environment or disrupting the river's busy shipping. For rather than constructing a huge barrage or dotting the river bed with turbines, Veerman and his colleagues at Wetsus, the Dutch Centre for Sustainable Water Technology in Leeuwarden, believe they can tap energy locked up in the North Sea's saltwater by channelling it, along with fresh water from the Rhine, into a novel kind of battery. With a large enough array of these batteries, he says, the estuary could easily provide over a gigawatt of electricity by a process they've called Blue Energy - enough to supply about 650,000 homes.
"Salinity power" exploits the chemical differences between salt and fresh water, and this project only hints at the technology's potential: from the mouth of the Ganges to the Mississippi delta, almost every large estuary could produce a constant flow of green electricity, day and night, rain or shine, without damaging sensitive ecosystems or threatening fisheries (see map). One estimate has it that salinity power could eventually become a serious power player, supplying as much as 7 per cent of today's global energy needs.
In an attempt to prove that this isn't just a pipe dream, Veerman's team has done lab tests on a prototype salinity power generator, and are now planning to scale it up. Yet a group of Norwegian engineers have gone one stage further, with their own twist on salinity power.
In the next few months, engineers at Norwegian power company Statkraft plan to throw the switch on the world's first salinity power station. Though their prototype is small, its impact could be huge. So what are these rival technologies, how do they stack up, and what are the obstacles to making electricity wherever rivers meet the sea?
Salinity power emerged from a rather different use for sea water. In the late 1950s, Sidney Loeb and Srinivasa Sourirajan, then working at the University of California, Los Angeles, came up with a new trick to extract drinking water from the sea. Their idea was based on osmosis, a natural process in which water passes spontaneously from a dilute to a concentrated solution through a semipermeable membrane. The pair realised that by using a synthetic membrane and high pressure pumps, they could run osmosis in reverse and literally squeeze fresh water from sea water. This approach is now used in desalination plants worldwide.
About 15 years later, Loeb had another brain wave. He realised that their design could be exploited to generate power. Working at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beer Sheva, Israel, he envisaged a tank with two chambers separated by a semipermeable membrane. With saltwater on one side and fresh on the other, osmosis would draw fresh water into the salty side, raising its pressure. This pressurised saltwater could then be piped through a turbine to generate electricity (see diagram). Loeb named this process pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) and patented it in 1973.
His plan was to harvest power where rivers meet the ocean, close to the point where fresh water meets salt. Fresh water would be piped to a generating plant from upstream and saltwater from downstream. Inside the plant, the fresh and saltwater would be channelled along either side of a membrane. Osmosis would then provide sufficient water pressure on the salty side of the membrane - up to 12 atmospheres, Loeb reckoned - to make electricity generation profitable.
The key lay in finding the right membrane. It would have to be permeable to water but not salt, and very thin yet extremely durable. This proved too tall an order and Loeb retired in 1986, his dream unrealised.
The concept was revived in 1997, when Thor Thorsen and Torleif Holt, working in Trondheim at the Norwegian research organisation SINTEF, became convinced that membrane technology was finally advanced enough to make Loeb's idea feasible. With their enthusiasm, and detailed calculations, they convinced Statkraft that salinity power could pay off in Norway. Using a design much like Loeb's original, they now believe they are close to their goal.
Membrane development remains the biggest headache, says Stein Erik Skilhagen, manager of the PRO project at Statkraft. Unfortunately, membranes used in desalination plants are too thick, he says, and cannot draw enough water through. So Statkraft's engineers have been working with membrane developers to improve designs. While their first membranes generated about 100 milliwatts per square metre, the latest version generates over 3 watts per square metre, close to their target of 5 watts.
Skilhagen reckons these membranes are now efficient enough to be worth testing beyond the lab, and in the next few months the company plans to turn on the world's first prototype PRO plant at the Södra Cell paper pulp factory in Tofte, alongside a fjord 60 kilometres from Oslo.
2. "Late Victorian Holocaust" and World Population Theories - Part I
3. I partly read the above book(which is also avaiable in a Korean translation) during weekend. Although I know about droughts and floods in China and Korea of the 19th century, I was not aware of the scale and the social effects of these natural disasters. Which has mostly been ignored by all the lecturers I had during 2 years at university. For short, I became even more aware of the effect of environment on men and the relevance of a sociology taking it into account.
The El Nino phenomen, as one of the main topics of this book, devastated countries around the world from Brazil to Egypt to Korea at the end of the 19th century. The overlapping of El Nino and a big part of the "underdeveloped" world is especially interesting. Although there might be no convincing evidence that El Nino regularly caused disasters in its area of occurence in the past, future might be different. Forecasted climate change can cause serious problems to the El Nino countries and dimish or even prevent growth - despite virtual food for everyone and modern technology that can grow plants in deserts.
By accident I found 3 articles dealing with population issues on a blog and became interested in them due to the last week about Malthus.
All three ar dealing with the issue of growing population, but quite different - from a potential risk/risky potential to a view of total overpopulation or optimistic outlook. First, the article about UN's population report was said to adjust its assumed population for 2050 to over 9 billion people. This was ironically necessary due to two factors: less people dying of HIV and a rise in life expectancy. These dropping and risings in numbers in the poorest countries might be the greatest chance or the greatest risk for these countries. Depending on if they can educate the more in people and give them jobs. Maybe I have missed the point, but to achieve high education might not be the easiest and not at last one of the first things you think about when you are one of the poorest countries and your economy is not going well. The last point which already is the reason for being on the list of the poorest countries might also make it difficult to provide jobs. For the people already alive as well as the 2 generations to go until 2050. China can be seen as a good example , missing the 12 million new jobs it would need to get all newcomers employed. Despite skyrocketing grotwh and western fertility rate. To argument a more in youth until 2050 is a chance for economic growth like the UN might be right. But in my oppinion this will only lead to a decline in wages, China-like work environment and living standard. Which in the 21st century should not be a desirable goal. ----- U.N.: Young and Old Boom on the Road to 9 Billion By Andrew C. Revkin
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
The world has more than 1 billion teenagers who, without education and job prospects, may contribute to instability and, in places like Sudan, end up being child soldiers, according to demographers and security specialists. Masafumi Yamamoto for The New York Times
Japanese convenience stores, which served mainly young customers decades ago, now cater to elderly customers. Sueko Inoue shopped in a Lawson store in Awaji. [UPDATE 3/13: There's a fascinating roundup of views of the new United Nations population projections in our new "Room for Debate" blog.]
The United Nations Population Division has updated its population forecasts through 2050, and concludes that, despite a longstanding global decline in fertility rates, the world is still on a path to exceed 9 billion people by mid-century, with the vast majority of the increase coming in the world’s poorest countries.
In those countries, large proportions of the population are children or teenagers, who could contribute either to a large workforce and economic gains or — in the absence of education and jobs — to instability and conflict.
The other fast-growing group around the globe is the oldest segment of the populations, according to the United Nations — and that trend also can pose challenges, particularly in the absence of a large working-age population. ( This article from 2004 explored how Japan is coping with an aging population: automated help for the elderly, including human washing machines.)
Three factors have nudged population projections upward over the past decade, Hania Zlotnik, the director of the population division, said in an interview: lengthening lifespans; the success of HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention efforts, particularly in Africa; and “a slower than expected decline in fertility” (meaning the number of children a woman bears).
Staff members at the population division warned in interviews that the updated projection for 2050 is premised on continuing declines in the fertility rate, but those declines are no longer a safe bet. The demand for reproductive information and contraceptives still exceeds the supply in dozens of developing countries, according to the report and separate assessments by other population groups — meaning that tens of millions of women are probably having larger families than they want.
Conditions that keep girls out of school, ranging from a lack of toilets to the demand for their labor gathering firewood and water, also contribute to elevated birth rates.
Some milestones have been passed in the report, U.N. officials said. India now has a higher population density than Japan. Africa’s total population has topped 1 billion for the first time.
The report contained hints that 9 billion is the new floor for population by 2050, instead of a best guess.
The importance of sustaining a decline in fertility by increasing access to family planning was stressed in the report summary:
The urgency of realizing the projected reductions of fertility is brought into focus by considering that, if fertility were to remain constant at the levels estimated for 2005-2010, the population of the less developed regions would increase to 9.8 billion in 2050 instead of the 7.9 billion projected by assuming that fertility declines. That is, without further reductions of fertility, the world population could increase by nearly twice as much as currently expected.
Officials at the U.N. Population Fund, which supports family planning programs around the world, said the new projections illustrated the importance of rich countries continuing to help poorer ones to ensure that couples have no more children than they want. [UPDATE, 10:30: President Obama signed a bill on Wednesday that sets the stage for restoration of United States contributions to the population fund.]
The population division’s country-by-country data on population trends can be sifted and explored online. The United States, whose population is growing faster than most other wealthy countries, has just over 300 million people now and will probably top 400 million by 2050. The report projects that the United States will, on average, gain 1.1 million people a year from 2010 to 2050 through immigration, nearly five times as many immigrants as Canada, which has the second highest inward immigration flow.
Given that Americans, per person, produce many times more carbon dioxide emissions than people in developing countries (at least for a few more decades), the growth in the United States has added significance for climate projections, said Leiwen Jiang, senior demographer at Population Action International, a nonprofit research group.
There are reams of fascinating findings. Check your country or some other detail that interests you and post what you find.
There will be lots more to come here on the two questions at the heart of this blog, which will largely shape the quality of life (human and otherwise) on this planet through the next few generations: How many people? How much stuff? ------------------------------------
2. "Late Victorian Holocaust" and World Population Theories - Part II
3. The second one, although not directly Malthusian argues that with the climate change world population would end up on the "carrying capacity" of our planet around 1 billion. Since I don't believe in this world view I was not really shocked by that "scientific" oppinion. I was more scared by the fact that he advised the head of state in Germany which might have rebound on me as a German. When I just think about the number of 1 billion, only one out of 6 to 7 persons living today would remain. Although there is nothing to laugh about in such a situation I would luckily live on the better side of the planet, namely the rich one. Somehow it would be a mean irony if in 40 years the populations of the nations famous for polluting and overusing have better chances to get a seat in a new earth equilibrium. Since his research result is based on data like average consumption per capita etc. altering of this data will also change the outcome and thereby his argument is a mere (intended) provocation.
The third one in an interview with an optimist about population trends which can be summarized by "there are already solutions, we just have to use them". Even dimensions like an Africa threefold the men size of Europe are said to be managable by technology.
Finally, I found two pages showing data of population growth until 2050 and migration trends. Which might be more important than general population growth in an age of imploding and exploding nations when it comes to population size.
------ Scientist: Warming Could Cut Population to 1 Billion By James Kanter
Lizette Kabré. Climate congress, Copenhagen 2009.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, spoke several times at the climate conference in Copenhagen.[UPDATE, 1:45 p.m.: A roundup of economists' and scientists' views at the Copenhagen climate meeting and a reaction from Mike Hulme, a participating scientist.]
COPENHAGEN — A scientist known for his aggressive stance on climate policy made an apocalyptic prediction on Thursay.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said that if the buildup of greenhouse gases and its consequences pushed global temperatures 9 degrees Fahrenheit higher than today — well below the upper temperature range that scientists project could occur from global warming — Earth’s population would be devastated. [UPDATED, 6:10 p.m: The preceding line was adjusted to reflect that Dr. Schellnhuber was not describing a worst-case warming projection. h/t to Joe Romm.] “In a very cynical way, it’s a triumph for science because at last we have stabilized something –- namely the estimates for the carrying capacity of the planet, namely below 1 billion people,” said Dr. Schellnhuber, who has advised German Chancellor Angela Merkel on climate policy and is a visiting professor at Oxford.
At that temperature, there would be “no fluctuations anymore, we can be fairly sure,” said Dr. Schellnhuber, exercising his characteristically dark sense of humor at the morning plenary session on the closing day of an international climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. [Earlier post: The conference organizers have sought to jog policymakers with a stronger assessment of global warming's risks, but some scientists warned the approach could backfire.]
“What a triumph,” Dr. Schellnhuber said. “On the other hand do we want this alternative? I think we can do much, much better,” he told the conference.
Dr. Schellnhuber, citing his own research, said that at certain “tipping points,” higher temperatures could cause areas of the ocean to become deoxygenated, resulting in what he calls “oxygen holes” between 600 and 2,400 feet deep. These are areas so depleted of the gas that they would badly disrupt the food chain.
Unabated warming would also lead to “disruption of the monsoon, collapse of the Amazon rain forest and the Greenland ice sheet will meltdown,” he said. But on the bright side, he noted, in a joking reference to the meeting’s Danish hosts, the retreat of the sheath of ice covering Greenland, which is Danish-controlled territory, “would increase your usable land by, I don’t know, 10,000 percent.”
“But I’m not sure whether you want to do this,” he said.
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October 25, 2007, 3:07 pm The Population Cluster Bomb? By Andrew C. Revkin
A crowded street in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. (Credit: Reuters) One of the underlying assumptions of Dot Earth is that the human population will hit nine billion before peaking some time midcentury. There are some readers and population campaigners who question this kind of presumption and wish we could avoid that kind of growth, for obvious reasons.
The reason I stuck with it is that it’s hard to find a demographer or other expert on population and social trends who sees even a small chance of humankind’s peaking at anything lower than nine billion — barring some catastrophic epidemic or asteroid strike.
What’s more interesting is that the overall number, whatever you choose, could be a red herring. Many population experts foresee the next few decades evolving in a way that is very different from the global-scale, catastrophic “population bomb” concept that caught hold in the 1960s.
What they depict is more like a dangerous scattering of cluster bombs, as the world splits into two types of countries: those with aging, shrinking populations, like Japan and much of Europe, and those regions, like most of Africa and parts of south Asia, still mired in poverty, disease, illiteracy or government dysfunction with resulting high birth and death rates.
Jesse Ausubel at Rockefeller University calls them “imploders and exploders,” and Jason DeParle’s continuing Border Crossings series on population flows around the world has perfectly captured the consequences.
I caught Joseph Chamie, a sociologist and demographer, on the phone a couple of nights ago to explore the inevitability of nine billion and these other trends. It’s telling that he used to run the United Nations Population Division but recently migrated (~sorry~) to the Center for Migration Studies.
It is flows of people, and regional population crises, that will matter most in the next two generations, Dr. Chamie said.
Q. The framing conception for this blog is how do we head toward nine billion people with the fewest regrets, but that obviously comes with the built-in notion that we’re heading toward nine billion people. Should I be confident that that’s pretty much unavoidable?
A. I don’t think anyone doubts we’re going to be approaching nine billion. A lot of it of course has to do with fertility levels.
Q. Do wealth and urbanization always lead to reduced population rates? A. Generally, prosperity brings so many different forces that keep fertility below replacement. You have urbanization, you have women’s education, you have women’s employment, you have higher survival for children so that couples say, “Well, two’s fine.”
Q. Is it more significant that you have these different population trends in different places or just that we’re heading toward nine billion?
A. You’re having changes in ratios between countries. Right after World War II Europe was almost three times as big as Africa. By 2050 Africa will be three times as big as Europe. These changes are very, very important, and the balance has implications for production, consumption and also relations between those countries.
Then you start thinking, Russia has this number of people. Pakistan is bigger. Pakistan has nuclear weapons; well, so does Russia. So you start thinking about what is a power, and what’s not a power.
I’ve been talking for 10 years about Pakistan being a problem area, even before Al Qaeda. Look at the growth in this country. It’s a hotbed and it’s growing so rapidly. It was less than 50 million in 1950, and it’s going to be like the fourth biggest country in the world.
Q. The notion way back in the 20th century that population was a bomb — has that fizzled or is there just a slow fuse on the bomb? Is heading toward nine billion, having two more Chinas essentially, a problem?
A. Certain regions of the world are going to have very, very stressful situations. Africa is projected to add a billion more people, India a half-billion more people. And that means stresses and strains and all sorts of adjustments.
The demographic transition is an adjustment from high levels of death and birth rates to low levels. Places like Iran, Tunisia, Thailand, Indonesia, they’re going through that transition much faster than Europe did. Iran and Tunisia are going through it in 25 years. France went through it in 125 years. Hopefully we can expedite the transition in Africa as well. You have to bring down mortality. You have to have education for girls and woman. You have to get them employed, actively engaged in society so there are alternatives to having lots of children and raising a large family.
It’s in everyone’s interest to bring down the death rates and educate girls, boys, get them working, and that will hopefully slow down the growth.
It’s happening. At the peak, growth was about 87 million a year, and we’re down to about 76 million per year now.
Q. We just had this Page One story by my colleague Donald McNeil about how we finally got down under 10 million childhood deaths per year. Given that the overall population has been growing, that actual improvement is even more rapid than it might seem.
A. We’re going to see even more of this. There are going to be increasing gains in longevity at the top, many more people above 100. According to U.N. projections that’s the most rapidly growing age group, and it’s predominantly women. When you have more women among the elderly, health care becomes an issue, and they vote.
Q. So the old story of a kind of uniform picture of a population bomb has been replaced by what?
A. It’s a very complex symphony. It’s not just one note. You just don’t hear a drum going boom, boom, boom.
Q. The climate impact of people is uniform. All the greenhouse gases mix, so as energy demands go up that creates an interesting problem.
A. It’s going to be problematic on the environment. We’re already seeing that. But even if we stabilized at nine billion or eight billion it’s the production and consumption of goods that’s creating this pressure. Even though the population of India is three or four times that of the United States, we produce more greenhouse emissions. All things being equal, a stabilized population will create less impact on the planet.
Q. But there’s a long way to go before we stabilize. Do you have your own vision of a path through this transition that comes out with a world that has reasonable functional ecosystems and resources left over for the stable population to come?
A. First of all there’s enough food for everybody. In fact, some places have too much food. Obesity is a problem. We’re going to have to make changes in society, changes in lifestyles. I’m optimistic about that because we’ve seen changes. Smoking? Gone.
Women are having a tremendous impact around the world, and that has a moderating impact.
I’m confident there’ll be technologies to increase less-polluting energy. It’s going to be a bumpy road and in some places very bumpy. And you’re going to have increased mortality. You have to be prepared for those big shocks, like the bird flu.
But if you look in the past, we had great successes. Think about polio. I went up to Alaska a couple of years ago and was talking about Jonas Salk. A girl came up and asked why “salt” was important? I said, “Salk, Jonas Salk, who came up with a vaccine against polio.”
She said, “Polio, what’s polio?”
Q. I detect an optimist.
A. With regard to the energy situation, the food, the technology, they’re all very promising. I’m rather optimistic. The path is clear. There’s no secret recipe that people are keeping hidden from you like Coca-Cola. We know the recipe for development. We just have to implement it.
A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.
1. Mikah Lee
ReplyDelete2. Tidal currents- our next source of energy
3. There obviously isn't any ONE answer to fixing our environment as it is today. When it comes to finding alternative power sources, I am under the opinion that we should find as many eco-friendly solutions as possible.
Here's another relatively 'safe' energy source besides solar and biofuels- tidal currents. Unlike those other sources, tidal currents are utterly predictable, which is a big plus for us: we can calculate when and how much energy we can harvest.
However, one of the problems that's keeping us from harvesting this energy is money. Equipment for such an operation is of course very expensive. Money may be the root of all evil, but now we need lots of it to try and 'make good' our mistakes of the past (and present).
There's also the problem with gov't support- I quote: "More than a dozen federal, state and local-government agencies share control over the nation's tidal waters, which can make obtaining a permit a bureaucratic nightmare." It'll obviously take a whole lot of time until we are able to harvest that tidal energy.
There is actually one such power plant in France- but it uses a system that involves damming water, which is not exactly eco-friendly. Tidal turbines would be a better way to harvest this energy, but again these are ridiculously expensive to make (according to the article, they must be practically 'hand-made').
Hmmm, tidal turbines... I like the idea of harvesting energy from tidal currents- it is very much like the way windmills work... only with water, but I am still a bit concerned about what these things may do to marine life (which is already being threatened by all kinds of other man-made problems).
It is, in my opinion, a project that should definitely be pursued- let's just not overdo it. If every single available spot in the ocean were to be filled with these turbines... that'll probably lead to even more problems. Wars might break out over which country gets to use which spots (a bit like how Korea is fighting over its rights to Dok-do, that little island, against Japan).
Again, let's use our resources moderately. Tidal currents may never 'run out', but those available spots certainly will one day.
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Tidal power isn't for the faint-hearted, as Verdant Power CEO William Taylor knows from experience. The first time Taylor's company sank an experimental turbine into New York City's East River, in late 2006, the powerful tidal currents — they can run up to 6 m.p.h. (almost 10 km/h) on a good day — smashed the device's fiberglass blades. Next they tried a turbine with rotors made of aluminum and magnesium, but after a couple of months the river won again. Finally, in the summer of 2008, Verdant sank a third design, with blades of tough aluminum alloy. These proved strong enough, and were soon generating sufficient electricity to power the lights at a nearby supermarket. That might seem like a small return for an operation that has cost millions of dollars, but Taylor isn't discouraged. "It's all part of the mantra — learning by doing," says the 61-year-old. "The potential of tidal can be just enormous."
Tidal power doesn't get the attention — or the venture capital — that higher-profile renewable energy sources such as solar or biofuels do, but there's a lot of energy waiting to be tapped in the motion of the ocean. Unlike the breeze or the sun, tidal currents are utterly predictable — sailors have charted them for centuries — which means engineers know exactly how much energy they'll get, and when they'll get it. The mechanics are physics 101 — at their most basic, tidal turbines act as underwater windmills, transforming sea currents into electrical current. And there is no shortage of potential sites around the world — a study by the Electric Power Research Institute estimated that as much as 10% of U.S. electricity could eventually be supplied by tidal, a potential equaled in Britain and surpassed in powerful coastal sites like Canada's Bay of Fundy.
But tidal power's takeoff has been held up by red tape, environmental concerns and the difficulties of building and maintaining infrastructure under the water. In the 42 years since the 240-MW Rance tidal plant was completed on the northern coast of France, not a single utility-scale commercial project has been built. "It will be viable, but I still think it will stay last on the list for a while," says Miriam Horn, a writer at the green group Environmental Defense Fund. "It will take a lot of [government] support."
That support has been largely missing in the U.S., where state aid for alternative energy that isn't grown by corn farmers is all but nonexistent. But that hasn't deterred start-ups like Verdant or Washington-based Oceana Power from investing in the technology. Verdant, launched in 2000, is expanding beyond its test in New York City and plans projects off the coast of Texas and in Canada, which has an estimated 15,000 MW of potential tidal energy. Oceana — which boasts environmental luminaries like Climate Institute president John Topping among its founders — has proceeded more slowly on actual projects, but through a network of regional subsidiaries it has staked out claims in tidal waters throughout the U.S., including beneath the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Competition has sometimes caused friction between the two companies, but they both agree that government red tape is hampering development of the nascent industry. More than a dozen federal, state and local-government agencies share control over the nation's tidal waters, which can make obtaining a permit a bureaucratic nightmare. "It will be one way in California and another way in Massachusetts," says Daniel Power, Ocean's CEO. "There's a lack of precedents here so everyone is getting their sea legs."
Things are slightly more advanced in Europe. The Rance plant in northwestern France is the only utility-scale tidal power system in the world — but it's a tidal barrage plant that involves damming water, a method that has more serious environmental impacts than the new generation of tidal turbines. The far northern town of Hammerfest, Norway, has hosted a 300 kW experimental tidal project for several years. The U.K., while hardly free from red tape, is also ahead of the U.S. That's partially a reflection of the British government's stronger stance on cutting carbon emissions, but also because tidal power has obvious appeal to an island nation. Bristol-based firm Marine Current Turbines (MCT), whose directors have been working in the field since the early 1990s, established a successful 300-kW turbine off Lynmouth, Devon, in 2003. Now MCT is developing a $20 million commercial-scale tidal-energy project in Northern Ireland's turbulent Strangford Narrows. Called SeaGen, the project has already broken records: last month it became the first tidal turbine to hit a capacity of 1.2 MW. The company next plans a 10.5-MW project off the Welsh island of Anglesey in partnership with npower renewables, part of utility giant RWE.
The chief obstacle these days is finance, not science, says Wright. Tidal projects have high initial construction costs — turbines are practically handmade — and that won't change until the market grows and developers can harness economies of scale. That requires subsidies. "This technology needs to be scaled up quickly," says Wright. "The government needs to believe this can happen." It might also require a streamlining of environmental regulations, according to Verdant's Taylor. Rules have already slowed several projects. Verdant had to spend $2 million on its New York operation just to ensure its turbines weren't making sashimi out of the local sea life. (They weren't.) Advocates argue that tidal power has enough potential advantages — unlike wind turbines, tidal generators are invisible, for instance — to be worth promoting. "It's going to happen," says Oceana's Power. "It's just a question of when and how quickly."
Go with the Flow
THEORY Like an undersea windmill, tidal-power plants use rotors to drive turbines. The density of water means a seamill can generate more power than a windmill of the same size
PRACTICE The SeaGen power plant, which began generating electricity off Northern Ireland last year, uses twin 600-kW turbines to develop 1.2 MW in a flow of 5 knots (2.4 m/sec.)
PROS AND CONS Tidal power is more predictable than solar or wind, and undersea machinery is less obtrusive than huge windmills. But start-up costs are still high and the ocean can be tough on equipment Source: Marine Current Turbines
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http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1872110_1872133_1872147,00.html
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete1. Yoo GaEun
ReplyDelete2. Peak Soil- The Silent Global Crisis
3. (Oh my god...... I just blew up the review I wrote. I deleted it without previously saving the passages!! haha....I feel too miserable and frustrated to write this again...lol)
As Professor Whitaker stressed the importance of
comprehending a certain phenomenon in diverse perspectives, I realized how intricate and convoluted the environmental problems actually are. I just saw the one factor that was supposedly known as a MAIN reason for the problem. So I attempted to find the article that can tell me how one problematic situation has induced by many different factors, and that is this article about soil. I chose this because in the class reading list, there was Daniel J. Hillel's article, 'Out of the Earth' which I think was highly informative and insightful.
Having read the article, I could not believe how ignorant and negligent I was about the basic condition of human lives, the soil problem!
We have called a land as the 'Mother God'. According to the Greek myth, the world was created by the goddess Gaia which means this healthy soil is what we must protect.
Here, I could know a correlation between soil degradation, strong wind, increasing precipitation, and biofuel. These various factors, all combinded, exacerbated the soil erosion. I found this article very informative and enlightening, and I hope it will be the same for other students^^
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A harsh winter wind blew last night, and this morning the thin snow cover has turned into a rich chocolate brown. The dirt covering the snow comes from cornfields near my home that were ploughed following the harvest, a common practice in southern Ontario and in the corn-growing regions of the US Midwest.
A handful of this dirty snow melts quickly, leaving a thin, fine-grained wet mess. It doesn’t look like much, but the mucky sludge in my hand is the prerequisite for life on the planet.
“We are overlooking soil as the foundation of all life on Earth,” says Andres Arnalds, assistant director of the Icelandic Soil Conservation Service. Arnalds is an eloquent spokesperson for the unheralded emergency of soil erosion, a problem that is reducing global food production and water availability, and is responsible for an estimated 30 percent of the greenhouse gases emissions. “Land degradation and desertification may be regarded as the silent crisis of the world, a genuine threat to the future of humankind.”
Arnalds is dead serious when he calls soil erosion a crisis. Each year, some 38,000 square miles of land become severely degraded or turn into desert. About five billion acres of arable land have been stripped of their precious layer of topsoil and been abandoned since the first wheat and barley fields were planted 10,000 years ago. In the past 40 years alone, 30 percent of the planet’s arable land has become unproductive due to erosion, mainly in Asia and Africa. At current erosion rates, soils are being depleted faster than they are replenished, and nearly all of the remaining 11 billion acres of cropland and grazing land suffer from some degree of erosion.
Most of this erosion is simply due to plowing, removal of crop residues after harvest, and overgrazing, which leaves soil naked and vulnerable to wind and rain. It is akin to tire wear on your car — a gradual, unobserved process that has potentially catastrophic consequences if ignored for too long.
Arnalds has seen our perilous future crisis by looking into the past. Eleven hundred years ago, the first Icelandic settlers came to a cold island mostly covered by forests and lush meadows, and blessed with deep volcanic soils. In a pattern repeated around the world, settlers cleared the forests and put too many animals on the meadows, until 96 percent of the forest was gone and half the grasslands destroyed. By the 1800s, Iceland had become Europe’s largest desert; the people starved, and the once prosperous country became one of the world’s poorest. “Once soil is gone, you can’t get it back,” Arnalds says. “It’s a non-renewable resource.”
Nickel and Dimed to Death
No one knows how much food-producing land will be left by 2050, when another three billion people are expected to join the current global population of 6.5 billion. What we do know is that right now, 99 percent of human food calories come from the land. Global food production has kept pace with population growth thus far thanks chiefly to the extensive use of chemical fertilizers. But food production per acre of land is starting to decline, primarily due to loss of productive land and water shortages. The latter is often the result of soil erosion because soil and vegetation act as a sponge that holds and gradually releases water. And that soil erosion, in turn, is exacerbated by chemical farming practices that over time break down soil structure.
Add to these challenges climate change’s impact on soil erosion and the competition between growing food and producing biofuels, and it’s frightening to consider the challenge of feeding nine billion people when nearly one billion go hungry right now. Arnalds summarizes the challenge: More food will have to be produced within the next 50 years than during the last 10,000 years combined. “Securing food in many places will become a crisis of rapidly growing proportions.”
Erosion largely goes unnoticed by farmers as it “nickels and dimes you to death,” says David Pimentel, an ecologist at Cornell University who has conducted extensive research on the subject. Even if there were no humans on the planet, soils would still erode. The soil formation from the weathering of rock and the breakdown of plants, however, would be faster than the erosion rate; it takes roughly 500 years to create one inch of soil. Once humans remove natural vegetation, soil is exposed to raindrops that easily dislodge it, washing soil particles into creeks, streams, rivers, and eventually into the ocean. One rainstorm will wash away .04 inches of soil. This may not seem like much, but over one acre of land that fraction of an inch adds up to tons of topsoil.
Wind also disrupts soil, and can transport dust huge distances. Dry and windy conditions blew nearly two inches of topsoil off Kansas farmlands during the winter of 1995–96. Contrary to common belief, the topsoil loss in Kansas didn’t end up being neatly deposited on farms in neighboring states. More than 60 percent ended up clogging ditches, streams, rivers, and lakes. That makes waterways more prone to flooding (further exacerbating erosion) and contaminates them with fertilizer and pesticide residues, Pimentel says.
Every rainy day or windy night steals a thin layer of soil from any exposed piece of ground until there is little left but sand and rock. “Iowa has some of the best and deepest soils in the world,” Pimentel says, “and they’ve lost nearly 50 percent in the last hundred years.”
Erosion’s potential threat to humanity remains largely ignored by the world community. When soil experts from around the world met in Selfoss, Iceland in August 2007, they concluded that an international treaty is needed to spur countries into taking action to protect their soils. The soil scientists proposed that, at the very least, soil ought to have its own year — “The International Year of Land Care” — to focus the world’s attention on soil stewardship.
But hold on a second. While politicians, CEOs, and autoworkers might not think much about soil, surely farmers, whose very existence depends on soil, don’t need a bunch of international lawyers and bureaucrats at the United Nations to tell them to protect their lands. After all, controlling erosion isn’t rocket science. By now it’s well known that agricultural practices such as protecting soil with cover crops when the land is not growing edible crops, keeping post-harvest plant residues on the land, and reducing overgrazing and forest clearance are some of the ways to protect soils.
“Farmers know their success depends on the soil, but they often have more immediate needs, such as feeding their families, paying school fees, or fleeing corrupt governments,” says Michael Stocking of the University of East Anglia in Britain, and one of the leading experts on agriculture in tropical countries. Most farmers face so many short-term challenges that it is difficult to invest in the long-term protection of the soil. Social and economic pressures force many farmers to “mine the soil” until the land is completely denuded and is turned into “badlands,” Stocking says.
Such badlands can be found in every country in the world, and are easy to spot. A more worrisome trend is the hidden danger of losing soil fertility on lands that appear healthy. “Fertility loss on good soils has a much bigger impact than further degradation of badlands,” Stocking says.
Healthy topsoil is a complex mixture of minerals, bacteria, fungi, microscopic invertebrates, and larger invertebrates such as ants and earthworms that break down nutrients and transfer them to the roots of plants. Degradation of soils diminishes this incredible below-ground biodiversity, reducing crop yield as well as soils’ ability to store and filter water and to regulate the global cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.
Edwin Remsberg
In the past 40 years alone, 30 percent of the planet’s arable land has become unproductive due to erosion.While some American farmers control erosion using low- or no-till techniques for planting, the majority are mining the soil, according to Craig Cox, executive director of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, headquartered in Iowa. “Soil conservation has taken a back seat to maximizing production,” Cox says.
As Cox drives the rural roads of Iowa, he sees fresh signs of erosion on the world’s best farmland. “It’s amazing to see the extent of erosion here, mainly because of the absence of basic soil conservation techniques,” he says. Those techniques — such as planting grasses along the edges of waterways and leaving crop residues on the soil — are some of the hard lessons learned during the dust bowl years of the 1930s. But those lessons have been forgotten — or ignored. Driven by the high costs of fertilizer and fuel, and currently lucrative crop prices, farmers are planting rows of corn right to the edge of stream banks, and sometimes in the streams themselves. “It’s amazing and discouraging to see,” Cox says.
Bad News Biofuels
It’s all the more discouraging because American farmers had reduced soil erosion by about 40 percent between 1985 and 1995, largely due to government policies like the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). But CRP programs are now taking a back seat to the desire to cash in on the biofuel bonanza. Erosion is ignored while the US government provides billions of dollars in subsidies for biofuels. “Biofuels and climate change are real threats to America’s soil health,” Cox says.
Farmers are eagerly plowing up CRP lands, pastures, and highly erodible land to grow corn — 12 million additional acres of corn in 2007 alone — so they can profit from the ethanol boom. Ethanol is mainly made from corn, and the federal government hopes the US will be producing 35 billion gallons of the stuff by 2017. Reaching that goal would turn much of the US into a giant cornfield and has already doubled the price of corn in the past two years. Corn is particularly hard on the soil, requiring plenty of fertilizer, water, and pesticides. Cox says ethanol has sparked a “gold-rush mentality” among farmers who are mortgaging the future health of their soils for short-term profits. “There’s no question that the ethanol boom is increasing erosion.”
Not surprisingly, land prices and rents in the corn belt have jumped upward, creating additional pressure to “mine the soil to pay the mortage.” Farmland has been a popular investment for many years, and in some states, half of all farmland is rented. This reduces the incentives for soil conservation, since the farmer who works the field is not the permanent caretaker of the land. Ethanol-driven land degradation will not disappear even if the much-touted cellulosic ethanol technology is commercialized. The cellulosic process uses crop residues like corn stalks and wheat straw (rather than grains like corn or soy) to make ethanol. While cellulosic ethanol won’t directly use food as fuel, the loss of crop residues would further expose soils to erosion. And it would also reduce organic matter in soils, greatly diminishing their fertility, Cox says. “I’m very concerned there will be serious consequences for soils if cellulosic ethanol goes forward.”
Hard Rains of Climate Change
Strange new weather patterns linked to global climate change could further harm vulnerable soils. Increasing corn and soy production could expose soils to the hard rains that climate change is producing.
A number of studies have documented increased rainfall intensity in the US since 1970. In many regions, the amount of overall rainfall hasn’t changed, but the rain comes in shorter, more intense bursts, doubling the normal rates of erosion. This is particularly noticeable in the southern US, Cox says. A brand new computer climate model that uses data collected over the last decade reveals that soil scientists have substantially underestimated the amount of erosion from climate change’s hard rains. “It could be four times higher than we thought,” Cox says. And that rate appears to be accelerating as hard rains wash soil off the land, ruining streams and destroying aquatic habitat. The soil conservation techniques of yesterday may not be enough to keep soil healthy with climate change, he says. “There has been very little attention paid to the impact of climate change on soil conservation.”
“Soil is the connection to ourselves. … To be at home with the soil is truly the only way to be at home with ourselves, and therefore the only way we can be at peace with the environment and all of the earth species that are part of it. It is, literally, the common ground on which we all stand.”
— Fred Kirschenmann
There are some 2,300 billion tons of carbon locked in the world’s soils, far more than the 790 billion tons currently in the atmosphere. Land degradation, including deforestation of farmland and desertification, may account for as much as 30 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas releases, according to studies by Rattan Lal of Ohio State University. Aside from removing the natural vegetation, plowing the soil releases organic carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Conventional agriculture methods have already reduced soil carbon by 30 and 60 percent in much of the US, says Don Reicosky, a research soil scientist with the US Department of Agriculture who is based in Morris, Minnesota. Carbon is a key ingredient for plant growth and crucial for soil fertility. For Reicosky, carbon is the primary driver of the entire living soil ecosystem: “Carbon does great things for the soil but it takes a generation to see the impacts.”
Farmers have only been able to escape the impacts of this massive loss of organic carbon thanks to cheap chemical fertilizers made from fossil fuels. But that short-term solution is just making matters worse, according to a new study out of the University of Illinois. In examining crop records and soil samples from the Illinois Morrow Plots dating back 100 years, soil scientists were surprised to see corn yields falling on plots that had received the most chemical nitrogen fertilizers and crop residues. It turns out that even with additional crop residues, fertilized soils have much less soil carbon, likely resulting in higher releases of carbon into the atmosphere.
Keeping carbon in the soil may be one of the quickest ways to reduce global carbon emissions. And if that’s not enough reason to substitute carbon storage for crop yield as the ultimate goal of farming, then the improvements in soil fertility and declines in erosion that will give us a chance at feeding a crowded world ought to.
“Blaming the farmer for these problems is futile, since we’ve created the economic system they operate in,” says Fred Kirschenmann, a North Dakota organic farmer who works at Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. That system forces farmers to produce as much as possible no matter what the cost, Kirschenmann says.
A Different Way of Farming
The Kirschenmann family broke out of that system in the late 1960s when Fred learned of organic farming around the same time that his father, a veteran grower, saw their farm’s soil quality deteriorating despite best efforts to protect it. Their primary objective was to rebuild the soil, and after years of trial and error, their 3,500 acres were certified as organic in 1976; they have never looked back. Today, about 1,000 acres are in native prairie and used for grazing livestock, and the rest is managed in a diversified operation with eight to nine crops each year in three different rotations. Being debt-free — a rare privilege in farming country — enabled the Kirschenmanns to take the economic risk of finding a way to farm that was environmentally sustainable.
While organic farmers eschew chemical fertilizers, they often use intensive tilling to eliminate weeds, which can break up soils. But most organic farmers are careful to maintain cover crops and add manures to keep the soil covered and well fed with organic matter. As a result, erosion is many times less than on conventional farms. And because organic soils are more fertile, they absorb more water deeper, further reducing erosion and allowing them to better withstand droughts. A USDA study using data collected between 1994 and 2005 confirmed that organic fields have much more living soil matter than those farmed by conventional methods that did not till the soil. Corn on the organic plots also produced 18 percent higher yields.
“Agriculture’s biggest problem is the health of soil; erosion is just a symptom,” Kirschenmann says. Overcoming that problem means fundamentally re-thinking our food production systems so that the first priority is to preserve the fertility and ecological health of the land. As to how this can be done, Kirschenmann refers to the writings of Sir Albert Howard, a British botanist who wrote in 1940 that farmers ought to farm as nature does in the forest. There should always be livestock and a multitude of plant varieties; all “wastes” should be returned to the soil so that growth and decay balance each other; great pains need to be taken to store rainfall. In such a system, Howard wrote, plants and animals protect themselves from disease.
That approach may seem quaint in our technology-driven industrial culture, but Kirschenmann points out that the cows on his farm no longer need visits from the vet. Soil considerations aside, Kirschenmann wonders why — if conventional agriculture is so effective — 62 percent of Iowa farm families have off-farm jobs.
“Our system is clearly dysfunctional, and in destroying soil, we are putting enormous burdens on future generations,” he says. “We need to start to be behave as members of the land community instead of continuing to act like conquerors.”
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http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/peak_soil/
1. Grace Huh
ReplyDelete2. China's Problems of the Past, Growing Worse or Improving?
3. What I want to talk about is related to the past week's topic of "soil," not directly talking about the components of soil but more the the agricultural systems of China and the winds that blow the the dust toxins to as far as the U.S.
Actually, for this article, I kind of used more than one source. The first article I had found, which is the one I will post below, is actually not talking about China's yellow dust storms. Rather, I surfed the net for dust storm information because I wondered if it was related to the first article I had found.
This article is called "Environmental Problems Serious in China" and is dated 25 February 2009, so it is pretty recent. I don't know much about the Chinese governmental system, and this article is rather vague and simple, however it seems to me that it is saying that China has been trying hard to fix its environmental problems and attempt pollution control on a national scale through the environment laws and "[replacing] the environmental protection agency last year with greater powers"(NEWSADMIN). Despite these efforts, "China's airs, lakes, and rivers" are still in problematic conditions. Even with the laws, not much is getting fixed because the situation relies on the actions of local officials instead, who apparently are not enforcing the laws strongly. Zhang Lijun (whose identity I am sorry to say do not know of, nor is it mentioned in the article... but I assume to hold a high position) says that the problem is caused a lot by businesses that keep producing with technology that emits pollutants (which I'm thinking isn't soley a China problem, just larger there I suppose). They say that according to China's six level water scale, (six being the worst) the major bodies of water (including the Yangtze and Yellow) all scored 6. Also, the air quality in many major cities were deemed "hazardous" in a November survey. The article mentions how "In one of the latest reported incidents, hundreds of thousands of people in the eastern Chinese city of Yancheng had their tap water cut off over the weekend after a chemical company spilled their products into a local river" and how in 2005, one of their biggest catastrophes, a massive chemical spill in the Songhua river in northeastern China caused a tap water cut off for millions and had even affected Russia.
If my interpretation of this article is correct, then it is sad to hear that things cannot be changed on a massive scale because of the individuals who choose to do nothing about it. Looking at it in a larger sense, I walk around streets and see people littering all the time, most of them very nonchalantly (even my younger cousin, which I was shocked to see). If something SO simple as throwing your own trash (not even other people's) in a bin designated to hold trash is that difficult, how difficult would it be for larger environmental choices, which (well for these businesses in China) probably are made due to reasons including monetary benefit, a personal goal in other words. If individuals don't paint the picture we are trying to create, then in the end nothing well happen, and the slate will remain barren.
But back to dust storms. As mentioned above, I questioned whether dust storms were related, and I guess yes in a more general sense because it is also a cause for air pollution.
My older cousin read in the news around a month ago how this month, March, would have a pretty severe amount of dust in the area, so I should go around wearing a mask. Even my parents in the U.S. warned me to wear masks going outside because of China's dust overflow. "China's killer "yellow dust" hits Korea and Japan" dated 3 March 2009 talks more in detail about the yellow dust that comes from China. The link is here: http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/32120
"The sand storms have been increasing in frequency and toxicity over the years because of China's rapid economic growth and have added to increased tensions with neighbors South Korea and Japan over recent years.
The dust picks up heavy metals and carcinogens such as dioxin as it passes over Chinese industrial regions, before hitting North and South Korea and Japan, meteorologists say.
Dry weather and seasonal winds in China hurl millions of tons of sand at the Korean peninsula and Japan from late February through April or May, turning the skies to a jaundiced hue"(Herskovitz).
Schools were closed down, people were advised to stay indoors more, and many had become ill or died because of these dust storms. It is not only a problem when these seasonal dust storms invade these countries, but it is also very costly to clean the areas after the event that continues to come and continues to grow in severity. This article, although older from 2001, "China's Dust Storms Raise Fears of Impending Catastrophe," shows how the dust storms even reached as far as the U.S. The link is here:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/06/0601_chinadust_2.html
This article also portrays the effects of these dust storms on China itself. A lot of this dust comes from the Gobi desert. High speed winds are carrying tiny grains of sand in large amounts. Actually, much of China's lands in the North are drying up into deserts. The article says how this desertification is caused by "overuse of land for farming and grazing"(Royston). This soil is eroding and thus being carried away by these highspeed winds, along with the agricultural toxins in it. The article says China is drying up at "an alarming rate" and say these dust storms may greatly affect the future of China itself.
So, now exactly what is so horrible about these dust storms, besides the fact that it chokes people and hinders vision and breath? And where, how is it caused? So, I found some basic information about them on wikipedia, link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Dust
Well, instead of explaining it, for those interested, please read, but I found that there are so many more pollutants than I expected, caused because of the industrial areas these dust storms pass over, and the health risks, as shown in the previous articles, are not minor.
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Environment problems serious in China
By newsadmin at 25 February, 2009, 6:09 am
SHANGHAI: China’s environmental problems remain serious with local governments not putting enough pressure on businesses to control pollution, the nation’s environment protection minister has said.
Efforts to toughen environment laws have not done enough to fix the widespread problems for China’s air, lakes and rivers, Zhang Lijun said on Tuesday, according to the official news agency.
“The general situation of environmental pollution does not allow us to be optimistic,” Zhang was quoted telling a national meeting on pollution control in Shanghai.
Zhang’s ministry replaced the environmental protection agency last year with greater powers, but enforcement still depends largely on local officials.
Zhang said environmental protection departments across the country needed to place greater pressure on businesses to contain pollution, according to the news agency.
“The fundamental way to overcome this is to continue to press enterprises to reduce pollution emissions through technology and management,” he said.
Nearly a quarter of the monitoring stations set up along major rivers, such as the Yangtze and Yellow, reported the worst water quality on China’s six-level scale, the report said, citing documents distributed at the meeting.
Nearly 40 percent of the water in 28 major lakes also registered level six ratings — meaning it was too polluted for even farm irrigation.
Meanwhile, the average air quality in two out of five Chinese cities ranges from “polluted” to “hazardous”, according to a survey conducted in November in 320 cities.
In one of the latest reported incidents, hundreds of thousands of people in the eastern Chinese city of Yancheng had their tap water cut off over the weekend after a chemical company spilled their products into a local river.
One of the most high-profile cases occurred in 2005, when a massive chemical spill into northeast China’s Songhua River resulted in tap water being cut for millions of people and pollution flowing into Russia.
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http://thecurrentaffairs.com/index.php/environment-problems-serious-in-china/
1.Selina Li Qiaowei
ReplyDelete2.The spectre of climate migration
3.It always makes me feel very depressed whenever I read a news article about environmental issue nowadays. And my greatest questions towards all these news is that why there is no action followed when problem is being appeared for such a long time? That is why I do not like environmental socialists, because from my understanding, they are just doing environmental analyzing every time but doing nothing to help the environment to progress in a better and effective way.
It is really extremely sad to know that our earth is abandoned by us; there is not enough care from us toward our ‘Mother Earth’. Human never fail to try to dig their own graves because they did not seems to understand that although the nature could not speak but it could revenge. The rich in this world, they enjoy their life as they believe money could buy anything including life of human which according to them as the poor people. It is so ironic to say that the US run into a lot of fights with the nature too, but why they never reflect themselves and learn from their mistake. The selfish of people towards the earth and its citizen will end up in a huge tragedy; I am very sure saying that.
In the article, it mentioned that people like Gaurpodomando have to move to India because their home is being flooded by the rise of sea water. And we have to always remember that there will be 250 million of Gaurpodomando by 2050. It is truly not too far from us. Not only caused by rising sea water also desertification. Small Island such as Maldives will sink into the sea. It is a pity to lose beautiful island like Maldives, the earth is willing to sacrifice its beauty to fulfill the wishes of people to relax and have fun. On the other hand, people never show respect and thankful to it. Sometimes I feel so speechless to this same environmental protect issue. Too many factors combined and created this result of environmental issue today, just like what we said in the class, it might be not the fault of citizens but the government. Majority of citizen cares about the environmental problems today but most of them could do nothing more than reading news. From the government point of view, in order for its citizen to have a safe and so call improved living, the government has to focus its spending on economic and security more than environment. At the end, there is no one we could blame to cause the sad stories of the earth. I want to say that everyone must build this sense as we are global citizens; we could only start from the 3Rs by ourselves, to wait for a better government policy is not a smart choice for our future.
According to the article, the largest immigration in history is expected to cause by environmental problems. “We’re talking about people migrating from sensitive places into other very sensitive places.” If all people move towards the centre city of the nation, many problems might rise. The lack of infrastructures and an even crowed city life are problems in front of our eyes. In the article, it stated that the first shifts of environmental migration will start within countries and than cross boarder. Those wealthy nations have to open their doors for world’s displaced people because at the last, people have no choice and no place to go. And for people who could not move due to poverty, how are we going to treat them, how are we going to help them, and how are we going to save them out of the muddy land?
We pray for the US president Barack Obama to convince the congress to pass the domestic cap-and-trade bill. We have to admit that not only American is going to pay for this bill, but all people who are living on the planet. Many governments like India has not prepared for the result of environmental migration, the illegal immigrants could create great conflicts to push environment issue to become a social issue. The environment and social problems never separated. What can we do by than?
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The spectre of climate migration
Lisa Friedman
March 13, 2009
Scientists see Bangladesh as ground zero as the effects of global warming increase. By 2100, more than 25% of the country may be inundated, displacing 15 million people. Lisa Friedman reports.
“This is not migration as we’ve known it before. We’re talking about people migrating from sensitive places into other very sensitive places.”
One by one, the men in Gaurpodomando’s family walked out of this mud-caked village, Harinagar, and never returned.
First, his uncles went. Both fishermen, they suffered as their catch declined year after year, before they crossed illegally into India to find work in construction. His brothers earned so little fishing that they braved tiger attacks in the nearby Sundarbans forest to forage for honey and timber. Finally, they left, too, and brought their father with them.
Now, Gaurpodomando, who said he is about 35 years old and who goes only by his first name, is the last man in his family still living in the waterlogged village along Bangladesh’s Indian border.
His brothers still don’t know about the angry tidal flood that burst through a dam and swallowed the family home and dozens of others in September. Those who live here say that between the disappearing fish, brackish flood waters destroying the rice fields and the ever-fiercer cyclones that seem to inhale entire villages, life is becoming almost unbearable.
But Gaurpodomando, who earns the equivalent of US$1.50 a day standing hip-deep in the salty river, casting a net to collect shrimp fry, said he is doing everything he can to hang onto his way of life.
“I do feel a little lonely and sad, but I don’t really want to go to India,” he said, squatting on the outdoor stoop of what was once the family kitchen but is now the only structure left to shelter him, his wife and their two children. His arms and bare feet are streaked with the slate-gray mud that covers the ground and seems never to dry.
“I don’t want to leave this place,” Gaurpodomando said. “I don’t want to leave this country. I love this place.”
One day soon, Gaurpodomando and an untold number of others in Bangladesh and around the world may no longer have a choice.
A growing body of evidence, including analyses from military experts in the United States and Europe, supports the estimate that by mid-century, climate change will make vast parts of Africa and Asia uninhabitable. Analysts say it could trigger a migration the size of which the world has never before seen.
Some of the big questions remain unanswered: How many people will really move? Where will they go? How will they go? Will they return?
But experts estimate that as many as 250 million people -- a population almost that of the entire United States -- could be on the move by 2050. They will go because temperatures are rising and desertification has set in where rainfall is needed most. They will go because more potent monsoons are making flood-prone areas worse. They will go because of other water events caused by melting glaciers, rising seas and the slow and deadly seepage of saline water into their wells and fields.
The worst migration cases will be nations like the Maldives and small islands in the Pacific. Their inhabitants will go because their homelands will likely sink beneath the rising sea.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a minimum of 207 million people in Latin America, Asia and Africa will not have enough water inside a decade. In Asia, an extra 130 million people will be at risk of hunger by the middle of the century. By 2100, crop revenues in Africa will drop 90%. And scientists see Bangladesh as ground zero.
The country’s 150 million inhabitants live in the delta of three waterways, and the majority of the country sits less than six metres above sea level. According to the IPCC, rising sea levels will wipe out more cultivated land in Bangladesh than anywhere in the world. By 2050, rice production is expected to drop 10% and wheat production by 30%.
By the end of the century, more than a quarter of the country will be inundated.
About 15 million people in Bangladesh alone could be displaced. That’s the equivalent of every person in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
But while more climate migrants will come from Bangladesh than from any other country, scientists say that from Mozambique to Tuvalu, from Egypt to Vietnam, climate migration will change the face of the world.
“This will be the largest migration in history. This is not migration as we’ve known it before,” said Edward Cameron, a former senior adviser to the government of the Maldives. “We’re talking about people migrating from sensitive places into other very sensitive places.”
In some ways, large-scale migration is nothing new. Humans, after all, have been on the move since early man left east Africa. But these shifts will not be the migrations of pioneers or adventurers seeking opportunities in new lands. Rather, social scientists say, they will be the movement of people who are rushed, unwanted and unprepared, into unfamiliar and perhaps hostile new environments. Most of those who will be uprooted already are living on less than US$1 per day.
The first shifts will start within countries. Scientists see families flocking from rural and coastal areas to cities where livelihoods are less tied to fickle weather patterns. It’s a pattern that is already happening against a background of rapid global urbanisation, in which the desperate rate of growth far outpaces jobs and infrastructure.
Mohammad Ayub Ali, 40, is part of that mosaic. He left the central Bangladesh town of Sherpur because the failing crops couldn’t earn him a living. A ruinous flood in September was the final straw.
Now Ali drives an eye-catching pink-and-orange rickshaw through the capital city Dhaka’s teeming streets, where he earns the equivalent of US$15 per month. He lives in a one-room metal shack with his mother, wife and two children.
“It’s not that great over here, but it’s better than over there,” he said. Nearly 3.5 million people in Dhaka -- about 40% of the population -- live in slums, like Ali. The World Bank estimates that by mid-century, half of all Bengalis will live in urban centres.
The next step in the migration pattern is across national borders. Military experts predict a downward spiral of violence and conflict as people desperate for food, water and jobs cross into neighbouring countries where resources may be only slightly less scarce.
Wealthy nations like the United States and the European Union, meanwhile, could also be asked to take in millions of the world’s displaced people even as they negotiate international disputes.
“Those people who are most vulnerable right now, and having a problem just surviving, and having the normal development challenges of clean water, fighting disease, getting an education -- those are the ones most affected,” said Koko Warner, who heads the environmental migration, social vulnerability and adaptation section at the United Nations University.
In Bangladesh, the issues are magnified by the density of the population. Any climate-induced disaster “inevitably affects millions of people,” researcher James Pender wrote in a recent sweeping report on Bangladesh. He estimated that by 2080, almost all the 51 million to 97 million people currently living in coastal zones may have to leave. The worst off won’t even be able to do that.
“If those who are causing the greenhouse-gas emissions are unable to control carbon emissions, the people in the vulnerable areas, many of the coastal areas, are going to be inundated,” said Khawaja Minnatullah, a water specialist at the World Bank’s Dhaka office.
“The vulnerable, the uneducated, the lowest of the communities will never be able to migrate to the US, to Canada, to Australia. There will be pressure on the not-so-vulnerable part of Bangladesh,” he said.
In the village of Gabura in south-west Bangladesh, 20-year-old Amina lives with the fractured collarbone she suffered when a tidal flood smashed a wall of her home, crushing her. She and her husband have no money for a doctor, much less a move.
“Everyone who’s living here, we’re all poor people,” she said, sitting in front of her partially repaired mud and thatch house. “We don’t have anywhere to go.”
But in Gabura and other parts of Bangladesh where the land can become the sea in the blink of an eye, climate migration has already begun.
Cities like Dhaka are bursting at the seams. Migration to bordering India appears to be occurring at a higher rate, as well, though government leaders are reluctant to acknowledge it. India, meanwhile, is wide awake to the possibility of migration from Bangladesh, and is building a fence much like the one along the US-Mexico border to keep illegal immigrants out.
There is a human tendency to deny mind-numbing futures like this one, and Bangladeshi experts are positioned on both sides of this verbal fence. Some insist that climate migration is a reality that needs to be addressed sooner than later.
Others say a large-scale migration out of the country will mean the world has failed to tackle global warming. It’s a prospect they don’t even want to acknowledge. “This idea of climate refugees takes up too much of our time. It’s an apocalyptic issue of the future,” said Omar Rahman, dean of the Independent University, Bangladesh, in Dhaka.
Ainun Nishat, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) representative for Bangladesh, said he is sceptical of migration predictions. Even if they are true, he argued, Bangladesh’s needs are more immediate: infrastructure improvements, cyclone shelters, improved flood warning systems and a massive build-up of food security.
“Will people leave? Maybe in a hundred years, but that’s not my priority now,” Nishat said. “People are living in areas that go underwater once in a fortnight in the coastal belt. The point is, they’re still there. They’re not migrating today. It’s not time to worry about it. My priority is the natural disaster that is happening now.”
This year, the western world will continue to grapple with the issue. US president Barack Obama will try to convince the congress to pass a domestic cap-and-trade bill. Meanwhile, the European Union is struggling to implement a plan on reducing emissions. In China and India, which have the economic muscle to begin some actions, debates continue to rage over how much responsibility to bear for fast-rising emissions.
There is little news about this in Harinagar, where men and women said they probably won’t be able to wait for politicians to agree on a global solution. Like the proverbial grains of sand that slowly assemble to make up a beach, individual families are making their painful decisions, creating the possibility of more cruel things yet to come.
“The area is getting worse. I don’t think it’s going to get better,” Gaurpodomando said. His wife, Chorna, her face loosely framed by a red floral headscarf, bounced the couple’s three-year-old daughter on her hip and said she, too, wants to stay, but she’s also realistic about the family’s prospects. Maybe, she said, they’ll go to Khulna, a booming port city about two hours away by car.
Gaurpodomando said his brothers living outside of Kolkata “say it’s good over there. They keep asking me to go, and they tell me there's good earning to be done there.”
But Harinagar, where the thatched mud huts still look out over a lush countryside, and where a woman who lost everything in a recent flood will still offer a visiting stranger a plate of eggs, has been his family’s home for at least three generations.
“I'll do whatever work I can find, but I might have to go outside,” Gaurpodomando said. “We might have to leave this village.”
A trail beyond the tears of the past
Human beings have been on the move for centuries. But climate scientists say global warming will displace people faster and on a larger scale than ever before -- maybe 200 million people by mid-century.
Here, for some perspective, are previous mass migrations.
• Slave traders transported 12 million to 20 million Africans to America.
• About 17 million eastern and southern Europeans entered the United States between 1880 and 1910.
• About one million Irish immigrants settled in America in the wake of the 19th-century potato famine.
• Nazi Germany deported between seven million and eight million people from 1939 to 1945.
• The 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent saw about 6.6 million Muslims moving to Pakistan and about 5.4 million Hindus and Sikhs migrating to India.
• About five million people fled Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation in the early 1980s.
• Ethnic cleansing in Rwanda displaced more than two million people in 1994.
Currently, the United Nations estimates that there are about 170 million international migrants worldwide.
Lisa Friedman is a reporter for E&E Publishing.
[Republished with permission. Copyright 2009, E&E Publishing, LLC.]
Homepage photo by IRRI Images
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http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/2832-The-spectre-of-climate-migration
1. Dakyung Lee
ReplyDelete2. Water for Life or Profit?
3.
Truthfully, as someone with very little knowledge about the current environmental controversies and issues, it was interesting to know the controversy behind the management of water. With the ongoing climate change throughout the world, it is hard to ignore the devastating consequences that shortages of water can have on the lives of people. I can't even begin to imagine what life would be like without clean drinking water and adequate sanitation, and the numerous health problems that this can bring. While this article shows that with the water forum, people are continuing to show their concerns to develope new strategies and policies to respond to the controversies regarding water shortages in an efficient manner, there is still a debate between the necessity to manage water publically or privately. While free water supply has created problems leading to huge waste, I think privatization of water also creates a big problem because private owners are more concerned with making profit then doing what is best for the environment and health of the people. It was quite shocking to find out that the private companies have only delivered less than 1% of their water to the poorest people in the world. It is pretty clear that continous efforts must be made in order to face the ongoing challenges that water shortages and climate changes will bring in the future.
4.
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Controversy surrounds water forum as world's water woes multiply
In the hustle and bustle of the 5th World Water Forum's ongoing preparations for a long week of activities, conferences, seminars and workshops starting tomorrow, it has been wet all over İstanbul, with more than a week of rain.
Despite the downpours in the city of about 15 million, İstanbul's residents constantly grapple with water shortages in summer months -- especially when winters pass with no snowfall.
The world has realized that what is important is not the amount of precipitation, but the net water supply available at the end -- meaning treated, potable water. But this realization has not been translated into practice in all parts of the world as 1.1 billion people live without clean drinking water and 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation, according to UN statistics.
"The management of water requires political will. Therefore, the importance of water and water management should be etched into the minds of decision-makers all over the world," said Professor Oktay Tabasaran, secretary-general of the World Water Forum, which is organized by the World Water Council (WWC) together with host country Turkey. How water should be managed is a contentious issue. Many governments and international lenders have been supporting the private sector's involvement in water management as public municipal systems in most parts of the developing world are hindered by corruption, bureaucracy and nepotism.
"We should have more community involvement in environmental issues," said Professor Tanay Sıdkı Uyar, coordinator for the Turkish Environmental Platform (TÜRÇEP).
He also noted that it is necessary for Turkey to adopt the Aarhus Convention, which was signed in 1998 and ratified by 41 countries, including most of the EU member states. The convention grants the public rights regarding access to information and public participation in governmental decision-making processes on matters concerning the local, national and trans-boundary environmental issues.
"Adoption [of the Aarhus Convention] would require indirect obligations on public and private enterprises to report on their activities," Uyar said, pointing out that civil society involvement and access to public records are key to making decision-makers liable for their actions, especially in consideration of the fact that public utilities are deliberately maligned to justify privatization.
"Instead of installing prepaid water meters at homes in urban areas, the public authorities should work on measures that will reduce water leaks by 40 percent," he said, adding that the work in Turkey contains contradictions that have a detrimental impact on its water resources.
"For instance, the agricultural and environmental impact of irrigation and dam projects is ignored and plans for irrigation investment in Turkey consider opening up new water resources to agricultural use."
In Turkey, of the total water consumed, 70 percent is used in agricultural production, 22 percent in industrial production and 8 percent as potable water.
Water for life or profit
The WWF5 takes place from March 16-22 and will be attended by representatives of various professional organizations, but TÜRÇEP activists are holding a demonstration today. Their campaign called "No to the commercialization of water" will continue until March 22 with various workshops on issues ranging from water management and pricing to relations between dietary habits and water.
Ten minutes away from the World Water Forum, "An Alternative Water Forum," attended by both local and international nongovernmental and opposition political party representatives, will be taking place from March 20 to 22 at Bilgi University's Santral İstanbul Campus.
Sunday's Zaman asked why the group does not raise its voice within the World Water Forum and Ercan Ayboğa, one of the activists, replied the WWC is skewed toward international lenders. "We are against public and private enterprise collaborations when it comes to water. There are so many bad examples, we don't need to repeat them," he said.
The bad examples Ayboğa refers to are Latin America's experiences in the mid-1990s, when international companies were involved in managing their water. Nobody knows better than the Bolivians what happens when water is mismanaged. As they took to the streets to protest steep price hikes and bad services, they suffered deaths, prison sentences and martial law before the World Bank-affiliated foreign companies were ousted from the country.
At the last meeting of the World Water Forum in Mexico City three years ago, the UN reported that privatization had not solved water problems as private companies had delivered water to less than 1 percent of the world's poorest people.
Civil society activists in Turkey have been further irked by a report from the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen's Association (TÜSİAD) on water utilities management that was released last September, suggesting public-private alliances in managing water networks.
"The report talks about privatization only after a strict regulation regime, legal framework and a competitive environment are assured. It does not suggest a transfer of ownership," said writer of the report Bülent Gökdemir, who is an anti-trust expert.
Pointing to the bad examples in Latin America and Africa where the poor segments of society were ignored, leading to catastrophe, he said privatization can work if access to water is guaranteed to low income groups.
Gökdemir added that there is a need for greater investment in water as it becomes scarcer and publicly managed networks are not effective, so there are more losses than gains. At the same time, he reiterated the civil society groups' demands that municipalities adopt a policy of transparency in order to pinpoint deficiencies in the system.
Citing a 2007 study conducted by the Competition Board, which has a legal right to access public records, he said it was revealed that the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality unfairly overcharged water consumers.
"Since it is only the municipalities that set price tariffs, they have a monopoly over the system," he said, adding that there is space for regulating it.
"Water is a critical product. Decisions over it should be made only after thorough work is done."
On Thursday, a report stressed by the UN that sustainable water management, with realistic pricing to curb waste, is important, giving the example of India where free or almost-free water had led to huge waste in irrigation, causing soils to be waterlogged and salt-ridden.
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http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=169634&bolum=101
1. Soo- Bin ,Lee
ReplyDelete2. Yellow dust season arrives in Korea / Koreans plant forest in Mongolia to combat yellow dust
3. It has not been a long time ago, since I heard that the danger of yellow dust has increased dramatically. I guess... it's about 3or 4 year ago. As far as I know, yellow dust is substance that comes from gobi desert (china & migolia ) and land to korea, japan and also a little bit to America. As everybody knows it is bad for the respiratory organs. Especially for children and elder people, it is very dangerous. However I remember that I heard from somebody that yellow dust it good for the soil. (of course when it is not too much)
The reason why the problem is getting worse is I think because of all kinds of human activities, which cause pollution. I think people deserves the situation. As I said before
if proper amount of yellow sand arrives Korea, it would be benefitial. But people aggravate the situation because of their greed. Hundreds of factories, tons of garbage etc. has brought all the situation.
But it is not late to make it right again. As the article reports (flower planting) people are trting to lessen the impact. Not only this but also there are things everybody can do. For
example trying to lessen the garbage, not to leave foods over and so on...
Actually I wanted to end the comments... but~ while I typed the last word 'on', my mother said "tommorrow a heavy yellow dust come, so should I give you something to hand over?. "
well...
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Yellow dust season arrives in Korea
By Jimmy Norris, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Sunday, February 22, 2009
SEOUL — Yellow dust season started Friday, with some areas spiking at more than 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
Levels dropped back to under 400 by early evening.
The seasonal phenomenon, which typically takes place between February and June, brings dust laden with heavy metals from the deserts of Mongolia and China, causing health concerns for children under age 11, seniors over age 65 and people with heart and breathing conditions.
According to Maj. Clarence Thomas, an environmental science officer with the 65th Medical Brigade, levels above 800 micrograms per cubic meter of air call for a warning to the community.
"At over 800, you should avoid going out," he said.
At levels between 400 and 799, high-risk individuals should avoid outdoor activity, he said, and others should avoid physical training and strenuous outdoor labor.
He described yellow dust storms with levels over 1,000 as very rare.
He said most of the toxic industrial particles that get picked up by the winds are too heavy to make it to South Korea.
The 65th Medical Brigade’s Force Health Protection and Preventive Medicine office maintains yellow dust information, provided to them by the 607th Weather Squadron, online at http://www.seoul.amedd.army.mil/sites/yellowsand/default.asp.
E-mail Jimmy Norris at: norrisj@pstripes.osd.mil
Yellow dust storm tips
According to 65th Medical Brigade, during a yellow dust storm people should:
Avoid outdoor activities, especially the elderly, young children and people with lung diseases (such as asthma), heart disease or diabetes.
Keep windows and doors closed.
Remove contact lenses and wear glasses.
Brush your teeth and wash your hands, face and eyes with warm water upon returning indoors.
Drink plenty of water to keep your tears flowing well.
Use air filters to keep air clear and a humidifier to increase the indoor humidity level.
Wash fruits and vegetables exposed to yellow sand before consumption.
Wash hands carefully before handling food.
Don’t burn candles and don’t smoke indoors.
Koreans plant forest in Mongolia to combat yellow dust
News - Environment News
Thursday, 05 March 2009 23:26
Residents of South Korea’s Kuyan will plant trees this spring to create Mongolia's Kuyan Grove in the town of Mandalgobi, Dundgobi aimag, a Gobi province.
The grove will cover about 100 hectares of area. This year, South Koreans are expected to plant trees on five hectares. This afforestation program will continue for 10 years.
The governor of Kuyan will arrive in Mandalgobi in May to take part in an opening ceremony of the afforestation campaign that will help to stop sand migration and decrease yellow dust storms in South Korea.
Yellow dust from Mongolia’s Gobi Desert has already begun settling in South Korea. During Korea’s yellow dust alerts, people with respiratory problems are urged to remain indoors and some contamination in high-tech environments occur.
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http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=60875
http://www.mongolia-web.com/content/view/2268/2/
1. Martin Weiser
ReplyDelete2. Biofueled planes and Korea's deal in Madagascar
3. Although alternative energies for cars have been disputed for several years I have never heard of or thought about biofuels for planes. So I was surprised about finding lots of articles about this topic. There are already announcements of lots of airlines to have biofuel-only flights within the next 5 years.
While the numbers of flights will ongoingly increase in the next decades, biofuels can reduce the negative effects.
I also found another article about Korea's big company Daewoo that signed a deal with Madagascar to lease about 1.3 million hectares for farming mainly corn and palm oil. Since this area is said to amount to more than half of its arable land and might be almost free, this deal seems rather unfair.
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The Top 10 Biofuels Stories of 2008: #10, Airlines test biofuels
Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand completed 747 biofuel tests this year, with Virgin testing a B20 blend using babassu palm oil and coconut oil in February while Air New Zealand used a B50 blend from jatropha in its December test.
Continental and Japan Airlines announced early 2009 tests as well. British Airways announced future tests, but avoided the term “biofuels” in the announcement due to the controversy over indirect land-use changes.
Not only are the airlines facing steep fuel charges, but airlines will now enter the European Trading Scheme for carbon emissions in 2012, and the industry is facing up to $10.5 billion in carbon charges unless it reduces its carbon footprint.
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Daewoo to pay nothing for vast land acquisition
By Song Jung-a and Christian Oliver in Seoul and Tom,Burgis in Johannesburg
Published: November 20 2008 02:00 | Last updated: November 20 2008 02:00
Daewoo Logistics of South Korea said it expected to pay nothing to farm maize and palm oil in an area of Madagascar half the size of Belgium, increasing concerns about the largest farmland investment of this kind.
The Indian Ocean island will simply gain employment opportunities from Daewoo's 99-year lease of 1.3m hectares, officials at the company said. They emphasised that the aim of the investment was to boost Seoul's food security.
"We want to plant corn there to ensure our food security. Food can be a weapon in this world," said Hong Jong-wan, a manager at Daewoo. "We can either export the harvests to other countries or ship them back to Korea in case of a food crisis."
Daewoo said it had agreed with Madagascar's government that it could cultivate 1.3m hectares of farmland for free when it signed a memorandum of understanding in May. When the company signed the contract in July, it agreed to discuss costs with Madagascar. But Daewoo now believes it will have to pay nothing.
"It is totally undeveloped land which has been left untouched. And we will provide jobs for them by farming it, which is good for Madagascar," said Mr Hong. The 1.3m hectares of leased land is more than half the African country's current arable land of 2.5m hectares.
But Madagascar could also benefit from Daewoo's in-vest-ment in roads, irrigation and grain storage facilities.
However, a European diplomat in southern Africa said: "We suspect there will be very limited direct benefits [for Madagascar]. Extractive projects have very little spill-over to a broader industrialisation."
Asian nations havebeen looking more often in the past five years or so to Africa to meet their resource needs. China has been particularly aggressive in building up stakes in oilfields and mines on the continent, sometimes facing accusations of neocolonialism.
But now the countries are moving from minerals and oil into food. Roelof Horne, who manages Investec Asset Management's Africa fund, said he expected to see more farmland investments on the continent. "Africa has most of the underutilised fertile land in the world," he said, though he cautioned that "land is always an emotive thing".
Apart from Daewoo, an increasing number of South Korean companies are venturing into Madagascar, investing in projects from nickel mines to power plants.
State-run Korea Resources recently signed a preliminary agreement with Madagascar to expand collaboration on resources development including mining projects for other metals.
Daewoo plans to start maize production on 2,000 hectares from next year and gradually expand it to other parts of the leased land. The company plans to plant maize on 1m hectares in the western part of Madagascar and oil palm trees on 300,000 hectares in the east.
The company plans to ship the bulk of the harvests back to South Korea and export some supplies to other countries. It is unclear if any of the production will remain in Madagascar, an impoverished nation where the World Food Programme provides food relief to about 600,000 people - about 3.5 per cent of the population.
The WFP, the UN agency in charge of emergency food relief, said more than 70 per cent of Madagascar's population lives below the poverty line. "Some 50 per cent of children under three years of age suffer retarded growth due to a chronically inadequate diet," it said.
The pursuit of foreign farm investments follows this year's food crisis, which saw record prices for commodities such as wheat and rice, and food riots in countries from Egypt to Haiti. Prices for agricultural commodities have tumbled by about half from such levels but nations are concerned about long-term supplies.
Daewoo said it chose Madagascar because it is relatively untouched by western companies. "The country could provide bigger opportunities for us as not many western companies are there," said Mr Hong.
Daewoo plans to develop the arable land in Madagascar over 15 years and intends to provide about half South Korea's maize imports. Heavily populated South Korea is the fourth largest importer of maize.
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http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2008/12/31/the-top-10-biofuels-stories-of-2008-10-airlines-test-biofuels/
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b0099666-b6a4-11dd-89dd-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1
1. Choi Jee Hyeon
ReplyDelete2. Title:Solution for the world's water woes
3. I chose an article about water shortage, one of serious global issues all around the world. The article talks about how rising populations and growing demand for water make our world a thirsty planet. David, the writer of the article, analyzed concurrent issues of population growth, lack o social infrastructures and incentives for water management in the 3rd worlds that had simultaneously huge impact on water crisis. Then, here comes my question; why is it that some areas use water carelessly and the others don’t. And why is it that the areas in much need of help for water supplies are considered ‘underdeveloped countries’. Do ‘designated areas’ have to do with our preconceived notions toward the third world?
Water woes turned out to be our problem here in Korea, too.
Last January, my friends and I went skiing to Hiwon resort in Kangwon province. On the way there, we were told from a radio that lack of water supply in that region put local people in great pain. Literally, some of them were actually, though temporarily, living without water. However, resort seemed to have built up the water supply system that would never let resort facilities run out of water. The irony underlying the water issue would probably from the local government that made water management policy that way.
Going back to the article, here it says “US and Australia, annual per capita water storage in US and Australia is more than 4,000 cubic metres whereas, yet in much of sub-Saharan Africa it is less than 100 cubic metres” and “the industrialised world is quick to point its finger at agricultural producers, blaming them for water woes, but it is our food habits that drive the problem”
My thought on the statement above is that implementing US strategies for the hydraulic infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa doesn’t guarantee improved water control system in Africa communities. Let me put it this way; each country must have different yet successful development plans for resolving current issues. On the other hand, it is also feasible, no matter how advantageous the plan will be in sub-Saharan Africa, that water demand won’t be stabilized unless urbanites change their food habits. (Let’s acknowledge the fact that food chain and demand in water are so interconnected that they are inseparable.)
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Today, one-third of the world's population has to contend with water scarcity, and there are ominous signs that this proportion could quickly increase.
Up to twice as much water will be required to provide enough food to eliminate hunger and feed the additional 2.5 billion people that will soon join our ranks.
The demands will be particularly overwhelming as a wealthier, urbanised population demands a richer diet of more meat, fish, and milk.
The water required for a meat-eating diet is twice as much needed for a 2,000-litre-a-day vegetarian diet.
Cities and industries will also demand more water. Ironically, even new endeavours pursued in the cause of environmental preservation, such as producing biofuels, will place even more pressure on dwindling water supplies.
Clearly, we are heading toward a tipping point that could soon bring us to a day of reckoning when we will have literally made one too many trips to the planetary well.
Given the current rate of development, we will not be able to provide water for producers to grow enough food and sustain a healthy environment.
The only solution is to learn how to live with less water by making much better use of what we have.
Better water management is good for farmers, good for the environment and good for all of us. We already know many of the ingredients to make this happen; the big question is why isn't it happening?
Trickle effect
The good news is that it does happen.
People are reaching for tools - new and old - to produce more food with less water.
Rice farmers in the region are now also saving water by a practice known as 'wet and dry' irrigation
They are adopting more precise irrigation practices, such as drip and sprinkle irrigation.
For example, many farmers in Nepal and India now regularly use low-cost drip irrigation to grow vegetables.
In sub-Saharan Africa, just a little water - combined with improved crop varieties, fertiliser and soil management - can go a long way.
Farmers can double the yield per hectare they currently harvest, and double the amount of food produced per unit of water.
Over the last two decades in Asia, sales of pumps that allow farmers to more reliably and precisely apply water to their crops, have skyrocketed.
Rice farmers in the region are now also saving water by a practice known as "wet and dry" irrigation, rather than following the traditional practice of keeping rice fields constantly flooded.
Also, many farming communities are getting organised into associations for more effective irrigation management.
But the bad news is that change isn't happening fast enough.
For example, there are still far too many ill-maintained and poorly operated irrigation systems across Asia that use two times more water than is really needed.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the problem is not water being wasted, but the simple yet devastating issue of access.
Despite water being available in nature, many farmers routinely lack enough water to produce food to feed their families.
'Water miles'
Why is it that some areas use water so carelessly?
One problem lies with public policies that fail to connect the interests of different user groups.
The industrialised world is quick to point its finger at agricultural producers, blaming them for water woes, but it is our food habits that drive the problem
For example, farmers may see little self-interest in being more conservative with water if the benefits flow to cities and not to them.
Although, broadly speaking, water is a precious commodity, for many users its costs are negligible, so there is no incentive to conserve.
Many countries do not invest enough in water to enable poor rural communities to grow more food.
In the US and Australia, annual per capita water storage is more than 4,000 cubic metres. Yet in much of sub-Saharan Africa it is less than 100 cubic metres; poor countries simply cannot afford investments in large hydraulic infrastructure.
Nonetheless, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and other research organisations have identified new and more affordable opportunities for low-cost water investment.
For example, resource-poor farmers can afford low-cost drip irrigation kits, whereas conventional irrigation, which costs more than $4,000 per hectare, is well beyond their means.
Unfortunately, while we think we know the answers, reality is more complex.
We have dramatically altered natural water systems in the quest for more water control.
Unwittingly, we have created salinity problems, dried up rivers and have caused groundwater tables to decline.
Institutions that govern water have not adapted to address these issues. Added to this is the fact that we don't fully understand what new water problems will result from climate change.
While we desperately need to know more about water resources, basic data and knowledge are hard to get because of a lack of investment.
The industrialised world is quick to point its finger at agricultural producers, blaming them for water woes, but it is our food habits that drive the problem.
When 50% of food is wasted after it leaves farmers' fields, it leads to an equivalent water waste of 50% because wasted food is also wasted water.
Action is urgently required on several fronts: we must continue to encourage the many local actions that are having a positive impact now; we must establish policies that create incentives for farming communities to invest in better water management; and we must invest in the infrastructure and the knowledge systems needed to manage complex water systems for the benefit of all.
Each of us can make a difference if we first consider the water implications of our lifestyles and the "water footprint" we are leaving behind.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7881382.stm
1. Sohyun Park
ReplyDelete2. Stimulus may get small wind turbines spinning
3. I have always thought windmills or wind turbines were impressive, how the big blades spin and electricity could be produced by wind power.
Wind turbines are environmentally friendly and can save money. There is no combustion of fuels including carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, mercury, and other substances discharged in the air like in the fossil fuel power. It is sustainable energy. Thus, I wanted to learn about the modern use of wind turbines. I found that in America, small wind turbines were becoming active in use. It says in the article that turbines are an investment in clean energy and one way to ease America’s dependence of foreign oil. The article talks about bringing wind turbines in the cities; however, it does not seem feasible.
Then I realized that I have only seen the positive side of the wind turbines. Actually, wind power was a very controversial issue. There are many conflicting articles of wind power. The negative impacts are the noise caused by the turbines, no wind means no power, birds, bats and so on. Therefore, I conclude that wind turbines cannot be totally eco-friendly.
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The gale force of President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package could breathe new life into an emerging industry: small wind turbines.
The bill provides a 30 percent investment tax credit to consumers who buy these turbines, which are typically used to help power homes or small businesses.
Even amid a recession, this tax credit "is going to blow the top off the market," said Ron Stimmel, a "small-wind" advocate with the American Wind Energy Association.
The association predicts the federal subsidy could help the small-turbine market grow by 40 to 50 percent annually, a boost that would parallel the growth of the U.S. solar photovoltaic industry after a similar 2005 initiative.
Unlike the towering windmills sprouting en masse from the Western Plains, small wind turbines have a capacity of 100 kilowatts or less and are designed to operate on the consumer side of the power grid, often in combination with solar panels. According to the American Wind Energy Association, the United States is already the world's leading manufacturer of small-wind technologies, holding roughly two-thirds of the world's market share. Last year, American companies made 98 percent of the small wind turbines sold in the United States.
To conservation-minded home or business owners, the turbines are an investment in clean energy and one way to ease America's dependence on foreign oil. In the right location, a 10-kilowatt turbine could supply the entire electricity needs of an average American household. The newly subsidized larger models can help power small businesses, farms and schools.
The wind industry is governed by the laws of physics. The higher the wind speed, the faster the turbine spins and the more electricity is produced. Because the output of a wind turbine also tends to increase proportionally with its distance from barriers such as trees or buildings, the most productive -- and cost-effective -- turbines sit atop tall towers erected on an acre or more of open land.
Despite this rule of thumb, there is a burgeoning movement to bring small-wind power to cities as well.
In San Francisco, California, a volunteer organization called the Urban Wind Task Force has distributed 27 wind-monitoring stations throughout the city to survey sites for potential turbine installations.
"It is true that doing wind in urban environments is a lot trickier than in rural environments," said Johanna Partin, San Francisco's Renewable Energy Program manager, who also coordinates the task force. "But the reason you rarely see [turbines in cities] may be that we just haven't figured out how to do it yet."
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg made headlines last August when he proposed installing wind turbines atop city bridges and skyscrapers. He later backtracked, saying he wasn't sure the project was feasible.
Some experts, citing physical and regulatory hurdles, view the urban wind movement as misconceived.
"When you get down around a house, or in and amongst a lot of trees, or around buildings, the wind resource is seriously compromised," said Mick Sagrillo, founder of Sagrillo Power and Light, a renewable energy consultancy firm.
"All of the data that we've seen that's come out of any reporting or testing ... backs that up," said Sagrillo, a 29-year veteran of the field.
Stimmel, of the small-wind industry association, agrees.
"There are pockets of usable wind in cities," he says, "but they're very hard to find, and they're a lot more limited than you might think. It is most often not worth the time and expense."
There are also zoning regulations and permitting requirements in many cities that pose serious challenges to wind installations. Most experts say that city dwellers should focus their energy conservation efforts on other renewable technologies or home efficiency improvements.
San Francisco entrepreneur Todd Pelman has founded a small start-up company called Blue Green Pacific, which produces a corkscrew-shaped, roof-mounted turbine that is still in the development phase. Pelman hopes to produce competitive amounts of electricity by capturing slower, more erratic winds, such as those blowing between tall buildings or across roofs.
He has an uphill struggle. Less than one percent of the 10,000 small wind turbines sold last year in the United States were of Pelman's rooftop variety.
For Pelman, harnessing the wind is more about environmentalism than profit.
"[If] the technology makes sense on a philosophical level, which ours will, then it is, at the very least, worthy," he said in an e-mail interview. "It should help us to recognize our involvement with materialism, energy and community."
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http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/09/small.wind.turbines/index.html
Dangers of windmills outweigh benefits: http://batr.net/cohoctonwindwatch/2008/12/dangers-of-windmills-outweigh-benefits.html
1. Kyuhee Shim
ReplyDelete2. Creating a World that can Feed Itself
3.
Below is a link and summary of an interesting forum discussing the topic of “Creating a World that can Feed Itself”. Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant, Google’s head of global development Sonal Shah, and journalist Michael Pollan present their views on the causes and possible solutions to the current food crisis.
Before watching this video I was not aware of the seriousness of the current situation pertaining to the food crisis. However this video made me how spiking food prices were threatening the lives of many people. Shah emphasized the impact of rising food prices on the lives of people living in poorer parts of the world, who are forced to sacrifice their children’s education, access to clean water, and even health because an increasing percentage of their small incomes are being spent on food.
The food crisis is such an apparent threat. It attacks the very basic needs for survival. Yet the issue is easily ignored by lawmakers, governments, and the public, probably because the impact is less felt by those who are better off. This is a problem because the wealthy developed nations are the ones who actually have the money, power, and resources to solve the crisis.
There are multiple causes that are contributing to this situation. In the forum it is described as three tiered; linking to food production, distribution, and information.
An obvious solution would be to increase food production. In the 21st century the world population has reached 6 billion, and with increased urbanization and a larger proportion of that population migrating to the cities, farms must produce a lot more food in order to feed everyone. Against these facts, Monsanto claims that the world will be able to double crop yields in 20 years with improved irrigation practices and smarter use of fertilizers, and science. However this is challenged by Pollan, who says that current efforts are not radical enough. He says that we must invest in researching a variety of different projects in order to find the optimal solution. In other words, agriculture must be de-centralized. In a comment directly addressed to Monsanto, Pollan argues that farmers should be allowed to save seeds from their crop – a practice that is treated as seed piracy by Monsanto.
There is a big divide in the debate on whether agriculture should rely on modern technology and science or return to organic practices. Personally I am against big corporations such as Monsanto, not because I oppose the use of technology and science, but because these corporations use technology to ensure their profit rather than helping farmers produce better crops. Their invention of the concept ‘seed piracy’ is a good example of that. I was curious how Grant might defend his company’s policy but unfortunately the Monsanto CEO did not give a response to the comment.
Shah commented that in order to solve the food shortage, especially for starving populations in Africa, we needed to provide African farmers with market information. At the present farmers in Africa are largely cut off from the global market; dealing with one buyer to sell their crops.
In addition farmers in Africa need to catch up with the Green revolution. The developed world must transfer modern agricultural skills and technology to poor farmers, for example how to better utilize water and fertilizers, and provide the infrastructure and better irrigation systems.
Distribution is also an important issue. Half of the world is guilty of consuming more than they need while the other half is starving. I was surprised to hear that even in the United States there are 35 million food insecure people. Even in the same country there is such a wide gap between the rich and poor. Moreover many poor farmers are growing crops that they cannot eat. Cash crops that grow feed for animals mean that people are unable to live on the crops they grow.
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5.
From: , Organic Consumers Association, More from this Affiliate
Published September 23, 2008 08:48 AM
GM Watch: Michael Pollan and Monsanto CEO at Google on YouTube
Straight to the Source
What's quite shocking about Hugh Grant's contribution is the way that he uses the current food crisis to push for GMOs as a solution to "needing more food". But the reality, as Michael Pollan points out is that the food crisis has been driven more than anything by the ethanol led "biofuel" boom and nobody has lobbied harder to keep that boom going than Monsanto, which has profited hugely out of it while the food crisis has been ratcheted up.
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Michael Pollan and Monsanto CEO at Google on YouTube
Here's a 36-minute video on YouTube featuring an unusual forum with Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant, talking with "In Defense of Food" author Michael Pollan and Google.org's head of global development, Sonal Shah, on the topic of "Creating a World That Can Feed Itself." (Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google.org, moderated the panel, telling the Google audience that he and Grant became friends when both visited the Doomsday seed vault in Norway.)
The discussion was polite and humanizing and occasionally pointed, but held no breakthrough surprises.
In just one snippet, Grant talked about the worldwide shortage of food and the dire problems of how to increase crop yields while lowering the use of water and fertilizer. Brilliant noted that Grant had sent him a copy of an article suggesting that, in a world facing a critical food crunch, we need to put aside our feuds and work on solutions -- the first part being a tough challenge in itself.
Monsanto believes yields can be doubled over the next 20 years or so, and Grant thinks the science isn't the hardest part of the problem. The hard part, he said, is how to get NGOS ("because NGOs are in the villages, they literally hold the hand of a local farmer who's farming half an acre or an acre") linked up with local governments and a company like Monsanto, to transfer technology and manage the soil and manage irrigation and so forth.
Grant commented, "Norman Borlaug, the architect of the Green Revolution and my personal hero, is 92, 93. Norm says, "Just get a move on. I don't have much time left." And I think a big piece of the secret the last time around was, this wasn't about either-or, this wasn't about big-small, it wasn't big-tech versus big-organic, it was about a group coming together... and truly joining forces with a common goal."
Pollan advocates "a great many food chain experiments" and a willingness to fund them all, even those that produce less profit, noting the public component of the last green revolution. He found Grant's confidence about doubling yields "breathtaking," given that high yields have not historically been a strength of genetically modified crops.
What the GMO crops are good at, he said, is allowing farmers to get bigger and take care of more land more conveniently. He challenged Monsanto to join the effort on terms that are ecologically and economically reasonable -- such as allowing farmers to save seed, which Pollan called critical to food security (Monsanto currently views seed saving as piracy).
Increasing crop yields, Pollan said, is not the only answer. We keep talking about Africa, but we have 35 million "food insecure" people in the U.S. even as we've had an explosion in agricultural yields.
"Producing enough food and getting it into the hands of people who need it, they're just two completely separate problems," he said. And, too, "yield of what?" -- He said he looks forward to Monsanto entering the realm of growing food people can eat, but their strength and history so far has been growing corn and soy as "raw materials," mostly animal feed.
It'd be an interesting show to take on the road. At least we've got one of them coming to Seattle -- Pollan will speak at a Bastyr event on Oct. 30, and at Seattle Arts & Lectures at Benaroya Hall on Jan. 12. http://bastyr.edu/development/FoundersWeekend.asp
Here's our interview with him on his last Seattle visit. http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/devouringseattle/archi...
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7.
http://www.enn.com/agriculture/commentary/38247
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9I1IkbcHNE
1. Yoon Hyesung
ReplyDelete2. Global Water Supply Drying Up as Population Grows - Billions of People Lack Clean Water and Adequate Sanitation
3. As I read this article, I felt that it would be horrible to live without water. How can we live without water? Of course, we can't. Water is very crucial to everyone. But most people sometimes do not think of the importance of water, especially in Korea. I also forget about that and use much water unintentionally at times.... I was really ashamed while reading this article..
Actually, I've already heard about the fact that there would be a lack of water. I read some articles about this topic. In one article, the author says that the demand for fresh water is greater than the supply in roughly 80 countries around the world today... And he also says that 48 countries will have chronic shortages of water by 2025. And now, as we can see, "water scarcity" became a real and big problem... I'm afraid of imagining the future without fresh water....
We should take actions... We mustn't waste water any longer.... There should be stricter policies to conserve clean water resources..!!
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Dear EarthTalk: How could there ever be a “water scarcity?” Isn’t water the most plentiful thing on Earth? – Chris Carroll, Austin, TX
Ocean water may cover more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, but thirsty humans rely on finite supplies of freshwater to stay alive. And with exploding human population growth, especially in poor countries, these finite supplies get quickly spoken for. Further, in places without proper sanitation, water can become tainted with any number of diseases and parasites.
Billions of People Lack Clean Water
According to the World Bank, as many as two billion people lack adequate sanitation facilities to protect them from water-borne disease, while a billion lack access to clean water altogether. According to the United Nations, which has declared 2005-2015 the “Water for Life”1 decade, 95 percent of the world’s cities still dump raw sewage into their water supplies. Thus it should come as no surprise to know that 80 percent of all the health maladies in developing countries can be traced back to unsanitary water.
Water Scarcity Likely to Increase as Population Grows
Sandra Postel, author of the 1998 book, Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity, predicts big water availability problems as populations of so-called “water-stressed” countries jump perhaps six fold over the next 30 years. “It raises tons of issues about water and agriculture, growing enough food, providing for all the material needs that people demand as incomes increase, and providing drinking water,” says Postel.
Developed Nations Using Disproportionate Amount of Water
Developed countries aren’t immune to freshwater problems either. Researchers found a six-fold increase in water use for only a two-fold increase in population size in the United States since 1900. Such a trend reflects the connection between higher living standards and increased water usage, and underscores the need for more sustainable management and use of water supplies even in more developed societies.
Environmentalists Oppose Desalination Solution
With world population expected to pass nine billion by mid-century, solutions to water scarcity problems are not going to come easy. Some have suggested that technology--such as large-scale saltwater desalination plants--could generate more freshwater for the world to use. But environmentalists argue that depleting ocean water is no answer and will only create other big problems. In any case, research and development into improving desalination technologies is ongoing, especially in Saudi Arabia, Israel and Japan. And already an estimated 11,000 desalination plants exist in some 120 countries around the world.
Water and Market Economics
Others believe that applying market principles to water would facilitate a more efficient distribution of supply everywhere. Analysts at the Harvard Middle East Water Project, for example, advocate assigning a monetary value to freshwater, rather than considering it a free natural commodity. They say such an approach could help mitigate the political and security tensions caused by water scarcity.
Personal Action to Conserve Water Resources
As individuals, we can all reign in our own water use to help conserve what is becoming an ever more precious resource. We can hold off on watering our lawns in times of drought. And when it does rain, we can gather gutter water in barrels to feed garden hoses and sprinklers. We can turn off the faucet while we brush our teeth or shave, and take shorter showers. As Sandra Postel concludes, “Doing more with less is the first and easiest step along the path toward water security.”
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http://environment.about.com/od/biodiversityconservation/a/watersupply.htm
1. Claire Cambier
ReplyDelete2. Algeria running for seawter desalination
3. I found this article on the website of a french journal dealing with international matters, and I got interested because the matter is quite puzzling to me.
The article is about desalinating water to make it fit for domestic use, because the country involved (Algeria) is experiencing a water shortage. What shocked me in this is that we hare facing here a shortage of a most vital ressource : water. This shows how a society can grow to use away all of such a primordial ressource, and then have to devise such complicated ways of deriving it from elsewhere. As the process is very costly on energy I wonder how long they will be able to sustain that : water prices could go up or the energetic demand grow to important.
I translated the article myself so there might be some strange parts...
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4. Algeria : Running for seawater desalination
„Algeria took a big step these last years concerning seawater desalination”, reports the newspaper La Tribune. Facing rarefication of conventional water ressources, and shortage which can be felt, too production process exist : treatment of used waters and seawater desalination. Algerian leaders made their choice. Recycled used waters will be used for agriculture and industry, and seawater for domestical needs, „needs more and more important, namely because of population growth”.
Algeria will double its efforts et plans on creation 13 desalination stations all along its costal zones. Algeria could thus come after Saudi Arabia, which is in the lead with 24% of world capacity, United Arab Emirates, and the United States. „In the years to come, the strongest growht will come from the costs of the Mediterranean sea”, predicts the newspaper. Besides Algeria, Israel and Lybia aim at doubling their capacity by 2015. But desalinated saewater has a costs, for the transformation process requires a lot of energy. The government promised to maintain the prices. „But until when ?” wonders La Tribune.
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6.
http://www.courrierinternational.com/article.asp?obj_id=95452
ALGÉRIE • La course au dessalement de l'eau de mer est lancée
"L'Algérie a franchi un grand pas ces dernières années en matière de dessalement de l'eau de mer", rapporte le quotidien La Tribune. Face à la raréfaction des ressources en eau conventionnelles et la pénurie qui se fait sentir, il existe deux procédés de production : le traitement des eaux usées et le dessalement de l'eau de mer. Les responsables algériens ont tranché. Les eaux usées recyclées serviront à l'agriculture et à l'industrie, et l'eau de mer aux besoins domestiques, "des besoins de plus en plus importants en raison, notamment, de la croissance démographique".
L'Algérie va mettre les bouchées doubles et prévoit de créer 13 stations de dessalement tout le long de ses zones côtières. Elle pourrait ainsi se classer derrière l'Arabie Saoudite, en tête avec 24 % de la capacité mondiale, les Emirats arabes unis et les Etats-Unis. "Dans les années à venir, la plus forte croissance viendra des bords de la Méditerranée", prévoit le quotidien. Outre l'Algérie, Israël et la Libye comptent doubler leur capacité d'ici 2015. Mais l'eau dessalée a un coût, car le procédé qui permet de transformer l'eau de mer est très gourmand en énergie. Le gouvernement s'est engagé à maintenir les prix. Mais jusqu'à quand ?, se demande La Tribune.
1. Daniel Cheng
ReplyDelete2. Tuna spawning grounds can help Coral Triangle nations get better deal on fishing
3. Water seems to be the theme this week, and because I love Kimbap, it makes total sense to combine the two and research an article on Tuna. The article speaks about future plans for protecting tuna fishing, a multibillion dollar industry, and regulations. Overfishing has been a constant threat for tuna, causing the yellowfin tuna to reach an "overfished state." This is bad because yellowfin tuna is the most popular fish served in a sashimi fashion (amongst other reasons). Further investigation states that, "Japan's huge appetite for tuna will take the most sought-after stocks to the brink of commercial extinction unless fisheries agree on more rigid quotas". The article describes the Coral Triangle region making up 70% of the world's tuna catches, but it doesn't state what the other 30% is. I imagine much of that 30% is from Japan, which has overfished a lot of its surrounding waters. "The Australian government alleged in 2006 that Japan had illegally overfished southern bluefin by taking 12,000 to 20,000 tonnes per year instead of the their agreed 6,000 tonnes; the value of such overfishing would be as much as USD $2 billion."
Trade regulations and commercial fishing are very interesting topics. I hope to learn more about it and it would be great if there was a class that went over some of it (following the ongoing theme of water so far).
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Asia Pacific fishing nations could use the presence of tuna spawning grounds to negotiate better prices and fairer fishing arrangements with foreign fishing nations, WWF said today.
The proposal was put forward as ministers started meeting in the Papua New Guinea capital Port Moresby this week to finalise a plan to protect marine environments and food security in the Coral Triangle region, covering waters between Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Pacific.
ADVERTISEMENT
The area provides spawning grounds and migratory routes for tuna caught in the Indian, Pacific and Southern Oceans, which make up around 70 per cent of the world’s tuna catch.
“The region’s spawning grounds are essential to the world’s multi-billion dollar tuna industry and the world should be prepared to support their protection and effective management,”� said Dr Lida Pet Soede, leader of WWF’s Coral Triangle Program.
“This can help Coral Triangle countries negotiate fairer prices and fairer fishing arrangements with non-Coral Triangle nations, who also fish in these waters.”�
Dr Pet Soede said it was fitting the final meeting be held in Papua New Guinea as PNG has taken a leading role in efforts to bring more sustainability to the region’s tuna fisheries, which are critical to the food security of millions.
Managing Director of Papua New Guinea’s National Fisheries Authority, Sylvester Pokajam, warned of a collapse of the big eye tuna fishery unless fishing nations operating in the Coral Triangle introduced measures to make the fishery more sustainable.
“We can see a crash coming for tuna and this will be disastrous for many coastal communities in the Coral Triangle, where millions of people depend on healthy tuna stocks for food and livelihoods,”� Mr Pokajam said.
“Here in PNG we have introduced fishing measures within our own zones in an effort to address the issue of overfishing, in particular where it comes to overfishing big eye tuna, but the success of these measures depends entirely on the willingness of other non-Coral Triangle nations to introduce similar measures.”�
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste collectively make up the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI), introduced by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the APEC leader’s meeting in September 2007.
This week’s meeting is the final ministerial forum before Coral Triangle leaders gather in Manado, Indonesia on May 15 to announce details of a plan to protect marine ecosystems and food security in the region.
The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission will meet in Bali at the end of this month to consider among other things a set of recommendations by its scientific committee to reduce fishing pressure on yellowfin tuna, which it says is likely to have reached an overfished state.
The World Ocean Conference and the Coral Triangle Initiative Summit will be held from May 11 to 15 in Manado, Indonesia, and are expected to result in the Manado Ocean Declaration, a definitive statement on oceans and climate change.
“With climate change threatening to alter habitats in the region, it is even more critical to manage marine ecosystems for the ongoing food security of the region and for the survival of many species that depend on the Coral Triangle’s unique marine environment,”� said Dr Pet Soede.
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http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/39442
1. Guirang Choi
ReplyDelete2. Salt solution: Cheap power from the river's mouth
3.
There is an simple idea long times ago. It could be disapear to the air with tapped. But somebody hung in there and keep improving, doubting, fixing and reversing, till it can be practise in reallity.
It is very impressive whenever i find that there's certain people have enthusiasm of environmental solution- While most time I live without concerning this worlds getting lose the resources.
I credit the bright side of the progress those believers have been and whould be acheive. Maybe there's no perfact conception, ideal system. As I doubt about this salt solution idea won't harm anenvironment at all- if the water salinated, some species whould get rid of the water. That will change the food chain and ecosystem which is very big finally.-
But still, I think this effort is much more worth than do nothing, we can keep fixing and doing somthing to see the environmental pay off gradually. I hope this plant keep detected by goverment and society. Finding the substitude and improving it is happening and for sure it doen't just pop out solitarily, This is the result of fantastic collaboration with lab and supports.
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STAND on the banks of the Rhine where it flows into the North Sea, near the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and you'll witness a vast, untapped source of energy swirling in the estuary. According to Dutch engineer Joost Veerman, it's possible to tap this energy without damaging the environment or disrupting the river's busy shipping. For rather than constructing a huge barrage or dotting the river bed with turbines, Veerman and his colleagues at Wetsus, the Dutch Centre for Sustainable Water Technology in Leeuwarden, believe they can tap energy locked up in the North Sea's saltwater by channelling it, along with fresh water from the Rhine, into a novel kind of battery. With a large enough array of these batteries, he says, the estuary could easily provide over a gigawatt of electricity by a process they've called Blue Energy - enough to supply about 650,000 homes.
"Salinity power" exploits the chemical differences between salt and fresh water, and this project only hints at the technology's potential: from the mouth of the Ganges to the Mississippi delta, almost every large estuary could produce a constant flow of green electricity, day and night, rain or shine, without damaging sensitive ecosystems or threatening fisheries (see map). One estimate has it that salinity power could eventually become a serious power player, supplying as much as 7 per cent of today's global energy needs.
In an attempt to prove that this isn't just a pipe dream, Veerman's team has done lab tests on a prototype salinity power generator, and are now planning to scale it up. Yet a group of Norwegian engineers have gone one stage further, with their own twist on salinity power.
In the next few months, engineers at Norwegian power company Statkraft plan to throw the switch on the world's first salinity power station. Though their prototype is small, its impact could be huge. So what are these rival technologies, how do they stack up, and what are the obstacles to making electricity wherever rivers meet the sea?
Salinity power emerged from a rather different use for sea water. In the late 1950s, Sidney Loeb and Srinivasa Sourirajan, then working at the University of California, Los Angeles, came up with a new trick to extract drinking water from the sea. Their idea was based on osmosis, a natural process in which water passes spontaneously from a dilute to a concentrated solution through a semipermeable membrane. The pair realised that by using a synthetic membrane and high pressure pumps, they could run osmosis in reverse and literally squeeze fresh water from sea water. This approach is now used in desalination plants worldwide.
About 15 years later, Loeb had another brain wave. He realised that their design could be exploited to generate power. Working at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beer Sheva, Israel, he envisaged a tank with two chambers separated by a semipermeable membrane. With saltwater on one side and fresh on the other, osmosis would draw fresh water into the salty side, raising its pressure. This pressurised saltwater could then be piped through a turbine to generate electricity (see diagram). Loeb named this process pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) and patented it in 1973.
His plan was to harvest power where rivers meet the ocean, close to the point where fresh water meets salt. Fresh water would be piped to a generating plant from upstream and saltwater from downstream. Inside the plant, the fresh and saltwater would be channelled along either side of a membrane. Osmosis would then provide sufficient water pressure on the salty side of the membrane - up to 12 atmospheres, Loeb reckoned - to make electricity generation profitable.
The key lay in finding the right membrane. It would have to be permeable to water but not salt, and very thin yet extremely durable. This proved too tall an order and Loeb retired in 1986, his dream unrealised.
The concept was revived in 1997, when Thor Thorsen and Torleif Holt, working in Trondheim at the Norwegian research organisation SINTEF, became convinced that membrane technology was finally advanced enough to make Loeb's idea feasible. With their enthusiasm, and detailed calculations, they convinced Statkraft that salinity power could pay off in Norway. Using a design much like Loeb's original, they now believe they are close to their goal.
Membrane development remains the biggest headache, says Stein Erik Skilhagen, manager of the PRO project at Statkraft. Unfortunately, membranes used in desalination plants are too thick, he says, and cannot draw enough water through. So Statkraft's engineers have been working with membrane developers to improve designs. While their first membranes generated about 100 milliwatts per square metre, the latest version generates over 3 watts per square metre, close to their target of 5 watts.
Skilhagen reckons these membranes are now efficient enough to be worth testing beyond the lab, and in the next few months the company plans to turn on the world's first prototype PRO plant at the Södra Cell paper pulp factory in Tofte, alongside a fjord 60 kilometres from Oslo.
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7. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126972.000-salt-solution-cheap-power-from-the-rivers-mouth.html
(I posted this at another board yesterday so attached here again!)
1. Martin Weiser
ReplyDelete2. "Late Victorian Holocaust" and World Population Theories - Part I
3. I partly read the above book(which is also avaiable in a Korean translation) during weekend. Although I know about droughts and floods in China and Korea of the 19th century, I was not aware of the scale and the social effects of these natural disasters. Which has mostly been ignored by all the lecturers I had during 2 years at university. For short, I became even more aware of the effect of environment on men and the relevance of a sociology taking it into account.
The El Nino phenomen, as one of the main topics of this book, devastated countries around the world from Brazil to Egypt to Korea at the end of the 19th century. The overlapping of El Nino and a big part of the "underdeveloped" world is especially interesting. Although there might be no convincing evidence that El Nino regularly caused disasters in its area of occurence in the past, future might be different. Forecasted climate change can cause serious problems to the El Nino countries and dimish or even prevent growth - despite virtual food for everyone and modern technology that can grow plants in deserts.
By accident I found 3 articles dealing with population issues on a blog and became interested in them due to the last week about Malthus.
All three ar dealing with the issue of growing population, but quite different - from a potential risk/risky potential to a view of total overpopulation or optimistic outlook.
First, the article about UN's population report was said to adjust its assumed population for 2050 to over 9 billion people. This was ironically necessary due to two factors: less people dying of HIV and a rise in life expectancy. These dropping and risings in numbers in the poorest countries might be the greatest chance or the greatest risk for these countries. Depending on if they can educate the more in people and give them jobs. Maybe I have missed the point, but to achieve high education might not be the easiest and not at last one of the first things you think about when you are one of the poorest countries and your economy is not going well. The last point which already is the reason for being on the list of the poorest countries might also make it difficult to provide jobs. For the people already alive as well as the 2 generations to go until 2050. China can be seen as a good example , missing the 12 million new jobs it would need to get all newcomers employed. Despite skyrocketing grotwh and western fertility rate. To argument a more in youth until 2050 is a chance for economic growth like the UN might be right. But in my oppinion this will only lead to a decline in wages, China-like work environment and living standard. Which in the 21st century should not be a desirable goal.
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U.N.: Young and Old Boom on the Road to 9 Billion
By Andrew C. Revkin
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
The world has more than 1 billion teenagers who, without education and job prospects, may contribute to instability and, in places like Sudan, end up being child soldiers, according to demographers and security specialists.
Masafumi Yamamoto for The New York Times
Japanese convenience stores, which served mainly young customers decades ago, now cater to elderly customers. Sueko Inoue shopped in a Lawson store in Awaji. [UPDATE 3/13: There's a fascinating roundup of views of the new United Nations population projections in our new "Room for Debate" blog.]
The United Nations Population Division has updated its population forecasts through 2050, and concludes that, despite a longstanding global decline in fertility rates, the world is still on a path to exceed 9 billion people by mid-century, with the vast majority of the increase coming in the world’s poorest countries.
In those countries, large proportions of the population are children or teenagers, who could contribute either to a large workforce and economic gains or — in the absence of education and jobs — to instability and conflict.
The other fast-growing group around the globe is the oldest segment of the populations, according to the United Nations — and that trend also can pose challenges, particularly in the absence of a large working-age population. ( This article from 2004 explored how Japan is coping with an aging population: automated help for the elderly, including human washing machines.)
Three factors have nudged population projections upward over the past decade, Hania Zlotnik, the director of the population division, said in an interview: lengthening lifespans; the success of HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention efforts, particularly in Africa; and “a slower than expected decline in fertility” (meaning the number of children a woman bears).
Staff members at the population division warned in interviews that the updated projection for 2050 is premised on continuing declines in the fertility rate, but those declines are no longer a safe bet. The demand for reproductive information and contraceptives still exceeds the supply in dozens of developing countries, according to the report and separate assessments by other population groups — meaning that tens of millions of women are probably having larger families than they want.
Conditions that keep girls out of school, ranging from a lack of toilets to the demand for their labor gathering firewood and water, also contribute to elevated birth rates.
Some milestones have been passed in the report, U.N. officials said. India now has a higher population density than Japan. Africa’s total population has topped 1 billion for the first time.
The report contained hints that 9 billion is the new floor for population by 2050, instead of a best guess.
The importance of sustaining a decline in fertility by increasing access to family planning was stressed in the report summary:
The urgency of realizing the projected reductions of fertility is brought into focus by considering that, if fertility were to remain constant at the levels estimated for 2005-2010, the population of the less developed regions would increase to 9.8 billion in 2050 instead of the 7.9 billion projected by assuming that fertility declines. That is, without further reductions of fertility, the world population could increase by nearly twice as much as currently expected.
Officials at the U.N. Population Fund, which supports family planning programs around the world, said the new projections illustrated the importance of rich countries continuing to help poorer ones to ensure that couples have no more children than they want. [UPDATE, 10:30: President Obama signed a bill on Wednesday that sets the stage for restoration of United States contributions to the population fund.]
The population division’s country-by-country data on population trends can be sifted and explored online. The United States, whose population is growing faster than most other wealthy countries, has just over 300 million people now and will probably top 400 million by 2050. The report projects that the United States will, on average, gain 1.1 million people a year from 2010 to 2050 through immigration, nearly five times as many immigrants as Canada, which has the second highest inward immigration flow.
Given that Americans, per person, produce many times more carbon dioxide emissions than people in developing countries (at least for a few more decades), the growth in the United States has added significance for climate projections, said Leiwen Jiang, senior demographer at Population Action International, a nonprofit research group.
There are reams of fascinating findings. Check your country or some other detail that interests you and post what you find.
There will be lots more to come here on the two questions at the heart of this blog, which will largely shape the quality of life (human and otherwise) on this planet through the next few generations: How many people? How much stuff?
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7. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/un-young-old-boom-on-road-to-9-billion/#more-883
1. Martin Weiser
ReplyDelete2. "Late Victorian Holocaust" and World Population Theories - Part II
3. The second one, although not directly Malthusian argues that with the climate change world population would end up on the "carrying capacity" of our planet around 1 billion. Since I don't believe in this world view I was not really shocked by that "scientific" oppinion. I was more scared by the fact that he advised the head of state in Germany which might have rebound on me as a German. When I just think about the number of 1 billion, only one out of 6 to 7 persons living today would remain. Although there is nothing to laugh about in such a situation I would luckily live on the better side of the planet, namely the rich one. Somehow it would be a mean irony if in 40 years the populations of the nations famous for polluting and overusing have better chances to get a seat in a new earth equilibrium. Since his research result is based on data like average consumption per capita etc. altering of this data will also change the outcome and thereby his argument is a mere (intended) provocation.
The third one in an interview with an optimist about population trends which can be summarized by "there are already solutions, we just have to use them". Even dimensions like an Africa threefold the men size of Europe are said to be managable by technology.
Finally, I found two pages showing data of population growth until 2050 and migration trends. Which might be more important than general population growth in an age of imploding and exploding nations when it comes to population size.
Population:
http://esa.un.org/unpp/p2k0data.asp
Migration:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/world/20070622_CAPEVERDE_GRAPHIC.html#
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Scientist: Warming Could Cut Population to 1 Billion
By James Kanter
Lizette Kabré. Climate congress, Copenhagen 2009.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, spoke several times at the climate conference in Copenhagen.[UPDATE, 1:45 p.m.: A roundup of economists' and scientists' views at the Copenhagen climate meeting and a reaction from Mike Hulme, a participating scientist.]
COPENHAGEN — A scientist known for his aggressive stance on climate policy made an apocalyptic prediction on Thursay.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said that if the buildup of greenhouse gases and its consequences pushed global temperatures 9 degrees Fahrenheit higher than today — well below the upper temperature range that scientists project could occur from global warming — Earth’s population would be devastated. [UPDATED, 6:10 p.m: The preceding line was adjusted to reflect that Dr. Schellnhuber was not describing a worst-case warming projection. h/t to Joe Romm.]
“In a very cynical way, it’s a triumph for science because at last we have stabilized something –- namely the estimates for the carrying capacity of the planet, namely below 1 billion people,” said Dr. Schellnhuber, who has advised German Chancellor Angela Merkel on climate policy and is a visiting professor at Oxford.
At that temperature, there would be “no fluctuations anymore, we can be fairly sure,” said Dr. Schellnhuber, exercising his characteristically dark sense of humor at the morning plenary session on the closing day of an international climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. [Earlier post: The conference organizers have sought to jog policymakers with a stronger assessment of global warming's risks, but some scientists warned the approach could backfire.]
“What a triumph,” Dr. Schellnhuber said. “On the other hand do we want this alternative? I think we can do much, much better,” he told the conference.
Dr. Schellnhuber, citing his own research, said that at certain “tipping points,” higher temperatures could cause areas of the ocean to become deoxygenated, resulting in what he calls “oxygen holes” between 600 and 2,400 feet deep. These are areas so depleted of the gas that they would badly disrupt the food chain.
Unabated warming would also lead to “disruption of the monsoon, collapse of the Amazon rain forest and the Greenland ice sheet will meltdown,” he said.
But on the bright side, he noted, in a joking reference to the meeting’s Danish hosts, the retreat of the sheath of ice covering Greenland, which is Danish-controlled territory, “would increase your usable land by, I don’t know, 10,000 percent.”
“But I’m not sure whether you want to do this,” he said.
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October 25, 2007, 3:07 pm
The Population Cluster Bomb?
By Andrew C. Revkin
A crowded street in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. (Credit: Reuters)
One of the underlying assumptions of Dot Earth is that the human population will hit nine billion before peaking some time midcentury. There are some readers and population campaigners who question this kind of presumption and wish we could avoid that kind of growth, for obvious reasons.
The reason I stuck with it is that it’s hard to find a demographer or other expert on population and social trends who sees even a small chance of humankind’s peaking at anything lower than nine billion — barring some catastrophic epidemic or asteroid strike.
What’s more interesting is that the overall number, whatever you choose, could be a red herring. Many population experts foresee the next few decades evolving in a way that is very different from the global-scale, catastrophic “population bomb” concept that caught hold in the 1960s.
What they depict is more like a dangerous scattering of cluster bombs, as the world splits into two types of countries: those with aging, shrinking populations, like Japan and much of Europe, and those regions, like most of Africa and parts of south Asia, still mired in poverty, disease, illiteracy or government dysfunction with resulting high birth and death rates.
Jesse Ausubel at Rockefeller University calls them “imploders and exploders,” and Jason DeParle’s continuing Border Crossings series on population flows around the world has perfectly captured the consequences.
I caught Joseph Chamie, a sociologist and demographer, on the phone a couple of nights ago to explore the inevitability of nine billion and these other trends. It’s telling that he used to run the United Nations Population Division but recently migrated (~sorry~) to the Center for Migration Studies.
It is flows of people, and regional population crises, that will matter most in the next two generations, Dr. Chamie said.
Q. The framing conception for this blog is how do we head toward nine billion people with the fewest regrets, but that obviously comes with the built-in notion that we’re heading toward nine billion people. Should I be confident that that’s pretty much unavoidable?
A. I don’t think anyone doubts we’re going to be approaching nine billion. A lot of it of course has to do with fertility levels.
Q. Do wealth and urbanization always lead to reduced population rates?
A. Generally, prosperity brings so many different forces that keep fertility below replacement. You have urbanization, you have women’s education, you have women’s employment, you have higher survival for children so that couples say, “Well, two’s fine.”
Q. Is it more significant that you have these different population trends in different places or just that we’re heading toward nine billion?
A. You’re having changes in ratios between countries. Right after World War II Europe was almost three times as big as Africa. By 2050 Africa will be three times as big as Europe. These changes are very, very important, and the balance has implications for production, consumption and also relations between those countries.
Then you start thinking, Russia has this number of people. Pakistan is bigger. Pakistan has nuclear weapons; well, so does Russia. So you start thinking about what is a power, and what’s not a power.
I’ve been talking for 10 years about Pakistan being a problem area, even before Al Qaeda. Look at the growth in this country. It’s a hotbed and it’s growing so rapidly. It was less than 50 million in 1950, and it’s going to be like the fourth biggest country in the world.
Q. The notion way back in the 20th century that population was a bomb — has that fizzled or is there just a slow fuse on the bomb? Is heading toward nine billion, having two more Chinas essentially, a problem?
A. Certain regions of the world are going to have very, very stressful situations.
Africa is projected to add a billion more people, India a half-billion more people. And that means stresses and strains and all sorts of adjustments.
The demographic transition is an adjustment from high levels of death and birth rates to low levels. Places like Iran, Tunisia, Thailand, Indonesia, they’re going through that transition much faster than Europe did.
Iran and Tunisia are going through it in 25 years. France went through it in 125 years. Hopefully we can expedite the transition in Africa as well. You have to bring down mortality. You have to have education for girls and woman. You have to get them employed, actively engaged in society so there are alternatives to having lots of children and raising a large family.
It’s in everyone’s interest to bring down the death rates and educate girls, boys, get them working, and that will hopefully slow down the growth.
It’s happening. At the peak, growth was about 87 million a year, and we’re down to about 76 million per year now.
Q. We just had this Page One story by my colleague Donald McNeil about how we finally got down under 10 million childhood deaths per year. Given that the overall population has been growing, that actual improvement is even more rapid than it might seem.
A. We’re going to see even more of this. There are going to be increasing gains in longevity at the top, many more people above 100. According to U.N. projections that’s the most rapidly growing age group, and it’s predominantly women. When you have more women among the elderly, health care becomes an issue, and they vote.
Q. So the old story of a kind of uniform picture of a population bomb has been replaced by what?
A. It’s a very complex symphony. It’s not just one note. You just don’t hear a drum going boom, boom, boom.
Q. The climate impact of people is uniform. All the greenhouse gases mix, so as energy demands go up that creates an interesting problem.
A. It’s going to be problematic on the environment. We’re already seeing that. But even if we stabilized at nine billion or eight billion it’s the production and consumption of goods that’s creating this pressure. Even though the population of India is three or four times that of the United States, we produce more greenhouse emissions. All things being equal, a stabilized population will create less impact on the planet.
Q. But there’s a long way to go before we stabilize. Do you have your own vision of a path through this transition that comes out with a world that has reasonable functional ecosystems and resources left over for the stable population to come?
A. First of all there’s enough food for everybody. In fact, some places have too much food. Obesity is a problem. We’re going to have to make changes in society, changes in lifestyles. I’m optimistic about that because we’ve seen changes. Smoking? Gone.
Women are having a tremendous impact around the world, and that has a moderating impact.
I’m confident there’ll be technologies to increase less-polluting energy. It’s going to be a bumpy road and in some places very bumpy. And you’re going to have increased mortality. You have to be prepared for those big shocks, like the bird flu.
But if you look in the past, we had great successes. Think about polio. I went up to Alaska a couple of years ago and was talking about Jonas Salk. A girl came up and asked why “salt” was important? I said, “Salk, Jonas Salk, who came up with a vaccine against polio.”
She said, “Polio, what’s polio?”
Q. I detect an optimist.
A. With regard to the energy situation, the food, the technology, they’re all very promising. I’m rather optimistic. The path is clear. There’s no secret recipe that people are keeping hidden from you like Coca-Cola. We know the recipe for development. We just have to implement it.
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http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/scientist-warming-could-cut-population-to-1-billion/
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/the-population-cluster-bomb/