Bag a polar bear for $35,000: the new threat to the species

The Independent 20 Mar 09;

The latest challenge for fans of extreme hunting is an expedition to the Arctic Circle. Jerome Taylor reports

Boyd Warner treasures the memory of killing his first polar bear. It was 2003. For days he had stalked his prey on the frozen wastelands north of Pond Inlet, one of Canada's most isolated Inuit communities deep inside the Arctic Circle. His dog team picked up the scent of an eight-foot adult male and they hurtled over the ice: the hunt was on.

"It was one of those beautiful Arctic days," recalled Mr Warner. "We'd had about 14 hours of sunlight and were completely surrounded by nature. The moment of death comes quickly for the bear. You might track one for days through the ice but a single shot to the heart kills it instantly."

For wealthy modern-day trophy hunters, bagging a polar bear is the ultimate kill. Fourteen days in harsh conditions, requiring dog-sleds, Inuit guides and a heated tent camp, does not come cheap: the minimum bill comes to $35,000 (£24,000).

Mr Warner is the man who helps them do it. Earlier this week, the 45-year-old Canadian, whose company Adventure Northwest is based in Yellowknife, sent this season's first group of hunters north to Pond Inlet, where they will track and kill up to six bears. "This is probably the toughest hunt you can ever do," he said. "The weather conditions are appalling and it takes a huge amount of patience. You're living in the Arctic where it can drop to -50C at night and everything is done with sled dogs. It's incredibly gruelling.

"This year we have a lot of Mexicans and Americans but you get hunters from Europe, mainly Norwegians and Poles. They are just genuine, ordinary folk with a lot of cash. They respect the animals enormously."

There are few animals more symbolic of the perils of climate change than the polar bear, which faces destruction as the Arctic sea ice melts away – the bears starve or drown because the distances they have to swim to find prey become too vast. Yet every year scores of wealthy hunters from around the world pay tens of thousands of dollars to travel into the frozen Arctic and bag themselves a coveted polar bear hide.

Canada, home to about 60 per cent of the world's 22,000 polar bears, is the only one of the five polar bear "range states" which allows outsiders to hunt them as a trophy sport. America, Greenland and Russia only allow their native Arctic populations to kill a quota each year whilst Norway has outlawed stalking altogether.

"I don't enjoy killing animals but I enjoy the hunt," said Mr Warner. "People find that difficult to understand but for me there is no paradox."

The kill quotas – known as "tags" – are also allotted for Canada's Inuit communities, many of whom choose to legally sell them onto outsiders willing to part with enough cash.

"Those 20 bears are going to get killed one way or another because the Inuits depend on them for food during the winter," Mr Warner insisted. "So it shouldn't really matter whether it is the indigenous population that is shooting them or outsiders."

When the animal is killed, usually with a shot to the heart just behind the bear's fore leg, the Inuits use everything apart from the liver, which contains toxic levels of vitamin A and has to be buried.

Most hunters are then allowed to take their polar bear hides back to their own country, so long as they have the completed paperwork. Last year the US banned the importation of polar bear hides but most countries, including Britain, place no restrictions on the skins.

Mr Warner reports that his business has been hit by the US restrictions. "The American ban on importing polar bear skins has definitely hit the Inuit communities hard," he said. "You're not going to part with thousands of dollars if you can't bring your trophy back."

The latest US-led scientific surveys suggest that up to two-thirds of all polar bears could be lost by 2050 – bringing the sustainability of hunting into question. Tackling the issue has been unpalatable for host governments because of the hunts' traditional role and ongoing economic importance in Inuit life. As the mercury rises, the fates of ursus maritimus, Mr Warner and the Inuit hunters will become ever more precariously intertwined.

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UNEP to observe Earth Hour in support of action on climate change

UNEP 20 Mar 09;

Nairobi, 20 March 2009 — The United Nations will observe Earth Hour on Saturday, 28 March at its Headquarters in New York and at other UN facilities around the world including the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) offices in Nairobi, Kenya.

It is part of an effort to mobilize global support for a new UN agreement to address climate change when governments meet in Copenhagen in December.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called Earth Hour "a way for the citizens of the world to send a clear message. They want action on climate change."

"It promises to be the largest demonstration of public concern about climate change ever attempted. People will be telling their representatives to seal a deal in Copenhagen, a deal at the climate change talks that will protect people and the planet," he said.

Earth Hour, launched two years ago in Australia by the WWF, the global conservation organization, calls for people, communities and cities to turn off their non-essential lights for one hour starting at 8:30 p.m. local time. The symbolic effort will be observed by more than 1,000 cities and close to a billion people this year.

The UN will be joining many other landmarks around the world in turning off its lights at its New York Headquarters and at other locations.

Secretary-General Ban said the deal that emerges from Copenhagen must be ambitious, fair and effective, and based on sound science.

"We are on a dangerous path," he said. "Our planet is warming. We must change our ways. We need green growth that benefits all communities. We need sustainable energy for a more climate-friendly, prosperous world. This is the path of the future. We must walk it together."

Earth Hour occurs the day before the first round of crucial UN negotiations this year on the new climate change agreement is set to begin in Bonn, Germany. The negotiations, which will take place from 29 March to 8 April, will be the first of three sessions leading up to the Copenhagen Climate Change summit in December.

The Earth Hour event will take place one week after the vernal equinox—when night and day are the same duration in both hemispheres—which ensures that it will be nighttime for all people, wherever they are at 8:30 in the evening.

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Earth's Future: Scary Ozone Scenario Thwarted

LiveScience 20 Mar 09;

If 193 nations hadn't agreed in 1989 to ban the chemicals that eat up the Earth's protective ozone layer, the world would have been a much different place later this century, with nearly two-thirds of the ozone layer gone and the ozone hole a permanent fixture over Antarctica, a new simulation shows.

Sunburns would occur in a matter of minutes and skin cancer-causing radiation would soar.

Ozone is the Earth's natural sunscreen, absorbing and blocking most of the incoming ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun and protecting life from the DNA-damaging rays.

The gas is naturally created and replenished by a photochemical reaction in the upper atmosphere where UV rays break oxygen molecules (O2) into individual atoms that then recombine into three-part molecules of ozone (O3).

As it is moved around the globe by upper level winds, ozone is slowly depleted by naturally occurring atmospheric gases. It is a system in natural balance.

But chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) - invented in 1928 as refrigerants and as inert, or non-reacting, carriers for chemical sprays - upset that balance.

Researchers discovered in the 1970s and 1980s that while CFCs are inert at Earth's surface, they are quite reactive in the stratosphere (6 to 31 miles altitude, or 10 to 50 kilometers), where roughly 90 percent of the planet's ozone accumulates.

UV radiation causes CFCs and similar bromine compounds in the stratosphere to break up into elemental chlorine and bromine that readily destroy ozone molecules. Worst of all, such ozone depleting substances can reside for several decades in the stratosphere before breaking down.

In the 1980s, ozone-depleting substances opened a wintertime "hole" over Antarctica, which served as the impetus for the 1989 Montreal Protocol, which banned CFCs.

The United States signed on to the original Montreal Protocol agreement, as did many other countries, including China, India, Iran and Brazil.

"The regulation pre-supposed that a lack of action would lead to severe ozone depletion, with consequent severe increases of solar UV radiation levels at the Earth's surface," said Paul Newman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Goddard and his colleagues used computer simulations to show "what might have been" if Montreal Protocol had never been put in place.

The team used a computer model that simulates the circulation of the Earth's atmosphere and takes into account how changing levels of ozone affect that circulation. They increased the emission of CFCs and similar compounds by 3 percent per year, a rate about half the growth rate for the early 1970s. Then they let the simulated world evolve from 1975 to 2065.

By the simulated year 2020, 17 percent of all ozone is depleted globally, as assessed by a drop in Dobson Units (DU), the unit of measurement used to quantify a given concentration of ozone. An ozone hole starts to form each year over the Arctic, which was once a place of prodigious ozone levels.

By 2040, in the scenario that is not actually happening, global ozone concentrations fall below 220 DU, the same levels that currently comprise the "hole" over Antarctica. (In 1974, globally averaged ozone was 315 DU.) The UV index in mid-latitude cities reaches 15 around noon on a clear summer day (a UV index of 10 is considered extreme today), giving a perceptible sunburn in about 10 minutes. Over Antarctica, the ozone hole becomes a year-round fixture.

In the 2050s, ozone levels in the stratosphere over the tropics collapse to near zero in a process similar to the one that creates the Antarctic ozone hole.

By the end of the model run in 2065, global ozone drops to 110 DU, a 67 percent drop from the 1970s. Year-round polar values hover between 50 and 100 DU (down from 300 to 500 in 1960). The intensity of UV radiation at Earth's surface doubles; at certain shorter wavelengths, intensity rises by as much as 10,000 times. Skin cancer-causing radiation soars.

"We simulated a world avoided," said Newman, "and it's a world we should be glad we avoided."

Some of the results of the simulation, detailed online in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, were unexpected, even to the scientists on the team.

"Our 'world avoided' calculation goes a little beyond what I thought would happen," said Goddard scientist and study team member Richard Stolarski. "The quantities may not be absolutely correct, but the basic results clearly indicate what could have happened to the atmosphere. And models sometimes show you something you weren't expecting, like the precipitous drop in the tropics."

The real world of CFC regulation has been somewhat kinder. Production of ozone-depleting substances was mostly halted about 15 years ago, though their abundance is only beginning to decline because the chemicals can reside in the atmosphere for 50 to 100 years. The peak abundance of CFCs in the atmosphere occurred around 2000, and has decreased by roughly 4 percent to date.

Stratospheric ozone has been depleted by 5 to 6 percent at middle latitudes, but has somewhat rebounded in recent years. The largest recorded Antarctic ozone hole was recorded in 2006.

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The Big Question: Does an impending shortage of vital resources threaten catastrophe?

Ed Howker, The Independent 20 Mar 09;

Why are we asking this now?

The Government's appointed Chief Scientist and latter-day Nostradamus, Professor John Beddington, has predicted that within 20 years the world could face "a perfect storm" of food, energy and water shortages that will create a crisis of unprecedented proportions. Yesterday, in a speech to the Sustainable Development UK conference, the Prof Beddington predicted that food and energy demand will grow by 50 per cent and water supplies 30 per cent greater than current ones will be required by 2030. "There's not going to be a complete collapse," he said, "but things will start to get really worrying if we don't tackle these problems" – chief among them that the global population will grow to 8.3 billion by 2030. "This is a very gloomy picture," he concluded.

What motivated this alarming outburst?

Prof Beddington claims that "the reason for saying all this is that if we are actually going to get science and technology in place to address the issues, we should do it now". He says he is particularly concerned that the recent collapse in oil and commodity prices, along with global recession, will encourage conservation issues to fall off the agenda. Worse, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of capital expenditure by big oil firms, invested in research into alternative energy sources, has been cut back in these hard times. He warned: "We can't afford to be complacent. Just because the high prices have dropped doesn't mean we can relax."

He also pointed out that today international food reserves are at a 50-year low, leading to price volatility, and that our strategies for storing and producing food have flaws which, by 2030, may well become fatal for large sections of the population who will starve. His concerns about water supplies, meanwhile, are echoed by the United Nations Environmental Programme which predicts widespread shortages across Africa, Europe and Asia by 2025 when the amount of water available per head of the population is expected to decline sharply.

This all sounds pretty depressing. What about climate change?

There's no escaping this. Climate issues play a crucial role in Prof Beddington's "perfect storm" thesis. In the first instance climate change will have a transformative effect on the shape of the world. There is already melting of the tropical glaciers and significant decrease in the Arctic ice cover. On Wednesday some scientists at the Royal Society voiced concerns that the Arctic could be free of ice by the summer of 2030. "These issues really have to be addressed in combination," concludes Prof Beddington. "You can't address the food security issue if you ignore water or climate change. Similarly, you can't address climate change if you ignore the fact that the world needs to feed itself and actually use energy supplies."

How will all this effect the UK?

In essence, Britain is relatively lucky, with our temperate climate we are unlikely to suffer dramatic food shortages but if we do not create better food reserves we are likely to suffer volatile prices. We might also expect to see greater rainfall, higher temperatures and more pests. These climate changes could, however, mean that northern Europe, Britain included, will become a new key centre for food production. Further afield the picture looks bleaker with shortages and climate change affecting the poorest countries in the world most dramatically. In Africa, for example, there are predictions that between 75 and 250 million people could be effected, especially in those countries that rely on farming. Some estimates suggest that some African harvests could yield half what they currently do by 2020. Furthermore, the UN estimate that up to 50 million people could become "environmentally displaced" by the effects of climate change – putting more pressure on already over-populated cities.

So what can we do to save ourselves from this doom-laden scenario?

By 2030 there are some obvious steps we should take which would include establishing greater co-ordinating efforts to clean water, and save it; to establish better food reserves and global energy security. But there is fierce debate about how best to achieve these ends. To give just one example, governments are increasingly keen to create new nuclear reactors, which they say are provide clean and green energy. Some argue the reverse – that the amount of energy required to mine the Earth's limited uranium reserves is massive, while plans for next-generation "fast-breeder" reactors, though more efficient, will create significant amounts of plutonium waste.

There are other debates over genetically-modified crops, and perfected species which some label "Frankenstein Foods" but which may hold the key to growing more food on less land. Only yesterday the "Stress Tolerant Rice for Africa and South Asia" project announced pioneering research in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea and Nigeria of 80 varieties of rice designed to survive in the iron-rich soils of West Africa. We must settle these issues quickly if we are to find a way to thrive in the long term.

And what about in the short term?

We have already seen the ravages caused by spikes in food costs. In 2007, global wheat prices rose by 77 per cent. One observation made by Prof Stephen Hopper, director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, is that the world relies too heavily on a tiny number of key species of plants for food. Last month he urged British farmers to enlarge the range of crops they grow to safeguard future supplies. There is also a growing body of evidence that biofuel crops may actually cause food prices to rise.

What about politicians? Can they help?

Well, the jury is out until G20 and the next international summit on climate change in Copenhagen this winter. But there are some rapid political changes that can be made. Prof Beddington believes that apart from national scientific advisers, the InterGovernemental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Scientists at all the world's leading universities and, of course, the UN, there is an urgent need for "brutal" scientific advice from nominated scientists at an European level. This might help settle some of those issues.

Isn't this suggestion just more 'jobs for the climate change boys'?

President Obama has placed a great deal of importance on science, appointing three leading scientists to his advisory council as well as leading scientists like Steven Chu at the Department of Energy, and Jane Lubchenco at the Oceonagraphic and Atmospheric Administration. This contrasts with the European Commission which has no formal adviser. Among member states only the British and Irish government's have Chief Scientific Advisors.

Should we be scared?

Even Prof Beddington admits that his predictions are "bleak" – crises in climate, food, energy and water could indeed conspire against us, but there are a range of "externalities" he does not consider. These include technological advances in the fields of information systems, battery production, and alternative energy supplies – which will lead to massive efficiency savings across all sectors of the global economy. Similarly, human behaviour – from plastic bag use to car-emissions – are already helping to save energy and more will soon follow. But neither of these factors play a role in the "perfect storm" hypothesis.

Will we be living in a dystopian nightmare world within 20 years?

Yes...

* By 2030 we may lack about 50 per cent of the food and energy we need to sustain everyone on the planet

* Millions of people may have been displaced from their homes and nations by water shortages

* It is more than conceivable that critical shortages of resources will lead to global instability and war

No...

* Don't take scientists' scare tactics too seriously. By overstating their concerns, they receive more funding

* A raft of technological advances and efficiency savings will ensure that the worst aspects of climate change are ameliorated

* We will certainly not become extinct – nature always finds a way

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Hong Kong calls for transparency on eco impact of planned oil refinery

The proposed Guangdong Nansha refinery could be one of the biggest oil plants in Asia, but Hong Kong lawmakers and environmentalists are protesting over web censorship about its negative impact
Jonathan Watts, guardian.co.uk 20 Mar 09;

Hong Kong lawmakers are demanding greater transparency on the environmental impact of a huge new petrochemical project that is allegedly being protected from scrutiny by Chinese government censors.

The Guangdong Nansha refinery will be one of the biggest oil plants in Asia if it goes ahead, but Hong Kong is being kept in the dark about the approval process despite its close proximity.

Unease in the territory and surrounding regions has been heightened by reports that mainland censors are blocking negative news and comments about the project's environmental impact assessment.

According to local media, the proposed $5bn refinery and oil storage centre will be the biggest joint investment project on the mainland. Its main partners, Sinopec and Kuwait Oil Company, say the plant will have a capacity to handle 300,000 barrels of oil per day.

Environmentalists warn that the planned site at the mouth of the Pearl River is an ecologically sensitive wetland. Before construction goes ahead, they and the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department are calling for close scrutiny and public consultation about the possible consequences.

But debate on the subject appears to have been curtailed. Chinese internet sites are buzzing with what is purportedly a leaked blocking order from the propaganda authorities, informing website managers to set keyword filters so the subject of environmental impact assessment of this project is not discussed.

Officials in Sinopec and the environment protection bureau in Guangzhou - the capital of the mainland's Guangdong province -

declined to comment.

Several websites related to this topic appeared to have been blocked yesterday, but if there was a ban it was far from comprehensive. Old stories on the subject remained online on the Xinhua and Guangzhou Evening websites.

The Hong Kong legislator, Audrey Yu, said she was aware of the blocking order and called on the mainland authorities to be more transparent.

"The EIA report should be made public so that those in Hong Kong can also have access and respond to the issues raised. However there appears to be a shroud of mystery covering up the details. I understand that the contents of the EIA will not be made public and the consultation will also be limited in time," she said.

Greenpeace called for greater transparency, noting that part of the problem was the different systems of governance on the mainland and the territory. "There should definitely be more information available to the public," said Edward Chan, the group's campaign manager in Hong Kong. "Hong Kong is nearer to Nansha than Guangzhou, but because of the one-country two-systems arrangement, Hong Kong people are not involved in the approval process."

Other environmental NGOs said the Nansha project was being quietly opposed by neighbouring regions, but would probably be forced through by the local government and the state on the grounds of economic development and energy security.

Wen Bo of the Pacific Environment NGO said it would be no surprise if the authorities blocked debate about the issue. "It has become routine to block reports on projects that will generate national attention," he said.

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Wind of change: How environmental jobs can help boost the UK economy

Steve McCormack, The Independent 19 Mar 09;

Amid the hanging gloom of recession there are occasional shafts of optimism. One of these is the evidence that careers in the environmental sector are showing some resilience in the downturn.

This is due in part to an acknowledgment of the business case for healthy environmental practices. Senior figures in the sector also point out a clear political lead coming from Whitehall, which is consistent with their own optimistic view. "The Government's low-carbon strategy sends the message that the new green economy will help move the UK out of recession," says Martin Baxter, deputy chief executive of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA), whose 14,000 members work as environment professionals across industry.

Evidence of the Government's priority in this area came when Peter Mandelson, the Business Secretary, announced a £2bn package of support for the British car industry, a key element of which was earmarked to help manufacturers develop cars with engines consuming far less carbon, or even none at all. In making the announcement, Lord Mandelson made clear his belief that this component will be key to the industry's future: "The steps we are taking will help companies speed their way to becoming greener, more innovative and more productive. This is the route to securing jobs for the long term."

The NHS, which employs one-and-a-half-million people, also recently announced a major campaign of carbon footprint reduction, which will be designed and driven by in-house and contracted environmental professionals.

These major public sector commitments bolster Baxter's own optimism, which stems partly from the knowledge that IEMA, as a body, continues to thrive. "We are still growing as an organisation, with 650 new members joining since January," he explains. Of these new recruits, about 80 per cent work for commercial businesses or are consultants operating in the sector, with the balance in the public sector or at academic institutions.

Of course, Baxter concedes that the credit crunch has hammered new capital developments and delayed numerous infrastructure projects, which in turn has radically reduced the amount of environmental assessment work required, such as cleaning up contaminated land.

"However," he says, "any lack of activity in this area is being offset by much more demand for climate-change and carbon-reduction services." Baxter has noticed more firms looking at carbon reduction down their supply chains, and ensuring that new products are resilient and relevant in the low-carbon market.

"Overall," he concludes, "the sector is performing well compared to other parts of the economy."

And this analysis is confirmed by those trying to place people in jobs. "There isn't as much of a downturn in the environmental sector as in most other markets," explains Adam Whitney, a partner of Evergreen Resources, one of the longest established recruitment agencies specialising in the sector. Among the categories of job where Evergreen continues to see a strong recruitment demand are renewable energy – marked growth in the last year or so, says Whitney – and positions demanding knowledge of sustainability issues for the building sector.

Here, Evergreen is seeing increasing demand for people with relevant sustainability qualifications and knowledge of the entire life cycle of a building. Among the most commonly sought-after qualifications are those allied to the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, which is gaining currency in the property development and management field.

Another specific growth area observed by Whitney is for people with up-to-date and detailed knowledge of how to minimise the harmful environmental impact of electrical and electronic goods. Since 2007, new laws – enshrined in the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive – place fresh demands on business. These regulations impact on almost every single employer, given the ubiquity of electronic equipment, and, for large organisations, it makes sense to have a dedicated in-house member of staff carrying the responsibility.

Other recruitment firms, however, are more cautious about the degree to which the environment sector is coping with the recession. Chris Kiernan, from Cobalt, the recruitment firm that operates in the UK, Germany, Middle East and Australia, identifies a "significant negative impact" on the environmental jobs market resulting from the slump in property development and company mergers. But he does see an area where recruitment remains healthy: "It is the legal and compliance environmental work that remains strongest where employers are making sure that corporate activity, whatever its nature, remains within the environmental boundary guidelines."

Many of these jobs are driven by the arrival of, or tightening up of, legislation originating in the EU. An example of the growing number of businesses benefiting from this development is Westlakes Scientific Consulting, based in Cumbria. Around half of its 70 scientists and technicians work within the environmental sector.

Westlakes works with and for businesses and public organisations in a range of areas, including monitoring of air and water quality, land contamination and gas emissions from landfill sites. At a current air quality project in Birmingham, for example, working as a consultant to the local authority, Westlakes has installed measuring equipment in the city centre that transmits real-time data on air quality back to Cumbria, where experts carry out and analyse detailed modelling of future air conditions. Conclusions based on this modelling are then sent back to Birmingham to be used in planning applications – a new factory or main road, for example, where effects on air quality are a factor. The company provides similar services to large industrial complexes, which can be comparable to small towns and where air quality, for employees, visitors and neighbours alike is of growing importance.

Westlakes has taken on six new junior staff this year – at graduate or Masters level – on the back of the firm winning two new large pieces of work involving the long-term monitoring of industrial sites.

Steve Bradley, chief executive of Westlakes and a fluvial geomorphologist by academic discipline, displays qualified optimism about the employment picture when looking at the sector as a whole. "Right at the moment things are holding up," says Bradley. He also endorses the view that devoting manpower and resources to sustainability-related projects will likely contribute to bringing about an economic upturn: "It's right and proper to get the best long-term value out of any capital investment, so I can see a lot of merit in focusing on green jobs."

Bradley's view is echoed by smaller operators in the field, such as Janet Shepherd, an IEMA member and principal consultant at EcoAgility, the environmental consultancy. She says she is yet to feel any adverse effects from the recession: "Demand is not reducing. In fact, it would appear that, as small- and medium-sized businesses are keener to get value for money, they are turning to smaller, independent consultancies with lower overheads and lower charges."

'I feel I am contributing to the solutions'

Lucy Candlin is a director of Future Perfect, an environmental consultancy. She is a chartered environmentalist and IEMA fellow. Candlin has a degree in botany and ecology, and a Masters in landscape management. She set up the firm, together with her two co-directors, five years ago. Candlin has a background in local government, NGOs and technical consultancy.

"I do a range of strategic risk management for a variety of organisations. I recently did a waste electronics compliance review at a small recycling company with three or four employees; but we also work with companies of the size of BP and Shell.

On a typical site visit, for climate-change accounting considerations, I might look at what emissions the firm is declaring and how they are ensuring the declarations are right and that they keep to agreed levels. We check that gas flow meters are calibrated properly, look at the process by which they take gas samples, how they analyse the samples and interpret the results.

I enjoy the work because I come from an ecological, conservationist background, and I believe in the need for sustainability, and the need for mankind to live within the capacity of the planet; I feel that I am contributing to the solutions through increasing awareness and controls.

Are sustainability concerns becoming embedded in corporate thinking? I'm open minded, but like to err on the positive side, because I think there are some really good companies out there who understand that risk management must encompass non-financial issues. Failure to consider corporate social responsibility and sustainability can come back and bite you further down the line."

'My job is to focus on the real challenges'

Dr Ben Vivian is head of communication and corporate social responsibility at Aggregate Industries, the building materials and road surfacing firm. He has an academic background in geography and has worked in a number of roles, including a period as a technical advisor for a law firm's environment team.

"I don't come from a communications background. I see myself as a physical environmental scientist who is keen to be heard, and working in this role is an exciting opportunity because I have the authority to take communications on environmental issues in a certain direction.

I have responsibility for the staff magazine, the website and the intranet. I am also one of the main points of contact between Aggregate Industries and the outside world.

My job's about being an environmental professional in a position to focus on the real challenges and take us forward as a society, rather than focusing on the negatives. People don't like being told what to do, and even less what not to do.

The firm is trying to shift from being a purely extractive industrial business to being one which promotes better construction methods, and a better built environment, which lasts longer and uses materials more efficiently.

We try to show our customers what they can achieve if they do things differently. For example, if they use what we call 'thin-surfacing' – a layer of asphalt on a road surface, manufactured to a high specification – the environment will benefit because less raw material will be used and the road will be a quieter one. Although it is more expensive, the gains are worth it."

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A high-tech solution to the landfill problem in the UK

Mark Hunter, Times Online 20 Mar 09;

In a giant green shed on the site of a former steelworks in South Yorkshire, two rocket-shaped cylinders twist and steam like colossal pressure cookers as they churn through hopper-loads of household rubbish. Council lorries arrive, loaded with stinking black bin liners. Others leave with gleaming piles of recyclable tins and plastics.

But this is not a conventional recycling plant; all the waste here is the unsorted black-bag variety. Nor is it a mass burn incinerator, the fashionable alternative to landfill.

The shed is owned by Sterecycle, a company that uses steam heat from autoclaves to turn unsorted waste into a mixture of organic biomass and non-organic recyclable materials. The plant has permission to double its capacity to 200,000 tonnes of waste a year. About 50 per cent will be turned into biomass, 20 per cent will be recycled and the remainder will be sent to landfill. The company plans to build more plants elsewhere in the UK.

It is an approach to waste disposal that may help local authorities out of a hole. Of the 28.5 million tonnes of municipal waste collected in England last year, 54.4 per cent ended up rotting in landfill, leaching toxins into the groundwater and releasing greenhouse gases. There are about 500 landfill sites and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates that all will be full by 2020.

Meanwhile, local authorities face increasingly punitive taxes and fines for landfill use. They are fined more than £150 per tonne for exceeding their landfill allowances. Hence their scramble to divert domestic rubbish anywhere but landfill. They have several options. We recycle or compost about 34 per cent of our waste.

This is, however, still short of the EU target of recycling 50 per cent of waste by 2020. The most popular alternative to landfill is mass burn incineration (MBI), which takes about 11 per cent of municipal waste. Its advantage is that it can recover energy from the burning rubbish. However, incinerators have an image problem with the public and are slow and costly to build.

This is where cheaper, more flexible technologies come in. Alternatives to MBI include gasification, biotreatment and, now, the autoclave process pioneered by Sterecycle.

Duncan Grierson, the chief executive of Sterecycle, said: “The autoclave process takes place in an enclosed building, so we don't have the Nimby problem that incinerators have. We got planning permission for this place in just four months and it took ten weeks to get permission to double capacity. Some incinerators have been trying for ten years and still haven't got planning permission.”

The Sterecycle plant is a fascinating mix of new technology and old. The two autoclaves form the centrepiece, using steam heat and pressure to turn the organic waste into a fibrous biomass material. This is shaken out through a cylindrical sieve known as a trommel. The company sells this biomass as a soil conditioner for land remediation projects and there are plans to use it as a green energy fuel.

With the biomass removed, the steam-cleaned, non-organic fraction of the waste travels through a series of mega-magnets, reverse magnets and blowers that sort the plastics from the metals. Wood and masonry are picked out by hand. At the far end of the plant there is a skip containing huge lumps of rock and concrete.

Sterecycle takes waste from Rotherham, Doncaster and Barnsley councils. Adrian Gabriel, waste strategy manager for Rotherham Borough Council, said: “We have looked at a number of options. Of those, Sterecycle seemed to be the most favourable and so far we are very happy with it.

“It's still a new technology, so we have begun with 75,000 tonnes a year and then plan to ramp that up to 150,000 tonnes from 2010. Farther down the line, it's likely that we will be using a number of different options including Sterecycle, the Sheffield energy recovery facility [an MBI] and with landfill still part of the equation.”

Mr Grierson agrees that there is a place for a range of technologies in Britain's drive away from landfill. He said: “This wouldn't have been possible ten years ago, because we would have been competing with landfill and back then nothing was cheaper than burying rubbish. But landfill isn't the cheap option any more, so that allows us to set prices that are attractive to local councils.”

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Internet could become environmental watchdog

Alister Doyle, Reuters 19 Mar 09;

OSLO (Reuters) - The Internet could provide an early warning system for environmental damage, imitating an online watchdog that gives alerts about outbreaks of disease, scientists said on Thursday.

An automated trawl of blogs, videos, online news and other sources could yield bits of information to fill in a bigger picture of problems such as global warming, pollution, deforestation or over-fishing, they said.

"We're facing huge environmental challenges ... But we don't have good monitoring systems," said Victor Galaz of Stockholm University who was lead author of the study with colleagues in Britain, the United States and Sweden.

"With the Internet there are pretty good ways to get that information. Nobody has exploited that really," he told Reuters. Better environmental information could help governments to act.

Online statistics about a surge in fish prices in an Asian port, for instance, might hint at wider problems of over-fishing. Or a blog about an insect pest outbreak in a Nordic forest might fit a pattern tied to global warming.

The study pointed to successes by the Canadian-developed Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), which trawls news wires and web sites for information about diseases.

"GPHIN currently picks up the first hints of about 40 percent of the 200-250 outbreaks subsequently investigated and verified by the WHO (World Health Organization) each year," they wrote in the journal Frontiers in the Ecology and the Environment.

Some online environmental monitoring networks already exist, such as birdwatchers recording sightings. Many species are shifting their ranges in what may be a sign of climate change.

The aim of trawling the Internet would be to "enlist the services of observers who don't know they are observers," said Tim Daw of the University of East Anglia in England, who was among the authors.

Coral reefs, which may die if sea temperatures rise, could be an example where scattered observations in Australia, Hawaii or the Caribbean might help put together a bigger puzzle, he told Reuters.

"Scuba divers, either recreational or professional, often put reports in blogs or other communications," he said.

One problem would be to filter out unreliable sources to avoid an information junkyard. Compiling information might perhaps be done by a U.N. agency.

(Editing by Charles Dick)

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Fresh water in Asia a challenge

Yahoo News 20 Mar 09;

ISTANBUL (AFP) – Burgeoning population growth, poor resource management and floods and droughts amplified by climate change hamper efforts by Asian countries to provide clean water and decent sanitation, the World Water Forum heard Friday.

Ministers from major Asian nations, in a side event at the seven-day arena in Istanbul, admitted they faced a major challenge in trying to meet surging demand for freshwater while at the same time conserve it.

Chinese Water Minister Chen Lei said his country's population, the largest in the world, had to grapple with water wealth that was unevenly distributed and sometimes sparse.

The mismatch "gives rise to intensive conflicts between socio-economic development, water resources and the water environment," he said.

The Asia-Pacific occupies 61 percent of the world's population, but its water resources only account for one third of the global total, according to a report issued at the meeting.

Half a billion people in the region still lack safe drinking water and 1.8 billion are without access to basic sanitation. Of the available sources of renewable water, 79 percent is used up by agriculture.

In some of Asia's breadbaskets, such as the Punjab in India and the North China plain, unreplenished extraction is causing water tables to fall by between two and three metres (6.5 to 6.75 feet) per year, while the glaciers in the Himalayas are shrinking faster than in any part of the world.

All this amounts to a grim outlook for farming, food security and access to safe water and sewerage, the report said.

"At its most dire, the region's water circumstances set the scene for tragedies and unfathomable suffering on a daily basis," it warned.

Bangladesh Water Minister Ramesh Chandra Sen said his country faced "daunting challenges."

"Every year, abundance of water during the monsoon causes disasters like floods and river bank erosions, and scarcity of freshwater during the dry season causes salinity ingression, drought," and other problems, he said.

Added to that was contamination of groundwater, drawn from shallow tubewells, by naturally occurring arsenic, he said.

Health experts say as many as 70 million people in India and Bangladesh are exposed to excessive concentrations of arsenic and fluoride. Some experts describe it baldly as the biggest mass poisoning in history.

Indonesia's minister of public works, Djoko Kirmanto, said countries in Southeast Asia were already beginning to be affected by climate change, which was affecting rainfall patterns and harvests.

"Recently, severe water-related disasters, such as floods, droughts, tsunami, rainstorms, landslides, water-borne diseases and epidemic have occurred in high intensity," he said.

Ministers outlined national water programmes, in water supply and conservation and flood control, and promised to work in regional fora to address competition for water supplies.

China's Chen defended his country against accusations of water misuse and pollution.

Greens point to problems of over-extraction of aquifers and river pollution, and say the Three Gorges dam and programmes to divert water towards the dry north of the country could unleash ecological disaster.

"Over the past 30 years, China has sustained a nearly 10 percent annual economic growth rate at a one percent annual growth rate of water use," Chen said.

"By 2020, when an all-round, well-off society becomes a reality in China, the Chinese people will be safely protected from floods, have access to safe and clean drinking water in both urban and rural areas (and) enjoy (a) remarkably improved water environment."

The World Water Forum, wrapping up on Sunday, has drawn around 27,000 experts, policymakers and activists to round tables, seminars and debates on the worsening problems of freshwater.

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Diplomacy key to defusing row over 'Blue Gold'

Richard Ingham And Jerome Cartillier Yahoo News 20 Mar 09;

ISTANBUL (AFP) – From South Asia and to the Middle East, from Australia to California, rivers and aquifers that cross boundaries have become potent sources of friction.

Farmers squabble with city dwellers over irrigation rights while countries in river basins complain about pollution or water theft from upstream, as their neighbours build dams to siphon off flow from the watershed.

"Conflicts about water can occur at all scales," the UN warned ahead of the World Water Forum, which winds up in Istanbul on Sunday.

"Local-level conflicts are commonplace in irrigation systems, where farmers vie for limited resources," it said in a massive document, the third World Water Development Report.

"Conflicts also occur at the scale of large national river basins -- multistate Indian rivers such as the Cauvery and the Krishna -- or transnational river basins, such as the Jordan and the Nile."

"Water wars" for the time belong in the realm of conjecture.

In more than half a century, there have been only 37 cross-border disputes about water that have led to some form of violence, while some 200 treaties on water-sharing have been negotiated and signed.

Some of these initiatives have worked well.

They include the 1960 Indo-Pakistani treaty on sharing the water of the Indus, which has survived two wars between the two neighbours; the Mekong Committee, which has functioned since 1957 and swapped data throughout the Vietnam War; and the Nile Basin Initiative, launched in 1999 gathering all 10 riparian, or river-bank, states along the world's longest river.

But there are also treaties that remain a dead letter, especially in Africa, which has nearly a quarter of the world's cross-border river basins.

The risk of bloodshed over the stuff of life is a scenario taken seriously by many specialists.

Global warming may already be causing changes in rainfall and snowfall patterns, affecting river flow and groundwater recharge, and amplifying water shortages in countries that are already under stress, say scientists.

One of the feared trigger points is the Middle East, where Israel's policies of drawing water from the River Jordan and coastal aquifers are bitterly resented in the West Bank and Gaza.

In a message to the World Water Forum on Thursday, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmud Abbas accused Israel of flouting international law.

Palestinians had four times less water per capita than Israelis living in Israel, a consumption level that fell far below the World Health Organization's guidelines for minimum daily access to water, he said.

"Palestinians should not be forced to wait until a peace agreement is reached before (they are) allowed (their) rightful share of the transboundary water resources," he said.

Flavia Loures, senior programme officer for international law and policy on freshwater at the World Wildlife Fund, said governments urgently needed to set in place better mechanisms for resolving water disputes.

"We really need a stable cooperation now, before we come to the point where, due to climate change, competition for water resources becomes much stronger," she said.

Loures said a solution could be found in a UN pact that was signed in 1997 by more than 100 countries -- China, Turkey and Burundi demurred.

The accord, called the Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, requires parties to pledge "equitable and reasonable" use of water resources that straddle an international boundary.

But only 16 countries have ratified the convention so far, and 35 are needed before it becomes international law. France this month announced its intention to ratify. Loures said it was possible that the convention could become international law in 2011.

A European diplomat, though, said some countries, notably China, which have a river watershed, baulked at the convention.

"They fear it will entail interference in their internal affairs," he said.

Millions wasted on Africa water projects: research
Yahoo News 20 Mar 09;

LONDON (AFP) – Hundreds of millions of dollars have been wasted on rural water projects in Africa because the donors and aid agencies that built them ignored maintenance, a new report claimed Friday.

London-based research organisation the International Institute for Environment and Development said about 50,000 water supply points across rural Africa had failed, representing a loss of 215 to 360 million US dollars.

"It is not enough to drill a well and walk away. Water projects need to support long-term maintenance needs and engage local communities. Without this, it is like throwing money down the drain," said report author Jamie Skinner.

The report says that of the 52 deep water borehole and supply systems built by the charity Caritas in Senegal's Kaolack region since the 1980s, only 33 are still functioning.

It also quotes research by the Global Water Initiative, which is backed by numerous non-governmental organisations (NGOs), showing 58 percent of deep water boreholes in northern Ghana need repair.

Of 43 such boreholes in western Niger, 13 are abandoned, 18 stop working for at least three days once a year, and 12 do not work for at least three days more than three times a year.

"Every day that a borehole does not provide safe water, people are obliged to drink from unclean pools and rivers, exposing them to water-borne diseases," Skinner said, urging a change in the way NGOs and donors approach the problem.

Patrick Nicholson, head of communications at Catholic development charity Caritas, said it was impossible to guarantee that all the boreholes set up with the help of his organisation were still functioning.

But he said Caritas focused on setting up such projects with local people, and ensuring they had a stake in their ongoing maintenance.

"Whatever project we are working on, we are trying to make sure that it has a long-term impact on the community and that it survives," he told AFP.

"The people who build these boreholes are not us, they are those communities. From that point onwards they have a stake in ensuring that they are maintained."

The IIED report was released as nations meet in Istabul for the week-long World Water Forum and ahead of the United Nation's World Water Day on March 22.

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Global Warming May Lead to More West Nile Virus in the US

A new, large survey of the mosquito-borne illness links it to increased rainfall, which may be a result of climate change

Crystal Gammon Scientific American 20 Mar 09;

The higher temperatures, humidity and rainfall associated with climate change have intensified outbreaks of West Nile virus infections across the United States in recent years, according to a study published this week.

One of the largest surveys of West Nile virus cases to date links warming weather patterns and increasing rainfall--both projected to accelerate with global warming--to outbreaks of the mosquito-borne disease across 17 states from 2001 to 2005.

The authors predict the pattern will only get worse. "If temperature and precipitation are influential in determining West Nile virus infection risk, such changes would likely increase the burden of this disease in coming decades," the authors note in the study, published online Monday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

In the study, Jonathan Soverow of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and colleagues at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children and the Harvard School of Public Health matched more than 16,000 confirmed West Nile cases in 17 states to local meteorological data.

The team found that warmer temperatures had the greatest effect on the virus' transmission to humans. Higher humidity, heavier rainstorms and increased precipitation were also tied to higher rates of West Nile virus infection, according to the study.

"A lot of the trends we see depend on local conditions," said Roger Nasci, an entomologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who studies vector-borne diseases but was not involved with the study. "West Nile virus is a very focal disease. It's not uniformly distributed across the U.S."

West Nile virus led to 43 deaths in 2008 in the United States. More than 1,300 infections were diagnosed last year, according to the CDC.

Humans can become infected if bitten by a mosquito carrying West Nile virus. Around 20 percent of infected people show symptoms of the disease, such as fever, headache and nausea. Of those, about one percent develop neurological symptoms such as numbness, convulsions and paralysis.

Warmer weather helps spread West Nile virus because it extends the length of the mosquito season, said Vicki Kramer, chief of the vector-borne disease section at the California Department of Public Health.

Higher temperatures also let mosquitoes reach biting age sooner and speed multiplication of the virus within insects, said Kramer. Thus in a warmer climate not only are there more biting mosquitoes, but those mosquitoes carry more copies of the West Nile virus, making them more likely to infect their human targets.

"It takes a while for the disease to build up," says Kramer. "That's why we see more cases in August than in June."

Rainfall's effects on mosquitoes and West Nile virus are more complicated, cautioned Bill Landesman, an ecologist at Rutgers University. For example, although their eggs need standing water to hatch, mosquito populations often flourish after a drought because mosquitoes can re-colonize faster than other insects.

"We're wrestling with this interplay of abiotic (physical) factors, mosquito populations and the West Nile virus," said Landesman, "and that sometimes makes things difficult to understand."
The new study by Soverow's team may help researchers make sense of some of these complex interactions.

For example, the study found that a single rainstorm resulting in at least two inches of rain could increase infection rates by 33 percent, while smaller storms did not. Heavy rainfall increases humidity, which can stimulate mosquitoes to bite; it also creates pools of water in which mosquitoes can breed.

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Q&A: Liquefied natural gas

BBC News 19 Mar 09;

The first ship carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) due in Wales will mark the culmination of one of the largest engineering projects of its kind.

The carrier Tembek is expected later on Friday at Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire.

It will supply a pipeline which is capable of carrying a fifth of the natural gas needed in the UK, which runs 196 miles (316km) across Wales into Gloucesterhsire, and which took three years to complete.

Here are the answers to some questions about LNG, and the significance of the project for the UK and its energy supplies.

What is liquefied natural gas?

LNG is a liquid form of the ordinary natural gas which we use in homes and industry. It is almost entirely methane that has been cooled to -162C in processing plants called "trains". At that temperature it becomes a liquid, reducing its volume by a ratio of 600:1. Large amounts of LNG can then be transported across the globe at atmospheric pressure in insulated tankers. LNG is colourless and odourless but also highly flammable. It is approximately 45% as dense as water. When it reaches its destination, the LNG is reheated, turned back into gas and then distributed through pipelines.

Where does the gas come from?

Natural gas fields are found in many countries across the world, often associated with other fossil fuel reserves, such as oil. LNG is currently being produced from natural gas fields in a number of countries, including Australia, Algeria, Indonesia, Trinidad, Nigeria and Qatar. South Hook at Milford Haven will be supplied with gas from the Qatar North field. Dragon will receive LNG from Algeria, Egypt, Trinidad and Malaysia.

This is a global business?

The great advantage of LNG is that gas can be traded over huge distances and is no longer fixed by the length and geography of pipelines. For instance, gas from Trinidad can be shipped to Europe - or Middle Eastern gas sold in Japan or South Korea. The industry is undergoing a major boom. International trade in LNG is growing at about twice the rate of pipeline gas. In the UK, natural gas is traded as a commodity through what's called the OCM system. Gas prices fluctuate in response to changing supply and demand. For instance, after a spell of very cold weather, demand will rise and the price of gas go up. In 2008 European wholesale gas prices reached a record high. Vast sums have been invested in LNG. The Qatar Gas II project which will supply the South Hook terminal is costing $13bn.

So what is been built at Milford Haven?

Special terminals are required to accept the large tankers. Two such terminals have been built in Milford Haven, which is a large deep water anchorage. They will be run by different consortia. The LNG will be offloaded at a jetty through pipes and stored in giant tanks where it remains at cryogenic temperatures. It is then re-gasified in a vapourising plant before leaving the terminal as gas in a pipeline.

The South Hook terminal is the largest operation and is a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum, Exxon Mobil and Total. The Dragon LNG terminal at nearby Waterston is owned by the shareholders BG Group, Petronas and 4Gas. Both these terminals have their own jetties, storage tanks and vapourisers. They will feed into a new 48" pipeline which has been constructed 316km across south Wales into Gloucestershire by the National Grid. This pipe then connects into the UK gas transmission system (the NTS) to be distributed around the country.

Is Milford Haven the only source of imported LNG in the UK?

No. An LNG facility was opened at the Isle of Grain in Kent as long ago as 1982. Initially this was designed to top up the UK gas supply at times of unusually high demand. Acting as a giant bunker, it liquefied spare North Sea gas into LNG and then vapourised it when needed. This facility has now been developed into the UK's first importation terminal, with a tanker jetty on the River Medway. The Isle of Grain already handles 10m tonnes of LNG a year, smaller than South Hook in Milford Haven (which will have a throughput of over 15m tonnes per annum - making it Europe's largest LNG terminal).

The Dragon terminal in Pembrokeshire is much smaller with the capacity to handle 2.2m tonnes of LNG a year. Between them, these three LNG terminals could provide around a third of the UK's gas supply at current demand levels. There is also a smaller LNG facility on Teeside which can handle up to 11m cubic metres a day. Gas is also stored as LNG at various sites around the UK including Avonmouth, Partington, Dynevor Arms in south Wales and Glen Mavis in Scotland.

Does the UK need LNG?

For many years, Britain has had its own natural gas supply, with off-shore fields in the North Sea and other sites including Morecambe Bay. The first gas was brought ashore in 1967. UK gas fields reached their peak of production around the year 2000 and are forecast to decline steeply over the next 20 years. In 2002, Britain became a net importer of gas. Currently the majority of imported gas comes from Norwegian gas fields.

The world's longest undersea pipeline runs between the Norwegian Sleipner gas field and the BP gas terminal at Easington on the Yorkshire coast. There is also a pipeline between Bacton in Norfolk and Zeebrugge, which is then linked to the European gas network. Without a replacement source of natural gas, the UK could face shortages in future years. The Russian gas company Gazprom has become a major supplier of natural gas in European markets but highly political disputes with Ukraine have led to fears over the reliability. The security of gas supplies has become a major international issue. The LNG industry believes it can fill the gap in the UK market.

Is it safe?

On the whole, the global LNG industry has an excellent safety record but there have been serious accidents including explosions and spillages. In 2004 there was a catastrophic blast at an LNG liquefaction facility at Skikda in Algeria, operated by the company Sonatrach. Twenty seven workers were killed and 77 seriously injured. Also in 2004, a pipeline carrying gas from an LNG terminal in the Belgian port of Zeebrugge exploded, killing 23 people. The new LNG terminals in the UK are subject to control by the Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) regulations.

Some residents living in and around Milford Haven are fearful of a potential accident. The local campaign group 'Safe Haven' points towards the Sea Empress disaster in February 1996 as an example of what can go wrong. The crude oil tanker lost an estimated 73,000 tonnes of its cargo after running aground on one of the reefs near the entrance to the Haven. Concerns have also been raised that the tankers, terminals and pipeline could be an attractive target to terrorists. The LNG tankers travelling from the Arabian Gulf have to travel through the Gulf of Aden - an area where piracy has become a major threat to shipping. In January a large liquid petroleum gas tanker was hijacked by Somali pirates.

What about the tankers?

There are around 230 LNG tankers operating across the world at the moment. They have double hulls for safety. Qatargas has recently built 50 new LNG tankers - 14 will be dedicated to the South Hook supply train. There are two sizes of these tankers - the Q-Flex and larger Q-Max tankers (the largest LNG tankers in the World). The Q-Flex tankers can carry 210,000 cubic metres of gas - the Q-Max tankers 260,000 cubic metres. The first tanker to deliver gas to Milford Haven will be the "Tembek" - a Q-Flex tanker.

Will it harm the environment?

Natural gas has been described as the cleanest fossil fuel - producing roughly half the CO2 emissions of coal per Btu of energy output. But it still a rich source of carbon dioxide. The main products of the combustion of natural gas are carbon dioxide and water vapour. Environmental groups say a proposed 2,000 Mw power station to be built by RWE npower at Pembroke, using LNG as fuel, would be one of the largest CO2 emission sources in the UK.

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