Red, Green, and Blue

Drought is something we think of as being substantial and dramatic – months in which rain doesn’t fall, monsoons that never happen. But the truth about drought is that it is much more insidious – when average rainfall drops, crops fail even though rain happens and can appear plentiful.

Monsoon failure threatens farmers

In India, right now, the monsoon is failing to deliver. Yes, there has been rain most days between June and now, but the actual rainfall has been only a quarter of the usual vast deluge. Around 80% of India’s agricultural land is close to drought conditions, and the monsoon rains will end in September. The fear is twofold: that the rains won’t arrive, and that they will, telescoping immense rainfalls into the last few weeks of monsoon and causing flash floods and subsidence. This year’s rainfalls, so far, are the weakest since 2002, and 2002 was the worst year for Indian agriculture for more than fifty years. Food security is fragile in a country with a young population, greedy for consumer goods, and unwilling to spend hours on cultivating subsistence crops. Read the rest of this entry »

In late June, more than 500 ring-billed gulls were found dead in Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River, only a couple days after the 40th anniversary of the day the river caught fire at roughly the same spot.  On Monday, Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District issued a report naming Sanimax, Inc., a nearby oil recycler, as a suspect in the spill of hundreds of gallons of cooking oil that caused the incident.  Lab results comparing oil from the spill to oil being released by Sanimax were indefinite, though, so Sanimax has not been directly blamed. Read the rest of this entry »

The first food security assessment ever carried out by a UK government has been published, and it says that the country needs to change the way food is produced and the way it is processed, to maintain a healthy and affordable food ‘base’ in the future.

Food security story has changed

While Winston Churchill’s government did undertake food security surveys during World War II, these encompassed food production across the ‘Commonwealth and dominions’ so this new food security assessment is a snapshot of what the UK has been doing well and badly since the early 1950s.

The Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) says that the UK has a strong food system, which is typified by diverse food supplies and a strong distribution network, but will be challenged when it comes to maintaining sustainability in this food supply. The challenge of a growing and aging population is complicated by the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change, both of which will require changes to the location of crops and the kind of food grown.  Water is a key issue and the depletion of fish stocks around British territorial waters is a concern.

Food and health

Another key concern is the relationship between food and health and the report says that ‘diet-related illness’ costs the UK ‘billions’ of pounds a year.

The report also contains draft indicators for the sustainability of the food system – once agreed, these indicators will be used to measure future food security issues and are hoped to serve as an early warning system. They will include recognising hikes in oil prices that affect the cost of food production severely.

A final substantial challenge is ensuring that current food production methods doesn’t damage or limit the natural resources on which future food production may depend.

The UK strategy for future food security will be published later in 2009, building on this report and on a consultation process that follows the report’s launch.

Food shop courtesy of Nick Saltmarsh at Flickr under a creative commons licence

Chinese protestors have partial success

One of last week’s protests appears to have borne results. The chemical plant in central Hunan that was the focus of protests by local residents has been closed ‘forever’ according to Chinese media. Production at the plant was halted in March but now the plant will not re-open. The Xianghe Chemical Factory was cited in a number of incidents in the region, and after the deaths of two villagers, who were discovered to have high cadmium levels during autopsy, around 500 of 3,000 residents were found to have high cadmium levels during urine tests. As well as the permanent closure of the plant, it seems that its directors have been detained by police and the head of the local Environment Protection Bureau has been dismissed. There is no information yet on free healthcare for those affected by the cadmium, but thirty local residents were hospitalised as a result of the urine testing programme.

Israeli citizens protest against air pollution

On 4 August Greenpeace protestors disrupted the running of a coal-powered electric plant in Ashkelon, Israel in protest at the proposed construction of two further coal-powered electricity production plants. They chained themselves to the plant’s entrance gate and sixteen activists were arrested some of them already inside the plant’s grounds. The protest is high profile within Israel with several well-known Israeli entertainers having taken part in a Greenpeace-sponsored short film that claims that the new plants will increase air pollution in the area, as well as reducing Israel’s chances of meeting its international commitment to reduce greenhouse gases.

Australian activists protest for Pacific islanders

On Thursday, four environmental activists spent the night chained to the coal loader of the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance’s Hay Point Export Coal Terminal in Queensland, Australia. Six Greenpeace protestors had already been arrested on Wednesday after chaining themselves to lower areas of the loader, but the four remained near the top of the fifty metre tall loader all night. Police had discussed removing the protestors but decided for safety reasons not to attempt a forced removal. The four finally came down voluntarily on Friday evening and gave themselves up to the police.

The protest is both about the failure of the Australian government to take tough enough action on climate change, and in support of Pacific Island groups who have asked for substantial emission cuts from Australia and New Zealand to help protect their land from rising sea levels.

Greenpeace activists courtesy of Greenpeace Media

Don’t look now, but the U.S. Defense Department is backing an academic program that may ultimately offer long-term aid in the area of resource conservation. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on Tuesday that the University of Akron, with the help of a $2.3 million Defense Department grant, has begun laying the groundwork for an engineering program aimed at the understanding and prevention of corrosion, a pervasive blight eating away at our domestic infrastructure at an estimated rate of $400 billion per year.

The Defense Department spends upwards of $22 billion a year (1/3 of their maintenance costs) on reigning in the degrading effects of corrosion. Dan Dunmire, director of the department’s Office of Corrosion Policy and Oversight, says the problem has created “almost a sense of crisis.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Food Standards Agency in the UK has declared that, “… there are no important differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health benefits, of organic food when compared with conventionally produced food.”

In a comprehensive study, researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine examined more than 50,000 studies on the nutritional value of foods going back to 1958. Of these, 55 met the criteria of the project. Dr Alan Dangour, the principal author, commented on the marginal differences found during the studies, “A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist … but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance. Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.” Read the rest of this entry »

While there are many conservation issues that regularly top the policy bill, such as destruction of habitat, over-hunting, fisheries collapsing and so on, a new concern has recently emerged through scientific studies. Wildlife cancer. In a report entitled ‘Wildlife cancer: a conservation perspective’ Denise McAloose and Alisa L. Newton provide a range of evidence about pollution linked cancers in a number of species. Read the rest of this entry »

India’s environment minster has announced that his government plans to invest $200 million in the conservation of forests in the country. His ministry will also measure and report the amount of carbon the forests capture.

While announcing the scheme, the minister reiterated his government’s stance that conservation and protection of forests is one of the most important aspects in the global fight against climate change. In addition, stopping deforestation and reforestation are the simplest and one of the most cost efficient methods of offsetting carbon emissions.

The Indian government carefully timed the announcement of such plan given the increasing pressure from developed countries to commit of some kind of emission reduction goals. China is already in talks with the United States for a potential deal on reduction of sectoral carbon emissions and India, being the other major developing country, is feeling the mounting pressure. Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s environmental protests all have the same key feature – scrutiny. In each case, the protestors are asking for a very specific response from those involved: a closer look at what’s going on, and what can be done to make things better.

Florida Swamp Protest

In Florida, Stevie Lowe has been convicted of resisting a law enforcement officer without violence. She chained herself to a tree as part of an environmental protest against Florida Power & Light (FP&L), whose Indiantown power plant is the focus of dispute. Environmentalists say that FP&L are draining the nearby Barley Barber swamp to service their plant – a claim FP&L deny. Lowe, who will spend ninety days in Martin County jail, said her action was designed to ‘instigate more public scrutiny of the Barley Barber Swamp’.

Indian Tribe protests - in London

In London, activists mounted a highly publicised protest at the AGM of Vedanta, a British mining company. Their concern is that a planned bauxite mine in Orissa, India will destroy a mountain and damage the habitat of a local tribe as well as that of indigenous animals and plants. Bauxite is strip-mined, leading to surface denudation and requiring the removal of features like lakes and forests. Around 90% of global bauxite is converted to aluminium.

The Kondh tribe wishes to stop the development and has enlisted the support of ActionAid and Survival International as well as celebrities like Bianca Jagger. ActionAid purchased a single share in Vedanta to allow tribal activist Sitaram Kulisika to attend the meeting on behalf of the Kondh. Kulisika says that a year ago Vedanta said it would not mine the area without tribal consent and that he wished all shareholders to keep the directors of the company to their promise.  Those shareholders include the Church of England which has shares worth over $4 million in the company. Vedanta claims the project is both ethically and environmentally sound.

Chinese protestors win one battle, but face another

In Hunan Province, China, a series of protests have taken place. The first were demonstrating against pollution problems caused by a chemical plant that has already closed owing to health and environment problems. The second protests, in the streets of Zhentou township, followed the detention of protestors who’d taken part in the first protest. Local government buildings were targeted, as people demanded to be fairly treated following health problems by the Xianhe Chemical Plant. The plant opened in 2004 and had a poor track record from the beginning –poor environmental management and the stockpiling of solid waste. Local people claim the plant was harming the environment by keeping the waste which had high concentrations of toxic heavy metals such as cadmium and indium, which were leaching into local drinking water.

Their complaints appear to have had substance, as the plant was ordered to cease production in March 2009 – now the local people want free health checks and treatment for those found to have excessive heavy metal levels because they fear that now the plant has closed, their situation will be ignored by officials.

Florida Swamp courtesy of chaunceydavis at Flickr under a creative commons licence

I’m such a geek. This week, I’m headed to the legendary Red Rocks Park in Morrison, Colorado, for four sold-out nights of music from the Vermont-based band, Phish, at what is arguably one of the greatest outdoor music venues in the United States, if not the world. And I will, at some point or another, be thinking about the New Deal.

That’s right, in the middle of some twenty-minute swirling, epic jam, my mind will undoubtedly stray a little and wonder about the millions of unemployed Americans that were employed during and after the Great Depression building thousands of roads, bridges, post offices, schools, dams and, well, amazing places like Red Rocks. Read the rest of this entry »