In a growing world, milk is the new oil
By Wayne Arnold
International Herald Tribune, France
Published: August 31, 2007
HAMILTON, New Zealand: After years of saving, Geoff Irwin finally scraped up enough money to buy his parents' dairy farm near here in 2003. Now his parents have retired to a house nearby and Irwin, 45, runs the farm with its 300 cows.
It is hard work, 12 hours a day, but already it looks as though it has paid off: Just four years later, the farm is worth more than twice what he paid for it. Prices for dairy farms in New Zealand are soaring along with dairy incomes, thanks to a global milk boom.
"It feels really good," Irwin said. "It feels like we're going to be earning and be rewarded the way we should."
Driven by a combination of climate change, trade policies and competition for cattle feed from biofuel producers, global milk prices have doubled over the past two years. In parts of the United States, milk is more expensive than gasoline. There are reports of cows being stolen on Wisconsin dairy farms.
"There's a world shortage of milk," said Philip Goode, manager of international policy at Dairy Australia in Canberra.
But the biggest force driving up milk prices is the same one that has driven up prices for conventional commodities like iron ore and copper: a roaring global economy. Rising incomes, from China and India to Latin America and the Middle East, are lifting millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class.
It turns out that, along with zippy cars and flat-panel TVs, milk is the mark of new money, a significant source of protein that factors into much of any affluent person's diet. Milk goes into infant formulas, chocolates, ice cream and cheese. Most baked goods contain butter, and coffee chains like Starbucks sell more milk than coffee.
Just meeting that demand, according to Alex Duncan, an economist at Fonterra, the dominant dairy cooperative in New Zealand and the world's largest dairy-exporting company, will require the addition each year of the equivalent of New Zealand's entire annual milk output.
That is a lot of milk. New Zealand is one of the world's largest milk producers, according to IFCN Dairy Research Center in Germany, but the largest exporter of dairy products. Some dairy economists doubt the world's heifers are up to the task, and say there is a possibility that the shortage of milk now being seen in parts of the world will spread.
Others say there are plenty of places where more milk can be produced if the price is right. One thing they agree on is that milk prices are likely to stay high and rise even higher.
"No one forecast this rapid shortage of milk," said Torsten Hemme, head of the IFCN center.
This is not good if you are in the market for milk. Pizza parlors and ice cream vendors are raising their prices. Starbucks has raised the price of its drinks. Raising the price of its candy bars didn't stop milk prices from pushing Hershey's profit down 96 percent in its latest financial year. Milk is also weighing on profits at Cadbury Schweppes and at Kraft Foods' cheese unit.
What is unusual, and somewhat confusing, about the milk boom compared with other booming commodities is that milk is not like oil: You can't stick it in barrels and stockpile it. It goes sour. Even in powder form, the most commoditized version, milk has a shelf life. As a result, only about 7 percent of all the milk produced globally is traded across borders. The rest is consumed in domestic markets, which are protected by geography and just as often by tariffs or subsidies.
Big buyers like chocolate makers and grocery stores buy their milk under long-term contracts, and so can smooth out sudden spikes or dips in prices. Thus, the full impact of the global shortage varies from country to country, and not all consumers are yet suffering the full impact.
But because of the local nature of the market, there is very little spare capacity. In the past, the world could always count on the United States and Europe to fill shortages by exporting some of their subsidized stockpiles of cheese, butter and milk powder. But the United States has drawn down its butter mountain and other stockpiles; the same is true of the European Union, which started cutting dairy subsidies in 1993 and will be finished this year. Rising dairy demand in the United States and among the EU's new members, moreover, is sucking up supplies. As a result, said Hemme, "This storage capacity is empty now."
Australia, a major exporter, is suffering a multi-year drought that has devastated its milk production by killing off the grass that milk cows eat. Many in Australia worry that, far from being a temporary problem, the drought is the result of global warming and that dairies will never be the same.
At the same time, rising demand for biofuels is pushing up the price of corn and other grains, which is what farmers in the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan use to feed their cows instead of grass. Rising feed costs are therefore helping to push milk prices even higher. Production is growing in emerging markets like China, but demand there is growing even faster. The average person in China now consumes more than 25 liters, or 6 gallons, of milk a year, up from 9 liters in 2000, according to IFCN. So while China is now one of the world's top milk producers, it is also the world's largest milk importer.
In other emerging markets, rising prices have prompted governments to step in to control prices. In Argentina, for example, the government has imposed a tax on dairy exports. India, the world's largest milk producer, this year banned exports of milk powder.
Rising milk prices are contributing to accelerating inflation worldwide, from Brazil to Australia, vexing policy makers and sparking allegations that there is more behind it than supply and demand. The authorities in South Africa are investing allegations of price-fixing in the country's milk market; in Germany they are looking into the rising prices of milk and butter; and the U.S. Congress has started an inquiry into alleged price-fixing in the nation's market for cheese.
But rising milk prices have not been an unmitigated boon for producers, not even in New Zealand. Payments to farmers here are on track to rise another 24 percent this year, putting an extra $76,000 into the average farmer's pocket. But rising exports, property prices and farm incomes have all contributed to rising inflation in New Zealand, prompting the central bank to push its benchmark interest rate up last month to 8.25 percent. That has helped push the New Zealand dollar to its highest point against the U.S. dollar in 22 years. As it rises, earnings from milk sold abroad decline when converted back into local currency. New Zealand's export boom has also created a labor shortage that is pushing up the cost of hiring farm hands.
Rising costs also hurt New Zealand's ability to increase production in response to rising demand. The country's sheep farmers, for example, are trying to convert to dairy, but there is a two-year waiting list for milking sheds, according to Peter Buckley, president of the Waikato Federated Farmers, which represents farmers in New Zealand's prime dairying area. Higher land costs are also making it more expensive to buy new pastures.
As a result, experts say the growing demand for milk will have to be met in countries like China and Argentina as higher prices trigger greater investment in lifting milk yields. India has announced plans to lift its ban on milk powder exports next month.
Some see the United States as another main source of additional milk supplies. International prices have now risen above the subsidized price of milk there, making it profitable for American dairies to export their milk. "There's a real opportunity for the U.S. to export without government support or subsidies," Goode said.
Hemme at IFCN estimates that both the U.S. Midwest and Europe could multiply their milk production. But it would take one or two years and require using more costly corn and grain. So even if milk supplies keep up with demand, the price will stay high.
"Even when prices start easing back, we don't expect them to go back to where they were," said Hayley Moynihan, a dairy analyst at Rabobank in New Zealand. "The cost of production and ongoing demand is going to see prices eventually settle at higher levels than they did in the past."
Friday, August 31, 2007
Industrial Nations Agree To Look At Tough New Climate Rules
VIENNA - Industrial nations agreed on Friday to consider stiff 2020 goals for cutting greenhouse gases in a small step towards a new long-term pact to fight climate change.
About 1,000 delegates at the Aug 27-31 U.N. talks set greenhouse gas emissions cuts of between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels as a non-binding starting point for rich nations' work on a new pact to extend the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.
"These conclusions...indicate what industrialized countries must do to show leadership," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, welcoming a compromise deal on the range of needed cuts.
"But more needs to be done by the global community," he told a news conference at the end of the 158-nation talks. Many countries want to broaden Kyoto to include targets for outsiders such as the United States and developing nations.
Delegates agreed that the 25-40 percent range "provides useful initial parameters for the overall level of ambition of further emissions reductions".
It fell short of calls by the European Union and developing nations for the range to be called a stronger "guide" for future work. Pacific Island states said that even stiffer cuts may be needed to avert rising seas that could wash them off the map.
Nations including Russia, Japan and Canada had objected to the idea of a "guide", reckoning it might end up binding them to make sweeping economic shifts away from fossil fuels, widely seen as a main cause of global warming.
Delegates in the Vienna conference hall applauded for 10 seconds after adopting the compromise text by consensus.
STARTING POINT
"This is a small step," Artur Runge-Metzger, head of the EU Commission delegation, told Reuters. "We wanted bigger steps. But I think the 25-40 percent will be viewed as a starting point, an anchor for further work."
The U.N.'s climate panel said in a study in May 2007 that rich nations would have to cut emissions by between 25 and 40 percent to help avert the worst impacts of climate change from droughts, storms, heatwaves and rising seas.
"The process is moving along," said Leon Charles from Grenada, who chaired the final session. "By and large we have achieved our objectives".
De Boer said that the decisions might help environment ministers who will meet in Bali, Indonesia, in December, to agree to launch formal negotiations on a new global climate treaty to be decided by the end of 2009.
"This meeting has put the Bali conference in the starting blocks," de Boer said.
Environmentalists also hailed the conclusions as a step in the right direction. "The road to Bali is clear but it's time to switch gears," said Red Constantino of Greenpeace.
"We have a clear message from most governments that they will take seriously" scientists' calls for deep cuts, said Hans Verolme, climate expert of the WWF.
Kyoto binds 36 industrial nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 in a first bid to contain warming.
The United States has not ratified Kyoto, rating it too costly and unfair for excluding 2012 goals for developing states, and thus was not involved in Friday's session. President George W. Bush has separately called a meeting of major emitters in Washington on September 27-28 to work out future cuts.
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
About 1,000 delegates at the Aug 27-31 U.N. talks set greenhouse gas emissions cuts of between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels as a non-binding starting point for rich nations' work on a new pact to extend the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.
"These conclusions...indicate what industrialized countries must do to show leadership," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, welcoming a compromise deal on the range of needed cuts.
"But more needs to be done by the global community," he told a news conference at the end of the 158-nation talks. Many countries want to broaden Kyoto to include targets for outsiders such as the United States and developing nations.
Delegates agreed that the 25-40 percent range "provides useful initial parameters for the overall level of ambition of further emissions reductions".
It fell short of calls by the European Union and developing nations for the range to be called a stronger "guide" for future work. Pacific Island states said that even stiffer cuts may be needed to avert rising seas that could wash them off the map.
Nations including Russia, Japan and Canada had objected to the idea of a "guide", reckoning it might end up binding them to make sweeping economic shifts away from fossil fuels, widely seen as a main cause of global warming.
Delegates in the Vienna conference hall applauded for 10 seconds after adopting the compromise text by consensus.
STARTING POINT
"This is a small step," Artur Runge-Metzger, head of the EU Commission delegation, told Reuters. "We wanted bigger steps. But I think the 25-40 percent will be viewed as a starting point, an anchor for further work."
The U.N.'s climate panel said in a study in May 2007 that rich nations would have to cut emissions by between 25 and 40 percent to help avert the worst impacts of climate change from droughts, storms, heatwaves and rising seas.
"The process is moving along," said Leon Charles from Grenada, who chaired the final session. "By and large we have achieved our objectives".
De Boer said that the decisions might help environment ministers who will meet in Bali, Indonesia, in December, to agree to launch formal negotiations on a new global climate treaty to be decided by the end of 2009.
"This meeting has put the Bali conference in the starting blocks," de Boer said.
Environmentalists also hailed the conclusions as a step in the right direction. "The road to Bali is clear but it's time to switch gears," said Red Constantino of Greenpeace.
"We have a clear message from most governments that they will take seriously" scientists' calls for deep cuts, said Hans Verolme, climate expert of the WWF.
Kyoto binds 36 industrial nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 in a first bid to contain warming.
The United States has not ratified Kyoto, rating it too costly and unfair for excluding 2012 goals for developing states, and thus was not involved in Friday's session. President George W. Bush has separately called a meeting of major emitters in Washington on September 27-28 to work out future cuts.
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
Death and desolation after the inferno on road from Artemida
People of the Peloponnese lost relatives, homes and livelihoods in worst disaster for decades to hit their picturesque land
Helena Smith in Athens
Saturday September 1, 2007
The Guardian
The flames rolled over the road all at once and when they came, Spyros Bilionis did instinctively what he did not want to do: he drove straight into them.
With Pandazis Chronopoulos, the mayor of Zaharo, in the passenger seat screaming not to stop he pointed his silver jeep at the inferno and closed his eyes.
Neither man is sure how long it lasted. Only that the fire, white-hot and fearless, licked at the windows of the vehicle, buckling them as if they were toffee, searing the men's feet and burning their lips dry. "We said 'Hail Mary, Hail, Hail Mary', and just drove. I couldn't see a thing, there was so much smoke, but I knew the road was straight and closed my eyes," said Mr Bilionis, recounting his experience of the deadliest fires to hit Greece since its birth as a modern state.
And then it was over. The road leading to Artemida, in the Peloponnese, was suddenly visible, a promise of life through the billowing smoke.
"I cried. I wept and said thank you, thank you, dear Mary, thank you," continued the 38-year-old, still shaking his head in disbelief.
Athanasia Paraskevopoulou and her four children were not as lucky. Minutes earlier the Athenian schoolteacher had taken the same road and gone with her instincts: when she reached the fork leading out of Artemida she decided to outrace the flames and not drive through them.
In a fraction of a second her car hurtled down the road, as others realising their terrible mistake - that the conflagration was already upon them - desperately tried to turn back.
"If she had turned right at that fork and taken the upper road out, as I did, she would have survived," said Giorgos Kosifas, her uncle. "But at such times you panic and that is what Athanasia did," said the farmer who, as Artemida's mayor, was one of the last to leave on a moped.
"She drove down that road and straight into what seems to have been a crash. Some people managed to escape, and ran into the olive groves only to die there, but when we found her she was still in the car, holding her children tight."
Today it is scorched sandals, a pair of children's shorts, a blackened piece of skirt and other tokens of death that litter a hill turned white by the flames.
More people died on the road out of Artemida - and of the 64 people killed in the fires, most died in this area - than anywhere else in the eight days that the blazes, Europe's worst in a decade, have ravaged the country.
Battle zone
When Artemida's inhabitants began to recover after the inferno streaked across their fields for 20 minutes, what they saw was a landscape that resembled a war zone. Twenty three people had died.
"We lived in the most beautiful part of Greece, you cannot imagine how green it was," said Antonis Bouroyannopoulos, 42, picking his way through the debris of the village church. "What has happened has taken our happiness away."
The Greek poet George Seferis wrote: "Wherever I go Greece wounds me." But nothing would wound him more than the sight of his beloved country today after fires that have erupted across its length and breadth and consumed thousands of hectares of forest and farmland, devastated 4m olive trees, gutted an estimated 6,000 homes, created thousands of internal refugees and wrought untold damage on an mountainous ecosystem.
Not since the second world war and the brutal civil war that followed has Greece suffered such privation.
In the Peloponnese, the peninsula worst hit by the fires, the signs of death are everywhere: in the stumps of still smouldering olive trees; the silver ash that carpets the land; the charred remains of carcasses putrefying in the summer heat; the trees tinged orange as if they are wearing wigs; and the thousands of others turned charcoal black, their baldness too awful to contemplate for those whose families have lived in these parts for centuries.
For the few tourists in the affected areas, it is as if they have encountered the "darkness visible" of Milton's Paradise Lost.
"Tell me, in God's name, how are we ever going to live in this?" cried Athanasios Karelas, one local. "How are our children and their children going to survive in land that is dead? Look, all around you, even the stones have burned!"
Yesterday, the smell of charred wood, continued to hang over Olympia, the birthplace of the ancient Olympic games, which only narrowly survived being burned to the ground on Sunday.
As tourists filed into the museum to see the pristine statute of Hermes carved by the master sculptor Praxiteles, workmen were busy clearing up debris around the site.
But with fires still raging across Arcadia - having crossed over from the adjoining province of Ilia on Thursday - there was no indication of any let-up soon.
In a region whose rustic beauty has inspired poets and painters and draws more nature lovers than any other part of Greece, vast swaths of land have been turned to ash as fires, for the first time ever, have devoured fir, olive and pine forests.
Victim trauma
"What's so dreadful is you see it coming and there's nothing, absolutely nothing, that you can do," said Athina Dalaminga, throwing her hands up in the air as she watched flames destroy the spectacular scenery beneath the historic Arcadian village of Karytaina. "We really thought we had put the fire out and then it re-erupted today with the winds."
Yesterday the first psychiatrists began to arrive in the Peloponnese. And the prognosis was not good.
"People are clearly in a state of shock because they appear unable to express anything," said Dr Giorgos Kyriazis. "But I am terribly worried that when they wake up to the reality, to the loss of relatives, homes, fields, practically everything they own, the problems of melancholy and depression will be enormous."
Already anger has set in deep with a conservative government widely believed to have done little to prevent the fires, and to have bungled a rescue operation that went from bad to worse as the scale of the damage and death gradually came to light.
With elections scheduled for September 16, Costas Karamanlis, the prime minister, has gone out of his way to offset rising anger by offering generous compensation.
But the government's insistence that the fires are the work of arsonists bent on destroying Greece has only brought more vilification, with many saying that the disaster has instead exposed a political system incapacitated by corruption and cronyism and a firefighting force headed by inexperienced conservative party appointees.
The statistics
64 The number of people who have died in the fires
8 The number of days that the fires have been raging for so far
6,000 The number of homes believed to have been destroyed in the fires
4m The number of olive trees estimated to have been burnt
Helena Smith in Athens
Saturday September 1, 2007
The Guardian
The flames rolled over the road all at once and when they came, Spyros Bilionis did instinctively what he did not want to do: he drove straight into them.
With Pandazis Chronopoulos, the mayor of Zaharo, in the passenger seat screaming not to stop he pointed his silver jeep at the inferno and closed his eyes.
Neither man is sure how long it lasted. Only that the fire, white-hot and fearless, licked at the windows of the vehicle, buckling them as if they were toffee, searing the men's feet and burning their lips dry. "We said 'Hail Mary, Hail, Hail Mary', and just drove. I couldn't see a thing, there was so much smoke, but I knew the road was straight and closed my eyes," said Mr Bilionis, recounting his experience of the deadliest fires to hit Greece since its birth as a modern state.
And then it was over. The road leading to Artemida, in the Peloponnese, was suddenly visible, a promise of life through the billowing smoke.
"I cried. I wept and said thank you, thank you, dear Mary, thank you," continued the 38-year-old, still shaking his head in disbelief.
Athanasia Paraskevopoulou and her four children were not as lucky. Minutes earlier the Athenian schoolteacher had taken the same road and gone with her instincts: when she reached the fork leading out of Artemida she decided to outrace the flames and not drive through them.
In a fraction of a second her car hurtled down the road, as others realising their terrible mistake - that the conflagration was already upon them - desperately tried to turn back.
"If she had turned right at that fork and taken the upper road out, as I did, she would have survived," said Giorgos Kosifas, her uncle. "But at such times you panic and that is what Athanasia did," said the farmer who, as Artemida's mayor, was one of the last to leave on a moped.
"She drove down that road and straight into what seems to have been a crash. Some people managed to escape, and ran into the olive groves only to die there, but when we found her she was still in the car, holding her children tight."
Today it is scorched sandals, a pair of children's shorts, a blackened piece of skirt and other tokens of death that litter a hill turned white by the flames.
More people died on the road out of Artemida - and of the 64 people killed in the fires, most died in this area - than anywhere else in the eight days that the blazes, Europe's worst in a decade, have ravaged the country.
Battle zone
When Artemida's inhabitants began to recover after the inferno streaked across their fields for 20 minutes, what they saw was a landscape that resembled a war zone. Twenty three people had died.
"We lived in the most beautiful part of Greece, you cannot imagine how green it was," said Antonis Bouroyannopoulos, 42, picking his way through the debris of the village church. "What has happened has taken our happiness away."
The Greek poet George Seferis wrote: "Wherever I go Greece wounds me." But nothing would wound him more than the sight of his beloved country today after fires that have erupted across its length and breadth and consumed thousands of hectares of forest and farmland, devastated 4m olive trees, gutted an estimated 6,000 homes, created thousands of internal refugees and wrought untold damage on an mountainous ecosystem.
Not since the second world war and the brutal civil war that followed has Greece suffered such privation.
In the Peloponnese, the peninsula worst hit by the fires, the signs of death are everywhere: in the stumps of still smouldering olive trees; the silver ash that carpets the land; the charred remains of carcasses putrefying in the summer heat; the trees tinged orange as if they are wearing wigs; and the thousands of others turned charcoal black, their baldness too awful to contemplate for those whose families have lived in these parts for centuries.
For the few tourists in the affected areas, it is as if they have encountered the "darkness visible" of Milton's Paradise Lost.
"Tell me, in God's name, how are we ever going to live in this?" cried Athanasios Karelas, one local. "How are our children and their children going to survive in land that is dead? Look, all around you, even the stones have burned!"
Yesterday, the smell of charred wood, continued to hang over Olympia, the birthplace of the ancient Olympic games, which only narrowly survived being burned to the ground on Sunday.
As tourists filed into the museum to see the pristine statute of Hermes carved by the master sculptor Praxiteles, workmen were busy clearing up debris around the site.
But with fires still raging across Arcadia - having crossed over from the adjoining province of Ilia on Thursday - there was no indication of any let-up soon.
In a region whose rustic beauty has inspired poets and painters and draws more nature lovers than any other part of Greece, vast swaths of land have been turned to ash as fires, for the first time ever, have devoured fir, olive and pine forests.
Victim trauma
"What's so dreadful is you see it coming and there's nothing, absolutely nothing, that you can do," said Athina Dalaminga, throwing her hands up in the air as she watched flames destroy the spectacular scenery beneath the historic Arcadian village of Karytaina. "We really thought we had put the fire out and then it re-erupted today with the winds."
Yesterday the first psychiatrists began to arrive in the Peloponnese. And the prognosis was not good.
"People are clearly in a state of shock because they appear unable to express anything," said Dr Giorgos Kyriazis. "But I am terribly worried that when they wake up to the reality, to the loss of relatives, homes, fields, practically everything they own, the problems of melancholy and depression will be enormous."
Already anger has set in deep with a conservative government widely believed to have done little to prevent the fires, and to have bungled a rescue operation that went from bad to worse as the scale of the damage and death gradually came to light.
With elections scheduled for September 16, Costas Karamanlis, the prime minister, has gone out of his way to offset rising anger by offering generous compensation.
But the government's insistence that the fires are the work of arsonists bent on destroying Greece has only brought more vilification, with many saying that the disaster has instead exposed a political system incapacitated by corruption and cronyism and a firefighting force headed by inexperienced conservative party appointees.
The statistics
64 The number of people who have died in the fires
8 The number of days that the fires have been raging for so far
6,000 The number of homes believed to have been destroyed in the fires
4m The number of olive trees estimated to have been burnt
Colombia joins Countdown 2010
Colombia has become the third country in South America to join Countdown 2010, an initiative to slow the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010
Colombia, which has the highest Biodiversity National Indicator in South America and the most biodiverse region of the world, has joined the Countdown 2010 initiative.
The Minister of Environment and Territorial Development, Juan Lozano Ramirez, signed the Countdown 2010 Declaration, on Thursday, August 30, in a ceremony at the International Workshop of Ecosystems for the Millenium in Bogota.
The country has joined an active network of partners from all sectors working together to reduce the loss of biodiversity and raise public attention on the challenge to save biodiversity by 2010.
Juan Lozano Ramirez, Ministry of Environment and Territorial Development, said: “With this Declaration we want to express to Colombians and to the rest of the world that we are committed to contribute towards the reduction of loss of biodiversity with this international goal.”
Main commitments for the 2010 declaration include support to halt or significantly reduce the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. The declaration also commits signatories to increase public awareness and participation for biodiversity conservation, better integrate biodiversity considerations into all relevant sectors of public policy and economy and undertake serious efforts to adapt human activities to the needs of natural systems.
Colombia’s particular commitments include identifying a clear agenda on biodiversity research to support decisions concerned on loss of biodiversity, consolidating the Colombian National System on Environmental Information and considering the fundamental role that protected areas have in terms of the conservation of biodiversity.
Robert Hofstede, IUCN South America Regional Director ad interim, indicated that the goal to reduce the loss of biodiversity includes the work of several sectors, including an important role for the private sector.
Colombia became the third country in South America to sign the Countdown 2010 Declaration, behind Peru and Ecuador, strengthening this commitment inside Andean countries. The South American hub for Countdown 2010, hosted in the IUCN South America Office, has been promoting the initiative with IUCN members in the region and other interested partners since January of this year.
The main challenges for this regional initiative are to prepare base information on loss of biodiversity, improve the impact of communications and education on biodiversity issues and support practical experiences on the conservation of biodiversity, including the participation of local communities, governments and the private sector.
For further information please contact: Arturo Mora (arturo.moranonesur.iucn.org) and Veronica Moreno (veronica.morenononesur.iucn.org)
Colombia, which has the highest Biodiversity National Indicator in South America and the most biodiverse region of the world, has joined the Countdown 2010 initiative.
The Minister of Environment and Territorial Development, Juan Lozano Ramirez, signed the Countdown 2010 Declaration, on Thursday, August 30, in a ceremony at the International Workshop of Ecosystems for the Millenium in Bogota.
The country has joined an active network of partners from all sectors working together to reduce the loss of biodiversity and raise public attention on the challenge to save biodiversity by 2010.
Juan Lozano Ramirez, Ministry of Environment and Territorial Development, said: “With this Declaration we want to express to Colombians and to the rest of the world that we are committed to contribute towards the reduction of loss of biodiversity with this international goal.”
Main commitments for the 2010 declaration include support to halt or significantly reduce the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. The declaration also commits signatories to increase public awareness and participation for biodiversity conservation, better integrate biodiversity considerations into all relevant sectors of public policy and economy and undertake serious efforts to adapt human activities to the needs of natural systems.
Colombia’s particular commitments include identifying a clear agenda on biodiversity research to support decisions concerned on loss of biodiversity, consolidating the Colombian National System on Environmental Information and considering the fundamental role that protected areas have in terms of the conservation of biodiversity.
Robert Hofstede, IUCN South America Regional Director ad interim, indicated that the goal to reduce the loss of biodiversity includes the work of several sectors, including an important role for the private sector.
Colombia became the third country in South America to sign the Countdown 2010 Declaration, behind Peru and Ecuador, strengthening this commitment inside Andean countries. The South American hub for Countdown 2010, hosted in the IUCN South America Office, has been promoting the initiative with IUCN members in the region and other interested partners since January of this year.
The main challenges for this regional initiative are to prepare base information on loss of biodiversity, improve the impact of communications and education on biodiversity issues and support practical experiences on the conservation of biodiversity, including the participation of local communities, governments and the private sector.
For further information please contact: Arturo Mora (arturo.moranonesur.iucn.org) and Veronica Moreno (veronica.morenononesur.iucn.org)
LSU professor looks for life in and under antarctic ice
If confirmed, "immortal cells" could prove potential for life on Mars and Europa, one of Jupiter's moons
BATON ROUGE ”“ Antarctica is home to the largest body of ice on Earth. Prior to approximately 10 years ago, no one thought that life could exist beneath the Antarctic ice sheets, which can be more than two miles thick in places, because conditions were believed to be too extreme. However, Brent Christner, assistant professor of biological sciences at LSU, has spent a great deal of time in one of the world’s most hostile environments conducting research that proves otherwise.
Christner’s discoveries of viable microbes in ancient ice cores and subglacial environments coupled with the realization that large quantities of liquid water exist beneath the Antarctic ice sheet have changed the way biologists view life in Antarctica.
“More than 150 lakes have been discovered underneath nearly two-and-a-half miles of ice in Antactica,” said Christner, “and most of these bodies of water have likely been covered by ice for at least 15 million years. The environmental conditions in the deep cold biosphere are unlike anything on the Earth’s surface and this represents one of the most extreme habitats for life on the planet.”
A timeframe of up to one million years is required for microbes in the atmosphere to be transported through the ice sheet and enter an Antarctic subglacial lake. Even though cells are preserved in the ice, the question of how the DNA of these organisms remains unscathed over such long periods of apparent metabolic inactivity still remains.
According to Christner, there are two possible explanations of how these microbes could survive frozen for millenia. Firstly, the microbes may be dormant in the ice and possess “very effective repair mechanisms that are initiated when the cells are introduced to a growth situation,” he said. Given enough time, dormant cells ”“ without active DNA repair mechanisms ”“ would eventually incur a lethal level of radiation-induced damage from natural background sources in the ice.
Alternatively, Christner suggests that the microbes may stay metabolically active while entrapped in the ice, giving them the ability to repair damage as it occurs. “If this is the case, these microbes may be essentially immortal when frozen ”“ that is, if a continuous energy supply was available,” he said.
Christner’s current laboratory research has shown that glacier microbes are capable of metabolic activity when frozen down to -20 degrees Celcius. “Our experiments have revealed the potential for microbes to metabolize under frozen conditions, but we still lack the ”˜smoking gun’ which proves this occurs in nature. We are now taking what we learned in the lab at LSU and using it to design experiments that address this question in real Antarctic ice samples,” he said.
In collaboration with research colleagues from Montana State University, Christner and two members of his laboratory will deploy to Antarctica in October 2007. Shawn Doyle, LSU senior and microbiology major, will accompany Christner, staying through January 2008. “I interviewed students based on their academic record and experiences,” said Christner. “We’re looking for more than a lab rat, because, as you might imagine, Antarctica presents various challenges for doing science.” He is currently looking for a Ph.D. student to join the research team and conduct field work during the 2008-09 Antarctic season.
“The implication of our research is that the large ice sheets of Antarctica, which make up 70 percent of the planet’s fresh water reserves, may represent active biomes, substantially expanding the known boundaries for life on Earth,” said Christner. “Terrestrial glacier environments provide analogues to address questions relevant to the search for past or present microbial life in extraterrestrial ice on planets and moons in our solar system. Based on what we now know about the tenacity of life in Earth’s deep cold biosphere, microbial life surviving and persisting in ice on Mars or Europa is not that much of a stretch.”
###
For more information, contact Brent Christner at 225-578-1734, e-mail him at xner@lsu.edu or visit www.brent.xner.net.
BATON ROUGE ”“ Antarctica is home to the largest body of ice on Earth. Prior to approximately 10 years ago, no one thought that life could exist beneath the Antarctic ice sheets, which can be more than two miles thick in places, because conditions were believed to be too extreme. However, Brent Christner, assistant professor of biological sciences at LSU, has spent a great deal of time in one of the world’s most hostile environments conducting research that proves otherwise.
Christner’s discoveries of viable microbes in ancient ice cores and subglacial environments coupled with the realization that large quantities of liquid water exist beneath the Antarctic ice sheet have changed the way biologists view life in Antarctica.
“More than 150 lakes have been discovered underneath nearly two-and-a-half miles of ice in Antactica,” said Christner, “and most of these bodies of water have likely been covered by ice for at least 15 million years. The environmental conditions in the deep cold biosphere are unlike anything on the Earth’s surface and this represents one of the most extreme habitats for life on the planet.”
A timeframe of up to one million years is required for microbes in the atmosphere to be transported through the ice sheet and enter an Antarctic subglacial lake. Even though cells are preserved in the ice, the question of how the DNA of these organisms remains unscathed over such long periods of apparent metabolic inactivity still remains.
According to Christner, there are two possible explanations of how these microbes could survive frozen for millenia. Firstly, the microbes may be dormant in the ice and possess “very effective repair mechanisms that are initiated when the cells are introduced to a growth situation,” he said. Given enough time, dormant cells ”“ without active DNA repair mechanisms ”“ would eventually incur a lethal level of radiation-induced damage from natural background sources in the ice.
Alternatively, Christner suggests that the microbes may stay metabolically active while entrapped in the ice, giving them the ability to repair damage as it occurs. “If this is the case, these microbes may be essentially immortal when frozen ”“ that is, if a continuous energy supply was available,” he said.
Christner’s current laboratory research has shown that glacier microbes are capable of metabolic activity when frozen down to -20 degrees Celcius. “Our experiments have revealed the potential for microbes to metabolize under frozen conditions, but we still lack the ”˜smoking gun’ which proves this occurs in nature. We are now taking what we learned in the lab at LSU and using it to design experiments that address this question in real Antarctic ice samples,” he said.
In collaboration with research colleagues from Montana State University, Christner and two members of his laboratory will deploy to Antarctica in October 2007. Shawn Doyle, LSU senior and microbiology major, will accompany Christner, staying through January 2008. “I interviewed students based on their academic record and experiences,” said Christner. “We’re looking for more than a lab rat, because, as you might imagine, Antarctica presents various challenges for doing science.” He is currently looking for a Ph.D. student to join the research team and conduct field work during the 2008-09 Antarctic season.
“The implication of our research is that the large ice sheets of Antarctica, which make up 70 percent of the planet’s fresh water reserves, may represent active biomes, substantially expanding the known boundaries for life on Earth,” said Christner. “Terrestrial glacier environments provide analogues to address questions relevant to the search for past or present microbial life in extraterrestrial ice on planets and moons in our solar system. Based on what we now know about the tenacity of life in Earth’s deep cold biosphere, microbial life surviving and persisting in ice on Mars or Europa is not that much of a stretch.”
###
For more information, contact Brent Christner at 225-578-1734, e-mail him at xner@lsu.edu or visit www.brent.xner.net.
China says 278 cities have no sewage treatment
BEIJING (Reuters) - More than half China's 1.3 billion population, including 278 cities, live without any form of sewage treatment, state media said on Friday, quoting city planning officials.
And eight of those cities have populations of more than 500,000, Zhao Baojiang, chairman of the China association of city planning, was quoted as saying.
In its rapid development into the world's fourth-largest economy, China has been struggling to curb horrific water and air pollution.
It has become the world's top emitter of acid-rain causing sulphur dioxide and many analysts expect it to overtake the United States this year as the biggest greenhouse gas emitter.
An estimated 5,000 "administrative towns" and 20,000 smaller, market towns also had no sewage treatment facilities and a lack of clean water was especially acute in the central province of Henan, the China Daily said.
Pollution has taken on greater urgency as Beijing tries to clean up its notoriously filthy air before hosting the 2008 Olympics next August.
And eight of those cities have populations of more than 500,000, Zhao Baojiang, chairman of the China association of city planning, was quoted as saying.
In its rapid development into the world's fourth-largest economy, China has been struggling to curb horrific water and air pollution.
It has become the world's top emitter of acid-rain causing sulphur dioxide and many analysts expect it to overtake the United States this year as the biggest greenhouse gas emitter.
An estimated 5,000 "administrative towns" and 20,000 smaller, market towns also had no sewage treatment facilities and a lack of clean water was especially acute in the central province of Henan, the China Daily said.
Pollution has taken on greater urgency as Beijing tries to clean up its notoriously filthy air before hosting the 2008 Olympics next August.
Spreading deserts threaten world food supply
From: Robert Evans -Reuters
GENEVA (Reuters) - Spreading deserts and degradation of farm land due to climate change will pose a serious threat to food supplies for the world's surging population in coming years, a senior United Nations scientist warned on Friday.
M.V.K. Sivakumar of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said the crunch could come in just over a decade as all continents see more weather-related disasters like heat waves, floods, landslides and wildfires.
"Should we worry about land being degraded? Yes," Sivakumar, who leads the WMO's agricultural meteorology division, told a news conference in Geneva.
"Today we feed the present world population of 6.3 billion from the 11 per cent of the land surface that can be used for serious food production. The question is: Will we be able to feed the 8.2 billion that we expect to populate the globe in 2020 if even less land is available for farming?," he said.
Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia -- where the climate is already more extreme and arid regions are common -- will be most affected as rainfall declines and its timing becomes less predictable, making water more scarce, he said.
But Europe, particularly around the Mediterranean, would also suffer from heat waves like those that this summer have led to devastating fires in Greece.
Declining rainfall and evaporation of water supplies could also mean less was available for irrigation and for generating electricity for farm machinery, causing lower crop productivity.
Sivakumar said that in some regions the spread of deserts and the salination of once arable land was already well under way. In the future it would be most widespread in drier areas of Latin America, including in farming giant Brazil.
In Africa, increasing climate variability would create major problems for farmers, who are likely to see their growing seasons getting shorter and crop yields cut, especially in areas near already arid and semi-arid regions.
Sivakumar, speaking on the eve of a U.N. conference on desertification in Madrid from September 3-14, said it was vital for the international community to help put innovative and adaptive land-management practices into action.
These should be targeted at preserving land and water resources. But a return to mixing crops, rather than focusing on single-crop production based on intensive use of fertilizers, could also help face the challenge, he said.
GENEVA (Reuters) - Spreading deserts and degradation of farm land due to climate change will pose a serious threat to food supplies for the world's surging population in coming years, a senior United Nations scientist warned on Friday.
M.V.K. Sivakumar of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said the crunch could come in just over a decade as all continents see more weather-related disasters like heat waves, floods, landslides and wildfires.
"Should we worry about land being degraded? Yes," Sivakumar, who leads the WMO's agricultural meteorology division, told a news conference in Geneva.
"Today we feed the present world population of 6.3 billion from the 11 per cent of the land surface that can be used for serious food production. The question is: Will we be able to feed the 8.2 billion that we expect to populate the globe in 2020 if even less land is available for farming?," he said.
Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia -- where the climate is already more extreme and arid regions are common -- will be most affected as rainfall declines and its timing becomes less predictable, making water more scarce, he said.
But Europe, particularly around the Mediterranean, would also suffer from heat waves like those that this summer have led to devastating fires in Greece.
Declining rainfall and evaporation of water supplies could also mean less was available for irrigation and for generating electricity for farm machinery, causing lower crop productivity.
Sivakumar said that in some regions the spread of deserts and the salination of once arable land was already well under way. In the future it would be most widespread in drier areas of Latin America, including in farming giant Brazil.
In Africa, increasing climate variability would create major problems for farmers, who are likely to see their growing seasons getting shorter and crop yields cut, especially in areas near already arid and semi-arid regions.
Sivakumar, speaking on the eve of a U.N. conference on desertification in Madrid from September 3-14, said it was vital for the international community to help put innovative and adaptive land-management practices into action.
These should be targeted at preserving land and water resources. But a return to mixing crops, rather than focusing on single-crop production based on intensive use of fertilizers, could also help face the challenge, he said.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Ireland warming twice as fast as rest of world, report finds
The Irish Times
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Ireland is warming up at twice the rate of the rest of the world on average, according to a new climate change report compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency. Tim O'Brien reports.
The report which analysed meteorological records going back more than 100 years concluded that Ireland warmed up by 0.42 degrees per decade between 1980 and 2004, about twice the levels of increase globally.
Entitled Key Meteorological Indicators of Climate Change in Ireland, the report also warned that the rate of warming in Ireland was still accelerating.
It predicted the main effects of climate change will include more intense rainfall in the north and west, with summer drought in the south and east, fewer frosty days everywhere in winter, and serious impacts on agriculture and flood plain management.
The report also notes population trends which see people moving from the west to the east and warns that the movement is from where drinking water will continue to be naturally plentiful, to where it will not.
While summers will be dryer, the reduction in rainfall in the south and east will be less than the increase in the rainfall increase in the west and north. But the report also notes that climate change in Ireland is leading towards a longer growing season, with potential for new crops and increased production of existing cereal and grass crops.
The report was launched by Minister for Environment John Gormley who said it was further evidence that "the debate on climate change is over". He likened continuing sceptics of climate change to "flat-earthists" and said the Government's climate change "platform" to deliver a 3 per cent annual reduction in CO2 emissions was vital.
According to the report's authors Dr John Sweeney and Dr Laura McElwain of Irish Climate and Analysis Research Units (Icarus) at NUI Maynooth, the analysis means there is no longer any doubt about the cause of global warming.
"We can say with certainty that it is people not nature that is causing global warming" said Dr Sweeney, who added that Ireland was particularly lucky in having written meteorological records which dated back to the reports of 2668 BC and the Annuals of the Four Masters.
Dr McElwain said the intensity and frequency of extreme rainfall - an increase in the number of days when rain falls and an increase in the intensity of the rain - provide a cause for concern as they may have a greater impact on the environment, society and the economy.
Another aspect of climate change in Ireland is likely to be increased and more frequent storm-related flooding, with consequent implications for settlement patterns and development. The report's authors noted that climate change is now one of the key elements that need to be addressed when assessing flood relief measures in Ireland.
© 2007 The Irish Times
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Ireland is warming up at twice the rate of the rest of the world on average, according to a new climate change report compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency. Tim O'Brien reports.
The report which analysed meteorological records going back more than 100 years concluded that Ireland warmed up by 0.42 degrees per decade between 1980 and 2004, about twice the levels of increase globally.
Entitled Key Meteorological Indicators of Climate Change in Ireland, the report also warned that the rate of warming in Ireland was still accelerating.
It predicted the main effects of climate change will include more intense rainfall in the north and west, with summer drought in the south and east, fewer frosty days everywhere in winter, and serious impacts on agriculture and flood plain management.
The report also notes population trends which see people moving from the west to the east and warns that the movement is from where drinking water will continue to be naturally plentiful, to where it will not.
While summers will be dryer, the reduction in rainfall in the south and east will be less than the increase in the rainfall increase in the west and north. But the report also notes that climate change in Ireland is leading towards a longer growing season, with potential for new crops and increased production of existing cereal and grass crops.
The report was launched by Minister for Environment John Gormley who said it was further evidence that "the debate on climate change is over". He likened continuing sceptics of climate change to "flat-earthists" and said the Government's climate change "platform" to deliver a 3 per cent annual reduction in CO2 emissions was vital.
According to the report's authors Dr John Sweeney and Dr Laura McElwain of Irish Climate and Analysis Research Units (Icarus) at NUI Maynooth, the analysis means there is no longer any doubt about the cause of global warming.
"We can say with certainty that it is people not nature that is causing global warming" said Dr Sweeney, who added that Ireland was particularly lucky in having written meteorological records which dated back to the reports of 2668 BC and the Annuals of the Four Masters.
Dr McElwain said the intensity and frequency of extreme rainfall - an increase in the number of days when rain falls and an increase in the intensity of the rain - provide a cause for concern as they may have a greater impact on the environment, society and the economy.
Another aspect of climate change in Ireland is likely to be increased and more frequent storm-related flooding, with consequent implications for settlement patterns and development. The report's authors noted that climate change is now one of the key elements that need to be addressed when assessing flood relief measures in Ireland.
© 2007 The Irish Times
Plans for three resort cities
The Standard, Kenya
http://www.eastandard.net/restate/index.php?id=1143973745
By Al Abdi
The Government is planning to develop three resort cities in the next five years in a project aimed at making Kenya among the top tourist destinations in the world.
The establishment of the three resort cities-two at the Coast and the other in Isiolo is classified as tourism�s flagship project to be completed by 2012.
At the coast, one will be located at the North Coast while the second one will be at the South Coast. The third in Isiolo District will be located just on the outskirts of Isiolo town.
The move is part of the Government�s all-encompassing national development plan, Vision 2030, which is envisaged to put Kenya at par with the Asian Tiger countries like Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea.
Vision 2030 is national long-term growth plan that aims at transforming Kenya into a globally competitive and prosperous nation, offering a high quality of life for all its citizens, by 2030.
Last week, a high-powered delegation led by Permanent secretaries Mr Mohamed Mahamud (Roads), Mr Zachary Mwaura (Defence) and Dr Hukka Wario (PS, East African Community) said in Isiolo the Government will make tourism as its cornerstone for development.
"Tourism will be the leading sector in achieving the goals of the vision where it is aimed that the country will be among the 10 long haul tourist destination in the world, offering a high-end, diverse and distinctive visitor experience that few of her competitors can offer,�� reads part of the policy document.
Scenery that rivals Hollywood
The Government has already opened discussions on the project with the Isiolo County Council. About 1, 000 hectares needs to be allocated for the resort project.
The Permanent Secretaries, who were accompanied by experts from the various ministries who helped develop the policy document, said Kenya aims to beat South Africa, Egypt and Morocco in tourist arrivals in the next five years.
In the Vision, the Government plans to focus on three specific areas to achieve the goals for 2012;
� to quadruple tourism�s GDP contribution to over Ksh80 billion;
� to raise international visitors from 1.8 million in 2006 to three million in 2012 while raising average spend per visitor from the current Sh40,000 to at least Sh70,000 and;
� to increase hotel beds from 40,000 to about 65,000, combined with an emphasis on high quality service.
Developed on the model of South Africa�s Sun City, each of the resort cities in Kenya will be allocated enough hectares of land to enable the facilities have casinos, golf courses, restaurants and discotheques among other features.
The delegation said Isiolo, as part of Kenya�s safari destination, was picked because of the fame acquired by Shaba Game Reserve that had attracted filmmakers from across the globe. ��It is Joy and George Adamson who made Shaba famous. As a result, many major films have been shot here. We have a scenery that rivals Hollywood right here,�� said PS Wario.
The Adamsons reared lions starting with lioness Elsa and later released them into the wild. While Joy died at Shaba, her husband was killed at neighbouring Kora National Reserve.
Movies shot at Shaba over the last two decades include Born Free, Out Of Africa, To Walk with Lions and CBS TV blockbuster series, Survivor Africa.
The Government now plans to develop the infrastructure in the northern circuit starting with the upgrading of the Isiolo-Moyale highway to bitumen standards.
Mohamud said the construction of the first 136km between Isiolo town and Merille River will start in October. The tendering process having been finalised.
"The first phase will start in about two months. We have Sh4 billion for the project and we are at the moment waiting for no-objection on tender valuation from the bank (Africa Development Bank),�� said the PS in charge of Roads.
The Permanent Secretaries reiterated the Government�s commitment to set up another international airport that also targets the tourism sector apart from transportation of miraa and horticultural products from the Mt Kenya region.
Isiolo District, measuring about 26,000 square kilometres, is sparsely populated with about 150,000 people. About 60 per cent of the population resides in Central division, an area measuring about 1, 500 sq km.
The value of land in the district has been low, but it had picked up in the last three years in Isiolo Town, where a plot measuring 50 by 100 feet goes for an average of Sh1 million.
Given its central geographical position in the country and the Government�s plan to set up a city resort on the outskirt of the town, value of land is expected to rise steadily.
Many parks dormant
Already, scramble for land especially in Central division has started in earnest with local leaders led by Isiolo North MP, Dr Mohamed Abdi Kuti, who is also the minister for Youth Affairs, appealing to the locals not to sell their land to �outsiders�.
The second flagship project will be to increase the country�s premium safari parks and the extension of facilities in other either under-utilised or dormant parks with a view to achieving higher tourist revenue yields.
The current premium parks to date include the world famous Maasai Mara National Reserve and the Kenya Wildlife managed Lake Nakuru National Park that are both becoming congested.
Under-utilised parks like Mt Marsabit and Ruma parks will benefit from improved infrastructure and better marketing here and abroad, aimed at bringing in more visitors.
"So many parks are either dormant or under-utilised. We want to revive the dormant ones and do an aggressive marketing both locally and abroad in order to attract tourists,�� said the PS.
Most idle parks are in the northern circuit that include Rahole, Kitui, Bisanadi, Sibiloi, and Kora but with abundant and rare wildlife and other attractions.
In the development of tourism plans is the business visitors� initiative that envisages to attract investors to set up of five more international class hotels in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu. Isiolo will be leveraged as a new high-end tourist destination in that period.
Under the niche products initiative, the Vision 2030 States that if undertaken, it will provide about 3,000 high cost bed accommodation for tourists interested in cultural and eco-tourism cum water-based sports especially around Lake Victoria.
The other item on the menu is the certification of 1,000 home-stay sites to promote cultural tourism in Kenyan homes where locals will exhibit their traditions.
http://www.eastandard.net/restate/index.php?id=1143973745
By Al Abdi
The Government is planning to develop three resort cities in the next five years in a project aimed at making Kenya among the top tourist destinations in the world.
The establishment of the three resort cities-two at the Coast and the other in Isiolo is classified as tourism�s flagship project to be completed by 2012.
At the coast, one will be located at the North Coast while the second one will be at the South Coast. The third in Isiolo District will be located just on the outskirts of Isiolo town.
The move is part of the Government�s all-encompassing national development plan, Vision 2030, which is envisaged to put Kenya at par with the Asian Tiger countries like Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea.
Vision 2030 is national long-term growth plan that aims at transforming Kenya into a globally competitive and prosperous nation, offering a high quality of life for all its citizens, by 2030.
Last week, a high-powered delegation led by Permanent secretaries Mr Mohamed Mahamud (Roads), Mr Zachary Mwaura (Defence) and Dr Hukka Wario (PS, East African Community) said in Isiolo the Government will make tourism as its cornerstone for development.
"Tourism will be the leading sector in achieving the goals of the vision where it is aimed that the country will be among the 10 long haul tourist destination in the world, offering a high-end, diverse and distinctive visitor experience that few of her competitors can offer,�� reads part of the policy document.
Scenery that rivals Hollywood
The Government has already opened discussions on the project with the Isiolo County Council. About 1, 000 hectares needs to be allocated for the resort project.
The Permanent Secretaries, who were accompanied by experts from the various ministries who helped develop the policy document, said Kenya aims to beat South Africa, Egypt and Morocco in tourist arrivals in the next five years.
In the Vision, the Government plans to focus on three specific areas to achieve the goals for 2012;
� to quadruple tourism�s GDP contribution to over Ksh80 billion;
� to raise international visitors from 1.8 million in 2006 to three million in 2012 while raising average spend per visitor from the current Sh40,000 to at least Sh70,000 and;
� to increase hotel beds from 40,000 to about 65,000, combined with an emphasis on high quality service.
Developed on the model of South Africa�s Sun City, each of the resort cities in Kenya will be allocated enough hectares of land to enable the facilities have casinos, golf courses, restaurants and discotheques among other features.
The delegation said Isiolo, as part of Kenya�s safari destination, was picked because of the fame acquired by Shaba Game Reserve that had attracted filmmakers from across the globe. ��It is Joy and George Adamson who made Shaba famous. As a result, many major films have been shot here. We have a scenery that rivals Hollywood right here,�� said PS Wario.
The Adamsons reared lions starting with lioness Elsa and later released them into the wild. While Joy died at Shaba, her husband was killed at neighbouring Kora National Reserve.
Movies shot at Shaba over the last two decades include Born Free, Out Of Africa, To Walk with Lions and CBS TV blockbuster series, Survivor Africa.
The Government now plans to develop the infrastructure in the northern circuit starting with the upgrading of the Isiolo-Moyale highway to bitumen standards.
Mohamud said the construction of the first 136km between Isiolo town and Merille River will start in October. The tendering process having been finalised.
"The first phase will start in about two months. We have Sh4 billion for the project and we are at the moment waiting for no-objection on tender valuation from the bank (Africa Development Bank),�� said the PS in charge of Roads.
The Permanent Secretaries reiterated the Government�s commitment to set up another international airport that also targets the tourism sector apart from transportation of miraa and horticultural products from the Mt Kenya region.
Isiolo District, measuring about 26,000 square kilometres, is sparsely populated with about 150,000 people. About 60 per cent of the population resides in Central division, an area measuring about 1, 500 sq km.
The value of land in the district has been low, but it had picked up in the last three years in Isiolo Town, where a plot measuring 50 by 100 feet goes for an average of Sh1 million.
Given its central geographical position in the country and the Government�s plan to set up a city resort on the outskirt of the town, value of land is expected to rise steadily.
Many parks dormant
Already, scramble for land especially in Central division has started in earnest with local leaders led by Isiolo North MP, Dr Mohamed Abdi Kuti, who is also the minister for Youth Affairs, appealing to the locals not to sell their land to �outsiders�.
The second flagship project will be to increase the country�s premium safari parks and the extension of facilities in other either under-utilised or dormant parks with a view to achieving higher tourist revenue yields.
The current premium parks to date include the world famous Maasai Mara National Reserve and the Kenya Wildlife managed Lake Nakuru National Park that are both becoming congested.
Under-utilised parks like Mt Marsabit and Ruma parks will benefit from improved infrastructure and better marketing here and abroad, aimed at bringing in more visitors.
"So many parks are either dormant or under-utilised. We want to revive the dormant ones and do an aggressive marketing both locally and abroad in order to attract tourists,�� said the PS.
Most idle parks are in the northern circuit that include Rahole, Kitui, Bisanadi, Sibiloi, and Kora but with abundant and rare wildlife and other attractions.
In the development of tourism plans is the business visitors� initiative that envisages to attract investors to set up of five more international class hotels in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu. Isiolo will be leveraged as a new high-end tourist destination in that period.
Under the niche products initiative, the Vision 2030 States that if undertaken, it will provide about 3,000 high cost bed accommodation for tourists interested in cultural and eco-tourism cum water-based sports especially around Lake Victoria.
The other item on the menu is the certification of 1,000 home-stay sites to promote cultural tourism in Kenyan homes where locals will exhibit their traditions.
Kempthorne Wins 2007 Rubber Dodo Award : Protects Fewer Species Than Any Interior Secretary in History
Kempthorne Wins 2007 Rubber Dodo Award : Protects Fewer Species Than Any Interior Secretary in History
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Center for Biological Diversity presented Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne with the first annual Rubber Dodo Award on Friday.
Since his confirmation as secretary of interior on May 26, 2006, Kempthorne has not placed a single plant or animal on the federal endangered species list. The last listing (12 Hawaiian picture-wing flies) occurred on May 9, 2006 - 472 days ago. The previous recordholder was James Watt, who listed no species for 376 days between 1981 and 1982.
Watt's refusal to list species resulted in a 1982 congressional amendment to the Endangered Species Act, which established firm timelines for listing species and litigation consequences for violating the deadlines. Kempthorne's refusal prompted Ed Markey (D-MA) to introduce H.R. 3459, the "Transparent Reporting Under ESA Listing Act," on August 4, 2007. It would amend the Endangered Species Act to require the secretary to explain the scientific basis of decisions to deny Endangered Species Act protections to imperiled plants and animals.
"Kempthorne is eminently deserving of the first annual Rubber Dodo award," said Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Center for Biological Diversity, which administers the award. "His refusal to protect a single imperiled species in more than 15 months gives him the worst record of any interior secretary in the history of the Endangered Species Act. His policies should go the way of the dodo as soon as possible."
"Political appointees like Kempthorne come and go, but extinction is forever. No politician has the right to destroy the future of an endangered species."
2007 marks the inaugural year of the Rubber Dodo Award, which will be presented annually by the Center for Biological Diversity to a deserving individual in public or private service who has done the most to drive endangered species extinct.
Background:
In 1598, Dutch sailors landing on the uninhabited island of Mauritius discovered a flightless, three-foot tall, extraordinarily friendly bird. Its original scientific name was Didus ineptus. (Contemporary scientists use the less defamatory Raphus cucullatus.) To the rest of the world, it's the dodo - the most famous extinct species on earth. Having evolved over millions of year with no natural predators, the dodo lost the ability to fly, becoming a land-based consumer of fruits, nuts and berries. Having never known predators, it showed no fear of humans or the menagerie of animals accompanying them to Mauritius.
It trusting nature led to its rapid extinction. By 1681, the dodo was extinct, having been hunted and out-competed by humans, dogs, cats, rats, macaques, and pigs. Humans logged its forest cover and pigs uprooted and ate much of the understory vegetation.
The origin of the name dodo is unclear. It likely came from the Dutch word dodoor, meaning "sluggard," the Portuguese word doudo, meaning "fool" or "crazy," or the Dutch word dodaars meaning "plump-arse" (that nation's name for the little grebe).
The dodo's reputation as a foolish, ungainly bird derives in part from its friendly naiveté and the very plump captives that were taken on tour across Europe. The reputation was cemented with the 1865 publication of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Based on skeleton reconstructions and the discovery of early drawings, scientists now believe that the dodo was a much sleeker animal than commonly portrayed. The rotund European exhibitions were accidentally produced by overfeeding captive birds.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Center for Biological Diversity presented Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne with the first annual Rubber Dodo Award on Friday.
Since his confirmation as secretary of interior on May 26, 2006, Kempthorne has not placed a single plant or animal on the federal endangered species list. The last listing (12 Hawaiian picture-wing flies) occurred on May 9, 2006 - 472 days ago. The previous recordholder was James Watt, who listed no species for 376 days between 1981 and 1982.
Watt's refusal to list species resulted in a 1982 congressional amendment to the Endangered Species Act, which established firm timelines for listing species and litigation consequences for violating the deadlines. Kempthorne's refusal prompted Ed Markey (D-MA) to introduce H.R. 3459, the "Transparent Reporting Under ESA Listing Act," on August 4, 2007. It would amend the Endangered Species Act to require the secretary to explain the scientific basis of decisions to deny Endangered Species Act protections to imperiled plants and animals.
"Kempthorne is eminently deserving of the first annual Rubber Dodo award," said Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Center for Biological Diversity, which administers the award. "His refusal to protect a single imperiled species in more than 15 months gives him the worst record of any interior secretary in the history of the Endangered Species Act. His policies should go the way of the dodo as soon as possible."
"Political appointees like Kempthorne come and go, but extinction is forever. No politician has the right to destroy the future of an endangered species."
2007 marks the inaugural year of the Rubber Dodo Award, which will be presented annually by the Center for Biological Diversity to a deserving individual in public or private service who has done the most to drive endangered species extinct.
Background:
In 1598, Dutch sailors landing on the uninhabited island of Mauritius discovered a flightless, three-foot tall, extraordinarily friendly bird. Its original scientific name was Didus ineptus. (Contemporary scientists use the less defamatory Raphus cucullatus.) To the rest of the world, it's the dodo - the most famous extinct species on earth. Having evolved over millions of year with no natural predators, the dodo lost the ability to fly, becoming a land-based consumer of fruits, nuts and berries. Having never known predators, it showed no fear of humans or the menagerie of animals accompanying them to Mauritius.
It trusting nature led to its rapid extinction. By 1681, the dodo was extinct, having been hunted and out-competed by humans, dogs, cats, rats, macaques, and pigs. Humans logged its forest cover and pigs uprooted and ate much of the understory vegetation.
The origin of the name dodo is unclear. It likely came from the Dutch word dodoor, meaning "sluggard," the Portuguese word doudo, meaning "fool" or "crazy," or the Dutch word dodaars meaning "plump-arse" (that nation's name for the little grebe).
The dodo's reputation as a foolish, ungainly bird derives in part from its friendly naiveté and the very plump captives that were taken on tour across Europe. The reputation was cemented with the 1865 publication of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Based on skeleton reconstructions and the discovery of early drawings, scientists now believe that the dodo was a much sleeker animal than commonly portrayed. The rotund European exhibitions were accidentally produced by overfeeding captive birds.
Experts Say Greenhouse Gases Fueled 2006 US Heat, Not El Nino
nasa.gov
WASHINGTON - Greenhouse gas emissions -- not El Nino or other natural phenomena -- pushed U.S. temperatures for 2006 close to a record high, government climate scientists reported on Tuesday.
The annual average U.S. temperature in 2006 was 2.1 degrees F (1.16C) above the 20th century average and the ninth consecutive year of above-normal U.S. temperatures, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote.
This is in line with a global warming trend over the past century that most climate scientists attribute to human-made greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide from petroleum-fueled vehicles and coal-fired power plants, build up in the atmosphere and hold in the sun's heat like the glass walls of a greenhouse.
But other factors also play a role, and when figures for 2006 indicated a near-record-heat year for the contiguous 48 states -- the area for which there are the best statistics -- U.S. climate scientists wondered if this warmth was due to climate change or to the naturally occurring El Nino.
El Nino seemed a logical culprit, since there were active El Nino patterns of warm water in the Pacific in 2006 and in the hottest U.S. year of 1998, said Martin Hoerling of the U.S. climate administration.
IF NOT EL NINO, THEN WHAT?
Hoerling and his co-authors, writing in the September 5 edition of Geophysical Research letters, looked back through history and found that El Nino does not generally cause a rise in U.S. average annual temperatures. But if not El Nino, what was it?
To find out, they used computer simulations of the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on temperature that were used by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel reported, with 90 percent probability, that human activities contribute to global warming.
They compared the 18 different simulations for 2006, which included projections of greenhouse gas emissions, with the actual average temperature for the United States, and found a correlation, Hoerling said.
"What we found was a very strong footprint of the observed warming, consistent with the greenhouse gas effect," Hoerling said in a telephone interview.
Preliminary data suggested that 2006 was a record warm year for the contiguous 48 U.S. states but updated numbers showed last year was 0.08 degrees F (.04C) cooler than 1998.
For most states, 2006 ranked among the 10 hottest years since 1895. Globally, 2005 was the warmest, edging out 1998, with 2006 ranked about sixth for the world, Hoerling said.
Hoerling said the difference in U.S. average temperatures between 2006, 1998 and 1934 was minuscule.
"Those three years are so close to one another... that's not really a relevant concern," he said.
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
WASHINGTON - Greenhouse gas emissions -- not El Nino or other natural phenomena -- pushed U.S. temperatures for 2006 close to a record high, government climate scientists reported on Tuesday.
The annual average U.S. temperature in 2006 was 2.1 degrees F (1.16C) above the 20th century average and the ninth consecutive year of above-normal U.S. temperatures, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote.
This is in line with a global warming trend over the past century that most climate scientists attribute to human-made greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide from petroleum-fueled vehicles and coal-fired power plants, build up in the atmosphere and hold in the sun's heat like the glass walls of a greenhouse.
But other factors also play a role, and when figures for 2006 indicated a near-record-heat year for the contiguous 48 states -- the area for which there are the best statistics -- U.S. climate scientists wondered if this warmth was due to climate change or to the naturally occurring El Nino.
El Nino seemed a logical culprit, since there were active El Nino patterns of warm water in the Pacific in 2006 and in the hottest U.S. year of 1998, said Martin Hoerling of the U.S. climate administration.
IF NOT EL NINO, THEN WHAT?
Hoerling and his co-authors, writing in the September 5 edition of Geophysical Research letters, looked back through history and found that El Nino does not generally cause a rise in U.S. average annual temperatures. But if not El Nino, what was it?
To find out, they used computer simulations of the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on temperature that were used by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel reported, with 90 percent probability, that human activities contribute to global warming.
They compared the 18 different simulations for 2006, which included projections of greenhouse gas emissions, with the actual average temperature for the United States, and found a correlation, Hoerling said.
"What we found was a very strong footprint of the observed warming, consistent with the greenhouse gas effect," Hoerling said in a telephone interview.
Preliminary data suggested that 2006 was a record warm year for the contiguous 48 U.S. states but updated numbers showed last year was 0.08 degrees F (.04C) cooler than 1998.
For most states, 2006 ranked among the 10 hottest years since 1895. Globally, 2005 was the warmest, edging out 1998, with 2006 ranked about sixth for the world, Hoerling said.
Hoerling said the difference in U.S. average temperatures between 2006, 1998 and 1934 was minuscule.
"Those three years are so close to one another... that's not really a relevant concern," he said.
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
NASA Study Predicts More Severe Storms With Global Warming
www.nasa.gov
NASA scientists have developed a new climate model that indicates that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth’s climate warms.
Previous climate model studies have shown that heavy rainstorms will be more common in a warmer climate, but few global models have attempted to simulate the strength of updrafts in these storms. The model developed at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies by researchers Tony Del Genio, Mao-Sung Yao, and Jeff Jonas is the first to successfully simulate the observed difference in strength between land and ocean storms and is the first to estimate how the strength will change in a warming climate, including "severe thunderstorms" that also occur with significant wind shear and produce damaging winds at the ground. This information can be derived from the temperatures and humidities predicted by a climate computer model, according to the new study published on August 17 in the American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters. It predicts that in a warmer climate, stronger and more severe storms can be expected, but with fewer storms overall.
Global computer models represent weather and climate over regions several hundred miles wide. The models do not directly simulate thunderstorms and lightning. Instead, they evaluate when conditions are conducive to the outbreak of storms of varying strengths. This model first was tested against current climate conditions. It was found to represent major known global storm features including the prevalence of lightning over tropical continents such as Africa and, to a lesser extent, the Amazon Basin, and the near absence of lightning in oceanic storms.
The model then was applied to a hypothetical future climate with double the current carbon dioxide level and a surface that is an average of 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the current climate. The study found that continents warm more than oceans and that the altitude at which lightning forms rises to a level where the storms are usually more vigorous.
These effects combine to cause more of the continental storms that form in the warmer climate to resemble the strongest storms we currently experience.
Lightning produced by strong storms often ignites wildfires in dry areas. Researchers have predicted that some regions would have less humid air in a warmer climate and be more prone to wildfires as a result. However, drier conditions produce fewer storms. "These findings may seem to imply that fewer storms in the future will be good news for disastrous western U.S. wildfires," said Tony Del Genio, lead author of the study and a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York. "But drier conditions near the ground combined with higher lightning flash rates per storm may end up intensifying wildfire damage instead."
The central and eastern areas of the United States are especially prone to severe storms and thunderstorms that arise when strong updrafts combine with horizontal winds that become stronger at higher altitudes. This combination produces damaging horizontal and vertical winds and is a major source of weather-related casualties. In the warmer climate simulation there is a small class of the most extreme storms with both strong updrafts and strong horizontal winds at higher levels that occur more often, and thus the model suggests that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common with warming.
The prediction of stronger continental storms and more lightning in a warmer climate is a natural consequence of the tendency of land surfaces to warm more than oceans and for the freezing level to rise with warming to an altitude where lightning-producing updrafts are stronger. These features of global warming are common to all models, but this is the first climate model to explore the ramifications of the warming for thunderstorms.
NASA scientists have developed a new climate model that indicates that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth’s climate warms.
Previous climate model studies have shown that heavy rainstorms will be more common in a warmer climate, but few global models have attempted to simulate the strength of updrafts in these storms. The model developed at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies by researchers Tony Del Genio, Mao-Sung Yao, and Jeff Jonas is the first to successfully simulate the observed difference in strength between land and ocean storms and is the first to estimate how the strength will change in a warming climate, including "severe thunderstorms" that also occur with significant wind shear and produce damaging winds at the ground. This information can be derived from the temperatures and humidities predicted by a climate computer model, according to the new study published on August 17 in the American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters. It predicts that in a warmer climate, stronger and more severe storms can be expected, but with fewer storms overall.
Global computer models represent weather and climate over regions several hundred miles wide. The models do not directly simulate thunderstorms and lightning. Instead, they evaluate when conditions are conducive to the outbreak of storms of varying strengths. This model first was tested against current climate conditions. It was found to represent major known global storm features including the prevalence of lightning over tropical continents such as Africa and, to a lesser extent, the Amazon Basin, and the near absence of lightning in oceanic storms.
The model then was applied to a hypothetical future climate with double the current carbon dioxide level and a surface that is an average of 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the current climate. The study found that continents warm more than oceans and that the altitude at which lightning forms rises to a level where the storms are usually more vigorous.
These effects combine to cause more of the continental storms that form in the warmer climate to resemble the strongest storms we currently experience.
Lightning produced by strong storms often ignites wildfires in dry areas. Researchers have predicted that some regions would have less humid air in a warmer climate and be more prone to wildfires as a result. However, drier conditions produce fewer storms. "These findings may seem to imply that fewer storms in the future will be good news for disastrous western U.S. wildfires," said Tony Del Genio, lead author of the study and a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York. "But drier conditions near the ground combined with higher lightning flash rates per storm may end up intensifying wildfire damage instead."
The central and eastern areas of the United States are especially prone to severe storms and thunderstorms that arise when strong updrafts combine with horizontal winds that become stronger at higher altitudes. This combination produces damaging horizontal and vertical winds and is a major source of weather-related casualties. In the warmer climate simulation there is a small class of the most extreme storms with both strong updrafts and strong horizontal winds at higher levels that occur more often, and thus the model suggests that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common with warming.
The prediction of stronger continental storms and more lightning in a warmer climate is a natural consequence of the tendency of land surfaces to warm more than oceans and for the freezing level to rise with warming to an altitude where lightning-producing updrafts are stronger. These features of global warming are common to all models, but this is the first climate model to explore the ramifications of the warming for thunderstorms.
Tropical Depression Could Form In Atlantic
NEW YORK - A tropical wave in the central Atlantic Ocean was a little better-defined early Thursday and could become the sixth tropical depression of the season in the next day or two, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in its morning advisory.
A tropical depression is a tropical cyclone in which the maximum sustained wind speed is 38 mph or less.
The NHC said upper-level winds were expected to be favorable for development of the system, which was located about 600 miles
east of the Windward Islands and generally tracking westward.
Computer models still show the system eventually moving into the Caribbean.
Energy traders were keeping a close eye on the tropical wave, which could force short sellers to cover ahead of the long U.S. Labor Day holiday weekend amid fears a stronger storm could develop in warmer Caribbean waters and possibly threaten U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil and natural-gas production.
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
A tropical depression is a tropical cyclone in which the maximum sustained wind speed is 38 mph or less.
The NHC said upper-level winds were expected to be favorable for development of the system, which was located about 600 miles
east of the Windward Islands and generally tracking westward.
Computer models still show the system eventually moving into the Caribbean.
Energy traders were keeping a close eye on the tropical wave, which could force short sellers to cover ahead of the long U.S. Labor Day holiday weekend amid fears a stronger storm could develop in warmer Caribbean waters and possibly threaten U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil and natural-gas production.
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
Elephant Romance
Staff and agencies
Thursday August 30, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
A tame female elephant has fled an Indian circus after eloping with a wild bull elephant that broke open a gate and led her off into the jungle, her distraught handler said today.
"I brought up Savitri since she joined the circus two decades ago," Kalimudddin Sheikh, who unsuccessfully tried to lure his charge away from her new beau, added.
The wild male, who wildlife officials believe was probably in musth - the periodic condition in which bull elephants seek to mate - turned up at the travelling circus when it stopped in the village of Kumar Bazar, in West Bengal state, yesterday.
It broke into an enclosure and led Savitri into the jungle, with the pair being followed by three other female elephants in the same pen. Their trumpeting alerted circus workers, who led them back.
Savitri's mind, however, seemed made up. According to one forestry official, she was last seen bathing with the bull in a jungle pond.
When handlers called for Savitri to come to them, she looped her trunk around the bull's leg and "he protectively shielded her like in a Bollywood blockbuster," the official said.
The forestry department said it would continue to monitor the pair to ensure they did not cause any damage.
Thursday August 30, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
A tame female elephant has fled an Indian circus after eloping with a wild bull elephant that broke open a gate and led her off into the jungle, her distraught handler said today.
"I brought up Savitri since she joined the circus two decades ago," Kalimudddin Sheikh, who unsuccessfully tried to lure his charge away from her new beau, added.
The wild male, who wildlife officials believe was probably in musth - the periodic condition in which bull elephants seek to mate - turned up at the travelling circus when it stopped in the village of Kumar Bazar, in West Bengal state, yesterday.
It broke into an enclosure and led Savitri into the jungle, with the pair being followed by three other female elephants in the same pen. Their trumpeting alerted circus workers, who led them back.
Savitri's mind, however, seemed made up. According to one forestry official, she was last seen bathing with the bull in a jungle pond.
When handlers called for Savitri to come to them, she looped her trunk around the bull's leg and "he protectively shielded her like in a Bollywood blockbuster," the official said.
The forestry department said it would continue to monitor the pair to ensure they did not cause any damage.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
California's water crisis solution: forget conservation. Insane gov wants more dams and diversion for big business.
Arnold, Tell the Truth about California Water!
Schwarzenegger's True Lies about Dams and Canals
By Dan Bacher
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger keeps repeating at his press conferences and meetings the big lie that no dams or water storage facilities have been constructed in California in the past 20 to 30 years.
Apparently, the Schwarzenegger administration believes in the classic propaganda technique that if a big lie is repeated enough, it will be eventually accepted as truth by the media and public. This fallacy is being used to bolster his call for a peripheral canal and more dams in California, although the truth is that several major dams and other storage facilities have been constructed during the last 30 years.
On July 14 at a town meeting in Bakersfield, the Governor stated, "Do you know that for 20 years, well, actually since the late '70s, they have not built a dam? I mean, think about that. They have not built a dam.”
Then on Monday, July 16, the Governor discussed his “Comprehensive Water Plan” at San Luis Reservoir, repeating this false statement again. “But over the last 20 years we have not built a single major reservoir that connects to this great system here, even though we have a population growth from 20 million to 37 million people over the same period,” he said.
On July 23, Gov. Schwarzenegger toured Long Beach Aquifer to discuss his Water Plan for Southern California, yet again repeating another variation of this fallacy.
“Right now our water system is extremely vulnerable,” he stated. “For one thing, we haven’t built a major state reservoir in more than 30 years and in that time our population has grown from 20 million to 37 million. We must solve California’s water problems not only for today, but for 40 years from now.”’
There is no doubt that the California dam building frenzy by the federal, state and regional governments of the period from 1945 through 1970 is long over, but this was because virtually all of the suitable and economically feasible on-stream dam sites already had dams built on them or were located on federally designated “wild and scenic” rivers.
In spite of what the Schwarzenegger says, a number of dams and reservoirs have been constructed in California since the late seventies, including some of the largest reservoirs in their respective regions.
The Contra Costa County Water District constructed one of the Bay Area’s largest ever reservoirs, Los Vaqueros near Livermore, during 1994-1997. The lake was filled to capacity and opened to recreation for the first time in September 2001. The lake has a capacity of 100,000 acre-feet of water now – and the reservoir is set for expansion in the future.
More recently, Diamond Valley Reservoir, built by the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California to improve dry year reliability, was finished in 2003. The lake, located between Temecula and Hemet off Hwy. 79 at Newport Rd. in the Domenigoni/Diamond valleys, has a capacity of 800,000 acre-feet of water and is the largest-ever reservoir constructed in Southern California.
According to MWD’s website, “This reservoir is larger than Lake Havasu and took 4 years to fill. This reservoir will hold as much water as combining Castaic Lake, Lake Mathews, Pyramid Lake, Lake Perris and Lake Skinner into one.”
This reservoir almost doubles Southern California's surface storage capacity and secures six months of emergency storage in the event of a major earthquake.
In addition, the newest federal Central Valley Project reservoir, San Justo Reservoir, was constructed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as part of the San Felipe Division beginning in 1987. Water in San Justo comes from the massive San Luis Reservoir.
As Spreck Rosekrans of Environmental Defense points out, "Water supply development continues in California, though today's solutions are different from those adopted during the middle of the 20th century. Today there are few practical opportunities to build new dams that would impound the natural flow of a large river. Most of California's major rivers are either already dammed, protected by law, or too remote to be economically developed." (See "Recently Developed Water Storage Capacity in California, Environmental Defense, April 2007).
He continues, “Innovative water managers are finding, however, that they can extend supplies in a variety of ways, including increased efficiency, recycling, local storage, groundwater management, and transfers and exchanges with other agencies that have different sources and different needs.”
Rosekranz emphasizes that since 1990, 6,200,000 acre-feet of storage have been developed at six sites alone. This storage includes the 900,000 acre-feet of off-stream storage at Los Vaqueros and Diamond Valley, combined with groundwater aquifers.
These aquifers have been developed either to serve local communities or to use as "banks" that exchange ground and surface supplies, using California's vast network of canals, with distant communities in dry years, said Rosekrans.
Whether it was Schwarzenegger’s staff or the Governor himself who concocted these false statements about California water storage really doesn’t make any difference. However, I call on the Governor NOW to stop repeating these mistruths as justification for his mad drive to build the peripheral canal and two new reservoirs.
The two new proposed dams, Sites Dam in the Sacramento Valley and Temperance Dam on the San Joaquin River, are not considered to be economically feasible for the amount of additional water storage they would provide. “The cost of producing water at Sites and Temperance dams would be between $1,000 and $2,000 per acre foot. Who is going to buy this water at such a high price?” said John Beuttler, conservation director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.
I believe that by promoting the myth that dams and water storage haven’t increased in California over the past 30 years, the Schwarzenegger administration is trying to create in the public mind the idea that water supply can be magically expanded by building two new dams and a peripheral canal. The problem isn’t that that there aren’t enough dams and water storage facilities in California – the problem is that virtually all of the economically feasible dam sites have already been taken and that California’s finite and fragile water resources have already been overallocated.
The governor’s call for more dams and a canal occurs at a time when the California Delta is at the worst ecological crisis in its history. Four species of pelagic (open water) species have crashed to record lows, the result of massive increases of water exports by the federal land state govnerments, the profileration of toxics in the water and the impact of invasive species. Exports from the Delta need to be reduced, not increased as the state and federal governments are proposing.
More recently, Governor Schwarzenegger and Senator Dianne Feinstein met on August 21 in a “Delta Summit” to hear presentations by California’s top water experts working to “fix” the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta. “Experts and stakeholders discussed plans to improve California’s water infrastructure and fix the deteriorating Delta, which supplies clean water to 25 million people in Southern California,” according to the Governor’s office.
“Senator Feinstein and I agree that we need a long-term, sustainable Delta fix that improves conveyance, restores the ecosystem and increases water storage and conservation. We cannot wait until we have a Katrina-like disaster to attack this problem. Twenty five million Californians rely on the Delta for clean, safe water. It also irrigates hundreds of thousands of acres of Central Valley farmland and it is the backbone of California’s $32 billion agricultural industry.”
The problem with this statement is that you can’t have a “long term, sustainable Delta fix” that “improves conveyance,” “increases water storage” and restores the ecosystem at the same time, since Delta water is already overallocated. I’m glad that the Governor mentioned conservation, but so far, his administration has just paid lip service to conserving water.
Building a peripheral canal or constructing economically unfeasible dams will not provide the solution to California’s water problems. The solution is for California and the federal government to take drainage-impaired land in the San Joaquin Valley out of agricultural production and to promote innovative ways of water conservation that will allow California’s fragile water supply to serve both environmental needs and the needs of cities, farmers and industry. The state should also also move full speed ahead with building water desalinization plants in southern California that utilize the latest in technology to effectively increase the public water supply.
Schwarzenegger's True Lies about Dams and Canals
By Dan Bacher
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger keeps repeating at his press conferences and meetings the big lie that no dams or water storage facilities have been constructed in California in the past 20 to 30 years.
Apparently, the Schwarzenegger administration believes in the classic propaganda technique that if a big lie is repeated enough, it will be eventually accepted as truth by the media and public. This fallacy is being used to bolster his call for a peripheral canal and more dams in California, although the truth is that several major dams and other storage facilities have been constructed during the last 30 years.
On July 14 at a town meeting in Bakersfield, the Governor stated, "Do you know that for 20 years, well, actually since the late '70s, they have not built a dam? I mean, think about that. They have not built a dam.”
Then on Monday, July 16, the Governor discussed his “Comprehensive Water Plan” at San Luis Reservoir, repeating this false statement again. “But over the last 20 years we have not built a single major reservoir that connects to this great system here, even though we have a population growth from 20 million to 37 million people over the same period,” he said.
On July 23, Gov. Schwarzenegger toured Long Beach Aquifer to discuss his Water Plan for Southern California, yet again repeating another variation of this fallacy.
“Right now our water system is extremely vulnerable,” he stated. “For one thing, we haven’t built a major state reservoir in more than 30 years and in that time our population has grown from 20 million to 37 million. We must solve California’s water problems not only for today, but for 40 years from now.”’
There is no doubt that the California dam building frenzy by the federal, state and regional governments of the period from 1945 through 1970 is long over, but this was because virtually all of the suitable and economically feasible on-stream dam sites already had dams built on them or were located on federally designated “wild and scenic” rivers.
In spite of what the Schwarzenegger says, a number of dams and reservoirs have been constructed in California since the late seventies, including some of the largest reservoirs in their respective regions.
The Contra Costa County Water District constructed one of the Bay Area’s largest ever reservoirs, Los Vaqueros near Livermore, during 1994-1997. The lake was filled to capacity and opened to recreation for the first time in September 2001. The lake has a capacity of 100,000 acre-feet of water now – and the reservoir is set for expansion in the future.
More recently, Diamond Valley Reservoir, built by the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California to improve dry year reliability, was finished in 2003. The lake, located between Temecula and Hemet off Hwy. 79 at Newport Rd. in the Domenigoni/Diamond valleys, has a capacity of 800,000 acre-feet of water and is the largest-ever reservoir constructed in Southern California.
According to MWD’s website, “This reservoir is larger than Lake Havasu and took 4 years to fill. This reservoir will hold as much water as combining Castaic Lake, Lake Mathews, Pyramid Lake, Lake Perris and Lake Skinner into one.”
This reservoir almost doubles Southern California's surface storage capacity and secures six months of emergency storage in the event of a major earthquake.
In addition, the newest federal Central Valley Project reservoir, San Justo Reservoir, was constructed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as part of the San Felipe Division beginning in 1987. Water in San Justo comes from the massive San Luis Reservoir.
As Spreck Rosekrans of Environmental Defense points out, "Water supply development continues in California, though today's solutions are different from those adopted during the middle of the 20th century. Today there are few practical opportunities to build new dams that would impound the natural flow of a large river. Most of California's major rivers are either already dammed, protected by law, or too remote to be economically developed." (See "Recently Developed Water Storage Capacity in California, Environmental Defense, April 2007).
He continues, “Innovative water managers are finding, however, that they can extend supplies in a variety of ways, including increased efficiency, recycling, local storage, groundwater management, and transfers and exchanges with other agencies that have different sources and different needs.”
Rosekranz emphasizes that since 1990, 6,200,000 acre-feet of storage have been developed at six sites alone. This storage includes the 900,000 acre-feet of off-stream storage at Los Vaqueros and Diamond Valley, combined with groundwater aquifers.
These aquifers have been developed either to serve local communities or to use as "banks" that exchange ground and surface supplies, using California's vast network of canals, with distant communities in dry years, said Rosekrans.
Whether it was Schwarzenegger’s staff or the Governor himself who concocted these false statements about California water storage really doesn’t make any difference. However, I call on the Governor NOW to stop repeating these mistruths as justification for his mad drive to build the peripheral canal and two new reservoirs.
The two new proposed dams, Sites Dam in the Sacramento Valley and Temperance Dam on the San Joaquin River, are not considered to be economically feasible for the amount of additional water storage they would provide. “The cost of producing water at Sites and Temperance dams would be between $1,000 and $2,000 per acre foot. Who is going to buy this water at such a high price?” said John Beuttler, conservation director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.
I believe that by promoting the myth that dams and water storage haven’t increased in California over the past 30 years, the Schwarzenegger administration is trying to create in the public mind the idea that water supply can be magically expanded by building two new dams and a peripheral canal. The problem isn’t that that there aren’t enough dams and water storage facilities in California – the problem is that virtually all of the economically feasible dam sites have already been taken and that California’s finite and fragile water resources have already been overallocated.
The governor’s call for more dams and a canal occurs at a time when the California Delta is at the worst ecological crisis in its history. Four species of pelagic (open water) species have crashed to record lows, the result of massive increases of water exports by the federal land state govnerments, the profileration of toxics in the water and the impact of invasive species. Exports from the Delta need to be reduced, not increased as the state and federal governments are proposing.
More recently, Governor Schwarzenegger and Senator Dianne Feinstein met on August 21 in a “Delta Summit” to hear presentations by California’s top water experts working to “fix” the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta. “Experts and stakeholders discussed plans to improve California’s water infrastructure and fix the deteriorating Delta, which supplies clean water to 25 million people in Southern California,” according to the Governor’s office.
“Senator Feinstein and I agree that we need a long-term, sustainable Delta fix that improves conveyance, restores the ecosystem and increases water storage and conservation. We cannot wait until we have a Katrina-like disaster to attack this problem. Twenty five million Californians rely on the Delta for clean, safe water. It also irrigates hundreds of thousands of acres of Central Valley farmland and it is the backbone of California’s $32 billion agricultural industry.”
The problem with this statement is that you can’t have a “long term, sustainable Delta fix” that “improves conveyance,” “increases water storage” and restores the ecosystem at the same time, since Delta water is already overallocated. I’m glad that the Governor mentioned conservation, but so far, his administration has just paid lip service to conserving water.
Building a peripheral canal or constructing economically unfeasible dams will not provide the solution to California’s water problems. The solution is for California and the federal government to take drainage-impaired land in the San Joaquin Valley out of agricultural production and to promote innovative ways of water conservation that will allow California’s fragile water supply to serve both environmental needs and the needs of cities, farmers and industry. The state should also also move full speed ahead with building water desalinization plants in southern California that utilize the latest in technology to effectively increase the public water supply.
At Australia’s Bunny Fence, Variable Cloudiness Prompts Climate Study
"Rabbit-Proof Fence Has Unintended Consequences"
August 14, 2007 -- By Sonal Noticewala, The New York Times
"A fence built to prevent rabbits from entering the Australian outback has unintentionally allowed scientists to study the effects of land use on regional climates.
The rabbit-proof fence — or bunny fence — in Western Australia was completed in 1907 and stretches about 2,000 miles. It acts as a boundary separating native vegetation from farmland. Within the fence area, scientists have observed a strange phenomenon: above the native vegetation, the sky is rich in rain-producing clouds. But the sky on the farmland side is clear.
Researchers led by Tom Lyons of Murdoch University in Australia and Udaysankar S. Nair of the University of Alabama in Huntsville have come up with three possible explanations for this difference in cloudiness.
One theory is that the dark native vegetation absorbs and releases more heat into the atmosphere than the light-colored crops. These native plants release heat that combines with water vapor from the lower atmosphere, resulting in cloud formation.
Another hypothesis is that the warmer air on the native scrubland rises, creating a vacuum in the lower atmosphere that is then filled by cooler air from cropland across the fence. As a result, clouds form on the scrubland side.
A third idea is that a high concentration of aerosols — particles suspended in the atmosphere — on the agricultural side results in small water droplets and a decrease in the probability of rainfall. On the native landscape, the concentration of aerosols is lower, translating into larger droplets and more rainfall.
Within the last few decades, about 32 million acres of native vegetation have been converted to croplands west of the bunny fence. On the agricultural side of the fence, rainfall has been reduced by 20 percent since the 1970s.
Dr. Nair speculates that increases in the world’s population will prompt the clearing of more land to increase food production. But he wonders whether, in the long run, “we will reach a point of land clearing that will diminish food production,” because rainfall has decreased.
Dr. Lyons said he hoped the research would help scientists “understand the relationships between the land surface and atmosphere and to provide ideas for sustainable agricultural practices.”
The bunny fence, as it turns out, failed to prevent rabbits from entering the farmland, but it has successfully blocked kangaroos and emus."
article @;
http://environmental-economics.blogspot.com/2007/08/rabbit-proof-fence-has-unintended.html
If we consider the loss of oak groves and wetlands in the Sacto/San Jo valley ecosystem, maybe the air in the summer months are much drier without these trees and the moisture produced from their transpiration (evaporation thrrough leaves)??
Valley oak groves can also be seen as a food resource, and an essential foundation for woodland ecosystems. Even one oak tree remaining on a field can become an island refuge for a variety of species. How about helping our farmers connect those oak islands??
"Acorns may be California's single greatest natural resource. An oak tree can bear more than 400 pounds of acorns a year. There are an estimated 1 billion oak trees in California. That's hundreds of millions of pounds of nutrient that serves as the staple for more kinds of creatures than any other food source in the state. But the bulk of nutrients oaks churn out is only the beginning of their contribution. Oak trees form the organizational backbone of numerous habitats from coastal valley bottoms to highland meadows, providing food, shelter, and stability for whole communities of organisms. According to a 1997 University of California study, California's oak woodlands harbor more biodiversity than any other major habitat type in the state: At least 4,000 kinds of insects inhabit them, along with 2,000 kinds of plants, thousands of fungi and lichens, 170 different birds, 60 amphibians and reptiles, and 100 different mammals."
article @;
http://www.baynature.com/2003octdec/v03n04_essentialtree.html
August 14, 2007 -- By Sonal Noticewala, The New York Times
"A fence built to prevent rabbits from entering the Australian outback has unintentionally allowed scientists to study the effects of land use on regional climates.
The rabbit-proof fence — or bunny fence — in Western Australia was completed in 1907 and stretches about 2,000 miles. It acts as a boundary separating native vegetation from farmland. Within the fence area, scientists have observed a strange phenomenon: above the native vegetation, the sky is rich in rain-producing clouds. But the sky on the farmland side is clear.
Researchers led by Tom Lyons of Murdoch University in Australia and Udaysankar S. Nair of the University of Alabama in Huntsville have come up with three possible explanations for this difference in cloudiness.
One theory is that the dark native vegetation absorbs and releases more heat into the atmosphere than the light-colored crops. These native plants release heat that combines with water vapor from the lower atmosphere, resulting in cloud formation.
Another hypothesis is that the warmer air on the native scrubland rises, creating a vacuum in the lower atmosphere that is then filled by cooler air from cropland across the fence. As a result, clouds form on the scrubland side.
A third idea is that a high concentration of aerosols — particles suspended in the atmosphere — on the agricultural side results in small water droplets and a decrease in the probability of rainfall. On the native landscape, the concentration of aerosols is lower, translating into larger droplets and more rainfall.
Within the last few decades, about 32 million acres of native vegetation have been converted to croplands west of the bunny fence. On the agricultural side of the fence, rainfall has been reduced by 20 percent since the 1970s.
Dr. Nair speculates that increases in the world’s population will prompt the clearing of more land to increase food production. But he wonders whether, in the long run, “we will reach a point of land clearing that will diminish food production,” because rainfall has decreased.
Dr. Lyons said he hoped the research would help scientists “understand the relationships between the land surface and atmosphere and to provide ideas for sustainable agricultural practices.”
The bunny fence, as it turns out, failed to prevent rabbits from entering the farmland, but it has successfully blocked kangaroos and emus."
article @;
http://environmental-economics.blogspot.com/2007/08/rabbit-proof-fence-has-unintended.html
If we consider the loss of oak groves and wetlands in the Sacto/San Jo valley ecosystem, maybe the air in the summer months are much drier without these trees and the moisture produced from their transpiration (evaporation thrrough leaves)??
Valley oak groves can also be seen as a food resource, and an essential foundation for woodland ecosystems. Even one oak tree remaining on a field can become an island refuge for a variety of species. How about helping our farmers connect those oak islands??
"Acorns may be California's single greatest natural resource. An oak tree can bear more than 400 pounds of acorns a year. There are an estimated 1 billion oak trees in California. That's hundreds of millions of pounds of nutrient that serves as the staple for more kinds of creatures than any other food source in the state. But the bulk of nutrients oaks churn out is only the beginning of their contribution. Oak trees form the organizational backbone of numerous habitats from coastal valley bottoms to highland meadows, providing food, shelter, and stability for whole communities of organisms. According to a 1997 University of California study, California's oak woodlands harbor more biodiversity than any other major habitat type in the state: At least 4,000 kinds of insects inhabit them, along with 2,000 kinds of plants, thousands of fungi and lichens, 170 different birds, 60 amphibians and reptiles, and 100 different mammals."
article @;
http://www.baynature.com/2003octdec/v03n04_essentialtree.html
Biofuels Must Be Made Sustainably, Says European Commission
European Commission is developing legislation that will require minimum sustainability standards for biofuels development, European Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said at the recent International Biofuels Conference in Brussels, Belgium, on July 5”“6. As part of its ongoing energy strategy, the European Union (EU) has agreed on an action plan to have biofuels comprise at least 10 percent of the region’s transport fuel use by 2020. "It is, of course, essential to ensure that this increase is fulfilled in a sustainable way; we cannot just sit back and assume this will happen automatically," Piebalgs said.
Current trends indicate that 60 percent of the increase in carbon dioxide emissions in the EU between 2005 and 2020 will come from transport, according to Piebalgs. Emphasizing that, "biofuels are not the panacea for all our energy problems," he noted that the renewable fuels—primarily biodiesel and ethanol—can help tackle climate change and other environmental challenges, but only if developed correctly. "Most biofuels deliver solid greenhouse gas savings—but there exist inefficient production techniques that do not," Pieblags said. “The use of these production techniques must be avoided.”
The directive currently under development will give legal backing to the 10-percent goal for biofuels and will include a set of minimum sustainability standards. Only biofuels that meet these standards will count toward the 10-percent target and be eligible for EU tax exemptions. The rules will apply equally to imports as well as to biofuels produced domestically. Debate continues within the EU on what the sustainability standards should include, particularly on issues such as bringing new land into cultivation and developing "second-generation" biofuels that can be derived from straw, organic waste, and woody material.
Worldwatch Institute biofuels expert Raya Widenoja applauds the Commission’s embrace of caution in pursuing its biofuels targets. "It is very encouraging that the EU is recognizing not only the important role these fuels can play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but also that not all biofuels are created equal," she says. If feedstock and production processes are not examined carefully, Widenoja notes, biofuels can do more environmental harm than good. She points to the example of palm oil production in Southeast Asia, which has increased due in part to rising European demand for biodiesel, but is also accelerating the destruction of virgin tropical forests.
According to Piebalgs, the European Commission’s biofuels directive will be ready by the end of 2007. The legislation is part of a larger EU push to have renewable energy sources account for 20 percent of the region’s energy market by 2020. After the draft directive is completed, it will be passed on to the European Council and Parliament for a final decision, Piebalgs said.
______________________________
This story was produced by Eye on Earth, a joint project of the Worldwatch Institute and the blue moon fund.
Current trends indicate that 60 percent of the increase in carbon dioxide emissions in the EU between 2005 and 2020 will come from transport, according to Piebalgs. Emphasizing that, "biofuels are not the panacea for all our energy problems," he noted that the renewable fuels—primarily biodiesel and ethanol—can help tackle climate change and other environmental challenges, but only if developed correctly. "Most biofuels deliver solid greenhouse gas savings—but there exist inefficient production techniques that do not," Pieblags said. “The use of these production techniques must be avoided.”
The directive currently under development will give legal backing to the 10-percent goal for biofuels and will include a set of minimum sustainability standards. Only biofuels that meet these standards will count toward the 10-percent target and be eligible for EU tax exemptions. The rules will apply equally to imports as well as to biofuels produced domestically. Debate continues within the EU on what the sustainability standards should include, particularly on issues such as bringing new land into cultivation and developing "second-generation" biofuels that can be derived from straw, organic waste, and woody material.
Worldwatch Institute biofuels expert Raya Widenoja applauds the Commission’s embrace of caution in pursuing its biofuels targets. "It is very encouraging that the EU is recognizing not only the important role these fuels can play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but also that not all biofuels are created equal," she says. If feedstock and production processes are not examined carefully, Widenoja notes, biofuels can do more environmental harm than good. She points to the example of palm oil production in Southeast Asia, which has increased due in part to rising European demand for biodiesel, but is also accelerating the destruction of virgin tropical forests.
According to Piebalgs, the European Commission’s biofuels directive will be ready by the end of 2007. The legislation is part of a larger EU push to have renewable energy sources account for 20 percent of the region’s energy market by 2020. After the draft directive is completed, it will be passed on to the European Council and Parliament for a final decision, Piebalgs said.
______________________________
This story was produced by Eye on Earth, a joint project of the Worldwatch Institute and the blue moon fund.
Volvo unveils green engines for trucks
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's Volvo, the world's second biggest truck maker, unveiled on Wednesday a line of truck engines adapted to run on renewable fuels and called for more efforts to make such fuels commercially available.
The engines are powered by seven types of fuel, ranging from synthetic diesel to a mix of hydrogen and biogas. These are made from renewable raw materials and do not add carbon dioxide to the ecosystem, the company said.
Rising emissions of carbon dioxide are widely thought to be a leading cause of climate change.
While none of the engines was being produced for the market, manufacturing could begin within a few years if the fuel was available, Volvo Chief Executive Leif Johansson said.
Johansson told a news conference that politicians and energy firms needed to do more to make sure renewable fuels were developed further and made more available to consumers.
"The message here today is that, had the fuels been available, we (Volvo vehicles) could have been carbon dioxide-free within just a few years," he said.
"We have significant problems finding commercially sensible volumes of fuel."
More efforts were needed to create European, or preferably global, standards for renewable fuels and to ensure their distribution, he said, adding that making green truck fuels widely available need not take a long time.
"We are not very far from there today," he said. "There have been two concerns from the fuel industry. One has been that there won't be any vehicles ready if they develop these fuels. We have tried to address that worry today."
But there also needed to be more public investment in research and development concerning new fuels, as well as in promoting them, he added.
The engines are powered by seven types of fuel, ranging from synthetic diesel to a mix of hydrogen and biogas. These are made from renewable raw materials and do not add carbon dioxide to the ecosystem, the company said.
Rising emissions of carbon dioxide are widely thought to be a leading cause of climate change.
While none of the engines was being produced for the market, manufacturing could begin within a few years if the fuel was available, Volvo Chief Executive Leif Johansson said.
Johansson told a news conference that politicians and energy firms needed to do more to make sure renewable fuels were developed further and made more available to consumers.
"The message here today is that, had the fuels been available, we (Volvo vehicles) could have been carbon dioxide-free within just a few years," he said.
"We have significant problems finding commercially sensible volumes of fuel."
More efforts were needed to create European, or preferably global, standards for renewable fuels and to ensure their distribution, he said, adding that making green truck fuels widely available need not take a long time.
"We are not very far from there today," he said. "There have been two concerns from the fuel industry. One has been that there won't be any vehicles ready if they develop these fuels. We have tried to address that worry today."
But there also needed to be more public investment in research and development concerning new fuels, as well as in promoting them, he added.
Driving Economic Growth - Mobility for Development
Geneva, 28 August 2007 - Mobility is key to economic development. Businesses need road, rail, shipping and air networks to transport goods and services to markets, while people need them to get to jobs and use basic services. Mobility is not solely about vehicles; it is also about infrastructure, communications technology, access to resources and energy, facilitation of trade and simplifying burdensome bureaucracy.
It is also intimately linked to the global energy crisis. Today the transport sector accounts for one-quarter of global CO2 emissions and is growing by 2% per year. It is estimated that global demand for oil will increase by 60% up to 2030, and some 75% of this will come from the transport sector, mainly in developing countries.
Increased demand for mobility results in higher energy demands, both to fuel new vehicles and modes of transport and for production and manufacturing processes. It also implies greater demand for raw materials such as rubber, increased demand for cement and asphalt for road building, and higher rates of extraction of metals from mines, including rarer, more specialized metals, many of which are found in less politically stable areas of the world.
As economic growth and industrialization accelerate and livelihoods and incomes improve, the demand for mobility increases. In much of the developing world, demand for mobility solutions to drive economic growth continues to outpace supply, while paradoxically the growing number of vehicles has not been matched by improved infrastructure or road safety provisions.
The World Health Organization rates road accidents as a major killer and notes that 85% of all road deaths occur in developing or transitional countries, a disproportionate burden given that these countries own only 40% of the world’s motor vehicles.
Around half the world’s population now lives in cities, and many of these cities are suffering increased congestion, haphazard urban planning, and increasing pollution from traffic. In addition, efforts to increase rural-urban connectivity can result in the destruction of important ecosystems and habitats and lead to the displacement of poorer segments of the population to make way for roads and rail links.
The expansion of global freight, while a major driver of economic growth, represents a further challenge, particularly for land-locked countries. Inadequate or poor road or rail links, high vehicle operating costs, and transit charges all help push up the costs of transborder freight in landlocked countries. Similarly, although 80% (by tonnage) of trade originating in developing countries is waterborne, the costs and time required to move containers to seaports can have important implications for the competitiveness of traded products.
Efforts to manage the mobility-development conundrum offer exciting and innovative opportunities for businesses.
A World Bank survey of private investment in infrastructure between 1990 and 2004 across the developing world revealed that six countries accounted for 80% of the total investment: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Malaysia and Mexico. The residual 20% was shared among the remaining developing countries with those in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia receiving the least. Bridging this investment divide could open up many new markets.
Part of the solution to meeting global mobility demand while reducing negative environmental impacts could rest in the development of alternative clean renewable energy solutions to power transport mechanisms and their production. The development of biofuels might be one such example, though a controversial one. Their backers promote them as providing clean energy while reducing the reliance of oil-dependent countries on imported fuel and so contributing to fuel self-sufficiency.
Appropriate institutional frameworks are needed to ensure that biofuel development is truly sustainable. The role of mobility in driving economic growth must be acknowledged more fully and institutional buy-in is essential to harness its potential. Efforts are required to encourage institutional investment to improve transport networks and infrastructure and to ensure that rural and urban transport planning is unified. Removing or reducing burdensome fees for goods transported to shipping ports would help to reduce costs and improve competitiveness.
The mobility challenge also offers opportunities for the development of communications, services, planning and logistics to reduce the amount of time and energy people spend traveling to jobs, markets or resources.
Firms that produce transport infrastructure and transport companies have a vested interest in sustainable mobility. Many see the mobility challenge as an opportunity. What is required now is a strong business voice to encourage the development of appropriate infrastructure and institutional frameworks. This is one of the aspects of mobility that members of the WBCSD Mobility for Development group are working on as part of their efforts to address the mobility divide challenge.
It is also intimately linked to the global energy crisis. Today the transport sector accounts for one-quarter of global CO2 emissions and is growing by 2% per year. It is estimated that global demand for oil will increase by 60% up to 2030, and some 75% of this will come from the transport sector, mainly in developing countries.
Increased demand for mobility results in higher energy demands, both to fuel new vehicles and modes of transport and for production and manufacturing processes. It also implies greater demand for raw materials such as rubber, increased demand for cement and asphalt for road building, and higher rates of extraction of metals from mines, including rarer, more specialized metals, many of which are found in less politically stable areas of the world.
As economic growth and industrialization accelerate and livelihoods and incomes improve, the demand for mobility increases. In much of the developing world, demand for mobility solutions to drive economic growth continues to outpace supply, while paradoxically the growing number of vehicles has not been matched by improved infrastructure or road safety provisions.
The World Health Organization rates road accidents as a major killer and notes that 85% of all road deaths occur in developing or transitional countries, a disproportionate burden given that these countries own only 40% of the world’s motor vehicles.
Around half the world’s population now lives in cities, and many of these cities are suffering increased congestion, haphazard urban planning, and increasing pollution from traffic. In addition, efforts to increase rural-urban connectivity can result in the destruction of important ecosystems and habitats and lead to the displacement of poorer segments of the population to make way for roads and rail links.
The expansion of global freight, while a major driver of economic growth, represents a further challenge, particularly for land-locked countries. Inadequate or poor road or rail links, high vehicle operating costs, and transit charges all help push up the costs of transborder freight in landlocked countries. Similarly, although 80% (by tonnage) of trade originating in developing countries is waterborne, the costs and time required to move containers to seaports can have important implications for the competitiveness of traded products.
Efforts to manage the mobility-development conundrum offer exciting and innovative opportunities for businesses.
A World Bank survey of private investment in infrastructure between 1990 and 2004 across the developing world revealed that six countries accounted for 80% of the total investment: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Malaysia and Mexico. The residual 20% was shared among the remaining developing countries with those in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia receiving the least. Bridging this investment divide could open up many new markets.
Part of the solution to meeting global mobility demand while reducing negative environmental impacts could rest in the development of alternative clean renewable energy solutions to power transport mechanisms and their production. The development of biofuels might be one such example, though a controversial one. Their backers promote them as providing clean energy while reducing the reliance of oil-dependent countries on imported fuel and so contributing to fuel self-sufficiency.
Appropriate institutional frameworks are needed to ensure that biofuel development is truly sustainable. The role of mobility in driving economic growth must be acknowledged more fully and institutional buy-in is essential to harness its potential. Efforts are required to encourage institutional investment to improve transport networks and infrastructure and to ensure that rural and urban transport planning is unified. Removing or reducing burdensome fees for goods transported to shipping ports would help to reduce costs and improve competitiveness.
The mobility challenge also offers opportunities for the development of communications, services, planning and logistics to reduce the amount of time and energy people spend traveling to jobs, markets or resources.
Firms that produce transport infrastructure and transport companies have a vested interest in sustainable mobility. Many see the mobility challenge as an opportunity. What is required now is a strong business voice to encourage the development of appropriate infrastructure and institutional frameworks. This is one of the aspects of mobility that members of the WBCSD Mobility for Development group are working on as part of their efforts to address the mobility divide challenge.
FACTBOX-Draft U.N. study shows climate risks and solutions
Reuters) - Following are highlights of a draft 21-page U.N. report summing up global warming research by 2,500 scientists this year. The report, obtained by Reuters and giving an overview of 3,000 pages of previously published documents by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will be issued in November in Spain after review by governments.
SCIENCE
-- "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level.
-- Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases. More than 89 percent of observed changes are consistent with a warming world.
-- Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due tothe observed increase in anthropogenic (from human activities)greenhouse gas concentrations.
-- Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years.
IMPACTS
-- Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century. Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would increase for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized. It is very unlikely that there will be large abrupt changes due to changes in (the system of major ocean currents) or ice sheets over the 21st century. The probability of large abrupt climate changes beyond 2100 cannot be assessed with confidence.
SOLUTIONS
-- There is high agreement and much evidence...that there is substantial economic potential for the mitigation of global greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades that could offset the projected growth of global emissions or reduce emissions below current levels.
-- Many impacts can be avoided, reduced or delayed by mitigation, but adaptation is also necessary even at the lowest stabilization levels assessed in this report.
-- Global emissions must peak and then decline to meet any of the assessed stabilization levels. Mitigation efforts over the next two to three decades will have a large impact on opportunities to achieve lower stabilization levels and resulting long-term equilibrium temperature changes.
-- There is high agreement and much evidence that the range of stabilization levels assessed can be achieved by deployment of a portfolio of technologies that are currently available and those that are expected to be commercialized in coming decades."
SCIENCE
-- "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level.
-- Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases. More than 89 percent of observed changes are consistent with a warming world.
-- Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due tothe observed increase in anthropogenic (from human activities)greenhouse gas concentrations.
-- Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years.
IMPACTS
-- Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century. Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would increase for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized. It is very unlikely that there will be large abrupt changes due to changes in (the system of major ocean currents) or ice sheets over the 21st century. The probability of large abrupt climate changes beyond 2100 cannot be assessed with confidence.
SOLUTIONS
-- There is high agreement and much evidence...that there is substantial economic potential for the mitigation of global greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades that could offset the projected growth of global emissions or reduce emissions below current levels.
-- Many impacts can be avoided, reduced or delayed by mitigation, but adaptation is also necessary even at the lowest stabilization levels assessed in this report.
-- Global emissions must peak and then decline to meet any of the assessed stabilization levels. Mitigation efforts over the next two to three decades will have a large impact on opportunities to achieve lower stabilization levels and resulting long-term equilibrium temperature changes.
-- There is high agreement and much evidence that the range of stabilization levels assessed can be achieved by deployment of a portfolio of technologies that are currently available and those that are expected to be commercialized in coming decades."
Mankind to blame for warming but can slow damage
VIENNA (Reuters) - Mankind is to blame for climate change but governments still have time to slow accelerating damage at moderate cost if they act quickly, a draft U.N. report shows.
Underlining the need for speed, it says a European Union goal of holding temperature rises to a maximum 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times is almost out of reach.
The 21-page study, due for release in November, lays out possible responses to global warming but cautions that some impacts are already inevitable, such as a gradual rise in sea levels that is set to last for centuries.
The report gives a first overview of 3,000 pages of research by the U.N.'s climate panel already published in three installments this year about the science, the likely impacts and the costs of slowing climate change.
The authoritative summary, obtained by Reuters and meant to guide governments in working out how to slow warming, reiterates that humans are to blame for climate change but that clean technologies are available to offset the most harmful emissions.
"Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (from human activities) greenhouse gas concentrations," it says.
"Very likely" means at least 90 percent probability, up from 66 percent in a previous report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001 when the link was only judged "likely." The IPCC draws on work by 2,500 scientists.
The report shows a table indicating worsening damage such as bleached corals, coastal flooding, increasing costs of treating disease, deaths from heat waves and rising risks of extinctions of species of animals and plants.
But it says: "Many impacts can be avoided, reduced or delayed" by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
FOSSIL FUELS
Among options to offset warming, blamed mainly on greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are energy efficiency, wider use of renewable energies, carbon markets or burying carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants.
The report indicates that the cost of such initiatives would be manageable for the world economy.
Global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2030 would be reduced by up to 3 percent in the most stringent case that would require emissions to peak within about 15 years. Other less tough goals would mean only a fractional loss of GDP by 2030.
The report will be issued in Valencia, Spain, on November 17 after review by governments, along with an even shorter 5-page summary. The draft is dated May 15 -- an updated version has been written this month to take account of government suggestions, scientists said.
"Warming of the climate is now unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global mean sea level," the summary begins.
The report reiterates best estimates that temperatures will rise by 1.8 to 4.0 Celsius (3 to 7 Fahrenheit) this century and that sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 centimeters.
But it says ocean levels are likely to keep rising "for many centuries" even if greenhouse gases are stabilized, because water expands as it heats up. The deep oceans will keep heating up as warmth filters down from the surface.
Under a range of scenarios, such thermal expansion of the oceans alone would bring sea level rises of 0.4 to 3.7 meters in coming centuries, without counting any melting of ice in glaciers or in the vast Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets.
About 1,000 delegates from 158 nations are meeting in Vienna this week to discuss ways to extend the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol for fighting warming beyond 2012 and to widen it to include outsiders such as the United States and developing nations.
Underlining the need for speed, it says a European Union goal of holding temperature rises to a maximum 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times is almost out of reach.
The 21-page study, due for release in November, lays out possible responses to global warming but cautions that some impacts are already inevitable, such as a gradual rise in sea levels that is set to last for centuries.
The report gives a first overview of 3,000 pages of research by the U.N.'s climate panel already published in three installments this year about the science, the likely impacts and the costs of slowing climate change.
The authoritative summary, obtained by Reuters and meant to guide governments in working out how to slow warming, reiterates that humans are to blame for climate change but that clean technologies are available to offset the most harmful emissions.
"Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (from human activities) greenhouse gas concentrations," it says.
"Very likely" means at least 90 percent probability, up from 66 percent in a previous report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001 when the link was only judged "likely." The IPCC draws on work by 2,500 scientists.
The report shows a table indicating worsening damage such as bleached corals, coastal flooding, increasing costs of treating disease, deaths from heat waves and rising risks of extinctions of species of animals and plants.
But it says: "Many impacts can be avoided, reduced or delayed" by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
FOSSIL FUELS
Among options to offset warming, blamed mainly on greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are energy efficiency, wider use of renewable energies, carbon markets or burying carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants.
The report indicates that the cost of such initiatives would be manageable for the world economy.
Global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2030 would be reduced by up to 3 percent in the most stringent case that would require emissions to peak within about 15 years. Other less tough goals would mean only a fractional loss of GDP by 2030.
The report will be issued in Valencia, Spain, on November 17 after review by governments, along with an even shorter 5-page summary. The draft is dated May 15 -- an updated version has been written this month to take account of government suggestions, scientists said.
"Warming of the climate is now unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global mean sea level," the summary begins.
The report reiterates best estimates that temperatures will rise by 1.8 to 4.0 Celsius (3 to 7 Fahrenheit) this century and that sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 centimeters.
But it says ocean levels are likely to keep rising "for many centuries" even if greenhouse gases are stabilized, because water expands as it heats up. The deep oceans will keep heating up as warmth filters down from the surface.
Under a range of scenarios, such thermal expansion of the oceans alone would bring sea level rises of 0.4 to 3.7 meters in coming centuries, without counting any melting of ice in glaciers or in the vast Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets.
About 1,000 delegates from 158 nations are meeting in Vienna this week to discuss ways to extend the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol for fighting warming beyond 2012 and to widen it to include outsiders such as the United States and developing nations.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
The looming food crisis
Land that was once used to grow food is increasingly being turned over to biofuels. This may help us to fight global warming - but it is driving up food prices throughout the world and making life increasingly hard in developing countries. Add in water shortages, natural disasters and an ever-rising population, and what you have is a recipe for disaster. John Vidal reports
Wednesday August 29, 2007
The Guardian
The mile upon mile of tall maize waving to the horizon around the small Nebraskan town of Carleton looks perfect to farmers such as Mark Jagels. He and his father farm 2,500 acres (10m sq km), the price of maize - what the Americans call corn - has never been higher, and the future has seldom seemed rosier. Carleton (town motto: "The center of it all") is booming, with $200m of Californian money put up for a new biofuel factory and, after years in the doldrums, there is new full-time, well-paid work for 50 people.
But there is a catch. The same fields that surround Jagels' house on the great plains may be bringing new money to rural America, but they are also helping to push up the price of bread in Manchester, tortillas in Mexico City and beer in Madrid. As a direct result of what is happening in places like Nebraska, Kansas, Indiana and Oklahoma, food aid for the poorest people in southern Africa, pork in China and beef in Britain are all more expensive.
Challenged by President George Bush to produce 35bn gallons of non-fossil transport fuels by 2017 to reduce US dependency on imported oil, the Jagels family and thousands of farmers like them are patriotically turning the corn belt of America from the bread basket of the world into an enormous fuel tank. Only a year ago, their maize mostly went to cattle feed or was exported as food aid. Come harvest time in September, almost all will end up at the new plant at Carleton, where it will be fermented to make ethanol, a clear, colourless alcohol consumed, not by people, but by cars.
The era of "agrofuels" has arrived, and the scale of the changes it is already forcing on farming and markets around the world is immense. In Nebraska alone, an extra million acres of maize have been planted this year, and the state boasts it will produce 1bn gallons of ethanol. Across the US, 20% of the whole maize crop went to ethanol last year. How much is that? Just 2% of US automobile use.
"Probably hasn't looked any better than it looks right now," Jerry Stahr, another Nebraskan farmer, told his local paper recently.
Jagels and Stahr are part of a global green rush, one of the greatest shifts that world agriculture has seen in decades. As the US, Europe, China, Japan and other countries commit themselves to using 10% or more alternative automobile fuels, farmers everywhere are rushing to grow maize, sugar cane, palm oil and oil seed rape, all of which can be turned into ethanol or other biofuels for automobiles. But that means getting out of other crops.
The scale of the change is boggling. The Indian government says it wants to plant 35m acres (140,000 sq km) of biofuel crops, Brazil as much as 300m acres (1.2m sq km). Southern Africa is being touted as the future Middle East of biofuels, with as much as 1bn acres (4m sq km) of land ready to be converted to crops such as Jatropha curcas (physic nut), a tough shrub that can be grown on poor land. Indonesia has said it intends to overtake Malaysia and increase its palm oil production from 16m acres (64,000 sq km) now to 65m acres (260,000 sq km) in 2025.
While this may be marginally better for carbon emissions and energy security, it is proving horrendous for food prices and anyone who stands in the way of a rampant new industry. A year or two ago, almost all the land where maize is now being grown to make ethanol in the US was being farmed for human or animal food. And because America exports most of the world's maize, its price has doubled in 10 months, and wheat has risen about 50%.
The effect on agriculture in the UK is price increases all round. "The world price [of maize] has doubled," says Mark Hill, food partner at the business advisory firm Deloitte. "In June, wheat prices across the US and Europe hit their highest levels in more than a decade. These price hikes are likely to trigger inflation in food prices, as processors are forced to pay increased costs for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat."
UK flour millers, for example, need 5.5m tonnes of wheat to produce the 12m loaves sold each day in the UK. The majority of this wheat is grown in the UK, and in the last year milling wheat prices moved from around £100 a tonne to £200 a tonne. Hovis raised the price of a standard loaf from 93p to 99p in February and has said more increases are on the way. In France, consumers have also been warned that their beloved baguette will become more expensive.
The era of cheap food is over, says Hill. World commodity prices of sugar, milk and cocoa have all surged, prompting the biggest increase in retail food prices in three decades in some countries. "Meat, too, will cost more because chicken and pigs are fed largely on grain," says Hill. "And while anyone growing grains will be better off, dairy and livestock producers may well struggle in this environment."
But the surge in demand for agrofuels such as ethanol is hitting the poor and the environment the hardest. The UN World Food Programme, which feeds about 90m people mostly with US maize, reckons that 850m people around the world are already undernourished. There will soon be more because the price of food aid has increased 20% in just a year. Meanwhile, Indian food prices have risen 11% in a year, the price of the staple tortilla quadrupled in Mexico in February and crowds of 75,000 people came on to the streets in protest. South Africa has seen food-price rises of nearly 17%, and China was forced to halt all new planting of corn for ethanol after staple foods such as pork soared by 42% last year.
In the US, where nearly 40 million people are below the official poverty line, the Department of Agriculture recently predicted a 10% rise in the price of chicken. The prices of bread, beef, eggs and milk rose 7.5 % in July, the highest monthly rise in 25 years.
"The competition for grain between the world's 800 million motorists, who want to maintain their mobility, and its two billion poorest people, who are simply trying to survive, is emerging as an epic issue," says Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute thinktank, and author of the book Who Will Feed China?
It is not going to get any better, says Brown. The UN's World Food Organisation predicts that demand for biofuels will grow by 170% in the next three years. A separate report from the OECD, the club of the world's 30 richest countries, suggested food-price rises of between 20% and 50% over the next decade, and the head of Nestlé, the world's largest food processor, said prices would remain high as far as anyone could see ahead.
A "perfect storm" of ecological and social factors appears to be gathering force, threatening vast numbers of people with food shortages and price rises. Even as the world's big farmers are pulling out of producing food for people and animals, the global population is rising by 87 million people a year; developing countries such as China and India are switching to meat-based diets that need more land; and climate change is starting to hit food producers hard. Recent reports in the journals Science and Nature suggest that one-third of ocean fisheries are in collapse, two-thirds will be in collapse by 2025, and all major ocean fisheries may be virtually gone by 2048. "Global grain supplies will drop to their lowest levels on record this year. Outside of wartime, they have not been this low in a century, perhaps longer," says the US Department of Agriculture.
In seven of the past eight years the world has actually grown less grain than it consumed, says Brown. World stocks of grain - that is, the food held in reserve for times of emergency - are now sufficient for just over 50 days. According to experts, we are in "the post- food-surplus era".
The food crisis, Brown warns, is only just beginning. What worries him as much as the new competition between food and fuel is that the booming Chinese and Indian populations - the two largest nations in the world, with nearly 40% of the world's population between them - are giving up their traditional vegetable-rich diets to adopt typical "American" diets that contain more meat and dairy products. Meat demand in China has quadrupled in 30 years, and in India, milk and egg products are increasingly popular.
In itself, this is no problem, say Brown and others, except that it means an accelerated demand for water to grow more food. It takes 7kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef, and increased demand will require huge amounts of grain-growing land. Much of this, of course, will need to be irrigated. "Water tables are now falling in countries that contain over half the world's people," Brown points out. "While numerous analysts and policymakers are concerned about a future of water shortages, few have connected the dots to see that a future of water shortages means a future of food shortages."
New figures from the World Bank, he says, show that 15% of the world's present food supplies, on which 160 million people depend, are being grown with water drawn from rapidly depleting underground sources or from rivers that are drying up. In large areas of China and India, the water table has fallen catastrophically.
Scientists are becoming increasingly alarmed. Earlier this year, water specialists from hundreds of institutes around the world published the biggest ever assessment of water and food. Their conclusions were chilling. With the earth's water, land and human resources, it would be possible to produce enough food for the future, they said. "But it is probable that today's food production and environmental trends will lead to crises in many parts of the world," said David Molden, deputy director general of the International Water Management Institute.
Climate change, meanwhile, is leading to more intense rains, unpredictable storms, longer-lasting droughts, and interrupted seasons. In Britain, the recent floods will result in a shortage of vegetables such as potatoes and peas, and cereals such as wheat. This comes on top of a 4.9% rise in food prices in the year to May - well over consumer price inflation - and a 9.6% hike in vegetable prices.
Britain can get by, but elsewhere climate change is proving disastrous. "I met leaders from Madagascar reeling from seven cyclones in the first six months of the year," Josette Sheeran, new director of the World Food Programme, told colleagues in Rome recently. "I asked them when the season ends and was told that such questions are becoming more difficult to answer. Farmers know that predictable patterns in weather are becoming a thing of the past. How does the global food supply system deal with such changing risk?"
The answer is: with ever greater difficulty. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that rain-dependent agriculture could be cut in half by 2020 as a result of climate change. "Anything even close to a 50% reduction in yields would obviously pose huge problems," said Sheeran. Within a week, Lesotho had declared a food emergency after the worst drought in 30 years and greatly reduced harvests in neighbouring South Africa pushed prices well beyond the reach of most of the population.
All this is far too gloomy, say other analysts and politicians. Earlier this year, Brazil's president, Luiz Lula, told the Guardian that there was no need for world food shortages, or any destruction of forests to grow more food at all. "Brazil has 320m hectares [3.2m sq km] of arable land, only a fifth of which is cultivated. Of this, less than 4% is used for ethanol production ... This is not a choice between food and energy."
Others say that the food price rises now being seen are temporary and will fall back within a year as the market responds. Technologists pin their faith on GM crops, or drought- resistant crops, or trust that biofuel producers will develop technologies that require less raw material or use non-edible parts of food. The immediate best bet is that countries such as Argentina, Poland, Ukraine and Kazakhstan will grow more food for export as US output declines.
Back on the great plains, meanwhile, ethanol fever is running high. This time last year, there were fewer than 100 ethanol plants in the whole United States, with a combined production capacity of 5bn gallons. There are now at least 50 more new plants being built and over 300 more are planned. If even half of them are finished, they will help to rewrite the politics of global food.
Wednesday August 29, 2007
The Guardian
The mile upon mile of tall maize waving to the horizon around the small Nebraskan town of Carleton looks perfect to farmers such as Mark Jagels. He and his father farm 2,500 acres (10m sq km), the price of maize - what the Americans call corn - has never been higher, and the future has seldom seemed rosier. Carleton (town motto: "The center of it all") is booming, with $200m of Californian money put up for a new biofuel factory and, after years in the doldrums, there is new full-time, well-paid work for 50 people.
But there is a catch. The same fields that surround Jagels' house on the great plains may be bringing new money to rural America, but they are also helping to push up the price of bread in Manchester, tortillas in Mexico City and beer in Madrid. As a direct result of what is happening in places like Nebraska, Kansas, Indiana and Oklahoma, food aid for the poorest people in southern Africa, pork in China and beef in Britain are all more expensive.
Challenged by President George Bush to produce 35bn gallons of non-fossil transport fuels by 2017 to reduce US dependency on imported oil, the Jagels family and thousands of farmers like them are patriotically turning the corn belt of America from the bread basket of the world into an enormous fuel tank. Only a year ago, their maize mostly went to cattle feed or was exported as food aid. Come harvest time in September, almost all will end up at the new plant at Carleton, where it will be fermented to make ethanol, a clear, colourless alcohol consumed, not by people, but by cars.
The era of "agrofuels" has arrived, and the scale of the changes it is already forcing on farming and markets around the world is immense. In Nebraska alone, an extra million acres of maize have been planted this year, and the state boasts it will produce 1bn gallons of ethanol. Across the US, 20% of the whole maize crop went to ethanol last year. How much is that? Just 2% of US automobile use.
"Probably hasn't looked any better than it looks right now," Jerry Stahr, another Nebraskan farmer, told his local paper recently.
Jagels and Stahr are part of a global green rush, one of the greatest shifts that world agriculture has seen in decades. As the US, Europe, China, Japan and other countries commit themselves to using 10% or more alternative automobile fuels, farmers everywhere are rushing to grow maize, sugar cane, palm oil and oil seed rape, all of which can be turned into ethanol or other biofuels for automobiles. But that means getting out of other crops.
The scale of the change is boggling. The Indian government says it wants to plant 35m acres (140,000 sq km) of biofuel crops, Brazil as much as 300m acres (1.2m sq km). Southern Africa is being touted as the future Middle East of biofuels, with as much as 1bn acres (4m sq km) of land ready to be converted to crops such as Jatropha curcas (physic nut), a tough shrub that can be grown on poor land. Indonesia has said it intends to overtake Malaysia and increase its palm oil production from 16m acres (64,000 sq km) now to 65m acres (260,000 sq km) in 2025.
While this may be marginally better for carbon emissions and energy security, it is proving horrendous for food prices and anyone who stands in the way of a rampant new industry. A year or two ago, almost all the land where maize is now being grown to make ethanol in the US was being farmed for human or animal food. And because America exports most of the world's maize, its price has doubled in 10 months, and wheat has risen about 50%.
The effect on agriculture in the UK is price increases all round. "The world price [of maize] has doubled," says Mark Hill, food partner at the business advisory firm Deloitte. "In June, wheat prices across the US and Europe hit their highest levels in more than a decade. These price hikes are likely to trigger inflation in food prices, as processors are forced to pay increased costs for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat."
UK flour millers, for example, need 5.5m tonnes of wheat to produce the 12m loaves sold each day in the UK. The majority of this wheat is grown in the UK, and in the last year milling wheat prices moved from around £100 a tonne to £200 a tonne. Hovis raised the price of a standard loaf from 93p to 99p in February and has said more increases are on the way. In France, consumers have also been warned that their beloved baguette will become more expensive.
The era of cheap food is over, says Hill. World commodity prices of sugar, milk and cocoa have all surged, prompting the biggest increase in retail food prices in three decades in some countries. "Meat, too, will cost more because chicken and pigs are fed largely on grain," says Hill. "And while anyone growing grains will be better off, dairy and livestock producers may well struggle in this environment."
But the surge in demand for agrofuels such as ethanol is hitting the poor and the environment the hardest. The UN World Food Programme, which feeds about 90m people mostly with US maize, reckons that 850m people around the world are already undernourished. There will soon be more because the price of food aid has increased 20% in just a year. Meanwhile, Indian food prices have risen 11% in a year, the price of the staple tortilla quadrupled in Mexico in February and crowds of 75,000 people came on to the streets in protest. South Africa has seen food-price rises of nearly 17%, and China was forced to halt all new planting of corn for ethanol after staple foods such as pork soared by 42% last year.
In the US, where nearly 40 million people are below the official poverty line, the Department of Agriculture recently predicted a 10% rise in the price of chicken. The prices of bread, beef, eggs and milk rose 7.5 % in July, the highest monthly rise in 25 years.
"The competition for grain between the world's 800 million motorists, who want to maintain their mobility, and its two billion poorest people, who are simply trying to survive, is emerging as an epic issue," says Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute thinktank, and author of the book Who Will Feed China?
It is not going to get any better, says Brown. The UN's World Food Organisation predicts that demand for biofuels will grow by 170% in the next three years. A separate report from the OECD, the club of the world's 30 richest countries, suggested food-price rises of between 20% and 50% over the next decade, and the head of Nestlé, the world's largest food processor, said prices would remain high as far as anyone could see ahead.
A "perfect storm" of ecological and social factors appears to be gathering force, threatening vast numbers of people with food shortages and price rises. Even as the world's big farmers are pulling out of producing food for people and animals, the global population is rising by 87 million people a year; developing countries such as China and India are switching to meat-based diets that need more land; and climate change is starting to hit food producers hard. Recent reports in the journals Science and Nature suggest that one-third of ocean fisheries are in collapse, two-thirds will be in collapse by 2025, and all major ocean fisheries may be virtually gone by 2048. "Global grain supplies will drop to their lowest levels on record this year. Outside of wartime, they have not been this low in a century, perhaps longer," says the US Department of Agriculture.
In seven of the past eight years the world has actually grown less grain than it consumed, says Brown. World stocks of grain - that is, the food held in reserve for times of emergency - are now sufficient for just over 50 days. According to experts, we are in "the post- food-surplus era".
The food crisis, Brown warns, is only just beginning. What worries him as much as the new competition between food and fuel is that the booming Chinese and Indian populations - the two largest nations in the world, with nearly 40% of the world's population between them - are giving up their traditional vegetable-rich diets to adopt typical "American" diets that contain more meat and dairy products. Meat demand in China has quadrupled in 30 years, and in India, milk and egg products are increasingly popular.
In itself, this is no problem, say Brown and others, except that it means an accelerated demand for water to grow more food. It takes 7kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef, and increased demand will require huge amounts of grain-growing land. Much of this, of course, will need to be irrigated. "Water tables are now falling in countries that contain over half the world's people," Brown points out. "While numerous analysts and policymakers are concerned about a future of water shortages, few have connected the dots to see that a future of water shortages means a future of food shortages."
New figures from the World Bank, he says, show that 15% of the world's present food supplies, on which 160 million people depend, are being grown with water drawn from rapidly depleting underground sources or from rivers that are drying up. In large areas of China and India, the water table has fallen catastrophically.
Scientists are becoming increasingly alarmed. Earlier this year, water specialists from hundreds of institutes around the world published the biggest ever assessment of water and food. Their conclusions were chilling. With the earth's water, land and human resources, it would be possible to produce enough food for the future, they said. "But it is probable that today's food production and environmental trends will lead to crises in many parts of the world," said David Molden, deputy director general of the International Water Management Institute.
Climate change, meanwhile, is leading to more intense rains, unpredictable storms, longer-lasting droughts, and interrupted seasons. In Britain, the recent floods will result in a shortage of vegetables such as potatoes and peas, and cereals such as wheat. This comes on top of a 4.9% rise in food prices in the year to May - well over consumer price inflation - and a 9.6% hike in vegetable prices.
Britain can get by, but elsewhere climate change is proving disastrous. "I met leaders from Madagascar reeling from seven cyclones in the first six months of the year," Josette Sheeran, new director of the World Food Programme, told colleagues in Rome recently. "I asked them when the season ends and was told that such questions are becoming more difficult to answer. Farmers know that predictable patterns in weather are becoming a thing of the past. How does the global food supply system deal with such changing risk?"
The answer is: with ever greater difficulty. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that rain-dependent agriculture could be cut in half by 2020 as a result of climate change. "Anything even close to a 50% reduction in yields would obviously pose huge problems," said Sheeran. Within a week, Lesotho had declared a food emergency after the worst drought in 30 years and greatly reduced harvests in neighbouring South Africa pushed prices well beyond the reach of most of the population.
All this is far too gloomy, say other analysts and politicians. Earlier this year, Brazil's president, Luiz Lula, told the Guardian that there was no need for world food shortages, or any destruction of forests to grow more food at all. "Brazil has 320m hectares [3.2m sq km] of arable land, only a fifth of which is cultivated. Of this, less than 4% is used for ethanol production ... This is not a choice between food and energy."
Others say that the food price rises now being seen are temporary and will fall back within a year as the market responds. Technologists pin their faith on GM crops, or drought- resistant crops, or trust that biofuel producers will develop technologies that require less raw material or use non-edible parts of food. The immediate best bet is that countries such as Argentina, Poland, Ukraine and Kazakhstan will grow more food for export as US output declines.
Back on the great plains, meanwhile, ethanol fever is running high. This time last year, there were fewer than 100 ethanol plants in the whole United States, with a combined production capacity of 5bn gallons. There are now at least 50 more new plants being built and over 300 more are planned. If even half of them are finished, they will help to rewrite the politics of global food.
The mysterious disappearance of millions of bees is fueling fears of an agricultural disaster: possible $9.3 billion lost in agriculture
Possible collapse in the food supply? Sounds like doomsday liberal talk again. But wait...this is Fortune magazine speaking.
-blogger
As bees go missing, a $9.3B crisis lurks
The mysterious disappearance of millions of bees is fueling fears of an agricultural disaster, writes Fortune's David Stipp.
FORTUNE Magazine
By David Stipp, Fortune
August 28 2007: 11:32 AM EDT
(Fortune Magazine) -- It's a sweet time for honeybees in the rolling hills of eastern Pennsylvania, and the ones humming around Dennis vanEngelsdorp seem too preoccupied by the blooming knapweed nearby to sting him as he carefully lifts the top off their hive. VanEngelsdorp, Pennsylvania's state apiarist, spots signs of plenty within: honeycomb stocked with yellow pollen, neat rows of wax hexagons housing larval bees, and a fertile queen churning out eggs.
But something has gone terribly wrong in this little utopia in a box. "There should be a lot more workers than there are," he says. "This colony is in trouble."
That pattern -- worker bees playing Amelia Earhart -- has become dismayingly familiar to the nation's beekeepers over the past year, as well as to growers whose crops are pollinated by honeybees. A third of our food, from apples to zucchinis, begins with floral sex acts abetted by honeybees trucked around the country on 18-wheelers.
The mysterious deaths of the honeybees
We wouldn't starve if the mysterious disappearance of bees, dubbed colony collapse disorder, or CCD, decimated hives worldwide. For one thing, wheat, corn, and other grains don't depend on insect pollination.
But in a honeybee-less world, almonds, blueberries, melons, cranberries, peaches, pumpkins, onions, squash, cucumbers, and scores of other fruits and vegetables would become as pricey as sumptuous old wine. Honeybees also pollinate alfalfa used to feed livestock, so meat and milk would get dearer as well. Ditto for farmed catfish, which are fed alfalfa too.
And jars of honey, of course, would become golden heirlooms to pass along to the grandkids. (Used for millennia as a wound dressing, honey contains potent antimicrobial compounds that enable it to last for decades in sealed containers.)
In late June, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns starkly warned that "if left unchecked, CCD has the potential to cause a $15 billion direct loss of crop production and $75 billion in indirect losses."
$9.3 billion worth of endangered crops
Late last year vanEngelsdorp, a strapping, 37-year-old Netherlands native with a thatch of blond hair and a close-cropped goatee, helped organize a group of bee experts to identify the killer. In recent months he's acted as the team's gumshoe, driving thousands of miles to collect bees and honeycomb samples from CCD-afflicted hives to analyze for clues.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania State University entomologist Diana Cox-Foster has scoured bees from collapsed colonies for signs of disease-causing microbes. She's shown that the insects are chock-full of them, as if their immune systems are suppressed.
Now the entomologists, aided by Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University scientist known for cracking the case of the West Nile virus (he identified the mosquito-transmitted killer of birds and sometimes people), are closing in on possible culprits and reportedly have submitted a study identifying a virus associated with CCD to a scientific journal. The bug may have been introduced into the U.S. via imported bees or bee-related products, say researchers familiar with the study.
"If I were a betting man," says Dewey Caron, a University of Delaware entomologist who co-authored a recent report on CCD's toll, "I'd bet it's a virus that's fairly new or one that's mutated to become more virulent." Other pathogens, such as fungi, may have combined forces with the virus, he adds.
But merely showing that germs selectively turn up in cases of CCD, he cautions, won't necessarily nail the culprit, for it will leave a key question unanswered: Are such microbes the main killers, or has something else stomped bees' immune systems, making them vulnerable to the infections?
After all, the first report on AIDS focused on a strange outbreak of rare fungal pneumonia, "opportunistic" infections whose root cause was later identified as HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus.
A fight about fish farms
Fortunately, a bee apocalypse seems unlikely at this point. Beekeepers have recovered from CCD-like hits in the past -- major bee die-offs seem to occur about once a decade. Most beekeepers recently contacted by Fortune say hives generally appear normal of late.
Still, ominous reports of worker-scarce hives like the one vanEngelsdorp recently examined suggest that whatever causes CCD is still in circulation and may well decimate hives again when bees' floral support system drops away this fall.
If that happens, "it will be a lot worse than the first time, because [commercial beekeepers] have already spent a lot of their money" replacing lost bees, says Richard Adee, head of the country's largest beekeeping operation, Adee Honey Farms of Bruce, S.D., which, despite its name, is largely a pollination business.
The losses weren't insured, he adds: Because of all the unpredictable things that can kill bees, from mites to droughts, insurers have long refused to cover them. "We'll see a lot of guys just hang it up."
So that's the thing to worry about: While CCD isn't likely to obliterate honeybees, it may wipe out enough migratory beekeepers to precipitate a pollination crisis.
They're already thin on the ground -- a rare breed of truck drivers who also happen to be applied entomologists, amateur botanists, skilled nursemaids of cussed old machines, traveling salesmen, and Job-like nurturers of finicky, stinging insects that, when they're not mysteriously dying off, can suddenly swarm on you like something out of Hitchcock.
Commercial beekeepers make up only about 1% of the 135,000 owners of hives in the U.S., but they manage over 80% of the nation's 2.4 million honeybee colonies. If the waning number of hives in the U.S. is any indication, commercial beekeeping was already in a long-term decline before CCD struck -- in 1960 there were about five million hives, more than twice as many as there are today.
Meanwhile, demand for pollination services is growing, largely because of our love affair with the almond -- it's increasingly seen as a health food, and the FDA acknowledged in 2004 that there are data "suggesting" a daily dose of 1.5 ounces of almonds or other nuts, along with a low-fat diet, may lower the risk of heart disease. By 2012 nearly 90% of the hives now estimated to exist in the U.S. will be needed to pollinate California's almond groves each spring, according to the Almond Board of California.
10 crops most at risk
Commercial beekeeping has a lot in common with the disappearing family farm. The typical bee rancher is a salt-of-the-earth, 50-something, strong-armed guy who often sweats through the night forklifting hives filled with seriously annoyed bees onto a flatbed semi in order to rush them to his next customer's field 500 miles away, which just may be near a crop sprayed with insecticides that will kill 15% of his livestock as they wing around the area.
Cheap honey imported from China and Argentina has clobbered his profits, forcing him to work his bees ever harder as migratory pollinators. He loses lots of bees to "vampire" mites, hive-busting bears, human vandals, and sometimes to beekeepers gone bad, who steal hives by night and pollinate by day. His kids can see that there are much easier ways to make a living.
But for all that, he's never lost the sense of wonder that came over him the first time he heard the piping of a queen -- a kind of battle cry that newly emerged honeybee queens make before fighting to the death for hive supremacy. From outside a hive, it sounds like a child wistfully tooting a toy trumpet in a distant room.
If CCD flares up again, one of the casualties may be the Paul Revere of colony collapse, a lanky, 58-year-old beekeeper named David Hackenberg. The story of the disappearing bees began one afternoon last October when he and his son Davey pulled into one of their "bee yards" near Tampa to check on 400 hives they had placed there three weeks earlier.
The Hackenbergs' main center of operations is a farm near Lewisburg, Pa., but like most migratory beekeepers, they move their bees south each winter for a few months of R&R (rest and reproduction) before the rigors of spring pollination.
Hackenberg, a gregarious raconteur with a Walter Brennan voice, says the first sign of trouble was that "there were hardly any bees flying around the hives. It was kind of a weird sensation, no bees in the air. We got out our smokers" -- bellows grafted to tin cans that beekeepers use to waft bee-sedating smoke into hives before opening them - "and smoked a few hives, and suddenly I thought, 'Wait a minute, what are we smoking?'
"Next thing, I started jerking covers off hives ... It was like somebody took a sweeper and swept the bees right out of the boxes. I set there a minute scratching my head, then I literally got down on my hands and knees and started looking for dead bees. But there weren't any."
Attack of the mutant rice
Hackenberg spread the word about his vanished bees. Within days other beekeepers began reporting similar cases. Penn State's Cox-Foster, vanEngelsdorp, and other bee experts launched an investigation. After turning up more than a dozen cases of collapsing colonies across the country, the team issued a report in mid-December telling of beekeepers who'd lost up to 90% of their bees.
The "unprecedented losses," according to the report, had many keepers "openly wondering if the industry can survive."
By late spring CCD had made headlines around the world. Assorted phobia purveyors vied to adopt the die-off as a poster child for everything from cellphone emanations to God's Just Wrath. Internet bloggers thrilled themselves silly bandying about a sentence from Albert Einstein, which the great physicist apparently tossed off about 40 years after his death to the public-relations department of a French beekeeping group: "If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man will have no more than four years to live."
A survey sponsored by Bee Alert Technology, a Missoula, Mont., firm that sells hive-tracking devices and other bee wares, turned up reports of CCD in 35 states and Puerto Rico by early June.
Despite the widespread impression that CCD started with Hackenberg's losses last October in Florida, says Bee Alert CEO Jerry Bromenshenk, "our survey shows that it probably first began to show up the previous spring in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. By midsummer [last year] it was moving through the heartland," hitting hives in the Dakotas, then appearing widely a few months later in the South and on both coasts.
A survey led by vanEngelsdorp and Florida apiary inspector Jerry Hayes suggests that a quarter of U.S. beekeepers were struck by CCD between September 2006 and March 2007. Those hit by mysterious die-offs lost, on average, 45% of their hives.
The surveys failed to show patterns suggesting CCD's cause. But they provided alibis for some prime suspects, such as beekeeper enemy No. 1: blood-sucking Varroa destructor mites. (Picture a tick as big as a Frisbee glommed onto your back -- that's what Varroa is like for a bee.) Varroa both transmits harmful viruses to bees and suppresses their immune systems.
But CCD has been reported in many hives without significant mite problems, says Jeff Pettis, an entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md.
Sugar cane ethanol's not-so-sweet future
Another leading suspect -- stress on bees due to migratory pollination -- hasn't gotten off the hook so easily. Low honey prices coupled with rising pollination fees for certain crops have prompted migratory beekeepers to put their bees on the road more than ever during the past few years.
Some now truck hives coast to coast, beginning in February with California almonds, then moving on to crops in the East, such as Maine blueberries. That potentially exposes bees to ever more diseases and insecticides. And many of the crops, such as cranberries, don't provide adequate bee nutrition.
The insects aren't very good travelers either. When a truck carrying bees gets caught in a summer traffic jam, for instance, hives quickly overheat, despite the fact that the millions of workers inside them furiously fan their wings in an attempt to prevent it, says Wes Card, a beekeeper whose Merrimack Valley Apiaries in Billerica, Mass., pollinates crops from California to Maine.
"Then every minute counts," he adds, for unless the driver can quickly find a way to pull off the road and hose down the hives with cooling water, desperately hot queens emerge from their inner sanctums and typically wind up venturing into nearby colonies on the truck, where they are perceived as alien invaders and promptly killed. (Ironically, worker bees typically execute a condemned monarch by clustering around her and vibrating their wing muscles to generate heat, fatally raising her temperature -- beekeepers call it "balling the queen" because the executioners form a ball of bees.) A hot day can turn a load of hives into a costly mess within minutes.
Stress probably isn't the main culprit, though. In fact, the biggest commercial beekeepers -- those with over 500 hives, most of whom are migratory pollinators -- lost a smaller percentage of their hives when hit by CCD last winter than did hobbyist beekeepers, according to the survey co-authored by vanEngelsdorp.
Further, there's some evidence that CCD may antedate the modern stresses put on bees. Large numbers of honeybees have mysteriously vanished a number of times since the mid-19th century, suggesting that CCD may be just the latest episode in a "cycle of disappearance" caused by a mystery disease that periodically flares up like a deadly worldwide flu epidemic.
Still, entomologists who have personally observed the effects of CCD insist that it is unlike any bee die-off they've seen. The University of Delaware's Caron, one of the bee world's biggest names, says he was stunned when 11 of 12 hives in the school's apiary collapsed last winter, apparently because of CCD.
"Never in 40 years had I witnessed the symptoms I was seeing," he says.
Winning in the wine biz
One of CCD's strangest symptoms, say bee experts, is a phenomenon that might be called the madness of the nurses. Nurse bees are workers that nurture a hive's preadult bees, called brood. Workers begin their adult lives as nurses, and only during the final third or so of their six-week lives do they become foragers, venturing outside the hive to collect nectar and pollen.
Researchers have discovered that the young nurses are maintained in a kind of immature, thickheaded state by chemical signals emanating from the queen. Nurses aren't supposed to leave the hive. They're not ready to cope with the big outside world, which requires a mature bee's smarts. Besides, with nurses on leave, the all-important brood would wither.
Yet empty hives struck by CCD are often found with intact brood, which means nurses were on the job shortly before all the bees flew off forever. Beekeepers find this gross dereliction of duty much weirder than the disappearance of foragers, which essentially work themselves to death and often die outside the hive.
Says Hackenberg: "Basically, I've never seen bees go off and leave brood. That's the real kicker."
To explain the psychotic behavior, some beekeepers, including Hackenberg, point the finger at an increasingly popular class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. The chemicals are widely used by farmers on fruits and vegetables that bees pollinate, as well as on corn and other crops often grown nearby.
Soon after Bayer (Charts), the German drug and chemicals concern, first put the products on the market in the early 1990s, they were implicated in a bee die-off in France, where their use was then sharply restricted. Since 2000, studies by French and Italian researchers have suggested that low, "sublethal" doses of the chemicals -- which bees might get from lingering traces of the insecticides in fields -- can mess up the insects' memories and navigational abilities, potentially making them get lost. Bayer has countered with its own studies, which it asserts demonstrate that the products, when properly used, don't pose significant risks.
Honeybees' exposure to trace amounts of neonicotinoids can't be ruled out, says Chris Mullin, a Penn State University entomologist investigating whether pesticides are involved in CCD.
But he and other CCD investigators doubt that neonicotinoids will turn out to be the primary culprits. For one thing, many other chemicals to which bees are exposed are nerve toxins that can make them act strange at low doses. And it's hard to reconcile the rapid, widespread appearance of CCD last year with the fact that numerous such chemicals have long been widely used.
Could infectious microbes induce the nurses' insanity?
The great corn gold rush
Maybe. Young workers with a disease caused by "sacbrood" virus tend to start foraging abnormally early in life, when their healthy peers are still nursing. And as if discombobulated in their new roles, they fail to collect pollen.
Although sacbrood virus has been detected in bees from some hives with CCD symptoms, as have a number of other viruses, it doesn't appear to be closely associated with the disorder. But its ability to warp young bees' behavior suggests that viruses may well induce nurses to do the unthinkable.
Another explanation may make more sense, though: Perhaps the nurses aren't really acting crazy when they fly away. Instead, their strange behavior may represent a perfectly natural attempt by doomed workers to protect their sisters from killer microbes.
After all, a hive's workers represent a famously close-knit sorority, geared by evolution to act strictly in the best interests of their colonies. (Male "drones" don't work, by the way. They loaf about the hive most of their lives, zip out about noon every day in hopes of mating on the wing with young queens, then immediately die after copulating, presumably happy.) Beekeepers have long known that sick bees generally leave the hive to die, minimizing the risk that they will infect others.
In his seminal 1879 tome The A B C of Bee Culture, Amos Ives Root, an early giant of U.S. beekeeping, marveled that "when a bee is crippled or diseased from any cause, he [sic] crawls away ... out of the hive, and rids the community of his presence as speedily as possible. If bees could reason, we would call this a lesson of heroic self-sacrifice for the good of the community."
Might a fast-spreading, immune-suppressing disease be making nurses so sick that their urge to stay put is overruled by the altruistic impetus to depart?
The organic milk price war
The effort to answer such questions has entered a new phase with the recent linking of specific infectious agents to CCD (the ones whose identities are expected to be disclosed soon in a scientific journal). Now Cox-Foster says she and colleagues are trying to reproduce CCD's effects on bee colonies by seeding healthy hives with the agents -- the biomedical equivalent of getting a killer to confess.
Meanwhile, scattered reports over the summer of hives with abnormally few workers and little stored honey have many bee people worried. A few beekeepers, frazzled by earlier heavy losses and worried that truly ruinous ones are on the way, have already bailed out.
CCD 2 would probably be a lot uglier for growers -- and for us fruit and veggie eaters -- than version one was. In fact, we got lucky the first time it hit: "A lot of the bees brought to California this year were total junk," their hives sparsely populated because of CCD and other problems, says Lyle Johnston, a Rocky Ford, Colo., beekeeper who arranges the placement of 50,000 hives owned by other keepers in almond groves each spring. "But we had the most perfect weather during the almond bloom that I can recall. It saved our butts," by enabling bees to take to the air more often than they usually do.
"We dodged the bullet with fruit, too, this year," says the University of Delaware's Caron. "We had weak bees, but the weather was exceptional during the apple, blueberry, and cranberry blooms."
Unfortunately, Caron and others note, by keeping crop prices low, the good weather may have actually discouraged legislators from funding studies on CCD. To beekeepers' dismay, the farm bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, which calls for $286 billion to be spent over the next five years on everything from school snacks to biofuels, earmarked no funds specifically for CCD research.
And the lucky run of weather probably won't last much longer. Extraordinarily dry weather through spring and early summer in California and the Southeast has stressed bees in those regions, potentially setting up many hives for collapse later in the year.
Despite making some progress, cash-strapped scientists looking into CCD aren't likely to identify what causes it -- and ways to fend it off -- before the high-risk season for bee die-offs arrives with the onset of cold weather.
So what to do in light of this new, unsolved, and probably ongoing threat to our food supply? Don't panic. But do take time to slowly savor your next sweet, spicy slice of cantaloupe, watermelon, apple, peach, or pear.
The pure pleasure of it may get a lot rarer.
-blogger
As bees go missing, a $9.3B crisis lurks
The mysterious disappearance of millions of bees is fueling fears of an agricultural disaster, writes Fortune's David Stipp.
FORTUNE Magazine
By David Stipp, Fortune
August 28 2007: 11:32 AM EDT
(Fortune Magazine) -- It's a sweet time for honeybees in the rolling hills of eastern Pennsylvania, and the ones humming around Dennis vanEngelsdorp seem too preoccupied by the blooming knapweed nearby to sting him as he carefully lifts the top off their hive. VanEngelsdorp, Pennsylvania's state apiarist, spots signs of plenty within: honeycomb stocked with yellow pollen, neat rows of wax hexagons housing larval bees, and a fertile queen churning out eggs.
But something has gone terribly wrong in this little utopia in a box. "There should be a lot more workers than there are," he says. "This colony is in trouble."
That pattern -- worker bees playing Amelia Earhart -- has become dismayingly familiar to the nation's beekeepers over the past year, as well as to growers whose crops are pollinated by honeybees. A third of our food, from apples to zucchinis, begins with floral sex acts abetted by honeybees trucked around the country on 18-wheelers.
The mysterious deaths of the honeybees
We wouldn't starve if the mysterious disappearance of bees, dubbed colony collapse disorder, or CCD, decimated hives worldwide. For one thing, wheat, corn, and other grains don't depend on insect pollination.
But in a honeybee-less world, almonds, blueberries, melons, cranberries, peaches, pumpkins, onions, squash, cucumbers, and scores of other fruits and vegetables would become as pricey as sumptuous old wine. Honeybees also pollinate alfalfa used to feed livestock, so meat and milk would get dearer as well. Ditto for farmed catfish, which are fed alfalfa too.
And jars of honey, of course, would become golden heirlooms to pass along to the grandkids. (Used for millennia as a wound dressing, honey contains potent antimicrobial compounds that enable it to last for decades in sealed containers.)
In late June, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns starkly warned that "if left unchecked, CCD has the potential to cause a $15 billion direct loss of crop production and $75 billion in indirect losses."
$9.3 billion worth of endangered crops
Late last year vanEngelsdorp, a strapping, 37-year-old Netherlands native with a thatch of blond hair and a close-cropped goatee, helped organize a group of bee experts to identify the killer. In recent months he's acted as the team's gumshoe, driving thousands of miles to collect bees and honeycomb samples from CCD-afflicted hives to analyze for clues.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania State University entomologist Diana Cox-Foster has scoured bees from collapsed colonies for signs of disease-causing microbes. She's shown that the insects are chock-full of them, as if their immune systems are suppressed.
Now the entomologists, aided by Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University scientist known for cracking the case of the West Nile virus (he identified the mosquito-transmitted killer of birds and sometimes people), are closing in on possible culprits and reportedly have submitted a study identifying a virus associated with CCD to a scientific journal. The bug may have been introduced into the U.S. via imported bees or bee-related products, say researchers familiar with the study.
"If I were a betting man," says Dewey Caron, a University of Delaware entomologist who co-authored a recent report on CCD's toll, "I'd bet it's a virus that's fairly new or one that's mutated to become more virulent." Other pathogens, such as fungi, may have combined forces with the virus, he adds.
But merely showing that germs selectively turn up in cases of CCD, he cautions, won't necessarily nail the culprit, for it will leave a key question unanswered: Are such microbes the main killers, or has something else stomped bees' immune systems, making them vulnerable to the infections?
After all, the first report on AIDS focused on a strange outbreak of rare fungal pneumonia, "opportunistic" infections whose root cause was later identified as HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus.
A fight about fish farms
Fortunately, a bee apocalypse seems unlikely at this point. Beekeepers have recovered from CCD-like hits in the past -- major bee die-offs seem to occur about once a decade. Most beekeepers recently contacted by Fortune say hives generally appear normal of late.
Still, ominous reports of worker-scarce hives like the one vanEngelsdorp recently examined suggest that whatever causes CCD is still in circulation and may well decimate hives again when bees' floral support system drops away this fall.
If that happens, "it will be a lot worse than the first time, because [commercial beekeepers] have already spent a lot of their money" replacing lost bees, says Richard Adee, head of the country's largest beekeeping operation, Adee Honey Farms of Bruce, S.D., which, despite its name, is largely a pollination business.
The losses weren't insured, he adds: Because of all the unpredictable things that can kill bees, from mites to droughts, insurers have long refused to cover them. "We'll see a lot of guys just hang it up."
So that's the thing to worry about: While CCD isn't likely to obliterate honeybees, it may wipe out enough migratory beekeepers to precipitate a pollination crisis.
They're already thin on the ground -- a rare breed of truck drivers who also happen to be applied entomologists, amateur botanists, skilled nursemaids of cussed old machines, traveling salesmen, and Job-like nurturers of finicky, stinging insects that, when they're not mysteriously dying off, can suddenly swarm on you like something out of Hitchcock.
Commercial beekeepers make up only about 1% of the 135,000 owners of hives in the U.S., but they manage over 80% of the nation's 2.4 million honeybee colonies. If the waning number of hives in the U.S. is any indication, commercial beekeeping was already in a long-term decline before CCD struck -- in 1960 there were about five million hives, more than twice as many as there are today.
Meanwhile, demand for pollination services is growing, largely because of our love affair with the almond -- it's increasingly seen as a health food, and the FDA acknowledged in 2004 that there are data "suggesting" a daily dose of 1.5 ounces of almonds or other nuts, along with a low-fat diet, may lower the risk of heart disease. By 2012 nearly 90% of the hives now estimated to exist in the U.S. will be needed to pollinate California's almond groves each spring, according to the Almond Board of California.
10 crops most at risk
Commercial beekeeping has a lot in common with the disappearing family farm. The typical bee rancher is a salt-of-the-earth, 50-something, strong-armed guy who often sweats through the night forklifting hives filled with seriously annoyed bees onto a flatbed semi in order to rush them to his next customer's field 500 miles away, which just may be near a crop sprayed with insecticides that will kill 15% of his livestock as they wing around the area.
Cheap honey imported from China and Argentina has clobbered his profits, forcing him to work his bees ever harder as migratory pollinators. He loses lots of bees to "vampire" mites, hive-busting bears, human vandals, and sometimes to beekeepers gone bad, who steal hives by night and pollinate by day. His kids can see that there are much easier ways to make a living.
But for all that, he's never lost the sense of wonder that came over him the first time he heard the piping of a queen -- a kind of battle cry that newly emerged honeybee queens make before fighting to the death for hive supremacy. From outside a hive, it sounds like a child wistfully tooting a toy trumpet in a distant room.
If CCD flares up again, one of the casualties may be the Paul Revere of colony collapse, a lanky, 58-year-old beekeeper named David Hackenberg. The story of the disappearing bees began one afternoon last October when he and his son Davey pulled into one of their "bee yards" near Tampa to check on 400 hives they had placed there three weeks earlier.
The Hackenbergs' main center of operations is a farm near Lewisburg, Pa., but like most migratory beekeepers, they move their bees south each winter for a few months of R&R (rest and reproduction) before the rigors of spring pollination.
Hackenberg, a gregarious raconteur with a Walter Brennan voice, says the first sign of trouble was that "there were hardly any bees flying around the hives. It was kind of a weird sensation, no bees in the air. We got out our smokers" -- bellows grafted to tin cans that beekeepers use to waft bee-sedating smoke into hives before opening them - "and smoked a few hives, and suddenly I thought, 'Wait a minute, what are we smoking?'
"Next thing, I started jerking covers off hives ... It was like somebody took a sweeper and swept the bees right out of the boxes. I set there a minute scratching my head, then I literally got down on my hands and knees and started looking for dead bees. But there weren't any."
Attack of the mutant rice
Hackenberg spread the word about his vanished bees. Within days other beekeepers began reporting similar cases. Penn State's Cox-Foster, vanEngelsdorp, and other bee experts launched an investigation. After turning up more than a dozen cases of collapsing colonies across the country, the team issued a report in mid-December telling of beekeepers who'd lost up to 90% of their bees.
The "unprecedented losses," according to the report, had many keepers "openly wondering if the industry can survive."
By late spring CCD had made headlines around the world. Assorted phobia purveyors vied to adopt the die-off as a poster child for everything from cellphone emanations to God's Just Wrath. Internet bloggers thrilled themselves silly bandying about a sentence from Albert Einstein, which the great physicist apparently tossed off about 40 years after his death to the public-relations department of a French beekeeping group: "If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man will have no more than four years to live."
A survey sponsored by Bee Alert Technology, a Missoula, Mont., firm that sells hive-tracking devices and other bee wares, turned up reports of CCD in 35 states and Puerto Rico by early June.
Despite the widespread impression that CCD started with Hackenberg's losses last October in Florida, says Bee Alert CEO Jerry Bromenshenk, "our survey shows that it probably first began to show up the previous spring in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. By midsummer [last year] it was moving through the heartland," hitting hives in the Dakotas, then appearing widely a few months later in the South and on both coasts.
A survey led by vanEngelsdorp and Florida apiary inspector Jerry Hayes suggests that a quarter of U.S. beekeepers were struck by CCD between September 2006 and March 2007. Those hit by mysterious die-offs lost, on average, 45% of their hives.
The surveys failed to show patterns suggesting CCD's cause. But they provided alibis for some prime suspects, such as beekeeper enemy No. 1: blood-sucking Varroa destructor mites. (Picture a tick as big as a Frisbee glommed onto your back -- that's what Varroa is like for a bee.) Varroa both transmits harmful viruses to bees and suppresses their immune systems.
But CCD has been reported in many hives without significant mite problems, says Jeff Pettis, an entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md.
Sugar cane ethanol's not-so-sweet future
Another leading suspect -- stress on bees due to migratory pollination -- hasn't gotten off the hook so easily. Low honey prices coupled with rising pollination fees for certain crops have prompted migratory beekeepers to put their bees on the road more than ever during the past few years.
Some now truck hives coast to coast, beginning in February with California almonds, then moving on to crops in the East, such as Maine blueberries. That potentially exposes bees to ever more diseases and insecticides. And many of the crops, such as cranberries, don't provide adequate bee nutrition.
The insects aren't very good travelers either. When a truck carrying bees gets caught in a summer traffic jam, for instance, hives quickly overheat, despite the fact that the millions of workers inside them furiously fan their wings in an attempt to prevent it, says Wes Card, a beekeeper whose Merrimack Valley Apiaries in Billerica, Mass., pollinates crops from California to Maine.
"Then every minute counts," he adds, for unless the driver can quickly find a way to pull off the road and hose down the hives with cooling water, desperately hot queens emerge from their inner sanctums and typically wind up venturing into nearby colonies on the truck, where they are perceived as alien invaders and promptly killed. (Ironically, worker bees typically execute a condemned monarch by clustering around her and vibrating their wing muscles to generate heat, fatally raising her temperature -- beekeepers call it "balling the queen" because the executioners form a ball of bees.) A hot day can turn a load of hives into a costly mess within minutes.
Stress probably isn't the main culprit, though. In fact, the biggest commercial beekeepers -- those with over 500 hives, most of whom are migratory pollinators -- lost a smaller percentage of their hives when hit by CCD last winter than did hobbyist beekeepers, according to the survey co-authored by vanEngelsdorp.
Further, there's some evidence that CCD may antedate the modern stresses put on bees. Large numbers of honeybees have mysteriously vanished a number of times since the mid-19th century, suggesting that CCD may be just the latest episode in a "cycle of disappearance" caused by a mystery disease that periodically flares up like a deadly worldwide flu epidemic.
Still, entomologists who have personally observed the effects of CCD insist that it is unlike any bee die-off they've seen. The University of Delaware's Caron, one of the bee world's biggest names, says he was stunned when 11 of 12 hives in the school's apiary collapsed last winter, apparently because of CCD.
"Never in 40 years had I witnessed the symptoms I was seeing," he says.
Winning in the wine biz
One of CCD's strangest symptoms, say bee experts, is a phenomenon that might be called the madness of the nurses. Nurse bees are workers that nurture a hive's preadult bees, called brood. Workers begin their adult lives as nurses, and only during the final third or so of their six-week lives do they become foragers, venturing outside the hive to collect nectar and pollen.
Researchers have discovered that the young nurses are maintained in a kind of immature, thickheaded state by chemical signals emanating from the queen. Nurses aren't supposed to leave the hive. They're not ready to cope with the big outside world, which requires a mature bee's smarts. Besides, with nurses on leave, the all-important brood would wither.
Yet empty hives struck by CCD are often found with intact brood, which means nurses were on the job shortly before all the bees flew off forever. Beekeepers find this gross dereliction of duty much weirder than the disappearance of foragers, which essentially work themselves to death and often die outside the hive.
Says Hackenberg: "Basically, I've never seen bees go off and leave brood. That's the real kicker."
To explain the psychotic behavior, some beekeepers, including Hackenberg, point the finger at an increasingly popular class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. The chemicals are widely used by farmers on fruits and vegetables that bees pollinate, as well as on corn and other crops often grown nearby.
Soon after Bayer (Charts), the German drug and chemicals concern, first put the products on the market in the early 1990s, they were implicated in a bee die-off in France, where their use was then sharply restricted. Since 2000, studies by French and Italian researchers have suggested that low, "sublethal" doses of the chemicals -- which bees might get from lingering traces of the insecticides in fields -- can mess up the insects' memories and navigational abilities, potentially making them get lost. Bayer has countered with its own studies, which it asserts demonstrate that the products, when properly used, don't pose significant risks.
Honeybees' exposure to trace amounts of neonicotinoids can't be ruled out, says Chris Mullin, a Penn State University entomologist investigating whether pesticides are involved in CCD.
But he and other CCD investigators doubt that neonicotinoids will turn out to be the primary culprits. For one thing, many other chemicals to which bees are exposed are nerve toxins that can make them act strange at low doses. And it's hard to reconcile the rapid, widespread appearance of CCD last year with the fact that numerous such chemicals have long been widely used.
Could infectious microbes induce the nurses' insanity?
The great corn gold rush
Maybe. Young workers with a disease caused by "sacbrood" virus tend to start foraging abnormally early in life, when their healthy peers are still nursing. And as if discombobulated in their new roles, they fail to collect pollen.
Although sacbrood virus has been detected in bees from some hives with CCD symptoms, as have a number of other viruses, it doesn't appear to be closely associated with the disorder. But its ability to warp young bees' behavior suggests that viruses may well induce nurses to do the unthinkable.
Another explanation may make more sense, though: Perhaps the nurses aren't really acting crazy when they fly away. Instead, their strange behavior may represent a perfectly natural attempt by doomed workers to protect their sisters from killer microbes.
After all, a hive's workers represent a famously close-knit sorority, geared by evolution to act strictly in the best interests of their colonies. (Male "drones" don't work, by the way. They loaf about the hive most of their lives, zip out about noon every day in hopes of mating on the wing with young queens, then immediately die after copulating, presumably happy.) Beekeepers have long known that sick bees generally leave the hive to die, minimizing the risk that they will infect others.
In his seminal 1879 tome The A B C of Bee Culture, Amos Ives Root, an early giant of U.S. beekeeping, marveled that "when a bee is crippled or diseased from any cause, he [sic] crawls away ... out of the hive, and rids the community of his presence as speedily as possible. If bees could reason, we would call this a lesson of heroic self-sacrifice for the good of the community."
Might a fast-spreading, immune-suppressing disease be making nurses so sick that their urge to stay put is overruled by the altruistic impetus to depart?
The organic milk price war
The effort to answer such questions has entered a new phase with the recent linking of specific infectious agents to CCD (the ones whose identities are expected to be disclosed soon in a scientific journal). Now Cox-Foster says she and colleagues are trying to reproduce CCD's effects on bee colonies by seeding healthy hives with the agents -- the biomedical equivalent of getting a killer to confess.
Meanwhile, scattered reports over the summer of hives with abnormally few workers and little stored honey have many bee people worried. A few beekeepers, frazzled by earlier heavy losses and worried that truly ruinous ones are on the way, have already bailed out.
CCD 2 would probably be a lot uglier for growers -- and for us fruit and veggie eaters -- than version one was. In fact, we got lucky the first time it hit: "A lot of the bees brought to California this year were total junk," their hives sparsely populated because of CCD and other problems, says Lyle Johnston, a Rocky Ford, Colo., beekeeper who arranges the placement of 50,000 hives owned by other keepers in almond groves each spring. "But we had the most perfect weather during the almond bloom that I can recall. It saved our butts," by enabling bees to take to the air more often than they usually do.
"We dodged the bullet with fruit, too, this year," says the University of Delaware's Caron. "We had weak bees, but the weather was exceptional during the apple, blueberry, and cranberry blooms."
Unfortunately, Caron and others note, by keeping crop prices low, the good weather may have actually discouraged legislators from funding studies on CCD. To beekeepers' dismay, the farm bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, which calls for $286 billion to be spent over the next five years on everything from school snacks to biofuels, earmarked no funds specifically for CCD research.
And the lucky run of weather probably won't last much longer. Extraordinarily dry weather through spring and early summer in California and the Southeast has stressed bees in those regions, potentially setting up many hives for collapse later in the year.
Despite making some progress, cash-strapped scientists looking into CCD aren't likely to identify what causes it -- and ways to fend it off -- before the high-risk season for bee die-offs arrives with the onset of cold weather.
So what to do in light of this new, unsolved, and probably ongoing threat to our food supply? Don't panic. But do take time to slowly savor your next sweet, spicy slice of cantaloupe, watermelon, apple, peach, or pear.
The pure pleasure of it may get a lot rarer.
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