Environment – Page 31

The big melt: Antarctica's retreating ice may re-shape Earth

February 28, 2015 by Nasheman

by Luis Andres Henao and Seth Borenstein, AP

In this Jan. 22, 2015 photo, a zodiac carrying a team of international scientists heads to Chile’s station Bernardo O’Higgins, Antarctica. Water is eating away at the Antarctic ice, melting it where it hits the oceans. As the ice sheets slowly thaw, water pours into the sea, 130 billion tons of ice (118 billion metric tons) per year for the past decade, according to NASA satellite calculations. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Cape Legoupil: From the ground in this extreme northern part of Antarctica, spectacularly white and blinding ice seems to extend forever. What can’t be seen is the battle raging thousands of feet (hundreds of meters) below to re-shape Earth.

Water is eating away at the Antarctic ice, melting it where it hits the oceans. As the ice sheets slowly thaw, water pours into the sea — 130 billion tons of ice (118 billion metric tons) per year for the past decade, according to NASA satellite calculations. That’s the weight of more than 356,000 Empire State Buildings, enough ice melt to fill more than 1.3 million Olympic swimming pools. And the melting is accelerating.

In the worst case scenario, Antarctica’s melt could push sea levels up 10 feet (3 meters) worldwide in a century or two, recurving heavily populated coastlines.

Parts of Antarctica are melting so rapidly it has become “ground zero of global climate change without a doubt,” said Harvard geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica.

Here on the Antarctic peninsula, where the continent is warming the fastest because the land sticks out in the warmer ocean, 49 billion tons of ice (nearly 45 billion metric tons) are lost each year, according to NASA. The water warms from below, causing the ice to retreat on to land, and then the warmer air takes over. Temperatures rose 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) in the last half century, much faster than Earth’s average, said Ricardo Jana, a glaciologist for the Chilean Antarctic Institute.

As chinstrap penguins waddled behind him, Peter Convey of the British Antarctic Survey reflected on changes he could see on Robert Island, a small-scale example and perhaps early warning signal of what’s happening to the peninsula and rest of the continent as a whole.

“I was last here 10 years ago,” Convey said during a rare sunny day on the island, with temperatures just above freezing. “And if you compare what I saw back then to now, the basic difference due to warming is that the permanent patches of snow and ice are smaller. They’re still there behind me, but they’re smaller than they were.”

Robert Island hits all the senses: the stomach-turning smell of penguin poop; soft moss that invites the rare visitor to lie down, as if on a water bed; brown mud, akin to stepping in gooey chocolate. Patches of the moss, which alternates from fluorescent green to rust red, have grown large enough to be football fields. Though 97 percent of the Antarctic Peninsula is still covered with ice, entire valleys are now free of it, ice is thinner elsewhere and glaciers have retreated, Convey said.

Dressed in a big red parka and sky blue hat, plant biologist Angelica Casanova has to take her gloves off to collect samples, leaving her hands bluish purple from the cold. Casanova says she can’t help but notice the changes since she began coming to the island in 1995. Increasingly, plants are taking root in the earth and stone deposited by retreating glaciers, she says.

“It’s interesting because the vegetation in some way responds positively. It grows more,” she said, a few steps from a sleeping Weddell seal. “What is regrettable is that all the scientific information that we’re seeing says there’s been a lot of glacier retreat and that worries us.”

Just last month, scientists noticed in satellite images that a giant crack in an ice shelf on the peninsula called Larsen C had grown by about 12 miles (20 kilometers) in 2014. Ominously, the split broke through a type of ice band that usually stops such cracks. If it keeps going, it could cause the breaking off of a giant iceberg somewhere between the size of Rhode Island and Delaware, about 1,700 to 2,500 square miles (4,600 to 6,400 square kilometers), said British Antarctic Survey scientist Paul Holland. And there’s a small chance it could cause the entire Scotland-sized Larsen C ice shelf to collapse like its sister shelf, Larsen B, did in a dramatic way in 2002.

A few years back, scientists figured Antarctica as a whole was in balance, neither gaining nor losing ice. Experts worried more about Greenland; it was easier to get to and more noticeable, but once they got a better look at the bottom of the world, the focus of their fears shifted. Now scientists in two different studies use the words “irreversible” and “unstoppable” to talk about the melting in West Antarctica. Ice is gaining in East Antarctica, where the air and water are cooler, but not nearly as much as it is melting to the west.

“Before Antarctica was much of a wild card,” said University of Washington ice scientist Ian Joughin. “Now I would say it’s less of a wild card and more scary than we thought before.”

Over at NASA, ice scientist Eric Rignot said the melting “is going way faster than anyone had thought. It’s kind of a red flag.”

What’s happening is simple physics. Warm water eats away at the ice from underneath. Then more ice is exposed to the water, and it too melts. Finally, the ice above the water collapses into the water and melts.

Climate change has shifted the wind pattern around the continent, pushing warmer water farther north against and below the western ice sheet and the peninsula. The warm, more northerly water replaces the cooler water that had been there. It’s only a couple degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the water that used to be there, but that makes a huge difference in melting, scientists said.

The world’s fate hangs on the question of how fast the ice melts.

At its current rate, the rise of the world’s oceans from Antarctica’s ice melt would be barely noticeable, about one-third of a millimeter a year. The oceans are that vast.

But if all the West Antarctic ice sheet that’s connected to water melts unstoppably, as several experts predict, there will not be time to prepare. Scientists estimate it will take anywhere from 200 to 1,000 years to melt enough ice to raise seas by 10 feet, maybe only 100 years in a worst case scenario. If that plays out, developed coastal cities such as New York and Guangzhou could face up to $1 trillion a year in flood damage within a few decades and countless other population centers will be vulnerable.

“Changing the climate of the Earth or thinning glaciers is fine as long as you don’t do it too fast. And right now we are doing it as fast as we can. It’s not good,” said Rignot, of NASA. “We have to stop it; or we have to slow it down as best as we can.”

"Documentary films are the most effective & the most powerful tools of change": Mike Pandey

February 27, 2015 by Shaheen Raaj

An interview with Mike Pandey – President Of Indian Documentary Producers Association (IDPA)

by Shaheen Raaj

Mike Pandey, an Indian filmmaker specializing in making films on wild life & environmental issues, needs no special introduction. He has won over 300 awards till date, for his work to spread awareness about biodiversity & species conservation. Mike Pandey is now working on his latest documentary,’ The Return Of The Tiger’, which is also supported by Bollywood actors Amitabh Bachchan & John Abraham. And since he became the president of the Indian Documentary Producers Association (IDPA), he is doing his best to support the Indian documentary filmmakers to address all their grievances.

What is the current scenario of documentary filmmaking movement?

The documentary filmmaking movement is gaining momentum. In fact the entire scenario & genre of documentary filmmaking is now changing as documentary films are the most effective and the most powerful tools of change.

IDPA has been instrumental in bringing about a lot of encouraging changes as far as Documentary filmmaking is concerned. Comment.

That’s right. And to top it all there is also a good piece of news as after a rigorous & arduous struggle of 5 long years, IDPA has just been successful in signing an MoU with the Government of India that will enable the documentary filmmakers to showcase their films on Doordarshan’s National Channel every week on Sundays and as and when more documentaries will come in then DD National will telecast these documentaries 4 to 5 times a week.

How else will the Documentary filmmakers benefit by this MoU?

Of course the initiative that we have taken with the Government regarding this MoU will certainly benefit them as the filmmakers whose documentaries are telecast will also receive a substantial remuneration which they can reuse it to make other documentaries. And if the telecasted documentaries happens to be an award winning ones then they will also be paid a bonus amount to encourage them to make more such educative, informative, meaningful & entertaining documentaries.

What other initiative has IDPA taken to boost the Documentary filmmakers?

The Indian Documentary Producers Association has also taken an initiative to set up a welfare trust for the documentary filmmakers to bail them out financially on the grounds of their medical crisis. That apart it is also trying to address the needs & the grievances of all the documentary filmmakers.

What other steps are now being taken by IDPA to further the Documentary filmmaking movement?

Frankly speaking at this stage what we at IDPA feel and which is also the need of the hour is that we need to fill up a vast vacuum of really good educational documentary films for children. And we are also trying to get the support of the Government to have an independent documentary channel. As this is the main grievance of the documentary filmmakers that the Government, which honors them with awards galore for their par excellence documentaries, is itself refusing to showcase them on its own platform namely DD National. Besides we are also trying to work on the concept of ‘Playschool’, on the lines of BBC Channel, to showcase inspirational films for children.

Does IDPA lays the blame only on Doordarshan for this step motherly treatment meted out to them?

No, not at all. What’s the point in blaming Doordarshan alone as other channels like BBC and other Satellite Channels too are also refusing to showcase our films. Documentary Filmmakers in general and documentary films in particular are still looked down upon by one & all concerned. In fact the situation is still prevailing as the documentary filmmakers and our films are still meted out a step motherly treatment, more especially by the people who really matters.

So what steps is IDPA taking in this regard?

What can we at IDPA do in this regard. We are just feeling helpless. But of course we are trying our level best to seek Government & some private agencies support to pool in more resources. in fact we are also on the look out for Corporate Social Responsibility funds (CSR) too. CSR is an annual fund of 2% of a businessmen’s profits, which is culled out by them for social work which can really, really help the documentary filmmakers in the long run to make good documentary films as even they in their turn are doing a social service by making educative, informative, meaningful & entertaining docu films for the people at large. In fact many donors are now coming forward to be a part of this initiative.

By the way recently IDPA had also offered some suggestions to IFFI director Shankar Mohan. Right?

Yes Indeed! As the International Film Festival Of India (IFFI Goa) is getting really bigger & better now. We have 2 Baby dreams and as suggested to the Festival Director Shankar Mohan we hope that it is really, really fulfilled and that is to have a separate enclosure in the next IFFI to screen documentary films with separate TV Screens or Computer Monitors so that people are not disappointed in the on rush of the feature films. And secondly we also suggested that there should be a specially created Documentary Lounge’ where all the documentary filmmakers can have an interchange of ideas, other discussions et al. In which both Indian & Foreign documentary filmmakers can view, buy or sell each other’s films.

And lastly what is the advice that you would like to give to the tribe of Documentary filmmakers?

I would like to give a cautionary advice to all the documentary filmmakers to make good, meaningful, informative, entertaining & socially relevant docu films and most importantly their film’s content should be good and their story telling must be powerful enough to have an impactful lasting impression. Period!

Eight million tonnes of plastic are going into the ocean each year

February 16, 2015 by Nasheman

by Britta Denise Hardesty & Chris Wilcox, The Conversation

Plastic waste washed up on a beach in Haiti. Timothy Townsend

You might have heard the oceans are full of plastic, but how full exactly? Around 8 million metric tonnes go into the oceans each year, according to the first rigorous global estimate published in Science today.

That’s equivalent to 16 shopping bags full of plastic for every metre of coastline (excluding Antarctica). By 2025 we will be putting enough plastic in the ocean (on our most conservative estimates) to cover 5% of the earth’s entire surface in cling film each year.

Around a third of this likely comes from China, and 10% from Indonesia. In fact all but one of the top 20 worst offenders are developing nations, largely due to fast-growing economies but poor waste management systems.

However, people in the United States – coming in at number 20 and producing less than 1% of global waste – produce more than 2.5 kg of plastic waste each day, more than twice the amount of people in China.

While the news for us, our marine wildlife, seabirds, and fisheries is not good, the research paves the way to improve global waste management and reduce plastic in the waste stream.

Lindsay Robinson/University of Georgia

Follow the plastic

An international team of experts analysed 192 countries bordering the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, and the Mediterranean and Black Seas. By examining the amount of waste produced per person per year in each country, the percentage of that waste that’s plastic, and the percentage of that plastic waste that is mismanaged, the team worked out the likely worst offenders for marine plastic waste.

In 2010, 270 million tonnes of plastic was produced around the world. This translated to 275 million tonnes of plastic waste; 99.5 million tonnes of which was produced by the two billion people living within 50 km of a coastline. Because some durable items such as refrigerators produced in the past are also thrown away, we can find more waste than plastic produced at times.

Of that, somewhere between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes found its way into the ocean. Given how light plastic is, this translates to an unimaginably large volume of debris.

While plastic can make its way into oceans from land-locked countries via rivers, these were excluded in the study, meaning the results are likely a conservative estimate.

With our planet still 85 years away from “peak waste” — and with plastic production skyrocketing around the world — the amount of plastic waste getting into the oceans is likely to increase by an order of magnitude within the next decade.

Our recent survey of the Australian coastline found three-quarters of coastal rubbish is plastic, averaging more than 6 pieces per meter of coastline. Offshore, we found densities from a few thousand pieces of plastic to more than 40,000 pieces per square kilometre in the waters around the continent.

Where is the plastic going?

While we now have a rough figure for the amount of plastic rubbish in the world’s oceans, we still know very little about where it all ends up (it isn’t all in the infamous “Pacific Garbage Patch”).

Between 6,350 and 245,000 metric tons of plastic waste is estimated to float on the ocean’s surface, which raises the all-important question: where does the rest of it end up?

Some, like the plastic microbeads found in many personal care products, ends up in the oceans and sediments where they can be ingested by bottom-dwelling creatures and filter-feeders.

It’s unclear where the rest of the material is. It might be deposited on coastal margins, or maybe it breaks down into fragments so small we can’t detect it, or maybe it is in the guts of marine wildlife.

Plastic recovered from a dead shearwater – a glowstick, industrial plastic pellets, and bits of balloon CSIRO, Author provided

Wherever it ends up, plastic has enormous potential for destruction. Ghost nets and fishing debris snag and drown turtles, seals, and other marine wildlife. In some cases, these interactions have big impacts.

For instance, we estimate that around 10,000 turtles have been trapped by derelict nets in Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria region alone.

More than 690 marine species are known to interact with marine litter. Turtles mistake floating plastic for jellyfish, and globally around one-third of all turtles are estimated to have eaten plastic in some form. Likewise seabirds eat everything from plastic toys, nurdles and balloon shreds to foam, fishing floats and glow sticks.

While plastic is prized for its durability and inertness, it also acts as a chemical magnet for environmental pollutants such as metals, fertilisers, and persistent organic pollutants. These are adsorbed onto the plastic. When an animal eats the plastic “meal”, these chemicals make their way into their tissues and — in the case of commercial fish species — can make it onto our dinner plates.

Plastic waste is the scourge of our oceans; killing our wildlife, polluting our beaches, and threatening our food security. But there are solutions – some of which are simple, and some a bit more challenging.

Solutions

If the top five plastic-polluting countries – China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka – managed to achieve a 50% improvement in their waste management — for example by investing in waste management infrastructure, the total global amount of mismanaged waste would be reduced by around a quarter.

Higher-income countries have equal responsibility to reduce the amount of waste produced per person through measures such as plastic recycling and reuse, and by shifting some of the responsibility for plastic waste back onto the producers.

The simplest and most effective solution might be to make the plastic worth money. Deposits on beverage containers for instance, have proven effective at reducing waste lost into the environment – because the containers, plastic and otherwise, are worth money people don’t throw them away, or if they do others pick them up.

Extending this idea to a deposit on all plastics at the beginning of their lifecycle, as raw materials, would incentivize collection by formal waste managers where infrastructure is available, but also by consumers and entrepreneurs seeking income where it is not.

Before the plastic revolution, much of our waste was collected and burned. But the ubiquity, volume, and permanence of plastic waste demands better solutions.

Britta Denise Hardesty is a Senior Research Scientist, Oceans and Atmosphere Flagship at CSIRO, and Chris Wilcox is a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO.

Humans have brought world's oceans to brink of 'major extinction event'

January 17, 2015 by Nasheman

But ‘proactive intervention’ could still avert marine disaster, researchers find

“Although defaunation has been less severe in the oceans than on land, our effects on marine animals are increasing in pace and impact,” the researchers write. (Photo: Phil’s 1stPix/flickr/cc)

by Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams

Marine wildlife at all levels of the food chain has been badly damaged by human activity, says a new report that urges immediate and “meaningful rehabilitation” if we are to avert mass extinction in the world’s oceans.

“We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event,” Douglas J. McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara and an author of the study, told the New York Times.

The report, published Thursday in the journal Science, finds that habitat loss, mismanagement of oceanic resources, climate change, and the overall “footprint of human ocean use” have resulted in a phenomenon known as “defaunation”—a decline in animal species diversity and abundance.

“Although defaunation has been less severe in the oceans than on land, our effects on marine animals are increasing in pace and impact,” reads the study abstract. “Humans have caused few complete extinctions in the sea, but we are responsible for many ecological, commercial, and local extinctions. Despite our late start, humans have already powerfully changed virtually all major marine ecosystems.”

“Humans have profoundly decreased the abundance of both large (e.g., whales) and small (e.g., anchovies) marine fauna,” it continues. “Such declines can generate waves of ecological change that travel both up and down marine food webs and can alter ocean ecosystem functioning.”

Just as the Industrial Revolution during the 1800s decimated the huge tracts of forests, driving many terrestrial species to extinction, industrial use of the oceans threatens to destroy marine habitats and in turn damage the health of marine wildlife populations.

Report co-author Steve Palumbi of Stanford University listed several emerging threats to the oceans: “There are factory farms in the sea and cattle-ranch-style feed lots for tuna. Shrimp farms are eating up mangroves with an appetite akin to that of terrestrial farming, which consumed native prairies and forest. Stakes for seafloor mining claims are being pursued with gold-rush-like fervor, and 300-ton ocean mining machines and 750-foot fishing boats are now rolling off the assembly line to do this work.”

Timeline (log scale) of marine and terrestrial defaunation. If left unmanaged, the authors predict that marine habitat alteration, along with climate change (colored bar: IPCC warming), will exacerbate marine defaunation. (Credit: Science)

“Human activities are negatively impacting the ocean at an ever increasing and unsustainable rate, and we must freeze the footprints of industrial activities and commercial fishing,” Oceana marine scientist Amanda Keledjian told Common Dreams. “Oceana applauds these researchers for their work, because assessing the oceans from a holistic perspective is the only way to understand the scope at which we must act to reverse collapsing fisheries and continued habitat degradation.”

According to the Times:

Scientific assessments of the oceans’ health are dogged by uncertainty: It’s much harder for researchers to judge the well-being of a species living underwater, over thousands of miles, than to track the health of a species on land. And changes that scientists observe in particular ocean ecosystems may not reflect trends across the planet.

Dr. [Malin L.] Pinsky, Dr. McCauley and their colleagues sought a clearer picture of the oceans’ health by pulling together data from an enormous range of sources, from discoveries in the fossil record to statistics on modern container shipping, fish catches and seabed mining. While many of the findings already existed, they had never been juxtaposed in such a way.

A number of experts said the result was a remarkable synthesis, along with a nuanced and encouraging prognosis.

“I see this as a call for action to close the gap between conservation on land and in the sea,” said Loren McClenachan of Colby College, who was not involved in the study.

The report authors say the effects of human activity in the ocean are still reversible: “Proactive intervention can avert a marine defaunation disaster of the magnitude observed on land.”

Oceana’s Keledjian echoed that appeal. “This study reminds us that it is critical to do everything we can to protect vulnerable species and the ocean ecosystems on which they depend,” she said. “While much remains unknown about the state of the oceans, we cannot wait to act until we know with 100 percent certainty that extinctions and devastation are upon us, because that will already be far too late.”

River inter-linking to continue despite opposition, says Venkaiah Naidu

January 14, 2015 by Nasheman

New Delhi: Notwithstanding concerns raised by environmentalists, the Union government on Tuesday said it will take up inter-linking of rivers on a priority basis “come what may” and that any “obstacles” which may come in the way would be addressed or removed.

“Some of our environmentalist friends are raising voices. There will be voices in democracy, let there be. But, they have answers also … We have to take up river linking on a priority basis come what may,” Union urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said at a function to mark ‘India Water Week’ here.

“Whatever obstacles come, that has be addressed and they have to be removed,” he added.

Environmentalists have raised concerns over inter-linking of rivers, claiming that it would threaten the ac-aquatic life and has no hydrological and ecological soundness.

Mr. Naidu said developed countries are “giving us lessons and sermons” and added, “We have to first develop, then we can give lessons to others.”

'Tare Ganga Par'

January 8, 2015 by Nasheman

Dr. Tare is the head of the IIT consortium charged with developing a plan for the Ganga River Basin.

by Chicu Lokgariwar, India Water Portal

The Government of India has commissioned a consortium of IITs to clean up the Ganga. How are they going about it? A consortium of the seven Indian Institutes of Technology has been formed and charged with the preparation of a basin-wide management plan to restore the Ganga. What have they proposed for the river?

In an interview with Chicu Lokgariwar first published by India Water Portal, Dr. Tare explained the IIT consortium’s vision for the Ganga and the steps that they are taking to achieve it.

What is the vision of Ganga that you think will be achieved by the implementation of this plan?

Vision is obviously that we want aviral (uninterrupted flow) and nirmal (unpolluted flow) Ganga. It has to be considered as an ecological entity and it has to be realised that it is a geological entity as well. These are the four basic principles that we are based on.

I am interested in understanding what the efforts are (towards restoring the Ganga) and how each effort interlinks with the other. What is the approach you have taken?

See, we have essentially almost looked at all kinds of factors and stakeholders. But our approach was very non-traditional, in terms of actually consulting them or involving them.

So we may not have formally involved anybody. Where it was necessary, there we have. We have had several round table discussions with industries. We also organised formal meetings.

As part of our project, at the highest level we had the project management board. The constitution of this board was that all the directors of the seven IITs were there. And then we had three expert members in that. Then there were representatives of three ministries of the Joint Secretary level from MOEF, Water resources and human resources. We had created various thematic groups.

So common people may not have realised that we have consulted them. But we tried to capture their aspirations. Everyone gives suggestions to the Prime Minister through his website, his email. He forwards all those to me. And when I go through it, by and large we feel that ‘yes, we have considered everyone.’

What are the steps you recommend be taken to achieve ‘nirmal dhara’ ?

Just as you consider other things to be an industry, also consider sewage treatment as an industry. Measure the discharge of each drain that outfalls into the river or tributary, and tender for the treatment of that sewage. Get it measured by those who will be treating the sewage. Then you say, ‘this is the raw material I can give you. And from that sewage, you produce water and give it to me. I will buy that treated water for the next 15 years. Now what I do with that, whether I reuse is, is up to me.’

So my worry is not to build STP. Let that investment come from the private sector. I will only purchase the water. In this, the government does not need to invest, private parties will come forward for that. The local body will also get money from the reuse of this treated water. The STP operator will also get revenue.

Industries should recycle their water completely. But suppose a 100 units of effluent is produced, only 70-80 units of recycled water can be reused. The remaining balance should be made up by treated sewage. It is difficult to implement this by regulation and policing. For that, you need to do pricing. We need to decide to price fresh water at 1.5 to 2 times that of treated water. After this is done, you don’t have to apply any ceiling to the industry, or worry about a license, because all their water is getting recycled.

Some other things we are insisting upon are those that even if it is very small in quantity has a very high importance. Like religious pollution, whether it is flowers or puja material. We are saying that our religion also does not say that we should throw it here. We have tried to convince the spiritual leaders that it is your responsibility to tell society that this is a sin.

What about ‘aviral dhara’?

For aviral dhara we have categorically said that river’s continuity, longitudinal connectivity and environmental flows needs to be seen. So no structure should come up on the river or its tributaries which violates this. There is no question of giving environmental clearance to such projects. Don’t even ask MOEF to clear this. If at all this has to be done, it has to be a political decision at the highest level, in the larger national interest.

As for the existing dams, it is like this. You have already spoiled the river in an irreversible way by constructing Tehri Dam, by constructing Koteshwar, This is an irreversible damage that you have done. How can the Ganga be Aviral with Tehri there? So we are looking at all possible options. Business as usual to the very extreme step of dismantling Tehri. I can even think of a technical solution; I can provide a river pass through the reservoir. Like by using a tunnel, we take a road or a railway below the sea. So complete connectivity is maintained upstream and downstream of the reservoir.

Ganga Basin is the poorest in terms of productivity per unit of water. The landholdings are very small. Our agricultural GDP is only 7 to 8%. And 50% workforce is working in this.

So one challenge is how can we increase the productivity per unit of water. That small farmers cannot do. Then there are two things. Either we say, ‘okay, these are small farmers. Let them be there’.

But then I create a system wherein he is supported in terms of technology or whatever. Call it a cooperative society or contract farming, whatever you want to call it. Second model is, you buy the land from them all. And give it to some big entity, he will manage the whole thing.

What are the challenges you face in realising your vision of the Ganga?

The most important challenge is, we have many actors. All actors say that Ganga is very important. Everyone wants to be connected with the Ganga. But everybody is sitting in different directions, and they see from their perspective. The main challenge is how to bring all the players to one side.

We have defined all actors – state government and central government. Within the government, politicians, bureaucrats, technocrats all have a different residence time. This is what we need to align. We have looked at why things have failed. Our assessment is that all the actors have different ‘residence times’. For example, the secretary has a post duration of not more than three years. So he is not interested in anything that spins for greater than three years. This is the same for politicians.

For that we have said that we need to move from NGRBA, we need a separate entity which is above all the ministries. We have proposed a commission- The national river Ganga basin management commission. We have proposed an Act, the national river ganga basin management Bill. The commission will be created through this bill. Then the commission will not be controlled by the government. The main purpose of the commission is to be a custodian of the Ganga basin.

We have done whatever work we have done based on whatever information was available. But we still believe that much of it is not scientific. Because we just don’t have that micro-level data.

There has to be a systematic drive. We should move away from a centralised government-controlled data collection to decentralised community-based data collection. Involve the community.

And what are the opportunities you see?

See the opportunity is that if you actually maintain Ganga and Ganga basin, our economic growth rate will actually go up. And that’s the sustainability issue. What Modi is saying that if you really implement the spirit of zero effect and zero defect..isn’t it? So I think we have the biggest opportunity. We have talent, we have manpower, and we have good climatic conditions. Such climatic conditions are not to be found anywhere else for work like this.

Even if we are poor, in some things our standards should be better than other countries. Our spiritual and cultural standards are much higher than any other country, right? So with river-related, water-related, our standards have to be much higher because we are very susceptible.

Dr. Tare is the head of the IIT consortium charged with developing a plan for the Ganga River Basin.

Ten years after the Boxing Day tsunami, are coasts any safer?

December 27, 2014 by Nasheman

The day after: a Sri Lankan man begins the slow process of rebuilding. EPA/Mike Nelson

by Emily Heath, The Conversation

Ten years ago we witnessed one of the worst natural disasters in history, when a huge earthquake off the coast of Sumatra triggered a devastating tsunami which swept across the Indian Ocean.

An estimated 230,000 people lost their lives, and 1.6 million people lost their homes or livelihoods.

The impact was greatest in northern Sumatra because of its proximity to the earthquake. Catastrophic shaking was followed within minutes by the full force of the tsunami.

Avoidable deaths

Thousands of people were also killed in distant countries, where the earthquake could not be felt. If they had received a warning of the approaching tsunami, they could have moved inland, uphill or out to sea, and survived. Tsunami take several hours to cross an ocean, becoming much larger and slower as they reach the coast.

Back in 2004 there were long-established tsunami warning systems in the Pacific Ocean, which has many subduction zones – places where two tectonic plates collide – capable of generating huge earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.

Other regions, including the Indian Ocean, did not have a warning system. The probability of a major tsunami was judged to be too low to justify the cost, especially for poorer countries.

The Boxing Day 2004 disaster changed all that.

Progress in the past decade

In early 2005, the UN agreed to develop an international warning system including regional systems in the Indian Ocean, North East Atlantic & Mediterranean, and Caribbean. The Indian Ocean tsunami warning system was developed between 2006 and 2013, at a total cost of at least $19 million.

Japan has installed more buoys in the wake of its own 2011 disaster. NOAA

In the three years prior to October 2014, bulletins were issued about 23 Indian Ocean earthquakes, resulting in a small number of potentially life-saving coastal evacuations. Most of these 23 earthquakes did not actually generate a threatening tsunami because they did not cause significant uplift or subsidence of the seafloor. But false alarms can provide reassurance that communications work well, or highlight weaknesses.

Communications and evacuation procedures are also regularly tested by international mock drills, often based on worst case scenarios.

How do tsunami warning systems work?

All warning systems work in the same general way. First, a network of broadband seismometers detects the seismic waves generated by an earthquake, which travel at speeds of several kilometres per second. When several seismometers have detected the seismic waves, the location and approximate magnitude of the earthquake can be computed. If the epicentre is under water and the magnitude large (greater than 6.5 on the Richter, or moment magnitude, scale) a tsunami bulletin, watch or warning is issued to local communication centres, ideally within three minutes of the earthquake. If the epicentre is nearby and the probability of a tsunami is high, evacuation procedures will be initiated immediately.

If all else fails, follow the signs. Kallerna, CC BY-SA

Otherwise, local centres will standby for confirmation of whether a tsunami has actually been generated. Confirmation comes within about 30-60 minutes, using a network of tsunami buoys and seafloor pressure recorders. These detect the series of waves (usually less than a couple of metres high and travelling at about 800 km/h) in the open ocean, and transmit the data by satellite to a regional control centre.

Tsunami warnings reach the public via TV, radio, email, text messages, sirens and loudspeakers. You can sign up to receive tsunami alerts anywhere in the world by SMS on your mobile phone, thanks to a not-for-profit humanitarian service called CWarn.org.

Many high-risk areas also have signage to alert people to “natural” warnings (such as strong shaking or a sudden withdrawal of the sea), and direct them to higher ground.

Limitations of warning systems

The Pacific and Japanese warning systems helped to ensure the major tsunami generated off the coast of Japan on 11 March 2011 caused far fewer deaths (15,000) than the 2004 disaster. However, it showed that even a wealthy and well-prepared nation such as Japan cannot fully protect people from extreme hazards, and that warning systems can sometimes lead to a false sense of security.

Japan, 2011: fewer lives were lost but the damage was immense Chief Hira, CC BY-SA

The slow rupture of the subduction zone near Japan meant the initial warnings underestimated the magnitude of the earthquake and resulting tsunami. Many people did not move to higher ground in the vital few minutes after receiving the warning, because they wrongly assumed the tsunami would be stopped by 5-10 m high sea walls.

Japan has learned from this tragedy and, among other things, made changes to tsunami warning messages, improved coastal defences, and installed more seismometers and tsunami buoys.

Will more tsunami disasters occur?

It is impossible to predict exactly when or where the next major tsunami will occur. They are very rare events in our limited historical record. But by dating prehistoric tsunami deposits, we can see that major tsunamis happen on average every few hundred years in many coastal regions.

Future tsunami disasters are inevitable, but with better technology, education and governance we can realistically hope that a loss of life on the scale of the 2004 tsunami disaster will not happen again.

Emily Heath is a Senior Teaching Associate, Lancaster Environment Centre at Lancaster University.

UAE's first nuclear plant to start in 2017

December 23, 2014 by Nasheman

Soaring energy use and inadequate gas supplies have spurred the UAE to look to nuclear power. Photo: Shutterstock

by Al Akhbar

The first of four nuclear reactors being built by the United Arab Emirates will become operational in 2017 and the rest will be fully functional by 2020, an official said Monday.

“When they are fully operational in 2020, they will generate 25 percent of UAE power needs,” the CEO of the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corp (ENEC), Mohammed al-Hammadi, told an energy conference in Abu Dhabi.

Hammadi said that 61 percent of the first reactor has been completed and it is slated to start production in 2017, while work is underway on the second and third reactors as the site is being prepared for the fourth. The second reactor will come on line in 2018, the third the following year and the last in 2020.

ENEC’s CEO added that his firm has signed a $3 billion contract with international firms to provide fuel for the plants over 15 years.

In 2009, an international consortium led by the state-run Korea Electric Power Corp won a $20.4 billion (15.8 billion euro) deal to build four nuclear power plants in Baraka, west of Abu Dhabi. Under the biggest single contract Seoul has ever won abroad, South Korean firms including Samsung, Hyundai and Doosan Heavy Industries are building the four 1,400-megawatt reactors.

Also in 2009, UAE signed an agreement with the United States on nuclear cooperation, paving the way for the Gulf state to acquire nuclear technology.

According to Hamadi, another five percent of UAE electricity needs will be provided by renewable energy sources by 2020, helping the Gulf state to cut 12 million tons of carbon emissions.

Oil-rich UAE, pumping 2.8 million barrels per day of crude oil, opened the world’s largest operating plant of concentrated solar power in Abu Dhabi in March, which has the capacity to provide electricity to 20,000 homes.

Progress in UAE’s nuclear program comes at a time when Iran and world powers are negotiating to end a standoff over Tehran’s nuclear goals. The Islamic Republic insists that its program is for peaceful purposes, aiming at producing atomic energy to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels.

However, the West and Israel insist the fuel could be enriched to produce a bomb. Consequently, they imposed international sanctions on Iran that have crippled the country’s economy.

Unlike Iran, the UAE is a key Western ally and has avoided international scrutiny over its program.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

Last year, the world pumped out more carbon pollution than ever before

December 19, 2014 by Nasheman

by Brian Merchant, Motherboard

Precisely at the moment that the climate depends on carbon pollution declining, worldwide emissions continue to boom. Case in point: 2013 saw yet another record carbon high, with 35.3 billion tons of CO2 entering the atmosphere.

That’s the finding of the European Union’s Joint Research Center, which released its annual report on global emissions today. The document tallies the emissions of fossil fuel power production—coal, oil, and gas—and emissions from industry, especially cement and metal manufacturing.

The record high was reached primarily thanks to developing, coal-hungry giants: “Sharp risers include Brazil (+ 6.2 percent), India (+ 4.4 percent), China (+ 4.2 percent) and Indonesia (+2.3 percent),” the report notes.

The US—the world’s largest historic greenhouse gas emitter—grew again after a brief pause, thanks to a return to coal.

“The emissions increase in the United States in 2013 (+2.5 percent) was mainly due to a shift in power production from gas back to coal together with an increase in gas consumption due to a higher demand for space heating.”

The silver lining is that the rate of emissions growth is at least slowing: “emissions increased at a notably slower rate (2 percent) than on average in the last ten years (3.8 percent per year since 2003, excluding the credit crunch years),” the report adds. China’s emissions are plateauing, after its economy’s mega-boom that began in the early 2000s has begun to level off. The EU’s emissions have continue to decline, slowly.

The report also notes that there’s a ‘decoupling’ underway, wherein GDP is growing even when carbon emissions slow (the two have historically been intrinsically linked). That’s because the globe is shifting to embrace a bigger service economy, and relying a bit less on industrial production.

Sadly, that’s not happening nearly fast enough. According to scientists who have estimated our global carbon budget, we have approximately 1,200 gigatons of carbon left to burn before we see levels of warning that may be altogether destabilizing to human civilization—2˚C or 3.7˚F worth of temperature rise. Last year, we ate through 37 gigatons of said budget.

The fact that we’re still shattering carbon production records in the face of global calamity—after 2˚C of warming, scientists worry about ’runaway’ effects like methane feedback loops—is disquieting. The fact that our international treaty process is woefully toothless and has taken decades to make the tiniest baby step, is further cause for worry.

Unless the international community can quell its thirst for coal and oil, and help developing economies grow with clean power sources, we’re heading for more sea level rise, more drought, and melting poles.

It’s one record we need to stop breaking.

India on alert after massive oil spill in Sunderbans

December 13, 2014 by Nasheman

Villagers have been asked to help the government clear the spill

by Reuters

New Delhi: Authorities on India’s eastern coast are on alert after a tanker and another vessel collided, spilling more than 350,000 litres of furnace oil into the waters of the Sunderban tidal mangrove forests in neighbouring Bangladesh.

“We are taking all precautionary measures,” Pradeep Vyas, additional director of India’s Sunderban Biosphere Reserve, told Reuters on Friday.

The Indian Coast Guard and Border Security Force are both monitoring the situation, and boats are patrolling the rivers that connect the Sunderban region, which straddles the border between India and Bangladesh, he said.

On Tuesday, an oil tanker carrying 358,000 litres of furnace oil and another vehicle crashed together. That caused the tanker to sink in the Shela river, in the Sunderbans, and spill its cargo into a complex network of rivers and canals, according to Mohammad Yunus Ali, chief conservator of forests in the Ministry of Environment and Forest.

A thick, black sheen spread in the days after the tanker crash, covering some 60km of waterways

Both Sunderbans include large swaths of protected areas that host a diverse wildlife, including threatened species such as the Bengal tiger, rare dolphins and the estuarine crocodile.

Yunus denied that the oil slick was moving towards India and said clean-up efforts were continuing. “We have been trying seriously to clean it within the quickest possible time,” he said. It was unclear when the process would be completed, he added.

Seven members of the sunken tanker’s crew managed to swim ashore, but the boat’s captain, Mokhlesur Rahman, was still missing as of Friday evening.

The Bangladesh government has filed a lawsuit against the owners of both ships.

Officials are still unclear about the extent of the damage from the spill

The chief wildlife warden in the state of West Bengal told Reuters the spill had not yet had any impact on the tiger reserve territory or marine life on the Indian side of the border.

“It may happen, and if it happens we have to deal with it,” said Ujjwal Kumar Bhattacharya, the chief warden.