In a desolate stretch of desert spanning West Texas and New Mexico, drillers are pumping more crude than Kuwait. The oil production is so frenzied that huge swaths of land are literally sinking and heaving. The land has subsided by as much as 11 inches since 2015 in a prime portion of the Permian Basin, as drillers extract huge amounts of oil and water, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of satellite data. In other areas where drillers dispose of wastewater in underground wells, the land has lifted by as much as 5 inches over the same period. Alongside crude, oil-and-gas companies are extracting gargantuan amounts of subterranean water—in the Delaware, between five and six barrels of water are produced, on average, for every barrel of oil. To dispose of it, they inject billions of barrels of putrid wastewater into underground disposal wells.
The constant extraction and injection of liquids has wrought complex geologic changes, which are raising concerns among local communities long supportive of oil and gas. Earthquakes linked to water disposal have rattled residents and prompted state regulators to step in. Some researchers worry that wastewater might end up contaminating scarce drinking-water supplies.
Excerpts from Benoit Morenne and Andrew Mollica, Permian Oil Extraction Lifts and Sinks Land, WSJ, Apr. 29, 2024
PFAS, or forever chemicals, are ubiquitous in our environment. In the U.S. alone, there are more than 57,000 sites contaminated with these chemicals. They’re in our drinking water, our soil, our products—and our ocean. And according to new research, when waves crash onto shores around the world, they spray hundreds of thousands of PFAS particles into the air, creating a cycle in which these chemicals go from land to sea and back again. PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a class of synthetic chemicals largely used to make products stain-, grease-, and water-resistant. They’ve been dubbed “forever chemicals” because they don’t easily break down and so stay in our environments for thousands of years. They’re linked to harmful effects to health, including cancer, decreased fertility, developmental delays, and more.
Excerpts from Kristin Toussaint, Ocean waves contain more ‘forever chemicals’ than industrial pollution. That’s bad news if you live on the coast, FastCompany, April 24, 2024
Countries are currently negotiating a global plastics treaty to end plastic pollution. It is essential that the treaty addresses plastic chemicals because all plastics, from food packaging to car tires, contain thousands of chemicals that can leach into foodstuffs, homes, and the environment. Since many of these chemicals are hazardous, they can damage human health and the environment.
Plastic chemicals comprise all chemicals in plastics, including additives, processing aids, and impurities. A previous report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and other international institutions identified 13,000 plastic chemicals. The new PlastChem Report shows that there are more plastic chemicals than previously known, with over 16,000 chemicals included in the new PlastChem database that accompanies the report. Further key findings of the report include: • At least 4,200 plastic chemicals (or 26%) are of concern because of their high hazards to human health and the environment, • More than 400 chemicals of concern can be present in each major plastic type, including in food packaging, and all tested plastics leached hazardous chemicals,
The report recommends : Increased transparency on the chemical composition of plastics is essential for closing data gaps, promoting a comprehensive management of plastic chemicals, and creating accountability across plastic value chains. A unified reporting, disclosure of the chemical composition of plastic materials and products as well as a “no data, no market” approach are recommended to ensure that essential information about plastic chemicals becomes publicly available.
A flurry of recent studies has found that microplastics are present in virtually everything we consume, from bottled water to meat and plant-based food. Now, University of New Mexico Health Sciences researchers have used a new analytical tool to measure the microplastics present in human placentas. In a study published February 17 in the journal Toxicological Sciences, a team led by Matthew Campen, reported finding microplastics in all 62 of the placenta samples tested, with concentrations ranging from 6.5 to 790 micrograms per gram of tissue.
Although those numbers may seem small (a microgram is a millionth of a gram), Campen is worried about the health effects of a steadily rising volume of microplastics in the environment. For toxicologists, “dose makes the poison,” he said. “If the dose keeps going up, we start to worry. If we’re seeing effects on placentas, then all mammalian life on this planet could be impacted. That’s not good.”…The researchers found the most prevalent polymer in placental tissue was polyethylene, which is used to make plastic bags and bottles. It accounted for 54% of the total plastics. Polyvinyl chloride (better known as PVC) and nylon each represented about 10% of the total, with the remainder consisting of nine other polymers…
Plastic use worldwide has grown exponentially since the early 1950s, producing a metric ton of plastic waste for every person on the planet. About a third of the plastic that has been produced is still in use, but most of the rest has been discarded or sent to landfills, where it starts to break down from exposure to ultraviolet radiation present in sunlight. “That ends up in groundwater, and sometimes it aerosolizes and ends up in our environment,” Garcia said. “We’re not only getting it from ingestion but also through inhalation as well. It not only affects us as humans, but all off our animals – chickens, livestock – and all of our plants. We’re seeing it in everything.”…The concentration of microplastics in placentas is particularly troubling, he said, because the tissue has only been growing for eight months (it starts to form about a month into a pregnancy). “Other organs of your body are accumulating over much longer periods of time.”
Christopher Wray warned in February 2023 that Beijing’s efforts to covertly plant offensive malware inside U.S. critical infrastructure networks is now at “a scale greater than we’d seen before,” an issue he has deemed a defining national security threat. Citing Volt Typhoon, the name given to the Chinese hacking network that was revealed in 2023 to be lying dormant inside U.S. critical infrastructure, Wray said Beijing-backed actors were pre-positioning malware that could be triggered at any moment to disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure. Officials have grown particularly alarmed at Beijing’s interest in infiltrating U.S. critical infrastructure networks, planting malware inside U.S. computer systems responsible for everything from safe drinking water to aviation traffic so it could detonate, at a moment’s notice, damaging cyberattacks during a conflict.
The Netherlands’ spy agencies said in February 2024 that Chinese hackers had used malware to gain access to a Dutch military network in 2023. The agency, considered to have one of Europe’s top cyber capabilities, said it made the rare disclosure to show the scale of the threat and reduce the stigma of being targeted so allied governments can better pool knowledge.
Millions of fish have died in the Darling River near his town, Menindee, in outback New South Wales, Australia in March 2023. After days under the sun, their bodies had started to “break up…transforming the river that locals rely on for drinking and showering into an ecological wasteland. Authorities have said the mass death was caused by a lack of oxygen in the water, called hypoxia, a result of recent floods and a heat wave. But furious locals say the true root of the problem is the overuse of Australia’s biggest and most vital river system.
The disaster is the latest episode in a long-running battle over the Murray Darling Basin, a vast network of lakes and rivers stretching across four states in eastern Australia, which sustains much of the country’s agriculture and dozens of communities along its banks. In an arid country where social, economic and environmental interests clash whenever water runs scarce, the issue has pitted states against each other, and riverside communities against farms upstream.
The 2019 fish deaths happened during a drought and the 2023 fish deaths happened after a flood, said Richard Kingsford, the director of the Center for Ecosystem Science at the University of New South Wales. But, he said, the long-term causes were the same both times: “There’s not enough water in the river, and the whole system is engineered so that escape routes are closed.” Over-extraction means parts of the river run dry more often, he said, and the small and medium-sized floods that used to periodically clear away organic debris have all but disappeared. That means when a big flood hits, that debris is all swept into the river, where it breaks down and deoxygenates the water. That, combined with the construction of weirs that have prevented the fish from swimming to better-oxygenated water, has made this disaster worse, he said….
The New South Wales fisheries and water management bodies, by contrast, both attribute the disaster to weather-related causes…
After many of the fish had already sunk to the bottom of the river, the cleanup started with workers in small boats removing floating carcasses with hand-held nets. Authorities said this will be followed by machinery that will drag nets through the river to scoop up sunken fish….
Excerpts from Yan Zhuang, A River Choking on Fish Corpses, and a Community Full of Anger, NYT, Mar. 24, 2023
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in March 2023 proposed the first federal limits on so-called forever chemicals in public drinking water…The EPA is proposing maximum allowable levels for two compounds in a class of chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Known as forever chemicals because they take a long time to break down, they were used for decades in carpeting, clothing, food packaging, firefighting foam and other consumer and industrial products…Once prized as innovative substances that could resist stains, water, grease and heat, PFAS are increasingly viewed as a threat because they persist in the environment and have been found in roughly 99% of the U.S. population…
The move represents a seismic shift in the regulation of the nation’s drinking water, and will require sweeping changes for thousands of water systems that will have to test for and treat a group of chemicals that have been the subject of growing concern among public health officials and people worried about the safety of water coming from their taps. In its new proposed rule, EPA set a limit for two types of PFAS of 4 parts per trillion each in public drinking-water systems. The EPA also said it would regulate four other PFAS chemicals by requiring treatment if the combined level reaches a certain concentration….The rule, if enacted, is likely to fuel fights over who will bear most of the cost for treatment systems in hundreds of communities. Water companies, states and communities have already filed thousands of lawsuits against companies that manufactured or used PFAS, seeking to recover costs for cleanups and filtration.
The two individual chemicals that the EPA is proposing limiting are known as PFOA and PFOS. Companies phased out their production over the past two decades, but the long-term use of firefighting foam containing them at military facilities and airports is a frequent source of drinking-water contamination, according to the EPA. The chemicals and other PFAS have also tainted water after escaping from landfills, wastewater-treatment plants and textile and other manufacturers.
Scientific understanding about the health risks from PFAS is still evolving, but a number of studies have shown links to a variety of cancers, thyroid disease, high cholesterol and other issues. There are thousands of PFAS chemicals, including roughly 700 that have been used in commerce in the U.S. in recent years, according to the EPA…
Excerpt from Kris Maher, EPA Proposes Limits for ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Drinking Water, WSJ, Mar. 15, 2023
The Biden administration approved the massive Willow oil-drilling project in the Alaskan Arctic in March 2023 over the objections of environmentalists and many Democrats who wanted the project scuttled. The green light means Houston-based ConocoPhillips can start construction on its roughly $7 billion project in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, which the company expects will produce about 180,000 barrels of oil a day at its peak—equivalent to about 40% of Alaska’s current crude production…The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has estimated that oil and gas extracted from its recommended version of the Willow project would generate more than 270 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over the project’s lifetime.
The approval paves the way for ConocoPhillips to build an airstrip, more than 430 miles of ice roads and nearly 270 miles of individual pipelines, among other infrastructure, according to the BLM’s environmental review of the project…
The company, which is the largest crude producer in Alaska, sits on abundant reserves in the state. As of the end of 2021, it owned about 1.6 million net undeveloped acres in the state, according to ConocoPhillips. Approval of the project means that ConocoPhillips now has a hub from which to further expand into Alaska… The initial build-out from Willow will allow ConocoPhillips to develop more wells and infrastructure in the coming years, he said. “It will be in many ways the gift that keeps on giving…”
Excerpts from Benoît Morenne, Biden Administration Approves Willow Oil-Drilling Project in Alaskan Arctic, WSJ, Mar. 13, 2023
Mining in river channels provides a living for millions of people across the globe, particularly in the tropics. However, because this mining involves deforestation, excavating, dredging, and other work directly in or next to river channels, ecosystems are intensively degraded. Soils and river sediments excavated during mining are processed to extract the precious mineral of interest, usually gold, then discarded. Often the excess sand, silt, and clay is washed downstream by rivers, muddying river water for as much as 1,000 km downstream of mining sites.
During the past 20 years, mining in rivers has increased dramatically, particularly during the Global Financial Crisis in 2008–09 when the price of gold increased significantly. Despite the human and ecological importance of mining-related environmental degradation, no global documentation of its environmental footprint exists. For the first time these environmental impacts were quantified through the use of satellite imagery and on-the-ground measurements, documenting more than 400 mining areas in 49 countries, mostly in the tropics. We show that the effects of mining have altered 173 rivers, which collectively represent 5–7% of large river length globally. In the tropical countries with river mining, on average nearly one-quarter of large river length is altered by river mining.
Wildlife officials in Florida are relaunching a program in December 2022 to feed manatees in a coastal area where many congregate in the winter, part of efforts to address the aquatic mammals’ chronic malnutrition caused by the disappearance of seagrasses they feed on…A key factor for the depletion of seagrasses is poor water quality in the Indian River Lagoon, an estuary spanning 156 miles of Florida’s eastern coast that draws many manatees.
The situation highlights a broader problem with polluted waterways in Florida. Algal blooms have broken out in numerous areas in recent years, fueled by nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus from improperly treated sewage, leaking septic tanks and fertilizer runoff, according to researchers. The outbreaks pose a threat to Florida’s economy, which relies heavily on tourism in coastal areas.
In 2021, mainly January to March, state and federal wildlife officials provided over 202,000 pounds of romaine lettuce, butter lettuce and cabbage to manatees gathering in warm water discharged by a power plant on the Indian River Lagoon. Many of the mammals, which typically are about 10 feet long and weigh more than 1,000 pounds, seek refuge there when waters cool in winter.
Excerpt from Arian Campo-Flores Florida Restarts Push to Feed Manatees, WSJ, Dec. 25, 2022
From the lush Amazon rainforest to the frigid Arctic Ocean, the world’s landscapes — and all the wildlife they contain — are under threat, and the world needs to set aside a third of all land and sea territories to save them, U.N. experts say.
The call is central to the global agreement being hashed out in December 2022 at the U.N. biodiversity summit in Montreal. If approved, governments would be agreeing to set aside 30% of their land and sea territories for conservation by 2030 – the so-called 30-by-30 goal, doubling the amount of land area and more than tripling the ocean territory currently under conservation…
A June 2022 study in the journal Science found, however, that at least 44% of global land area would be needed to protect areas with a high diversity of species, prevent the loss of intact ecosystems, and optimize the representation of different landscapes and species. But more than 1.8 billion people live in these areas…
One of the key tension points that has emerged in the 30-by-30 debate at COP15 is whether the target should be carried out globally or at a national level…It is an important distinction, scientists and negotiators said. Some countries are small, without much land to set aside for nature. Others are vast and still contain a high degree of biodiversity, such as tropical forest nations like Brazil and Indonesia. Were such countries to protect only 30% of their territories, that could actually result in a significant loss of nature…Currently, just under 50% of the Amazon is under some form of official protection or indigenous stewardship, so a national pledge to conserve 30% would represent a significant downgrade.
The other dispute plaguing 30-by-30 is over what should count as protection. Some countries might allow people to live within protected areas or promote indigenous stewardship of these lands. Some might even allow for extractive industries to operate under permits and regulation. In other cases, conservation areas are off limits to everyone. The European Union has proposed allowing activities like logging, mining and fishing to be carried out under conservation management for 20% of protected areas, while 10% would be held under stricter protections.
The idea caused environmental nonprofit Greenpeace to accused the EU last week of trying to water down language on 30-by-30, which the EU denied.
Excerpts from Gloria Dickie, Protecting 30% of the planet to save nature is not as simple as it sounds, Reuters Dec. 14, 2022
Only a few years ago, the clear, shallow waters of Mar Menor, a saltwater lagoon off eastern Spain that is Europe’s largest, hosted a robust population of the highly endangered fan mussel, a meter-long bivalve. But in 2016, a massive algal bloom, fueled by fertilizer washing off farm fields, sucked up the lagoon’s oxygen and killed 98% of the bivalves, along with seahorses, crabs, and other marine life.
The suffocating blooms struck again and again, and millions of dead fish washed onto shore. In 2021 local residents—some of whom benefit from tourism to the lagoon—had had enough. Led by a philosophy professor, activists launched a petition to adopt a new and radical legal strategy: granting the 135-square-kilometer lagoon the rights of personhood. Nearly 640,000 Spanish citizens signed it, and on 21 September, Spain’s Senate approved a bill enshrining the lagoon’s new rights. The new law doesn’t regard the lagoon and its watershed as fully human. But the ecosystem now has a legal right to exist, evolve naturally, and be restored. And like a person, it has legal guardians, including a scientific committee, which will give its defenders a new voice.
The lagoon is the first ecosystem in Europe to get such rights, but this approach to conservation has been gaining popularity around the world over the past decade…The clearest success story, scholars say, is the Whanganui River in New Zealand, which was given legal rights by an act of Parliament in 2017. Like a person, the river and its catchment can sue or be sued, enter contracts, and hold property. In that case, the aim was not to stop pollution but to incorporate the Māori connection between people and nature into Western law. “The river and the land and its people are inseparable,” Niko Tangaroa, a Māori elder of the Whanganui Iwi people and a prominent activist for the river, wrote in 1994.
Excerpts from Erik Stokstad, This Lagoon is Effectively a Person, New Spanish Law Says, Science, Oct. 7, 2022
After years of fighting, Native American tribes, environmentalists and the hydroelectric power industry say they have reached a deal on a proposed legislative package that could boost clean energy as well as river conservation. The compromise deal, which would require approval from Congress, is the result of four years of talks between groups that have long been courtroom and policy adversaries because of disagreements involving vanishing fish populations and changes to river ecosystems. Concerns over climate change have helped them find common ground to potentially expand hydroelectric power, a carbon-free energy source, they said.
The deal seeks to grant approvals to add hydroelectric power to some existing dams in as little as two years, while speeding the approval of off-river pumped-storage projects, which store surplus energy for later use, in as little as three years. Another key component would give tribes, instead of the Department of the Interior, authority on the conditions put on permits for things like the protection of tribal cultural resources or fish passage.
Hydroelectric power makes up about 7% of the U.S. electricity mix. Around 281 hydro-generating facilities, making up roughly one-third of non-federally owned generation, are up for re-licensing by 2030. The re-licensing process usually takes more than seven years and new projects take almost as long, a regulatory environment that has been likened to nuclear power approvals. Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, called the current permitting process for hydropower “a wasteful disaster” because of its yearslong timelines. “I look forward to seeing the agreement various stakeholders have reached,” he said Friday.
The proposal would amend the Federal Power Act, first passed in 1920.
Excerpts from Jennifer Hille, Tribes, Industry Groups Reach Deal to Boost U.S. Hydroelectric Power, WSJ, Apr. 4, 2022
Lithium Americas, a Canadian company, has plans to build a mine and processing plant at Thacker Pass, near the southern tip of the caldera in Nevada. It would be America’s biggest lithium mine. Ranchers and farmers in nearby Orovada, a town of about 120 people, worry that the mine will threaten their water supply and air quality. Native American tribes in the region say they were not properly consulted before the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a federal agency that manages America’s vast public lands, decided to permit the project. Tribes also allege that a massacre of their ancestors took place at Thacker Pass in 1865…
The fight over Thacker Pass is not surprising. President Joe Biden wants half of all cars sold in 2030 to be electric, and to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. These ambitious climate targets mean that battles over where and how to mine are coming to mineral-rich communities around the country. America is in need of cobalt, copper and lithium, among other things, which are used in batteries and other clean-energy technologies. As with past commodity booms, large deposits of many of these materials are found in America’s western states . America, of course, is not the only country racing to secure access to such materials. As countries pledge to go carbon-free, global demand for critical minerals is set to soar. The International Energy Agency, a forecaster, estimates that by 2040 demand for lithium could increase by more than 40 times relative to 2020. Demand for cobalt and nickel could grow by about 20 times in the same period.
Beyond its green goals, America is also intent on diversifying mineral supplies away from China and Russia (big producer of nickel), which—by virtue of its natural bounty and muscular industrial policy—has become a raw-materials juggernaut… The green transition has also turned the pursuit of critical minerals into a great-power competition not unlike the search for gold or oil in eras past. Mining for lithium, the Department of Energy (DOE) says, is not only a means of fighting climate change but also a matter of national security.
Westerners have seen all this before, and are wary of new mines…The economic history of the American West is a story of boom and bust. When a commodity bubble burst, boomtowns were abandoned. The legacy of those busts still plagues the region. In 2020 the Government Accountability Office estimated that there could be at least 530,000 abandoned hardrock-mine features, such as tunnels or waste piles, on federal lands. At least 89,000 of those could pose a safety or environmental hazard. Most of America’s abandoned hardrock mines are in 13 states west of the Mississippi River…
Is it possible to secure critical minerals while avoiding the mistakes of previous booms? America’s debates over how to use its public lands, and to whom those lands belong, are notoriously unruly. Conservationists, energy companies, ranchers and tribal nations all feel some sense of ownership. Total harmony is unlikely. But there are ways to lessen the animosity.
Start with environmental concerns. Mining is a dirty business, but development and conservation can coexist. In 2020 Stanford University helped broker a national agreement between the hydropower industry and conservation groups to increase safety and efficiency at existing dams while removing dams that are harming the environment….Many worry that permitting new development on land sacred to tribes will be yet another example of America’s exploitation of indigenous peoples in pursuit of land and natural resources. msci, a consultancy, reckons that 97% of America’s nickel reserves, 89% of copper, 79% of lithium and 68% of cobalt are found within 35 miles of Native American reservations.
TThe BLM is supposed to consult tribes about policies that may affect the tribes but the consultation process is broken. Often it consists of sending tribes a letter notifying them of a mining or drilling proposal.
Lithium Americas has offered to build the town a new school, one that will be farther away from a road that the firm will use to transport sulphur. Sitting in her truck outside a petrol station that doubles as Orovada’s local watering hole, Ms Amato recalled one group member’s response to the offer: “If all I’m going to get is a kick in the ass, because we’re getting the mine regardless, then I may as well get a kick in the ass and a brand new school.”
Excerpt from America’s Next Mining Boom: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Economist, Feb. 19, 2022
Heads of State, Ministers of environment and other representatives from 175 nations endorsed a historic resolution at the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) on March 2, 2022: “End Plastic Pollution: Towards an internationally legally binding instrument.” The resolution addresses the full lifecycle of plastic, including its production, design and disposal.
The resolution…establishes an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), which will begin its work in 2022, with the ambition of completing a draft global legally binding agreement by the end of 2024…The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) will convene a forum by the end of 2022 that is open to all stakeholders in conjunction with the first session of the INC, to share knowledge and best practices in different parts of the world.
Plastic production soared from 2 million tonnes in 1950 to 348 million tonnes in 2017, becoming a global industry valued at US$522.6 billion, and it is expected to double in capacity by 2040.
Exposure to plastics can harm human health, potentially affecting fertility, hormonal, metabolic and neurological activity, and open burning of plastics contributes to air pollution. By 2050 greenhouse gas emissions associated with plastic production, use and disposal would account for 15 per cent of allowed emissions, under the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C (34.7°F). More than 800 marine and coastal species are affected by this pollution through ingestion, entanglement, and other dangers.
Some 11 million tonnes of plastic waste flow annually into oceans. This may triple by 2040. A shift to a circular economy can reduce the volume of plastics entering oceans by over 80 per cent by 2040; reduce virgin plastic production by 55 per cent; save governments US$70 billion by 2040; reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent; and create 700,000 additional jobs – mainly in the global south.
Excerpts from ,Historic day in the campaign to beat plastic pollution: Nations commit to develop a legally binding agreement, UNEP Press Release, Mar. 2, 202
There are an estimated 350,000 different types of manufactured chemicals on the global market. These include plastics, pesticides, industrial chemicals, chemicals in consumer products, antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals….The rate at which these pollutants are appearing in the environment far exceeds the capacity of governments to assess global and regional risks, let alone control any potential problems..
In 2009, an international team of researchers identified nine planetary boundaries that demarcate the remarkably stable state Earth has remained within for 10,000 years – since the dawn of civilization. These boundaries include greenhouse gas emissions, the ozone layer, forests, freshwater and biodiversity. The researchers quantified the boundaries that influence Earth’s stability, and concluded in 2015 that four boundaries have been breached. But the boundary for chemicals was one of two boundaries that remained unquantified.
This new research takes this a step further. The researchers say there are many ways that chemicals and plastics have negative effects on planetary health, from mining, fracking and drilling to extract raw materials to production and waste management.
Some of these pollutants can be found globally, from the Arctic to Antarctica, and can be extremely persistent…Global production and consumption of novel entities is set to continue to grow. The total mass of plastics on the planet is now over twice the mass of all living mammals, and roughly 80% of all plastics ever produced remain in the environment. Plastics contain over 10,000 other chemicals, so their environmental degradation creates new combinations of materials – and unprecedented environmental hazards. Production of plastics is set to increase and predictions indicate that the release of plastic pollution to the environment will rise too, despite huge efforts in many countries to reduce waste.
Excerpt from Safe planetary boundary for pollutants, including plastics, exceeded, say researchers, Stockholm Resilience Center Press Release, Jan. 18, 2022
For an alternative view on planetary boundaries see NY Times Article, 2015
Protests in the Iranian city of Isfahan erupted in November 2021 due to a severe shortage of water, as the region continues to suffer from a year of low rainfall and drought. Thousands of farmers and others who supported them took to the streets in Isfahan in central Iran, expressing their dissatisfaction at the water shortages and urging the government to solve the crisis. They shouted “let Isfahan breathe again, revive Zayandeh Rud,” referring to the dried river which supplies their crops with water.
The drying up of the Zayandeh Rud river has not only been caused by drought, however, but also by the government’s diversion of water from the river to supply other areas and with a pipeline supplying water to Yazd province also having been damaged. Those incidences have contributed to the farms being left dry and the famers’ livelihoods being threatened.
The water shortages and the drying of the river come at a time when the region is suffering from a similar shortage, as rainfall has been low and temperatures have increased to make it one of the hottest and driest years recorded. ..Neighboring Iraq and Syria have also been expressed concern over the shortage of water this year… In November 201, a major reservoir in Syria also dried up completely, and was similarly due to a combination of climatic and structural causes.
Excerpts from Protests over water shortages erupt in Iran, as river dries up, Middle East Monitor, Nov. 21, 2021
The number of microbial enzymes with the ability to degrade plastic is growing, in correlation with local levels of plastic pollution. That is the finding of a study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, that measured samples of environmental DNA from around the globe. The results illustrate the impact plastic pollution is having on the environment, and hint at potential new solutions for managing the problem.
The study analyzed samples of environmental DNA from hundreds of locations around the world. The researchers used computer modelling to search for microbial enzymes with plastic-degrading potential, which was then cross-referenced with the official numbers for plastic waste pollution across countries and oceans. “Using our models, we found multiple lines of evidence supporting the fact that the global microbiome’s plastic-degrading potential correlates strongly with measurements of environmental plastic pollution – a significant demonstration of how the environment is responding to the pressures we are placing on it,” says Aleksej Zelezniak, Associate Professor in Systems Biology at Chalmers University of Technology.
More enzymes in the most polluted areas: In other words, the quantity and diversity of plastic-degrading enzymes is increasing, in direct response to local levels of plastic pollution. In total, over 30,000 enzyme ‘homologues’ were found with the potential to degrade 10 different types of commonly used plastic. Homologues are members of protein sequences sharing similar properties. Some of the locations that contained the highest amounts were notoriously highly polluted areas, for example samples from the Mediterranean Sea and South Pacific Ocean…
The researchers believe that their results could potentially be used to discover and adapt enzymes for novel recycling processes…“The next step would be to test the most promising enzyme candidates in the lab to closely investigate their properties and the rate of plastic degradation they can achieve. From there you could engineer microbial communities with targeted degrading functions for specific polymer types,” explains Aleksej Zelezniak.
Plastic-degrading enzymes increasing in correlation with pollution, Chalmers University of Technology Press Release, Dec. 14, 2021
Fish populations appear to recover rapidly from mercury pollution once humans stop adding it to their environment. A 15-year study of a lake in Canada found that eight years after the metal’s supply ceased, concentrations of methylmercury – a highly toxic substance made from mercury by bacteria in aquatic ecosystems – fell by 76 per cent…
“I can’t imagine a much faster recovery,” says Paul Blanchfield at government agency Fisheries and Oceans Canada, who led the research. The team are not suggesting the fish excrete the mercury quickly – the experiment in fact shows they hang on to it for a long time – but that quick turnover of generations sees concentrations fall fast when new pollution stops.
Mercury pollution is still a major global environmental problem, with small-scale gold mining and coal burning being the two biggest sources. Transported in the atmosphere and rained down on lakes and oceans, the metal’s accumulation in freshwater and marine species has raised concerns over the human health impact of eating fish.
Excerpts from Adam Vaughan, Freshwater fish can recover from mercury pollution in just a few years, New Scientist, Dec. 15, 2021
Small island states will not, most likely, be swallowed by the sea… In research published in 2010, Paul Kench measured the size of 27 atolls over a period of decades and found that while 14% had shrunk and a couple had disappeared, 43% stayed the same size and another 43% became bigger. Many of the ring-shaped coral reefs have been able to adapt to sea-level rise, changing shape as sediment is eroded and pushed around. Tuvalu’s land surface, for instance, increased by 3% between 1971 and 2014 despite a rise in the local sea level of 4mm a year, twice the global average for that period…
But there are other, more immediate effects of climate change that threaten the lives and livelihoods of the citizens of these countries. They are less arresting, harder to explain and, as in the changing shape and size of islands, sometimes counterintuitive. But the upshot is the same: the countries may soon become uninhabitable.
One is “king tides”, high tides that briefly but entirely inundate the narrow strips of low-lying land that comprise most atoll, are becoming more frequent. The saltwater can kill crops such as banana and papaya and seeps into groundwater, making it unfit to drink.
There are also ways to keep islands habitable: Kiribati plans to dredge its lagoons and use the sand to raise the surrounding islands higher above the sea. Tuvalu has embarked on a land-reclamation project. But the spectre of climate change makes it harder to drum up investment for such schemes. “I am trying to change the minds of the many people who say, ‘We cannot invest in your country, you’re finished’,” says Kiribati’s Mr Tito.
The depressing long-term solution may be to move. The Marshall Islands hopes to renegotiate its post-colonial “Compact of Free Association” with America, which expires in 2023, to ensure a permanent right of residence in the United States for all Marshallese. Tuvalu has no such option. Maina Talia, a climate activist, thinks that the government should take Fiji up on its offer of a home where Tuvaluans could practice the same culture rather than “be dumped somewhere in Sydney’‘.
Earlier this year, the government of Tuvalu, which until recently insisted that there would be no Plan B, established a new un initiative. Its aim is to work with “like-minded countries” to figure out how and where such countries could be relocated, how they could continue to function ex-situ, and whether they could still lay claim to vast exclusive economic zones if their land disappeared under water.
Relocating a country would raise other big questions, too, for both the international system and the way in which people think about statehood. “How to prepare to move a nation in dignity, that has never been done before,” says Kamal Amakrane, a migration expert whose ideas helped spark the UN initiative.
Excerpt from Moving story: Pacific countries face more complex problems than sinking, Economist, August 7, 2021
“Plastic waste is not just a global crisis that threatens economic recovery, climate, and nature. It is also an investment opportunity that can flip it from a scourge into an engine for economic development,” said Rob Kaplan, who founded Circulate Capital in 2017. Initially the firm sought to back companies in India and Southeast Asia, such as recycling or waste-sorting companies, that help reduce the amount of plastic waste that winds up in the ocean.
In 2019 it raised a $106 million debt and project finance fund, Circulate Capital Ocean Fund, backed by a handful of large multinational corporations that include Coca-Cola, Danone, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever…Circulate is one of a small but growing number of firms investing in companies that contribute to what they callthe circular economy, a business model that seeks to eliminate waste that organizations produce, continuously reuse products and materials and regenerate natural systems.
An estimated 30 private-market funds, including private-equity, venture and debt strategies focused on the circular economy in the first half of 2020, up from just three in 2016….A number of large multinational corporations are funding these firms’ efforts as part of a broader push to reduce both the overall waste their own companies produce and the amount of virgin materials they use.
Unilever, which has backed funds managed by Circulate and New York-based Closed Loop Partners, aims to cut in half the amount of virgin plastic it uses by 2025 and plans to collect and process more plastic packaging than it sells. Coca-Cola, also a backer of Circulate’s Ocean fund, aims to make all of its global packaging recyclable by 2025 and to use at least 50% of recycled packaging material by 2030, among other goals.
Excerpt from Laura Kreutzer, Growth Firms See Plastic Waste as an Investment Opportunity, WSJ, June 23, 2021
Attempts to modify the weather can be dangerous. They require pilots to head into the kind of clouds they would normally avoid. But officials claim that China’s efforts to trigger or boost precipitation by scattering chemicals in the sky, which began in the 1950s, have been hugely successful. Today the country spends at least $200m a year on the programme. In 2018 about 50,000 people were involved in it, most of them part-time or seasonal staff working from small offices in rural areas.
Among the 50 or so countries where cloud-seeding is practiced, China is the most enthusiastic promoter of it….Officials claim it can help to put out wildfires and reduce air pollution. State media report that cloud-seeding brings down about 50bn cubic metres of extra rain or snow across the country each year—equal to about 8% of total water demand. Officials in Beijing claim that in the parched capital, seeding can boost rainfall by 15%…
Recent advances in radar and computer modelling have made rigorous tests more possible. Scientists now generally agree that cloud-seeding can slightly augment snowfall from specific types of cloud that form on the slopes of mountains. Some of China’s weather-modification projects take place in such environments. But elsewhere, despite the lack of convincing proof that it works, farmers still want the government to try. And the government likes getting credit when rain does fall. Cloud-seeding creates employment in poor rural places, in particular for army veterans who believe that the government owes them a job.
Only a few of China’s rainmakers use planes. More commonly, they fire silver iodide into the sky from artillery pieces. But that can be dangerous, too. Locals are often advised to keep an eye out for unexploded shells, which occasionally land on people’s homes….
Excerpts from No silver lining: Cloud-seeding will not solve China’s water shortages, Economist, Mar. 27, 2021
Businesses pay a fee to Tontoton, a company established in 2019, for every ton of plastic that they generate. Tontoton then uses the money to employ scavengers, who retrieve an equal weight of plastic garbage in Vietnam — the world’s No. 4 source of ocean debris…Tontoton said it has the only such program in Vietnam, while Plastic Bank runs a similar one in Indonesia and the Philippines, and the Plastic Collective covers Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia…Tontoton targets the worst ocean-bound rubbish, called orphan plastic because it cannot be recycled. Trash pickers find the single-use plastic along the cyan waters hugging Vietnam’s Phu Quoc and Hon Son islands. Their goal is to collect 5,000 tons a year and send it to INSEE, part of Siam City Cement, to be burned for energy….
These cleanup programs have sprung up globally as doubts emerge about recycling, which used to seem like a win-win idea because consumers could keep consuming and the environment could stay pristine. But instead, for decades, the public believed its plastic was being recycled, only to find that 91% of it was not, according to a study in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, assessing all plastic from 1950-2015.
Vietnam is a focus of cleanup campaigns because it’s among the top five countries sending litter to sea, along with China, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand…These Asian countries earned this marker because they import so much waste for processing from the rest of the world.
Tontoton says clients sign a letter committing to multiple strategies beyond offsets, including plastic substitutes and reduction. The company helps them offset or “neutralize” plastic already used, but this isn’t a “getaway car” to escape broader responsibility. “Plastic neutralization cannot solve the problem by itself.”
Excerpt from LIEN HOANG, Vietnam tests waters for plastic credits to fight marine pollution, April 15, 2021
From 1966 to 1974, France blew up 41 nuclear weapons in above-ground tests in French Polynesia, the collection of 118 islands and atolls that is part of France. The French government has long contended that the testing was done safely. But a new analysis of hundreds of documents declassified in 2013 suggests the tests exposed 90% of the 125,000 people living in French Polynesia to radioactive fallout—roughly 10
The findings come from a 2-year collaboration, dubbed the Moruroa Files, between Disclose, a French nonprofit that supports investigative journalism; Interprt, a collective of researchers, architects, and spatial designers affiliated with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who focus on environmental issues; and the Science & Global Security program at Princeton. The findings were presented on 9 March on the project’s website, in a book, and in a technical paper posted to the arXiv preprint server.
The abandoned testing facility at the Moruroa Atoll. The atoll is at the risk of collapsing due to nuclear blasts
Declassified documents suggest actual exposures were between two and 20 times higher than France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) estimates… Reasons for the discrepancies vary from test to test, he says. For example, CEA acknowledged that the first test, dubbed Aldébaran, exposed residents of the Gambier Islands to relatively high levels of fallout. But actual exposures were likely higher still… Although CEA noted that contaminated rainwater fell on the island, he says, it failed to consider that many residents likely drank the contaminated water, collected in household cisterns, for days.
Most important, the documents suggest a single test in 1974, called Centaure, exposed the entire population of Tahiti—87,500 people at the time—to fallout. French authorities set off a relatively tiny atom bomb with an explosive yield equal to 4 kilotons of TNT, and weather forecasts predicted that winds should carry fallout to the north. Instead, the wind blew to the west, carrying the plume directly over Tahiti. A new simulation based on data in the documents shows how the plume of radiation wafted over the island. CEA estimated that people on the island received a dose of about 0.6 mSv. However, Phillipe and colleagues argue that CEA underestimated the total amount of radiation that accumulated on the ground over several days, didn’t account for radiation lingering in vegetables consumed later…
The new analysis moves the vast majority of French Polynesians past the exposure threshold to qualify for compensation. Philippe and Schoenberger would like to see France do away with the exposure standard and compensate anyone who lived through the tests and developed a qualifying cancer. “Our hope is to demonstrate that this kind of threshold can be prejudicial to claimants just because of the difficulties of proving exposure,” Schoenberger says.
Philippe estimates that, assuming a cancer rate of 0.2% per year, roughly 10,000 cancer patients or their families would qualify retroactively and that compensating them would cost about €700 million. Future cancers would cost about €24 million per year, he estimates. However, Hughes says it remains to be seen whether the French government will even acknowledge the analysis. “My fear is that they will simply ignore it,” Hughes says.
The declassified documents also show the French government routinely failed to warn Polynesians about the radiation risks, Philippe says. In the Centaure test, authorities could have warned Tahitians about the approaching fallout 2 days in advance, but did not. Ironically, Philippe notes, the United States, the Soviet Union, and other countries were monitoring the tests remotely. “Everybody knew what was going on,” he says, “except the Polynesians.”
Excerpt from Adrian Cho, France grossly underestimated radioactive fallout from atom bomb tests, study finds, Science, Mar. 11, 2021
Munduruku Indigenous people in the Tapajós basin – an epicenter of illegal gold mining in the Amazon rainforest – in southwestern Pará state have reported increasing encroachments upon their lands by armed “wildcat” miners known as “garimpeiros” since March 14, 2021. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office has warned of a potential for violence between local residents and the miners and urged the deployment of the federal police and other authorities to remove the trespassers. But the government has yet to act. The tension has escalated in recent weeks after a group of miners brought equipment to the area.
Illegal mining causes significant deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and has been linked to dangerous levels of mercury poisoning, from mercury widely used to process the gold, in several Munduruku communities along the Tapajós basin. Indigenous people also fear that miners could spread the Covid-19 virus in their communities.
In a public statement on March 16, 2021 the Federal Prosecutor’s Office reported that a helicopter appeared to have escorted the miners and their equipment, suggesting the invasion is “an orchestrated action” by an organized crime group. The office also reported that the miners may be coordinating the invasion with a “small group” of Indigenous people who support the mining. Members of Munduruku communities who oppose the mining and have reported the invasions to the authorities say they have faced threats and intimidation. On March 19, 2021 armed men reportedly prevented a group of Munduruku Indigenous people from disembarking from their boats in an area within their territory. On March 25, 2021 in the Jacareacanga municipality, miners and their supporters forced their way into a building that houses the Wakoborun Women’s Association and other community organizations that have opposed the mining. The attackers destroyed furniture and equipment and set fire to documents, Indigenous leaders reported…
President Bolsonaro has signaled his aversion to protecting Indigenous lands. As a candidate, he vowed not to designate “one more centimeter” of land as Indigenous territory. His administration has halted the demarcation of Indigenous territories – there are 237 pending requests – leaving Indigenous communities even more vulnerable to encroachments, deforestation, and violence. The Munduruku territory is already demarcated. In 2020, Bolsonaro introduced a draft bill in Congress to allow mining and other commercial activities in Indigenous territories. The bill is pending in Congress and is listed as one of Bolsonaro’s priorities.
Excerpt from Brazil: Remove Miners from Indigenous Amazon Territory, Human Rights Watch, Apr. 12, 2021
A resolution to the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains a distant goal a decade after three of its reactors melted down. The most challenging part of the cleanup—removing molten nuclear fuel from each reactor—has yet to begin because of high radiation inside the reactor buildings, putting the targeted decommissioning of the plant by 2051 into doubt.
More than 80% of the Japanese public doesn’t feel significant progress is being made and is concerned about further accidents because of recent events. On Feb. 13, 2021 a large earthquake centered near Fukushima, an aftershock of the one 10 years ago, caused water to slosh out of a tank containing spent fuel rods, which must be kept submerged to avoid overheating. A week later, a fish caught off the coast of Fukushima was found to contain 10 times the allowed level of radioactive cesium…This incident shows how risks from the plant continue to weigh on those who live and work nearby.
“We are still struggling with harmful rumors from the nuclear plant accident,” said Tadaaki Sawada, a spokesman for the federation of Fukushima fishery cooperatives. “How many more years will it continue?”…By several measures, the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl accident in 1986 has been contained. Only around 2% of Fukushima prefecture, or state, is still a no-go area, down from 12% immediately after the disaster. An extensive decontamination process removed topsoil from areas around the plant. Still, thousands of people remain forced out of towns closest to the plant.
In 2020, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., known as Tepco, and the government were close to a decision to start releasing into the sea over a million cubic meters of water from the plant, but plans were suspended amid opposition from local fishermen and concerns raised by neighboring countries. Contaminated rain and groundwater is stored in large tanks that dominate one side of the plant site. Once treated to remove most radioactive elements, the water still contains tritium, a form of hydrogen that emits a weak form of radiation. Tritium is regularly released into the sea and air from nuclear plants around the world after dilution.
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency visited the Fukushima plant in 2020 and said disposal of the treated water into the sea would be in line with international practice. “A decision on the disposition path should be taken urgently” to keep the overall decommissioning on track, the IAEA said.
The most challenging part of the cleanup—removing molten nuclear fuel from each reactor—has yet to begin…Tepco has yet to get a clear picture of the location of molten fuel in the reactors because the levels of radiation are damaging even to robots…Gov. Uchibori said that gaining an accurate grasp of the molten-fuel situation was critical to making headway. “If you look at the entire process, right now we are still around the starting point of decommissioning,” he said.
Excerpts from Alastair Gale Fukushima Nuclear Cleanup Is Just Beginning a Decade After Disaster,
Wearing blue hard hats, white hazmat suits and respirator masks, workers carted away bags of debris on a recent morning from a sprawling and now-defunct oil refinery once operated by Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES). Other laborers ripped asbestos from the guts of an old boiler house, part of a massive demolition and redevelopment of the plant, which closed in 2019 after a series of explosions at the facility.
Plans call for the nearly 1,400-acre site to be transformed into a new commercial hub with warehousing and offices. All it will take is a decade, hundreds of millions of dollars, and confronting 150 years’ worth of industrial pollution, including buried rail cars and a poisonous stew of waste fuels poured onto the ground. A U.S. refinery cleanup of this size and scope has no known precedent, remediation experts said. It’s a glimpse of what lies ahead if the United States hopes to wean itself off fossil fuels and clean up the toxic legacy of oil, gas and coal.
President Joe Biden wants to bring the United States to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to fight climate change through a shift to clean-energy technologies, while reducing pollution in low-income and minority neighborhoods near industrial facilities. It’s a transition fraught with challenges. Among the biggest is what to do with the detritus left behind. The old PES plant is just one of approximately 135 oil refineries nationwide, to say nothing of the country’s countless gas stations, pipelines, storage hubs, drill pads and other graying energy infrastructure.
In Philadelphia, a private-sector company is taking the lead. Hilco Redevelopment Partners, a real estate firm that specializes in renovating old industrial properties, bought the PES refinery out of bankruptcy for $225.5 million in June…The full extent of the pollution won’t be understood for years. Also uncertain is the ability of the refinery’s previous owners to pay their share of the cleanup. The facility has had multiple owners over its lifetime and responsibility has been divided between them through business agreements and legal settlements. Oil refining at the Philadelphia site began in 1870, 100 years before the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Gasoline, once a worthless byproduct of heating oil, was routinely dumped by the refinery into the soil, according to historians and researchers. Leaks and accidents spewed more toxins. The June 2019 blasts alone released 676,000 pounds of hydrocarbons, PES said at the time. The Philadelphia site is not unique. About half of America’s 450,000 polluted former industrial and commercial sites are contaminated with petroleum, according to the EPA.
Cleanup in Philadelphia will be painstaking. After asbestos abatement comes the demolition and removal of 3,000 tanks and vessels, along with more than 100 buildings and other infrastructure, the company said. Then comes the ground itself. Hilco’s Perez said dirt quality varies widely on the site and will have to be handled differently depending on contamination levels. Clearing toxins like lead must be done with chemical rinses or other technologies…The site also has polluted groundwater and giant benzene pools lurking underneath, according to environmental reports Sunoco filed over the years with the federal and state governments.
Excerpts from Laila Kearney, 150 years of spills: Philadelphia refinery cleanup highlights toxic legacy of fossil fuels, Reuters, Feb. 16, 2021
A mining firm has paid a record $2bn fine over a huge oil spill that caused one of Russia’s worst environmental disasters. Norilsk Nickel, the world’s leading nickel and palladium producer, said it had paid the fine on March 10, 2021.The fuel spill in May 2021 saw 21,000 tonnes of diesel pour from one of the company’s storage tanks into rivers and lakes in Russia’s Arctic north…The penalty is the biggest ever issued for environmental damage in Russia, officials say.
How did the spill happen? The diesel oil began leaking on May 29, 2020. It is thought to have originated from a rusty storage tank at Norilsk Nickel’s power plant in Siberia. Investigators believe the tank near Norilsk sank because of melting permafrost which weakened its supports. The Arctic had seen weeks of unusually warm weather – widely believed to be a symptom of global warming – prior to the disaster. The oil contaminated the Ambarnaya river and surrounding subsoil before drifting about 20km (12 miles) north of Norilsk. It then entered Lake Pyasino, which flows to the Kara Sea in the Arctic Ocean. In total, the oil contaminated a 350 sq km (135 sq mile) area…
The clean-up could cost $1.5bn and take between five and 10 years…Norilsk is already a well-known pollution hotspot, because of contamination from the industry that dominates the city.
Excerpt from Norilsk Nickel: Mining firm pays record $2bn fine over Arctic oil spill, BBC, Mar. 10, 2021
Low-value or “residual” plastics – those left over after more valuable plastic is recovered for recycling – are most likely to end up as pollution. So how does this happen? In Southeast Asia, often only registered recyclers are allowed to import plastic waste. But due to high volumes, registered recyclers typically on-sell plastic bales to informal processors…When plastic types were considered low value, informal processors frequently dumped them at uncontrolled landfills or into waterways.
Plastics stockpiled outdoors can be blown into the environment, including the ocean. Burning the plastic releases toxic smoke, causing harm to human health and the environment. When informal processing facilities wash plastics, small pieces end up in wastewater, which is discharged directly into waterways, and ultimately, the ocean.
The price of many recycled plastics has crashed in recent years due to oversupply, import restrictions and falling oil prices, (amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic). However clean bales of (polyethylene terephthalate) PET and (high-density polyethylene) HDPE are still in demand. In Australia, material recovery facilities currently sort PET and HDPE into separate bales. But small contaminants of other materials (such as caps and plastic labels) remain, making it harder to recycle into high quality new products. Before the price of many recycled plastics dropped, Australia baled and traded all other resin types together as “mixed plastics”. But the price for mixed plastics has fallen to zero and they’re now largely stockpiled or landfilled in Australia.
Excerpts from Monique Retamal et al., Why Your Recycled Plastic May End up in the Ocean, the Maritime Executive, Mar. 8, 2021
Maria do Socorro explains in graphic detail the spate of ailments affecting newborns in her remote community in the Amazon: her grandson died after being born with his intestines outside his body, while others were missing organs or had undeveloped bones. For the 56-year-old community leader, there is little doubt about the cause of these illnesses. She said the rainforest town had for years suffered from toxic waste pollution from the local operations of Norwegian aluminum producer Norsk Hydro.
Long a simmering environmental scandal in Brazil, the allegations were brought on to the international stage in February 2021 when Socorro’s community sued the Norwegian giant in a Dutch court, seeking damages for claims that “the incorrect disposal of toxic waste” from operations in the area had caused a variety of health ailments, polluted the rainforest and destroyed economic opportunities.
“If business can be global, why can’t justice? These companies have businesses everywhere, but then when they do something wrong they want to smother the possibility of people getting compensation,” said Pedro Martins, partner at law firm PGMBM, which is representing 40,000 alleged victims bringing the suit against Norsk Hydro…
Through local entities, Norsk Hydro runs three facilities — a bauxite mine, a refinery and a smelter — in Pará, a vast Amazonian state that is a flashpoint for illegal deforestation, gold mining and land-grabbing. The company…denied that in 2018 pollutants from its facilities spilled over during heavy rains and polluted nearby rivers and earth….
Locals say bauxite, lead and aluminium pollution have turned the region’s rivers red. A study from the Evandro Chagas Institute, a Brazilian public health body, found in 2018 that the region’s waters were so polluted with industrial waste from the Norsk Hydro facilities that they “cannot be used for recreation, fishing, or human consumption”.
“I invite these Norwegians to come and bathe in our waters. I challenge them. They have good water there in Norway. Our wealth just goes there,” said Socorro, who heads Cainquiama, a group representing mainly indigenous people and quilombolas — the descendants of runaway slaves. Nearly all of the claimants in the suit have complained about chronic pain, hair loss and skin conditions. The suit also contains claims in relation to birth defects, such as those that have affected Socorro’s grandson, who was born with gastroschisis — a hole in the abdominal wall.
The case is a sensitive one for Norwegian investors and the government, which owns a 34 per cent stake in Norsk Hydro. Oslo has long attempted to hold Brasília to account for the environmental destruction of the Amazon, even publishing its own data on deforestation in the world’s largest rainforest.
Excerpts from Bryan Harris, Norsk Hydro blamed for birth defects in Amazon forest pollution case, FT, Feb. 27, 2021
The Great Green Wall aims to transform the lives of some 100 million people by planting a mosaic of trees, shrubs, and grasses along a corridor stretching some 8000 kilometers across Africa by 2030. Since the African Union first launched the Great Green Wall in 2007, the initiative has struggled to make headway. Made up of local efforts across 11 countries, it has reached just 16% of its overall goal to vegetate 150 million hectares.
But in January 2021, the project—which analysts estimate will cost at least $30 billion—got a major boost: a pledge of $14 billion in funding over the next 5 years from a coalition of international development banks and governments. The money is meant to accelerate the effort to sustain livelihoods, conserve biodiversity, and combat desertification and climate change, French President Emmanuel Macron said in announcing the pledges on January 11, 2021.
Environmental restoration and community development specialists welcomed the news. But many are also apprehensive. In recent years, research by ecologists, economists, and social scientists has shown that many forestry projects around the world have failed because they didn’t adequately address fundamental social and ecological issues…Many efforts, particularly those not led by local communities, stumble. Newly planted trees can die of neglect when planners don’t engage communities from the start in discussions about which species to plant, as well as whether residents are willing and able to provide the water, fertilizer, and protection from grazing animals that saplings need. Farmers are often busy and have their own priorities; they “will not … manage trees that they do not value.” …
Elvis Paul Tangem, who coordinates the Great Green Wall Initiative for the African Union Commission, agrees. He says promises to plant huge numbers of trees at low cost, for example at $1 per seedling, can distract from the real challenge. “You can plant a tree for $1,” he says, “but you cannot grow a tree for $1.”
Excerpt from Rachel CernanskyNew funds could help grow Africa’s Great Green Wall. But can the massive forestry effort learn from past mistakes?, Science, Feb. 11, 2021
What is the contribution of nature to the economy?… The breathable air, drinkable water and tolerable temperatures that allow humans to do everything they do, and the complex ecosystems that maintain them, tend to be taken for granted. Professor Dasgupta’s review on the Economics of Biodiversity does not seek to play on the heartstrings with tales of starving polar bears. Rather, it makes the hard-headed case that services provided by nature are an indispensable input to economic activity. Some of these services are relatively easy to discern: fish stocks, say, in the open ocean. Others are far less visible: such as the complex ecosystems within soil that recycle nutrients, purify water and absorb atmospheric carbon. These are unfamiliar topics for economists, so the review seeks to provide a “grammar” through which they can be analysed.
The report features its own illustrative production function, which includes nature. The environment appears once as a source of flows of extractable resources (like fish or timber). But it also shows up more broadly as a stock of “natural” capital. The inclusion of natural capital enables an analysis of the sustainability of current rates of economic growth. As people produce GDP, they extract resources from nature and dump waste back into it. If this extraction and dumping exceeds nature’s capacity to repair itself, the stock of natural capital shrinks and with it the flow of valuable environmental services. Between 1992 and 2014, according to a report published by the UN, the value of produced capital (such as machines and buildings) roughly doubled and that of human capital (workers and their skills) rose by 13%, while the estimated value of natural capital declined by nearly 40%. The demands humans currently place on nature, in terms of resource extraction and the dumping of harmful waste, are roughly equivalent to the sustainable output of 1.6 Earths (of which, alas, there is only the one)…Indeed, Professor Dasgupta argues that economists should acknowledge that there are in fact limits to growth. As the efficiency with which we make use of Earth’s finite bounty is bounded (by the laws of physics), there is necessarily some maximum sustainable level of GDP…
Professor Dasgupta hints at this problem by appealing to the “sacredness” of nature, in addition to his mathematical models and analytical arguments.
Excerpts from How should economists think about biodiversity?, Economist, Feb. 6, 2021
Tantalum, a metal used in smartphone and laptop batteries, is extracted from coltan ore. In 2019 40% of the world’s coltan was produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to official data. More was sneaked into Rwanda and exported from there. Locals dig for the ore by hand in Congo’s eastern provinces, where more than 100 armed groups hide in the bush. Some mines are run by warlords who work with rogue members of the Congolese army to smuggle the coltan out.
When demand for electronics soared in the early 2000s, coltan went from being an obscure, semi-valuable ore to one of the world’s most sought-after minerals. Rebels fought over mines and hunted for new deposits. Soldiers forced locals to dig for it at gunpoint. Foreign money poured into Congo. Armed groups multiplied, eager for a share.
Then, in 2010, a clause in America’s Dodd-Frank Act forced American firms to audit their supply chains. The aim was to ensure they were not using minerals such as coltan, gold and tin that were funding Congo’s protracted war. For six months mines in eastern Congo were closed, as the authorities grappled with the new rules. Even when they reopened, big companies, such as Intel and Apple, shied away from Congo’s coltan, fearing a bad press.
The “Obama law”, as the Congolese nickname Dodd-Frank, did reduce cash flows to armed groups. But it also put thousands of innocent people out of work. A scheme to trace supply chains known as ITSCI run by the International Tin Association based in London and an American charity, Pact, helped bring tentative buyers back to Congo. ITSCI staff turn up at mining sites to see if armed men are hanging about, pocketing profits. They check that no children are working in the pits. If a mine is considered safe and conflict-free, government agents at the sites put tags onto the sacks of minerals. However, some unscrupulous agents sell tags on the black market, to stick on coltan from other mines. “The agents are our brothers,” Martin says. It is hard to police such a violent, hilly region with so few roads. Mines are reached by foot or motorbike along winding, muddy paths.
For a long time those who preferred to export their coltan legally had to work with itsci, which held the only key to the international market. Miners groaned that itsci charged too much: roughly 5% of the value of tagged coltan. When another scheme called “Better Sourcing” emerged, Congo’s biggest coltan exporter, Société Minière de Bisunzu, signed up to it instead.
Excerpts from Smugglers’ paradise: Congo, Economist, Jan. 23, 2021
At current rates of consumption, the demand for water worldwide will be 40% greater than its supply by 2030, according to the UN. Portfolio managers are realizing that physical, reputational and regulatory water risk could hurt their investments, particularly in thirsty industries such as food, mining, textiles and utilities.
One worry is that shocks to supply could drown or dry out a company’s assets. In recent years Coca-Cola has been forced to close plants in India because of drought. In 2019 floods in America’s Midwest caused disruptions at the facilities of two food giants, Cargill and Tyson Foods. A survey by CDP, a non-profit firm, found that 783 big listed companies had faced a total of $40bn of water-related losses in 2018.
Another concern is that the price a company pays for water could rocket. The market price of water does not reflect the environmental and social costs of using it. Government subsidies also mean that companies often do not pay for its true cost. As aquifers are depleted, though, subsidies could become more costly and unpopular, forcing governments to retract them. S&P Global Trucost, a data provider, reckons that if Fortune 500 companies paid the true cost of water, based on estimates of scarcity, rather than current prices, their profit margins would shrink by a tenth. Margins for food, drink and tobacco firms would fall by three-quarters.
Disclosures of water risk are even patchier than those of greenhouse-gas emissions…Established names like Bloomberg and S&P Global are plugging the gap, as are startups. The result is that investors can approach management armed with data rather than questions. “We are getting rid of the black box that companies hide in.”
Ceres, a non-profit firm, scores businesses on everything from direct water management to risks in the supply chain. Those seeking more detail can use visual tools, such as Bloomberg’s “maps” function, which plots a company’s facilities over a heat map based on water stress. (California is the same color as swathes of sub-Saharan Africa; far-eastern Russia looks a lot like western Europe.) Firms like Aquantix go further, and try to predict the financial cost of water risk.
The accuracy of such forecasts is not yet proven. For Andrew Mason of Aberdeen Standard Investments, though, they are still useful. They show companies that investors care about water risk and encourage them to share data. “This is where carbon was ten or 15 years ago,” he says.
Excerpt from An expanding pool: Investors start to pay attention to water risk, Economist, Jan. 9, 2021
Some of Europe’s largest banks are phasing out trading services for the export of oil from the Ecuadorean Amazon, a move that reflects the growing focus of global banks on climate change and their shift away from increasingly risky fossil fuels.
On January 25, 2021, Switzerland’s Credit Suisse Group AG and Holland’s ING said that they were excluding new transactions related to exports of Ecuador’s Amazonian oil from their trading activities, citing climate change and concerns for the Amazon rainforest and its Indigenous people. France’s BNP Paribas SA, the largest bank in the eurozone and one of the region’s trading powerhouses, said in December 2020 that it would immediately exclude from its trading activities the seaborne exports of oil from the Esmeraldas region in Ecuador under its latest environmental finance policies.
Ecuador isn’t one of the world’s top oil producers, but petroleum exports are a key contributor to the country’s economy. Petroecuador, the nation’s state-owned oil company, didn’t respond to requests for comment. The banks’ flight from Amazonian crude follows last year’s crash in oil prices and growing fears of so-called stranded assets, which are fossil fuels that lose value due to the world’s transition to cleaner forms of energy…
Banks are also facing calls from environmentalists and Indigenous peoples to limit their involvement in fossil fuels. In Ecuador, a campaign by activists and Indigenous people spurred ING and Credit Suisse to reduce their exposure to the Amazonian oil trade. The nonprofits Stand.earth and Amazon Watch published a report in 2020 that called out banks—including ING, Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas—for their financing of Amazonian crude…
Banks and insurers are also cutting ties with Arctic oil drilling. This month, Axis Capital Holdings joined fellow insurers AXA and Swiss Re in pledging not to underwrite any new oil-and-gas drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. The six biggest U.S. banks— Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. , Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo & Co.—have also said they would end funding for new drilling and exploration projects in the Arctic.
Excerpts from Dieter Holger & Pietro Lombardi, European Banks Quit Ecuador’s Amazonian Oil Trade, WSJ, Jan. 25, 2021
Royal Dutch Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary has been ordered on January 29, 2021 by a Dutch court to pay compensation for oil spills in two villages in Nigeria…The case was first lodged in 2008 by four Nigerian farmers and Friends of the Earth Netherlands. They had accused Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary of polluting fields and fish ponds through pipe leaks in the villages of Oruma and Goi.
The Court of Appeal in the Hague, where Shell has its headquarters, also ordered the company to install equipment to safeguard against future pipeline leaks. The amount of compensation payable related to the leaks, which occurred between 2004 and 2007, is yet to be determined by the court. The case establishes a duty of care for the parent company to play a role in the pollution abroad, in this case by having the duty to make sure there is a leak-detection system…
Shell argued that the leaks were caused by sabotage…
In recent years there have been several cases in U.K. courts related to whether claimants can take matters to a parent company’s jurisdiction. In 2019, the U.K. Supreme Court ruled that a case concerning pollution brought by a Zambian community against Vedanta, an Indian copper-mining company previously listed in the U.K., could be heard by English courts. “It established that a parent company can be liable for the actions of the subsidiary depending on the facts,” said Martyn Day, partner at law firm Leigh Day, which represented the Zambians.
The January 2021 case isn’t the first legal action Shell has faced related to pollution in Nigeria. In 2014, the company settled a case with over 15,000 Nigerians involved in the fishing industry who said they were affected by two oil spills, after claims were made to the U.K. High Court. Four months before the case was due to go to trial Shell, which has its primary stock-exchange listing in the U.K., agreed to pay 55 million British pounds, equivalent to $76 million…
The January 2021 verdict tells oil majors that “when things go wrong they will be held to account and very likely held to account where their parent company is based,” said Mr. Day, adding that the ruling could spark more such actions.
Excerpts from Sarah McFarlane, Shell Ordered to Pay Compensation Over Nigerian Oil Spills, WSJ, Jan. 29, 2021
Kabwe, in Zambia, sprung up around a mine founded in 1904 by the Rhodesian Broken Hill Development Company, a British colonial firm. For decades miners crushed and burnt ore to extract lead. That metal made Kabwe but it also devastated it. To this day lead particles blow across town, making their way into houses and bloodstreams.
Scientists generally consider soil hazardous if it has more than 400mg of lead per kilogram. In three townships near the old mine the soil contains six, eight and 15 times that amount, according to analysis in 2014 by Pure Earth, an environmental ngo. “Kabwe is the most toxic place I’ve ever been to,” says Richard Fuller, its president…
The pollution in Kabwe is a scandal. Yet responsibility for it has long been contested, and that is set to continue. In October 2020, Mbuyisa Moleele Attorneys, a South African law firm, with help from Leigh Day, a British one, announced a class-action lawsuit against a subsidiary of Anglo American on behalf of potentially more than 100,000 children and women of reproductive age in Kabwe. It is targeting Anglo because it was affiliated to the mine from the 1920s until shortly after Zambia’s mines were nationalised in 1970. The suit claims that most of the pollution stems from the period when the mine was under the de facto control of Anglo, which allegedly did not do enough to stop the harm. Anglo rejects the claims, arguing that its involvement ended five decades ago and that, before then, it was neither the operator nor a majority shareholder in the mine and thus not responsible.
The case may take years. The lawyers for the plaintiffs must first convince a South African court to take it on. Only then may it proceed to a trial. Meanwhile children in Kabwe will keep on playing in the dust.
The World Bank included Kabwe in a broader project it funded to clean up Zambian mines. The scheme, which ran from 2003-2011, had some successes. It dredged a toxic canal and buried some contaminated soil. But it did not treat the main source of the dust—the former mine and dumps—and it left roads unpaved and most houses untreated…Another clean-up funded by the bank was started in December 2016. But it, too, is struggling. Some children have been tested and have received therapy to reduce blood lead levels. But since little has been done about the lead in the environment there is a risk their levels will rise again.
Excerpt from Mining’s Toxic Legacy: Lead Astray, Economist, Dec. 12, 2020
Approximately 8 million metric tonnes of plastic litter flow to the ocean annually, and only 9% of plastic waste ever produced has been recycled….Another major issue relates to microplastics – those plastics that are smaller than 5 millimeters, and that pose increasing environmental, economic and health hazards… Discarded plastics break down into these smaller particles through natural weathering processes. Microplastics can enter water bodies through different pathways, including atmospheric deposition, run-off from land, roads and through municipal wastewater.
A review of technical solutions from source to sea explores a set of innovative tech solutions. Among these potential technologies include:
Introducing debris-cleanup boats, debris sweepers and sea-bins to remove plastics and other wastes carried into water bodies;
Protecting large bodies of water by introducing wetlands along coastlines;
Secondary and tertiary wastewater treatment which relies on membrane filtration to prevent microplastics entering rivers and lakes;
Advanced coagulation technology to make water contaminated with microplastics drinkable;
Promoting sustainable waste management practices to reduce plastic leakage.
A key principle of this work is preventing untreated wastewater, which is often packed with plastics and microplastics, from entering the environment in the first place. The wastewater coming from urban residential, industrial and commercial settings is full of contaminants including plastics, microplastics and other debris…
Water pollution by plastics and microplastics: A review of technical solutions from source to sea, UNEP Press Release, Dec. 27, 2020
The current Earth system models used for climate predictions show that the Amazon rainforest is very sensitive to water stress. Since the air in the future is predicted to get warmer and drier with climate change, translating to increased water stress, this could have large implications not just for the forest’s survival, but also for its storage of CO2. If the forest is not able to survive in its current capacity, climate change could greatly accelerate.
Columbia Engineering researchers decided to investigate whether this was true, whether these forests are really as sensitive to water stress as what the models have been showing. In a study published in Science Advances, they report their discovery that these models have been largely over-estimating water stress in tropical forests.
The team found that, while models show that increases in air dryness greatly diminish photosynthesis rates in certain regions of the Amazon rainforest, the observational data results show the opposite: in certain very wet regions, the forests instead even increase photosynthesis rates in response to drier air…[In fact] As the trees become stressed, they generate more efficient leaves that can more than compensate for water stress.”…
“So much of the scientific research coming out these days is that with climate change, our current ecosystems might not be able to survive, potentially leading to the acceleration of global warming due to feedbacks,” Gentine added. “It was nice to see that maybe some of our estimates of approaching mortality in the Amazon rainforest may not be quite as dire as we previously thought.”
Excerpts from Some Amazon Rainforest Regions More Resistant to Climate Change than Previously Thought, Columbia Engineering, Nov. 20, 2020
Oil pollution in Syria has been a growing concern since the 2011 onset of a civil war that has taken a toll on oil infrastructure and seen rival powers compete over control of key hydrocarbon fields. In the Kurdish-held northeast, a large storage facility in the Rmeilan oil field in Hasakeh province is of particular concern, according to the Dutch peace organisation PAX. [A River of Death, pdf] Oil leaks from the Gir Zero storage facility have been suspected since at least 2014, the latest in March 2020, it said in a June report. Thousands of barrels have leaked out into creeks in the area over the past five years, threatening the health and livelihoods of people in dozens of villages….
The major Rmeilan field controlled by the Kurdish administration, located near a US airbase, has been among the Syrian Kurds’ most prized assets since regime forces withdrew early on in the war. But oil wealth comes at a heavy cost for livestock farmers whose sheep and cows have died because they drank oil contaminated water.
Residents too suffer heavily from the pollution because of the foul odour of gas and crude oil wafting over the area… Compounding the situation, makeshift oil refineries have cropped up across the northeast in recent years, dumping oil waste in the waterways…These informal refineries receive oil from nearby fields and process it to provide benzine, gasoline and diesel to locals.
Excerpts from Delil SouleimanBlack waters: Oil spills pollute northeast Syria creeks by Delil Souleiman, AFP, July 23, 2020
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a giant edifice that would span the Blue Nile, the main tributary of the Nile river. Half a century in the making, the hydro-electric dam is Africa’s largest, with a reservoir able to hold 74bn cubic metres of water, more than the volume of the entire Blue Nile. Once filled it should produce 6,000 megawatts of electricity, double Ethiopia’s current power supply. Millions of people could be connected to the grid for the first time. More than an engineering project, it is a source of national pride.
For Egypt, however, it seems a source of national danger. Over 90% of the country’s 100m people live along the Nile or in its vast delta. The river, long seen as an Egyptian birthright, supplies most of their water. They fear the dam will choke it off. Pro-regime pundits, not known for their subtlety, have urged the army to blow it up….Ethiopia wants to start filling the reservoir during this summer’s rainy season. On June 26th, 2020 after another round of talks, Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan pledged to reach a deal within two weeks. Ethiopia agreed not to start filling the dam during that period.
Diplomats say most of the issues are resolved. But the outstanding one is big: how to handle a drought. Egypt wants Ethiopia to promise to release certain amounts of water to top up the Nile. But Ethiopia is loth to “owe” water to downstream countries or to drain the reservoir so much that electric output suffers. It wants a broader deal between all riparian states, including those on the White Nile, which flows out of Lake Victoria down through Uganda and Sudan.
Even if talks fail and Ethiopia starts filling without a deal, Egyptians will not find their taps dry. There is enough water in the reservoir behind Egypt’s Aswan High Dam to make up for any shortfall this year. But the mood in both countries is toxic. Egyptians have cast Ethiopia as a thief bent on drying up their country. In Ethiopia, meanwhile, Egypt is portrayed as a neocolonial power trampling on national sovereignty. The outcome of the talks will have political consequences in both countries, and perhaps push them to the brink of conflict—at a time when Egypt is already contemplating involvement in a war in Libya.
Ethiopia’s grand dam became a reality and a national obsession under Meles Zenawi, the longtime prime minister who ruled until 2012. His political masterstroke was asking Ethiopians to finance it through donations and the purchase of low-denomination bonds…. Most contributed voluntarily, but there was always an element of coercion. Civil servants had to donate a month’s salary at the start. Local banks and other businesses were expected to buy bonds worth millions of birr. ….
Excerpts from The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: Showdown on the Nile, Economist, July 4, 2020
Scientists measured microplastics — tiny particles and fibers of plastic that can float in the air like dust — and found that over 1,000 tons a year are falling into wilderness areas and national parks in the western U.S. Janice Brahney of Utah State University and her team identified samples of microplastics and other particulates collected over 14 months in 11 national parks and wilderness areas to create the study published in the journal Science, on June 12, 2020. Pieces of plastic less than 5 mm in length, or microplastics, occur in the environment as a consequence of plastic pollution…
The presence of microplastics in oceans and water supplies has been a matter of concern for some time, but the impact of airborne microplastics is a relatively new area of study. Though microplastics are found nearly everywhere on Earth, the sources and processes behind their ubiquitous distribution, or the “global plastic cycle,” remain vaguely understood. Initially overlooked, recent studies have suggested that long-range atmospheric transport plays an important role in carrying microplastic pollution vast distances and to remote locations…
Examination of weekly wet and monthly dry samples from 11 sites allowed the authors to estimate that more than 1,000 tons of microplastics are deposited onto protected lands in the western U.S. each year, equivalent to more than 123 million plastic water bottles.
The ubiquity of microplastics in the atmosphere has unknown consequences for humans and animals, but the research team observed sizes of particles that were within the ranges that accumulate in lung tissue. Moreover, the accumulation of plastic in the wilderness areas and national parks could well influence the ecosystems in complicated ways.
Excerpts, VICTORIA PRIESKOP, Scientists Find Tons of Microplastics Polluting National Parks, Courthouse News Service, June 11, 2020
The UN Environment Programme in 2011 proposed the creation of a $1 billion fund to repair the damage done by decades of crude spills in the Ogoniland area in southeastern Nigeria. However, progress has been poor and the little work that has been done is sub-standard, advocacy groups including Amnesty International reported in June 2020. “Research reveals that there is still no clean-up, no fulfillment of ‘emergency’ measures, no transparency and no accountability for the failed efforts, neither by the oil companies nor by the Nigerian government,” the groups said.
Shell’s Nigerian unit pumped oil in Ogoniland until 1993, when the company withdrew amid increasing protests against its presence. Even though the Hague-based company no longer produces crude in the area, a joint venture operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company, or SPDC, still owns pipelines that crisscross the region.
A government agency responsible for overseeing the clean-up, the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, known as Hyprep, was finally set up in 2017 after several false starts, but it’s failing to deliver. …“Hyprep is not designed, nor structured, to implement a project as complex and sizable as the Ogoniland clean-up,” the report cites UNEP as saying in 2019
Excerpt from Clean Up Oil in Nigerial Lacks Progress, Bloomberg, June 18,, 2020
The East African Court of Justice delivered in June 2020 a temporary injunction order to the country’s Minister for Justice, the Greater Pioneer Operating Company (GPOC), and the Dar Petroleum Operating Company. The Court approved the application by Hope for Humanity Africa (H4HA), a non-governmental organization (NGO), which sought to highlight the environmental damage caused by oil spills… The NGO contends that: “Over 47,249 of the local population in Upper Nile State and 60,000 in Unity State are at risk of being exposed to the oil pollution this is because the local population depends on the wild foods for survival, the contaminated swamps, streams and rivers waters for cooking, drinking, washing, bathing and fishing.”…
The H4HA is looking for an injunction to stop multiple companies from exporting oil from the region, including CNPC of China, Petronas of Malaysia, and Oil & Natural Gas Corp. of India (ONGC)
Excerpts South Sudan Suspended by African Union, Barred From Exporting Oil by East African Court, https://www.youngbhartiya.com, June 24, 2020
Since Tibet is part of China, Chinese engineers have been making the most of that potential. They have built big dams not only on rivers like the Yellow and the Yangzi, which flow across China to the Pacific, but also on others, like the Brahmaputra and the Mekong, which pass through several more countries on their way to the sea.
China has every right to do so. Countries lucky enough to control the sources of big rivers often make use of the water for hydropower or irrigation before it sloshes away across a border. But If the countries nearest the source of water, like China, suck up too much of the flow, or even simply stop silt flowing down or fish swimming up by building dams, the consequences in the lower reaches of the river can be grim: parched crops, collapsed fisheries, salty farmland.
Tension and recrimination have been the order of the day for China and its neighbours… In part, this is because a river like the Mekong does not contain enough water to go round. China has already built 11 dams across the main river (never mind its tributaries) and has plans for eight more; the downstream states have built two and are contemplating seven more. Last year, during a drought, the river ran so low that Cambodia had to turn off a big hydropower plant. Even when rainfall is normal, the altered flow and diminished siltation are causing saltwater to intrude into the Mekong delta, which is the breadbasket of Vietnam, and depleting the fish stocks that provide the only protein for millions of poor Cambodians.
China has long resisted any formal commitment to curb its construction of dams or to guarantee downstream countries a minimum allocation of water. It will not even join the Mekong River Commission, a body intended to help riparian countries resolve water-sharing disputes…
China has not signed any agreements about managing the Mekong with the other countries it flows through, so is not obliged to share a particular amount of water with them, nor even provide data on the flow or any warning about the operations of its dams. It does provide the Mekong River Commission with a trickle of information about water levels and planned releases from dams, which helps with flood-control lower down the river
Excerps from Water Torture: Hydropower in Asia, Economist, May 16, 2020; Torrent to Tickle: the Mekong, Economist, May 16, 2020
Substantial amounts of raw materials will be required to build new low-carbon energy devices and infrastructure. Such materials include cobalt, copper, lithium, cadmium, and rare earth elements (REEs)—needed for technologies such as solar photovoltaics, batteries, electric vehicle (EV) motors, wind turbines, fuel cells, and nuclear reactors…A majority of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country struggling to recover from years of armed conflict…Owing to a lack of preventative strategies and measures such as drilling with water and proper exhaust ventilation, many cobalt miners have extremely high levels of toxic metals in their body and are at risk of developing respiratory illness, heart disease, or cancer.
In addition, mining frequently results in severe environmental impacts and community dislocation. Moreover, metal production itself is energy intensive and difficult to decarbonize. Mining for copper,and mining for lithium has been criticized in Chile for depleting local groundwater resources across the Atacama Desert, destroying fragile ecosystems, and converting meadows and lagoons into salt flats. The extraction, crushing, refining, and processing of cadmium can pose risks such as groundwater or food contamination or worker exposure to hazardous chemicals. REE extraction in China has resulted threatens rural groundwater aquifers as well as rivers and streams.
Although large-scale mining is often economically efficient, it has limited employment potential, only set to worsen with the recent arrival of fully automated mines. Even where there is relative political stability and stricter regulatory regimes in place, there can still be serious environmental failures, as exemplified by the recent global rise in dam failures at settling ponds for mine tailings. The level of distrust of extractive industries has even led to countrywide moratoria on all new mining projects, such as in El Salvador and the Philippines.
Traditional labor-intensive mechanisms of mining that involve less mechanization are called artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). Although ASM is not immune from poor governance or environmental harm, it provides livelihood potential for at least 40 million people worldwide…. It is also usually more strongly embedded in local and national economies than foreign-owned, large-scale mining, with a greater level of value retained and distributed within the country. Diversifying mineral supply chains to allow for greater coexistence of small- and large-scale operations is needed. Yet, efforts to incorporate artisanal miners into the formal economy have often resulted in a scarcity of permits awarded, exorbitant costs for miners to legalize their operations, and extremely lengthy and bureaucratic processes for registration….There needs to be a focus on policies that recognize ASM’s livelihood potential in areas of extreme poverty. The recent decision of the London Metals Exchange to have a policy of “nondiscrimination” toward ASM is a positive sign in this regard.
A great deal of attention has focused on fostering transparency and accountability of mineral mining by means of voluntary traceability or even “ethical minerals” schemes. International groups, including Amnesty International, the United Nations, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, have all called on mining companies to ensure that supply chains are not sourced from mines that involve illegal labor and/or child labor.
Traceability schemes, however, may be impossible to fully enforce in practice and could, in the extreme, merely become an exercise in public relations rather than improved governance and outcomes for miners…. Paramount among these is an acknowledgment that traceability schemes offer a largely technical solution to profoundly political problems and that these political issues cannot be circumvented or ignored if meaningful solutions for workers are to be found. Traceability schemes ultimately will have value if the market and consumers trust their authenticity and there are few potential opportunities for leakage in the system…
Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is a framework that stipulates that producers are responsible for the entire lifespan of a product, including at the end of its usefulness. EPR would, in particular, shift responsibility for collecting the valuable resource streams and materials inside used electronics from users or waste managers to the companies that produce the devices. EPR holds producers responsible for their products at the end of their useful life and encourages durability, extended product lifetimes, and designs that are easy to reuse, repair, or recover materials from. A successful EPR program known as PV Cycle has been in place in Europe for photovoltaics for about a decade and has helped drive a new market in used photovoltaics that has seen 30,000 metric tons of material recycled.
Benjamin K. Sovacool et al., Sustainable minerals and metals for a low-carbon future, Science, Jan. 3, 2020
The decades-overdue clean-up of Ogoniland, after years of oil spills from the pipelines that criss-cross the region, is finally under way. But the billion-dollar project — funded by Nigeria’s national oil company and Royal Dutch Shell — is mired in allegations of corruption and mismanagement. “We are not pleased with what is going on,” said Mike Karikpo, an attorney with Friends of the Earth International and a member of the Ogoniland team that negotiated the creation of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (Hyprep), the government body running the clean-up…
Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer, pumping out about 1.8m barrels per day. It provides roughly 90 per cent of the country’s foreign exchange and more than half of government revenues. The clean-up began only the summer 2019, about a year after the first of an expected five tranches of $180m in funding was released to Hyprep. Mr Karikpo complains of a lack of transparency, alleging that planning, budgeting and awarding of contracts took place behind closed doors. Work started at the height of the rainy season, washing away much of the progress as contaminated soil collected for treatment was swept back into the environment…
Ogoniland, like the broader Niger Delta, has become more polluted and development has stalled, with little to show for the billions of dollars in crude that has been extracted. Critics have now accused Hyprep of being, like much of Nigeria’s oil sector, a vehicle for political patronage and graft. This year 16 companies were awarded contracts for the first phase of the clean-up, which — to the consternation of critics — focuses on the least contaminated parts of Ogoniland.
An investigation by the news site Premium Times found that almost all the companies were set up for other purposes, including poultry farming, car sales and construction, and had no experience of tackling oil pollution. Meanwhile, insiders have questioned Hyprep’s capacity to handle such a massive project…
Shell and Hyprep have rejected the criticism. Shell, which closed its Ogoniland operations in 1993, said it accepted responsibility “for spills arising from its operations”, but that some of the blame for the pollution must go to thieves who illegally tapped into pipelines and makeshift refining operations in the Delta’s creeks
Excerpts from Craft and Mismanagement Taint Nigeria’s Oil CleanUp, Financial Times, Dec. 29, 2019
China imposed a 10-year commercial fishing ban in January 2020 on the Yangtze – the first ever for Asia’s longest river – in a bid to protect its aquatic life. Facing dwindling fish stocks and declining biodiversity in the 6,300km (3,915-mile) river, the Chinese government decided seasonal moratoriums were not enough. The ban will be applied at 332 conservation sites along the river. It will be extended to cover the main river course and key tributaries by January 1 2021, according to a State Council notice. Dam-building, pollution, overfishing, river transport and dredging had worsened the situation for the waterway’s aquatic species. Fishermen using nets with smaller holes and illegal practices such as the use of explosives or electrocution have also contributed to the river’s decline
President Xi Jinping warned that the Yangtze River had become so depleted that its biodiversity index was as bad as it could get, saying it had reached what could be described as the “no fish” level… Back in 1954, the annual catch from the Yangtze was about 427,000 tonnes, but in recent years it had been less than 100,000 tonnes. According to an official estimate, about 280,000 fishermen in 10 provinces along the Yangtze River will be affected by the ban. Their 113,000 registered fishing boats will be grounded or destroyed. The government has allocated funds to help those affected find alternative work and provide them with welfare and retraining. To counter illegal fishing, he said river authorities would be equipped with speedboats, drones and video surveillance systems. Fishermen would also be recruited to patrol the river.
Excerpts from China bans fishing in depleted Yangtze River for 10 years to protect aquatic life, South China Morning Post, Jan. 3, 2020
A salty substance called “brine,” is a naturally occurring waste product that gushes out of America’s oil-and-gas wells to the tune of nearly 1 trillion gallons a year, enough to flood Manhattan, almost shin-high, every single day. At most wells, far more brine is produced than oil or gas, as much as 10 times more. Brine collects in tanks, and workers pick it up and haul it off to treatment plants or injection wells, where it’s disposed of by being shot back into the earth…
The Earth’s crust is in fact peppered with radioactive elements that concentrate deep underground in oil-and-gas-bearing layers. This radioactivity is often pulled to the surface when oil and gas is extracted — carried largely in the brine…
Radium, typically the most abundant radionuclide in brine, is often measured in picocuries per liter of substance and is so dangerous it’s subject to tight restrictions even at hazardous-waste sites. The most common isotopes are radium-226 and radium-228, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires industrial discharges to remain below 60 for each. Some brine samples registered combined radium levels above 3,500, and one was more than 8,500. “It’s ridiculous that those who haul brine are not being told what’s in their trucks,” says John Stolz, Duquesne’s environmental-center director. “And this stuff is on every corner — it is in neighborhoods. Truckers don’t know they’re being exposed to radioactive waste, nor are they being provided with protective clothing.
“Breathing in this stuff and ingesting it are the worst types of exposure,” Stolz continues. “You are irradiating your tissues from the inside out.” The radioactive particles fired off by radium can be blocked by the skin, but radium readily attaches to dust, making it easy to accidentally inhale or ingest. Once inside the body, its insidious effects accumulate with each exposure. It is known as a “bone seeker” because it can be incorporated into the skeleton and cause bone cancers called sarcomas. It also decays into a series of other radioactive elements, called “daughters.” The first one for radium-226 is radon, a radioactive gas and the second-leading cause of lung cancer in the U.S. Radon has also been linked to chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
Oil fields across the country — from the Bakken in North Dakota to the Permian in Texas — have been found to produce brine that is highly radioactive. “All oil-field workers,” says Fairlie, “are radiation workers.” But they don’t necessarily know it.
The advent of the fracking boom in the early 2000s expanded the danger, saddling the industry with an even larger tidal wave of waste to dispose of, and creating new exposure risks as drilling moved into people’s backyards. “In the old days, wells weren’t really close to population centers. Now, there is no separation,” says City University of New York public-health expert Elizabeth Geltman. In the eastern U.S. “we are seeing astronomically more wells going up,” she says, “and we can drill closer to populations because regulations allow it.” As of 2016, fracking accounted for more than two-thirds of all new U.S. wells, according to the Energy Information Administration. There are about 1 million active oil-and-gas wells, across 33 states, with some of the biggest growth happening in the most radioactive formation — the Marcellus. …
There is little public awareness of this enormous waste stream, the disposal of which could present dangers at every step — from being transported along America’s highways in unmarked trucks; handled by workers who are often misinformed and underprotected; leaked into waterways; and stored in dumps that are not equipped to contain the toxicity. Brine has even been used in commercial products sold at hardware stores and is spread on local roads as a de-icer…
But a set of recent legal cases argues a direct connection to occupational exposure can be made… Pipe cleaners, welders, roughnecks, roustabouts, derrickmen, and truck drivers hauling dirty pipes and sludge all were exposed to radioactivity without their knowledge and suffered a litany of lethal cancers. An analysis program developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined with up to 99 percent certainty that the cancers came from exposure to radioactivity on the job, including inhaling dust and radioactivity accumulated on the workplace floor, known as “groundshine.”
“Almost all materials of interest and use to the petroleum industry contain measurable quantities of radionuclides,” states a never-publicly released 1982 report by the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s principal trade group, passed to Rolling Stone by a former state regulator. Rolling Stone discovered a handful of other industry reports and articles that raised concerns about liability for workers’ health. A 1950 document from Shell Oil warned of a potential connection between radioactive substances and cancer of the “bone and bone marrow.” In a 1991 paper, scientists with Chevron said, “Issues such as risk to workers or the general public…must be addressed.”
“There is no one federal agency that specifically regulates the radioactivity brought to the surface by oil-and-gas development,” an EPA representative says. In fact, thanks to a single exemption the industry received from the EPA in 1980, the streams of waste generated at oil-and-gas wells — all of which could be radioactive and hazardous to humans — are not required to be handled as hazardous waste. In 1988, the EPA assessed the exemption — called the Bentsen and Bevill amendments, part of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act — and claimed that “potential risk to human health and the environment were small,” even though the agency found concerning levels of lead, arsenic, barium, and uranium, and admitted that it did not assess many of the major potential risks. Instead, the report focused on the financial and regulatory burdens, determining that formally labeling the “billions of barrels of waste” as hazardous would “cause a severe economic impact on the industry.”…
There is a perception that because the radioactivity is naturally occurring it’s less harmful (the industry and regulators almost exclusively call oil-and-gas waste NORM — naturally occurring radioactive material, or TENORM for the “technologically enhanced” concentrations of radioactivity that accumulate in equipment like pipes and trucks.”…
In Pennsylvania, regulators revealed in 2012 that for at least six years one hauling company had been dumping brine into abandoned mine shafts. In 2014, Benedict Lupo, owner of a Youngstown, Ohio, company that hauled fracking waste, was sentenced to 28 months in prison for directing his employees to dump tens of thousands of gallons of brine into a storm drain that emptied into a creek that feeds into the Mahoning River. While large bodies of water like lakes and rivers can dilute radium, Penn State researchers have shown that in streams and creeks, radium can build up in sediment to levels that are hundreds of times more radioactive than the limit for topsoil at Superfund sites. Texas-based researcher Zac Hildenbrand has shown that brine also contains volatile organics such as the carcinogen benzene, heavy metals, and toxic levels of salt, while fracked brine contains a host of additional hazardous chemicals. “It is one of the most complex mixtures on the planet,” he says…
“There is nothing to remediate it with,” says Avner Vengosh, a Duke University geochemist. “The high radioactivity in the soil at some of these sites will stay forever.” Radium-226 has a half-life of 1,600 years. The level of uptake into agricultural crops grown in contaminated soil is unknown because it hasn’t been adequately studied.
“Not much research has been done on this,” says Bill Burgos, an environmental engineer at Penn State who co-authored a bombshell 2018 paper in Environmental Science & Technology that examined the health effects of applying oil-field brine to roads. Regulators defend the practice by pointing out that only brine from conventional wells is spread on roads, as opposed to fracked wells. But conventional-well brine can be every bit as radioactive, and Burgos’ paper found it contained not just radium, but cadmium, benzene, and arsenic, all known human carcinogens, along with lead, which can cause kidney and brain damage.
Brine as dust suppressant
Ohio, because of its geology, favorable regulations, and nearness to drilling hot spots in the Marcellus, has become a preferred location for injection wells. Pennsylvania has about a dozen wells; West Virginia has just over 50. Ohio has 225. About 95 percent of brine was disposed of through injection as of 2014. Government scientists have increasingly linked the practice to earthquakes, and the public has become more and more suspicious of the sites. Still, the relentless waste stream means new permits are issued all the time, and the industry is also hauling brine to treatment plants that attempt to remove the toxic and radioactive elements so the liquid can be used to frack new wells.
Excerpts from America’s Radioactive Secret, Rolling Stone Magazine, Jan. 21, 2020
Less than half of the world’s larger miners have released safety and environmental details about their mine-waste dams, showing the mixed success of investors’ demands for greater transparency after the deadly Brumadinho dam collapse in Brazil. In January, 2019, 270 people died following the collapse of a tailings dam owned by Brazil’s Vale SA. The incident prompted a coalition of investors who manage more than $13 trillion to ask 726 companies in the mining and oil-sands business to disclose information on their dams. Nearly 55% of companies hadn’t delivered as of November 2019. While some of the largest miners—including Vale, BHP , and Anglo American have disclosed their information, others have yet to do so. Investors are increasingly examining ethical issues when looking at mining.
Tailings, the waste material from extracting valuable minerals, are often held for decades behind dams that can be risky if they are poorly constructed, ill-maintained or filled with too much waste. Major failures of tailings dams have become more frequent as mining companies ramp up production to meet the world’s growing demand for commodities. Norilsk Nickel one of world’s most valuable miners with a market capitalization of roughly $43 billion, hasn’t publicly released details on its tailings dams. In 2016, heavy rainfall caused a Norilsk Nickel tailings dam in northern Russia to overflow, coloring a local river red. Miners of potash and phosphate—minerals used mainly in fertilizers—have been slow to disclose.
Another big company that has not released details is Canada-based Nutrient. Satellite images show two of the company’s six Saskatchewan mines are located a few miles from residential communities and one neighbors a bird-breeding area. A tailings pond at the company’s North Carolina phosphate mine is located next to the Pamlico River, which feeds into the state’s largest estuary.
In 2017, Israel Chemicals reported that the partial collapse of a subsidiary’s dike in Israel released 100,000 cubic meters of acidic wastewater that flowed into a nearby nature reserve. The wastewater resulted from the production of phosphate fertilizer.Vancouver-based Imperial Metals Corp.is tied to what is considered one of Canada’s worst environmental catastrophes. In 2014, a British Columbia dam owned by the company burst, sending some 25 million cubic meters of mining waste pouring into a pair of glacial lakes
Large Chinese miners such as Jiangxi Copper, Zijin Mining Group Co. and Zhongjin Gold Corp. also haven’t shared information with the investor coalition. There are 8,869 documented tailings dams, of which 16% are within about half a mile of a residential area, school or hospital, according to research led by the School of University of Science and Technology in Beijing. Karen Hudson-Edwards, a mining specialist at Britain’s University of Exeter, said the actual number in China is estimated at around 12,000 dams and there is little transparency on tailings risk in the country. There have been at least 12 serious tailings-dam accidents in China since the 1960s, with one in 2008 killing 277 people, according to the World Information Service on Energy, a Netherlands-based nonprofit.
Alistair MacDonald et al, Many Mining Companies Fail to Provide Waste-Dam Data, WSJ, Dec. 18, 2019
Nile has become a battleground. Countries that sit upriver and wealthy Gulf states are starting to use the Nile more than ever for water and electricity. That means less water for the 250 million-plus small farmers, herders and city dwellers in the Nile basin. Dams funded by foreign countries including China and oil-rich neighbors like Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are tapping the river to irrigate industrial farms and generate electricity. Crops grown using Nile water are increasingly shipped out of Africa to the Middle East, often to feed livestock such as dairy cows…
Exporting crops to feed foreign animals while borrowing money to import wheat is “almost insane,” Sudan’s new prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, said in an interview. “It’s exporting water, basically. We could be growing wheat and getting rid of half our import bill,” he said. Mr. Hamdok’s predecessor, dictator Omar al-Bashir, is in prison after an uprising sparked by rising prices for food….
The most dramatic change to the Nile in decades is rising in Ethiopia, where the Blue Nile originates. Ethiopia, which has one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, turned to China to help finance the $4.2 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project to generate electricity. While the dam, located just miles from the Sudan border, won’t supply water for farms and cities, its massive reservoir will affect the flow of water.
Downstream, Egypt is worried that Ethiopia will try to quickly fill the reservoir beginning in 2020. The issue is “a matter of life and death for the nation,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi said in televised remarks in 2017. “No one can touch Egypt’s share of water.” A spokesman for Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a September press conference that “any move that does not respect Ethiopia’s sovereignty and its right to use the Nile dam has no acceptance.” Sharing of the Nile’s waters has long been governed by international treaties, with Egypt claiming the vast majority. Since Ethiopia wasn’t included in those treaties, it was never provided an allotment of water. Ethiopia’s massive dam has thrown a wrench into past agreements…
Sudan is stuck in the middle. Much of the water that flows through the country is already allocated. “Sudan actually doesn’t have that much free water available,” says Harry Verhoeven, author of “Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan.” By early 2015, Saudi Arabia doubled its investment in Sudan’s agriculture sector to $13 billion, equaling about one-third of all foreign investment in Sudanese industry….The contrast between verdant export crops watered by the Nile and parched villages was visible in the area where protests started in December 2019, during a nationwide wheat shortage. The protesters were angry about food prices, poor job prospects, social strictures and Sudan’s moribund economy, Mr. Alsir says. “We’re surrounded by farms,” he says. “But we’re not getting any of it.
Past a rocky expanse next to the village flows a deep canal, green with weeds, dug a decade ago by a Saudi-owned company called Tala Investment Co. It runs from the Nile about 10 miles to Tala’s farm, which leases its land from the government. Tala grows crops for export and maximizes profits using Sudan’s “cheap manpower,” the company’s website says….The alfalfa is shipped 400 miles overland to Port Sudan and then across a nearly 200-mile stretch of the Red Sea to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, then is used for animal feed….
The Aswan dam In Egypt is primarily used to generate electricity. But a sprawling desert farm, the Toshka project to the west, taps the reservoir. That is where Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. have made some of their biggest agricultural investments in Egypt in the past decade. The strategy there is straightforward, says Turki Faisal Al Rasheed, founder of Saudi agriculture company Golden Grass Inc., which has explored purchasing farms in Egypt and Sudan. “When you talk about buying land, you’re not really buying land,” he says. “You’re buying water.”
Even with all that water dedicated to growing crops, Egypt is rapidly outstripping its resources. This is because he country’s population is forecast to grow 20% to 120 million by 2030, and to 150 million by 2050. Access to water in Egypt is increasingly uncertain. The country’s annual per capita water use dipped below 24,000 cubic feet in recent years and is expected to fall below 18,000 cubic feet by 2030, a level defined as “absolute water scarcity,” according to the United Nations. The comparable figure in the U.S. is 100,000 cubic feet, enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool. Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. control about 383,000 acres of land in Egypt, an expanse nearly twice the size of New York City, according to Land Matrix. The main crops are corn, potatoes, wheat, alfalfa, barley and fruit such as grapes that are exported back home.
Mr. Sisi is now looking for new places to grow food. In 2015 he launched a program to expand arable land by more than 1.5 million acres in the country, part of which will tap into the Nubian aquifer, an irreplaceable ancient store of water beneath the Sahara. Saudi and U.A.E. companies have bid for lands in the project, according to the New Egyptian Countryside Development Co., which is managing the project. Mr. Al Rasheed, the Saudi farm owner in Egypt, says that for him and others from the Gulf, farming along the Nile is about building regional influence as much as ensuring food supplies. “Food is the ultimate power,” he says.
Excerpts from Justin Scheck &Scott Patterson, ‘Food Is the Ultimate Power’: Parched Countries Tap the Nile River Through Farms, WSJ, Nov. 25, 2019
A biological remediation pilot project seeking to enhance nature’s own ability to clear up oil spills in Iraq’s conflict-affected areas has been launched in Kirkuk, Iraq…This UNEP initiative seeks to harness naturally occurring soil bacteria as a powerful natural ally to decontaminate poisoned land. Over three years ago in summer 2016, the residents of Qayyarah—a small town of around 25,000 people, some 60 km south of Mosul—were caught in the line of fire as so-called Islamic State fighters torched nineteen nearby oil wells. So thick were the clouds of smoke, that people could not distinguish day from night for weeks in what infamously came to be known as the “Daesh winter”. Rivers of crude oil flowed through Qayyarah’s streets and into seasonal wadis as oil wells spewed tens of thousands of barrels of oil relentlessly for months. The specter of an even worse environmental catastrophe was heightened as the oil slick migrated to less than three kilometers from the Tigris River, Iraq’s water lifeline.
Following an epic battle to control the oil fires that took nearly a year, North Oil Company, which manages the oil fields of northern Iraq, is currently collecting an estimated 20,000 tonnes of remaining oil waste in Qayyarah into around a dozen large pits. Progress, however, has been slow and pools of heavy viscous oil remain on the doorsteps of entire neighborhoods and households, who complain about the impacts of noxious fumes on their children’s health.
“In some places, the layer of heavy oil is two to three meters thick, and long stretches of wadi channels are now effectively tarmac roads on which cars can be driven,” observed Mohammed Dawood, head of Qayarrah oil refinery’s environmental unit. Furthermore, Environment Ministry officials expressed concern that exceptionally heavy rains and flash floods of the 2018/19 winter season washed out oil from the holding pits into the Tigris River.
While oil production restarted in Qayyarah immediately after the conflict ended in June 2017, reaching currently an estimated 40,000 barrels per day, little has been done to clean up the conflict’s toxic aftermath… The UN Environment Programme in collaboration with the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq delivered a four-day hands-on training workshop on remediation of oil spills by the use of bacteria in September 2019. “By adding nutrients from manure, bulking agents like wood chips and water, we are simply creating the ideal conditions for bacteria to thrive and speeding up the natural process of breaking down the oil,”
Excerpts from Microbes offer hope of cleaning up Iraq conflict’s pollution legacy, UNEP Press Release, Oct. 23, 2019
In the effort to keep the planet from reaching dangerous temperatures, a hybrid approach called BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) has a seductive appeal. Crops suck carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, power plants burn the biomass to generate electricity, and the emissions are captured in a smokestack and pumped underground for long-term storage. Energy is generated even as CO2 is removed: an irresistible win-win. But, the United Nations’s climate panel sounded a warning about creating vast bioenergy plantations, which could jeopardize food production, water supplies, and land rights for poor farmers.
In an earlier special report in October 2018, IPCC called for holding the rise in global average temperatures to no more than 1.5°C above preindustrial conditions to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. It emphasized that cutting emissions won’t be enough to reach that goal. Replacing coal with renewable energy, and significantly cutting oil and natural gas, would still leave gigatons of excess carbon in the atmosphere. BECCS could remove it, computer models suggested, if several million square kilometers—an area the size of India—were devoted to energy crops.
But the 2019 IPCC report examines the consequences of deploying BECCS on that vast scale and concludes it could “greatly increase” the demand for agricultural land. The pressure on conventional crops could compromise food security, as happened in 2007 when rising U.S. corn ethanol production contributed to a spike in food prices. (In Mexico, the price of tortillas, a staple for the poor, rose 69% between 2005 and 2011.) The bioenergy plantations could also take a toll on biodiversity—as is happening in Southeast Asia, where plantations producing palm oil for biodiesel as well as food are displacing diverse tropical forest. And they could suck up scarce water, especially in drylands, where irrigation of crops might deplete local supplies, the IPCC report says.
Industrial bioenergy crops can lead to the same kinds of problems as intensive food production, such as the contamination of water from excess fertilizer. Scaling up bioenergy in developing countries can also exacerbate social problems like the loss of land by small farmers.
Excerpts from Erik Stokstad, Bioenergy plantations could fight climate change—but threaten food crops, U.N. panel warns, Science, Aug. 8, 2019
What to do with the enormous amount of radioactive water, which grows by around 150 tons a day at Fukushima, is a thorny question, with controversy surrounding a long-standing proposal to discharge it into the sea, after extensive decontamination. The water comes from several different sources: Some is used for cooling at the plant, which suffered a meltdown after it was hit by a tsunami triggered by a massive earthquake in March 2011. Groundwater that seeps into the plant daily, along with rainwater, add to the problem.
A thousand, towering tanks have now replaced many of the cherry trees that once dotted the plant’s ground. Each can hold 1,200 tons, and most of them are already full. “We will build more on the site until the end of 2020, and we think all the tanks will be full by around the summer of 2022,” said Junichi Matsumoto, an official with the unit of plant operator TEPCO in charge of dismantling the site.
TEPCO has been struggling with the problem for years, taking various measures to limit the amount of groundwater entering the site. There is also an extensive pumping and filtration system, that each day brings up tons of newly contaminated water and filters out as many of the radioactive elements as possible.
The hangar where the decontamination system runs is designated “Zone Y” — a danger zone requiring special protections. All those entering must wear elaborate protection: a full body suit, three layers of socks, three layers of gloves, a double cap topped by a helmet, a vest with a pocket carrying a dosimeter, a full-face respirator mask and special shoes. Most of the outfit has to burned after use.
“The machinery filters contain radionuclides, so you have to be very protected here, just like with the buildings where the reactors are,” explained TEPCO risk communicator Katsutoshi Oyama. TEPCO has been filtering newly contaminated water for years, but much of it needs to go through the process again because early versions of the filtration process did not fully remove some dangerous radioactive elements, including strontium 90.
The current process is more effective, removing or reducing around 60 radionuclides to levels accepted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for water being discharged. But there is one that remains, which cannot be removed with the current technology: tritium.
Tritium is naturally present in the environment, and has also been discharged in its artificial form into the environment by the nuclear industry around the world. There is little evidence that it causes harm to humans except in very high concentrations and the IAEA argues that properly filtered Fukushima water could be diluted with seawater and then safely released into the ocean without causing environmental problems.
But those assurances are of little comfort to many in the region, particularly Fukushima’s fishing industry which, like local farmers, has suffered from the outside perception that food from the region is unsafe.
Karyn Nishimura, At Fukushima plant, a million-ton headache: radioactive water, Japan Times, Oct. 7, 2019
Signs posted around the Grand Lake, Ohio read: “Danger: Avoid all contact with the water.” When dangerously high levels of toxins from blue-green algae in Grand Lake, Ohiio were publicized in 2009, many residents and tourists stopped using the 13,000-acre lake in northwest Ohio. Hotel revenue and home values sank for several years as algae bloomed in the state’s largest inland lake.
Greenish water still laps at Grand Lake’s shores, but recent water samples show that the amount of algae-feeding nutrients entering the lake is down significantly. State, federal and private donations covered more than $10 million in projects aimed at improving water quality. More people are boating on the lake again. Grand Lake could now serve as an example for communities with algae problems across the nation, experts say.
Algal blooms are on the rise, from Lake Erie to the Florida Everglades. In August 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency listed algae-related beach closures or health advisories in 23 states, and it said other blooms may not have been reported. In 2010, the EPA found that 20% of 50,000 lakes surveyed had been affected by phosphorous and nitrogen pollution, which feeds algae.e Cleaning up bodies of water choked with toxic algae has proved difficult. The project to repair Grand Lake, once one of the most polluted by algae in the nation, is one of the clearest successes. It shows cleanup is possible, but also expensive and time-consuming.
“It’s not restored yet, but it’s on the road to recovery,” said Stephen Jacquemin, an associate professor of biology at Wright State University-Lake Campus in Celina. Beginning in 2012, wetlands areas were built around the lake, which was hand dug in the 1830s. The thick stands of bulrushes and other plants have reduced phosphorous and nitrogen levels in water entering the wetlands before reaching the lake by as much as 90%, Dr. Jacquemin said. Three wetland areas, which cost a total of about $6 million to build, are constructed as a series of interconnected pools that allow particulates to settle out and plants and microbes to remove nutrients.
Areal View of Artificial Wetlands, Great Lake Ohio
The state’s Department of Natural Resources has also dredged the lake bottom to remove nutrient-loaded sediment, and tried to clean up one of Grand Lake’s beaches near St. Marys by building a rock jetty and installing aerators and a curtain to filter water. Recent water tests there showed levels below 6 parts per billion of the toxin microcystin, under Ohio’s threshold of 20 parts per billion for avoiding contact with water.
As Green Algae Forces Beaches to Close, Ohio Lake Offers Hope, WSJ, Sept. 18, 2019
Australia’s Darling River…provided fresh water to farmers seeking to tame Australia’s rugged interior. No longer. The Darling River hasn’t flowed for eight months, with long stretches completely dried up. A million fish died there in January 2019. Kangaroos, lizards and birds became sick or died after drinking from toxic pools of stagnant water. Australia’s water-trading market is drawing blame. The problems with the system, created more than a decade ago, have arisen as similar programs are being considered in the U.S.
Water crises are unfolding across the world as surging populations, industrial-scale farming and hotter temperatures deplete supplies. Australia thought it had the answer: a cap-and-trade system that would create incentives to use water efficiently and effectively in the world’s driest inhabited continent. But the architects of water trading didn’t anticipate that treating water as a commodity would encourage theft and hoarding. A report produced for a state resources regulator found the current situation on the Darling was caused by too much water being extracted from the river by a handful of big farmers. Just four license holders control 75% of the water extracted from the Barwon-Darling river system.
The national government, concerned that its water-trading experiment hasn’t turned out as intended, in August 2019 requested an inquiry by the country’s antitrust regulator into water trading. Anticorruption authorities are investigating instances of possible fraud, water theft and deal making for water licenses. In one case, known as Watergate, a former agriculture minister allegedly oversaw the purchase of a water license at a record price from a Cayman Islands company co-founded by the current energy minister. The former agriculture minister said he was following departmental advice and had no role in determining the price or the vendor. The energy minister said he is no longer involved with the company and received no financial benefit from the deal.
Since 2007, Australia has allowed not only farmers but also investors who want to profit from trading to buy and sell water shares. The water market is now valued at some $20 billion. But making water valuable had unintended consequences in some places. “Once you create something of real value, you should expect people to attempt to steal it and search for ways to cheat,” says Mike Young, a University of Adelaide professor. “It’s not rocket science. Manage water like money, and you are there.” Big water users have stolen billions of liters of water from rivers and lakes, according to local media investigations and Australian officials, often by pumping it secretly and at night from remote locations that aren’t metered. A new water regulator set up in New South Wales investigated more than 300 tips of alleged water thefts in its first six months of operation. In 2018, authorities charged a group of cotton farmers with stealing water, including one that pleaded guilty to pumping enough illegally to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools. Another problem is that water trading gives farmers an incentive to capture more rain and floodwater, and then hoard it, typically by building storage tanks or lining dirt ditches with concrete. That enables them to collect rain before it seeps into the earth or rivers.
The subsequent water shortages, combined with trading by dedicated water funds and corporate farmers, have driven up prices. Water in Australia’s main agricultural region, the Murray-Darling river basin, now trades at about $420 per megaliter, or one million liters, compared with as low as $7 in previous years. David Littleproud, Australia’s water-resources minister, says 14% of water licenses are now owned by investors. “Is that really the intent of what we want this market to be?” he asks. “Water is a precious commodity.”
Excerpts from Rachel Pannett , The U.S. Wants to Adopt a Cap-and-Trade Plan for Water That Isn’t Working, WSJ, Sept. 4, 2019
Cigarette butts, the most littered items in the world, are posing an intractable trash problem for regulators and tobacco companies: Throwing them on the ground is a firmly entrenched habit for many smokers. Regulators are taking a tougher stance on cigarette filter pollution amid concerns about the environmental impact of single-use plastic. Butts for decades have been made from cellulose acetate, a form of plastic, which takes years to break down. Studies show that butts—which often wash from sidewalks into drains and then waterways—can be toxic to fish.
About 65% of cigarettes smoked in the U.S. are littered, according to Keep America Beautiful, a nonprofit whose cigarette litter prevention program is funded by the tobacco industry. “That whole habit is so ingrained it becomes part of the ritual of taking the cigarette out of the pack, lighting it, smoking it, putting it on the ground,” said Christopher Proctor, chief scientific officer at British American Tobacco (BAT), whose cigarette brands include Kent, Newport and Camel. “Changing ingrained behavior is a really difficult thing to do.”
The European Union in May adopted new rules under which members must pass laws within two years requiring tobacco companies to fund the cleanup of filter litter as part of a broader crackdown on single-use plastics. A bill proposing banning filters has made its way through the California Senate and will be heard by the lower house next year. In response, BAT and Japan Tobacco Inc. are testing biodegradable filters, while Philip Morris International Inc. is assessing the appetite for portable ashtrays. Companies also are tapping behavioral psychologists to understand what propels smokers to litter, hoping to forestall stricter regulation…
he World Health Organization says that when filters do break down they leach out some of the 7,000 chemicals contained in cigarettes, many of which are environmentally toxic.
Excerpts from Saabira Chaudhuri, The World’s Most Littered Item Comes Under Fire, WSJ, July 31, 2019
Malaysia, Singapore’s biggest source for sea sand, has banned the export of the commodity, according to officials in Kuala Lumpur, a move that traders said could complicate the island-state’s ambitious expansion plans on reclaimed land. Those plans include the development of the Tuas mega port, slated to be the world’s biggest container terminal. Singapore has increased its land area by a quarter since independence in 1965, mostly by using sand to reclaim coastal areas.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir, who came to power in a shock election last year, imposed a ban on all sea sand exports on October 3, 2018… Endie Shazlie Akbar, Mahathir’s press secretary, confirmed that the government had put a stop to sand exports last year. However, he denied that it was aimed at curbing Singapore’s expansion plans, saying it was a move to clamp down on illegal sand smuggling….Two traders importing sand to Singapore, who both asked not to be named, said the commodity is becoming scarcer and driving Singapore to source sand from as far as India, which would push up costs. Shipping is the biggest single cost in acquiring sand.The traders added Singapore has been stockpiling sand in recent years which could provide a buffer against any immediate bottleneck in supplies.
The sand industry is opaque with no international price index, making it difficult to gauge the financial impact of a ban by Malaysia. Sea sand is mostly used for land reclamation, while river sand is a core component in constructions materials like cement.
Singapore imported 59 million tonnes of sand from Malaysia in 2018, at a cost of $347 million, according to United Nations Comtrade data, which is based on information provided by individual countries’ customs offices. That accounted for 97% of Singapore’s total sand imports in the year by volume, and 95% of Malaysia’s global sand sales.The data does not distinguish between types of sand. When Indonesia banned exports to Singapore in 2007, citing environmental concerns, it caused a “sand crisis” in the city-state that saw building activity almost come to a halt. Singapore has since bolstered its stockpiles.
Unsustainable sand dredging disrupts sediment flows and fishing grounds, destroying livelihoods and polluting water sources in some of the poorest communities in Asia. But Singapore criticized Indonesia for allegedly using the ban as leverage in negotiations over an extradition treaty and border delineation.
River Dredging for Extraction of Sand
Excerpts from Fathin Ungku, Rozanna Latiff , Exclusive: In blow to Singapore’s expansion, Malaysia bans sea sand exports, Reuters, July 2, 2019
The southern city of Chennai—India’s fifth largest with a population of around 10 million—has been meeting only two-thirds of its water needs for weeks, the product of years of drought and decades of failure to manage the region’s water resources. Residents have been scrambling around the clock to get water—spending hours chasing government tankers or paying private companies to deliver water. Recent light rains broke a 200-day streak without rain. But the first month of India’s annual monsoon brought one-third less rain than the 50-year average, the driest June in five years, according to the India Meteorological Department.
The acute water shortage in one of India’s largest cities has been building for decades through a mix of population growth, poor planning and increasingly erratic monsoon rains….
The situation in Chennai reflects a larger water crisis spreading across India. Half the country’s population—600 million people—live in areas where water resources are highly or extremely stressed. About 100 million people living in 21 of India’s biggest cities may see their groundwater exhausted by the end of next year, according to a 2018 study by NITI Aayog, an Indian government policy think tank. By 2030, demand for water will be double the country’s supply, the report said. And the impact will go far beyond the areas actually affected by water shortages: Almost one-third of the country’s agricultural output comes from areas most affected by water shortages…
The scarcity has led to clashes between neighbors. “No one is ready to share even a glass of water,” she said.
Excerpts from Vibhuti Agarwal and Krishna Pokhare Indians Hunt Through the Night for Water as a Megacity Runs Dry, WSJ, July 6, 2018
The daily plastic waste generated by the average Indian—while much lower than the average American—climbed 69% between 2015 and 2018, according to government estimates. Across the country, dumps are overflowing and drains are clogging with plastic, while cows—considered sacred—are getting sick after eating packaging….To get a grip, India has instituted some of the world’s strictest rules on single-use plastic, forcing companies to collect packaging that is often left as litter.
Nonrecyclable packaging is a problem globally, but particularly acute in countries with poor waste management. Many Indian households lack regular collection services so they burn trash or dump it on the side of the road. Much of the waste ends up in waterways. Of plastic found in the world’s oceans, 90% is traced to 10 rivers, according to a 2017 study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Eight of the rivers are in Asia and two flow through India.
Single-Serve Pouches
In emerging markets, products like shampoo and detergent are often sold in single-serve pouches similar to the ketchup packets that come with an order of fries. The resilient “multilayer” pouches protect against extreme temperatures and contamination, and, most important, are affordable for poor consumers. Single-serve packets make up over 80% of shampoo sales in India, Indonesia and the Philippines, according to Euromonitor….This type of packaging combines different types of plastic with materials like aluminum. That makes it nonrecyclable and of no interest to India’s waste pickers who trawl through trash looking for recyclables to sell. Three years ago, India’s government said it would ban multilayer packaging by 2018, setting off alarm bells through the industry…
A consortium—including Nestlé, Pepsi and Mentos-maker Perfetti Van Melle SpA—tried for months to develop a recyclable alternative. After little success, they decided on a different approach. Through street plays and workshops, the companies trained 1,500 waste pickers across eight cities to identify and collect multilayer packaging, paying them for what they brought in. The pilot program amassed 680 metric tons of material in three months. In March 2018, New Delhi changed the law to allow the sale of multilayer packaging. The caveat is that companies must collect back the equivalent volume of what they sell and find other uses for it, like sending it to cement plants as fuel…
Despite such efforts, some government officials have accused companies of moving too slowly. E. Ravendiran of the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board says companies only swung into action after being threatened with bans or having to pay a deposit on multilayer packaging sold. Executives say the target of collecting 100% of multilayer plastic by 2020 is unrealistic and that details on how the rule will be implemented are scarce.
Hassan, a former waste picker who manages a small team of waste collectors in Bangalore, says pickers aren’t financially motivated to bend down hundreds of times to collect a kilogram of multilayer plastic from piles of mixed waste or just off the street. Saahas pays him 27 rupees (around 39 U.S. cents) for one kilogram of plastic bottles, compared with just 4 rupees for one kilogram of multilayer packaging, which is much harder to collect.
Excerpts, Saabira Chaudhu India Saddles Consumer-Goods Makers With Fixing Plastic Trash Problem, WSJ, July 5, 2019
Four Chinese-run gold mines should be closed in the Central African Republic because of pollution threatening public health, a parliamentary panel said in a report published on July 14, 2019. “Ecological disaster,” “polluted river,” “public health threatened,” were some of the phrases used in the report. “Gold mining by the Chinese firms at Bozoum is not profitable for the state and harmful to the population and the environment,” the commission found after its investigation into mining in the northern town. “The nature of the ecological disaster discovered onsite justifies the immediate, unconditional halt to these activities,” the report found.
Members of the commission spent four days in Bozoum a month ago in response to “multiple complaints from the population.” There, they found a badly polluted River Ouham, shorn of several aquatic species following the excavation of its riverbed. They discovered that a rising death rate in fishing villages as well as shrinking access to clean drinking water.
The investigators also voiced fears that the country’s “resources are being squandered with the complicity of certain ministry of mines officials.” The CAR is rich in natural resources but riven by conflict which has forced around one in four of its 4.5 million population to flee their homes. Under those circumstances, exploitation of the country’s natural resources is difficult to monitor effectively given that the state only has partial control of its own territory.
Central African Republic Report Cites Ecological Disaster in Calling for Closing of 4 Chinese Gold MInes, Agence France Presse, July 14, 2019
There is no point collecting recyclable waste unless someone is willing to buy it and actually do the recycling. Until late 2017 China was the world’s biggest importer of scrap by far. All this came to a halt when the Chinese government banned the import of all but the purest scrap material in 2017, killing a trade worth $24bn a year. Waste dealers in the rich world had to scramble to find new buyers. South-East Asia soon emerged as the pre-eminent destination for foreign waste. Unfortunately, the region’s recycling industry is much smaller than China’s; its processing plants were quickly overwhelmed. Plastics from America and Europe have piled up in landfills. Lots of toxic rubbish has simply been torched.
South-East Asian governments are not pleased. They have begun to ban or crimp imports themselves, abruptly diminishing a booming business. On May 28th, 2919 Yeo Bee Yin, Malaysia’s environment minister, complaining that “garbage [was] being traded under the pretext of recycling”, announced that her government would be sending back 3,000 tonnes of foreign plastic. Much of it was of poor quality, she noted, and hence unrecyclable. Thailand plans to ban plastic-waste imports by 2021. Vietnam’s government has similar ideas. Kate O’Neill of the University of California, Berkeley, reckons these bans are motivated not only by environmental concerns but also by pride: Asia does not want to be the world’s dumping ground. Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, recently threatened to go to war with Canada if it did not take back a shipment of plastic scrap. Canada agreed to take it away…
Excerpts from South-East Asian countries are banning imports of waste for recycling, Economist, June 15, 2019
The Mobil Foundation sought to use its tax-exempt grants to shape American laws and regulations on issues ranging from the climate crisis to toxic chemicals – with the explicit goal of benefiting Mobil, documents obtained by the Guardian newspaper show. Recipients of Mobil Foundation grants included Ivy League universities, branches of the National Academies and well-known civic organizations and environmental researchers. Benefits for Mobil included – in the foundation’s words – funding “a counterpoint to so-called ‘public interest’ groups”, helping Mobil obtain “early access” to scientific research, and offering the oil giant’s executives a forum to “challenge the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) behind-the-scenes”….
A third page reveals Mobil Foundation’s efforts to expand its audience inside environmental circles via a grant for the Environmental Law Institute, a half-century-old organization offering environmental law research and education to lawyers and judges. “Institute publications are widely read in the environmental community and are helpful in communicating industry’s concerns to such organizations,” the entry says. “Mobil Foundation grants will enhance environmental organizations’ views of Mobil, enable us to reach through ELI activities many groups that we do not communicate with, and enable Mobil to participate in their dialogue groups.”
The documents also show Mobil Foundation closely examining the work of individual researchers at dozens of colleges and universities as they made their funding decisions, listing ways that foundation grants would help shape research interests to benefit Mobil, help the company recruit future employees, or help combat environmental and safety regulations that Mobil considered costly. “It should be a wake-up call for university leaders, because what it says is that fossil fuel funding is not free,” said Geoffrey Supran, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard and MIT. “When you take it, you pay with your university’s social license,” Supran said. “You pay by helping facilitate these companies’ political and public relations tactics.”
In some cases, the foundation described how volunteer-staffed not-for-profits had saved Mobil money by doing work that would have otherwise been performed by Mobil’s paid staff, like cleaning birds coated in oil following a Mobil spill. In 1987, the International Bird Rescue Research Center’s “rapid response and assistance to Mobil’s West Coast pipeline at a spill in Lebec, CA not only defused a potential public relations problem”, Mobil Foundation said, “but saved substantial costs by not requiring our department to fly cross country to respond”.d of trustees at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (recipient of listed donations totalling over $200,000 from Mobil) and a part of UN efforts to study climate change.
Wise ultimately co-authored two UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, serving as a lead author on one. One report chapter Wise co-authored prominently recommended, among other things, burning natural gas (an ExxonMobil product) instead of coal as a way to combat climate change.
Excerpts from How Mobil pushed its oil agenda through ‘charitable giving’, Guardian, June 12, 2019
With the global demand for sand and gravel standing at 40 to 50 billion tonnes per year, a new report by UN Environment reveals that aggregate extraction in rivers has led to pollution, flooding, lowering of water aquifers and worsening drought occurrence.
Sand extraction is fast becoming a transboundary issue due to sand extraction bans, international sourcing of sand for land reclamation projects and impacts of uncontrolled sand extraction beyond national borders. International trade in sand and gravel is growing due to high demand in regions without local sand and gravel resources and is forecast to rise 5.5 per cent a year with urbanization and infrastructure development trends.
Unsustainable sand extraction does not only impact the environment but can also have far-reaching social implications. Sand removal from beaches can jeopardize the development of the local tourism industry, while removing sand from rivers and mangrove forests leads to a decrease of crab populations—negatively affecting women whose livelihood depends on the collection of crabs.
Excerpts from Rising demand for sand calls for resource governance, UNEP, May 7, 2019
The hard surface of waterborne plastic provides an ideal environment for the formation of biofilm by opportunistic microbial colonisers, and could facilitate a novel means of dispersal for microorganisms across coastal and marine environments. Biofilms that colonise the so-called ‘plastisphere’ could also be a reservoir for faecal indicator organisms (FIOs), such as Escherichia coli, or pathogenic bacteria such as species of Vibrio.
Nurdles on bathing beach
A study published in March 2019 looks into five public bathing beaches and quantifies their colonisation by E. coli and Vibrio spp. Nurdles [i.e., microplastics] were heterogeneously distributed along the high tide mark at all five beaches, and each beach contained nurdles that were colonised by E. coli and Vibrio spp. Knowledge of E. coli colonisation and persistence on nurdles should now be used to inform coastal managers about the additional risks associated with plastic debris.
Essential to the identity and economy of Mongolia—more than half of the country’s 3 million people live there—the grasslands are under increasing threat from overgrazing and climate change. Multiple studies over the past decade have shown that the once lush Mongolian steppe, an expanse twice the size of Texas that is one of the world’s largest remaining grasslands, is slowly turning into a desert. An estimated 70% of all the grazing lands in the country are considered degraded to some degree….
The collective here of a little more than 100 families is at the center of an unusual effort, run by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), to turn space-based maps of the grasslands into a tool for making grazing more sustainable. Supported by the world’s largest mining company and a luxury apparel giant, the pilot effort uses data gathered by NASA and Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, to help herders find places where the vegetation is healthy enough to sustain their voracious herds.
Meanwhile, development, especially mining, has exponentially increased water usage. Twelve percent of rivers and 21% of lakes have dried up entirely. An increasing number of people, vehicles, and heavy equipment put additional stress on the land. But one factor stands out: overgrazing, which, according to a 2013 study by researchers at Oregon State University in Corvallis, has caused 80% of the recent decline in vegetation on the grasslands.
Mongolia is now the world’s second-largest cashmere producer, after China. Goats, which account for more than half of all grazing animals on the grasslands, can be more lucrative than other livestock, but they’re also much more destructive than the sheep they’ve replaced because they eat roots and the flowers that seed new grasses=s.
WCS’s Sustainable Cashmere project may offer part of the solution. The project, whose budget the organizers won’t disclose, is funded by mining giant Rio Tinto, which runs a massive copper mine not far away, and Kering, the French luxury apparel giant that owns Gucci, Balenciaga, and other brands that need cashmere. Both aim to help offset their impact on the Mongolian environment, a requirement of Rio’s mining agreement and part of Kering’s corporate social responsibility program.
Excerpts Kathleen McLaughlin, Saving the steppes, Science, Feb. 1, 2019
The Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding mountains [the Himalayas], often termed the Third Pole, contain more ice than anywhere outside the Arctic and Antarctic. This region is also the source of the nine largest rivers in Asia, providing fresh water, food, and other ecosystem services to more than 1.5 billion people…In recent decades, air temperature at the Third Pole has warmed significantly faster than the global average…Meanwhile, intensive anthropogenic activities, such as overgrazing, deforestation, urbanization, and expansion of infrastructure projects such as construction of roads, dams, and electrical grids, are causing widespread landcover changes within the region.
Together, these changes are altering the Third Pole’s biogeochemical cycles and pushing the fragile ecosystem toward degradation and possible collapse, which would cause irreversible harm on a regional and global scale. To avoid this, all nations must meet the standards laid out in the Paris Agreement. At the regional level, we strongly urge the relevant nations (including Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Tajikistan) to cooperate in addressing these impending threats through systematic changes to management policies. Rapid and unprecedented coordination will be necessary, including a regional cooperation treaty and formation of a cross-border biodiversity conservation plan for the Third Pole region. Meanwhile, any infrastructure projects undertaken must be environmentally sustainable, and a practicable grazing management policy should be adopted.
Excerpts from Jie Liu, Protect Third Pole’s Fragile Ecosystem, Science, Dec. 21, 2018
The water level of the Sea of Galilee, on which Jesus supposedly walked, is a national obsession in Israel. Newspapers report its rise and fall next to the weather forecast. Lately the sea, which is actually a freshwater lake, has been falling. It is now a quarter empty. Small islands have emerged above its shrinking surface.
For the past five years Israel has experienced its worst drought in nearly a century. That has reduced the flow of the Jordan river and other streams that feed into the Sea of Galilee. Less turnover in the lake’s water is leading to increased salinity and the spread of cyanobacteria (sometimes called “blue-green algae”, despite not being algae). As the pressure from fresh water eases, it allows in more salt water from subterranean streams. Climate change is expected to exacerbate these problems, perhaps one day making the lake water undrinkable.
Israel can probably cope. For most of its history the Sea of Galilee was its largest source of drinking water. But over the past decade the country has invested heavily in desalination plants and projects that allow it to reclaim effluents and brackish water. Since 2016 well over half of the water consumed by households, farms and industry has been “man-made”. Less than 70m cubic metres of water will be pumped out of the Sea of Galilee this year for consumption, down from 400m in the past. Some 50m will go to Jordan, which is also suffering from a severe drought.
In Jun 2018e the Israeli government authorised a billion-shekel ($270m) plan to pump desalinated sea water, mostly from the Mediterranean, into the Sea of Galilee. Work on a new pipeline began last month. A freshwater lake has never been replenished in this way, but the scientists monitoring the plan believe it will work similarly to rainfall and will not harm the lake’s unique ecosystem. By 2020 the new pipeline is expected to pump enough desalinated water into the Sea of Galilee to stabilise its level.
Excerpts from The Sea of Galilee: Walking on Desalinated Water, Economist, Dec. 1, 2018
Innovator Cranfield University, U.K.: Putting down the toilet lid activates a dry flush. The motion turns a set of gears that drop feces and urine into a pan, where they are separated and either combusted into ash that can be thrown away or filtered into clean water that could be used to water plants, for instance, though not drinking. It was one of the few completely standalone toilets at the expo, able to function without links to water, sewer or electric lines.
The Innovator: Helbling Group, Switzerland: Helbling’s self-contained toilet system
Similar to other models, this toilet is a mostly self-contained system that transforms waste into clean water and a form of charcoal. But its makers, who were contracted by the Gates Foundation to develop this model, also had modern design in mind: A sleek, black-and-white prototype includes a touchpad for the flush and a container that can be detached to dump out excess water. While it doesn’t have to connect to water or sewer lines, one limit is that the model still needs electricity from an outside source
Sedron Technologies makes the Janicki Omni Processor, a small-scale waste-treatment plant that can filter wet fecal matter so thoroughly that the resulting water is not only free of bacteria and viruses but also safe for drinking. At its highest capacity the plant can manage waste for up to 500,000 people, the same range as two other plants featured at the expo. A trial has been running in Dakar, Senegal, over the past three years to identify and fix technical problems.
Excerpts from Flush With Ideas: Bill Gates Pursues the Toilet of the Future, WSJ, Nov. 9, 2018
Australia has one of the world’s most sophisticated water-trading systems, and officials in other water-challenged places—notably California and China—are drawing on its experience to manage what the World Bank has called world’s “most precious resource.” The system here, set up after a catastrophic drought in the 2000s saw the country’s most important river system almost run dry, aims to make sure each gallon of river water goes to higher-value activities.
But the return of severe drought to an area of eastern Australia more than twice the size of Texas is testing the system…Putting a price on water is politically unacceptable in many countries, where access to lakes and rivers is considered a basic right and water is often allocated under administrative rules instead of by markets.
Many water markets that do exist only allow landowners to buy and sell water rights. Australia since 2007 has allowed anyone to trade water parcels, putting supply under the influence of market forces in a system now valued at about $21 billion. Water may be freely bought and sold by irrigators, farmers, water brokers or investors through four exchanges—H2OX, Waterfind,Water Exchange and Ruralco—which allow real-time pricing…
As Australia rewrote the rules of its water market over the last decade to deal with its own drought crises, many farmers chose to sell their water licenses and rely on one-off purchases to keep farming. The tactic worked until winter rains failed to arrive this year, turning fertile areas into dust bowls. Where a megaliter of water in June last year, before the drought took hold, cost around 3,000 Australian dollars (U.S. $2,166), the price is now closer to A$5,000, according to Aither Water, an advisory firm. The high cost has left smaller farmers praying for rain…
Australia’s drought is splitting agriculture-producing regions into those who have water and those who don’t. Large investors—including Canadian and U.S. funds—bought high-price water licenses to set up agribusiness ventures in profitable almonds, cotton and citrus, with an eye to growing Asian markets. Others have set up dedicated water investment funds, with prices at the highest levels seen since the drought last decade.
In a country where boom-and-bust cycles, through drought and flood, have historically made water a political flashpoint, some rural Australian lawmakers and farmers want the government to divert water to help parched farms…In August 2018, Victoria state auctioned 20 gigaliters of water that had been earmarked for the environment, putting it on the market for dairy and fruit regions around Cohuna…Some water traders and environmentalists criticized the move as political interference—and said it risked undermining the water market by giving priority to farmers and disrupting forward trades and planning by other irrigators….Euan Friday, a water manager for farm and water investment company Kilter Rural, said the market is doing what it is supposed to do, and warned that the country’s fragile rivers—much smaller than the major rivers of North America—would be facing a dire situation without it. Supported by Australian pension funds, Kilter Rural has invested $130 million in buying water rights and redeveloping farmland.
Excerpt from Australia Model Water Market Struggles with Drought, WSJ, Nov. 8, 2018
The installation of large-scale wind and solar power generation facilities in the Sahara could cause more local rainfall, particularly in the neighboring Sahel region. This effect, could increase coverage by vegetation, creating a positive feedback that would further increase rainfall.
Wind and solar farms offer a major pathway to clean, renewable energies. However, these farms would significantly change land surface properties, and, if sufficiently large, the farms may lead to unintended climate consequences. In this study, we used a climate model with dynamic vegetation to show that large-scale installations of wind and solar farms covering the Sahara lead to a local temperature increase and more than a twofold precipitation increase, especially in the Sahel, through increased surface friction and reduced albedo. The resulting increase in vegetation further enhances precipitation, creating a positive albedo–precipitation–vegetation feedback that contributes ~80% of the precipitation increase for wind farms…
This highlights that, in addition to avoiding anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and the resulting warming, wind and solar energy could have other unexpected beneficial climate impacts when deployed at a large scale in the Sahara, where conditions are especially favorable for these impacts. Efforts to build such large-scale wind and solar farms for electricity generation may still face many technological (e.g., transmission, efficiency), socioeconomic (e.g., cost, politics), and environmental challenges, but this goal has become increasingly achievable and cost-effective
Exceprts from Yan Li, Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation, Science, Sept. 7, 2018
Caspian Sea…is the world’s largest body of inland water—or what some would call a rather salty lake. The confusion has fuelled disputes over its legal status for nearly 30 years, as lakes and seas fall under different international legal regimes.
The Caspian sits at a strategic spot between Europe and Asia, and contains lucrative stores of oil, gas and fish, including the caviar-producing sturgeon. The Soviet Union and Iran had a clearly defined maritime border but, after the Soviet collapse, the appearance of independent Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan muddied the waters.
On August 12th the five littoral countries at last signed an agreement the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea. The Caspian, says a Russian official, is to be treated as neither sea nor lake, but instead subject to a “special legal status”. While leaving some of the thorniest issues unresolved, the pact clarifies the maritime borders, enabling new oil, gas and pipeline projects to go ahead.
All five countries are to have 15 mile-wide territorial waters extending from their shores and another ten miles of exclusive fishing rights. The rest of the surface water will be common territory, but non-signatory states (e.g., the United States) may not deploy armed forces there. For Russia, this helps preserve its military dominance by retaining freedom of movement for its warships. (Russia has used the Caspian to launch missiles into Syria.)
The seabed and its resources, meanwhile, will be divided separately between the signatories. Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan already have agreements that split up the northern Caspian. Carving up the rest of the seabed will require further negotiations. The agreement also allows pipelines to be constructed with the consent only of the countries whose sectors they pass through. That might unblock a much-discussed Trans-Caspian Pipeline from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan which Russia has long opposed.
Exceprts from Big Lake Small Sea: Russia’s Neighborhood, Economist, Aug. 18, 2018, at 44
Kapuas, Indonesia’s longest river support somes 3m people…One reason that the water is so murky is deforestation. Since the 1970s logging has enriched locals while stripping away the vegetation that held the soil in place. The Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) found that between 1973 and 2010 over 100,000 square kilometres of forest was lost on Kalimantan, or a third of the original coverage. A national moratorium that began in 2011 has done little to still the axes. As a result, torrential tropical rains wash lots of loose earth into the Kapuas.
Illegal gold-mining compounds the problem. Locals tear up the riverbed with diggers or blast the banks with high-pressure hoses, then sieve the mud for gold. Mercury, which the miners use to separate gold from sediment, but which is poisonous to humans and fish alike, leaks into the river.
The riverbank is punctuated with corrugated-iron towers, which emit birdsong from loudspeakers. These are designed to lure swiftlets, who make their nests with saliva. The nests of swiftlets are considered a delicacy and aphrodisiac by many Chinese.* Deane, a shop owner, built his tower last December after seeing others do the same. He sells the nests to a wholesaler for about 15m rupiah ($1,025) a kilogram…
In Kapuas Hulu, an upstream district, half the population rely on the river for drinking water. A quarter have no toilet. Even where bathrooms do exist along the river, they are often floating cubicles with a hole in the floorboards. Cows and goats, living in wooden riverside cages, also defecate straight into the Kapuas…
The Kapuas passes through seven districts. Midstream ones, such as Sintang and Sanggau, earn hefty tax revenues by encouraging palm-oil plantations. But downstream districts suffer from the resulting silt, traffic and run-off without receiving any of the benefits. The same problem occurs at a village level. Mr Hadi says that fishing by sprinkling poisonous leaves on the water (the stricken fish float to the surface) is forbidden but other village heads do not enforce the rules…
A study by CIFOR on the income of villagers living near the Kapuas river found that the best-paid palm-plantation workers earned 50% more than the most successful fishermen. (Gold miners made three times as much—and spent more on education.)…But the environmental damage is plain to see. The river here is brown, clouded by silt. A study published in 2016 found that levels of phosphates in the water, from fertilisers and villagers washing themselves with soap, are highest near urban areas and palm plantations.
Down in Pontianak, the river water is darker still, occasionally brightened by oil slicks. Water bottles and instant-noodle packets cling together to form plastic islands.
Excerpts from Indonesia’s Longest River, Economist, Aug. 25, 2018
*According to Wikipedia: Authentic bird’s-nest soup is made from nests of some species of swiftlet. Instead of twigs, feathers and straw, these swiftlets make their nest only from strands of their gummy saliva, which hardens when exposed to air. Once the nests are harvested, they are cleaned and sold to restaurants. Eating swiftlet nest material is believed to help maintain skin tone, balance qi (“life energy”) and reinforce the immune system… (Dictionary of Traditional Chinese Medicine, The History of Chinese Medicine and the Nutrition Table).
Fledgling companies, many backed by private equity, are rushing to help shale drillers deal with one of their trickiest problems: what to do with the vast volumes of wastewater that are a byproduct of fracking wells.
When producers blast a mix of water, sand and chemicals to release oil and gas from rock formations miles underground, they not only unlock oil and gas, but also massive quantities of briny water long buried beneath the surface. Drillers in the Permian Basin in New Mexico and Texas currently generate more than 1,000 Olympic-size swimming pools full of this murky, salty water every day. Handling it amounts to up to 25% of a well’s lease operating expense, according to analysts.
Investors have expressed interest in this corner of the U.S. shale industry as oil production in the Permian soars to record levels. Analysts said the region could produce more than five million barrels of oil a day by 2023, more than the current daily production of Iran.
Sensing a chance for a big return, private-equity firms have invested more than $500 million into wastewater-disposal companies such as Solaris Water Midstream LLC, WaterBridge Resources LLC, Goodnight Midstream LLC and Oilfield Water Logistics LLC. There are roughly a dozen of these water-focused companies that analysts said could each be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
These companies are building pipelines to transport the wastewater and dispose of it deep underground, hoping to displace the trucks that currently do the job. Some companies have a longer-term plan: recycling the wastewater to sell it back to drillers to reuse. Most of the companies are currently private;….
Apache Corp. , one of the largest producers in the Permian, wants to reuse more water to reduce the millions of barrels it must dispose of and limit the freshwater it purchases for fracking, according to a company presentation earlier this year. Apache recycled more than 22 million barrels of water from 2013 to 2016 in just one subsection of the Permian.
Excerpts from The Next Big Bet in Fracking: Water, WSJ, Aug. 12, 2018
At the height of activity in 1980, U.S. companies produced nearly 44 million pounds of uranium concentrate and provided most of the supplies purchased by nuclear power plants. In 2017, American miners produced 2.4 million pounds and supplied just 7 percent of the uranium bought by domestic plants. The industry, which once supported nearly 22,000 jobs, now employs just a few hundred people each year…
In July 2018, the U.S. Commerce Department opened an investigation to determine whether the nation’s growing dependence on foreign uranium supplies poses a risk to national security….The two miners that petitioned Commerce to conduct the review, Energy Fuels and UR-Energy, want the United States to take steps to ensure U.S. producers control 25 percent of the market. They say they can’t compete with subsidized supplies from places like Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
To be sure, nearly half of the uranium used in the United States comes from allies like Canada and Australia. From the moment they lost trade protections, U.S. miners had trouble competing with these foreign supplies.
“It’s been government-sponsored, government-subsidized just since the beginning. Trying to sort that out and find where there’s a free market in uranium — I find that very questionable.”-Luke Danielson, Sustainable Development Strategies Group president
The U.S. uranium mining industry is relatively young. It went through a brief golden age between about 1955 and 1980, beginning when the United States offered generous incentives to shore up its stockpiles of the nuclear weapons fuel during the Cold War….By the 1960s, the program had packed U.S. storehouses so full of uranium stockpiles that the government stopped paying the incentives. However, it left in place rules barring the use of foreign uranium until 1975, when it began to allow a growing percentage of overseas supplies into the market. That opened the door to high-quality, low-cost supplies from Canada and Australia. By 1987, the United States was importing nearly 15 million pounds of uranium, and domestic output fell by about a third to roughly 13 million pounds.
While competition weighed on U.S. uranium production, the excitement around nuclear energy in the 1970s kept mines busy. However, the American love affair with atomic power proved short-lived. The 1979 meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania sparked fierce backlash against nuclear energy. Seven years later, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster turned a Ukrainian city into a ghost town…
By the early 2000s, U.S. uranium production was at its lowest in a half century. Around that time, the former Soviet state Kazakhstan was ramping up uranium mining. In just a few short years, it would become the world’s top uranium producer and the second biggest supplier to the United States.
The Central Asian nation accomplished that feat in large part by exploiting a process called “in situ leaching” (ISL) or in situ recovery (ISR)*** increasingly being used to extract uranium. Along with countries like Niger, Mali and Mongolia, Kazakhstan has an advantage: lax regulations that allow it to process uranium cheaply from in situ leaching, which involves pumping chemicals into uranium reserves and carries serious risks to the environment if it’s not carried out responsibly…
And then in 2011, the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan created a backlash unlike anything seen since Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. In the aftermath, Japan shut down all of its nuclear reactors, and Germany decided to phase out nuclear energy by 2022. The U.S. nuclear renaissance has also fizzled as flagship projects have turned into costly boondoggles. The venerable Westinghouse Electric Company filed for bankruptcy last year under the weight of billions of dollars in losses tied to its troubled nuclear power plant projects in Georgia and South Carolina. “There’s such a glut of inventory in the market that it’s just not profitable for some of the mines to produce, so the price has just really plummeted as a result of that,” said Sean Davis, a research analyst at IHS Markit who tracks the chemicals used in uranium mining.
Since their peak in 2007, uranium prices have crashed from nearly $140 per pound to $20-$25.
Excerpts from Nuclear wasteland: The explosive boom and long, painful bust of American uranium mining, CNBC, Aug. 4, 2018
High levels of a radioactive material and other contaminants have been found in water from a West Australian fracking site* but operators say it could be diluted and fed to beef cattle. The revelations illustrate the potential risks associated with the contentious gas extraction process known as fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, as the Turnbull government pressures states to ease restrictions on the industry and develop their gas reserves.
The findings were contained in a report by oil and gas company Buru Energy that has not been made public. It shows the company also plans to reinject wastewater underground – a practice that has brought on seismic events when used in the United States.
Buru Energy has been exploring the potentially vast “tight gas” resources of the Kimberly region’s Canning Basin. The work was suspended when the WA government last year introduced a fracking moratorium, subject to the findings of a scientific inquiry.
In a submission to the inquiry obtained by the Lock the Gate Alliance, Buru Energy said a “relatively high concentration” of Radium-228…The samples exceeded drinking water guidelines for radionuclides. However Buru Energy said samples collected from retention ponds were below guideline levels and the water posed “no risk to humans or animals”. Water monitoring also detected elevated levels of the chemical elements barium, boron and chloride….Buru Energy said while the water was not suitable for human consumption, the “reuse of flowback water for beef cattle may also be considered”. The water did not meet stockwater guidelines but this could be addressed “through dilution with bore water”.
The company’s development in the Yulleroo area of the basin could lead to 80 wells operating over 20 years….The company insists its fracking fluids are non-toxic and to illustrate its safety, executive chairman Eric Streitberg drank the fluid at the company’s 2016 annual general meeting.
Excerpt from Nicole Hasham Radioactive water reignites concerns over fracking for gas, Sydney Morning Herald, June 24, 2018
*Fracking, which involves injecting water mixed with chemicals and sand deep underground in order to fracture rock and release oil and gas, generates large amounts of wastewater. … In some cases, improper handling of this waste water has resulted in the release of radioactive fracking waste that has contaminated streams and rivers, Science Magazine, Apr 9, 2015
Globally, one-third of protected land is under intense pressure from road building, grazing, urbanization, and other human activities, according to a new study in the 18 May 2018 issue of Science…Nations around the world have committed to preserving biodiversity under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), through protected status designations ranging from nature reserves with strict controls on human impact to regions where people can extract natural resources in a sustainable way. This study suggests that many of these nations are failing to meet their conservation goals.
James Watson, a researcher at the Wildlife Conservation Society and an author of the study, noted that 111 nations currently claim they have meet their obligations under the CBD based on the extent of their protected areas. “But if you only counted the land in protected areas that are not degraded, which play a role in conserving biodiversity, 77 of these nations don’t meet the bar. And it’s a low bar.”
Watson and a team of researchers decided to take advantage of a recently released human footprint map to look at the degradation of protected areas. “The results are quite staggering,” said Watson. “We found that 2.3 million square miles — twice the size of Alaska — was impacted by road building, grazing, logging, roads and urbanization. That is 32.8% of all protected land — the land set aside by nations for the purpose of biodiversity conservation — that] is highly degraded.” Regions that were found to be particularly burdened by human activity include western Europe and southern Asia.
In terms of protected land that is free of any measurable human pressure, 42% could be classified as such; however, many of these areas are within remote regions of high-latitude nations, such as Russia and Canada.
Some conservation efforts have been fruitful, though. “We did see glimmers of hope,” said Watson…. (e.g., the Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia, and Niassa Reserve in Mozambique)
Protected areas designated after 1993 have a lower level of intense human pressure within their borders than those previously designated, the authors found. They suggest this may indicate that more recently designated areas were targeted as protected spaces because they were recognized as being under low human pressure.
Exceprts from Michelle Hampson, One-Third of World’s Protected Areas under Intense Human Pressure, American Association for the Advancement of Scicence, May 16, 2018
May 2018: The environmental damage around the site of two Royal Dutch Shell oil spills in Nigeria a decade ago has worsened significantly after years of delay to cleanup efforts, according to a report that the oil giant has been accused of trying to shield from public view. The spills from a ruptured Shell pipeline spewed thousands of barrels of oil over parts of the Bodo fishing community in the crude-rich Niger Delta. Although the company in 2015 reached an out-of-court settlement with the local community, admitting to liability and agreeing to pay £55 million, or around $80 million at the time, in compensation, controversy around the case has remained.
A United Nations body, in a 2011 report, found extensive environmental damage around Bodo. Four years later, an assessment to prepare the cleanup found soil contamination had worsened while cleanup efforts languished and illegal refining and oil theft added to pollution in the area, according to an academic paper published last month. That has left the community facing potentially toxic pollution and “catastrophic” damage to the environment, the paper said. The 2015 analysis was commissioned by the Bodo Mediation Initiative, a consortium established to oversee the cleanup in the area. Shell is a member of the group along with local stakeholders.
At least one of the authors urged the findings to be widely distributed because they pointed to significant health risks to the local community. Kay Holtzmann, the cleanup project’s former director, said in a letter reviewed by the Journal that Shell had denied him permission to publish the study’s results in a scientific journal.
But the academic paper* said the site survey contained new facts. The average surface soil contamination in Bodo had tripled since the original U.N. probe,the paper said. Out of 32 samples taken from the top two inches of soil in the area around Bodo, only one was within Nigeria’s legally acceptable limit for oil contamination, the paper added.
Excerpts from Pollution Worsens Around Shell Oil Spills in Nigeria, Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2018.
Most of the drinking water consumed in Beijing has travelled 1,432km (895 miles), roughly the distance from New York to Orlando, Florida. Its journey begins in a remote and hilly part of central China at the Danjiangkou reservoir, on the bottom of which lies the drowned city of Junzhou. The water gushes north by canal and pipeline, crosses the Yellow river by burrowing under it, and arrives, 15 days later, in the water-treatment plants of Beijing. Two-thirds of the city’s tap water and a third of its total supply now comes from Danjiangkou.
This winter and spring, the reservoir was the capital’s lifeline. No rain or snow fell in Beijing between October 23rd 2017 and March 17th 2018—by far the longest drought on record. Yet the city suffered no supply disruptions, unlike Shanxi province to the west, where local governments rationed water. The central government is exultant, since the project which irrigates Beijing was built at vast cost and against some opposition.
The South-to-North Water Diversion Project—to give the structure its proper name—is the most expensive infrastructure enterprise in the world. It is the largest transfer of water between river basins in history, and China’s main response to its worst environmental threat, which is (despite all the pollution) lack of water.
The route between Beijing and Danjiangkou, which lies on a tributary of the Yangzi, opened in 2014. An eastern route opened in 2013 using the ancient Grand Canal between Hangzhou and the capital. (Jaw-dropping hydrological achievements are a feature of Chinese history.) A third link is planned on the Tibetan plateau, but since that area is prone to earthquakes and landslides, it has been postponed indefinitely…
Downstream from Danjiangkou, pollution has proved intractable. By diverting water from the Yangzi, the project has made the river more sluggish. It has become less able to wash away contaminants and unable to sustain wetlands, which act as sponges and reduce flooding. To compensate for water taken from their rivers, local governments are also building dams wherever they can to divert it back again. Shaanxi province, for example, is damming the Han river to transfer water to its depleted river Wei….Worst of all, the project diverts not only water but money and attention from China’s real water problem: waste and pollution.
Excerpts from Water: Massive Diversion, Economist, Apr. 7, 2018
Charcoal is one of the biggest informal businesses in Africa. It is the fuel of choice for the continent’s fast-growing urban poor, who, in the absence of electricity or gas, use it to cook and heat water. According to the UN, Africa accounted for three-fifths of the world’s production in 2012—and this is the only region where the business is growing. It is, however, a slow-burning environmental disaster.
In Nyakweri forest, Kenya, the trees are ancient and rare. Samwel Naikada, a local activist, points at a blackened stump in a clearing cut by burners. It is perhaps 400 years old, he says. The effect of burning trees spreads far. During the dry season, the forest is a refuge for amorous elephants who come in from the plains nearby to breed. The trees store water, which is useful in such a parched region. It not only keeps the Mara river flowing—a draw for the tourists who provide most of the county government’s revenue. It also allows the Masai people to graze their cows and grow crops. “You cannot separate the Masai Mara and this forest,” says Mr Naikada….
Nyakweri is hardly the only forest at risk. The Mau forest, Kenya’s largest, which lies farther north in the Rift Valley, has also been hit by illegal logging. Protests against charcoal traders (!) broke out earlier this year, after rivers that usually flow throughout the dry season started to run dry. In late February a trader’s car was reportedly burned in Mwingi, in central Kenya, by a group of youngsters who demanded to see the trader’s permits. At the end of February 2018 the government announced an emergency 90-day ban on all logging, driving up retail prices of charcoal by 500%, to as much as 5,000 shillings a bag in some cities.
The problems caused by the charcoal trade have spread beyond Kenya. In southern Somalia, al-Shabab, a jihadist group, funds itself partly through the taxes it levies on the sale of charcoal (sometimes with the help of Kenyan soldiers, who take bribes for allowing the shipments out of a Somali port that Kenya controls). The logging also adds to desertification, which, in turn, causes conflict across the Sahel, an arid belt below the Sahara. It forces nomadic herders to range farther south with their animals, where they often clash with farmers over the most fertile land.
In the power vacuum of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, rampant charcoal logging has destroyed huge swathes of Virunga National Park. That threatens the rare gorillas which tourists currently pay as much as $400 a day to view, even as it fuels the conflict.
In theory, charcoal burning need not be so destructive. In Kenya the burners are meant to get a licence. To do so, they have to show they are replacing the trees they are cutting down and that they are using modern kilns that convert the trees efficiently into fuel. But, admits Clement Ngoriareng, an official at the Kenya Forest Service (KFS), the rules are laxly enforced. Some suspect that powerful politicians stymie efforts to police burners.
Excerpts from A Very Black Market: Illegal Charcoal, Economist, Mar. 31, 2018
The report, Freshwater biodiversity in the Lake Victoria Basin (2018), assesses the global extinction risk of 651 freshwater species, including fishes, molluscs, dragonflies, crabs, shrimps and aquatic plants native to East Africa’s Lake Victoria Basin, finding that 20% of these are threatened with extinction. Of the freshwater species assessed, 204 are endemic to the Lake Victoria Basin and three-quarters (76%) of these endemics are at risk of extinction.
The African Lungfish (Protopterus aethiopicus), for example, is declining in the Lake Victoria Basin largely due to overfishing, poor fishing practices and environmental degradation as wetlands are converted to agricultural land. The lungfish is considered a delicacy for some local communities and is an important local medicinal product, used to boost the immune system and treat alcoholism. The lungfish is also traded at market, making it important to the local economy.
Lake Victoria is the world’s second largest freshwater lake by surface area. Its catchment area includes parts of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda. Also referred to as ‘Darwin’s Dreampond’, Lake Victoria is known for its high levels of unique biodiversity. The Lake Victoria Basin harbours immense natural resources including fisheries, forests, wetlands and rangelands….
Pollution from industrial and agricultural sources, over-harvesting of resources and land clearance are among the primary threats to biodiversity in this region. Invasive species also present an important threat to native biodiversity in the basin, affecting 31% of all species and 73% of threatened species. The purple flowered Water Hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) was accidentally introduced to Lake Victoria from South America in the 1980s, and at its peak covered close to 10% of the lake surface in dense floating mats. These mats reduce the oxygen and nutrient availability in the water column, which negatively affects native biodiversity. Opportunities for harvesting and exploiting the Water Hyacinth, for example by using the species as fuel in bio-digesters for energy production, are under investigation.
Excerpts from Livelihoods at risk as freshwater species in Africa’s largest lake face extinction – IUCN Report, IUCN Report, Apr. 30, 2018
Mukono- Residents of Kitoba village in Mukono District have opposed plans by the Uganda Atomic Energy Council (AEC) to construct a nuclear and atomic waste site in the area. The residents fear the dump for non-functional atomic equipment, including X-rays and cancer machines, will compromise their safety. Already, the residents at Canaan Sites are suspicious of a container that has been standing on the 11.5 acres of land acquired by the AEC in 2011.
But AEC executive secretary Deogratias Luwalira told the residents that the Energy ministry acquired the land to implement a five-year master plan.
He told the residents at Kichwa Primary School in Mpoma during a community awareness meeting on that the Energy ministry acquired the land to build AEC headquarters, staff accommodation, laboratories, atomic/nuclear storage facility, and sports fields.
“The equipment to be kept here has no safety hazards. The store will have a safety case that will be operated in a safe manner,” Mr Luwalira said.
He said radioactive wastes are currently scattered in different parts of the country and needed to be secured in one central location…
Cesspools—holes in the ground where untreated human waste is deposited—have become a crisis in Hawaii, threatening the state’s drinking water, its coral reefs and the famous beaches that are the lifeblood of its tourist economy. Sewage from cesspools is seeping into some of Hawaii’s ocean waters, where it has been blamed for infections suffered by surfers and snorkelers. It is also entering the drinking water in part of the state, pushing nitrate levels close to the legal limit.
Hawaii has 88,000 cesspools across its eight major islands, more than any other state. Collectively, they deposit 53 million gallons of raw sewage into the ground every day, according to the state health department. More than 90% of the state’s drinking water comes from groundwater wells…
Replacing all of the state’s cesspools with alternate sewage systems would cost at least $1.75 billion, according to the health department…At one groundwater well, nitrate levels are already at 8.7 milligrams a liter; the legal limit is 10, and the Department of Health estimated that some parts of the aquifer are already over that limit. Environmentalists say they are worried about the potential effect of the water on infants, who can be killed by high levels on nitrates, which are chemicals found in fertilizer and sewage.
Many bathrooms in homes outside Honolulu still pump sewage into nearby holes in the ground. Yet, some residents resist plans to replace cesspools, worried about expense. In January 2018, Upcountry Maui residents overwhelmed a Department of Public Health meeting, complaining about potential costs.
Excerpt from Hawaii’s Big Headache: Cesspools, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 12, 2018
The Maritime Environment Protection Authority’s (MEPA) of Sri Lanka spent millions of rupees on coastal cleanups last year — a reflection of “spending public money for public waste,” as the MEPA’s General Manager and CEO, Dr. Terney Pradeep Kumara, puts it.
A large proportion of the problem is attributable to inland waste, he notes. “It is not merely what is dumped directly on the beaches, but all that flows through canals and rivers,” he says, pointing out that other triggers, including the fisheries and the tourism sector, are only secondary to inland waste which ends up on the coast. Added to the burden is the garbage which flows from India, Indonesia and Thailand, he says. The MEPA’s role in controlling pollution covers Sri Lanka’s 1640 km coastal belt and extends up to 200 nautical miles to the deep sea, the area, which, according to Dr. Pradeep Kumara, is eight times the size of Sri Lanka’s land area.
The garbage dumped in the coastal vegetation is contributing to the dengue problem…especially the fishing craft, both in use and abandoned, in which water is stagnated.” Mitigating inland pollution is seen by MEPA authorities as the first step in realising cleaner beaches. They moot a site-specific garbage disposal system, as opposed to a ‘blanket system’. “What works for Colombo will not work for other areas,” says Dr. Pradeep Kumara.
Excerpt Sea of trash: Inland and overseas garbage washes up on Lanka’s beaches, Sunday Times (Sri Lanka), Feb. 11, 2018
The UN Environment and WHO have agreed a new, wide-ranging collaboration to accelerate action to curb environmental health risks that cause an estimated 12.6 million deaths a year.
On January 10, 2018 in Nairobi, Mr Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment, and Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, signed an agreement to step up joint actions to combat air pollution, climate change and antimicrobial resistance, as well as improve coordination on waste and chemicals management, water quality, and food and nutrition issues. The collaboration also includes joint management of the BreatheLife advocacy campaign to reduce air pollution for multiple climate, environment and health benefits
“Our health is directly related to the health of the environment we live in. Together, air, water and chemical hazards kill more than 12.6 million people a year. This must not continue,” said WHO’s Tedros. He added: “Most of these deaths occur in developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America where environmental pollution takes its biggest health toll.”
Excerpts from, UN Environment and WHO agree to major collaboration on environmental health risks, Press Release, Jan. 10, 2017
The Dead Sea is dying. Half a century ago its hyper-salty, super-pungent waters stretched 80km from north to south. That has shrunk to just 48km at its longest point. The water level is falling by more than a meter per year. All but a trickle from its source, the Jordan River, is now used up before it reaches the sea. “It will never disappear, because it has underground supplies, but it will be like a small pond in a very big hole,” says Munqeth Mehyar of EcoPeace, an NGO.
Until the summer of 2017 Israel and Jordan, which share the sea, were trying to slow the decline. The “Red-Dead project”, as it is called, would desalinate seawater at the Jordanian port of Aqaba and pump 200m cubic metres of leftover brine into the Dead Sea each year. That would not be enough to stabilise the sea, which needs at least 800m cubic metres to stay at current levels. Still, it would help—and the project has a much more important benefit.
The World Bank defines water scarcity as less than 1,000 cubic metres per person annually. Jordan can provide less than 15% of that. The Aqaba plant would send fresh water to southern towns in both Jordan and Israel. In return for its share, Israel agreed to pump an equal amount to parched northern Jordan, where most of the population lives.
But the project was now on hold due a dispute between Jordan and Israel. On July 23rd, 2017 a Jordanian teenager delivering furniture to the Israeli embassy stabbed a security guard. The guard opened fire, killing both his assailant and an innocent bystander….
Jordan is already one of the world’s most arid countries. Climate change will make matters worse. By the end of the century, say scientists from Stanford University, Jordan could be 4°C hotter, with about a third less rain. It needs to rationalise water consumption. And Israel, which wants a stable neighbour to its east, has an interest in getting water projects back on track.
Excerpts from Jordan’s Water Crisis: Diplomatic Drought: Economist, Dec. 2, 2017
A water crisis rooted in wasteful irrigation, climate change and dam-building is imperiling [the wetlands of Iraq] again.
A weakened flow into the Tigris and Euphrates rivers means that salt water from the Persian Gulf can now seep upstream into the marshes. This, coupled with farming run-off that has boosted salinity,threatens wetland wildlife, vegetation and the local Marsh Arabs who have depended on them for millennia. The problem is partly home-made. Iraq’s irrigation methods are often wasteful, and the equipment tends to be rickety. Many farmers rely on thirsty crops such as rice. Politicians have in the past secured extra water for their upstream districts at the marshes’ expense. Reform-minded technocrats are forced to contend with deep-rooted corruption, the distracting and costly fight against the Islamic State (IS) group, and low oil prices, all of which have drained state coffers.
But other problems lie beyond Iraq’s control. For decades dams built in Syria, Turkey and Iran have swallowed up the waters of the Tigris, Euphrates and other rivers feeding the marshes. New dams due to open in Turkey, including the 1,200-megawatt Ilisu Dam, could further restrict the flow of the Tigris.
Talks over these dams have been inconclusive, partly because the Syrian and Iraqi states barely function and partly because IS has controlled swathes of the Euphrates. Turkey may be tempted to exploit its upstream position.
Climate change is taking its toll, too. Last summer temperatures of about 54°C were recorded in southern Iraq, among the hottest ever.
If only Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey would share their waters as amicably as the Danube countries do… Dam levels should be calibrated during wet and dry years to ensure steadier flows. Iraqi officials might also ponder novel solutions, he says, such as renting storage at the Ilisu Dam for use when needed. Yet stronger countries have exploited their advantages rather than seek compromise
Excerpts from Iraq’s Wetlands: Drying Up Again, Economist, Sept. 16, 2017
Data published in 2013 suggested that it was not safe for people to submerge themselves in 60% of New Zealand’s waterways. “We used to swim in these rivers,” says Sam Mahon, the artist. “Now they’ve turned to crap… [T]he real villains behind New Zealand’s deteriorating water quality are still at large…intensive dairy farms…
The first concern is bovine urine, which is rich in nitrogen. Nitrogen can cause toxic algae to grow when it leaches into water. Nitrogen fertiliser, used to increase fodder yields so that more cows can be raised on less land, exacerbates the problem….
At many of the sites where the government tests the groundwater it contains too much nitrate to be safe to drink—a particular problem in New Zealand, since water in much of the country has long been considered clean enough that it is used as drinking water with only minimal treatment. In Canterbury, one of the most polluted areas, expectant mothers are told to test tap water to avoid “blue baby syndrome”, a potentially fatal ailment thought to be caused by nitrates. The poisonous blooms have killed dogs.
An even greater concern for human health comes from cow dung, which contains nasty bacteria such as E.coli….And then there is the damage to native flora and fauna. The algal blooms suck the oxygen from rivers. Sediment washed from farmland can also choke the life out of streams. Almost three-quarters of native species of freshwater fish are under threat.
…One recent tally suggested that just 2,000 of the thirstiest dairies suck up as much water as 60m people would—equivalent to the population of London, New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro combined. …
Dairies are trying to clean up their act. Farmers have fenced off thousands of kilometres of rivers to prevent livestock from wading in. Some have planted trees along waterways to curb erosion; others remove animals from muddy fields during winter. Some parts of the country are using more sophisticated techniques: around Lake Taupo, the country’s biggest lake, farmers can buy and sell nitrogen allowances in a cap-and-trade scheme. A technique called “precision irrigation” may curb both water consumption and the leaching of nitrogen.
Earlier this year the National Party launched a plan to make 90% of rivers “swimmable” by 2040. Yet it ignored several recommendations of a forum of scientists and agrarians established to thrash out water policy….Environmentalists argue that the national dairy herd should be cut to prevent further damage…And pollutants moving through groundwater can take decades to emerge in lakes. The worst may still be to come.
Excerpts from New Zealand’s Water, Economist, Nov. 18, 2017
Negligence by the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. caused the triple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a court ruled on October 10, 2017 in the biggest class-action suit related to the March 2011 accident.
The Fukushima District Court ordered the government and Tepco to pay a total of Yen 498 million ($4.4 million) plus delinquency charges to 2,907 people who fled the radiation that was released into the air and water after a tsunami flooded the power plant, knocking out the power to the vital cooling system. It was the second time a court found the government responsible for failing to prepare adequately for the likelihood of a large tsunami wave hitting the plant.
If Japan’s government had ordered Tepco to make sure the plant was ready to withstand a tsunami wave of 15.7 meters (51.5 feet), Tepco would have made sure critical instruments were waterproof, Tuesday’s ruling said.”The accident, triggered by total loss of power, could have been avoided, ” Judge Hideki Kanazawa said.
The compensation represents a small fraction of the damages the residents had sought. They also wanted compensation for every month that radiation levels stay above normal, but the court rejected that claim. Still, with some 30 class-action lawsuits so far brought by more than 10,000 affected residents. The October 11, 2017 ruling is a sign additional compensation costs could weigh on both the government and Tepco for years to come. Tepco has so far paid more than Yen7.6 trillion ($67 billion) in compensation to residents affected by the accident, and has been struggling to clean up the reactors — a daunting technological task that could take decades.
As of September 2017, nearly 55,000 Fukushima residents are registered as evacuees, meaning they can’t return home and haven’t settled permanently elsewhere.
The plaintiffs argued the government and Tepco failed to give adequate attention to studies that said a major tsunami could occur in the area of the plant. One 2002 study by the government’s Earthquake Research Promotion Unit said there was a 20% chance of a magnitude 8 tsunami-triggering earthquake in the area off Fukushima within 30 years. Another study by Tepco’s senior safety engineer in 2007 found there was about a 10% chance that a tsunami could breach Fukushima Daiichi’s defenses within 50 years.
The defendants said the scientific basis for such predictions was unclear, and even if the calculations were correct, the chance was too low to require immediate steps in response. The government said it wasn’t until after the accident that it gained the ability to force Tepco to take anti-flooding measures. Both argued the compensation already being paid to displaced people was adequate.
On March 11, 2011, a tsunami triggered by an earthquake flooded the Fukushima Daiichi plant, knocking out auxiliary power sources that were supposed to keep the reactors’ cooling systems running. Three reactors melted down.
Excerpts from Redress Ordered In Fukushima Case, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 11, 2017
The Ganges, arguably the lifeline of India, has its origin in the Himalayas. Once it crosses Gangotri, it flows through Haridwar collecting industrial, agricultural and human waste on its way. Before it culminates in the Bay of Bengal, it passes through various towns and villages lacking sanitation. The Government of India is rolling up its sleeves to clean the 2525 KM long-Ganga and facilitate its flow as it is the source of water for more than 40 per cent of India’s population.
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is non-profit engineering organisation founded 145 years ago, the IET is one of the world’s leading professional societies for the engineering and technology community. The IET has more than 167,000 members across 150 countries. In India, the IET has over 13,000 members, eight Local Networks and focuses on Energy, Transport, Information & Communications, IoT and Education sectors.
In March 2017, a panel formed by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) on IoT (Internet of Things) were invited to consult the Government of India’s National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) to discuss the ways to clean the river. According to IET, the leaders discussed and tried to identify ways to improve the water flow in Ganga, better treatment of pollutants via sewage and effluent treatment plants, need for controlling unregulated sewage, open defecation, and handling chemical runoff from agricultural lands (fertilisers and pesticides).
The IoT technology could be used in providing real-time information of pollution status and enabling the industries and societies to find alternate means of disposal of waste. Other technologies being used to clean up the river Unmanned robotic water surface vehicle with drones: The vehicle can be programmed to collect all the pollutant waste through its arms and offload the same. It works 24X7 and under all weather conditions. More, it can actually submerge to clean up pollutants on even the riverbed. A set of drones is used with it to collect videos of the pollutants.
Gumps- Detectors for pipeline leaks: The Guided Ultrasonic Monitoring of Pipe Systems (GUMPS) can detect oil leakages from oil pipelines that are laid across the river bed of the Ganga River. They continuously monitor pipelines and alert any impending leaks, thus preventing loss of marine life and pollution due to oil leakages.
Utah Great Salt Lake has shrunk to a depth of about 14 feet—nearly half its former average since it was settled by the Mormons 170 years ago. Under a controversial engineering plan, the lake would recede even further….State engineers want to siphon off some of the river water that flows into the lake and use it for the Salt Lake City area’s booming population. Proponents say the plan, which calls for lapping up a fifth of Bear River’s current unused flow, is essential for meeting the region’s needs.
But critics note that the diversion would cause the lake to drop by almost a foot, according to state estimates, eventually exposing 30 square miles of lake bed and potentially worsening the dust storms that regularly blanket the region and ruining a fragile wetlands habitat.
The debate echoes concerns heard in many other arid parts of the world. Salt lake ecology is especially delicate and requires a certain amount of fresh water to maintain a saline balance. Brine shrimp, for instance, could die off if the water becomes too salty.
In the Middle East, diversion of the Jordan and other rivers that feed the Dead Sea has shriveled the famous body of saltwater and its once robust tourism. The Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan has shrunk to about 10% of its original size after diversions.
Critics, including environmental groups and affected businesses, say that under the new diversion plan lake-dependent businesses such as brine shrimp fishing would suffer, as would farmers whose land could be inundated upstream if existing dams are raised to retain more water. In all, the lake accounts for an estimated $1.3 billion in annual economic output, according to Utah State University, much of it from the shrimping industry, as well as mineral extraction and tourism.
The plan would also destroy wetlands along the lake shoreline that provide food and habitat for an estimated eight million birds, said Zach Frankel, executive director of Utah Rivers Council, an environmental group opposed to the project.
But proponents say the diversion of up to 72 billion gallons of water—enough to meet the needs of a city of one million for a year—is needed to forestall anticipated shortages for one of the fastest-growing regions in the country….“If Utah continues to grow, it’s not a matter of if but when we are going to need more water,” said state Sen. Stuart Adams, the Republican majority whip, who sponsored a bill to begin funding the estimated $1.5 billion project.
Excerpt from Utah Searches for Water Solution, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 14, 2017
Since Ethiopia announced its plan to build the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, it has inspired threats of sabotage from Egypt, which sits downstream and relies on the Nile for electricity, farming and drinking water. Egypt claims that it is entitled to a certain proportion of the Nile’s water based on colonial-era treaties….
By 2050 around a billion people will live in the countries through which the Nile and its tributaries flow. That alone will put enormous stress on the water supply. But according to a study by Mohamed Siam and Elfatih Eltahir of MIT, potential changes to the river’s flow, resulting from climate change, may add to the strain. Messrs Siam and Eltahir conclude that on current trends the annual flow could increase, on average, by up to 15%. That may seem like a good thing, but it could also grow more variable, by 50%. In other words, there would be more (and worse) floods and droughts.
There is, of course, uncertainty in the projections, not least because differing global climate models give different numbers. But the idea that the flow of the Nile is likely to become more variable is lent credibility, the authors argue, by the fact that trends over decades seem to agree with them, and by consideration of the effects of El Niños.
More storage capacity will be needed to smooth out the Nile’s flow. But unlike Egypt’s large Aswan Dam, which was built with storage in mind, the new Ethiopian one is designed for electricity production. Once water starts gushing through its turbines, it is expected to produce over 6,000 megawatts of power. It is unclear, though, if the structure has the necessary flexibility to meet downstream demands in periods of prolonged drought.
The talks between the three countries, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt, seem to be glossing over the potential effects of climate change. “Nowhere in the world are two such large dams on the same river operated without close co-ordination,” says another study from MIT. But so far co-operation is in short supply. The latest round of talks has been postponed. Even the methodology of impact studies is cause for wrangling.
Excerpts from: Climate Change and the Nile: Flood and Famine, Economist, Aug. 5, 2017
Deep beneath the desert east of Los Angeles is a Southern California treasure: a massive basin filled with fresh water.
The aquifer has spurred development of the popular resort towns in the Coachella Valley, such as Palm Springs, Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage. But it also lies underneath the reservation of a small Native American tribe that owns golf courses and casinos in the area.
The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians say the drinking water is partly theirs, and wants a stake in how it is used by public utilities. A yearslong legal battle over the issue could end up being taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court this fall. The high court’s action could affect groundwater rights across the arid West, where utilities now deliver the water to tribes as another customer, along with farmers, cities and businesses.
The 480-member tribe contends the local water agencies—the Desert Water Agency and Coachella Valley Water District—have mismanaged the groundwater by allowing too much to be pumped out and by replenishing the source with untreated water from the Colorado River that they consider subpar. The water agencies, however, say the tribe appears to be making a water grab, potentially setting a dangerous precedent where control of a municipal resource is partially ceded from a public utility.
They also say the tribe, which has built two casino resorts and two 18-hole championship-caliber golf courses on its 31,500 acres, has little experience in managing water, and could potentially sell some of it. “They’re in the money business,” said James Cioffi, board president of the Desert Water Agency. The tribe says its only interest is in preserving the quality of the water.
Agua Caliente in 2013 took its case to federal court, winning in the first round on the issue of whether it has federal reserved rights to groundwater. That ruling was upheld in March by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The water agencies appealed to the Supreme Court, which is expected to decide whether to hear the case this fall….If it lets the lower court rulings stand, more tribes could seek groundwater rights—triggering more litigation….Other tribes have already filed friend-of-the-court briefs on behalf of Agua Caliente’s litigation, including the Spokane in Washington and Paiutes in Nevada.
Tribal rights over rivers and other surface water supplies are well established in the West, but less so when it comes to groundwater—one of the most important drinking water sources in many desert areas.
Excertp from In Palm Springs, a Fight Over Who Controls the Drinking Water, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 2, 2017
Nuclear specialists say Andreyeva Bay contains the largest reserves of spent nuclear fuel in the world, in fragile conditions that have disturbed the international community for years During the Cold War period, nuclear submarines were refuelled at sea, and the spent nuclear fuel was then shipped to Andreyeva Bay, where it was placed in a special storage facility to cool off before being transported to a reprocessing plant at Mayak, in the Urals. But in the early 1980s, leaks sprung up in the storage system, causing high levels of radioactive contamination.
The facility at Andreyeva Bay was one of many top-secret installations in the Soviet Arctic. This is partly because Russia has a working nuclear submarine base on the other side of the bay at Zaozyorsk….[W]estern nations who see Moscow as a military threat are helping to fund the clean-up of the mess the Soviet military left behind. 13 countries have provided €165m in funding since 2003 for nuclear decommissioning in Russia’s north-west. There have also been a number of bilateral projects, with Britain, Norway and other countries funding a long project to help clean up Andreyeva Bay.
The Norwegian foreign minister….said the funding for the projectd was committed nearly two decades ago, when Russia was in no economic state to deal with the problems alone. He also pointed out that the Andreyeva Bay facility is only about 40 miles from the Norwegian border, making the decommissioning issue one in which Norway has long taken a strong interest. “Nuclear challenges recognise no borders, and it is in our common interest to deal with nuclear waste now rather leaving the problems to future generations,” said the Norwegian foreign minister…
A suite of new buildings has been constructed around the area where the spent nuclear fuel caskets are kept, replacing the decaying structures that stood there previously. Work to load canisters into the giant protective casks can now be done using specially commissioned machinery.
The Rossita, a ship constructed for the task, will take the huge fuel casks to Murmansk, where they will be put on fortified trains which will proceed under armed guard on the long journey from the Arctic to the Mayak reprocessing site. At the Mayak facility, the spent fuel will be recycled and the Russians say they will turn it into fuel to be used in civilian nuclear reactors.
Specialists at the plant estimate it could take 10 years to remove all the fuel. About half of the caskets have some kind of surface damage to their containers and will be dealt with after the non-problematic batches have been removed.
Excerpts from Russia begins cleaning up the Soviets’ top-secret nuclear waste dump, Guardian, July 2, 2017
While India, Pakistan and China have all developed massive hydropower plants along the Himalayan mountains, Nepal’s civil war and political instability scared off investment for decades. Now, thanks to an inclusive peace process that allowed the country’s main rebel leader to be elected prime minister twice, the focus is shifting to Nepal. Hydropower projects worth billions of dollars are in progress, with geologists and investors scouring the landscape for more.
Government surveys show Nepal’s abundant water resources can feasibly yield hydropower equal to more than 40% of U.S. output, a 40-fold increase from today. Officials project almost a third more hydropower capacity will come online this year. More than 100 projects under construction—over 40 since last year—and others in development will yield at least a tenfold increase in the next decade to 10 gigawatts of power, they say.
Nepal is ramping up its development of hydroelectric power plants in the Himalayas, but building in the region can be risky work. Photo: Brian Sokol for The Wall Street Journal “There’s such an energy shortage that any project you build will find a market,” said Allard Nooy, CEO of InfraCo Asia, a development body funded by the U.K., Swiss and Australian governments that is financing one hydro project and seeking to develop two more.
Still, power companies don’t face an easy ride. Among the hurdles are natural ones: earthquakes, landslides and inland tsunamis from glacial lakes as warmer temperatures prompt ice melt. Two years ago a series of massive quakes killed 9,000 people and shattered the country.
Opposition from environmental groups is another difficulty, especially for a new generation of dam projects. In the past, the World Bank and Japan’s Asian Development Bank have withdrawn support for projects amid opposition from environmental groups that say large dams can damage natural habitats like wetlands, threaten migratory fish stocks, and displace traditional farming communities.
Activists are concerned over the effects hydropower projects have on the environment and communities. Here are some of their top worries.
Displacement Dams flood valleys and in many cases require communities to abandon their land. A number of dam projects under consideration in Nepal would require whole villages to relocate. Earthquakes A growing body of research suggests large dams can trigger quakes by adding pressure to areas near fault lines, a phenomenon known as “reservoir-induced seismicity.” Wildlife Projects can disrupt the natural migration of fish and other river life. Environmentalists in Nepal are particularly concerned about the country’s small population of endangered Ganges River Dolphins. Seasonal River-based hydropower projects, which are popular in Nepal, only generate electricity when water is flowing, making them less effective in the dry season. Dams can generate power in any season.
The greater stability has boosted momentum for rising investment in the Himalayas—a region dominated by Nepal, India and Bhutan that is considered the final development frontier in South Asia. Hydro energy projects are the biggest focus. “The only resource we have, like the Arabian countries have oil, is water,” said Chhabi Gaire, project manager at the Rasuwagadhi Hydroelectric Project, a 1f11-megawatt plant under construction near China’s border.
Funding for projects is increasingly coming from Nepalese working abroad, says the Nepal Electricity Authority. Their remittances reached $6.7 billion in 2015, according to the World Bank, more than even Thai and South Korean workers abroad sent to their own countries. Meanwhile, India’s cabinet approved $850 million in February to build a plant on Nepal’s Arun River that would export most of its energy to India. A month earlier, the Chinese-state owned China Three Gorges Company agreed to a joint venture with Nepal’s government to build a $1.6 billion hydropower plant on Nepal’s Seti River, also mainly for electricity export to India…
Workers on Nepal’s hydropower projects face sometimes deadly risks in the steep mountain valleys of the Himalayas such as landslides, falling boulders and flash floods… [T] he 456-megawatt Upper Tamakoshi project, funded by a group of Nepal’s major banks and pension funds, is now under construction and set to open in mid-2018 with a reservoir to enable energy generation in the dry season. It’s is also a risky project.
To the East the dangerous glacial lake Tsho Rolpa threatens to burst its banks. To the West, the Gongar river routinely spits boulders the size of two-story buildings over the valley wall. A bridge the developers built over the Gongar was swept away in a flash flood during monsoon season. Landslides triggered by quakes swept away swaths of the access road. To keep working, project developers built a steel truss bridge and drilled a new road tunnel through a collapsed valley wall. Moreover, the project is built on such volatile terrain that the turbines and delicate transmission equipment were buried 460 feet beneath the surface.
Excerpts from In the Himalayas, a New Power Rises: Water, Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2017
The spring of 2017 50 million waterbirds will move from their winter homes in South-East Asia, Australia and New Zealand to their breeding grounds in Russia, Mongolia, northern China, the Korean peninsula, Japan and even Alaska. They rely on intertidal flats teeming with nourishing molluscs, worms and crustaceans, as well as plants, to supply the food that fuels their journeys. Of the eight big flyways, the East Asian-Australasian is also the one displaying the sharpest decline in the number of birds. Of its 155-odd waterbird species, at least 24 are now globally threatened. They include the diminutive spoon-billed sandpiper, a wader whose numbers are down to fewer than 200 pairs.
Transiting one of the world’s most dynamic industrial regions is clearly taking a toll. Asia’s migratory waterbirds face immense pressures, from hunting, pollution, ingested plastic and competition from aquaculture. But the biggest disaster is the destruction of coastal way-stations. Since 1950 China has lost over half its coastal wetlands to “reclamation”. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Yellow Sea, into which the Yellow River flows, has lost over 35% of intertidal habitat since the early 1980s. An especially destructive moment was the run-up to the Beijing Olympics of 2008, for which a lot of heavy industry was moved from the capital to the coast.
Xianji Wen, who works for the WWF, describes the Yellow Sea as a “bottleneck” for the whole flyway: so many waders pass through it that the loss of habitat there is particularly consequential. Four-fifths of Asia’s red knots, having wintered in Australasia, stop on their way north at one spot, Luannan, east of Beijing. The bar-tailed godwit flies non-stop from New Zealand to the Yellow Sea—over 6,000km. After recovering there, the species flies non-stop again to its breeding grounds in the extreme north of Russia. Populations of both species have crashed by over a third, probably because of coastal development…..
There is a silver lining, however. The vast middle class created by the region’s breakneck growth is becoming interested in conservation…In China several hundred birdwatchers gather for the spring migration by the Yellow Sea near the North Korean border. And Mr Wen says that local governments in China increasingly take pride in the acclaim they win for conservation schemes—several work with the WWF. In 2016 China and New Zealand even signed an agreement—an “air bridge” between the two countries—to protect the habitat of the bar-tailed godwits, whose annual departure, Maori mythology holds, is for the homeland of the ancestors who first colonised New Zealand.
South Korea’s conservation movement is feeble. But the government of North Korea, by failing to develop the country, has inadvertently preserved a greater share of valuable waterbird habitats. It recently agreed to designate one as a protected site under the “Ramsar” international convention on wetlands….
Excerpt from Canaries in the Coal Fumes, Economist, Apr. 22, 2017
A potent blend of pride, economic nationalism and mounting concern over water security have the world’s two biggest cola brands in a bind in southern India. Shopkeepers in drought-hit Kerala state decided on March 15, 2017 to promote local brands over Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. beverages after counterparts in neighboring Tamil Nadu boycotted the multinational drinks. While retail groups claim the companies are siphoning off groundwater and selling products tainted with pesticides, academics and analysts say the soda giants have become scapegoats for a water crisis that’s become mired in politics and patriotism.
India is one of the most water-challenged nations, and fights over water have erupted between users periodically for decades. Failed monsoon rains over as many as the past three years in some states have parched rivers and dams, forcing farmers, manufacturers and municipal water suppliers to rely more on wells to meet their needs. Problem is, those too are drying up, and that’s hurting farmers, India’s economic mainstay.
“The root cause for the boycott isn’t the multinational companies, but the enduring fight between industrial users and farmers, especially in several drought-hit states,” said P.L. Beena, an associate professor with the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. On top of that, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to companies to “make in India” has given rise to a pro-India push — and, in some cases, an anti-foreigner backlash — that’s supporting local brands….
The latest action means drinks from Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, which together have a 96 percent hold on India’s $4.9 billion soda market, will be kept off the shelves of more than 1 million shops. Vendors would rather lose business than sell the products, said A. M. Vikrama Raja, president of a retailers’ association in Tamil Nadu with about 1.5 million members. The boycott started March 1, 2017 a day before the Madras High Court dismissed a petition seeking a ban on the American soda-makers drawing water from the local Thamirabarani river.
“Instead of foreign sodas, we will promote local beverages,” said T. Naseeruddin, president of a retailers’ group that says it has more than 700,000 retailers in Kerala, which is facing its worst drought in 115 years.
The group stopped short of joining the boycott in Tamil Nadu after a meeting Wednesday with Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, a spokesman said. Instead, retailers will pursue “sensitization against multinational products” via a state-level conference, and seek a policy response from the state government. India has at least 50 local drink brands, which are typically 20 percent cheaper than the global cola brands, brokerage Kotak Securities Ltd. said in a Feb. 23 report. Manpasand Beverages Ltd., based in Vadodara, Gujarat state’s cultural capital, is “aggressively expanding its reach in Tamil Nadu to take advantage of the ongoing cola ban,”….
Excerpts from PepsiCo, Coca-Cola Fight Patriotism in Parched Indian State, Bloomberg Business Week, Mar. 15, 2017
Nigeria’s military said on April 13, 2017 that it had destroyed 13 illegal refineries in the restive Niger Delta oil hub, in an operation in which two soldiers died in clashes with “sea robbers”. Military authorities say there are hundreds of illegal refineries in the region, which process stolen crude from oil company pipelines. The Nigerian government said last week that it plans to legalise illicit refineries as part of an attempt to bring peace to the production heartland of crude oil, but it is unclear when it will put the plan into action. Major Abubakar Abdullahi, a military spokesman, said troops “discovered and destroyed 13 illegal refineries” on April 12, 2017 while on patrol in the Iyalama Adama axis of Rivers state. The two soldiers were killed in the Ijawkiri general area, in Rivers state, he said.Makeshift refineries, usually hidden in oil-soaked clearings, support tens of thousands of people locally.
Nigeria’s navy chief has said that 181 illegal refineries were destroyed in 2016, 748 suspects were arrested, and crude oil and diesel worth 420 billion naira ($1.3 billion) was confiscated. The military shut down around 50 bush refineries in the first few weeks of 2017.
The new law that declares the Whanganui river, New Zealand’s third-longest, a legal person, in the sense that it can own property, incur debts and petition the courts, is not unprecedented. Te Urewera, an area of forested hills in the north-east that used to be a national park, became a person for legal purposes in 2014….
The law, which was approved on March 15th, 2017 stems from disputes over the Treaty of Waitangi, by which New Zealand’s indigenous Maori ceded sovereignty to British colonialists in 1840. The treaty was supposed to have protected Maori rights and property; it was observed mainly in the breach. In recent years the government has tried to negotiate settlements for breaches of the treaty with different Maori iwi, or tribes. For the Whanganui iwi, the idea of the river as a person is nothing new. The iwi professes a deep spiritual connection to the Whanganui: as a local proverb has it, “I am the river and the river is me.” The law acknowledges the river as a “living whole”, rather than trying to carve it up, putting to rest an ownership dispute that has dragged on for 140 years. When it was passed, members of the iwi in the gallery of parliament broke into a ten-minute song of celebration.
In practice, two guardians will act for the river, one appointed by the government and one by the iwi. Mr Finlayson, the minister in charge of negotiations tied to the Treaty of Waitangi, hopes the change will help bring those who do environmental damage to the river to book. Under the settlement the government will also pay the iwi NZ$80m ($56m) as compensation for past abuses and set up a fund of NZ$30m to enhance the “health and well-being” of the river. It is one of 82 deals that aim to remedy breaches of the treaty, including one with the Tuhoe iwi that made Te Urewera into a person.
Days after the law passed, an Indian court declared two of the biggest and most sacred rivers in India, the Ganges and Yamuna, to be people too. Making explicit reference to the Whanganui settlement, the court assigned legal “parents” to protect and conserve their waters. Local lawyers think the ruling might help fight severe pollution: the rivers’ defenders will no longer have to prove that discharges into them harm anyone, since any sullying of the waters will now be a crime against the river itself. There is no doubt that of the 1.3bn-odd people in India, the Ganges and the Yamuna are among the most downtrodden.
Excerpts from Hydrological Jurisprudence: Try me River, Economist, Mar. 25, 2017
See also Do Trees have Standing? by Christopher Stone
Mongolia recently reached a new deal to sell coal to China, helping it boost its faltering economy and start repaying billions of dollars it owes Wall Street lenders. Under the landmark agreement completed late 2016, Mongolia’s state-owned mining company will sell coal to China at roughly double the previously agreed-upon rate. The deal follows a devastating four-year period when Mongolian miners exported coal to China at deeply-discounted prices, sometimes for as little as 11% of the global benchmark price, undercutting Mongolia’s economic growth. Mongolia agreed to those punitive terms to get the loan from China and has been struggling to repay it.
The new export agreement will help Mongolia pay its mounting debt, including bonds held by BlackRock Inc., Fidelity Investments, UBS Global Asset Management and other global investors that bought the debt for its double-digit yields, according to bond investors.
But the export deal has a downside for Mongolia: It effectively transfers much coal production from China, which is bent on cleaning up its environment, to its poorer neighbor… Trucks carrying coal are backed up for nearly 40 miles at Mongolia’s southern border with China, in what some analysts call the world’s largest traffic jam…Yet Mongolia seems willing to make that trade-off, with coal prices soaring since China has begun cutting production, analysts say. Market prices for the type of coal produced in Mongolia, which is used in steel- and iron-making operations, skyrocketed 200% in 2016 to $225 a ton.
Mongolia is also in talks with some Asian firms to develop its Tavan Tolgoi coal reserves, analysts say. The Gobi desert site is one of the world’s largest untapped coal mines, with more than six billion tons of coal deposits.
Excerpts from the New China-Mongolia Mining Deal: Economic Windfall or Environmental Threat?, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 21, 2017
The São Luiz do Tapajós (SLT) project… would dam one of the last big unobstructed tributaries of the Amazon. The project would provide about a third of the hydropower that Brazil plans for the forthcoming decade, but it would also flood 376 square km (145 square miles) of land where the Munduruku hunt, fish and farm. “The Tapajós valley is our supermarket, our church, our office, our school, our home, our life,” explained Mr Kabá.
The tussle over the Tapajós dam is part of a bigger fight about Brazil’s energy future. SLT is an example of a new sort of hydropower project, which floods a smaller area than traditional dams and therefore ought to cause less disruption and environmental damage. The massive Itaipu dam on the border with Paraguay inundated an area nearly four times as large. But critics of hydropower say “run of river” projects like SLT, which use a river’s natural flow to turn turbines, do not work as well as advertised. Though less destructive than conventional dams, which require bigger reservoirs, they still provoke opposition from people like the Munduruku. Other energy sources, such as gas and wind, are becoming more competitive. Brazil has “an opportunity” to rethink its energy policies, says Paulo Pedrosa, an energy official.
Hydropower has long been Brazil’s main way of generating electricity. Most forecasts suggest it will remain so. The government intends to build more than 30 dams in the Amazon over the next three decades.
Climate change may worsen the problem. Some climate models predict that river flows in large parts of the Amazon will fall by 30% in coming decades. Deforestation is delaying the onset of the rainy season in some areas by six days a decade, according to research published in Global Change Biology, a journal. Drought can be expensive. In 2014 power from conventional dams dipped because of a dry spell, forcing electricity companies to buy from gas- and coal-powered generators at high spot prices. The risk of such fluctuations rises with run-of-river dams. Carlos Nobre, a former chief of research at the ministry of science, technology and innovation, thinks more frequent droughts will make future hydropower projects in the Amazon unprofitable.
Brazil’s potential for solar and wind energy is among the highest in the world. The government has promoted them with lavish tax breaks. In the blustery north-east, wind power overtook hydropower this year; wind turbines now generate 36% of the region’s electricity, up from 22% in 2015. The Energy Research Company, a firm linked to the energy ministry, expects renewable generating capacity apart from hydropower to double by 2024.
Generators fuelled by natural gas have been hurt by the subsidies lavished on renewable energy. But, though less climate-friendly than hydropower, they are beginning to compete with it as a source of steady baseload electricity. Brazil now produces gas in abundance as a by-product of pumping oil from its offshore wells. Its marginal cost of production is nearly zero. The future of baseload energy is “hydro-thermal”, rather than hydro alone, says Adriano Pires of the Brazilian Infrastructure Centre, a think-tank in Rio de Janeiro.
Excerpts from Dams in the Amazon: Not in my valley, Economist, Nov. 5, 2016
Rights regimes that are well designed and implemented are among the most effective tools for distributing water fairly and sustainably. Under one such system, Australian states began reforming water management in 1994. Few others have followed, though attempts at reform in Chile and Yemen have met with varying degrees of success.
To create tradable water rights, Australia first drew up a baseline for water use, taking into consideration past commercial, social and environmental needs. Next, old water rights were replaced with shares that granted holders (usually landowners) a proportion of any annual allocations. Clever formulae take account of the seniority of pre-existing rights. Different classes of shares determine who gets what and when to balance the competing claims of upstream farmers and downstream urbanites. After that a regulatory board makes sure that all users get as much as they are entitled to.
Allocations made to shareholders are tradable, but those receiving them can also store them for the future. This prevents any sudden wasting of water at the end of each year and encourages thrift during a drought. Issuing shares in perpetuity ensures that a holder can have more water only if someone else is prepared to have less. A centralised register holds everything together. Two markets for trading have been created: one in which shares are exchanged, and another for allocations of water in a given year. The idea is not a new one. In places such as Oman, aflaj systems involve villages trading in shares and in minutes of water flow.
Such regime change originally met strong resistance from farmers and other big users in Australia. But trading allocations reaped enormous rewards for shareholders. During the first decade of reform the annual internal rate of return from owning a water right was over 15%; those who held water shares saw the value of their rights double every five or so years. But following this example elsewhere will be tough. Even rich countries will struggle to unbundle rights that have accumulated over decades.
Excerpt from Liquidity Crisis, Economist, Nov. 5, 2016, at 17
The widow of a Nigerian activist is planning to sue Royal Dutch Shell in the Dutch courts alleging the oil company was complicit in the execution of her husband by the Nigerian military in 1995, court documents filed in the United States/Esther Kiobel has filed an application in New York to secure documents from Shell’s US lawyers, which she could use in the Dutch action.
The filings with the US District Court for the Southern District Court of New York said she planned to begin the action before the end of the year.“Ms. Kiobel will demonstrate that Shell encouraged, facilitated, and conspired with the Nigerian government to commit human rights violations against the Ogoni people,” a memorandum in the application filed last week said. Kiobel previously took her lawsuit to the United States but the US Supreme Court ruled in 2013 the case could not be heard because the alleged activities took place outside the country.
In 2009 prior to that ruling Shell had agreed in the United States to pay $15.5 million to settle lawsuits related to other activists executed at the same time as Barinem Kiobel, including author and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. [three separate lawsuits were brought by the family of Ken Saro-Wiwa].
The Nigerian military cracked down heavily on local opposition to oil production by a Shell joint venture in the Niger Delta in the early 1990s. Kiobel alleges that Shell provided support to the military in its crackdown. A Dutch court ruled in December that Shell may be sued in the Netherlands for oil spills at its subsidiary in Nigeria, although it did not say Shell was responsible..
Excerpts from Shell faces possible Dutch lawsuit over Nigerian activist’s execution, Reuters, Oct. 18, 2016
It’s been a bad year for Peru’s Amazon – 2016 has seen seven oil spills there so far. And it’s only September. Most of these occurred across the Northern Peruvian Pipeline, in operation since 1977, which transports crude from the Peruvian Amazon to the Pacific Coast along 854 kilometers (530 miles) and is under the control of state-owned Petroperu. After the first two spills leaked around 3,000 barrels, in January and February 2016, the pipeline was shuttered for repairs. However, five additional oil spills have happened since then.According to Peru’s environment regulator OEFA, at least five oil spills were due to poor pipeline conditions, and illegal use of it after the closure. However, the oil company is blaming the latest two spills on vandalism by locals.,,
[M]ore than 190 oil spills have been recorded in Peru since 1997, according to Peru’s energy and mining agency. But the situation appears to have worsened since the beginning of 2016. After the two oil spills leaked 3,000 barrels – polluting nearby rivers and destroying the livelihood of locals – protests against pipeline’s poor conditions in February 2016 forced its shutdown.
When a third oil spill occurred in June 2016 – of 600 barrels – then-Minister of Environment, Manuel Pulgar Vidal, accused Petroperu of pumping crude illegally through the pipeline. The president of Petroperu was ousted, and a $3.5-million (around 3-million-euro) fine was levied.
But the disaster continued: During August and September 2016, four additional oil spills were recorded in the area. The last two occurred while thousands of indigenous people were demonstrating for withdrawal of the oil companies. According to the Peruvian government, Petroperu is responsible for at least five of the seven oil spills – the company has already been penalized more than $7 million. Petroperu continues to insist, however, that the oil spills were a result of extreme weather or vandalism by the locals.
The amount of oil spilled 2016 in the Peruvian Amazon – less than 10,000 barrels in seven spills – is a relatively small amount, compared for instance to the 650,000 barrels of oil that have fouls parts of the Amazon of Ecuador since the 1960s.
Australia is the world’s driest continent. Climate change is expected to make its droughts even more frequent. The country is still paying for years of overexploitation of its biggest river system, the Murray-Darling basin. The federal government in Canberra is spending A$3.2 billion ($2.2 billion) buying up and cancelling farmers’ water entitlements in a bid to reduce salinity and repair other environmental damage stretching back a century.
While mainland farmers are being paid to give up water, those in wetter Tasmania are being enticed to buy more. The island state accounts for just 1% of Australia’s land mass and 2% of its population. Yet it receives 13% of the country’s rainfall. Tasmania may be blessed with water, but most of it falls in the mountains of the west, making it useless to farmers elsewhere.
So the island has embarked on a project to capture more water for its drier east and north, shifting it through pipes to these regions’ farms. Almost 800 farmers have already bought into ten irrigation schemes that are up and running. They will allow farmers to do more than graze sheep and cattle; they will be able to grow fruit and vegetables, including more of Tasmania’s exotic stuff: cherries, grapes for the island’s increasingly fashionable wines and even poppies (the island is a big opium supplier for legitimate pharmaceuticals).
If another five planned schemes involving 200 farmers go ahead, Tasmania’s investment in shifting its water around the island will be almost A$1 billion. The federal and Tasmanian governments are putting up some of the money. But that comes with conditions. Farmers and other investors must first agree to meet at least two-thirds of the costs of each irrigation project before governments commit the rest….
Tasmania’s new water market has already been kind to one of its biggest investors. David Williams, a Melbourne banker, owns no Tasmanian farms. But he put A$10m into two central Tasmania irrigation schemes after local farmers had bought in. Mr Williams likens the arrival of reliable water in such regions to technological change: “I punted that it would change the way land is used.” He calculates that trading his water entitlement with farmers in both schemes could turn his investment into A$16m….
Among the foreign tourists coming to sample Tasmanian Riesling, oysters and marbled beef are plenty of Chinese. When China’s president, Xi Jinping, visited Hobart in late 2014, he sent signals that China wanted more seafood, beef and other costlier food exports from Tasmania.
Excerpts from Tasmania charts a new course: Water into wine, Economist, Feb. 11, 2016
[M]ost of Israel’s water is artificially produced. About a third comes from desalination plants that are among the world’s most advanced. Farmers rely on reclaimed water for irrigation. Israel recycles 86% of its wastewater, the highest level anywhere; Spain, the next best, reuses around 20%.
West Bank: None of these high-tech solutions helps the Palestinians [in the West Bank,] though, because they are not connected to Israel’s water grid. They rely on the so-called “mountain aquifer”, which lies beneath land Israel occupied in 1967. The 1995 Oslo Accords stipulated that 80% of the water from the aquifer would go to Israel, with the rest allocated to the Palestinians. The agreement, meant to be a five-year interim measure, will soon celebrate its 21st birthday. During that time the Palestinian population in the West Bank has nearly doubled, to almost 3m. The allocation has not kept pace.
The settler population has doubled too, and they face their own shortages. In Ariel, a city of 19,000 adjacent to Salfit, residents experienced several brief outages this month. Smaller settlements in the area, which are not hooked up to the national grid, have dealt with longer droughts. Palestinians have suffered far more, however. On average they get 73 litres per day, less than the 100-litre minimum recommended by the World Health Organisation.
The situation is even worse in Gaza, which relies almost entirely on a fast-shrinking coastal aquifer; what remains is polluted from years of untreated sewage and agricultural run-off. The stuff that comes out of Gazan taps is already brackish and salty. UN experts think that aquifer will be irreversibly damaged by 2020.
Israel’s water authority sells the Palestinians 64m cubic metres of water each year. It says they cause their own shortages, because up to a third of the West Bank’s water supply leaks out of rusting Palestinian pipes. A joint water committee is supposed to resolve these issues, but it has not met for five years…
Water in the West Bank: Nor yet a drop to drink, Economist, July 30, 2016, at 38
2016: Drought is plaguing much of mainland South-East Asia, including Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. Thailand’s shortages are the worst for two decades, Vietnam has been hit as hard as any. The Mekong basin is home to one-fifth of the population. It produces about half of the country’s rice. The government says the amount available for export in the three months to June will be 11% less than originally forecast. Drought in the country’s Central Highlands has affected a third of coffee plantations there and now endangers the region’s supply of drinking water. These woes are weighing on the economy. Growth in the first quarter slowed by half a percent year-on-year to 5.5%.
The immediate cause is El Niño…People living near the Mekong say there is another problem: hydroelectric dams built in China near the head of the river that are holding up its flow. Since March China has loosened some of the dam gates, ostensibly as a favour to its neighbours. But locals say the effect on water levels has been measly. The episode has only heightened fears that China (with which Vietnam has an enormous trade deficit and an intense territorial dispute) can use water flow to hold the country to ransom.
The dams are certainly stripping the Mekong of essential sediment. But many of Vietnam’s water woes are self-inflicted. In the delta, for example, a booming population has built more than 1m wells since the 1960s. These have made saline contamination worse, and are also causing subsidence. In 2014 an American study found that the delta, which mostly lies less than two metres above sea level, could be nearly a metre lower by 2050.
A related problem is the ruling Communist Party’s obsession with maximising rice production. Straining to hit absurd targets—inspired by memories of post-war food shortages—the government has pushed delta farmers to produce three rice crops per year.
This policy has caused the poisoning of paddies with pesticides and has discouraged farming of more profitable, less thirsty crops. It has also prompted the building of a massive network of dykes, canals and sluice gates, which spread pollution from fertilisers and pesticides and restrict the flow of sediment. Koos Neefjes, a climate-change expert in Hanoi, the capital, reckons all this infrastructure has done more to harm the delta than China’s dams.
Fixing this will mean taking on powerful state-owned rice traders and exporters, who benefit from intensive production.
Excerpts Vietnam’s drying delta: Salt of the earth, Economist, Apr. 30, 2016, at 37
Facing the bleak prospect of millions of its citizens being displaced in coming years due to storms and sea level rise caused by climate change, Bangladesh is building up existing coastal embankments in a bid to protect coastal lands and people. On November 2015, the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) signed a deal with the Chinese firm First Engineering Bureau of Henan Water Conservancy to start work on the Coastal Embankment Improvement Project-1… And as per the agreement, the Chinese firm is helping rebuild four polders in two coastal districts – Khulna and Bagerhat.
Bangladesh is a low-lying delta, making it one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. The coastal region adjoining the Bay of Bengal is characterised by a vast network of active tidal rivers. The strength of the tides and the flatness of the delta causes the tides to influence river processes a long way upstream in the southern estuaries. And climate change has intensified the tides in recent years.
“We will repair all 139 coastal polders considering the climate-induced changes presumed to take place by 2050 to protect coastal people from recurrent climatic disasters like cyclone and storm surge,” Water Resources Minister Anisul Islam Mahmud told IPS. He said the water development board is currently working to rebuild 17 coastal embankments in its first phase, and the remaining polders will be repaired gradually.
The Coastal Embankment Improvement Project Phase-1 (CEIP-1) involving 400 million dollars to rebuild 17 polders in six coastal districts – Khulna, Satkhira, Begerhat, Pirojpur, Barguna and Patuakhali. The height of 200-kilometre-long embankments will be increased by one to two metres and 58 regulators will be set up in the first phase.
Since the 1960s, Bangladesh built 139 polders to protect about 1.2 million hectares of land from seawater…
Excerpts from Rafiqul Islam , Raising Walls Against the Sea, IPS News Service, May 12, 2016
Considered as the “white gold” –as opposed to the “black gold”—oil, water scarcity has become one of the major concerns of Bahrain in spite of the fact that it has a high Human Development Index and was recognized by the World Bank as a high-income economy. It’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita amounts to 29,140 US Dollars. And it is home to the headquarters for the United States Naval Forces Central Command/United States Fifth Fleet.
All the above does not suffice to make Bahrainis happy. In fact, their country leads the list of 14 out of the 33 countries most likely to be water-stressed in 2040 –all of them situated in the Middle East– including nine considered extremely highly stressed according to the World Resources Institute (WRI). After Bahrain comes Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Other Middle East Arab countries more or less share with Bahrain this front line position of water-stressed states. These are Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. All of them hold a very close second position in the region’ s water-stress ranking. The total represents two thirds of the 22 Arab countries. Not that the remaining Arab states are water-safe. Not at all: Mauritania, in the far Maghreb West, and Egypt, at the opposite end, are already under heavy threat as well.
The whole region, already arguably the least water-secure in the world, draws heavily on groundwater and desalinated sea water, and faces exceptional water-related challenges for the foreseeable future, says the WRI’s report: Ranking the World’s Most Water-Stressed Countries in 2040. The report’s authors Andrew Maddocks, Robert Samuel Young and Paul Reig foresee that world’s demand for water, including of course the Middle East, is likely to surge in the next few decades…This comes at a time when the Arab region has not taken advantage of its water resources of about 340 billion cubic meters, using only 50 per cent. The rest is lost and wasted.
Regarding the North of Africa, the Egyptian Ministry for Environment has recently admitted that large extensions of the country’s Northern area of the Nile Delta, which represents the most important and extensive agricultural region in Egypt, is already heavily exposed to two dangerous effects: salinasation and flooding. This is due to the rise of the Mediterranean Sea water levels and the land depression.
The impact of global warming and growing heat waves is particularly worrying the Egyptian authorities as it might reduce the flow of the Nile water in up to 80 per cent according to latest estimates
Excerpts from Baher Kamal, Climate Change and the Middle East (II), No Water in the Kingdom of the Two Seas—Nor Elsewhere, IPS, Apr. 18, 2016
In 1849 the First Nation of Ojibways, a Canadian indigenous group, fired a cannon into a copper mine that had gone ahead without their approval.These days Canada’s aboriginal groups use public pressure, backed by legal action, to protect their lands against exploitation by outsiders. In February 2016 the government of British Columbia reached agreement with forest companies, environmental groups and 26 First Nations communities to protect from logging an area on the Pacific coast larger than Belgium—newly dubbed the Great Bear Rainforest. The deal, which allows logging and mining in areas aboriginals have agreed to, is the culmination of a long public-relations campaign (choosing the Kermode bear as its mascot was a masterstroke). It would have got nowhere without centuries of treaty-making and decades of case law to back it up….
The federal aboriginal affairs agency is party to 554 proceedings involving such rights (not all of which concern resource firms). That does not include disputes between aboriginal groups and firms. Projects as diverse as seismic testing for mineral deposits in Arctic waters and fracking in the west face challenges. Until 1951 such lawsuits were barred. They are expensive and can drag on for years; the outcome is never assured. The Tsilhqot’in, who filed suit in 1998 against logging on their ancestral lands in British Columbia, finally won in 2014 and now have title to 1,750 square km (1,100 square miles). But the Innu of Ekuanitshit in Quebec last year lost their bid to stop the Muskrat Falls hydropower project, which they say will affect caribou herds.
Some big projects are caught in legal limbo. The Northern Gateway pipeline, which is to bring crude oil from Alberta to Canada’s west coast, has been stalled for more than a decade, largely because of opposition from First Nations groups along its route, some of them parties to the Great Bear agreement. The Pacific Northwest liquefied natural gas project, backed by Petronas, a Malaysian state-owned firm, has offered C$1 billion ($726m) in benefits over 40 years to the Lax Kw’alaams nation of northern British Columbia. That has not allayed fears that the project would destroy salmon fisheries.
When such disputes are unresolved, the price can be high. The Northern Gateway pipeline would add C$300 billion to Canada’s GDP over 30 years.
Miners and aboriginals in Canada: I’ll see you in court, Economist, Feb. 6, 2016 at 33
It’s been a tough year for glyphosate, the world’s most popular weedkiller. In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an arm of the World Health Organization, declared that glyphosate—the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup products—was probably carcinogenic to humans. In the months since, multiple lawsuits have been filed blaming the chemical for causing cancer and birth defects. In February, testing found traces of glyphosate in German beer and organic panty liners sold in France. Other tests have found chemical residue in British bread, as well as in the urine of people across Europe. In early March, the European Union put off a vote to renew a 15-year license for glyphosate after several member states balked.
Monsanto famously advertised Roundup, which was introduced in 1974, as safer than table salt. In 1996 the company stopped making the table salt claim after complaints from New York state….. In September 2016 state officials in California proposed adding the herbicide to a list of known carcinogens. The FDA said in February 2016 that it would begin testing for glyphosate residue in food in the U.S. The results aren’t yet available. The Environmental Protection Agency has been reviewing its use since 2009. The agency, which in 1985 temporarily classified glyphosate as “possibly carcinogenic,” was supposed to wrap up sometime last year; it now says a draft of its decision should be available for public comment sometime this year.
The herbicide industry has mounted an aggressive campaign to discredit the cancer finding and to convince regulators—and the public—that the herbicide should remain in use. …
Glyphosate works by blocking the production of certain amino acids that a plant needs to grow, and it’s nonselective, meaning it kills most plants. It began to dominate the herbicide market only after Monsanto genetically engineered crops to survive it, marketing them under its Roundup Ready brand. Global sales of glyphosate were about $7.8 billion in 2014, 30 percent of the herbicide market, according to Cropnosis, a market-research firm. Monsanto’s dominance of the glyphosate market has declined since the chemical went off patent in 2000. Some weeds have become resistant to glyphosate, triggering the need for other weedkillers. Nonetheless, Roundup remains the primary money-maker for Monsanto’s agricultural productivity segment, which brought in 32 percent of its revenue in fiscal 2015.
A rejection of glyphosate by either the U.S. or Europe would have “massive” ramifications on farming and food production, says Jason Miner, an analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. “You could quickly take us two decades back in terms of farm yields,” he says. “The world doesn’t have capacity to produce all the alternatives.”
Monsanto’s Roundup Could Get Whacked by European Regulators, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Mar. 10, 2016
As Prime Minister Shinzo Abe moves to reopen Japanese nuclear plants that were all shut after the disaster on March 11, 2011, a distrustful public is pushing back. A court on March 9, 2016ordered Kansai Electric Power Co. to halt two of the four reactors that have been restarted, saying the utility had failed to show the public they were safe. The utility called the ruling “unacceptable” and said it would appeal….However, near the ruined Fukushima reactors……Growing swaths of land are covered with black bags full of slightly radioactive soil.
The hardest parts of the cleanup haven’t even begun. Tepco, as Tokyo Electric is known, has yet to draw up plans for removing highly radioactive nuclear fuel that melted through steel containment vessels and now sits at the bottom of three Fukushima reactors.The company estimates that the nearly $20 billion job of decommissioning the plant could take another three or four decades. That is not counting damages and cleanup costs expected to reach some $100 billion or more, including about $50 billion paid to evacuees. Legal wrangling over the disaster continues. In February 2016, three former Tepco executives were charged with professional negligence.
Tepco also is working to reduce a total 400 tons of rain and groundwater that breach the plant’s defenses daily, becoming contaminated and requiring treatment and storage. But a wall of frozen earth meant to reduce the flow has run into resistance from regulators.On large parts of the site, workers can now walk around without full-face shields or hazmat suits, using simple surgical masks for protection.Fukushima was once a prized post for elite engineers and technicians in Japan’s nuclear heyday. Now, unskilled laborers make up the bulk of a workforce of about 6,000 workers, down from a peak of 7,450 in 2014. “There’s a constant stream of people who can’t find work elsewhere,” said Hiroyuki Watanabe, a Communist city councilman in Iwaki, about 30 miles away. “They drift and collect in Fukushima.”…
Looking ahead, the biggest issue remains the reactors. No one knows exactly where the molten nuclear debris sits or how to clean it. Humans couldn’t survive a journey inside the containment vessels, so Tepco hopes to use robots guided by computer simulations and video images. But two attempts had to be abandoned after the robots got tripped up on rubble.“The nature of debris may depend on when the nuclear fuel and concrete reacted,” said Pascal Piluso, an official of France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. “We are talking about extremely varied and complex debris.”….A government panel recently questioned Tepco’s ability to tackle the daunting task of decommissioning while seeking profit for its shareholders. The disaster nearly pushed the company to bankruptcy, prompting the government to buoy it with ¥1 trillion ($9 billion (really????) in public money and pledge government grants and guarantees to help Tepco compensate victims.”…
Excerpts from Fukushima Still Rattles Japan, Five Years After Nuclear Disaster, Wall Street Journal, Mar. 8, 2016
To protect incense trees, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora restricts trading in agarwood. But Hong Kong does not single out those who destroy or damage the trees for harsh treatment. If an incense tree is on government-managed land, the maximum sentence for cutting it down is the same as it is for felling any other kind of tree on such property: a fine of HK$25,000 ($3,210) and a year in prison. Such penalties do little to deter thieves from mainland China, who are encouraged by growing demand for exotic medicines among members of the mainland’s fast-growing middle class. Professor C.Y. Jim of the University of Hong Kong reckons that in 2013 high-grade agarwood was worth $1,600 a gram on the black market. That is more than gold. According to Mr Jim, Hong Kong may be the “last refuge” of the tree, so it has become a “honeypot” for tree-snatchers.
Most of the thieves work for criminal gangs based across the border in mainland China. In recent years a relaxation of restrictions on travel from the mainland to Hong Kong has made their work easier. They often pretend to be hikers, sometimes camping out for weeks while gathering the timber. A local NGO has produced a map showing about 200 sites from which it says around 500 trees were stolen in the past year.
Very few incense trees form agarwood, so they are often destroyed indiscriminately. On Lamma, a plaque marks a spot where three young trees were uprooted. A short scramble up a steep slope reveals a gorier scene: splintered woodchips are all that remain of an aged tree. Mr Yeung, the beekeeper, says “hunters” felled and butchered it in situ. As supplies diminish, the gangs are becoming more desperate. Thieves are raiding private gardens; some residents have begun organising patrols to frighten the thieves away. Alarms and monitoring cameras are being installed.
Excerpts from Trees in Hong Kong: Fragrant Arbour, Economist, Feb. 22, 2016, at 37
Tens of thousands of Nigerian fishermen and farmers are suing multinational oil giant Shell in two new lawsuits filed on March 2, 2016 in a British High Court, alleging that decades of uncleaned oil spills have destroyed their lives. London law firm Leigh Day & Co. is representing them after winning an unprecedented $83.5 million in damages from Shell in a landmark ruling by the same court last year. Shell originally offered villagers $50,000.
In a statement on March 2, 2016 before the trial opened, Shell blamed sabotage and oil theft for the ongoing pollution and noted it had halted oil production in 1993 in Ogoniland, the area where the two communities are located in Nigeria’s oil-rich southern Niger Delta. Shell said it will challenge the jurisdiction of the British court.
The Ogoni are among the most traumatized of millions of Nigerians suffering oil pollution since the late 1950s….
Excerpts from MICHELLE FAUL, Nigerians sue Shell in UK court for oil spills contamination, Associated Press, Mar. 2, 2016
The federal government plans to spend $80 million ( assessing whether its hottest nuclear waste can be stored in 3-mile-deep holes, a project that could provide an alternative strategy to a Nevada repository plan that was halted in 2010. The five-year borehole project was tentatively slated to start later this year on state-owned land in rural North Dakota, but it has already been met with opposition from state and local leaders who want more time to review whether the plan poses any public danger…The Department of Energy wants to conduct its work just south of the Canadian border on 20 acres near Rugby, North Dakota — in part because it’s in a rural area not prone to earthquakes — but is prepared to look elsewhere if a deal can’t be reached. Some sites in West Texas and New Mexico have expressed interest in becoming interim sites for above-ground nuclear waste storage, but it’s not clear if they would be considered for borehole technology.
Project leaders say the research will require months of drilling deep into the earth but will not involve any nuclear waste. Instead, dummy canisters without radioactive material would be used in the project’s third and final phase. The research team will look at deep rock to check its water permeability, stability, geothermal characteristics and seismic activity — a central concern with burying the hot radioactive waste deep underground….
If the technology proves successful and the government moves forward with deep borehole disposal, there must be no fracking-related injection wells in the vicinity…which some research has linked to seismic activity.
Currently, high-level radioactive waste — both from government sources and utilities’ nuclear power plants — is without a final burial site. The waste at power plants is stored on site in pools of water or in heavily fortified casks, while the government’s waste remains at its research labs.
But the 16,000-foot-deep boreholes could be used for high-level radioactive waste from the department’s decades of nuclear work originally slated to go to Yucca, including nearly 2,000 canisters of cesium and strontium now being stored in water at the department’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
Excerpts from , Feds seek borehole test for potential hot nuke waste burial, Associated Press, Feb. 14, 2016
The storage and disposal of used nuclear fuel from other countries is likely to deliver substantial economic benefits for South Australia, a royal commission into the nuclear fuel cycle has found. On Monday, the South Australian royal commission released its tentative findings, which backed nuclear fuel storage and left the door open to further uranium mining and processing but came down against the use of nuclear power for electricity generation.
The findings said a nuclear storage and disposal facility would be commercially viable and South Australia could store nuclear waste as early as the late 2020s. It suggested the state set up a sovereign wealth fund “to accumulate and equitably share the profits from the storage and disposal of waste”. The royal commission noted the main hazard from developing an industry storing other countries’ used fuel rods was emission of radiation into the natural environment, including that particles emitting radiation could be inhaled or ingested by humans and other organisms. But it said Finland and Sweden had both developed safe facilities for long-term disposal of nuclear waste. Risks could be mitigated by storing waste in solid form in geologically stable areas, and several layers of packaging and containers to prevent waste contaminating groundwater. South Australia was suitable because of its low levels of seismic activity, arid environment in many parts of the state, stable political structure and frameworks for securing long-term agreement with landowners and the community.
The draft findings were that nuclear waste storage and disposal could generate $5bn a year for the first 30 years of operation and about $2bn a year until waste receipts conclude. This would result in $51bn profit over the life of the project, it said. The report predicted nuclear storage would create approximately 1,500 full-time jobs during a construction period of about 25 years, peaking at 4,500, and leaving more than 600 jobs once operations begin.
The report also said expansion of uranium mining could be economically beneficial but “it is not the most significant opportunity”. The royal commission said uranium processing could not be developed in the next decade as a standalone industry as the market was already oversupplied and uncertain, but uranium leasing, which links uranium processing with its eventual return for disposal, is more likely to be commercially attractive….
Federal minister for resources and energy Josh Frydenberg …the federal government’s proposed national nuclear waste facility would only store low and intermediate level waste. “It cannot and will not be built to store radioactive waste generated overseas or high level waste,” he said.
Excerpts Paul Karp, Inquiry backs plan to store world’s nuclear waste in outback Australia, Guardian, Feb. 14, 2016
Subcultron is a swarm of at least 120 self-directing, underwater robots being developed by scientists in six countries to monitor Venice’s polluted waterways and transmit environmental data to government officials.The robots, shaped like fish, mussels, and lily pads to mimic the species’ hydrodynamics, carry sensors to monitor water conditions like temperature and chemical composition…The swarm communicates via the Internet-capable lily pads…
The robots use lithium ion batteries and solar cells for power. (Yes, enough sunlight gets through.)Some of the robots carry cameras. Others have electrodes that allow them to “see” by measuring objects crossing the electric fields they generate.Using wireless signals, human monitors can take over from the swarm’s AI software if something goes wrong. The European Commission has granted the project €4 million ($4.4 million).
Thomas Schmickl, the inventor, …..plans to build robot swarms that can monitor the oceans or even faraway moons that have water.
Excerpts from Innovation Subcultron, Bloomberg Business Week, Jan. 28, 2016
The main drawback to making fresh water from the sea is that it takes lots of energy. Around 25% of Jordan’s electricity and 10% of Israel’s goes on treating and transporting water. Using power from the sun could fill a sizeable gap, and make Palestinians less dependent on Israeli power. Renewables supply just 2% of Israel’s electricity needs, but the government is committed to increasing that share to 17% by 2030. Jordan, which has long relied on oil supplies from Arab benefactors, is striving for 10% by 2020.,,, Over the past 40 years there has been a series of plans to build a Red Sea-Dead Sea canal that would have irrigated the Jordan Valley and generated power, none of which have been built.
Beyond many logistical and financial obstacles, the plan’s boosters also have to navigate a political minefield.
Excerpts from Utilities in the Middle East: Sun and Sea, Economist, Jan. 16, 2016, at 54
Egyptian politicians discussed sabotaging the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in 2013, they naturally assumed it was a private meeting. But amid all the scheming, and with a big chuckle, Muhammad Morsi, then president, informed his colleagues that their discussion was being broadcast live on a state-owned television channel.
Embarrassment apart, it was already no secret that Egypt wanted to stop the largest hydroelectric project in Africa. When Ethiopia completes construction of the dam in 2017, it will stand 170 metres tall (550 feet) and 1.8km (1.1 miles) wide. Its reservoir will be able to hold more than the volume of the entire Blue Nile, the tributary on which it sits. And it will produce 6,000 megawatts of electricity, more than double Ethiopia’s current measly output, which leaves three out of four people in the dark…
This boon for Ethiopia is the bane of Egypt, which for millennia has seen the Nile as a lifeline snaking across its vast desert. The river still provides nearly all of Egypt’s water. Egypt claims two-thirds of that flow based on a treaty it signed with Sudan in 1959. But even that is no longer enough to satisfy the growing population and sustain thirsty crops. Annual water supply per person has fallen by well over half since 1970. The UN warns of a looming crisis. Officials in Egypt, while loth to fix leaky pipes, moan that the dam will leave them high and dry.,,
Only recently has the Egyptian government adopted a more conciliatory tone. In March of last year Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who ousted Mr Morsi in a coup, joined Hailemariam Desalegn, Ethiopia’s prime minister, and Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, to sign a declaration that tacitly blesses construction of the dam so long as there is no “significant harm” to downstream countries. The agreement was affirmed in December. 2015, when the three countries settled on two French firms to study the dam’s potential impact. The impact studies were meant to be completed last year, but bickering over the division of labour, and the withdrawal of one firm, caused delays. Many Egyptians believe that Ethiopia is stalling so that the dam becomes a fait accompli. Already half-finished, experts worry that it may be too late to correct any problems. Representatives of the three countries are now meeting to discuss “technical” issues. The contracts for studying the dam are not yet signed.
A sense of mistrust hangs over the dam’s ultimate use. Ethiopia insists that it will produce only power and that the water pushing its turbines (less some evaporation during storage) will ultimately come out the other side. But Egypt fears it will also be used for irrigation, cutting downstream supply. …A more reasonable concern is over the dam’s large reservoir. If filled too quickly, it would for a time significantly reduce Egypt’s water supply and affect the electricity-generating capacity of its own Aswan Dam. But the Ethiopian government faces pressure to see a quick return on its investment. The project, which is mostly self-funded, costs $4.8 billion….
A potential wild card in the negotiations is Sudan, which long sided with Egypt in opposition to the dam, some 20km from its border. But as the potential benefits to Sudan have become clear, it has backed Ethiopia…Short on energy itself, Sudan will receive some of the power produced by the dam. By stabilising the Nile’s flow, it will also allow Sudan to prevent flooding, consume more water and increase agricultural output (once old farming methods are updated). Currently much of the country’s allocation of water under the 1959 treaty is actually consumed by Egyptians…
The Renaissance Dam is merely the latest test of countries’ willingness to share water. There may soon be more difficulties. Ethiopia plans to build other dams on the river, which could further affect downstream supply. Sudan has promised foreign investors an abundance of water for irrigation…
Sharing the Nile, Economist, January 16, 2016, at 49
Anadarko Petroleum Corp. was ordered to pay almost $160 million for its role as part-owner of the doomed Gulf of Mexico well that in 2010 caused the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The fine was the last big uncertainty hanging over Anadarko from the disaster. The order on November 30, 2015 comes after the government told U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans that the company should be fined more than $1 billion for its role in the well’s blowout, which killed 11 people and spewed oil for almost three months. Anadarko, which had a 25 percent stake in the Macondo well, argued it shouldn’t be required to pay fines simply because it owned part of the well, as the accident wasn’t its fault. In 2014, The Woodlands, Texas-based company set aside $90 million for the case when it offered to settle for that amount.
Barbier said the fine reflected his finding that Anadarko didn’t have a role in causing the spill. Under the law, he could have imposed as much as $1,100 per barrel of oil spilled, or about $3.5 billion. The fine is “only 4.5 percent of the maximum penalty, and therefore on the low end of the spectrum,” Barbier said in his order. “The court finds this amount strikes the appropriate balance between Anadarko’s lack of culpability and the extreme seriousness of this spill.”
Barbier rejected Anadarko’s argument that a heavy penalty could cause minority partners to seek a larger role in offshore operations, which might complicate safety and drilling decisions. “A penalty of this size might encourage non-operators to avoid investing with careless operators,” he said. The company said it’s pleased the penalty is less than what the government sought and that it’s reviewing whether to file an appeal. “While we respect the court’s decision, we continue to believe that penalizing a non-operator for events beyond its control is inconsistent with the intent of the Clean Water Act,” Anadarko said in a statement posted on its website.
David Berg, a Houston attorney who has tracked the oil spill litigation and often sues polluters on behalf of municipalities, said given the damage from the spill, the fine is “not a slap on the wrist; it’s a tongue kiss from the judge.” David Uhlmann, former head of the Justice Department’s environmental crimes unit, said the fine is “too small to be an effective deterrent.” It “will not have a significant effect on a company worth approximately $30 billion,” said Uhlmann, now a University of Michigan law professor.
The professor said Anadarko wasn’t a silent partner in its dealings with BP Plc, which owned 65 percent of the well. “Anadarko urged BP to continue drilling deeper, even when BP wanted to stop,” he said. “Yet the judge refused to consider evidence of Anadarko’s risky behavior, which may explain the small size of Anadarko’s fine.”
Excerpt from Anadarko Ordered to Pay $159.5 Million for 2010 Gulf Spill, Bloomberg Business, Nov. 30, 2015
By the time Fukushima prefecture finishes the task of decontaminating houses and farmland around the Dai-ichi plant, it will have spent an estimated $50 billion on the work. Some argue it would have been wiser to have spent the money on resettling former residents elsewhere. Already many of the 80,000 or so people displaced from the areas around the plant have begun new lives. Those moving back are mainly elderly. Local officials expect that half of the evacuees, especially those with children who are more vulnerable to radiation, may never return.
Fear of radiation, and distrust of data from the government and from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the Dai-ichi operator, on the risk it poses, are the biggest reasons. On October 20th, 2015 it was announced that a worker who had helped to contain the accident had developed cancer linked to the meltdown. It was the first such diagnosis, but a recent medical study found a huge leap in cases of thyroid cancer among children and adolescents in Fukushima prefecture since the catastrophe.
Public faith in Japan’s institutions suffered a severe blow as a result of the government’s bungled response to the accident in 2011. So when officials of Tamura city wanted to open the Miyakoji district in 2013, residents resisted and demanded more decontamination work.
A year after the lifting of the evacuation order on his village, Yuko Endo, the mayor of Kawauchi, says distrust is so widespread that he doubts his community will return even near to its former size. But he has visited the area around Chernobyl in Ukraine, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster 29 years ago. He says the sight there of abandoned villages resembling graveyards has stiffened his resolve to rebuild. Those who have now returned are still deeply sceptical about the assurances they receive. Many ask why, for instance, if the soil is safe, they must take their locally grown produce to be checked for radiation.
There is a particular ray of hope in Naraha—more of one than is evident in Miyakoji and Kawauchi. The town will benefit from jobs related to the decommissioning of the nearby nuclear plants, including Dai-ni, which got through the earthquake and tsunami relatively unscathed. Another of Naraha’s immediate projects is to erect new streetlights. It will be helped by dollops of government aid. Mr Matsumoto, the mayor, talks of luring people back by making his town much more attractive than it was before. But for now, many streetlights do not even work. It is dark at night and the atmosphere is eerie.
Nuclear Power in Japan: Back to the Nuclear Zone, Economist, Oct. 24, 2015, at 39
The U.S. Energy Department has canceled in October 2015 a plan to ship to the Idaho National Laboratory spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors out of state, a controversial proposal that drew protests from two former governors and a lawsuit from one of them. Incumbent Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter and state Attorney General Lawrence Wasden in January 2015 expressed conditional support for two proposed deliveries of the high-level radioactive waste, saying it would raise the lab’s profile and boost the local economy around Idaho Falls, where the facility is located.
But talks between the Department of Energy (DOE) and Idaho broke down amid mounting opposition to the plan by two of Idaho’s former governors, one of whom filed a lawsuit last month seeking information he said the federal agency was concealing about the proposal.
Cecil Andrus, a Democrat who served four terms as governor, said at the time that he suspected DOE’s intent was to turn the sprawling research facility along the Snake River into a de facto nuclear dump in the absence of a permanent repository for high-level radioactive waste elsewhere in the United States. Earlier this year, Andrus and former Governor Phil Batt, a Republican, accused DOE of violating a 1995 agreement that banned such shipments to Idaho.Specifically, they said the Energy Department had not yet complied with a provision of the accord requiring removal of nuclear waste already stored at the lab to reduce impacts on an aquifer that supplies drinking water to tens of thousands of Idaho residents.
In a statement sent Friday to Idaho National Lab workers, the director, Mark Peters, said he had been informed that the state and DOE “were unable to reach an understanding that would have enabled the first of two recently discussed shipments of research quantities of spent nuclear fuel to come to INL.” [see also 2011 Memorandum of Agreement on Storage of Research Quantities of Commercial Spent Fuel at the Idaho National Laboratory] Peters said in his statement that the spent nuclear fuel in question would be delivered instead to “another DOE facility,” though it was not made clear where the materials were now destined.
Energy Department cancels plan to ship nuclear waste to Idaho, Reuters, Oct. 23, 2015
Finance Minister Alonso Segura said in an interview in 2015 that Peru is in good shape to weather the biggest flight of capital from emerging markets in a quarter century. It has foreign exchange reserves of more than $60 billion, or about 30 percent of gross domestic product. With 2.4 percent growth forecast this year, the Peruvian economy will still easily outperform Latin America, whose overall output the IMF expects to shrink by 0.3 percent… What Peru lacks is both strong innovation and public institutions. The World Economic Forum ranks Peru in the bottom fifth globally in both.And so it remains heavily dependent on wooing mining investment with incentives including comparatively lax regulation. In June 2014, Peru enacted a law further easing environmental rules.
Carlos Monge, Latin America director for the New York-based nonprofit Natural Resource Governance Institute, blames that law for triggering a protest last month in which four people were killed by police bullets at a $7.4 billion Chinese-owned copper mining project. Protest leaders complained that Las Bambas’ mine owner, China Minmetals Corp., altered the project’s plans without local consent, eliminating plans for a mineral pipeline. Instead, instead crushed ore was to be trucked through communities, increasing contamination. In May, 2015 five people were killed as farmers in a rice-growing valley mobilized against another copper-mining project, this one Mexican-owned. In both disputes, the government declared states of emergency and suspended civil liberties locally. Said Monge: “More conflicts is a very possible scenario, as the government is seeking mining projects at all costs.”
Excerpts from Celebration of Peru’s economic boom comes late, Associated Press, Oct. 9, 2015
A nationwide carbon-trading scheme, to be set up in 2017, is the most visible example of a broader trend in China towards using market mechanisms in environmental matters…[A] reform plan issued by the government on September 21st, 2015 laying out the basis of future policy, talks about developing “a market system which allows economic levers to play a greater role in environmental governance”. If the plan is to be believed, China will go further than any other country in developing environmental market mechanisms.
The plan talks of selling “green” bonds, ie, those financing projects certified as environmentally sound. The government will improve financial guarantees for low-carbon projects. But those are becoming common. More fundamentally, the reform says China will separate the ownership of all natural resources from the rights to use them—and sell the usage rights at market.
This is much more radical. The idea is rooted in communist dogma, which says all natural resources—land, rivers, minerals and so on—are collectively owned. The reform plan begins by calling for a massive Domesday-like inventory of who owns what, whether central government, provincial governments or lower tiers. It then says, with utter insouciance, that “with the exception of natural resources which are ecologically important [eg, national parks], the ownership rights and use rights for all other natural resources can be separated”. And, having separated them, the usage rights can be bought and sold, rented out, used as collateral or as the basis of loan guarantees, and so on.
The carbon-trading scheme suggests what this could mean in practice. It is like a market in energy-usage rights, with the carbon treated as part of the cost of using fossil fuels. A market in water rights will also be set up. Trials will be held in Gansu and Ningxia, two north-western provinces. The plan talks cryptically of setting up a “natural resource asset exchange”.
Excerpts from Markets and the environment: Domesday scenario, Economist, Oct. 3, 2015, at 46
Kyrgyzstan: Dr Osekeeva’s 38 years practising family medicine in this idyllic-looking valley in southern Kyrgyzstan make her a cataloguer of death. Cancer rates are rising, she says, and she thinks she knows the culprit. Buried along the river in and around Mailuu-Suu, a town of some 20,000 people, lurks the poisonous legacy of the Soviet Union’s first atom bombs: 2m cubic metres of radioactive waste leaching into the water supply. Mailuu-Suu was once closed to outsiders. Its well-paid workers were treated as members of the elite: they received perks such as handouts of beer and beach vacations in Crimea. Over the years, they mined and milled 10,000 tonnes of uranium ore into yellowcake, ready for conversion into bomb material. Uranium was also sent from as far as East Germany and Czechoslovakia to be processed here.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and local industry in 1991, the specialists left. Supervision of the town’s 23 tailings sites—dumps containing the hazardous leftovers—became sporadic. Fences and warning signs have been looted for scrap metal. Today, cows graze atop the invisible menace. Goats sleep inside an abandoned uranium mineshaft. Local dairy products and meat are often unsafe; kitchen taps spew silty river water laced with heavy metals.
Neighbouring countries worry. The river through Mailuu-Suu is prone to earthquakes and floods. It is only about 15 miles (25km) upstream from Central Asia’s breadbasket, the Fergana Valley, which is home to over 10m people. Every few years landslides block the flow, threatening to flood the dumps and wash radionuclides over the melon patches and cornfields downstream. A European aid official warns of a “creeping environmental disaster”.
Mailuu-Suu is only a small part of the picture. Dotting hills above the Fergana—straddling the post-Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan—lie dozens of other tailings dumps. Many also contain other heavy metals such as lead, arsenic and cadmium, which can be more dangerous to the body than radiation. Few are secured or monitored.
The three countries are hardly on speaking terms, so cross-border co-operation is non-existent. …Kyrgyzstan, however, has made a little progress. Between 2010 and 2012, an $8.4m World Bank-led project moved 150,000 cubic metres of waste from one of the most accident-prone tailings dumps in Mailuu-Suu to a safer spot up the hill. But locals complain they were not briefed properly about this. They say workers stirred up radioactive dust; many claim cancers have grown more frequent since the transfer.
The government is appealing to the European Union for $50m to deal with ten sites at Mailuu-Suu it says are in need of “urgent” relocation. Others estimate that even this relatively small project would cost hundreds of millions. Kyrgyz officials grumble that donors are slow to make decisions, spending millions on assessments that take years.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says the landslides and flooding make Mailuu-Suu “high risk” and a top priority. But donors can be forgiven for hesitating. Corruption and inertia have eroded many government institutions in Kyrgyzstan and its neighbours.
Uranium in Central Asia: Poisoned legacy, Economist, July 11, at 40
The Sierra del Divisor region in the Peruvian Amazon was identified as a biodiversity conservation priority back in the early 1990s. More than 20 years later and Peruvians are still waiting – some more desperately than others given all the narco-traffickers, illegal loggers and gold-miners in or near the region.
What’s so special about the Sierra del Divisor? It’s the “only mountainous region” anywhere in the lowland rainforest, according to Peruvian NGO Instituto del Bien Comun (IBC), while The Field Museum, in the US, describes it as “a mountain range” rising up “dramatically from the lowlands of central Amazonian Peru” and boasting “rare and diverse geological formations that occur nowhere else in Amazonia.” Its most iconic topographical feature is “El Cono”, an extraordinary peak visible from the Andes on a clear day.
Sierra del Divisor is home to numerous river headwaters feeding into key Amazon tributaries, eco-systems, and a tremendous range of flora and fauna, some of which are endemic, some endangered or threatened – and some with the most wonderful names. Giant armadillos, jaguars, cougars, Acre antshrikes, curl-crested aracaris, blue-throated piping guans and various kinds of monkeys, including the bald – but very red-faced – uakari, all populate the region. Effectively, it forms part of a vast “ecological corridor” running all the way from the Madidi National Park in Bolivia in a north-westerly direction along much of the Peru-Brazil border.
21 indigenous communities and 42 other settlements would benefit from the Sierra del Divisor being properly protected, states the Environment Ministry, while ultimately over 230,000 people in Peru depend on the region for food and water, according to the IBC. In addition, in the absolute remotest parts, it is home to various groups of indigenous peoples living in what Peruvian law calls “isolation.”
In 2006 Peru’s government established a 1.4 million hectare temporary “protected natural area” in this region called the Sierra del Divisor Reserved Zone. Six years later a government commission agreed it would be converted into a national park, and, all that remains now, after a painful administrative process, several key advances made this year and indigenous leaders lobbying various ministries, is for Peru’s Cabinet to approve it and the president, Ollanta Humala, to sign off on it. That is how it has stood since early May 2015 – and still nothing….
Why such a delay indeed, this year or in the past? Might it have something to do with the infrastructure integration plans for the region, such as the proposed – and effectively already underway – road between Pucallpa, the Peruvian Amazon’s current boom city, and Cruzeiro do Sul across the border in Brazil? Or the proposed railway between the same two cities ultimately connecting to Peru’s northern Pacific coast, declared in the “national interest” some years ago? Or the proposed railway running all the way across South America from Peru’s Pacific coast to Brazil’s Atlantic coast, a long-mooted project which has received so much media coverage recently because of Chinese interest in financing it and the visit by China’s premier, Li Keqiang, to Brazil and Peru in May?
Or might the delay be explained by oil and gas industry interests? Perupetro, the state company promoting oil and gas operations, tried to open up what would be the entire southern part of the park for exploration before backtracking in 2008, while the London Stock Exchange-Alternative Investment Market-listed company Maple Energy has been pumping oil for years in a concession just overlapping the west of the proposed park. More significantly, Canadian-headquartered company Pacific Rubiales Energy runs a one million hectare oil concession that would overlap the entire northern part of the park if it was established, and conducted its first phase of exploratory drilling and seismic tests in late 2012 and 2013 in what would be the park’s far north. Clearly, it wouldn’t be good PR for either Pacific or Peru to explore for oil in, or exploit oil from, a national park, although it wouldn’t be the first time a concession and park have overlapped. Indeed, according to the IBC, it has been agreed that Pacific’s “rights” to operate will be respected if the park is created.
Excerpts from David Hill Peru stalling new national park for unique Amazon mountain range, Guardian, July 29, 2015
Taiwan’s Kinmen, a cluster of tiny islands two kilometres (just over a mile) off the coast of China’s Fujian Province…is facing a new threat: a water shortage. Officials say that groundwater on its largest island is being depleted. Tourism from the mainland China, which has grown rapidly since 2008…, is putting pressure on its reservoirs…. Kinmen’s water authorities are ready to sign a 30-year agreement with their counterparts in Fujian to buy water from Longhu Lake in Jinjiang city. Taiwan is to build a submarine pipeline 17km long from Fujian’s coast to Kinmen at a budgeted cost of 1.35 billion Taiwanese dollars ($44m). After 2017, when it is scheduled to be finished, China will eventually provide up to 40% of Kinmen’s water. The signing is expected soon after a meeting on Kinmen on May 23rd between ministers from China and Taiwan, the first such encounter on the islands since the time of Mao.
When Taiwan’s parliament approved the budget for the pipeline in January 2015, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which supports independence, made surprisingly few objections. Only the small, hardline Taiwan Solidarity Union voiced concerns about having such a large share of Kinmen’s water supplied by China. Pragmatists see the deal as the best way to boost Kinmen’s economy: piping water from China is much cheaper than using desalination plants. Taiwanese officials would be allowed to carry out inspections in China, such as testing water in the lake.
The Politics of Water: Peace Pipe, Economist, May 23, 2015, at 32.
The Maori claim a special relationship with New Zealand’s fresh water, based on their historical use of its rivers for drinking water, spiritual beliefs, fishing and shellfish harvest, transport and trade, among other things. Their case goes back to 1840, when the British Crown and most of the Maori tribes signed the Waitangi treaty, which first formalised the colonists’ settling of the islands. Maori rights were enshrined in the treaty. An interim ruling by the Waitangi tribunal, set up in 1975 to deal with Maori grievances about land and related issues, says that the Maori have freshwater rights “for which full ownership was the closest cultural equivalent in 1840.”
Although the government has been willing to discuss water rights with some Maori groups, John Key, the prime minister, says that “full ownership” will not be ceded. In 2012 the government sought to part-privatise Mighty River Power, an electricity company with dams on the longest river, the Waikato, which has particular spiritual value for the Tainui tribe. The Maori Council, with representatives from each Maori district, tried to have the sale stopped or postponed. But in 2013 the high court ruled in the government’s favour….
One proposal is that the Maori get a specified water allocation from regional councils, just as farms do. But Federated Farmers, a lobby group, argues that all available water has already been allocated and that specifying a share for the Maori would mean others losing out. New Zealand’s farms rely heavily on water—especially in the dairy sector, which is now the country’s biggest export earner, worth $10 billion a year.
Growing Chinese demand for milk powder means farmers are increasingly switching from meat production to dairy, thereby increasing their water use. Dairy farming is also polluting freshwater supplies, as phosphates and nitrates seep into groundwater. This has become a political issue, not just for the Maori: many of the rivers and lakes loved by all Kiwis are no longer safe to swim in. The most likely outcome is a fudge that avoids saying anyone owns New Zealand’s fresh water. But the Maori may get more influence over some water, or even an allocation.
Excerpts from Maori rights in New Zealand Water, water everywhere, Economist, May 9, 2015 at 34.
The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on May 2015 (reissued on June 2015) aimed at drafting a legally binding international treaty for the conservation of marine biodiversity and to govern the mostly lawless high seas beyond national jurisdiction.The resolution was the result of more than nine years of negotiations by an Ad Hoc Informal Working Group, which first met in 2006.
If and when the treaty is adopted, it will be the first global treaty to include conservation measures such as marine protected areas and reserves, environmental impact assessments, access to marine genetic resources and benefit sharing, capacity building and the transfer of marine technology.
The High Seas Alliance (HSA), a coalition of some 27 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), played a significant role in pushing for negotiations on the proposed treaty and has been campaigning for this resolution since 2011…The General Assembly will decide by September of 2018 on the convening of an intergovernmental conference to finalise the text of the agreement and set a start date for the conference….
A new treaty would help to organise and coordinate conservation and management [in the high seas]. That includes the ability to create fully protected marine reserves that are closed off to harmful activities. Right now there is no way to arrange for such legally binding protections, she added….In a statement released Friday, the HSA said the resolution follows the Rio+20 conference in 2012 where Heads of State committed to address high seas protection.The conference came close to agreeing to a new treaty then, but was prevented from doing so by a few governments which have remained in opposition to a Treaty ever since.
The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which is recognised as the “constitution” for global ocean governance, has a broad scope and does not contain the detailed provisions necessary to address specific activities, nor does it establish a management mechanism and rules for biodiversity protection in the high seas. Since the adoption of UNCLOS in 1982, there have been two subsequent implementing agreements to address gaps and other areas that were not sufficiently covered under UNCLOS, one related to seabed mining and the other related to straddling and highly migratory fish stocks, she added. This new agreement will be the third implementing agreement developed under UNCLOS….
The “high seas” is the ocean beyond any country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) ‑ amounting to 64 percent of the ocean…
Excerpts from Thalif Deen, U.N. Takes First Step Towards Treaty to Curb Lawlessness in High Seas, IPS, June 19 2015
Despite the precipitous fall in global oil prices (from 110 dollars in 2014 to under 50 dollars in 2015), Argentina has continued to follow its strategy of producing unconventional shale oil, although in the short term there could be problems attracting the foreign investment needed to exploit the Vaca Muerta shale deposit, Argentina’s energy trade deficit climbed to almost seven billion dollars in 2014, partly due to the decline in the country’s conventional oil reserves. Eliminating that deficit depends on the development of Vaca Muerta, a major shale oil and gas deposit in the Neuquén basin in southwest Argentina. At least 10 billion dollars a year in investment are needed over the next few years to tap into this source of energy…
According to the state oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), Vaca Muerta multiplied Argentina’s oil reserves by a factor of 10 and its gas reserves by a factor of 40, which will enable this country not only to be self-sufficient in energy but also to become a net exporter of oil and gas. YPF has been assigned 12,000 of the 30,000 sq km of the shale oil and gas deposit in the province of Neuquén. The company admits that to exploit the deposit, it will need to partner with transnational corporations capable of providing capital.
It has already done so with the U.S.-based Chevron in the Loma Campana deposit, where it had projected a price of 80 dollars a barrel this year….YPF has also signed agreements for the joint exploitation of shale deposits with Malaysia’s Petronas and Dow Chemical of the United States, while other transnational corporations have announced their intention to invest in Vaca Muerta.
Professor Leonid Rikhvanov says he has a number of questions about the potential damage to the community from reactors that have been used since the Soviet Era .His plea comes as the Siberian Chemical Combine (SCC) in Seversk, a secretive city located 15 miles north of Tomsk, prepares for the construction of a new experimental fast reactor known as BREST-300…
‘I would also like to raise the question of conducting a complex study on how the SCC’s reactors have affected the environment over the past 50 years. Before making a decision on new projects, it’d be worth estimating the outcomes of the old ones’…Siberian Chemical Combine in Seversk, a secretive city located 15 miles north of Tomsk, prepares for the construction of a new experimental fast reactor.
‘And lastly I would ask about warheads [housed at SCC as recently as the 1990s]. Have they been replaced or not? If not, in what conditions are they kept?’He added: ‘I’m not radical and I support the idea of nuclear energy. But the approach to its use, and to estimating risks, should be totally different. Russian nuclear enterprises as they are now are so dangerous that it’d definitely be better if they didn’t exist at all.’
On April 6 2015 it was reported in Seversk that construction was already under way of a pilot plant for the production of fuel for the experimental BREST-300 reactor.The new reactor will work on special ‘pills’ made from the spent nuclear fuel and taken from the old reactors, with officials saying it will allow waste-free production of energy. It is thought the pilot plant will begin operating in 2017, with the full new BREST-300 reactor up and running from 2020.
Prof Rikhvanov stressed that he is not anti-nuclear but insisted that it has to be used correctly with the proper safety and environmental considerations in place. An accident at a new plant at the Siberian Chemical Combine in February 2015 resulted in an employee receiving burns to his hands.And, of course, a massive explosion at the site in April 1993 resulted in the release of a radioactive gas cloud in an incident listed as one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents.Prof Rikhvanov was one of the experts flown into Seversk following the incident, allowing him a rare glimpse inside the secretive city to analyse the state of the plant.
‘First of all, we got to see what is there,’ he recalled. ‘I visited all the production facilities, I saw the reactors, the well where the waste is put to, and the warehouses where the nuclear warheads were stored with my own eyes.’I saw about 23,000 decommissioned warheads stored there. And I doubt they have been moved elsewhere since then. By the way, at the time, they were stored in terrible conditions and I don’t know what it is like now.’ The professor also found out that a facility for storing liquid radioactive waste in aquifers was located near to where the water supply was sourced on the Tom River. As far as he is aware, the situation remains the same. He said: ‘We pump water from aquifers on the left side of the river, and store some of the most hazardous elements humanity has ever created in aquifers on the other side of the river…
Another concern he has is that the city is ‘still not prepared’ for a mass evacuation in the event of a major incident.’The road to Maryinsk is terrible, the second branch of the railway hasn’t spring out yet,’ he said. ‘There is also no separate railway to ship the radioactive materials to SCC without going through Tomsk. Such freights are now going through city railway station which creates additional risks.’
Excerpts from Olga Gertcyk & Derek Lambie, Expert raises serious questions over state of the nuclear industry in Siberia, Siberian Times, May 2, 2015
The US energy department is to fund $73m in road and other infrastructure projects in New Mexico as compensation for radiation leaks at a nuclear laboratory and underground dump.The deal struck between the department and New Mexico forgoes fines and instead applies funds to upgrade federal nuclear facilities and surrounding communities in the state, according to settlement documents. Projects include construction of a $5m emergency operations centre in Carlsbad, near where the nuclear waste dump leaked radiation in February 2014.
The leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or Wipp, exposed 22 workers to radiation in amounts not expected to threaten their health and led to the indefinite suspension of key operations at the site, which is the energy department’s only permanent underground disposal facility for certain types of waste from US nuclear labs.The radiation accident was caused by “chemically incompatible” contents, including cat litter, which reacted in a barrel of waste and caused it to rupture, according to a federal probe of the mishap. The breached drum containing radioisotopes such as plutonium was improperly packaged with the wrong sort of absorbent litter at the Los Alamos National Laboratory near Santa Fe before it arrived at WIPP for disposal, investigators found….
The deal includes $34m to improve roads around the Wipp site, $12m to improve nuclear waste transportation routes in and around Los Alamos, and $9.5m in stormwater management upgrades at the lab’s complex.In addition it provides $10m for improvements to water infrastructure in and around Los Alamos and $2.75m for an independent compliance and operational review. Energy department officials have estimated the cost of the initial recovery of the dump at $240m and that it might be two years or more before it is fully operational.
Excerpts from New Mexico radiation accident: $73m compensation deal struck over leak, Guardian, Apr. 30, 2015
Some ecosystems show little response [to climate change] until a threshold or tipping point is reached where even a small perturbation may trigger collapse into a state from which recovery is difficult . ….[S}uch collapse may be altered by conditions that can be managed locally…. [This] provides potential opportunities for pro-active management.…[C]rises in iconic UNESCO World Heritage sites illustrate that such stewardship is at risk of failing. The term “safe operating space” frames the problem of managing our planet in terms of staying within acceptable levels or “boundaries” for global stressors [Such as climate change]….
Obviously, local interventions are no panacea for the threats of climatic change. For example, melting of arctic sea ice with its far-reaching ecological consequences cannot be arrested by local management. However, ways of building climate resilience are emerging for a variety of ecosystems, ranging from control of local sources of ocean acidification to management of grazing pressure on dry ecosystems,World Heritage Areas.
The Doñana wetlands in southern Spain provide the most important wintering site for waterfowl in Europe. They contain the largest temporary pond complex in Europe, with a diversity of amphibians and invertebrates. Despite the site’s protected status, the marshes are threatened by eutrophication due to pollution and reduced flow of incoming streams, promoting toxic cyanobacterial blooms and dominance by invasive floating plants that create anoxic conditions in the water. In addition, groundwater extraction for strawberry culture and beach tourism also has major impacts. Little has been done to control these local stressors, leaving Doñana unnecessarily vulnerable to climate change. UNESCO has just rated this World Heritage Site as under ‘very high threat’.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral system in the world. In response to multiple threats, fishing has been prohibited since 2004 over 33% of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and efforts have begun to reduce runoff of nutrients, pesticides, herbicides and sediments from land. However, these interventions may be too little, too late. Approximately half of the coral cover has been lost in recent decades, and the outlook is “poor, and declining” with climate change, coastal development and dredging as major future threats. The World Heritage Committee has warned that in the absence of a solid long-term plan, it would consider listing the reef as “in danger” in 2015.
More available online Creating a Safe Operating Space for Iconic Ecosystems By M. Scheffer et al, 2015
Dead fish wash up on the once-fertile shores of creeks around Bodo, a town in the Niger delta, that are covered with crude oil more than six years after two massive spills. Locals have only now received compensation from Shell, the oil firm responsible for the leaks. For the first time in half a decade, fishermen have cash to start businesses, repair their houses and send children to school… “Look,” says the chief of a tiny town called B-Dere, just a few miles from Bodo. He gestures to the deathly-black banks still bearing the marks of the slicks. “There is nothing to drink, nowhere to fish. What good has come from it?”
The cash that the oil industry provides has greased Nigerian politics for decades. Gross mismanagement and corruption in the industry are the causes of much of the inequality and discontent with the ruling party in an economy that is not just Africa’s largest but that ought to also be one of its wealthiest…
Nigeria pumps something like 2m barrels of oil a day. These account for most of its exports and about 70% of government revenues. But official figures are as murky as its polluted creeks. Volumes are recorded only at export terminals rather than at the wellhead, says Celestine AkpoBari of the Port Harcourt-based advocacy group, Social Action. Were a proper tally kept, he says, corruption would be exposed on a scale that would shock even the most cynical Nigerian.
It seems likely that more than 100,000 barrels of crude are stolen (or “bunkered” in the local parlance) every day, at a cost to the state and investors of billions of dollars a year. Politicians, oil workers and security forces are said to be behind the complex cartels that steal, illegally refine and sell crude oil. They have amassed almost unimaginable wealth in a country where poverty is still rife.
Oil’s taint has seeped into almost all levels of government and business. Yet the central problem is found in the petroleum ministry, which wields vast unaccountable power. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), a state-owned behemoth, is responsible for all aspects of the industry, from exploration to production and regulation. It is among the most secretive oil groups in the world, and is “accountable to no one”, says Inemo Samiama, country head of the Stakeholder Democracy Network, a non-profit group.
In 2013 the former governor of the central bank, Lamido Sanusi, alleged that $20 billion in oil revenues was missing from state coffers. He was fired for his troubles soon after. …
Even where cash has not been nicked, it has often been squandered. Take the Excess Crude Account (ECA), a sovereign-wealth fund intended to cushion Nigeria’s budget against falling oil prices. Most of it was spent over the past two years, despite oil prices being relatively high for most of that period.
The industry itself is in as sorry a state as the government’s finances. Although oil practically gushes from the ground in parts of the delta, oil output has been stagnant for years and billions of dollars of investment are stalled because of uncertainty over a new law for the industry. This is holding back Nigeria’s economy almost across the board. Because the industry has failed to build the infrastructure to pipe gas to domestic consumers such as power plants, much of it is simply flared and burned: Britain reckons that some $800m worth of Nigeria’s gas a year goes up in smoke. The country is also chronically short of fuel even though it has four state-owned oil refineries. Because of poor maintenance and ageing equipment they operate at well below capacity, forcing Nigeria to import about 70% of the fuel it needs. There is little incentive for reform since the government pays hefty subsidies to NNPC to keep on importing…
But a starting point should be to halt subsidies for fuel imports. At a stroke that would undercut a major source of corruption and crime (both on land and at sea) that spills into neighbouring countries, the destination for smuggled consignments of cheap Nigerian fuel. It should also take a close look at NNPC, which should not be allowed both to participate in the market and regulate it. Some of its assets could be privatised. The ruling party and opposition are considering both….
For communities in Ogoniland, the most pressing problem is cleaning up. Shell has promised to mop up the mess around Bodo, though the process has yet to start. Compensation is one thing, Bodo residents say, but what they really want is their livelihood back.
Nigeria’s oil: Crude politics, Economist, Mar. 28, 2015, at 54
Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan on March 23, 2015 signed an initial agreement on sharing water from the Nile River that runs through the three countries, as Addis Ababa presses ahead with its construction of a massive new dam it hopes will help alleviate the country’s power shortages. The dam had been an issue of contention among the three countries, with Egypt concerned it would reduce its share of the Nile established under a colonial-era agreement that gave Egypt and Sudan the main rights to exploit the river’s water…..
“While you are working for the development of your people, keep in mind the Egyptian people, for whom the Nile is not only a source of water, but a source of life,” el-Sissi said, addressing his Ethiopian counterpart after the three watched a short film about the Grand Renaissance Dam highlighting how it could benefit the region.
Cairo previously had voiced fears that Ethiopia’s $4.2 billion hydro-electric project, announced in 2011, would diminish its share of the Nile, which provides almost all of the desert nation’s water needs, especially under previous governments.
The agreement, hashed out by officials from the three countries weeks beforehand in Khartoum, outlines principles by which they will cooperate to use the water fairly and resolve any potential disputes peacefully, leaving details on specific procedures to be determined later after the release of joint, expert studies.
“The Egyptians don’t really have any other options,” said Ethiopian water researcher Seifulaziz Milas, adding that once the dam had been built and the land behind it flooded, the amount of water flowing down the Nile would return to normal. “It’s just a question of filling up the reservoir, after that there’s nowhere else for the water to go besides downstream.”
Until recently, Ethiopia had abided by the colonial-era agreement that gives downstream Egypt and Sudan rights to the Nile water, with Egypt taking 55.5 billion cubic meters and Sudan 18.5 billion cubic meters of the total of 84 billion cubic meters, with 10 billion lost to evaporation.
That agreement, first signed in 1929, took no account of the eight other nations along the 6,700-kilometer (4,160-mile) river and its basin, which have been agitating for a decade for a more equitable accord. But in 2013, Ethiopia’s parliament unanimously ratified a new accord that replaced previous deals that awarded Egypt veto powers over Nile projects…. Experts have estimated that Egypt could lose as much as 20 percent percent of its Nile water in the three to five years needed for Ethiopia to fill the dam’s massive reservoir.
Excerpt from MOHAMED OSMAN and BRIAN ROHAN , Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan Sign Accord Over Nile, Associated Press, Mar. 23, 2015
A planned mega-dam in Guatemala, whose carbon credits will be tradable under the EU’s emissions trading system, has been linked to grave human rights abuses, including the killing of six indigenous people, two of them children. Several European development banks and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) have provided funds for the $250m (£170m) Santa Rita dam.
But human rights groups back claims from the Mayan community that they were never consulted about the hydro project, which will forcibly displace thousands of people to generate 25MW of energy, mostly for export to neighbouring countries. The issue has become a focus of indigenous protest in Guatemala – which has led to a march on the capital and severe political repression.
“At the moment our community is living under the same conditions as they did during the war,” Maximo Ba Tiul, a spokesman for the Peoples’ Council of Tezulutlán told the Guardian. “Our civilian population is once again being terrorised by armed thugs.” Around 200,000 Mayans died or were “disappeared” during the civil war of the early 1980s, leading to the conviction of the country’s former president, Efraín Ríos Montt, in 2013 on genocide charges.
Augusto Sandino Ponce, the son of a local landowner who community leaders allege worked as a contractor to Montt’s junta during the civil war, is at the centre of new accusations of human rights violations. Last April Ponce and his bodyguards allegedly opened fire on a Mayan community ceremony in which families asked the Earth for permission to plant their crops. One local man, Victor Juc, was killed and several were injured. Ponce reportedly claims he was acting in self defence…
In a letter to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) clean development mechanism (CDM) executive board, the People’s Council of Tezulutlán outlined a litany of human rights abuses in the region, including kidnappings, evictions, house burnings, attacks by men wielding machetes and guns, and the arrest of community leaders. The council also says that an environmental impact assessment for the dam suggests that it would create a 40ft-high wall, flooding local communities and depriving them of access to water, food, transport and recreation. In approving projects, the CDM board pursues a narrow remit focused on emissions reductions. The reign of terror in the Alta Verapaz region, falls outside it – as did similar events in Honduras….
Perhaps the most shocking incident took place on 23 August 2013, when two children were killed by an allegedly drunken Santa Rita hydroelectricity company worker looking for David Chen, a community leader in the Monte Olivo region. Chen was meeting with the rapporteur of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights at the time. When the worker could not find him, he is said to have lined up two of Chen’s nephews, David Stuart Pacay Maaz, 11 and Haggai Isaac Guitz Maaz, 13, and killed them with a single bullet to one child’s head that continued through the throat of the other. The killer has since been killed himself. The annual report of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights implicitly blamed the approval of the dam project for the killings….
Eva Filzmoser, the director of Carbon Market Watch said: “We want the CDM board to take responsibility and establish a grievance and redress mechanism for local communities to appeal, ask for problematic decisions to be rescinded and gain redress. We will be pushing for this at the Paris climate summit to apply to all forms of climate finance in the future.”Efforts to reform the CDM were boosted last month, when 18 countries signed a “Geneva declaration” calling for human rights norms to be integrated into UNFCCC climate decisions….Signatory countries to the declaration include France, Sweden, Ireland, Mexico, Uruguay and Peru.
Excerpts Green’ dam linked to killings of six indigenous people in Guatemala, Guardian, Mar. 26, 2015
Hundreds of indigenous people deep in the Peruvian Amazon are blocking a major Amazon tributary following what they say is the government’s failure to address a social and environmental crisis stemming from oil operations. Kichwa men, women and children from numerous communities have been protesting along the River Tigre for almost a month, barring the river with cables and stopping oil company boats from passing. Oil companies have operated in the region for over 40 years, and have been linked by local people to pollution that has led the government to declare “environmental emergencies” in the Tigre and other river basins….
The oil concession where the protest is taking place, Lot 1-AB, is Peru’s most productive, but the contract, held by Pluspetrol, expires in August 2015. The government has committed to relicensing it and consulting the indigenous communities involved, but leaders say the contamination and other issues must be addressed first. “What we want is remediation, compensation, and to be consulted, according to international norms, about the relicensing,” says Fachin. “We won’t permit another 30 years of work otherwise.”…The Kichwas are now they are demanding 100 million Peruvian nuevo soles, from Pluspetrol, for “compensation after almost 45 years of contamination.”
“The state declared an environmental emergency, but hasn’t done anything,” says Guillermo Sandi Tuituy, from indigenous federation Feconat. “It must find a solution to this problem if it wants to relicense the concession.”...Pluspetrol took over Lot 1-AB from Occidental in 2000. It did not respond to requests for comment.
Peru’s indigenous people protest against relicensing of oil concession, Guardian, Feb, 2, 2012
Hydropower has boomed in Vietnam over the past decade and now generates more than a third of the country’s electricity. In 2013 the National Assembly reported that 268 hydropower projects were up and running, with a further 205 projects expected to be generating by 2017. They are helping to meet a national demand for energy that the authorities forecast will treble between 2010 and 2020. Other power sources are less promising, at least in the short run. A plan to build several nuclear reactors by 2030 is behind schedule, for example. And Vietnam’s coal reserves, mostly in the north, are not easy to get at.
Yet the hydropower boom comes at a price. Rivers and old-growth forests have been ravaged, and tens of thousands of villagers, often from ethnic minorities, displaced. Many have been resettled on poor ground. Those who have stayed are at risk of flash floods caused by faulty dam technology and inadequate oversight. Green Innovation and Development Centre, an environmental group in the capital, Hanoi, says shoddy dam construction is the norm, and developers ignore the question of whether their projects could trigger earthquakes…
Many hydro-electric companies are owned by or affiliated with Electricity Vietnam (EVN), the loss-making state power monopoly. Because hydropower is Vietnam’s cheapest source of electricity, EVN resists investing in measures such as dam-safety assessments that would further erode its financial position. As it is, even though environmental-impact assessments for hydropower projects are required, they are never published, according to the United Nations Development Programme….. Hydropower companies want to keep their mountain reservoirs as full as possible in order to generate as much electricity as Vietnam’s rivers allow. But that narrow focus can deprive farmers of irrigation in the dry season. And when heavy rains come in the summer and autumn, floodwaters cascade over the dam walls with little or no warning.
Hydropower in Vietnam: Full to bursting, Economist, Jan.10, 2015, at 35
China aims to induce more than 60 billion cubic metres of additional rain each year by 2020, using an “artificial weather” programme to fight chronic water shortages…China’s water resources are among the world’s lowest, standing at 2,100 cubic metres per person, or just 28 per cent of the world average. Shortages are particularly severe in the country’s northeast and northwest.
China has already allocated funds of 6.51 billion yuan (S$1.45 billion) for artificial weather creation since 2008, the State Council, or cabinet, said in a document setting out the programme from 2014 to 2020. “Weather modification has an important role to play in easing water shortages, reducing natural disasters, protecting ecology and even safeguarding important events,” it added. The figure of 60 billion cu.m is equivalent to more than one-and-a-half times the volume of the Three Gorges reservoir, part of the world’s largest hydropower plant.
China sets 2020 “artificial weather” target to combat water shortages, Reuters, Jan. 13, 2015
The global gold rush, driven by increasing consumption in developing countries and uncertainty in financial markets, is an increasing threat for tropical ecosystems. Gold mining causes significant alteration to the environment, yet mining is often overlooked in deforestation analyses because it occupies relatively small areas. As a result, we lack a comprehensive assessment of the spatial extent of gold mining impacts on tropical forests.
The study Global demand for gold is another threat for tropical forests published in Environmental Research Letters provides a regional assessment of gold mining deforestation in the tropical moist forest biome of South America. Specifically, we analyzed the patterns of forest change in gold mining sites between 2001 and 2013, and evaluated the proximity of gold mining deforestation to protected areas (PAs)….Approximately 1680 km2 of tropical moist forest was lost in these mining sites between 2001 and 2013. Deforestation was significantly higher during the 2007–2013 period, and this was associated with the increase in global demand for gold after the international financial crisis….In addition, some of the more active zones of gold mining deforestation occurred inside or within 10 km of ~32 PAs. There is an urgent need to understand the ecological and social impacts of gold mining because it is an important cause of deforestation in the most remote forests in South America, and the impacts, particularly in aquatic systems, spread well beyond the actual mining sites.
In the mid-1950s, seven bombs were tested at Maralinga in the south-west Australian outback. The combined force of the weapons doubled that of the bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War Two. In archive video footage, British and Australian soldiers can be seen looking on, wearing short sleeves and shorts and doing little to protect themselves other than turning their backs and covering their eyes with their hands.Some reported the flashes of the blasts being so bright that they could see the bones of their fingers, like x-rays as they pressed against their faces.
A cloud hangs over Australia’s Monte Bello Islands after Britain tested its first atomic bomb
Much has been written about the health problems suffered by the servicemen as a result of radiation poisoning. Far less well-documented is the plight of the Aboriginal people who were living close to Maralinga at the time….”A lot of people got sick and died,” said Mima Smart, an aboriginal community leader.”It was like a cancer on them. People were having lung disease, liver problems, and kidney problems. A lot of them died,” she said, adding that communities around Maralinga have been paid little by way of compensation. It’s a ten hour drive to the nearest big city, Adelaide. But people here say that the Australian government was wrong to let the tests go ahead and that Britain acted irresponsibly…
“They didn’t want to do it in their own back yard because their back yard wasn’t big enough,” said Robin Matthews, caretaker of the Maralinga Nuclear Test Site.”They thought they’d pick a supposedly uninhabited spot out in the Australian desert. Only they got it wrong. There were people here.”During the 1960s and 70s, there were several large clean-up operations to try and decontaminate the site. All the test buildings and equipment were destroyed and buried. Large areas of the surface around the blast sites was also scraped up and buried.
But Mr Matthews said the clean-up, as well as the tests themselves, were done very much behind closed doors with a high level of secrecy.“You’ve got to remember that this was during the height of the Cold War. The British were terrified that Russian spies might try and access the site,” he said. The indigenous communities say many locals involved in the clean-up operation also got sick. Soil at the nuclear site grow so hot from the blast that it melted and turned to silicon has long been declared safe. There are even plans to open up the site to tourism.
But it was only a few months ago that the last of the land was finally handed back to the Aboriginal people. Most, though, say they have no desire to return there….And even almost 60 years on, the land still hasn’t recovered. Huge concrete plinths mark the spots where each of the bombs was detonate
Excerpt from Jon Donnison, Lingering impact of British nuclear tests in the Australian outback, BBC, Dec. 31, 2014
Himalayan rivers, fed by glacial meltwater and monsoon rain, offer an immense resource. They could spin turbines to light up swathes of energy-starved South Asia. Exports of electricity and power for Nepal’s own homes and factories could invigorate the dirt-poor economy. National income per person in Nepal was just $692 last year, below half the level for South Asia as a whole.
Walk uphill for a few hours with staff from GMR, an Indian firm that builds and runs hydropower stations, and the river’s potential becomes clear. An engineer points to grey gneiss and impossibly steep cliffs, describing plans for an 11.2km (7-mile) tunnel, 6 metres wide, to be blasted through the mountain. The river will flow through it, before tumbling 627 metres down a steel-lined pipe. The resulting jet—210 cubic metres of water each second—will run turbines that at their peak will generate 600MW of electricity. The project would take five years and cost $1.2 billion. It could run for over a century—and produce nearly as much as all Nepal’s installed hydropower.
Trek on and more hydro plants, micro to mighty, appear on the Marsyangdi. Downstream, China’s Sinohydro is building a 50MW plant; blasting its own 5km-long tunnel to channel water to drive it. Nearby is a new German-built one. Upstream, rival Indian firms plan more. They expect to share a transmission line to ill-lit cities in India.
GMR officials in Delhi are most excited by another river, the Upper Karnali in west Nepal, which is due to get a 900MW plant. In September the firm and Nepal’s government agreed to build it for $1.4 billion, the biggest private investment Nepal has seen.
Relations between India and Nepal are improving. Narendra Modi helped in August as the first Indian prime minister in 17 years to bother with a bilateral visit. Urged by him, the countries also agreed in September to regulate power-trade over the border, which is crucial if commercial and other lenders are to fund a hydropower boom…. Another big Indian hydro firm agreed with Nepal’s government, on November 25th, to build a 900MW hydro scheme, in east Nepal, known as Arun 3. Research done for Britain’s Department for International Development suggests four big hydro projects could earn Nepal a total of $17 billion in the next 30 years—not bad considering its GDP last year was a mere $19 billion.
All Nepal’s rivers, if tapped, could feasibly produce about 40GW of clean energy—a sixth of India’s total installed capacity today. Add the rivers of Pakistan, Bhutan and north India and the total trebles. Bhutan has made progress: 3GW of hydro plants are to be built to produce electricity exports. The three already generating produce 1GW out of a total of 1.5GW from hydro. These rely on Indian loans, expertise and labour….
A second reason, says Raghuveer Sharma of the International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank), was radical change that opened India’s domestic power market a decade ago. Big private firms now generate and trade electricity there and look abroad for projects. India’s government also presses for energy connections over borders, partly for the sake of diplomacy. There has even been talk of exporting 1GW to Lahore, in Pakistan—but fraught relations between the two countries make that a distant dream.
An official in India’s power ministry says South Asia will have to triple its energy production over the next 20 years. Integrating power grids and letting firms trade electricity internationally would be a big help. It would expand market opportunities and allow more varied use of energy sources to help meet differing peak demand. Nepal could export to India in summer, for example, to run fans and air conditioners. India would export energy back uphill in winter when Nepali rivers dry and turbines stop spinning.
Governments that learn to handle energy investments by the billion might manage to attract other industries, too. Nepal’s abundant limestone, for example, would tempt cement producers once power supplies are sufficient. In the mountains, it is not only treks that are rewarding.
South Asia’s Hydro-Politics: Water in them hills, Economist, Nov. 29, 2014, at 38
China’s new canal stretches over 1,200km (750 miles) from the Yangzi river north to the capital, Beijing. The new channel is only part of the world’s biggest water-diversion scheme. More than 300,000 people have been kicked out to make way for the channel and the expansion of a reservoir in central China that will feed it. But the government is in a hurry, and has paid their complaints little heed.
China’s leaders see the so-called South-North Water Diversion Project, which has already cost tens of billions of dollars, as crucial to solving a water problem that threatens the country’s development and stability. Grain-growing areas around Beijing have about as much water per person as such arid countries as Niger and Eritrea. Overuse has caused thousands of rivers to disappear. The amount of water available is diminishing fast as the water table drops and rivers dry up; what little is left is often too polluted even for industrial use. The World Bank has said that China’s water crisis costs the country more than 2% of GDP, mostly because of damage to health. T
Yet China’s water problem will remain unsolved. The canal is the second leg of the diversion project; the first, which opened last year in eastern China, brings water from the south along the route of the old Grand Canal, built 1,400 years ago, to the northern plain. Neither will prove more than temporary palliatives as demand continues to soar and pollution remains widespread. China’s water crisis cannot be tackled by showy mega-projects. Misguided policy is as much to blame as a mismatch in supply between the water-rich south and the arid north. A new approach to water management, rather than more concrete, is needed.
The solution is simple: China needs to price its water properly. The Maoist obsession with food self-sufficiency compounds the problem. The arid northern plain, home to 200m people, produces water-hungry crops such as wheat and corn. Nearly 70% of water consumed in the area is used for agriculture. It is time for China to abandon autarkic thinking and import more food.
China’s water crisis: Grand new canals, Economist, Sept. 27, 2014
In a new study of the Centre for Global Development (CGD), a Washington think-tank, Jonah Busch and Kalifi Ferretti-Gallon look at 117 cases of deforestation round the world. They find that two of the influences most closely correlated with the loss of forests are population and proximity to cities (the third is proximity to roads). Dramatic falls in fertility in Brazil, China and other well-forested nations therefore help explain why (after a lag) deforestation is slowing, too. Demography even helps account for what is happening in Congo, where fertility is high. Its people are flocking to cities, notably Kinshasa, with the result that the population in more distant, forested areas is thinning out.
Two of the countries that have done most to slow forest decline also have impressive agricultural records: Brazil, which became the biggest food exporter of all tropical countries over the past 20 years; and India, home of the green revolution. Brazil’s agricultural boom took place in the cerrado, the savannah-like region south and east of the Amazon (there is farming in the Amazon, too, but little by comparison). The green revolution took place mostly in India’s north-west and south, whereas its biggest forests are in the east and north.
But if population and agricultural prowess were the whole story, Indonesia, where fertility has fallen and farm output risen, would not be one of the worst failures. Figures published inNature Climate Change in June show that in the past decade it destroyed around 60,000 sq km of primary forests; its deforestation rate overtook Brazil’s in 2011. Policies matter, too—and the political will to implement them.
The central problem facing policymakers is that trees are usually worth more dead than alive; that is, land is worth more as pasture or cropland than as virgin forest. The benefits from forests, such as capturing carbon emissions, cleaning up water supplies and embodying biodiversity, are hard to price….The most successful policies therefore tend to be top-down bans, rather than incentives (though these have been tried, too). India’s national forest policy of 1988 explicitly rejects the idea of trying to make money from stewardship. “The derivation of direct economic benefit”, it says, “must be subordinated to this principal aim” (maintaining the health of the forest). In Brazil 44% of the Amazon is now national park, wildlife reserve or indigenous reserve, where farming is banned; much of that area was added recently. In Costa Rica half the forests are similarly protected. In India a third are managed jointly by local groups and state governments.
Top-down bans require more than just writing a law. Brazil’s regime developed over 15 years and involved tightening up its code on economic activity in forested areas, moratoriums on sales of food grown on cleared land, a new land registry, withholding government-subsidised credit from areas with the worst deforestation and strengthening law enforcement through the public prosecutor’s office. (The most draconian restriction, requiring 80% of any farm in the Amazon to be set aside as a wildlife reserve, is rarely enforced.)
Two developments make bans easier to impose. Cheaper, more detailed satellite imagery shows in real time where the violations are and who may be responsible. Brazil put the data from its system online, enabling green activists to help police the frontier between forest and farmland. Its moratoriums on soyabeans and beef from the Amazon, which require tracing where food is coming from, would not have worked without satellites…
The Forestry Ministry of Indonesia, [on the other hand] is rated the most corrupt among 20 government institutions by Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission in 2012. Some within government are hostile to anti-deforestation schemes, which they see as “foreign”, says Ade Wahyudi of Katadata, an Indonesian firm of analysts. Perhaps the biggest problem is the lack of a single, unified map including all information on land tenure and forest licensing: efforts to create one have been slowed by unco-operative government ministries and difficulties created by overlapping land claims.
Excerpts from Tropical Forests: A Clearing in the Trees, Economist, Aug. 23, 2014, at 56
When Dwight Eisenhower, then president of the United States, and John Diefenbaker, his Canadian counterpart, signed a treaty in 1961 to jointly control the unruly Columbia river, they hailed their collaboration as a model for the rest of the world. Fifty years after the treaty was implemented, in 1964, cracks are appearing.
The treaty involved a series of new dams and an agreement to share the power generated as a result. It has worked well. There has been no repeat of the catastrophic flood that wiped out the second-largest city in Oregon in 1948. The United States dutifully hands over Canada’s share of the hydropower generated, worth an average of C$215m ($170m) a year between 1998 and 2013. But the Americans in particular are keen to make changes. Nigel Bankes of the University of Calgary says there is “zero chance” that the disagreements between the two countries can be resolved before September 16th, 2014—after which date either country can give ten years’ notice that it wishes to terminate the agreement.
Money is one of two main differences. In return for building three dams—Duncan, Hugh Keenleyside and Mica —on its side of the border, Canada received an upfront payment from the United States and a guaranteed share of the extra power that could be generated downstream as a result of more dependable water flows. The Americans think Canada has been more than reimbursed for the costs of dam construction, and want to whittle away the annual energy payment known as the Canadian Entitlement. In an open letter to Barack Obama in April, 26 senators and congressmen from the Pacific north-west said a reduction should be part of a renegotiated deal.
Not so fast, say the Canadians. They point out that people were displaced and fertile land flooded to create the dams. That represents a continuing loss. There are also benefits not captured in the treaty, says Bill Bennett, the minister of energy and mines for British Columbia (BC), which implements the treaty for Canada. More dependable water flows lead to improved navigation and irrigation south of the border; BC also co-operates when the United States asks it to spill water over its dams to help meet obligations under endangered-fish-species legislation.
In fact, fish are the other slippery issue.The restoration of salmon migration on the upper reaches of the Columbia river is being pushed by First Nations (native Indian) tribes on both sides of the border. The United States wants salmon on the negotiating table, but the Canadians do not.None of the treaty dams was built with fish ladders and they would be costly to construct today. “Salmon migration in the Columbia river ended 26 years before the treaty was ever ratified,” says Mr Bennett. “It was eliminated by the Grand Coulee dam in 1938, and our position is that’s an important issue but it’s not part of the Columbia River Treaty discussion.”
Excerpt, The Columbia River Treaty: Salmon en route, Economist, June 7. 2014, at 42
Coal is cheap and simple to extract, ship and burn. It is abundant: proven reserves amount to 109 years of current consumption… Just as this wonder-fuel once powered the industrial revolution, it now offers the best chance for poor countries wanting to get rich. Such arguments are the basis of a new PR campaign launched by Peabody, the world’s largest private coal company (which unlike some rivals is profitable, thanks to its low-cost Australian mines). And coal would indeed be a boon, were it not for one small problem: it is devastatingly dirty. Mining, transport, storage and burning are fraught with mess, as well as danger. Deep mines put workers in intolerably filthy and dangerous conditions. But opencast mining, now the source of much of the world’s coal, rips away topsoil and gobbles water. Transporting coal brings a host of environmental problems.
The increased emissions of carbon dioxide from soaring coal consumption threaten to fry the planet…he CO2 makes the oceans acid; burning coal also produces sulphur dioxide, which makes buildings crumble and lungs sting, and other toxic chemicals. By some counts, coal-fired power stations emit more radioactivity than nuclear ones. They release tiny, lethal particulates. Per unit generated, coal-fired stations cause far more deaths than nuclear ones, and more even than oil-fired ones.
But poverty kills people too, and slow growth can cost politicians their jobs. Two decades of environmental worries are proving only a marginal constraint on the global coal industry. The International Energy Agency has even predicted that, barring policy changes, coal may rival oil in importance by 2017… As countries get richer they tend to look for alternatives—China is scrambling to curb its rising consumption. But others, such as India and Africa, are set to take up the slack
America’s gas boom has prompted its coal miners to seek new export markets, sending prices plunging on world markets. So long as consumers do not pay for coal’s horrible side-effects, that makes it irresistibly cheap. In Germany power from coal now costs half the price of watts from a gas-fired power station. … Its production of power from cheap, dirty brown coal (lignite) is now at 162 billion kilowatt hours, the highest since the days of the decrepit East Germany. Japan, too, is turning to coal in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. On April 11th the government approved a new energy plan entrenching its role as a long-term electricity source.
International coal companies face two worries. One is that governments may eventually impose punitive levies, tariffs and restrictions on their mucky product. The other is the global glut. Prices for thermal coal (the kind used for power and heating) are at $80-85 a tonne, which barely covers the cost of capital. Some Australian producers are even mining at a loss, having signed freight contracts with railways and ports that make them pay for capacity whether they use it or not….
Perhaps the biggest hope for all involved in the coal industry is technology. Mining and transporting coal will always be messy, but this could be overlooked were it burned cheaply and cleanly. Promising technologies abound: pulverising coal, extracting gas from it, scrubbing emissions and capturing the CO2. But none of these seems scalable in the way needed to dent the colossal damage done by coal. And all require large subsidies—from consumers, shareholders or taxpayers.
A $5.2 billion taxpayer-supported clean-coal plant in Mississippi incorporates all the latest technology. But at $6,800 per kilowatt, it will be the costliest power plant yet built (a gas-fired power station in America costs $1,000 per kW). At those prices, coal is going to stay dirty.
The fuel of the future, unfortunately: A cheap, ubiquitous and flexible fuel, with just one problem, Economist, Apr. 19, 2014, at 55
“Silent oil spills” occur daily when oil is released into the environment during use or illegally dumping. Silent oil spills generate around 10 billion gallons of contamination in a single year. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Developing a used oil recycling program” fact sheet, 40 percent of the pollutants in the water come from motor oil.
California’s bill, SB 916, attempts to address this by encouraging the use of bio-based motor oil. Most bio-based motor oils are made from the organic fatty acids found in various plants. The oil is non-toxic and is biodegradable….Very few are aware that 200 million gallons of used motor oil is illegally dumped in the United States every single year…More than twice as much motor oil enters the near shore waters off Los Angeles every year from urban runoff.
According to the EPA, petroleum based lubricants biodegrade slowly, they bioaccumulate in the tissues of marine organisms and they have high levels of aquatic toxicity. They also have much higher GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions relative to bio based alternatives, and of course, they are not renewable…
The fight to bring bio-based motor oil into the mainstream is an uphill battle for those seeking to unseat the deeply entrenched and deep pocketed gas and oil industry. Last year alone, the industry spent $144 million lobbying on legislators at the federal level.
Excerpt from Justin King, California attempts to battle ‘silent oil spills’ SPECIAL, Digital Journal, April 11, 2014
Feliance on food imports is problematic when countries such as Argentina suddenly restrict their exports in response to rising prices. Buying farmland in countries such as Sudan, Tanzania and Pakistan is another Gulf ploy. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are among the top ten investors in land abroad, according to Land Matrix, a body that tracks such deals. But this has drawbacks, too. Getting big projects off the ground in places that lack infrastructure is tricky. And Gulf states who fund them have sometimes been accused of being neocolonial.
Many of the region’s rulers are now considering investing in food companies abroad, often in more developed countries. The UAE’s Al Dahra Agriculture, which works closely with the government and owns land abroad, recently bought eight farm companies in Serbia for $400m. It has also invested in an Indian rice producer. In addition, countries like Saudi Arabia are looking at ways of keeping strategic food reserves.
Gulf rulers may end up following a mixture of such strategies to fill their peoples’ stomachs. They should at least be commended for grappling with the problem, says a regional food expert. Poorer and hungrier Arab countries, like Egypt and Yemen, are far less willing to address it.
Food security in the Gulf: How to keep stomachs full, Economist, Feb. 22, 2014
For decades, the Kenyan government has attempted to evict indigenouspeople from the forests of Embobut and Cherangany, in the western county of Elgeiyo Marakwet. Past tactics have even included torture and setting fire to homes, those affected say…The government – accused in recent weeks of preparing to carry out yet another forced eviction – maintains that communities living in 12 forest glades must leave so it can rehabilitate the degraded forest and the water services it provides to the surrounding regions and beyond.
“This is a government initiative aimed specifically at conserving the country’s second-largest water tower – nothing else,’’ said Inspector Stephen Chessa, who works for the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) and is in charge of the Embobut eviction…
But one forest warder who preferred to remain anonymous told Thomson Reuters Foundation he and his colleagues had been instructed to evict forcefully anyone who resists the move. The U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, expressed deep concern about this prospect, urging the Kenyan government “to ensure that the human rights of the Sengwer indigenous people are fully respected, in strict compliance with international standards protecting the rights of indigenous peoples”. Most families are asking for more time to assemble their things and harvest crops before leaving the forest. But Solomon Mibei, head of conservation for the KFS, said families would not be given extra time and the evictions would continue as planned. “They have no reason to continue staying in the forest – they were compensated,’’ he said.
The situation is complex because there are different communities living in Embobut: the Sengwer indigenous people; groups displaced by disasters and political violence; and others who have come to benefit from cultivation opportunities. “Why should the government treat us equally with the victims of post-election violence and landslides?’’ asked Sengwer spokesperson Yator Kiptum. “The forest is our home – our case is different, it’s not fair at all.”…According to Article 63 of the constitution, community land shall be vested in and held by communities identified on the basis of ethnicity, culture or similar community of interest. Community land consists of ancestral lands and lands traditionally occupied by hunter-gatherers.
Justin Kenrick of the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), a UK-based rights organisation, said the government’s justification for evicting people is forest conservation, but research has long since shown that forests are best preserved not by evicting ancestral communities but by supporting them to regain secure rights to their land. Payments to evictees by the government are “intended to distract the public and the communities themselves from addressing the real issues”, Kenrick said. “According to international treaties to which Kenya is a party, the Sengwer should have been consulted, and accepted or rejected the proposal,’’ he added. Kiptum, however, claims the Sengwer were not consulted, did not sign anything, and have not agreed to hand over their land for the small amount of money that has been paid into some people’s bank accounts. “You cannot create a humanitarian crisis for the sake of conserving biodiversity while there are other ways of doing it better,” said Stephen Cheboi, coordinator of the North Rift Human Rights Network based in nearby Eldoret town. He also called for an audit of the compensation process.
Excerpts from Caleb Kemboi, Indigenous rights clash with forest protection in Kenya, Reuters, Jan. 17,, 2014
Drained by farms along its banks, the River Jordan is barely a trickle by the time it dribbles into the Dead Sea, and most of that is sewage coming out of Jerusalem and West Bank settlements. Israeli and Jordanian factories also use the water to recover potash.So fast are the Dead Sea’s briny waters shrinking that it has already shed its southern half. Much of the seabed is now as crusty as the pillar of salt that Lot’s wife turned into after fleeing Gomorrah. Hotels built on the shores in the 1980s have a cliff-top view today. Arthritic pensioners keen on the sea’s therapeutic powers are reduced to swimming in saline hotel pools. By 2050, say Friends of the Earth, a conservation group, the sea will be little more than a pond the size of two football fields.
After years of regional squabbling, Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian ministers signed a deal ( a Memorandum of Understanding)* on December 9th, 2013 to slow desiccation. Backed by the World Bank, they plan to build a desalination plant on the Red Sea and pipe the run-off 180km (112 miles) north to the Dead Sea. Some see advantages in diluting the Dead Sea’s nose-twitchingly sulphurous tides with ocean water. But there are drawbacks. Mucky algae might spread, turning the sea red. “It’s playing with an entire ecosystem,” says Mira Edelstein of Friends of the Earth.
The Dead Sea: Emptying out, Economist, Dec. 14, 2013, at 58
*The MoU outlines in broad language three major regional water sharing initiatives that will be pursued over the coming months by the cooperating parties. These initiatives include the development of a desalination plant in Aqaba at the head of the Red Sea, where the water produced will be shared between Israel and Jordan; increased releases of water by Israel from Lake Tiberias for use in Jordan; and the sale of about 20-30 million m3/year of desalinated water from Mekorot (the Israeli water utility) to the Palestinian Water Authority for use in the West Bank. In addition, a pipeline from the desalination plant at Aqaba would convey brine to the Dead Sea to study the effects of mixing the brine with Dead Sea water. In order to proceed with these actions, especially the desalination plant at Aqaba, technical work and studies will need to be undertaken. See World Bank
Amazonas [in Venezuela] has many problems, but those most cited by local people are mainly the responsibility of central government. Frequent and lengthy power-cuts, unpunished violent crime, a precarious air link with Caracas and an almost non-existent internet service are among them. Outside Puerto Ayacucho, in the jungle that extends almost unbroken to the Brazilian border, an even darker mood prevails in the scattered Amerindian villages. Illegal mining is destroying the forest and polluting the water. The armed forces, whose duties include environmental protection, are accused by the Amerindians of complicity with the illegal miners and with the guerrillas of Colombia’s FARC, who have shifted their camps to Venezuela to evade military pressure at home.
“The guerrillas ordered the villagers not to go out at night,” says Uriel Blanco of OPIJKA, an organisation that defends the rights of the Jivi tribe. In the early hours, community leaders claim, boats laden with fuel and food head upriver to guerrilla camps. Neither these boats nor the miners seem to have problems with checkpoints run by Mr Maduro’s National Guard. But the guard seizes game from Amerindian hunters, as well as any fuel or processed food for which they lack receipts. The state’s Catholic bishop, José Angel Divasson, says that for the FARC, Amazonas is more than just a refuge: “It’s clear that they are trafficking drugs. Why else would they need 500-metre airstrips? The light planes go over [to Colombia] with guns and they come back with drugs.”
The cocaine business, along with illegal mining of gold and coltan, a mineral used in the manufacture of electronic devices, creates an almost insatiable demand for petrol and diesel, which are heavily subsidised by the Venezuelan government. The official price of a 200-gallon drum of petrol is just 14 bolívares. But once it leaves the river-port of Samariapo, it sells for at least 2,000 bolívares on the black market. By the time it gets to San Carlos de Río Negro, near the Brazilian border, it can cost five times that. Permits to buy fuel are controlled by the army.
“We get diesel for our generator once a month,” says a villager. “That gives us six hours of electricity.” Shops on the Colombian side of the river are well-stocked with subsidised Venezuelan food, while the people for whom it was intended go hungry. Amerindian groups have demanded a meeting with the president, but there has been no reply.
May 2018: The environmental damage around the site of two Royal Dutch Shell oil spills in Nigeria a decade ago has worsened significantly after years of delay to cleanup efforts, according to a report that the oil giant has been accused of trying to shield from public view. The spills from a ruptured Shell pipeline spewed thousands of barrels of oil over parts of the Bodo fishing community in the crude-rich Niger Delta. Although the company in 2015 reached an out-of-court settlement with the local community, admitting to liability and agreeing
Mukono- Residents of Kitoba village in Mukono District have opposed plans by the Uganda Atomic Energy Council (AEC) to construct a nuclear and atomic waste site in the area. The residents fear the dump for non-functional atomic equipment, including X-rays and cancer machines, will compromise their safety. Already, the residents at Canaan Sites are suspicious of a container that has been standing on the 11.5 acres of land acquired by the AEC in 2011.
Cesspools—holes in the ground where untreated human waste is deposited—have become a crisis in Hawaii, threatening the state’s drinking water, its coral reefs and the famous beaches that are the lifeblood of its tourist economy. Sewage from cesspools is seeping into some of Hawaii’s ocean waters, where it has been blamed for infections suffered by surfers and snorkelers. It is also entering the drinking water in part of the state, pushing nitrate levels close to the legal limit.
The Dead Sea is dying. Half a century ago its hyper-salty, super-pungent waters stretched 80km from north to south. That has shrunk to just 48km at its longest point. The water level is falling by more than a meter per year. All but a trickle from its source, the Jordan River, is now used up before it reaches the sea. “It will never disappear, because it has underground supplies, but it will be like a small pond in a very big hole,” says Munqeth Mehyar of EcoPeace, an NGO.
Law-In-Action 