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list of environmental laws by country

This article lists the most important national environmental laws by continent and country. Africa Egypt Egyptian Law 102 of 1983, for Nature Protectorates Environmental Protection Law 4/1994 amended by Law 9/2009(Egypt) Law 48/1982Concerning the Protection of Nile River and Water Channels Law 124/83Concerning Fishing, Aquatic Life Organization of Fisheries Law 93/1962Concerning Discharge of Liquid Wastes Law 27/1978Concerning Organizing General Water Resources for Drinking and Human Use Kenya Biosafety Act 2009 Environmental (Impact Assessment and Audit) Regulations, 2003 Environmental Management and Co-ordination (Conservation of Biological Diversity and Resources, Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing) Regulations, 2006 Environmental Management and Co-ordination (Controlled Substances) Regulations 2007 Environmental Management and Co-ordination (Noise and Excessive Vibration Pollution) (Control) Regulations 2009 Environmental Management and Co-ordination (Waste Management) Regulations 2006 Environmental Management and Co-ordination (Water Quality) Regulations 2006 Environmental Management and Co-ordination (Wetlands, Riverbanks, Lake Shores and Sea Shore Management) Regulations 2009 Environmental Management and Co-ordination Act 1999 / no 8 Environmental (Prevention Of Pollution In Coastal Zone And Other Segments Of The Environment) Regulation, 2003 Fisheries Act (Chapter 378) Forests Act (Chapter 385) The Forests Act, 2005 Kenya Tourist Development Authority (Chapter 382) Kenya's Environment Management and Coordination Act 1999 Noise Regulations Timber Act (Chapter 386) Tourist Industry Licensing Act (Chapter 381) Water Act 2002 Water Act 2002 / no 8 Wildlife (Conservation and Management) Act (Chapter 376) South Africa Asia China Air Pollution Control Act (China) Animal Epidemic Prevention Law 1997 Basic Environment Act Drinking Water Management Act Environmental Impact Assessment Act Environmental Protection Law 1989 Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China (For Trial Implementation) 1979 Fisheries Law 1986 Fisheries Law (2004 Revision) Flood Control Law 1997 Forestry Law 1985 Forestry Law of the People's Republic of China (1998) Grassland Law 1985 Law of the People's Republic of China on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste Law of the People's Republic of China on Prevention and Control of Pollution from Environmental Noise Law of the People's Republic of China on Prevention and Control of Water Pollution Law of the People's Republic of China on Water and Soil Conservation Law on Desert Prevention and Transformation 2001 Law on Marine Environment Protection 1983 Law on Mineral Resources 1986 Law on the Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution Law on Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution 2000 Law on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Noise Pollution 1997 Law on the Prevention and Control of Solid Wastes Pollution Law on Prevention and Control of Water Pollution 1996 Law on Promoting Clean Production 2002 Law on Protecting Against and Mitigating Earthquake Disasters Law on the Protection of Cultural Relics Law on the Protection of Wildlife 1989 Law on the Protection of Wildlife (2004 Revision) Law on Water and Soil Conservation Marine Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China (1983) Marine Pollution Control Act Public Nuisance Dispute Mediation Act Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Act Water Law 1988 Water Law 2002 (the modified edition) Water Pollution Control Act (China) Wildlife Protection Law India Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) cess act, 1977 Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 Biological Diversity Act, 2002 Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 Forest Conservation Act, 1980 Hazardous Waste Handling and Management Rules, 1989 Indian Forest Act, 1927 The National Environment Tribunal Act, 1995 National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 Noise Pollution rule, 2000 Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act of 2001 Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991 The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution), 1974 Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Act, 2002 Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 Japan Air Pollution Control Law Basic Environment Law Environmental Impact Assessment law Fisheries Law No 267 of 1949 Fundamental Law for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society Invasive Alien Species Act (Law No. 78, June 2, 2004) Law concerning the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biological Diversity through Regulation on the Use of Living Modified Organisms Law Concerning the Promotion of Business Activities with Environmental Consideration by Specified Corporations, etc., by Facilitating Access to Environmental Information, and Other Measures Law Concerning the Promotion of the Measures to Cope with Global Warming Law Concerning the Protection of the Ozone Layer Through the Control of Specified Substances and Other Measures (May 1988) Law Concerning the Promotion of Procurement of Eco-Friendly Goods and Services by the State and Other Entities Law concerning the Rational Use of Energy Law concerning the Recovery and Destruction of Fluorocarbons (Fluorocarbons Recovery and Destruction Law) (June 2001) Law Concerning Reporting etc. of Releases to the Environment of Specific Chemical Substances and Promoting Improvements in Their Management Law Concerning Special Measures against Dioxins Law for the Control of Export, Import and Others of Specified Hazardous Wastes and Other Wastes Law for Enhancing Motivation on Environmental Conservation and Promoting of Environmental Education Law for the Promotion of Nature Restoration Law on Special Measures concerning Removal of Environmental Problems Caused by Specified Industrial Wastes Law relating to Protection of the Environment in Antarctica Noise Regulation Law NOx Law (Japan) Offensive Odor Control Law Studded Tires Regulation Law Vibration Regulation Law Waste Management and Public Cleansing Law Water Pollution Control Law Wildlife Protection and Hunting Law Kyrgyzstan Law on Animal World, 1999 Law on Biosphere Areas in Kyrgyz Republic, 1999 Law on Environment Protection, 1999 Law on Environmental Expertise, 1999 Law on General Technical Regulations ensuring Environmental Safety in Kyrgyz Republic, 2009 Law on Protection and Use of Flora, 2001 Law on Protection of Atmospheric Air, 1999 Law on Protection of Ozone Layer, 2006 Law on Radiation Safety of Population of Kyrgyz Republic, 1999 Law on Renewable Energy Sources, 2008 Law on Specially Protected Natural Territories, 2011 Law on Sustainable Development of Environmental and Economic System Yssyk-Kul, 2004 Law on Tailing Ponds and Mine Wastes, 2001 Law on Waste of Production and Use, 2001 Law on Water, 1994 Pakistan Pakistan Environmental Protection Act 1997 Sindh Environmental Protection Act 2014 Philippines Philippine Environmental Impact Statement System Fisheries Act of 1932 Philippine Environment Code Revised Forestry Code of the Philippines Water Code of the Philippines Pollution Control Law (Presidential Decree 1181; 1977) Philippine Environmental Impact Statement System (Presidential Decree 1586; 1978) Food Security Act of 1985 Toxic Substances and Hazardous and Nuclear Waste Control Act of 1990 Philippine Mining Act of 1995 Animal Welfare Act of 1998 Philippine Fisheries Code of 1998 Clean Air Act of 1999 Philippine Ecological Waste and Solid Management Act of 2000 Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act of 2001 Chain Saw Act of 2002 Philippine Plant Variety Protection Act of 2002 Clean Water Act of 2004 Environmental Awareness and Education Act of 2008 Climate Change Act of 2009 Singapore Environmental Protection and Management Act (Cap 94A) Hazardous Waste (Control of Export, Import and Transit) Act (Cap. 122A) Parks and Trees Act (Cap. 216) and its associated regulations, the Parks and Trees Regulations (Cap. 216 Section 63) aimed at regulating conduct within parks and nature reserves. Wildlife Act (Cap. 351) aimed at protecting named species of plant, animal and fungi in Singapore Endangered Species (Import and Export) Act (Cap. 92A) aimed at preventing the trade of wildlife protected under Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Carbon Pricing Act (No. 23 of 2018) aimed at regulating and limiting the carbon footprint of corporate bodies in Singapore. Resource Sustainability Act (No. 29 of 2019) aimed at conserving existing resources and materials. Sri Lanka(Contribution by Dhanvin Nandakumaran of Gateway College Colombo, Sri Lanka) National Environmental Act 1980 First Forest Policy 1929 Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance 1937 Europe Austria Animal Protection Act Environmental Impact Assessment Act 2000 Federal Act dated 27th November 1984 - for comprehensive protection of the environment Federal Act No. 33/1998 on Trade of Wild Flora and Fauna Federal Law amending the Species Trade Act Forstgesetz 1975 Lebensmittelsicherheits und Verbraucherschutzgesetz (LMSVG) 2006 Umweltinformationsgesetzes (UIG) Belarus Article 131 Ecocide Law Belgium Loi du 20 janvier 1999 sur la protection du milieu marin dans les espaces marins sous juridiction de la Belgique Loi du 22 avril 1999 sur la zone économique exclusive de la Belgique dans la mer du Nord Wet van 20 januari 1999 tot bescherming van het mariene milieu in de zeegebieden onder de rechtsbevoegdheid van België Wet van 22 april 1999 betreffende de exclusieve economische zone van België in de Noordzee Bulgaria Agricultural Producers' Protection Act Amendments to the Law on protection of the environment Biological Diversity Act, 2002 Environmental Protection Act 2002 Forestry Act Law for Hunting and Protection of the Game Law of Preservation of Environment Law of the Purity of Atmospheric Air Law on obligations to the international reimbursement of damages from oil pollution fund Law on Protection against Harmful Impact of Chemical Substances and Preparations Law on Tourism Law on Waste Management 2003 (State Gazette No 86/2003) Medicinal Plants Act 2000 (State Gazette No 29/2000) Nature Protection Act Protected Areas Act 1998 (State Gazette No 133/1998) Protection of Waters and Soil against Pollution Act Regulation on the terms and conditions for carrying out Environmental Impact Assessment (SG 25/18.03.2003) Regulations for implementation of the Law for the forests Water Act 1999 (State Gazette No. 67/27.1999) Cyprus Air Quality Law 188(I)/2002 Air Quality Law (Air Pollution by Ozone) Regulations P.I. 530/2002 Air Quality Law (Amendment) Law 53(I)/2004 Air Quality Law (Annual Emission Ceilings for Certain Atmospheric Pollutants) Regulations P.I. 193/2004 Air Quality Law (Limit Values for Benzene and Carbon Monoxide in Ambient Air) Regulations P.I. 516/2002 Air Quality (Ozone in Ambient Air) Regulations P.I. 194/2004 Control of Atmospheric Pollution (Control of Volatile Organic Compounds Emissions Resulting from the Storage of Petrol and its Distribution from Terminals to Service Stations) Regulations P.I. 76/2003 Control of Atmospheric Pollution (Incineration of Hazardous Wastes) Regulations P.I. 638/2002 Control of Atmospheric Pollution (Incineration of Waste Oils) Regulations P.I. 529/2002 Control of Atmospheric Pollution (Incineration of Wastes) Regulations P.I. 284/2003 Control of Atmospheric Pollution Law 187(I)/2002 Control of Atmospheric Pollution (Limitation and Control of Atmospheric Pollution caused by Waste from Titanium Dioxide Industry) Regulations P.I. 527/2002 Control of Atmospheric Pollution (Limitation of Emissions of Certain Pollutants into Air from Large Combustion Plants) Regulations P.I. 195/2004 Control of Atmospheric Pollution (Limitation of Volatile Organic Compounds due to the Use of Organic Solvents in Certain Activities and Installations) Regulations P.I. 73/2003 Control of Atmospheric Pollution (Non Licensable Installations) Regulations P.I. 170/2004 Control of Atmospheric Pollution (Prevention and Reduction of Atmospheric Pollution by Asbestos) Regulations P.I. 528/2002 Control of Atmospheric Pollution (Prevention of Air Pollution from Existing Municipal Incineration Plants) Regulations P.I. 75/2003 Control of Atmospheric Pollution (Procedures for the Surveillance and Monitoring of Environments concerned by Waste from Titanium Dioxide Industry) Regulations P.I. 545/2002 Forest Law 1967 Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Law 56(I)/2003 Law 77(I)/2010 for the Quality of Atmospheric Air Protection from Ionising Radiation Law 115(I)/2002 Regulation 327/2010 regarding the Quality of Atmospheric Air Czech Republic Act 1991 - 2 Collective Bargaining Act Act 1992 - 1 on Wages, Remuneration for Stand-Bye, and Average Earnings Act 1992 - 114 on the protection of nature and Landscape Act 1995 - 289 Forest Act Act 2001 - 100 on environmental impact assessment Act 2001 - 185 on Waste Act 2001 - 254 Water Act Act 2002 - 521 on integrated pollution prevention and control (amendment) Act 2004 - 99 on Fishery Act 2005 - 7 amending Act No. 185/2001 - Coll. on waste and on amendment to some other laws Decree 2004 – 382 - on the protection of farm animals at the time of slaughter, killing or other ways of putting to death Decree 2005 – 424 - amending Decree No 382/2004 Coll. on the protection of farm animals at the time of slaughter, killing or other ways of putting to death Decree 2006 – 346 - on laying down more detailed conditions of keeping and training of animals Decree 2008 – 411 - specifying animal species requiring special care Decree 2009 – 3 - on professional competence for the performance of supervision in the field of protection of animals against cruelty Decree 2009 – 4 - on the protection of animals during transport Decree 2009 – 5 - on the protection of animals at a public performance and in breeding Regulation 2003 on the Waste Management Plan of the Czech Republic Denmark Act on Access to Information on the Environment No. 292 of April 27, 1994 Act on Environment and Genetic Engineering No. 356 of June 6, 1991 Act on the Protection of the Marine Environment No. 476 of June 30, 1993 Act on the Protection of the Marine Environment, the Safety of ships Act, and Merchant Shipping Act (Exclusive Economic Zones Act) No. 394 of May 22, 1996 Act on Waste Deposits No. 420 of June 13, 1990 Consolidated Act from the Ministry of the Environment on Watercourses No. 404 of May 19, 1992 Consolidated Act on Chemical Substances and Products No. 21 of January 16, 1996 Consolidated Act on Taxes on Waste and Raw Materials No. 570 of August 3, 1998 Consolidated Act on Water Supply Consolidated Environment And Genetic Engineering Act No. 981 Of December 2002 Consolidated Environmental Protection Act No. 698 of September 22, 1998 Contaminated Soil Act No. 370 of June 2, 1999 Danish Forest Act 1989 Act no 383 Estonia Deliberate Release into the Environment of Genetically Modified Organisms Act Earth's Crust Act Environmental Impact Assessment and Environmental Management System Act 2005 Environmental Monitoring Act 1999 (amended until 2005) Environmental Supervision Act Forest Act 2007 Hunting Act (Estonia) Law on Hunting Management Nature Conservation Act (Estonia) Tourism Act Tourism Law 2000 Water Act Finland Act on Compensation for Environmental Damage 1994 Act on Environmental Permit Authorities 2000 Act on the Financing of Sustainable Forestry Act on Implementation of the Legislation on Environmental Protection Act on Jointly Owned Forests Act on Metsähallitus Act on Trade in Forest Reproductive Material Act on Water Resources Management 2004 Act on Water Services (119/2001) Animal Welfare Act (Finland) Animal Welfare Decree Decree on the Financing of Sustainable Forestry Environmental Damage Insurance Act Environmental Protection Act (Finland) Environmental Protection Decree Forest Act 1996 Forest Decree Forest Management Association Act Forest Management Association Decree Government Decree on the Assessment of Soil Contamination and Remediation Needs Government Decree on Substances Dangerous and Harmful to the Aquatic Environment 2006 Government Decree on Urban Waste Water Treatment 2006 Hunting Act 1993 Nature Conservation Act (1096/1996) Nature Conservation Decree 1997 Waste Act (1072/1993) Waste Decree 1993 Waste Oil Charge Act (894/1986) France Code de l'environnement Code forestier Loi du 14 avril 2006 relative aux parcs nationaux, aux parcs naturels marins et aux parcs naturels régionaux Loi du 30 décembre 1996 sur l'air et l'utilisation rationnelle de l'énergie Germany Law on Conservation and Environmental Care (Gesetz über Naturschutz und Landschaftspflege - Bundesnaturschutzgesetz - BNatSchG) Law on Protection for Environmental Harms due to Air Pollution, Noise, etc. (Gesetz zum Schutz vor schädlichen Umwelteinwirkungen durch Luftverunreinigungen, Geräusche, Erschütterungen und ähnliche Vorgänge - Bundes-Immissionsschutzgesetz - BImSchG) Regulation on Drinking Water Quality (Trinkwasserverordnung - TrinkwV) Regulation on Soil Protection (Bundesbodenschutzgesetz - BBSchG) Regulation on Waste Management (Kreislaufwirtschaftsgesetz - KrwG) Regulation on Water Usage (Wasserhaushaltsgesetz - WHG) Greece Law 2939 Waste Law Iceland Act on Protective Measures Against Avalanches and Landslides, 1997 Act on Radiation Protection, 2002 Emissions of Greenhouse Gases Act No. 65, 2007 Environmental Impact Assessment Act (Iceland) No. 106, 25 May 2000 Fisheries Management Act No. 38, 15 May 1990 Nature Conservation Act Ireland Air Pollution Act 1987 Chemicals Act 2008 Dumping at Sea (Amendment) Act 2004 Fisheries (Amendment) Act 2003 Foreshore and Dumping at Sea (Amendment) Act 2009 Forestry Act 1988 Forestry (Amendment) Act 2009 Foyle and Carlingford Fisheries Act 2007 Litter Pollution Act 1997 No. 27/2003: Protection of the Environment Act 2003 Oil Pollution of the Sea (Civil Liability and Compensation) (Amendment) Act 2003 Protection of the Environment Act 2003 Sea Pollution (Amendment) Act 1999 Sea Pollution (Hazardous Substances)(Compensation) Act 2005 Sea Pollution (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2006 Waste Management (Amendment) Act 2001 Water Services Act 2007 Wildlife Act 1976 Wildlife (Amendment) Act 2000 Climate Action and Low Carbon Development 2015 Italy Decreto Presidente 1997 - 357 Regolamento recante attuazione della direttiva 92/43/CEE relativa alla conservazione degli habitat Law 1993 - 157 provisions for the protection of wildlife and restrictions on hunting Legge 2002 - 179 Disposizioni in materia ambientale Decreto Lgislativo Governo 3 aprile 2006, n. 152, Norme in materia ambientale. Latvia Animal Protection Law Chemical Substances and Chemical Products Law Environmental Protection Law (Latvia) Fishery Law Forestry Law Hunting Law (2003) Law on Chemical Substances and Chemical Products Law on the Conservation of Species and Biotopes Law on End-of Life Vehicles Management Law on Environmental Impact Assessment (Latvia) (amended until 2005) Law on Environmental Protection (Latvia) Law on Pollution Law on Specially Protected Nature Territories (1993) Law on Subterranean Depths Packaging Law (9 January 2002) Protection Zone Law (5 February 1997) Regulation No. 118 - adopted on 12 March 2002; "Regulations regarding the Quality of Surface Waters and Groundwaters" Regulation No. 280 - adopted 24 April 2007; "General Procedures for the Issue of Licences for the Use of Subterranean Depths and Authorisations for the Extraction of Widespread Mineral Resources, and for the Use of Geological Information" Regulation No. 34 - "Regulations regarding Discharge of Polluting Substances into Water" (22 January 2002) Regulation No. 475 - "Procedures regarding the Cleaning and Deepening of Surface Water Bodies and Port Basins"; 13 June 2006 Regulation No. 595 - adopted 18 July 2006 "Regulations regarding the Protection of the Environment during the Works of Exploration and Extraction of Hydrocarbons in the Sea" Regulation No. 736 - "Regulations Regarding a Permit for the Use of Water Resources"; 23 December 2003 Regulation No. 779 - adopted 19 September 2006; "Procedures for the Extraction of Mineral Resources" Regulation No. 857 - "Regulations regarding Procedures for Ascertaining of Groundwater Resources and Criteria of Quality" 19 October 2004 Regulations no 184 Requirements for Activities with Biocidal Products Regulations no 340 on Procedures for Import, Notification and Risk Assessment of New Chemical Substances (6 August 2002) Regulations on electrical and electronic equipment waste management (9 November 2004) Regulations Regarding the Limitation of Emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds from Certain Products Regulations Regarding Protection of Water and Soil from Pollution with Nitrates Caused by Agricultural Sources Regulations Regarding Restrictions and Prohibitions on Use and Marketing of Dangerous Chemical Substances and Dangerous Chemical Products Regulations Regarding Restrictions of the Use of Chemicals in Electric and Electronic Equipment Tourism Law Waste Management Law Lithuania Environmental Protection Law (Lithuania) Forestry Law (Lithuania) Law on the Department Of Environmental Protection Law on Drinking Water Supply and Waste Water Management Law on Environmental Protection (Lithuania) Law on Financial Instruments for Climate Change management Law on Fisheries Law on the Management of Packaging and Packaging Waste Law on the Management of Radioactive Waste Law on Water The Underground Law Luxembourg Code de l'Environnement Loi du 10 août 1993 relative aux parcs naturels Loi du 10 juin 1999 relative aux établissements classés Loi du 11 mars 2008 ayant pour objet d’autoriser le Gouvernement à subventionner l’exécution d’unhuitième palanquin quen nal del infrastructure touristique Loi du 14 avril 1992 portant réglementation de la mise sur le marché de substances qui appauvrissent la Loi du 19 décembre 2008 relative à l'eau Loi du 19 janvier 2004 concernant la protection de la nature et des ressources naturelles Loi du 19 novembre 2003 modifiant la loi du 10 juin 1999 relative aux établissements classés Loi du 25 avril 1970 modifiant et complétant la loi du 17 juillet 1960 portant institution d ´un statut de l ´hôtellerie Loi du 25 juin 2004, la loi relative à la coordination de la politique nationale de développement durable a été adoptée Loi du 28 mai 2004 portant création d’une Administration de la gestion de l’eau Loi du 6 juillet 1999 portant création d’un réseau national de pistes cyclables Loi modifiée du 21 juin 1976 relative à la lutte contre le bruit Règlement grand-ducal du 7 mars 2003 concernant l’évaluation des incidences de certains projets publics et privés sur l’environnement Règlement grand-ducal du 9 janvier 2009 concernant la protection intégrale et partielle de certaines espèces animales de la faune sauvage Malta Clean Air Act (Malta) Filfla Nature Reserve Act Integrated Pollution Prevention & Control Regulations L.N. 13/2006 Control and Security of High-Activity Radioactive and Orphan L.N. 44/03 Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Regulations, 2003 Litter Act Malta's International Obligations regarding Environmental Matters Management of Bathing Water Quality Regulations, 2008 Prevention and Remedying of Environmental Damage Regulations, 2008 Quality of Water Intended for Human Consumption Regulations, 2009 Strategic Environmental Assessment Regulations, 2005 Waste Management (Management of Waste from Extractive Industries and Backfilling) Regulations, 2009 Waste Management (Waste Oils) Regulations Water Services Corporation Act Water Supply (Amendment) Regulations, 2008 Netherlands Boswet Cadmium Decree 1999 - rules for the manufacture and sale of products containing cadmium Environment Protection Act Environmental Management Act 2004 Experiments on Animals Act 1997 Flora en faunawet Groundwater Act Invoeringswet Waterwet Marine Pollution Act Natuurbeschermingswet 1998 Ontgrondingenwet Soil Protection Act Waterleidingbesluit Waterleidingwet Waterwet 2008 Wet beheer rijkswaterstaatswerken Wet Bodembescherming Wet Geluidhinder Wet milieubeheer Wet verontreiniging van oppervlaktewateren Norway Act 13 March 1981 no 6 - relating to protection against pollution and relating to waste. Last amended by Act 10 December 1999 no 83 Act on Radiation Protection and Use of Radiation 2000 Act Relating to Biobanks 2003 Animal Welfare Act 1974 Cultural Heritage Act 1978 Environmental Information Act 2003 Finnmark Act (2005) Forestry Act 2005 Gene Technology Act 1993 Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Act 2004 Nature Conservation Act 1970 Pollution Control Act (Norway) Pollution Control Act of 13 March 1981 No.6 Regulations Relating to Pollution Control (pollution regulations) Regulations Relating to Restrictions on the Use of Chemicals and Other Products Hazardous to Health and the Environment (product regulations) Svalbard Environmental Protection Act 2001 Waste Regulations (Norway) Water Resources Act 2000 Watercourse Regulation Act 1917 Wildlife Act 1981 Poland Act 1991 on Inspection for Environmental Protection Act 1997 Poland Animal Protection Act Act 2000 on Access to Information on the Environment and Its Protection and on Environmental Impact Assessments Act 2001 on Waste Portugal Decreto-Lei 151B - de 31 de outubro de 2013 - aprova o regime jurídico da Avaliação de Impacte Ambiental (AIA)dos projetos públicos e privados suscetíveis de produzirem efeitos significativos no ambient. Decreto-Lei 1998 - 236 Lei da qualidade da agua Decreto-Lei 2007 - 306 Lei estabelece o regime da qualidade da água destinada ao consumo humano Lei 1959 - 2097 Lei de Bases do Fomento Piscícola nas Águas Interiores Lei 1987 - 11 Lei de Bases do Ambiente Lei 2005 - 58 Lei de Agua Romania Law 1995-137 Environmental Protection Law Law 1996-107 Water Law Law 1996-26 Forest Code Law 2000-182 Regarding the Protection of the Movable National Heritage Law 2001-422 Protection of Historical Monuments Law 2006-407 Law on Hunting Law 2008-46 Forestry Code Russia Forest Code of the Russian Federation Water Code of the Russian Federation Slovakia Act 287 / 1994 - on the Preservation of Nature and Landscape Act No. 163/2001 - Coll. on Chemical Substances and Chemical Preparations Act No. 238/1991 - on the Collection of Waste Regulation 1993 - on the specification of areas requiring special protection of the atmosphere and on the operation of smog warning and control systems Slovenia Act on protection against ionising radiation and nuclear safety Biocidal Products Act Chemicals Act Cosmetic Products Act Decree Amending the Decree on the Method, Subject and Conditions for the Provision of the Public Utility Service of Management of Abattoir Waste and Infectious Material of Animal Origin Decree on Amendments and Additions to the Decree on Noise in the Natural and Living Environment Decree on Amendments and Supplements to the Decree on Charges for the Loading of the Atmosphere with Carbon Dioxide Emissions Decree on changes and additions to the decree on the tax for the pollution of the air with emissions of carbon dioxide Decree on the Emission of Substances into the Atmosphere from Hazardous Waste Incineration Plants Decree on the emission of substances into the atmosphere from lacquering plants Decree on the Emission of Substances into the Atmosphere from Municipal Waste Incineration Plants Decree on the emission of substances into the atmosphere from plants for the production and processing of wood products Decree on the emission of substances into the atmosphere from plants for the production of lead and its alloys from secondary raw materials Decree on Emission of Volatile Organic Compounds into the Air from the Storage of Petrol and From its Distribution from Terminals to Service Stations Decree on the Export, Import and Transit of Wastes Decree on the Input of Dangerous Substances and Plant Nutrients into the Soil Decree on the Limit, Warning and Critical Concentration Values of Dangerous Substances in Soil Decree on the manner, subject and conditions for performing the commercial public service of managing radioactive waste Decree on Noise in the Natural and Living Environment Decree on Noise Owing to Road and Railway Traffic Decree on the quality of liquid fuels with regard to their sulphur, lead and benzene content Decree on the quantity of waste from the production of titanium dioxide discharged into water and on the emission of substances into the air from the production of titanium dioxide Decree on the tax for the pollution of the atmosphere with emissions of carbon dioxide Environment Protection Act (Slovenia) Forest Act Forest reproductive materials act Management of Genetically modified organisms Act Nature Conservation Act (Slovenia) Regulations on Changes and Additions to the Regulations on the Management of Wastes which Contain Toxic Substances Regulations on Initial Measurement of Noise and Operational Monitoring for Sources of Noise and on Conditions for their Execution Regulations on Initial Measurements and Operational Monitoring for Sources of Electromagnetic Radiation and on Conditions for Their Execution Rules on Amendments and Supplements to the Rules on Initial Measurements and Operational Monitoring of the Emission of Substances into the Atmosphere from Stationary Sources of Pollution, and on the Conditions for their Implementation Rules on amendments and supplements to the rules on waste management Rules on Authorizations for Biocidal Products Based on Mutual Recognition within the European Union Rules on the Disposal of Polychlorinated Biphenyls and Polychlorinated Terphenys Rules on the form for the notification of suppliers of cosmetic products and the procedure or notifying new cosmetic products prior to their first placing on the market Rules on the Handling of Packaging and Packaging Waste Rules on the labelling of cosmetic products Rules on landfill waste tipping Rules on the management of waste from the production of titanium dioxide Rules on the Management of Waste Oils Rules on the monitoring of environmental pollution from the production of titanium dioxide Rules on Monitoring Seismicity in Regions with Large Dams Rules on the quality of liquid fuels Rules on the reporting of data on chemicals Rules on Waste Incineration Rules on Waste Management Waters Act Spain Ley 1989 - 4 de Conservación de los Espacios Naturales y de la flora y fauna silvestres (on the preservation of natural areas and wildlife) Ley 1995 - 38 sobre el Derecho de Acceso a la Información en materia de Medio Ambiente (on public access to environmental information) Ley 1995 - 5 de Protección de los animales (on the protection of animals) Ley 2000 - 5 de saneamiento y depuración de aguas residuales de La Rioja (on water treatment for the autonomous region of La Rioja, provincial law) Ley 2003 - 37 del Ruido (on noise) Ley 2005 - 1 por la que se regula el régimen del comercio de derechos de emisión de gases de efecto invernadero (on greenhouse gas emissions trading) Ley 2006 - 27 por la que se regulan los derechos de acceso a la información, de participación pública y de acceso a la justicia en materia de medio ambiente (on public access to information, public participation and justice related to environmental matters) Ley 2007 - 26 de Responsabilidad Medioambiental (on environmental liability) Ley 2007 - 32 para el cuidado de los animales, en su explotación, transporte, experimentación y sacrificio (on animal welfare regarding their breeding, transportation, experimentation and slaughter) Ley 2007 - 34 de calidad del aire y protección de la atmósfera (on air quality and the protection of the atmosphere) Ley 2010 - 3 por la que se aprueban medidas urgentes para paliar los daños producidos por los incendios forestales y otras catástrofes naturales ocurridos en varias Comunidades Autónomas (approves urgent actions to mitigate impacts due to forest fires and other natural disasters in different Autonomous Regions) Ley 2013 - 21 de Evaluación Ambiental (on Environmental Impact Assessment) Ley Organica 2007 - 16 complementaria de la Ley para el desarrollo sostenible del medio rural (complements the Law on sustainable development of rural areas) Real Decreto Legislativo 2008 - 2 por el que se aprueba el texto refundido de la ley de suelo (consolidated text of the Soil Law) Sweden Animal Welfare Act (Sweden) Animal Welfare Ordinance Fishery Conservation Areas Act (SFS 1981:533) Forest Act 2004 Heritage Conservation Act (Sweden) (1988:950) Heritage Conservation Ordinance (1988:1188) Ordinance concerning Environmentally Hazardous Activities and the Protection of Public Health (1998:899) Ordinance on Environmental Quality Standards on Ambient Air (2001:527) Ordinance on Land and Water Management (1998:896) Plant Protection Ordinance (2006:1010) Public Water Areas (Boundaries) Act (SFS 1950:595) Radiation Protection Act (1988:220) Swedish Environmental Code (1998:808) Switzerland Bundesgesetz vom 1. Juli 1966 über den Natur- und Heimatschutz (NHG) Bundesgesetz vom 20. Juni 1986 über die Jagd und den Schutz wildlebender Säugetiere und Vögel (Jagdgesetz, JSG) Bundesgesetz vom 22. Dezember 1916 über die Nutzbarmachung der Wasserkräfte (Wasserrechtsgesetz, WRG) Bundesgesetz vom 22. Juni 1877 über die Wasserbaupolizei Bundesgesetz vom 24. Januar 1991 über den Schutz der Gewässer (Gewässerschutzgesetz, GSchG) Bundesgesetz vom 4. Oktober 1991 über den Wald (Waldgesetz, WaG) Bundesgesetz über den Natur- und Heimatschutz Chemicals Ordinance (ChemO) Chemikaliengebührenverordnung (ChemGebV) Chemikalienverordnung (ChemV) CO2-Gesetz Environmental Protection Act (Switzerland) (EPA) Federal Act of 7 October 1983 on the Protection of the Environment (Environmental Protection Act, EPA) Federal Act on the Protection of Waters (GSchG) Federal Act on Railways Noise Abatement Federal Law on the reduction of CO2 emissions Federal Law relating to Non-human Gene Technology Federal Law relating to the Protection of the Environment Gentechnikgesetz (GTG) Gewässerschutzgesetz (GSchG) Gewässerschutzverordnung (GSchV) Hydraulic Engineering Act Jagdgesetz (JSG) Jagdverordnung (JSV) Luftreinhalte-Verordnung (LRV) Lärmschutz-Verordnung (LSV) Nationalparkgesetz Natur- und Heimatschutzgesetz (NHG) Noise Abatement Ordinance Ordinance of 7 November 2007 on Parks of National Importance (Parks Ordinance, ParkO) Ordinance on Air Pollution Ordinance on Beverage Containers (VGV) Ordinance on Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance on Hydraulic Engineering (WBV) Ordinance on Plant Protection Products (PSMV) Ordinance on Railways Noise Abatement Ordinance relating to Impacts on the Soil (VBBo) Ordinance relating to Protection from Non-Ionizing Radiation (NISV) Ordonnance du 7 décembre 1998 concernant la sécurité des ouvrages d’accumulation (Ordonnance sur les ouvrages d’accumulation, OSOA) Ordonnance sur la chasse (OChP) Ordonnance sur la protection contre le bruit (OPB) Ordonnance sur la protection contre le rayonnement non ionisant (ORNI) Ordonnance sur la protection de la nature et du paysage (OPN) Ordonnance sur la protection de l’air (OPair) Ordonnance sur la protection des eaux (OEaux) Ordonnance sur la taxe sur le CO2 (Ordonnance sur le CO2) Ordonnance sur l’aménagement des cours d’eau (OACE) Ordonnance sur les atteintes portées aux sols (OSol) Ordonnance sur les emballages pour boissons (OEB) Ordonnance sur les forêts (OFo) Ordonnance sur les produits chimiques (OChim) Pflanzenschutzmittelverordnung (PSMV) Technical Ordinance on Waste (TVA) Umweltschutzgesetz (USG) Verordnung vom 12. Februar 1918 über die Berechnung des Wasserzinses (Wasserzinsverordnung, WZV) Verordnung vom 2. Februar 2000 über die Nutzbarmachung der Wasserkräfte (Wasserrechtsverordnung, WRV) Verordnung vom 25. Oktober 1995 über die Abgeltung von Einbussen bei der Wasserkraftnutzung (VAEW) Verordnung über Belastungen des Bodens (VBBo) Verordnung über Getränkeverpackungen (VGV) Verordnung über den Natur- und Heimatschutz (NHV) Verordnung über den Schutz vor nichtionisierender Strahlung (NISV) Verordnung über die CO2-Abgabe (CO2-Verordnung) Waldgesetz (WaG) Waldverordnung (WaV) Wasserbaugesetz (WBG) Wasserbauverordnung (WBV) Water Protection Ordinance (GSchV) Turkey Law 1946-4922 on the Protection of Life and Property at Sea Law 1956-6831 Forest Law Law 1964-12 on Water Pollution by Oil Law 1982-2634 for the Encouragement of Tourism Law 1983-2872 Environment Law United Kingdom Alkali Act 1863 Clean Air Act 1956 Clean Air Act 1968 Clean Air Act 1993 Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 Climate Change Act 2008 Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006 Energy Act 2010 Environment Act 1995 Environmental Protection Act 1990 Flood and Water Management Act 2010 Forestry Act 1991 Ground Game Act 1880 Hunting Act 2004 Merchant Shipping (Pollution) Act 2006 Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 Planning Act 2008 Pollution Prevention and Control Act 1999 Waste Minimisation Act 1998 Water Act 2003 Weeds Act 1959 Northern Ireland Game Preservation (Amendment) Act 2002 Water and Sewerage Services (Amendment) Act 2010 Scotland Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 Marine (Scotland) Act 2010 North America Canada Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act Canada Fisheries Act Canada Forestry Act Canada Shipping Act Canada Water Act Canada Wildlife Act Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 1992 Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 - main piece of Canadian environmental legislation, focusing on "respecting pollution prevention and the protection of the environment and human health in order to contribute to sustainable development." Department of the Environment Act Hazardous Products Act (Canada) Migratory Birds Convention Act National Parks Act (Canada) Natural Heritage Conservation Act (Canada) Navigable Waters Protection Act Pest Control Products Act (Canada) Rocky Mountains Park Act Species at Risk Act Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992 Alberta Climate Change and Emissions Management Amendment Act Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act (Alberta) Fisheries Act (Alberta) Forest Act (Alberta) Water Act (Alberta) Wildlife Act (Alberta) British Columbia Environmental Management Act (British Columbia) Forest Act (British Columbia) Water Act (British Columbia) Water Protection Act (British Columbia) Wildlife Act (British Columbia) Manitoba East Side Traditional Lands Planning and Special Protected Areas Act (Manitoba) Ecological Reserves Act (Manitoba) Environment Act (Manitoba) Forest Act (Manitoba) Provincial Parks Act (Manitoba) Water Protection Act (Manitoba) Water Rights Act (Manitoba) Wildlife Act (Manitoba) New Brunswick Clean Water Act (New Brunswick) Heritage Conservation Act (New Brunswick) Newfoundland Environment Act (Newfoundland) Environmental Assessment Act (Newfoundland) Environmental Protection Act (Newfoundland) Forestry Act (Newfoundland) Water Resources Act (Newfoundland) Northwest Territories Environmental Protection Act (Northwest Territories) Forest Management Act (Northwest Territories) Forest Protection Act (Northwest Territories) Water Resources Agreements Act (Northwest Territories) Northern Territories Waters Act (Northern Territories) Wildlife Act (Northern Territories) Nova Scotia Environment Act (Nova Scotia) Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act (Nova Scotia) Forests Act (Nova Scotia) Water Resources Protection Act (Nova Scotia) Wildlife Act (Nova Scotia) Special Places Protection Act (Nova Scotia) Wilderness Areas Protection Act (Nova Scotia) Crown Lands Act (Nova Scotia) Parks Development Act (Nova Scotia) Water Act (Nova Scotia) Beaches Act (Nova Scotia) Beaches and Foreshores Act (Nova Scotia) Ontario Clean Water Act 2005 (Ontario) Clean Water Act (Ontario) Environmental Assessment Act (Ontario) Environmental Bill of Rights Environmental Protection Act (Ontario) Forestry Act (Ontario) Green Energy Act (Ontario) Nutrient Management Act (Ontario) Ontario Water Resources Act Pesticides Act (Ontario) Safe Drinking Water Act Toxics Reduction Act (Ontario) Waste Management Act 1992 (Ontario) Prince Edward Island Environment Tax Act (Prince Edward Island) Environmental Protection Act (Prince Edward Island) Forest Management Act (Prince Edward Island) Water and Sewerage Act (Prince Edward Island) Wildlife Conservation Act (Prince Edward Island) Quebec Environment Quality Act (Quebec) Forest Act (Quebec) Saskatchewan Environmental Assessment Act (Saskatchewan) Fisheries Act (Saskatchewan) Wildlife Act (Saskatchewan) Yukon Environment Act (Yukon) Environmental Assessment Act (Yukon) Waters Act (Yukon) Wildlife Act (Yukon) Mexico Ley Ambiental del Distrito Federal - Environmental Law of the Federal District Ley de Agua del Estado de Sonora - Water Act of the State of Sonora Ley de Aguas del Distrito Federal - Water Law of the Federal District Ley de Aguas Nacionales - National Water Law Ley de Bioseguridad de Organismos Genéticamente Modificados - Law on Biosafety of Genetically Modified Organisms Ley de Pesca - Fisheries Act Ley Federal de Turismo - Federal Tourism Law Ley Federal del Mar - Federal Law of the Sea Ley Forestal - Forestry Law Ley General de Bienes Nacionales - General Law of National Assets Ley General de Vida Silvestre - General Wildlife Act Ley General del Equilibrio Ecológico y la Protección al Ambient - General Law of Ecological Equilibrium and Protection Ambient United States South America Bolivia Law of the Rights of Mother Earth Brazil Lei Nº 6.938/81 - Lei da Política Nacional do Meio Ambiente, de 31 de agosto de 1981, que trata da Política Nacional do Meio Ambiente, seus fins e mecanismos de formulação e aplicação. Lei Nº 7.347/85 - Lei da Ação Civil Pública, de 24 de julho de 1985, que trata da ação civil pública de responsabilidade por danos causados ao meio ambiente, ao consumidor, a bens e direitos de valor artístico, estético, histórico e turístico. Lei Nº 9.605/98 - Lei de Crimes Ambientais, de 12 de fevereiro de 1998, que trata das sanções penais e administrativas derivadas de condutas e atividades lesivas ao meio ambiente.LEI N° 5.197, DE 3 DE JANEIRO DE 1967 http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/leis/L5197.htm - Lei n. 5197/67. Dispõe sobre a proteção à fauna e dá outras providências. Chile Ley Nº 19.300 - Ley sobre bases generales del medio ambiente (Ley Nº 19300, 09 de Marzo de 1994) Oceania Australia Biological Control Act 1984 Clean Energy Act 2011 (repealed in 2014) Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005 Environmental Protection Act 1994 Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 - centerpiece environmental legislation in Australia Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act 1981 Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act 1975 Hazardous Waste (Regulation of Exports and Imports) Act 1989 National Environment Protection Council Act 1994 National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 Ozone Protection Act 1989 Product Stewardship Act 2011 Water Act 2007 Wildlife Protection (Regulation of Exports and Imports) Act 1982 World Heritage Properties Conservation Act 1983 New South Wales Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 Forestry Act 1916 No 55 (New South Wales) Northern Territory Darwin Waterfront Corporation Act 2006 Queensland Forestry Act 1959 (Queensland) Nature Conservation Act 1992 Nuclear Facilities Prohibition Act 2007 (Queensland) Water Act 2000 (Queensland) South Australia Environment Protection Act 1993 Forestry Act 1950 (South Australia) Water Resources Act 1997 (South Australia) Wilderness Protection Act 1992 (South Australia) Tasmania Environmental Management and Pollution Control Act 1994 (Tasmania) Forestry Act 1920 (Tasmania) Living Marine Resources Management Act 1995 (Tasmania) Threatened Species Protection Act 1995 Water Management Act 1999 (Tasmania) Wildlife Regulations 1999 (Tasmania) Victoria Environment Protection (Amendment) Act 2006 (Victoria) Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 Water (Governance) Act 2006 (Victoria) Water (Resource Management) Act 2005 (Victoria) Western Australia Environmental Protection Act 1986 (EP Act) Environmental Protection (Controlled Waste) Regulations 2004 Environmental Protection (Noise) Regulations 1997 Environmental Protection (Unauthorised Discharges) Regulations 2004 Health Act 1911 Rights in Water and Irrigation Act Biodiversity Conservation Act Contaminated Sites Act New Zealand Clean Air Act 1972 Climate Change (Forestry Sector) Regulations 2008 (SR 2008/355) Climate Change Response Act 2002 Conservation Act 1987 Environment Act 1986 Forest and Rural Fires Regulations 2005 (SR 2005/153) (as of 6 November 2008) Forests Act 1949 Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 Litter Amendment Act 2006 Marine Reserves Act 1971 National Parks Act 1980 New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987 Ozone Layer Protection Act 1996 Reserves Act 1977 Resource Management Act 1991 - primary environmental legislation, outlining the government's strategy of managing the "environment, including air, water soil, biodiversity, the coastal environment, noise, subdivision, and land use planning in general" Resource Management Amendment Act 2005 Scenery Preservation Act 1903 Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Act 1941 Waste Minimisation Act 2008 - No 89 Public Act Wildlife Act 1953 References External links ECOLEX (Gateway to Environmental Law) Lexadin global law database

controlled-environment agriculture

Controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) -- which includes indoor agriculture (IA) and vertical farming—is a technology-based approach toward food production. The aim of CEA is to provide protection from the outdoor elements and maintain optimal growing conditions throughout the development of the crop. Production takes place within an enclosed growing structure such as a greenhouse or plant factory.Plants are often grown in a soilless medium in order to supply the proper amounts of water and nutrients to the root zone as well as supplemental lighting to ensure a sufficient daily light integral. CEA optimizes the use of resources such as water, energy, space, capital and labor. CEA technologies include hydroponics, aeroponics, aquaculture, and aquaponics.Different techniques are available for growing food in controlled environment agriculture. Currently, the greenhouse industry is the largest component of the CEA industry but another quickly growing segment is the vertical farming industry. Controlled Environment Agriculture has the ability to produce crops all year round, with the possibility of increased yield by adjusting the amount of carbon and nutrients the plants receive (Benke et al).In consideration to urban agriculture, CEA can exist inside repurposed structures, built to purpose structures or in basements and subterranean spaces. The trend is increasingly growing into alternative food networks, as entrepreneurs and households seek to meet the growing demand for fresh food products. Technical implementation Controllable variables: Environmental: Temperature (air, nutrient solution, root-zone, leaf) Relative Humidity (%RH) Carbon dioxide (CO2) Light (intensity, spectrum, duration and intervals)Cultural: Water Quality Nutrient concentration (PPM of Nitrogen, Potassium, Phosphorus, etc) Nutrient pH (acidity) Cropping duration and density Cultivar Pest controlsCEA facilities can range from fully 100% environmentally controlled enclosed closed loop systems, to automated glasshouses with computer controls for watering, lighting and ventilation. Low-tech solutions such as cloches or plastic film on field grown crops and plastic-covered tunnels are referred to as modified environment agriculture. CEA methods can be used to grow literally any crop, though the reality is a crop has to be economically viable and this will vary considerably due to local market pricing, and resource costs. Currently, tomatoes, leafy greens and herbs are the most economically viable crops. Motivation Crops can be grown for food, pharmaceutical and nutriceutical applications. It can also be used to grow algae for food or for biofuels. CEA methods can increase food safety by removing sources of contamination, and increases the security of supply as it is unaffected by outside environment conditions and eliminates seasonality to create a stable market pricing, which is good for both farmers and consumers. The use of monitoring software and automation can greatly reduce the amount of human labor required. CEA is used in research so that a specific aspect of production can be isolated while all other variables remain the same. For example, the use of tinted greenhouse glass could be compared to clear glass in this way during an investigation into photosynthesis.A February 2011 article in the magazine Science Illustrated states, "In commercial agriculture, CEA can increase efficiency, reduce pests and diseases, and save resources. ... Replicating a conventional farm with computers and LED lights is expensive but proves cost-efficient in the long run by producing up to 20 times as much high-end, pesticide-free produce as a similar-size plot of soil. Fourteen thousand square feet of closely monitored plants produce 15 million seedlings annually at the solar-powered factory. Such factories will be necessary to meet urban China's rising demand for quality fruits and vegetables."Advantages of CEA over traditional field farming: Water efficiency Space use efficiency Reduced transportation requirements Reliable year-round production Protection from adverse weather events Reduce fertilizer runoff Pleasant working conditions Urban impacts According to the findings of a USDA workshop in 2018: indoor agriculture (IA) in urban and near-urban areas has the potential to act as a consistent, local, and accessible producer and distributor of fresh produce. If these farms are placed strategically, this possibility of local food production, processing, and distribution could be especially impactful for urban areas without reliable access to affordable and fresh produce. Such farms could also have far-reaching impacts in traditionally underserved communities by creating opportunities for training employment and business development in an emerging sector. Industry As of mid-2021, reportedly 16.55 million square feet (380 acres / 154 hectares) of indoor farms were operating around the world. The State of Indoor Farming annual report suggests this will grow to 22 million sq. ft. (505 acres / 204 hectares) by 2022. (By comparison, the USDA reported 915 million acres (38 million hectares) of farmland in the United States, alone, in 2012.)As of 2018, an estimated 40 indoor vertical farms exist in the United States, some of which produce commercially sold produce and others which are not yet selling to consumers. Another source estimates over 100 startups in the space of 2018. In Asia, adoption of indoor agriculture has been driven by consumer demand for quality. The Recirculating Farms Coalition is a US trade organization for hydroponic farmers.A 2020 survey of indoor farming in the U.S. found that indoor production was: 26% leafy greens, 20% herbs 16% microgreens 10% tomatoes 28% otherAeroFarms, founded in 2011, raised $40 million in 2017 and reportedly opened the largest indoor farm in the world in Newark, New Jersey in 2015; by 2018 it built its 10th indoor farm. As of June 2023, AeroFarms filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection citing "significant industry and capital market headwinds". Economics The economics of indoor farming has been challenging, with high capital investment and energy operating costs—particularly the price of electricity—and several startups shut down as a result. A 2018 U.S. survey found only 51% of indoor farming operations profitable.A 2020 U.S. survey found that typical indoor agriculture crops, per pound of crop yield, consumed between US$0.47 (for leafy greens) and US$1.38 (for microgreens) in inputs (especially seed, growing media, and nutrients) -- though tomatoes were reported at US$0.06 inputs per pound. Labor costs for container farms were reported at US$2.35 per pound. However, the same survey noted that indoor agriculture yields more revenue per pound than conventional field agriculture.In the Asia-Pacific region, where burgeoning population growth conflicts with burgeoning space requirements for agriculture to feed the population, indoor farming is expected to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29%, growing from a 2021 value of US$0.77 billion to a 2026 value of US$2.77 billion.Advances in LED lighting have been one of the most important advances for improving economic viability. The high financial cost of investing in CEA presents a challenge that can only be overcome through research & development to innovate sustainable practices. The production potential of these farm networks justifies the investment in infrastructural value and contributes towards the 2030 SDGS to combat carbon footprint. Organic agriculture In 2017, the US National Organic Standards Board voted to allow hydroponically grown produce to be labeled as certified organic. See also Building-integrated agriculture Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (CEAC) at the University of Arizona Vertical farming External links Urban Agriculture Tool Kit, U.S. Dept. of Agricuture "Advances in greenhouse automation and controlled environment agriculture: A transition to plant factories and urban agriculture", January, 2018, Int J Agric & Biol Eng, Vol. 11 No.1, copied at USDA.gov "Indoor agriculture quickly gaining speed", May 21, 2015, Vegetable Growers News, retrieved January 9, 2022 (extensive data). == References ==

sustainable business

A sustainable business, or a green business, is an enterprise that has a minimal negative impact or potentially a positive effect on the global or local environment, community, society, or economy—a business that strives to meet the triple bottom line. They cluster under different groupings and the whole is sometimes referred to as "green capitalism." Often, sustainable businesses have progressive environmental and human rights policies. In general, a business is described as green if it matches the following four criteria: It incorporates principles of sustainability into each of its business decisions. It supplies environmentally friendly products or services that replace demand for nongreen products and/or services. It is greener than traditional competition. It has made an enduring commitment to environmental principles in its business operations. Terminology A sustainable business is any organization that participates in environmentally friendly or green activities to ensure that all processes, products, and manufacturing activities adequately address current environmental concerns while maintaining a profit. In other words, it is a business that “meets the needs of the present [world] without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” It is the process of assessing how to design products that will take advantage of the current environmental situation and how well a company’s products perform with renewable resources.The Brundtland Report emphasized that sustainability is a three-legged stool of people, planet, and profit. Sustainable businesses with the supply chain try to balance all three through the triple-bottom-line concept—using sustainable development and sustainable distribution to affect the environment, business growth, and society.Everyone affects the sustainability of the marketplace and the planet in some way. Sustainable development within a business can create value for customers, investors, and the environment. A sustainable business must meet customer needs while, at the same time, treating the environment well.To succeed in such an approach, where stakeholder balancing and joint solutions are key, requires a structural approach. One philosophy, that includes many different tools and methods, is the concept of Sustainable Enterprise Excellence. Another is the adoption of the concept of responsible growth.Sustainability is often confused with corporate social responsibility (CSR), though the two are not the same. Bansal and DesJardine (2014) state that the notion of ‘time’ discriminates sustainability from CSR and other similar concepts. Whereas ethics, morality, and norms permeate CSR, sustainability only obliges businesses to make intertemporal trade-offs to safeguard intergenerational equity. Short-termism is the bane of sustainability. While CSR and sustainability are not the same, they are related to each other. Determining salaries, implementing new technology, and retiring old plants all have an impact on the firm's stakeholders and the natural environment.Green business has been seen as a possible mediator of economic-environmental relations, and if proliferated, would serve to diversify our economy, even if it has a negligible effect on lowering atmospheric CO2 levels. The definition of "green jobs" is ambiguous, but it is generally agreed that these jobs, the result of green business, should be linked to "clean energy" and contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases. These corporations can be seen as generators of not only "green energy", but as producers of new "materializes" that are the product of the technologies, these firms developed and deployed. Environmental sphere A major initiative of sustainable businesses is to eliminate or decrease the environmental harm caused by the production and consumption of their goods. The impact of such human activities in terms of the number of greenhouse gases produced can be measured in units of carbon dioxide and is referred to as the carbon footprint. The carbon footprint concept is derived from the ecological footprint analysis, which examines the ecological capacity required to support the consumption of products.Businesses take a wide range of green initiatives. One of the most common examples is the act of "going paperless" or sending electronic correspondence in instead of paper when possible. On a higher level, examples of sustainable business practices include: refurbishing used products (e.g., tuning up lightly used commercial fitness equipment for resale); revising production processes to eliminate waste (such as using a more accurate template to cut out designs), and choosing nontoxic raw materials and processes. For example, Canadian farmers have found that hemp is a sustainable alternative to rapeseed in their traditional crop rotation; hemp grown for fiber or seed requires no pesticides or herbicides. Another example is upcycling clothes or textiles, in which businesses can upcycle products to maintain or increase their quality.Sustainable business leaders also take into account the life cycle costs for the items they produce. Input costs must be considered regarding regulations, energy use, storage, and disposal. Designing for the environment DFE is also an element of sustainable business. This process enables users to consider the potential environmental impacts of a product and the process used to make that product.The many possibilities for adopting green practices have led to considerable pressure being put upon companies from consumers, employees, government regulators, and other stakeholders. Some companies have resorted to greenwashing instead of making meaningful changes, merely marketing their products in ways that suggest green practices. For example, various producers in the bamboo fiber industry have been taken to court for advertising their products as "greener" than they are. Still, countless other companies have taken the sustainability trend seriously and are enjoying profits. In their book “Corporate Sustainability in International Comparison”, Schaltegger et al. (2014) analyzes the current state of corporate sustainability management and corporate social responsibility across eleven countries. Their research is based on an extensive survey focusing on the companies’ intention to pursue sustainability management (i.e. motivation; issues), the integration of sustainability in the organization (i.e. connecting sustainability to the core business; involving corporate functions; using drivers of business cases for sustainability) and the actual implementation of sustainability management measures (i.e. stakeholder management; sustainability management tools and standards; measurements). The Gort Cloud written by Richard Seireeni, (2009), documents the experiences of sustainable businesses in America and their reliance on the vast but invisible green community, referred to as the Gort cloud, for support and a market. Green investment firms are consequently attracting unprecedented interest. In the UK, for instance, the Green Investment Bank is devoted exclusively to supporting renewable domestic energy. However, the UK and Europe as a whole are falling behind the impressive pace set by developing nations in terms of green development. Thus, green investment firms are creating more and more opportunities to support sustainable development practices in emerging economies. By providing micro-loans and larger investments, these firms assist small business owners in developing nations who seek business education, affordable loans, and new distribution networks for their "green" products. An effective way for businesses to contribute towards waste reduction is to remanufacture products so that the materials used can have a longer lifespan. Sustainable Businesses The Harvard Business School business historian Geoffrey Jones (academic) has traced the historical origins of green business back to pioneering start-ups in organic food and wind and solar energy before World War 1. Among large corporations, Ford Motor Company occupies an odd role in the story of sustainability. Ironically, founder Henry Ford was a pioneer in the sustainable business realm, experimenting with plant-based fuels during the days of the Model T. Ford Motor Company also shipped the Model A truck in crates that then became the vehicle floorboards at the factory destination. This was a form of upcycling, retaining high quality in a closed-loop industrial cycle. Furthermore, the original auto body was made of a stronger-than-steel hemp composite. Today, of course, Fords aren't made of hemp, nor do they run on the most sensible fuel. Currently, Ford's claim to eco-friendly fame is the use of seat fabric made from 100% post-industrial materials and renewable soy foam seat bases. Ford executives recently appointed the company’s first senior vice president of sustainability, environment, and safety engineering. This position is responsible for establishing a long-range sustainability strategy and environmental policy, developing the products and processes necessary to satisfy customers and society as a whole while working toward energy independence. It remains to be seen whether Ford will return to its founder's vision of a petroleum-free automobile, a vehicle powered by the remains of plant matter.The automobile manufacturer Subaru has also made efforts to tackle sustainability. In 2008 a Subaru assembly plant in Lafayette became the first auto manufacturer to achieve zero landfill status when the plant implemented sustainable policies. The company successfully managed to implement a plan that increased refuse recycling to 99.8%. In 2012, the corporation increased the reuse of Styrofoam by 9%. And from the year 2008 to the year 2012, environmental incidents and accidents were reduced from 18 to 4.Smaller companies such as Nature's Path, an organic cereal and snack-making business, have also made sustainability gains in the 21st century. CEO Arran Stephens and his associates have ensured that the quickly growing company's products are produced without toxic farm chemicals. Furthermore, employees are encouraged to find ways to reduce consumption. Sustainability is an essential part of corporate discussions. Another example comes from Salt Spring Coffee, a company created in 1996 as a certified organic, fair trade, coffee producer. In recent years they have become carbon neutral, lowering emissions by reducing long-range trucking and using bio-diesel in delivery trucks, upgrading to energy-efficient equipment, and purchasing carbon offsets. The company claims to offer the first carbon-neutral coffee sold in Canada. Salt Spring Coffee was recognized by the David Suzuki Foundation in the 2010 report Doing Business in a New Climate. A third example comes from Korea, where rice husks are used as nontoxic packaging for stereo components and other electronics. The same material is later recycled to make bricks.Some companies in the textile industry have been moving towards more sustainable business practices. Specifically, the clothing company Patagonia has focused on reducing consumption and waste. The company limits its environmental impact by ensuring only recycled and organic materials, repairing damaged clothes, and by complying with strong environmental protection standards for its entire supply chain. Some companies in the mining and specifically gold mining industries are attempting to move towards more sustainable practices, especially given that the industry is one of the most environmentally destructive. Indeed, regarding gold mining, Northwestern University scientists have, in the laboratory, discovered an inexpensive and environmentally sustainable method that uses simple cornstarch—instead of cyanide—to isolate gold from raw materials in a selective manner. Such a method will reduce the amount of cyanide released into the environment during gold extraction from raw ore, with one of the Northwestern University scientists, Sir Fraser Stoddart stating that: “The elimination of cyanide from the gold industry is of the utmost importance environmentally". Additionally, the retail jewelry industry is now trying to be more sustainable, with companies using green energy providers and recycling more, as well as preventing the use of mined-so called 'virgin gold' by applying re-finishing methods on pieces and re-selling them. Furthermore, the customer may opt for Fairtrade Gold, which gives a better deal to small-scale and artisanal miners, and is an element of sustainable business. However, not all think that mining can be sustainable and believe that much more must be done, noting that mining in general requires greater regional and international legislation and regulation, which is a valid point given the huge impact mining has on the planet and the huge number of products and goods that are made wholly or partly from mined materials.In the luxury sector, in 2012, the group Kering developed the "Environmental Profit & Loss account" (EP&L) accounting method to track the progress of its sustainability goals, a strategy aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In 2019, on a request from the President Emmanuel Macron, François-Henri Pinault, Chairman and CEO of the luxury group Kering, presented the Fashion Pact during the summit, an initiative signed by 32 fashion firms committing to concrete measures to reduce their environmental impact. By 2020, 60 firms joined the Fashion Pact.Fair Trade is a form of sustainable business and among the highest forms of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). Organizations that participate in Fair Trade typically adhere to the ten principles of the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO). Moreover, Fair Trade promotes entrepreneurial development among communities in developing countries and it encourages communities to be responsible and accountable for their economic development via market engagement. Fair Trade is a form of marketing with a strong and direct social benefit beyond the economic supply chain. Social sphere Organizations that give back to the community, whether through employees volunteering their time or through charitable donations, are often considered socially sustainable. Organizations can also encourage education in their communities by training their employees and offering internships to younger members of the community. Practices such as these increase the education level and quality of life in the community. For a business to be truly sustainable, it must sustain not only the necessary environmental resources, but also social resources—including employees, customers (the community), and its reputation.A term that is directly relates to the social aspect of sustainability is Environmental justice. Sustainability and social justice are directly connected to one another, and seeing these as separate unrelated issues can lead to more problems for the environment and potentially businesses. Consumers and Marketing When people are choosing to purchase goods or services, they care what a company stands for. This includes social and environmental aspects that may not have seemed important in business in the past. Consumers nowadays are demanding more sustainable goods and services. Because of this demand, companies must focus on their environmental impact to gain consumer loyalty. Because ecological awareness can be treated as a choice of personal taste rather than a necessity, it can be a method to try to increase capital from a marketing standpoint. When marketing a product or service it is important that a business is actually following through with environmental claims, and not just pretending to be in order to gain customers. False advertising leads to distrust among consumers and can ultimately end a company. Greenwashing With the idea of sustainability becoming more prevalent in the last decade, businesses must be aware of laws surrounding it and the potential legal implications. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Green guides are essentially a rulebook for businesses on how to avoid deceiving consumers with false advertising. This often is a problem when companies make vague or false environmental claims about a product or service they are selling. When this occurs, it can be called "greenwashing". Greenwashing can also be described as the act of overexaggerating the beneficial effect the product has on the environment. If companies do not follow this guide, they could be subject to legal ramifications. It is also important for green businesses to invest in experienced legal practitioners who can understand and can provide counsel on the FTC guidelines. Organizations The European community’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive restricts the use of certain hazardous materials in the production of various electronic and electrical products. Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directives provide collection, recycling, and recovery practices for electrical goods. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the World Resources Institute are two organizations working together to set a standard for reporting on corporate carbon footprints. From October 2013, all quoted companies in the UK are legally required to report their annual greenhouse gas emissions in their directors’ report, under the Companies Act 2006 (Strategic and Directors’ Reports) Regulations 2013.Lester Brown’s Plan B 2.0 and Hunter Lovins’s Natural Capitalism provide information on sustainability initiatives. Corporate sustainability strategies Corporate sustainability strategies can aim to take advantage of sustainable revenue opportunities, while protecting the value of business against increasing energy costs, the costs of meeting regulatory requirements, changes in the way customers perceive brands and products, and the volatile price of resources. Not all eco-strategies can be incorporated into a company's Eco-portfolio immediately. The widely practiced strategies include Innovation, Collaboration, Process Improvement and Sustainability reporting. Innovation & Technology: This introverted method of sustainable corporate practices focuses on a company's ability to change its products and services towards less waste production. Collaboration: The formation of networks with similar or partner companies facilitates knowledge sharing and propels innovation. Process Improvement: Continuous process surveying and improvement are essential to reduction in waste. Employee awareness of company-wide sustainability plan further aids the integration of new and improved processes. Sustainability Reporting: Periodic reporting of company performance in relation to goals. These goals are often incorporated into the corporate mission (as in the case of Ford Motor Co.). Greening the Supply Chain: Sustainable procurement is important for any sustainability strategy as a company's impact on the environment is much bigger than the products that they consume. The B Corporation (certification) model is a good example of one that encourages companies to focus on this. Choosing the Right Leaders: Having educated and driven CEOs on sustainability guide companies in the right steps to being eco-friendly. As the world is slowly transitioning to sustainability, it is important for our company leaders to prioritize and have a sense of urgency. Additionally, companies might consider implementing a sound measurement and management system with readjustment procedures, as well as a regular forum for all stakeholders to discuss sustainability issues. The Sustainability Balanced Scorecard is a performance measurement and management system aiming at balancing financial and non-financial as well as short and long-term measures. It explicitly integrates strategically relevant environmental, social and ethical goals into the overall performance management system and supports strategic sustainability management. Noteworthy examples of sustainable business practices that are often part of corporate sustainability strategies can include: transitioning to renewable energy sources, implementing effective recycling programs, minimizing waste generation in industrial processes, developing eco-friendly product designs, prioritizing the adoption of sustainable packaging materials, fostering an ethical and responsible supply chain, partnering with charities, encouraging volunteerism, upholding equitable treatment of employees, and prioritizing their overall welfare, among numerous other initiatives. Standards Enormous economic and population growth worldwide in the second half of the twentieth century aggravated the factors that threaten health and the world — ozone depletion, climate change, resource depletion, fouling of natural resources, and extensive loss of biodiversity and habitat. In the past, the standard approaches to environmental problems generated by business and industry have been regulatory-driven "end-of-the-pipe" remediation efforts. In the 1990s, efforts by governments, NGOs, corporations, and investors began to grow to develop awareness and plans for investment in business sustainability. One critical milestone was the establishment of the ISO 14000 standards whose development came as a result of the Rio Summit on the Environment held in 1992. ISO 14001 is the cornerstone standard of the ISO 14000 series. It specifies a framework of control for an Environmental Management System against which an organization can be certified by a third party. Other ISO 14000 Series Standards are actually guidelines, many to help you achieve registration to ISO 14001. They include the following: ISO 14004 provides guidance on the development and implementation of environmental management systems. ISO 14010 provides general principles of environmental auditing (now superseded by ISO 19011) ISO 14011 provides specific guidance on audit an environmental management system (now superseded by ISO 19011) ISO 14012 provides guidance on qualification criteria for environmental auditors and lead auditors (now superseded by ISO 19011) ISO 14013/5 provides audit program review and assessment material. ISO 14020+ labeling issues ISO 14030+ provides guidance on performance targets and monitoring within an Environmental Management System ISO 14040+ covers life cycle issues Circular business models While the initial focus of academic, industry, and policy activities was mainly focused on the development of re-X (recycling, remanufacturing, reuse, recovery, ...) technology, it soon became clear that the technological capabilities increasingly exceed their implementation. For the transition towards a Circular Economy, different stakeholders have to work together. This shifted attention towards business model innovation as a key leverage for 'circular' technology adaption.Circular business models are business models that are closing, narrowing, slowing, intensifying, and dematerializing loops, to minimize the resource inputs into and the waste and emission leakage out of the organizational system. This comprises recycling measures (closing), efficiency improvements (narrowing), use phase extensions (slowing or extending), a more intense use phase (intensifying), and the substitution of product utility by service and software solutions (dematerializing). Certification Challenges and opportunities Implementing sustainable business practices may have an effect on profits and a firm's financial 'bottom line'. However, during a time where environmental awareness is popular, green strategies are likely to be embraced by employees, consumers, and other stakeholders. Many organizations concerned about the environmental impact of their business are taking initiatives to invest in sustainable business practices. In fact, a positive correlation has been reported between environmental performance and economic performance. Businesses trying to implement sustainable business need to have insights on balancing the social equity, economic prosperity and environmental quality elements. If an organization’s current business model is inherently unsustainable, becoming truly sustainable requires a complete makeover of the business model (e.g. from selling cars to offering car sharing and other mobility services). This can present a major challenge due to the differences between the old and the new model and the respective skills, resources and infrastructure needed. A new business model can offer major opportunities by entering or even creating new markets and reaching new customer groups. The main challenges faced in the sustainable business practices implementation by businesses in developing countries include lack of skilled personnel, technological challenges, socio-economic challenges, organizational challenges and lack of proper policy framework. Skilled personnel plays a crucial role in quality management, enhanced compliance with international quality standards, and preventative and operational maintenance attitude necessary to ensure sustainable business. In the absence of skilled work forces, companies fail to implement a sustainable business model. Another major challenge to the effective implementation of sustainable business is organizational challenges. Organizational challenges to the implementation of sustainable business activities arise from the difficulties associated with the planning, implementation and evaluation of sustainable business models. Addressing the organizational challenges for the implementation of sustainable business practices need to begin by analyzing the whole supply chain of the business rather than focusing solely on the company's internal operations. Another major challenge is the lack of an appropriate policy framework for sustainable business. Companies often comply with the lowest economic, social and environmental sustainability standards, when in fact the true sustainability can be achieved when the business is focused beyond compliance with integrated strategy, passion and purpose.Companies leading the way in sustainable business practices can take advantage of sustainable revenue opportunities: according to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills the UK green economy will grow by 4.9 to 5.5 percent a year by 2015, and the average internal rate of return on energy efficiency investments for large businesses is 48%. A 2013 survey suggests that demand for green products appears to be increasing: 27% of respondents said they are more likely to buy a sustainable product and/or service than 5 years ago. Furthermore, sustainable business practices may attract talent and generate tax breaks. See also References External links Sustainable Business Ideas For Eco Conscious Entrepreneurs David O'Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise, Concordia University, Montreal Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University Natural Resources Defense Council Sustainable Business Models - On the New Economy Magazine MN| Sustainable Business and Eco-innovations Sustainability-focused consumer business reviews

ethical consumerism

Ethical consumerism (alternatively called ethical consumption, ethical purchasing, moral purchasing, ethical sourcing, or ethical shopping and also associated with sustainable and green consumerism) is a type of consumer activism based on the concept of dollar voting. People practice it by buying ethically made products that support small-scale manufacturers or local artisans and protect animals and the environment, while boycotting products that exploit children as workers, are tested on animals, or damage the environment. The term "ethical consumer", now used generically, was first popularised by the UK magazine Ethical Consumer, first published in 1989. Ethical Consumer magazine's key innovation was to produce "ratings tables", inspired by the criteria-based approach of the then-emerging ethical investment movement. Ethical Consumer's ratings tables awarded companies negative marks (and overall scores, starting in 2005) across a range of ethical and environmental categories such as "animal rights", "human rights", and "pollution and toxics", empowering consumers to make ethically informed consumption choices and providing campaigners with reliable information on corporate behaviour. Such criteria-based ethical and environmental ratings have subsequently become commonplace both in providing consumer information and in business-to-business corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings such as those provided by Innovest, Calvert Foundation, Domini, IRRC, TIAA–CREF, and KLD Analytics. Today, Bloomberg and Reuters provide "environmental, social, and governance" ratings directly to the financial data screens of hundreds of thousands of stock market traders. The nonprofit Ethical Consumer Research Association continues to publish Ethical Consumer and its associated website, which provides free access to ethical rating tables. Although single-source ethical consumerism guides such as Ethical Consumer, Shop Ethical, and the Good Shopping Guide are popular, they suffer from incomplete coverage. User-generated ethical reviews are more likely, long-term, to provide democratic, in-depth coverage of a wider range of products and businesses. The Green Stars Project promotes the idea of including ethical ratings (on a scale of one to five green stars) alongside conventional ratings on retail sites such as Amazon or review sites such as Yelp. The term "political consumerism", first used in a study titled "The Gender Gap Reversed: Political Consumerism as a Women-Friendly Form of Civic and Political Engagement" from authors Dietlind Stolle and Michele Micheletti (2003), is identical to the idea of ethical consumerism. However, in this study, the authors found that political consumerism as a form of social participation often went overlooked at the time of writing and needed to be accounted for in future studies of social participation. However, in "From Ethical Consumerism to Political Consumption", author Nick Clarke argues that political consumerism allows for marginalized groups, such as women, to participate in political advocacy in non-bureaucratic ways that draw attention to governmental weaknesses. Political consumerism has also been criticised on the basis that "it cannot work", or that it displays class bias. The widespread development of political consumerism is hampered by substantial mundane consumption, which does not afford reflective choice, along with complexities of everyday life, which demand negotiations between conflicting moral and ethical considerations. Consumer groups In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people in industrialized countries began formal consumer movements to ensure that they would get value for their money in terms of the things they purchased. These movements focused on the unfair labor practices of the companies, and on labelling requirements of food, cosmetics, drugs, etc. Examples of the consumer movements were the Consumer League which was established in New York, US in 1891, National Consumers League created in US in 1898, and Consumers Council which was established during World War I in Great Britain. During this time workers were neither well-paid nor did they have secure employment with benefit of social protection; similarly, working conditions were decent and the Irish Trade Union movement focused the ILO policy of campaigning for decent work wherever there was an opportunity for job improvement or job creation. Basis Global morality In Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market As An Ethical System (1998), John McMurtry argues that all purchasing decisions imply some moral choice, and that there is no purchasing that is not ultimately moral in nature. This mirrors older arguments, especially by the Anabaptists (e.g. Mennonites, Amish), that one must accept all personal moral and spiritual liability for all harms done at any distance in space or time to anyone by one's own choices. Some interpretations of the book of Genesis from the Judeo-Christian scriptures appears to direct followers towards practising good stewardship of the Earth, under an obligation to a God who is believed to have created the planet for people to share with other creatures. A similar argument presented from a secular humanist point of view is that it is simply better for human beings to acknowledge that the planet supports life only because of a delicate balance of many different factors. Spending as morality Some trust criteria, e.g. creditworthiness or implied warranty, are considered to be part of any purchasing or sourcing decision. However, these terms refer to broader systems of guidance that would, ideally, cause any purchasing decision to disqualify offered products or services based on non-price criteria that affect the moral rather than the functional liabilities of the entire production process. Paul Hawken, a proponent of natural capitalism, refers to "comprehensive outcomes" of production services as opposed to the "culminative outcomes" of using the product of such services. Often, moral criteria are part of a shift away from commodity markets towards a service economy where all activities, from growing to harvesting to processing to delivery, are considered part of the value chain for which consumers are "responsible". Andrew Wilson, Director of the UK's Ashridge Centre for Business and Society, argues that "Shopping is more important than voting", and that the disposition of money is the most basic role we play in any system of economics. Some theorists believe that it is the clearest way that we express our actual moral choices: if we say we care about something but continue to buy in a way that has a high probability of risk of harm or destruction to that thing, we don't really care about it; we are practising a form of simple hypocrisy. Ethical consumerism is widely explained by psychologists using the theory of planned behavior, which attributes a consumer's choices to their perceived sense of control, social norms, and evaluation of the consequences. However, recent research suggests that a consumer's ethical obligation, self-identity, and virtues may also influence their buying decisions.In an effort by churches to advocate moral and ethical consumerism, many have become involved in the Fair Trade movement: Ten Thousand Villages is affiliated with the Mennonite Central Committee SERRV International is partnered with Catholic Relief Services and Lutheran World Relief Village Markets of Africa sells Fair Trade gifts from the Lutheran Church in Kenya Catholic Relief Services has their own Fair Trade mission in CRS Fair Trade Standards and labels A number of standards, labels and marks have been introduced for ethical consumers, such as: Along with disclosure of ingredients, some mandatory labelling of the origins of clothing or food is required in all developed nations. This practice has been extended in some developing nations so that, for example, every item carries the name, phone number and fax number of the factory where it was made so a buyer can inspect its conditions. This can also be used to show that the item was not made by child labour or "prison labor", the use of which to produce export goods is banned in most developed nations. Such labels have also been used for boycotts, as when the merchandise mark Made in Germany was introduced in 1887. These labels serve as tokens of some reliable validation process, some instructional capital, much as does a brand name or a nation's flag. They also signal some social capital, or trust, in some community of auditors that must follow those instructions to validate those labels. Some companies in the United States, though currently not required to reduce their carbon footprint, are doing so voluntarily by changing their energy use practices, as well as by directly funding (through carbon offsets), businesses that are already sustainable—or that are developing or improving green technologies for the future. In 2009, Atlanta's Virginia-Highland neighborhood became the first Carbon-Neutral Zone in the United States. Seventeen merchants in Virginia-Highland allowed their carbon footprint to be audited. Now, they are partnered with the Valley Wood Carbon Sequestration Project—thousands of acres of forest in rural Georgia—through the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). The businesses involved in the partnership display the Verus Carbon Neutral seal in each store front and posted a sign prominently declaring the area's Carbon Neutral status. (CCX ceased trading carbon credits at the end of 2010 due to inactivity in the U.S. carbon markets, although carbon exchanges were intended to still be facilitated.)Some theorists suggest the amount of social capital or trust invested in nation-states (or "flags") will continue to decrease, and that placed in corporations (or "brands") will increase. This can only be offset by retrenched national sovereignty to reinforce shared national standards in tax, trade, and tariff laws, and by placing the trust in civil society in such "moral labels". These arguments have been a major focus of the anti-globalization movement, which includes many broader arguments against the amoral nature of markets. However, the economic school of Public Choice Theory pioneered by James M. Buchanan has offered counter-arguments based on an economic demonstration of this theory of "amoral markets", which lack ethics or morals, versus "moral governments", which are tied to ideas of justice. Areas of concern Ethical Consumer Research Association collects and categorises information about more than 30,000 companies according to their performance in five main areas, composing the "Ethiscore": Environment: Environmental Reporting, Nuclear Power, Climate Change, Pollution & Toxics, Habitats & Resources People: Human Rights, Workers' Rights, Supply Chain Policy, Irresponsible Marketing, Armaments Animals: Animal Testing, Factory Farming, Other Animal Rights Politics: Political Activity, Boycott Call, Genetic Engineering, Anti-Social Finance, Company Ethos Product Sustainability: Organic, Fairtrade, Positive Environmental Features, Other Sustainability. Research GfK NOP, the market research group, made a five-country study of consumer beliefs about the ethics of large companies. The countries surveyed were Germany, the United States, Britain, France, and Spain. More than half of respondents in Germany and the US believed there is a serious deterioration in standards of corporate practice. Almost half of those surveyed in Britain, France, and Spain held similar beliefs.About a third of respondents told researchers they would pay higher prices for ethical brands, though the perception of various companies' ethical or unethical status varied considerably from country to country. The most ethically perceived brands were The Co-op (in the UK), Coca-Cola (in the US), Danone (in France), Adidas (in Germany), and Nestlé (in Spain). Coca-Cola, Danone, Adidas, and Nestlé did not appear anywhere in the UK's list of 15 most ethical companies. Nike appeared in the lists of the other four countries but not in the UK's list. In the UK, The Co-operative Bank has produced an Ethical Consumerism Report (formerly the Ethical Purchasing Index) since 2001. The report measures the market size and growth of a basket of 'ethical' products and services, and valued UK ethical consumerism at GBP36.0 billion (~USD54.4 billion) in 2008, and GBP47.2 billion (USD72.5 billion) in 2012. A number of organizations provide research-based evaluations of the behavior of companies around the world, assessing them along ethical dimensions such as human rights, the environment, animal welfare, and politics. Green America is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 1982 that provides the Green American Seal of Approval and produces a "Responsible Shopper" guide to "alert consumers and investors to problems with companies that they may shop with or invest in." The Ethical Consumer Research Association is a not-for-profit workers' co-operative founded in the UK in 1988 to "provide information on the companies behind the brand names and to promote the ethical use of consumer power." They provide an online searchable database under the name Corporate Critic or Ethiscore. The Ethiscore is a weightable numerical rating designed as a quick guide to the ethical status of companies, or brands in a particular area, and is linked to a more detailed ethical assessment. "Alonovo" is an online shopping portal that provides similar weightable ethical ratings termed the "Corporate Social Behavior Index". Related concepts Conscientious consumption Conscientious consumerism is when people make a habit of buying goods from ethical companies and avoid impulsive buying from unethical ones, in order to contribute positively in political, social, and environmental ways. Such a consumer rationalizes unnecessary and even unwanted consumption by saying that "it's for a good cause." As a result, the consumer buys pink ribbons during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, green products to support the environment, candy and popcorn from school children, greeting cards and gift wrap from charities, and other such often-unwanted objects. The consumer avoids considering whether the price offered is fair, whether a small cash donation would be more effective with far less work, or even whether selling the item is consistent with the ostensible mission, such as when sports teams sell candy. Some of these efforts are based on concept brands: the consumer is buying an association with women's health or environmental concerns as much as they are buying a tangible product.Conscientious consumption involves people who are "more focused on real needs than artificially created craves," such as not continually following trend cycles in consumer industries.Conscientious consumerism has become more popular in recent years, with consumers becoming more aware of the impact of their purchases on society and the environment. This trend has led to the growth of companies that prioritize corporate social responsibility and ethical practices in their operations to reinforce customer loyalty. However, some companies have taken note of this shift towards conscientious consumerism and started deceptive marketing to convey a false impression that their product is environmentally friendly. This green marketing tactic is called greenwashing, which is prevalent in the cosmetic industry. Greenwashing has a negative impact on consumer trust with brands and cosmetic products that are marketed as green. Alternative giving In response to an increasing demand for ethical consumerism surrounding gift-giving occasions, charities have promoted an alternative gift market, in which charitable contributions are made on behalf of the gift "recipient". The "recipient" receives a card explaining the selected gift, while the actual gift item (frequently agricultural supplies or domestic animals) is sent to a family in a poor community. Criticism Critics argue that ethical consumerism has limited ability to effect structural change. Berkley (2021) has argued that ethical consumerism's focus on individual consumer behavior rather than systemic change can create a false sense of efficacy and distract from more effective methods of creating change, such as collective action and policy reform. Some say the actual effect of ethical consumerism is the preponderance of niche markets, while others argue that because it is difficult for consumers to obtain enough information about the outcomes of a given purchase, this prevents them from making informed ethical choices. Critics have also argued that the uneven distribution of wealth prevents consumerism, ethical or otherwise, from fulfilling its democratic potential.One study suggests that "Buying Green" serves as a license for unethical behavior. In their 2009 paper, "Do Green Products Make Us Better People?", Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong write: In line with the halo associated with green consumerism, people act more altruistically after mere exposure to green than conventional products. However, people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products as opposed to conventional products. Together, the studies show that consumption is more tightly connected to our social and ethical behaviors in directions and domains other than previously thought. In a 2010 The Guardian article, British environmental writer and activist George Monbiot argued that green consumers who do not articulate their values are part of "a catastrophic mistake," on the grounds that such consumerism "strengthens extrinsic values" (those that "concern status and self-advancement"), thereby "making future campaigns less likely to succeed".James G Carrier, Associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, draws on Karl Marx's concept of commodity fetishism to argue that ethical consumption does not help consumers lead a more moral life, nor does it influence businesses as intended. The goal of ethical consumption at a personal level is to lead a more moral life, and that capitalism causes commodities to be presented in such a way that they are perceived without regard for the labor that is represented by the product, the labor that was involved in allowing that commodity to exist. The goal at a public level is for consumers to use their purchasing power to put pressure on companies to change the way they conduct business. Marx argued that under capitalism, the presentation of goods obscures the people and processes behind their production. Carrier begins by giving examples of products that have been presented in a way that misrepresents their context. He first points to the images of growers commonly found on fair trade coffee packaging. The image suggests self-reliance and ignores the dependence upon immigrant wage workers who harvest the coffee. Fairtrade coffee is viewed as a direct link to the grower without a middle man. However, there are many parties involved such as the roasters, shippers, wholesalers, and retailers of the product. Carrier also discusses fictitious commodities, which are things that are not produced in the conventional sense, material or not, and can be appropriated for commercial gain. The conceptual categories of ethicality need to be legible to consumers in order for a consumer to be able to participate in ethical consumption. Sellers use imagery to satisfy that need, and the images they use become emblematic and representational of the values of ethical consumers, and in some ways the presentation of these images fetishize the product, and the pervasiveness of such images begins to shape ethicality, as the absence of these images also signifies the absence of those same values. In short: it's difficult to buy ethical products because there are many aspects to commodities that consumers are unable to be fully aware of; fully informed decisions are almost impossible to make. Consumers see the images that sellers use as a means of virtue signaling, and purchase those products with the intent of ethical consumption because they believe that those images have been produced conscientiously to represent conceptual categories of "ethical."Carrier extends commodity fetishism to include nature reserves because they are advertised and because people are urged to visit the landscapes and animals for a fee. For example, parks in Jamaica show colorful fish and coral growth on pamphlets to attract tourists. These photos fetishize coastal waters by ignoring the other important ecological aspects of the water. In Montego Bay, Jamaica, environmentalists argue that tourism has damaged the park. Run-off feeds into the waterways and sea-grass beds integral to local nutrient cycles are removed.The strategic direction of the consumer's attention further mystifies and fetishizes the object of consumption. Carrier points out that the moment of consumer choice is emphasized rather than the context that leads people to seek ethicality. He believes that more attention should be paid to how the consumer acquired their moral leanings. See also References Further reading Speth, James Gustave (2008). The Bridge at the End of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability. Caravan Books. Bartley, Tim and colleagues (2015). Looking Behind the Label: Global Industries and the Conscientious Consumer. Indiana University Press.

environmental enterprise

An environmental enterprise is an environmentally friendly/compatible business. Specifically, an environmental enterprise is a business that produces value in the same manner which an ecosystem does, neither producing waste nor consuming unsustainable resources. In addition, an environmental enterprise rather finds alternative ways to produce one's products instead of taking advantage of animals for the sake of human profits. To be closer to the goal of being an environmentally friendly company, some environmental enterprises invest their money to develop or improve their technologies which are also environmentally friendly. In addition, environmental enterprises usually try to reduce global warming, so some companies use materials that are environmentally friendly to build their stores. They also set in place regulations that are environmentally friendly. All these efforts of the environmental enterprises can bring positive effects both for nature and people. The concept is rooted in the well-enumerated theories of natural capital, the eco-economy and cradle to cradle design. Examples of environmental enterprise would be Seventh Generation, Inc., and Whole Foods. Background Economic globalization is an irreversible trend Natural resource scarcity or/and abundance are drivers of globalization, as they incite supply and demand forces in global markets. Environment and sustainability For the past 50 years we have amassed unprecedented financial wealth, but have also chronically under-priced risk in terms of our natural resource base (our endowment of minerals, forests, fish, water and climate). We have financed our extraordinary growth in aggregate living standards while systematically under-pricing the goods and services we derive from our planet's natural resources, the negative externalities we create by polluting them and the future risks we face from their cumulative depletion and degradation. The phenomenal economic growth we have enjoyed over the past 50 years has seen our world's built environment and transport networks expand in size and complexity at an unprecedented rate. We have developed a vastly more interconnected global human ecosystem to provide us with food, fuel, water, homes and transportation than has ever been. Sustainability can be achieved because the companies adapt sustainable production to improve their image. Being environmentally friendly is good for product branding. Meanwhile, as social issues come up, some companies focus on the environmental issues in order to create the positive image of the company. As environmental social concerns increase, some companies start to supply environmentally friendly products and distribution systems. The meanings of the systems can be explained either by the viewpoints of the company's management or the idea that an environmentally friendly management guidelines will give a positive image of the company and its goods. In other words, these thoughts are based on economic and ethical reasons. The Kyoto Protocol can be an example: It was intended to solve global problems of climate change and global warming; however, some companies had already put reducing emissions and getting better energy efficiency into practice, which is helpful to create a positive public image. Nature An environmental enterprise is an environmentally friendly/compatible business. Specifically, an environmental enterprise is a business that produces value in the same manner which an ecosystem does, neither producing waste nor consuming unsustainable resources. The concept is rooted in the well-enumerated theories of natural capital, the eco-economy and cradle to cradle design. The flow process shows the loop between enterprise and natural capital. Evidently, nature is the spring of wealth and the only thing that could and should be done is to promote the economy efficiency in the inner cycle.[6] In another word, strengthening the utilization ratio of raw materials to increase output, and meanwhile, enhancing the technology to reduce input of sources and waste products. To accomplish sustainability is, in this case, to make the economy functioning better. External cost In economics, an externality is the cost or benefit that affects a party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit. The cost of the environment is usually termed as the external cost of an enterprise. Air pollution from burning fossil fuels causes damages to crops, (historic) buildings and public health. "Social cost − private cost = External cost". The ideal situation of environmental enterprise is to cut the negative external cost. Social cost Social cost in economics may be distinguished from "private cost". Economic theorists model individual decision-making as measurement of costs and benefits. Social cost is also considered to be the private cost plus externalities. For example, the manufacturing cost of a car (i.e., the costs of buying inputs, land tax rates for the car plant, overhead costs of running the plant and labor costs) reflects the private cost for the manufacturer (in some ways, normal profit can also be seen as a cost of production; see, e.g., Ison and Wall, 2007, p. 181). The polluted waters or polluted air also created as part of the process of producing the car is an external cost borne by those who are affected by the pollution or who value unpolluted air or water. Because the manufacturer does not pay for this external cost (the cost of emitting undesirable waste into the commons), and does not include this cost in the price of the car (a Kaldor-Hicks compensation), they are said to be external to the market pricing mechanism. The air pollution from driving the car is also an externality produced by the car user in the process of using his good. The driver does not compensate for the environmental damage caused by using the car. How to achieve Take environmental issues into consideration in the process of operation and management of an enterprise.Generally speaking, regardless of the scale of an enterprise, every industrial enterprise have the problem of being environmental friendly. Since the environmental issue is gradually affecting the long-term development of a nation, not only companies but also the state should take this into consideration and control the pollution in practice. An advanced enterprise should take care of the natural capital and external cost which paid by the nature circumstance rather than merely sacrifice the natural resources to make profit. Establishing an environmental managing system and regulations.To achieve the concept of environmental enterprise is a multiple task. Not only polluting problem but also saving raw materials; decreasing the usage of energy, output of waste, reducing the carcinogens in products are highly emphasized. Only by accomplishing these could an industry completely deal with the environmental issue. Invested in reducing pollution from the origin of contamination and introducing environmental friendly production line.The origin of contamination should be constrained. The most effective way of control degradation is to go to the beginning of it rather than the pathways. Carrying forward the culture of environmental enterprise and gradually modifying the whole industry.It is our duty to maintain the globe. Therefore, making these a culture is one of the best way to keep people's consciousness in a long term period of time. Case study Whole Foods: "We see the necessity of active environmental stewardship so that the earth continues to flourish for generations to come. Because of the 42% waste reduction, we were profiled by the EPA as a construction waste reduction and recycling record-setter." Sustainable agriculture "We support organic farmers, growers and the environment through our commitment to sustainable agriculture and by expanding the market for organic products. We work with ranchers and producers to develop hormone and antibiotic-free alternatives for our customers to buy. We advocate fewer and safer pesticides in non-organic foods." Wise environmental practices "We respect our environment and recycle, reuse, and reduce our waste wherever and whenever we can. We seek to balance our needs with the needs of the rest of the planet through the following actions: Supporting sustainable agriculture. We are committed to greater production of organically and bio-dynamically grown foods in order to reduce pesticide use and promote soil conservation. Reducing waste and consumption of non-renewable resources. We promote and participate in recycling programs in our communities. We are committed to reusable packaging, reduced packaging, and water and energy conservation. Encouraging environmentally sound cleaning and store maintenance programs. Promoting the purchase of bulk food and other products utilizing reduced or reusable packaging, as well as encouraging shoppers to reduce waste through nickel per bag rebate program." See also Environmental accounting Environmental economics Environmental finance Environmental pricing reform Notes References Dr N. Jardine, C., 2005. Calculating the Environmental Impact of Aviation Emissions, Environmental Change Institute Oxford University Centre for the Environment. [Accessed 22 May 2014] Huwart, J.Y., and Verdier, L., 2013. What is the impact of globalization on the environment?, in Economic Globalisation: Origins and consequences, OECD Publishing. Available at: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/0111111ec008.pdf?expires=1393405980&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=3221D28DAC1CBE3C6D4D57AEDDADC385 [Accessed 18 October 2014] McAusland, C., 2008. Globalisation's Direct and Indirect Effects on the Environment. Available at: http://www.oecd.org/greengrowth/greening-transport/41380703.pdf [Accessed 25 October 2014] Najam, A., Runnalls,D. and Halle, M., 2007. Environment and Globalization: Five Propositions. IISD. Available at: http://www.unep.org/gc/gc24/docs/FivePropositions.pdf Archived 2013-07-30 at the Wayback Machine [Accessed 17 October 2014] de Jongea, V.; Pintoc, R.; Turnerd, R.K. (2012). "Integrating ecological, economic and social aspects to generate useful management information under the EU Directives' 'ecosystem approach'". Ocean & Coastal Management. 68: 169–188. doi:10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2012.05.017. Panayotou, T., 2000. Globalization and Environment. CID Working Paper No. 53. Available at: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/var/ezp_site/storage/fckeditor/file/pdfs/centers-programs/centers/cid/publications/faculty/wp/053.pdf [Accessed 22 October 2014] Thai, K., Rahm, D., and Coggburn, J., 2007. Handbook of Globalization and the Environment. Taylor & Francis Group,LLC. [Accessed 20 October 2014] United Nations Development Programme, 2000. Human Development Report, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Accessed 18 October 2014] Yearly, S., 1995. ‘Dirty Connections: Transnational Pollution', in J. Allen and C. Hamnett (eds), A Shrinking World? Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Accessed 18 October 2014] External links Eco-Economy

illegal logging

Illegal logging is the harvest, transportation, purchase, or sale of timber in violation of laws. The harvesting procedure itself may be illegal, including using corrupt means to gain access to forests; extraction without permission, or from a protected area; the cutting down of protected species; or the extraction of timber in excess of agreed limits. Illegal logging is a driving force for a number of environmental issues such as deforestation, soil erosion and biodiversity loss which can drive larger-scale environmental crises such as climate change and other forms of environmental degradation. Illegality may also occur during transport, such as illegal processing and export (through fraudulent declaration to customs); the avoidance of taxes and other charges, and fraudulent certification. These acts are often referred to as "wood laundering".Illegal logging is driven by a number of economic forces, such as demand for raw materials, land grabbing and demand for pasture for cattle. Regulation and prevention can happen at both the supply size, with better enforcement of environmental protections, and at the demand side, such as an increasing regulation of trade as part of the international lumber Industry. Overview Illegal logging is a pervasive problem, causing enormous damage to forests, local communities, and the economies of producer countries. The EU, as a major timber importer, has implemented the European Union Timber Regulation as a means to halt the import of illegally sourced wood products. The identification of illegally logged or traded timber is technically difficult. Therefore, a legal basis for normative acts against timber imports or other products manufactured out of illegal wood is missing. Scientific methods to pinpoint the geographic origin of timber are currently under development. Possible actions to restrict imports cannot meet with WTO regulations of non-discrimination. They must instead be arranged in bilateral agreements. TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, strives to monitor the illegal trade of timber and provide expertise in policy and legal reviews. Scale It is estimated that illegal logging on public land alone causes losses in assets and revenue in excess of US$10 billion annually. Although exact figures are difficult to calculate, given the illegal nature of the activity, decent estimates show that more than half of the logging that takes place globally is illegal, especially in open and vulnerable areas such as the Amazon Basin, Central Africa, Southeast Asia and the Russian Federation.Available figures and estimates must be treated with caution. Governments tend to underestimate the situation, given that high estimates of illegal logging may cause embarrassment as these to suggest ineffective enforcement of legislation or, even worse, bribery and corruption. On the other hand, environmental NGOs publish alarming figures to raise awareness and emphasize the need for stricter conservation measures. For companies in the forestry sector, publications making high estimates can be regarded as potentially threatening to their reputation and their market perspective, including the competitiveness of wood in comparison to other materials. However, for many countries, NGOs are the only source of information apart from state institutions, which probably clearly underestimates the true figures. For example, the Republic of Estonia calculated a rate of 1% illegally harvested timber in 2003, whereas it was estimated to reach as much as 50% by the NGO "Estonian Green Movement". In Latvia, the situation is comparable; anecdotal evidence points towards 25% of logging being illegal. Consequences Illegal logging has detrimental impacts, including deforestation and, consequently, global warming. It leads to biodiversity loss, weakens the rule of law, and hampers responsible forest management. Moreover, it fosters corruption, tax evasion, and diminishes revenue for producer countries, limiting their capacity to invest in sustainable development. The economic and social consequences disproportionately affect the poor and disadvantaged, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars in timber revenue annually.Furthermore, the illegal trade of forest resources undermines international security, and is frequently associated with corruption, money laundering, organized crime, human rights abuses, climate change and, in some cases, violent conflict. In the forestry sector, cheap imports of illegal timber and forest products, together with the non-compliance of some economic players with basic social and environmental standards, destabilize international markets. This unfair competition affects those European companies, especially the small and medium-sized companies that are behaving responsibly and ready to play by fair rules. Illegal logging in Africa Nigeria The indiscriminate logging in the rainforest and uncontrolled felling of trees for fuel wood are reported to have had adverse effect on the environment. The loss of trees and other vegetation cover can cause temperature increase, fewer crops, flood, increased greenhouse gases within the atmosphere, ecological imbalance, soil erosion, and loss of biodiversity. The forest reserve in Nigeria spans approximately 10 million hectares, constituting over 10% of the total land area, which is around 96.2 million hectares or 923,768 square kilometers. The population was about 170,790 in 2006 (National Directorate of Employment, 2012). However, the expanse of marked forest lands has been gradually decreasing due to the rampant tree felling and activities of illegal loggers across the nation. For example, the Federal Department of Forestry (2010) estimated that Nigeria's forests are depleting at an annual rate of 3.5%. The country previously had around 20% of its area covered by natural forests, but this has dwindled to about 10%. The loss of approximately 60% of natural forests occurred due to encroachments for agriculture, extensive logging, and urbanization from the 1960s to the year 2000.Notably, industrial and social development, contending for the same land areas occupied by forests, has not been praiseworthy. Nigeria, given its extensive land area, encompasses diverse and favorable climatic and ecological zones. The nation's significant size, diverse population, and socio-political and economic challenges have placed immense pressure on the forest belts. The rise in unemployed youth has revealed that looting forest products for survival presents an opportunity. Consequently, unemployment, a significant developmental challenge in Nigeria, has far-reaching adverse effects on environmental crime. Environmental crime often takes a back seat in priority in most developing nations, as there is a common belief that the forest belongs to everyone in the community. Furthermore, Nigeria's over-reliance on crude oil has led the government to place less emphasis on the annual losses from theft of forest produce. Regrettably, the government's attempts to implement effective measures to combat illegal logging have not yielded the desired results, with only 6% of the nation's land area designated as protected.According to global data, a significant majority of unemployed individuals in developing regions, both in rural and urban areas, constitute about two-thirds of the total unemployed youth. In Nigeria, unemployment emerged as a pressing issue, particularly since the 1980s, a period marked by economic downturns due to plummeting world petroleum prices, devaluation of the Nigerian currency, rampant corruption, and a rapid increase in the country's population. These economic challenges had adverse effects on food production and led to escalating deforestation concerns. In regions that were rural or semi-urban and endowed with abundant forest trees and agricultural produce, the forests were readily accessed and exploited not only by locals but also by foreign criminal networks. Particularly alarming were the activities of illegal traders of forest products, often facilitated by foreigners seeking rare and hard wood species for European and American markets. This resulted in rampant destruction and felling of trees on both communal and individual farmlands. From a scientific perspective, the destruction of these trees significantly impacts the carbon cycle and intensifies the greenhouse effect due to carbon depletion. The socio-economic losses to the nation, particularly concerning endangered species in the South-west and Mid-west forest zones of Nigeria (encompassing states such as Oyo, Ondo, Osun, Ogun, Ekiti, Edo, and Delta), are immeasurable. The rapid urbanization in Nigeria, coupled with escalating unemployment rates, persistent poverty, inequalities, inadequate social services, the presence of trans-national criminal organizations, widespread drug use and trafficking, and inadequately equipped security personnel and forest guards to combat illegal logging, lumbering cartels, clandestine markets, and sawmills for rare forest products, have driven many youths to explore opportunities in forest-related businesses.Illegal logging, lumbering, and sawmilling can be understood as a system with diverse individuals and institutions involved in meeting the industry's supply and demand requirements, whether legitimate or illegitimate. Given the unemployment rate in the country, which currently stands at about 20.3 million jobless Nigerians (National Directorate of Employment, 2012), primarily youth, a crucial question arises: how are they sustaining themselves? Undoubtedly, deviant activities tend to thrive in such circumstances, especially in forested areas. The diversity and dynamics of crime and illegalities in the forest belt have received relatively little emphasis, often overshadowed by discussions about environmental degradation and climate change. This study delves into the patterns and trends of illegal wood logging, forest exploitation, and how youths adapt and survive in Nigeria's South-West forest belt. Illegal logging in Southeast Asia Indonesia Myanmar Cambodia Thailand Statistics The scale of illegal logging represents a major loss of revenue to many countries and can lead to widespread associated environmental damage. A senate committee in the Philippines estimated that the country lost as much as US$1.8bn per year during the 1980s. The Indonesian government estimated in 2002 that costs related to illegal logging are US$3bn each year. The World Bank estimates that illegal logging costs timber-producing countries between 10 and 15 billion euros per year. This compares with 10 billion euros disbursed as EC aid in 2002. A joint UK-Indonesian study of the timber industry in Indonesia in 1998 suggested that about 40% of throughput was illegal, with a value in excess of $365 million. More recent estimates, comparing legal harvesting against known domestic consumption plus exports, suggest that 88% of logging in the country is illegal in some way. Malaysia is the key transit country for illegal wood products from Indonesia. In Brazil, 80% of logging in the Amazon violates government controls. At the core of illegal logging is widespread corruption. Often referred to as 'green gold', mahogany can fetch over US$1,600 m-3. Illegal mahogany facilitates the illegal logging of other species, and widespread exploitation of the Brazilian Amazon. Recent Greenpeace investigations in the Brazilian state of Pará reveal just how deeply rooted the problem remains. No reliable legal chain of custody exists for mahogany, and the key players in its trade are ruthless. The World Bank estimates that 80% of logging operations are illegal in Bolivia and 42% in Colombia, 10 while in Peru, illegal logging constitutes 80% of all activities. Research carried out by WWF International in 2002 shows that in Africa, rates of illegal logging vary from 50% for Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea to 70% in Gabon and 80% in Liberia – where revenues from the timber industry also fuelled the civil war. WWF estimates that illegal logging in Russia is at least 20%, reaching up to 50% in its far eastern regions. A 2012 joint study by the United Nations Environment Programme and Interpol states that illegal logging accounts for up to 30% of the global logging trade and contributes to more than 50% of tropical deforestation in Central Africa, the Amazon Basin and South East Asia. Between 50% and 90% of logging from the key countries in these regions is being carried out by organised criminal entities. A study conducted by TRAFFIC found that 93% of all timber exported from Mozambique to China in 2013 was done so illegally. As of 2020, Interpol states that every year 10 million hectares of forest are lost to illegal logging across the globe. They also state that the illicit wood sector is worth almost $152 billion per year and up to one-third of all wood furniture is made from illegally sourced timber.In March 2004, Greenpeace carried out actions against a cargo ship transporting timber from the Indonesian company Korindo, which was being imported into France, UK, Belgium and the Netherlands. Korindo is known to be using illegal timber from the last rainforests of Indonesia. In May 2003, an Indonesian Government investigation confirmed that Korindo was receiving illegal timber from notorious timber barons known to obtain timber from an orang-utan refuge – the Tanjung Puting National Park. Tanjung Puting National Park is a 4,000-square-kilometre conservation area of global importance. It is recognized as a world biosphere reserve by the United Nations and forms the largest protected area of swamp forest in South-East Asia. Mitigation North Asia The Europe and North Asia Forest Law Enforcement and Governance (ENA FLEG) Ministerial Conference was held in Saint Petersburg, Russia on 22–25 November 2005. In May 2004, the Russian Federation announced its intention to host the ENA FLEG process, supported by the World Bank. A preparatory conference was held in Moscow in June 2005. The Saint Petersburg conference brought together nearly 300 participants representing 43 governments, the private sector, civil society, and international organizations. It agreed to the Saint Petersburg Declaration on Forest Law Enforcement and Governance in Europe and North Asia. The Declaration includes an indicative list of actions, intended to serve as a general framework for possible actions to be undertaken by governments as well as civil society. The conference took place as the United Kingdom prepared to pass the G8 Presidency to Russia. As Valery Roshchupkin, Head of the Federal Forestry Agency of the Russian Federation, confirmed, illegal logging would be of special importance for Russia as the G8 President and for the following G8 Summit, also held in Saint Petersburg. East Asia The East Asia Forest Law Enforcement and Governance (EA FLEG) Ministerial Conference took place in Bali in September 2001. The Conference brought together nearly 150 participants from 20 countries, representing government, international organizations, NGOs, and the private sector. The event was co-hosted by the World Bank and the Government of Indonesia. The meeting included detailed technical discussions of forest law enforcement in relation to governance, forest policy and forest management as well as ministerial engagement. The Conference's primary aims were to share analysis on forest law enforcement; explore priority issues of forest law enforcement, including illegal logging in the East Asia region, among senior officials from the forest and related ministries, NGOs, and industry representatives; and commit to action at the national and regional level. European Union In May 2003, the European Commission presented the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Action Plan (EU FLEGT). This marked the beginning of a long process by which the EU aims to develop and implement measures to address illegal logging and related trade. The primary means of implementing the Plan is through Voluntary Partnership Agreements with timber producing countries. The European Union Timber Regulation was adopted in 2010 and went into effect 3 March 2013. It prohibits the placing on the EU market for the first time of illegally harvested timber and products derived from such timber; It requires EU traders who place timber products on the EU market for the first time to exercise 'due diligence'; Once on the market, the timber and timber products may be sold on and/or transformed before they reach the final consumer. To facilitate the traceability of timber products, economic operators in this part of the supply chain (referred to as traders in the regulation) have an obligation to keep records of their suppliers and customers.A Greenpeace investigation published in May 2014 demonstrates that EU Timber Regulation is ineffective if fraudulent paperwork is accepted at face value and there is not sufficient enforcement by EU authorities. Africa The Africa Forest Law Enforcement and Governance (AFLEG) Ministerial Conference was held in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in October 2003. The meeting drew together ministers and stakeholders from Africa, Europe, and North America to consider how partnerships between producers, consumers, donors, civil society and the private sector could address illegal forest exploitation and associated trade in Africa. The AFLEG conference, the second regional forest law enforcement and governance meeting after East Asia, resulted in endorsement of a ministerial declaration and action plan as well as a variety of informal implementation initiatives. In 2014, the FAU-EU-FLEGT Programme of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations published the study The Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) process in Central and West Africa: from theory to practice to document and foster strategic reflection in partner countries already engaged in negotiating a VPA - or those who will be entering into such negotiations - by providing examples of good practices. These good practices were identified and recorded following interviews with the main stakeholders in the eight VPA countries in West and Central Africa, the European Forest Institute's (EFI) EU FLEGT Facility and the European Commission. In 2016, the FAO-EU FLEGT Programme published an additional study, Traceability: a management tool for business and governments, providing examples of good practices in the region's traceability systems, which help prevent illegal logging by tracking timber from its forest of origin throughout its journey along the supply chain. United States In response to growing concerns over illegal logging and advice from TRAFFIC and other organisations, on 22 May 2008, the U.S. amended the Lacey Act, when the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 expanded its protection to a broader range of plants and plant products (Section 8204. Prevention of Illegal Logging Practices).The requirements under the new Amendments are two-fold. First, the Lacey Act now makes it illegal to import into the United States plants that have been harvested contrary to any applicable Federal Law, State Law, Indian Tribal Law, or Foreign Law. If a plant is found to have been harvested in violation of the laws of the country where it was harvested, that plant would be subject to seizure and forfeiture if imported into the U.S. The Lacey Act also makes it unlawful, beginning 15 December 2008, to import certain plants and plant products without a Plant and Plant Product import declaration.This Plant and Plant Product Declaration must contain (besides other information) the Genus, Species, and Country of Harvest of every plant found in commercial shipments of certain products, a list of applicable products (along with other requirements and guidance) can be found on the USDA APHIS website. See also Deforestation and climate change Environmental crime Environmental impact of roads Environmental Investigation Agency European Anti-Fraud Office Environmental vandalism Illegal logging in Madagascar List of environmental issues Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) Timber mafia United Nations Forum on Forests UAV monitoring Satellite surveillance Preventing easy forest access (i.e. roads and waterways) References Further reading Monbiot, George (1991). Amazon Watershed. Michael Joseph. ISBN 0349101620. EIA and Telapak Indonesia (September 2001). "Timber trafficking: Illegal Logging in Indonesia, South East Asia and International Consumption of Illegally Sourced Timber" (PDF). Environmental Information Agency. Ravenel, Ramsay M.; Ilmi M. E. Granoff; Carrie A. Magee (18 January 2005). Illegal logging in the tropics: strategies for cutting crime. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-56022-117-3. Sheikh, Pervaze A., ed. (9 June 2008). "Illegal Logging: Background and Issues" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 June 2011. Tacconi, Luca (2007). Illegal logging: law enforcement, livelihoods and the timber trade. London: Earthscan. ISBN 978-1-84407-348-1. External links Illegal Logging and Related Timber Trade - Dimensions, Drivers, Impacts and Responses (IUFRO World Series Volume 35) - 2017 report containing results of fifth global scientific assessment undertaken by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO)-led Global Forest Expert Panels (GFEP) initiative Policy Brief based on the report FAO-EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Programme from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations European Commission page on illegal logging, with links to FLEGT Regulation (adopted in 2005) and EU Timber Regulation (adopted in 2010) Forest Legality Alliance Environmental Investigation Agency page on investigations related to illegal logging

list of environmental books

Humans have been writing about the environment for centuries, and the environment has figured prominently as a theme in both Western and Eastern philosophies. Books about or featuring the environment as a prominent theme have proliferated especially since the middle of the twentieth century. The rise of environmental science, which has encouraged interdisciplinary approaches to studying the environment, and the environmental movement, which has increased public and political awareness of humanity's impact on the environment, have been highly influential. The 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring has been regarded as particularly important in popularizing environmental science and helping to launch the modern environmental movement. The emergence of the environmental humanities, including fields like environmental history, has also been important in bridging divides between the sciences and humanities and encouraging further interdisciplinary approaches. The environment also features prominently in much fictional literature. This page is a list of environmental books. In this context they are notable books that feature the environment as a major theme, including human impacts on the environment. Non-fiction environmental books Non-fiction accounts are ones that are presented as factual, although often in the context of subjective argument. Non-fiction environmental books may, for example, be the products of scholarly or journalistic work. The books in this list include fields and styles such as anthropology, conservation science, ecology, environmental history, lifestyle, and memoirs. Fiction environmental books Fiction environmental books feature the environment as a prominent theme. Books in this list include fields such as children's literature, eco-fiction, fantasy, and science fiction. See also Bibliography of sustainability Climate change in literature Earth Policy Institute#Books Eco-terrorism in fiction Environmentalism in The Lord of the Rings List of American non-fiction environmental writers List of Australian environmental books List of books about energy issues List of books about nuclear issues List of books about renewable energy List of climate change books List of environmental issues List of environmental law reviews and journals List of environmental periodicals List of environmental reports List of environmental websites Lists of environmental publications Opposing Viewpoints series Risk#List of related books References External links Biology Library News: Best Sellers in Environmental Science eScholarship: Environmental Information Sources: Websites and Books H-Environment (H-Net, Humanities and Social Sciences Online) Natural Resources Library - Best Sellers in Environmental Studies, December 2006 - Present, As Compiled by YBP Library Services News

effects of climate change

Climate change affects the physical environment, ecosystems and human societies. Changes in the climate system include an overall warming trend, more extreme weather and rising sea levels. These in turn impact nature and wildlife, as well as human settlements and societies. The effects of human-caused climate change are broad and far-reaching. This is especially so if there is no significant climate action. Experts sometimes describe the projected and observed negative impacts of climate change as the climate crisis. The changes in climate are not uniform across the Earth. In particular, most land areas have warmed faster than most ocean areas. The Arctic is warming faster than most other regions. There are many effects of climate change on oceans. These include an increase in ocean temperatures, a rise in sea level from ocean warming and ice sheet melting. They include increased ocean stratification. They also include changes to ocean currents including a weakening of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.: 10  Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is acidifiying the ocean.Recent warming has had a big effect on natural biological systems. It has degraded land by raising temperatures, drying soils and increasing wildfire risk.: 9  Species all over the world are migrating towards the poles to colder areas. On land, many species move to higher ground, whereas marine species seek colder water at greater depths. At 2 °C (3.6 °F) of warming, around 10% of species on land would become critically endangered.: 259 Food security and access to fresh water are at risk due to rising temperatures. Climate change has profound impacts on human health. These can be direct impacts via heat stress. They can be indirect changes via the spread of infectious diseases. Humans are vulnerable and exposed to climate change in different ways. This varies by economic sector and by country. Wealthy industrialised countries, which have emitted the most CO2, have more resources. So they are the least vulnerable to global warming. Climate change affects many economic sectors. They include agriculture, fisheries, forestry, energy, insurance, and tourism. Some groups may be particularly at risk from climate change, such as the poor, women, children and indigenous peoples. Climate change can lead to displacement and changes in migration flows. Changes in temperature Global warming affects all parts of Earth's climate system. Global surface temperatures have risen by 1.1 °C (2.0 °F). Scientists say they will rise further in the future. The changes in climate are not uniform across the Earth. In particular, most land areas have warmed faster than most ocean areas. The Arctic is warming faster than most other regions. Night-time temperatures have increased faster than daytime temperatures. The impact on nature and people depends on how much more the Earth warms.Scientists use several methods to predict the effects of human-caused climate change. One is to investigate past natural changes in climate. To assess changes in Earth's past climate scientists have studied tree rings, ice cores, corals, and ocean and lake sediments. These show that recent temperatures have surpassed anything in the last 2,000 years. By the end of the 21st century, temperatures may increase to a level last seen in the mid-Pliocene. This was around 3 million years ago. At that time, mean global temperatures were about 2–4 °C (3.6–7.2 °F) warmer than pre-industrial temperatures. The global mean sea level was up to 25 meters higher than it is today.: 323  The modern observed rise in temperature and CO2 concentrations has been rapid. even abrupt geophysical events in Earth's history do not approach current rates.: 54 How much the world warms depends on human greenhouse gas emissions and how sensitive the climate is to greenhouse gases. The more carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted in the 21st century the hotter the world will be by 2100. For a doubling of greenhouse gas concentrations, the global mean temperature would rise by about 2.5–4 °C (4.5–7.2 °F). What would happen if emissions of CO2 stopped abruptly and there was no use of negative emission technologies? The Earth's climate would not start moving back to its pre-industrial state. Temperatures would stay at the same high level for several centuries. After about a thousand years, 20% to 30% of human-emitted CO2 would remain in the atmosphere. The ocean and land would not have taken them. This would commit the climate to a warmer state long after emissions have stopped.With current mitigation policies the temperature will be about 2.7 °C (2.0–3.6 °C) above pre-industrial levels by 2100. It would rise to 2.4 °C (4.3 °F) if governments achieve all unconditional pledges and targets they have made. If all the countries that have set or are considering net-zero targets achieve them, the temperature will rise by around 1.8 °C (3.2 °F). There is a big gap between national plans and commitments and the actions that governments have taken around the world. Weather The lower and middle atmosphere, where nearly all weather occurs, are heating due to the greenhouse effect. Evaporation and atmospheric moisture content increase as temperatures rise. Water vapour is a greenhouse gas, so this process is a self-reinforcing feedback.The excess water vapour also gets caught up in storms. This makes them more intense, larger, and potentially longer-lasting. This in turn causes rain and snow events to become stronger and leads to increased risk of flooding. Extra drying worsens natural dry spells and droughts. This increases risk of heat waves and wildfires. Scientists have identified human activities as the cause of recent climate trends. They are now able to estimate the impact of climate change on extreme weather events. They call this process extreme event attribution. For instance such research can look at historical data for a region and conclude that a specific heat wave was more intense due to climate change. In addition , the time shifts of the season onsets, changes in the length of the season durations have been reported in many regions of the world. As a result of this, the timing of the extreme weather events such as heavy precipitaions and heat waves is changing in parallel with season shifting. Heat waves and temperature extremes Heatwaves over land have become more frequent and more intense in almost all world regions since the 1950s, due to climate change. Heat waves are more likely to occur simultaneously with droughts. Marine heatwaves are twice as likely as they were in 1980. Climate change will lead to more very hot days and fewer very cold days.: 7  There are fewer cold waves.: 8 Experts can often attribute the intensity of individual heat waves to global warming. Some extreme events would have been nearly impossible without human influence on the climate system. A heatwave that would occur once every ten years before global warming started now occurs 2.8 times as often. Under further warming, heatwaves are set to become more frequent. An event that would occur every ten years would occur every other year if global warming reaches 2 °C (3.6 °F).Heat stress is related to temperature. It also increases if humidity is higher. The wet-bulb temperature measures both temperature and humidity. Humans cannot adapt to a wet-bulb temperature above 35 °C (95 °F). This heat stress can kill people. If global warming is kept below 1.5 or 2 °C (2.7 or 3.6 °F), it will probably be possible to avoid this deadly heat and humidity in most of the tropics. But there may still be negative health impacts.There is some evidence climate change is leading to a weakening of the polar vortex. This would make the jet stream more wavy. This would lead to outbursts of very cold winter weather across parts of Eurasia and North America and incursions of very warm air into the Arctic. Rain Warming increases global average precipitation. Precipitation is when water vapour condenses out of clouds, such as rain and snow.: 1057  Higher temperatures increase evaporation and surface drying. As the air warms it can hold more water. For every degree Celsius it can hold 7% more water vapour.: 1057  Scientists have observed changes in the amount, intensity, frequency, and type of precipitation. Overall, climate change is causing longer hot dry spells, broken by more intense rainfall.: 151, 154 Climate change has increased contrasts in rainfall amounts between wet and dry seasons. Wet seasons are getting wetter and dry seasons are getting drier. In the northern high latitudes, warming has also caused an increase in the amount of snow and rain.: 1057  In the Southern Hemisphere, the rain associated with the storm tracks has shifted south. Changes in monsoons vary a lot. More monsoon systems are becoming wetter than drier. In Asia summer monsoons are getting wetter. The West African monsoon is getting wetter over the central Sahel, and drier in the far western Sahel.: 1058 Extreme storms Storms become wetter under climate change. These include tropical cyclones and extratropical cyclones. Both the maximum and mean rainfall rates increase. This more extreme rainfall is also true for thunderstorms in some regions. Furthermore, tropical cyclones and storm tracks are moving towards the poles. This means some regions will see large changes in maximum wind speeds. Scientists expect there will be fewer tropical cyclones. But they expect their strength to increase. There has probably been an increase in the number of tropical cyclones that intensify rapidly. Meterological and seismological data indicate a widespread increase in wind-driven global ocean wave energy in recent decades that has been attributed to an increase in storm intensity over the oceans due to climate change. Impacts on land Floods Due to an increase in heavy rainfall events, floods are likely to become more severe when they do occur.: 1155  The interactions between rainfall and flooding are complex. There are some regions in which flooding is expected to become rarer. This depends on several factors. These include changes in rain and snowmelt, but also soil moisture.: 1156  Climate change leaves soils drier in some areas, so they may absorb rainfall more quickly. This leads to less flooding. Dry soils can also become harder. In this case heavy rainfall runs off into rivers and lakes. This increases risks of flooding.: 1155 Droughts Climate change affects many factors associated with droughts. These include how much rain falls and how fast the rain evaporates again. Warming over land increases the severity and frequency of droughts around much of the world.: 1057  In some tropical and subtropical regions of the world, there will probably be less rain due to global warming. This will make them more prone to drought. Droughts are set to worsen in many regions of the world. These include Central America, the Amazon and south-western South America. They also include West and Southern Africa. The Mediterranean and south-western Australia are also some of these regions.: 1157 Higher temperatures increase evaporation. This dries the soil and increases plant stress. Agriculture suffers as a result. This means even regions where overall rainfall is expected to remain relatively stable will experience these impacts.: 1157  These regions include central and northern Europe. Without climate change mitigation, around one third of land areas are likely to experience moderate or more severe drought by 2100.: 1157  Due to global warming droughts are more frequent and intense than in the past.Several impacts make their impacts worse. These are increased water demand, population growth and urban expansion in many areas. Land restoration can help reduce the impact of droughts. One example of this is agroforestry. Wildfires Climate change promotes the type of weather that makes wildfires more likely. In some areas, an increase of wildfires has been attributed directly to climate change. Evidence from Earth's past also shows more fire in warmer periods.Climate change increases evaporation. This can cause vegetation to dry out. When a fire starts in an area with very dry vegetation, it can spread rapidly. Higher temperatures can also lengthen the fire season. This is the time of year in which severe wildfires are most likely, particularly in regions where snow is disappearing.Weather conditions are raising the risks of wildfires. But the total area burnt by wildfires has decreased. This is mostly because savanna has been converted to cropland, so there are fewer trees to burn. Prescribed burning isan indigenous practice in the US and Australia. It can reduce wildfire burning. The carbon released from wildfires can add to greenhouse gas concentrations. Climate models do not yet full reflect this feedback.: 20 Oceans Sea level rise Ice and snow The cryosphere, the area of the Earth covered by snow or ice, is extremely sensitive to changes in global climate. There has been an extensive loss of snow on land since 1981. Some of the largest declines have been observed in the spring. During the 21st century, snow cover is projected to continue its retreat in almost all regions.: 39–69 Glaciers and ice sheets decline Since the beginning of the twentieth century, there has been a widespread retreat of glaciers.: 1215  Those glaciers that are not associated with the polar ice sheets lost around 8% of their mass between 1971 and 2019.: 1275  In the Andes in South America and in the Himalayas in Asia, the retreat of glaciers could impact water supply. The melting of those glaciers could also cause landslides or glacial lake outburst floods.The melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets will continue to contribute to sea level rise over long time-scales. The Greenland ice sheet loss is mainly driven by melt from the top. Antarctic ice loss is driven by warm ocean water melting the outlet glaciers.: 1215 Future melt of the West Antarctic ice sheet is potentially abrupt under a high emission scenario, as a consequence of a partial collapse.: 595–596  Part of the ice sheet is grounded on bedrock below sea level. This makes it possibly vulnerable to the self-enhancing process of marine ice sheet instability. Marine ice cliff instability could also contribute to a partial collapse. But there is limited evidence for its importance.: 1269–1270  A partial collapse of the ice sheet would lead to rapid sea level rise and a local decrease in ocean salinity. It would be irreversible for decades and possibly even millennia.: 595–596  The complete loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet would cause over 5 metres (16 ft) of sea level rise.In contrast to the West Antarctic ice sheet, melt of the Greenland ice sheet is projected to take place more gradually over millennia.: 595–596  Sustained warming between 1 °C (1.8 °F) (low confidence) and 4 °C (7.2 °F) (medium confidence) would lead to a complete loss of the ice sheet. This would contribute 7 m (23 ft) to sea levels globally.: 363  The ice loss could become irreversible due to a further self-enhancing feedback. This is called the elevation-surface mass balance feedback. When ice melts on top of the ice sheet, the elevation drops. Air temperature is higher at lower altitudes, so this promotes further melting.: 362 Sea ice decline Sea ice reflects 50% to 70% of the incoming solar radiation back into space. Only 6% of incoming solar energy is reflected by the ocean. As the climate warms, the area covered by snow or sea ice decreases. After sea ice melts, more energy is absorbed by the ocean, so it warms up. This ice-albedo feedback is a self-reinforcing feedback of climate change. Large-scale measurements of sea ice have only been possible since we have been using satellites.Sea ice in the Arctic has declined in recent decades in area and volume due to climate change. It has been melting more in summer than it refreezes in winter. The decline of sea ice in the Arctic has been accelerating during the early twenty-first century. It has a rate of decline of 4.7% per decade. It has declined over 50% since the first satellite records. Ice-free summers are expected to be rare at 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) degrees of warming. They are set to occur at least once every decade with a warming level of 2 °C (3.6 °F).: 8  The Arctic will likely become ice-free at the end of some summers before 2050.: 9 Sea ice extent in Antarctica varies a lot year by year. This makes it difficult to determine a trend, and record highs and record lows have been observed between 2013 and 2023. The general trend since 1979, the start of the satellite measurements, has been roughly flat. Between 2015 and 2023, there has been a decline in sea ice, but due to the high variability, this does not correspond to a significant trend. Permafrost thawing Globally, permafrost warmed by about 0.3 °C between 2007 and 2016. The extent of permafrost has been falling for decades. More decline is expected in the future.: 1280  Permafrost thaw makes the ground weaker and unstable. The thaw can seriously damage human infrastructure in permafrost areas such as railways, settlements and pipelines.: 236  Thawing soil can also release methane and CO2 from decomposing microbes. This can generate a strong feedback loop to global warming. Some scientists believe that carbon storage in permafrost globally is approximately 1600 gigatons. This is twice the atmospheric pool. Wildlife and nature Recent warming has had a big effect on natural biological systems. Species worldwide are moving poleward to colder areas. On land, species may move to higher elevations. Marine species find colder water at greater depths. Climate change had the third biggest impact on nature out of various factors in the five decades up to 2020. Only change in land use and sea use and direct exploitation of organisms had a bigger impact.The impacts of climate change on nature are likely to become bigger in the next few decades. The stresses caused by climate change, combine with other stresses on ecological systems such as land conversion, land degradation, harvesting, and pollution. They threaten substantial damage to unique ecosystems. They can even result in their complete loss and the extinction of species. This can disrupt key interactions between species within ecosystems. This is because species from one location do not leave the warming habitat at the same rate. The result is rapid changes in the way the ecosystem functions. Impacts include changes in regional rainfall patterns. Another is earlier leafing of trees and plants over many regions. Movements of species to higher latitudes and altitudes, changes in bird migrations, and shifting of the oceans' plankton and fish from cold- to warm-adapted communities are other impacts.These changes of land and ocean ecosystems have direct effects on human well-being. For instance, ocean ecosystems help with coastal protection and provide food. Freshwater and land ecosystems can provide water for human consumption. Furthermore, these ecosystems can store carbon. This helps to stabilize the climate system. Ecosystems on land Climate change is a major driver of biodiversity loss in different land types. These include cool conifer forests, savannas, mediterranean-climate systems, tropical forests, and the Arctic tundra. In other ecosystems, land-use change may be a stronger driver of biodiversity loss, at least in the near term. Beyond 2050, climate change may be the major cause of biodiversity loss globally. Climate change interacts with other pressures. These include habitat modification, pollution and invasive species. Through this interaction, climate change increases the risk of extinction for many terrestrial and freshwater species. At 1.2 °C (2.2 °F) of warming (around 2023) some ecosystems are threatened by mass die-offs of trees and from heatwaves. At 2 °C (3.6 °F) of warming, around 10% of species on land would become critically endangered. This differs by group. For instance insects and salamanders are more vulnerable.: 259 Rainfall on the Amazon rainforest is recycled when it evaporates back into the atmosphere instead of running off away from the rainforest. This water is essential for sustaining the rainforest. Due to deforestation the rainforest is losing this ability. This effect is even worse because climate change brings more frequent droughts to the area. The higher frequency of droughts in the first two decades of the 21st century and other data signal that a tipping point from rainforest to savanna might be close. A 2019 study concluded that this ecosystem could begin a 50-year-long collapse to a savanna around 2021. After that it would become increasingly and disproportionally more difficult to prevent or reverse this shift. Marine ecosystems Marine heatwaves are happening more often. They have widespread impacts on life in the oceans. These include mass dying events and coral bleaching. Harmful algae blooms have increased. This is in response to warming waters, loss of oxygen and eutrophication.: 451  Melting sea ice destroys habitat, including for algae that grows on its underside.Ocean acidification can harm marine organisms in various ways. Shell-forming organisms like oysters are particularly vulnerable. Some phytoplankton and seagrass species may benefit. However, some of these are toxic to fish phytoplankton species. Their spread poses risks to fisheries and aquaculture. Fighting pollution can reduce the impact of acidification.Warm-water coral reefs are very sensitive to global warming and ocean acidification. Coral reefs provide a habitat for thousands of species. They provide ecosystem services such as coastal protection and food. The resilience of reefs can be improved by curbing local pollution and overfishing. But 70–90% of today's warm-water coral reefs will disappear even if warming is kept to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F).: 179  Coral reefs are framework organisms. They build physical structures that form habitats for other sea creatures. Other framework organisms are also at risk from climate change. Mangroves and seagrass are considered to be at moderate risk from lower levels of global warming.: 225 Tipping points and irreversible impacts Feedbacks that reinforce themselves can make climate change worse. The climate system exhibits "threshold behaviour" or tipping points when these feedbacks lead parts of the Earth system into a new state. Examples are the runaway loss of ice sheets or the dieback of forests. Tipping behaviour is found in all parts of the climate system. These include ecosystems, ice sheets, and the circulation of the ocean and atmosphere. Tipping points are studied using data from Earth's distant past and by physical modelling. There is already moderate risk of global tipping points at 1 °C (1.8 °F) above pre-industrial temperatures. That becomes a high risk at 2.5 °C (4.5 °F).: 254, 258  It is possible that some tipping points are close or have already been crossed. Examples are the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, the Amazon rainforest and warm-water coral reefs.Tipping points are perhaps the most dangerous aspect of future climate change. They would lead to irreversible impacts on society. A collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation would likely halve rainfall in India. It would probably lead to severe drops in temperature in Northern Europe. Many tipping points are interlinked. This means triggering one may lead to a cascade of effects. This could happen even well below 2 °C (3.6 °F) of warming. A 2018 study states that 45% of environmental problems, including those caused by climate change, are interconnected. This makes the risk of a domino effect bigger.Further impacts may be irreversible, at least over the timescale of many human generations. This includes warming of the deep ocean and acidification. These are set to continue even when global temperatures stop rising. In biological systems, the extinction of species would be an irreversible impact. In social systems, unique cultures may be lost. Climate change could make it more likely that endangered languages disappear. Health, food security and water security Humans have a climate niche. This is a certain range of temperatures in which they flourish. Outside that niche, conditions are less favourable. This leads to negative effects on health, food security and more. This niche is a mean annual temperature above 29ºC. As of May 2023, 60 million people lived outside this niche. With every additional 0.1 degree of warming, 140 million people will be pushed out of it. Health Food security Climate change will affect agriculture and food production around the world. The reasons include the effects of elevated CO2 in the atmosphere. Higher temperatures and altered precipitation and transpiration regimes are also factors. Increased frequency of extreme events and modified weed, pest, and pathogen pressure are other factors. Droughts result in crop failures and the loss of pasture for livestock. Loss and poor growth of livestock cause milk yield and meat production to decrease. The rate of soil erosion is 10–20 times higher than the rate of soil accumulation in agricultural areas that use no-till farming. In areas with tilling it is 100 times higher. Climate change worsens this type of land degradation and desertification.: 5 Climate change is projected to negatively affect all four pillars of food security. It will affect how much food is available. It will also affect how easy food is to access through prices, food quality, and how stable the food system is. Climate change is already affecting the productivity of wheat and other staples.In many areas, fishery catches are already decreasing because of global warming and changes in biochemical cycles. In combination with overfishing, warming waters decrease the amount of fish in the ocean.: 12  Per degree of warming, ocean biomass is expected to decrease by about 5%. Tropical and subtropical oceans are most affected, while there may be more fish in polar waters. Water security Water resources can be affected by climate change in various ways. The total amount of freshwater available can change, for instance due to dry spells or droughts. Heavy rainfall and flooding can have an impact on water quality. They can transport pollutants into water bodies through increased surface runoff. In coastal regions, more salt may find its way into water resources due to higher sea levels and more intense storms. Higher temperatures also directly degrade water quality. This is because warm water contains less oxygen. Changes in the water cycle threaten existing and future water infrastructure. It will be harder to plan investments for water infrastructure. This is because there are significant uncertainties about future variability of the water cycle.Between 1.5 and 2.5 billion people live in areas with regular water security issues. If global warming reaches 4 °C (7.2 °F), water insecurity would affect about twice as many people. Water resources are likely to decrease in most dry subtropical regions and mid-latitudes. But they will increase in high latitudes. However, variable streamflow means even regions with increased water resources can experience additional short-term shortages.: 251  In the arid regions of India, China, the US and Africa dry spells and drought are already affecting water availability. Human settlement Climate change is particularly likely to affect the Arctic, Africa, small islands, Asian megadeltas and the Middle East regions. Low-latitude, less-developed regions are most at risk of experiencing negative climate change impacts. The ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are among the most vulnerable in the world to the negative effects of climate change. ASEAN's climate mitigation efforts are not in proportion to the climate change threats the region faces. Impacts from heat Regions inhabited by a third of the human population could become as hot as the hottest parts of the Sahara within 50 years. This would happen if greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow rapdily without a change in patterns of population growth and without migration. The projected average temperature of above 29 °C (84 °F) for these regions would be outside the "human temperature niche". This is a range for climate that is biologically suitable for humans. It is based on historical data of mean annual temperatures. The most affected regions have little adaptive capacity.Increased extreme heat exposure from climate change and the urban heat island effect threatens urban settlements. This is made worse by the loss of shade from urban trees that cannot withstand the heat stress.In 2019, the Crowther Lab from ETH Zurich paired the climatic conditions of 520 major cities worldwide with the predicted climatic conditions of cities in 2050. It found that 22% of the major cities would have climatic conditions that do not exist in any city today. For instance, 2050 London would have a climate similar to 2019 Melbourne in Australia. Athens and Madrid would be like Fez in Morocco. Nairobi in Kenya would be like Maputo in Mozambique. The Indian city Pune would be like Bamako in Mali and Bamako would be like Niamey in Niger. Brasilia would be like Goiania, both in Brazil. Low-lying coastal regions Low-lying cities and other settlements near the sea face multiple simultaneous risks from climate change. They face flooding risks from sea level rise. In addition they may face impacts from more severe storms, ocean acidification, and salt intrusion into the groundwater. Changes like continued development in exposed areas increase the risks that these regions face. Population density on the coasts is high. Estimates of the number of people at risk of coastal flooding from climate-driven sea level rise vary. Estimates range from 190 million to 300 million. It could even be 640 million in a worst-case scenario related to the instability of the Antarctic ice sheet. People are most affected in the densely-populated low-lying megadeltas of Asia and Africa.Small island developing states are especially vulnerable. They are likely to experience more intense storm surges, salt water intrusion and coastal destruction. Low-lying small islands in the Pacific, Indian, and Caribbean regions even risk permanent inundation. This would displace their population. On the islands of Fiji, Tonga and western Samoa, migrants from outer islands inhabit low and unsafe areas along the coasts. The entire populations of small atoll nations such as Kiribati, Maldives, the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu are at risk of being displaced. This could raise issues of statelessness. Several factors increase their vulnerability. These are small size, isolation from other land, low financial resources, and lack of protective infrastructure. Impacts on societies Climate change has many impacts on society. It affects health, the availability of drinking water and food, inequality and economic growth. The effects of climate change are often interlinked. They can exacerbate each other as well as existing vulnerabilities. Some areas may become too hot for humans to live in. Climate-related changes or disasters may lead people in some areas to move to other parts of the country or to other countries. Some scientists describe the effects of climate change, with continuing increases in greenhouse gas emissions, as a "climate emergency" or "climate crisis". Some researchers and activists describe them as an existential threat to civilization. Some define these threats under climate security. The consequences of climate change, and the failure to address it, can distract people from tackling its root causes. This leads to what some researchers have termed a "climate doom loop". Displacement and migration Displacement is when people move within a country. Migration is when they move to another country. Some people use the terms interchangeably. Climate change affects displacement in several ways. More frequent and severe weather-related disasters may increase involuntary displacement. These destroy homes and habitats. Climate impacts such as desertification and rising sea levels gradually erode livelihoods. They force communities to abandon traditional homelands. Other forms of migration are adaptive and voluntary. They are based on individual or household decisions.: 1079  On the other hand, some households may fall into poverty or get poorer due to climate change. This limits their ability to move to less affected areas.Migration due to climate and weather is usually within countries. But it is long-distance. Slow-onset disasters such as droughts and heat are more likely to cause long-term migration than weather disasters like floods. Migration due to desertification and reduced soil fertility is typically from rural areas in developing countries to towns and cities.: 109 According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, extreme weather events displaced approximately 30 million people in 2020. Violence and wars displaced approximately 10 million in the same year. There may have been a contribution of climate change to these conflicts. In 2018, the World Bank estimated that climate change will cause internal migration of between 31 and 143 million people by 2050. This would be as they escape crop failures, water scarcity, and sea level rise. The study covered only Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. Conflict Climate change can worsen conflicts over water and other resources. Climate change can also cause large population dislocations and migration. This can lead to increased tensions. At the micro level, climate change has also been found to lead to spikes in violent crime. Scientists have found that factors other than climate change were more important in affecting conflict over the last century. One such factor is inequality between groups. Another is low socio-economic development. In some cases, climate change can lead to more peaceful relationships between groups. This is because environmental problems need common policies.Global warming has been described as a "threat multiplier". Conditions in certain places make it more likely that climate change will have an impact on conflict. These include ethnic exclusion, economies dependent on agriculture, insufficient infrastructure, poor local governance, and low levels of development. A spike in wheat prices following crop losses from a period of drought may have contributed to the onset of the "Arab Spring" protests and revolutions in 2010. Economic impacts Economic forecasts of the impact of global warming vary considerably. The impacts are worse if there is insufficient adaptation. Economic modelling may underrate the impact of catastrophic climatic changes. When estimating losses, economists choose a discount rate. This determines how much one prefers to have goods or cash now compared to at a future date. Using a high discount rate may understate economic losses. This is because losses for future generations weigh less heavily.Economic impacts are bigger the more the temperature rises. Scientists have compared impacts with warming of 1.5 ºC (2.7 ºF) and a level of 3.66 ºC (6.59 ºF). They use this higher figure to represent no efforts to stop emissions. They found that total damages at 1.5 ºC were 90% less than at 3.66 ºC. : 256  One study found that global GDP at the end of the century would be 3.5% less if warming is limited to 3 °C (5.4 °F). This study excludes the potential effect of tipping points. Another study found that excluding tipping points underestimates the global economic impact by a factor of two to eight.: 256  Another study found that a temperature rise of 2 °C (3.6 °F) by 2050 would reduce global GDP by 2.5%–7.5%. By 2100 in this scenario the temperature would rise by 4 °C (7.2 °F). This could reduce global GDP by 30% in the worst case.Global losses reveal rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather events since the 1970s. Socio-economic factors have contributed to the observed trend of global losses. These factors include population growth and increased wealth. Regional climatic factors also play a role. These include changes in precipitation and flooding events. It is difficult to quantify the relative impact of socio-economic factors and climate change on the observed trend. The trend does suggest social systems are increasing vulnerable to climate change. Economic inequality Climate change has contributed to global economic inequality. Wealthy countries in colder regions have felt little overall economic impact from climate change or may have benefited. Poor hotter countries probably grew less than if there had been no global warming. Highly affected sectors Climate change has a bigger impact on economic sectors directly affected by weather than on other sectors. It heavily affects agriculture, fisheries and forestry. It also affects the tourism and energy sectors. Agriculture and forestry have suffered economic losses due to droughts and extreme heat. If global warming goes over 1.5 ºC, there may be limits to how much tourism and outdoor work can adapt.In the energy sector, thermal power plants depend on water to cool them. Climate change can increase the likelihood of drought and fresh water shortages. Higher operating temperatures make them less efficient. This reduces their output. Hydropower is affected by changes in the water cycle such as river flows. Diminished river flows can cause power shortages in areas that depend on hydroelectric power. Brazil relies on hydroelectricity. So it is particularly vulnerable. Rising temperatures, lower water flow, and changes in rainfall could reduce total energy production by 7% annually by the end of the century. Climate change affects oil and natural gas infrastructure. This is also vulnerable to the increased risk of disasters such as storms, cyclones, flooding and rising sea levels.Global warming affects the insurance and financial services sectors.: 212–213, 228, 252  Insurance is an important tool to manage risks. But it is often unavailable to poorer households. Due to climate change, premiums are going up for certain types of insurance, such as flood insurance. Poor adaptation to climate change further widens the gap between what people can afford and the costs of insurance, as risks increase. In 2019 Munich Re said climate change could make home insurance unaffordable for households at or below average incomes. Social impacts on vulnerable groups Climate change does not affect people within communities in the same way. It can have a bigger impact on vulnerable groups such as women, the elderly, religious minorities and refugees than on others. People living in poverty: Climate change disproportionally affects poor people in low-income communities and developing countries around the world. Those in poverty have a higher chance of experiencing the ill-effects of climate change, due to their increased exposure and vulnerability. A 2020 World Bank paper estimated that between 32 million to 132 million additional people will be pushed into extreme poverty by 2030 due to climate change. Women: Climate change increases gender inequality. It reduces women's ability to be financially independent, and has an overall negative impact on the social and political rights of women. This is especially the case in economies that are heavily based on agriculture. Indigenous peoples: Indigenous communities tend to rely more on the environment for food and other necessities. This makes them more vulnerable to disturbances in ecosystems. Indigenous communities across the globe generally have bigger economic disadvantages than non-indigenous communities. This is due to the oppression they have experienced. These disadvantages include less access to education and jobs and higher rates of poverty. All this makes them more vulnerable to climate change. Children: The Lancet review on health and climate change lists children among the worst-affected by global warming. Children are 14–44 percent more likely to die from environmental factors. Possibility of societal collapse Climate change has long been described as a severe risk to humans. Climate change as an existential threat has emerged as a key theme in the climate movement. People from small island nations also use this theme. There has not been extensive research in this topic. Existential risks are threats that could cause the extinction of humanity or destroy the potential of intelligent life on Earth. Key risks of climate change do not fit that definition. However, some key climate risks do have an impact people's ability to survive. For instance, areas may become too hot to survive, or sea level rise may make it impossible to live at a specific location. Long-term scenarios (up to 2500) In 2021, researchers found that projecting effects of greenhouse gas emissions only for up to 2100, as widely practiced in research and policy-making, is short-sighted. They then modeled RCPs, climate change scenarios and their effects for up to 2500. See also Anthropocene Global catastrophic risk Politics of climate change References Sources IPCC AR4 WG1 (2007), Solomon, S.; Qin, D.; Manning, M.; Chen, Z.; Marquis, M.; Averyt, K.B.; Tignor, M.; Miller, H.L. (eds.), Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-88009-1 (pb: 978-0-521-70596-7). IPCC AR4 WG2 (2007), Parry, M.L.; Canziani, O.F.; Palutikof, J.P.; van der Linden, P.J.; Hanson, C.E. (eds.), Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-88010-7 (pb: 978-0-521-70597-4).IPCC AR4 SYR (2007), Core Writing Team; Pachauri, R.K; Reisinger, A. (eds.), Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report, Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC, ISBN 978-92-9169-122-7. IPCC SREX (2012), Field, C.B.; et al. (eds.), Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX), Cambridge University Press, archived from the original on 19 December 2012. Summary for Policymakers available in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish.IPCC AR5 WG1 (2013), Stocker, T.F.; et al. (eds.), Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group 1 (WG1) Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report (AR5), Cambridge University Press. Climate Change 2013 Working Group 1 website.IPCC AR5 WG2 A (2014), Field, C.B.; et al. (eds.), Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II (WG2) to the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Cambridge University Press, archived from the original on 16 April 2014. ArchivedIPCC TAR SYR (2001), Watson, R. T.; the Core Writing Team (eds.), Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report, Contribution of Working Groups I, II, and III to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-80770-0, archived from the original on 3 November 2018, retrieved 21 May 2013 (pb: 0-521-01507-3). USGCRP (2017). Wuebbles, D. J.; Fahey, D. W.; Hibbard, K. A.; Dokken, D. J.; et al. (eds.). Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Global Change Research Program. doi:10.7930/J0J964J6. External links IPCC Working Group I (WG I). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change group which assesses the physical scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change. Climate from the World Meteorological Organization Climate change UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Sustainable Development Effects of climate change from the Met Office United Nations Environment Programme and the climate emergency

our common future

Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report, was published in October 1987 by the United Nations through the Oxford University Press. This publication was in recognition of Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Norwegian Prime Minister and Chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). Its targets were multilateralism and interdependence of nations in the search for a sustainable development path. The report sought to recapture the spirit of the Stockholm Conference which had introduced environmental concerns to the formal political development sphere. Our Common Future placed environmental issues firmly on the political agenda; it aimed to discuss the environment and development as one single issue. The document was the culmination of a "900-day" international exercise which catalogued, analysed, and synthesised written submissions and expert testimony from "senior government representatives, scientists and experts, research institutes, industrialists, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and the general public" held at public hearings throughout the world. The report defined 'sustainable development' as "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Content The Brundtland Commission's mandate was to: "Re-examine the critical issues of environment and development and to formulate innovative, concrete, and realistic action proposals to deal with them; [S]trengthen international cooperation on environment and development and to assess and propose new forms of cooperation that can break out of existing patterns and influence policies and events in the direction of needed change; and [R]aise the level of understanding and commitment to action on the part of individuals, voluntary organizations, businesses, institutes, and governments" (1987: 347). "The Commission focused its attention in the areas of population, food security, the loss of species and genetic resources, energy, industry, and human settlements - realizing that all of these are connected and cannot be treated in isolation one from another"The Brundtland Commission Report recognized that human resource development in the form of poverty reduction, gender equity, and wealth redistribution was crucial to formulating strategies for environmental conservation, and it also recognized that environmental-limits to economic growth in industrialized and industrializing societies existed. The Brundtland Report claimed that poverty reduces sustainability and accelerates environmental pressures – creating a need for the balancing between economy and ecology.The publication of Our Common Future and the work of the World Commission on Environment and Development laid the groundwork for the convening of the 1992 Earth Summit and the adoption of Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration and to the establishment of the Commission on Sustainable Development. In addition, key contributions of Our Common Future to the concept of sustainable development include the recognition that the many crises facing the planet are interlocking crises that are elements of a single crisis of the whole and of the vital need for the active participation of all sectors of society in consultation and decisions relating to sustainable development. Controversy In 1988, Helge Ole Bergesen wrote that this report is perceived by the Third World elites as green imperialism. See also National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy References Further reading Ahmed, Faiz (2008). An Examination of the Development Path Taken by Small Island Developing States (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-10-03. Retrieved 2012-04-19. (pp. 17–26) Iris Borowy, Defining Sustainable Development: the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission), Milton Park: earthscan/Routledge, 2014 WBGU (10 July 2019). Our common digital future – a draft charter for a sustainable digital age (PDF). Berlin, Germany: German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU). Retrieved 2020-03-04. PDF version. External links Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development

soil erosion

Soil erosion is the denudation or wearing away of the upper layer of soil. It is a form of soil degradation. This natural process is caused by the dynamic activity of erosive agents, that is, water, ice (glaciers), snow, air (wind), plants, and animals (including humans). In accordance with these agents, erosion is sometimes divided into water erosion, glacial erosion, snow erosion, wind (aeolian) erosion, zoogenic erosion and anthropogenic erosion such as tillage erosion. Soil erosion may be a slow process that continues relatively unnoticed, or it may occur at an alarming rate causing a serious loss of topsoil. The loss of soil from farmland may be reflected in reduced crop production potential, lower surface water quality and damaged drainage networks. Soil erosion could also cause sinkholes. Human activities have increased by 10–50 times the rate at which erosion is occurring world-wide. Excessive (or accelerated) erosion causes both "on-site" and "off-site" problems. On-site impacts include decreases in agricultural productivity and (on natural landscapes) ecological collapse, both because of loss of the nutrient-rich upper soil layers. In some cases, the eventual end result is desertification. Off-site effects include sedimentation of waterways and eutrophication of water bodies, as well as sediment-related damage to roads and houses. Water and wind erosion are the two primary causes of land degradation; combined, they are responsible for about 84% of the global extent of degraded land, making excessive erosion one of the most significant environmental problems worldwide.Intensive agriculture, deforestation, roads, acid rains, anthropogenic climate change and urban sprawl are amongst the most significant human activities in regard to their effect on stimulating erosion. However, there are many prevention and remediation practices that can curtail or limit erosion of vulnerable soils. Physical processes Rainfall and surface runoff Rainfall, and the surface runoff which may result from rainfall, produces four main types of soil erosion: splash erosion, sheet erosion, rill erosion, and gully erosion. Splash erosion is generally seen as the first and least severe stage in the soil erosion process, which is followed by sheet erosion, then rill erosion and finally gully erosion (the most severe of the four).In splash erosion, the impact of a falling raindrop creates a small crater in the soil, ejecting soil particles. The distance these soil particles travel can be as much as 0.6 m (two feet) vertically and 1.5 m (five feet) horizontally on level ground. If the soil is saturated, or if the rainfall rate is greater than the rate at which water can infiltrate into the soil, surface runoff occurs. If the runoff has sufficient flow energy, it will transport loosened soil particles (sediment) down the slope. Sheet erosion is the transport of loosened soil particles by overland flow. Rill erosion refers to the development of small, ephemeral concentrated flow paths which function as both sediment source and sediment delivery systems for erosion on hillslopes. Generally, where water erosion rates on disturbed upland areas are greatest, rills are active. Flow depths in rills are typically of the order of a few centimeters (about an inch) or less and along-channel slopes may be quite steep. This means that rills exhibit hydraulic physics very different from water flowing through the deeper wider channels of streams and rivers.Gully erosion occurs when runoff water accumulates and rapidly flows in narrow channels during or immediately after heavy rains or melting snow, removing soil to a considerable depth. Another cause of gully erosion is grazing, which often results in ground compaction. Because the soil is exposed, it loses the ability to absorb excess water, and erosion can develop in susceptible areas. Rivers and streams Valley or stream erosion occurs with continued water flow along a linear feature. The erosion is both downward, deepening the valley, and headward, extending the valley into the hillside, creating head cuts and steep banks. In the earliest stage of stream erosion, the erosive activity is dominantly vertical, the valleys have a typical V cross-section and the stream gradient is relatively steep. When some base level is reached, the erosive activity switches to lateral erosion, which widens the valley floor and creates a narrow floodplain. The stream gradient becomes nearly flat, and lateral deposition of sediments becomes important as the stream meanders across the valley floor. In all stages of stream erosion, by far the most erosion occurs during times of flood, when more and faster-moving water is available to carry a larger sediment load. In such processes, it is not the water alone that erodes: suspended abrasive particles, pebbles and boulders can also act erosively as they traverse a surface, in a process known as traction.Bank erosion is the wearing away of the banks of a stream or river. This is distinguished from changes on the bed of the watercourse, which is referred to as scour. Erosion and changes in the form of river banks may be measured by inserting metal rods into the bank and marking the position of the bank surface along the rods at different times.Thermal erosion is the result of melting and weakening permafrost due to moving water. It can occur both along rivers and at the coast. Rapid river channel migration observed in the Lena River of Siberia is due to thermal erosion, as these portions of the banks are composed of permafrost-cemented non-cohesive materials. Much of this erosion occurs as the weakened banks fail in large slumps. Thermal erosion also affects the Arctic coast, where wave action and near-shore temperatures combine to undercut permafrost bluffs along the shoreline and cause them to fail. Annual erosion rates along a 100-kilometre (62-mile) segment of the Beaufort Sea shoreline averaged 5.6 metres (18 feet) per year from 1955 to 2002. Floods At extremely high flows, kolks, or vortices are formed by large volumes of rapidly rushing water. Kolks cause extreme local erosion, plucking bedrock and creating pothole-type geographical features called Rock-cut basins. Examples can be seen in the flood regions result from glacial Lake Missoula, which created the channeled scablands in the Columbia Basin region of eastern Washington. Wind erosion Wind erosion is a major geomorphological force, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. It is also a major source of land degradation, evaporation, desertification, harmful airborne dust, and crop damage—especially after being increased far above natural rates by human activities such as deforestation, urbanization, and agriculture.Wind erosion is of two primary varieties: deflation, where the wind picks up and carries away loose particles; and abrasion, where surfaces are worn down as they are struck by airborne particles carried by wind. Deflation is divided into three categories: (1) surface creep, where larger, heavier particles slide or roll along the ground; (2) saltation, where particles are lifted a short height into the air, and bounce and saltate across the surface of the soil; and (3) suspension, where very small and light particles are lifted into the air by the wind, and are often carried for long distances. Saltation is responsible for the majority (50–70%) of wind erosion, followed by suspension (30–40%), and then surface creep (5–25%). Silty soils tend to be the most affected by wind erosion; silt particles are relatively easily detached and carried away.Wind erosion is much more severe in arid areas and during times of drought. For example, in the Great Plains, it is estimated that soil loss due to wind erosion can be as much as 6100 times greater in drought years than in wet years. Mass movement Mass movement is the downward and outward movement of rock and sediments on a sloped surface, mainly due to the force of gravity.Mass movement is an important part of the erosional process, and is often the first stage in the breakdown and transport of weathered materials in mountainous areas. It moves material from higher elevations to lower elevations where other eroding agents such as streams and glaciers can then pick up the material and move it to even lower elevations. Mass-movement processes are always occurring continuously on all slopes; some mass-movement processes act very slowly; others occur very suddenly, often with disastrous results. Any perceptible down-slope movement of rock or sediment is often referred to in general terms as a landslide. However, landslides can be classified in a much more detailed way that reflects the mechanisms responsible for the movement and the velocity at which the movement occurs. One of the visible topographical manifestations of a very slow form of such activity is a scree slope.Slumping happens on steep hillsides, occurring along distinct fracture zones, often within materials like clay that, once released, may move quite rapidly downhill. They will often show a spoon-shaped isostatic depression, in which the material has begun to slide downhill. In some cases, the slump is caused by water beneath the slope weakening it. In many cases it is simply the result of poor engineering along highways where it is a regular occurrence.Surface creep is the slow movement of soil and rock debris by gravity which is usually not perceptible except through extended observation. However, the term can also describe the rolling of dislodged soil particles 0.5 to 1.0 mm (0.02 to 0.04 in) in diameter by wind along the soil surface. Tillage erosion Factors affecting soil erosion Climate The amount and intensity of precipitation is the main climatic factor governing soil erosion by water. The relationship is particularly strong if heavy rainfall occurs at times when, or in locations where, the soil's surface is not well protected by vegetation. This might be during periods when agricultural activities leave the soil bare, or in semi-arid regions where vegetation is naturally sparse. Wind erosion requires strong winds, particularly during times of drought when vegetation is sparse and soil is dry (and so is more erodible). Other climatic factors such as average temperature and temperature range may also affect erosion, via their effects on vegetation and soil properties. In general, given similar vegetation and ecosystems, areas with more precipitation (especially high-intensity rainfall), more wind, or more storms are expected to have more erosion. In some areas of the world (e.g. the mid-western USA and the Amazon Rainforest), rainfall intensity is the primary determinant of erosivity, with higher intensity rainfall generally resulting in more soil erosion by water. The size and velocity of rain drops is also an important factor. Larger and higher-velocity rain drops have greater kinetic energy, and thus their impact will displace soil particles by larger distances than smaller, slower-moving rain drops.In other regions of the world (e.g. western Europe), runoff and erosion result from relatively low intensities of stratiform rainfall falling onto previously saturated soil. In such situations, rainfall amount rather than intensity is the main factor determining the severity of soil erosion by water. Soil structure and composition The composition, moisture, and compaction of soil are all major factors in determining the erosivity of rainfall. Sediments containing more clay tend to be more resistant to erosion than those with sand or silt, because the clay helps bind soil particles together. Soil containing high levels of organic materials are often more resistant to erosion, because the organic materials coagulate soil colloids and create a stronger, more stable soil structure. The amount of water present in the soil before the precipitation also plays an important role, because it sets limits on the amount of water that can be absorbed by the soil (and hence prevented from flowing on the surface as erosive runoff). Wet, saturated soils will not be able to absorb as much rainwater, leading to higher levels of surface runoff and thus higher erosivity for a given volume of rainfall. Soil compaction also affects the permeability of the soil to water, and hence the amount of water that flows away as runoff. More compacted soils will have a larger amount of surface runoff than less compacted soils. Vegetative cover Vegetation acts as an interface between the atmosphere and the soil. It increases the permeability of the soil to rainwater, thus decreasing runoff. It shelters the soil from winds, which results in decreased wind erosion, as well as advantageous changes in microclimate. The roots of the plants bind the soil together, and interweave with other roots, forming a more solid mass that is less susceptible to both water and wind erosion. The removal of vegetation increases the rate of surface erosion. Topography The topography of the land determines the velocity at which surface runoff will flow, which in turn determines the erosivity of the runoff. Longer, steeper slopes (especially those without adequate vegetative cover) are more susceptible to very high rates of erosion during heavy rains than shorter, less steep slopes. Steeper terrain is also more prone to mudslides, landslides, and other forms of gravitational erosion processes. Human activities that aid soil erosion Agricultural practices Unsustainable agricultural practices increase rates of erosion by one to two orders of magnitude over the natural rate and far exceed replacement by soil production. The tillage of agricultural lands, which breaks up soil into finer particles, is one of the primary factors. The problem has been exacerbated in modern times, due to mechanized agricultural equipment that allows for deep plowing, which severely increases the amount of soil that is available for transport by water erosion. Others include monocropping, farming on steep slopes, pesticide and chemical fertilizer usage (which kill organisms that bind soil together), row-cropping, and the use of surface irrigation. A complex overall situation with respect to defining nutrient losses from soils, could arise as a result of the size selective nature of soil erosion events. Loss of total phosphorus, for instance, in the finer eroded fraction is greater relative to the whole soil. Extrapolating this evidence to predict subsequent behaviour within receiving aquatic systems, the reason is that this more easily transported material may support a lower solution P concentration compared to coarser sized fractions. Tillage also increases wind erosion rates, by dehydrating the soil and breaking it up into smaller particles that can be picked up by the wind. Exacerbating this is the fact that most of the trees are generally removed from agricultural fields, allowing winds to have long, open runs to travel over at higher speeds. Heavy grazing reduces vegetative cover and causes severe soil compaction, both of which increase erosion rates. Deforestation In an undisturbed forest, the mineral soil is protected by a layer of leaf litter and an humus that cover the forest floor. These two layers form a protective mat over the soil that absorbs the impact of rain drops. They are porous and highly permeable to rainfall, and allow rainwater to slow percolate into the soil below, instead of flowing over the surface as runoff. The roots of the trees and plants hold together soil particles, preventing them from being washed away. The vegetative cover acts to reduce the velocity of the raindrops that strike the foliage and stems before hitting the ground, reducing their kinetic energy. However it is the forest floor, more than the canopy, that prevents surface erosion. The terminal velocity of rain drops is reached in about 8 metres (26 feet). Because forest canopies are usually higher than this, rain drops can often regain terminal velocity even after striking the canopy. However, the intact forest floor, with its layers of leaf litter and organic matter, is still able to absorb the impact of the rainfall.Deforestation causes increased erosion rates due to exposure of mineral soil by removing the humus and litter layers from the soil surface, removing the vegetative cover that binds soil together, and causing heavy soil compaction from logging equipment. Once trees have been removed by fire or logging, infiltration rates become high and erosion low to the degree the forest floor remains intact. Severe fires can lead to significant further erosion if followed by heavy rainfall.Globally one of the largest contributors to erosive soil loss in the year 2006 is the slash and burn treatment of tropical forests. In a number of regions of the earth, entire sectors of a country have been rendered unproductive. For example, on the Madagascar high central plateau, comprising approximately ten percent of that country's land area, virtually the entire landscape is sterile of vegetation, with gully erosive furrows typically in excess of 50 metres (160 ft) deep and 1 kilometre (0.6 miles) wide. Shifting cultivation is a farming system which sometimes incorporates the slash and burn method in some regions of the world. This degrades the soil and causes the soil to become less and less fertile. Roads and human impact Human Impact has major effects on erosion processes—first by denuding the land of vegetative cover, altering drainage patterns, and compacting the soil during construction; and next by covering the land in an impermeable layer of asphalt or concrete that increases the amount of surface runoff and increases surface wind speeds. Much of the sediment carried in runoff from urban areas (especially roads) is highly contaminated with fuel, oil, and other chemicals. This increased runoff, in addition to eroding and degrading the land that it flows over, also causes major disruption to surrounding watersheds by altering the volume and rate of water that flows through them, and filling them with chemically polluted sedimentation. The increased flow of water through local waterways also causes a large increase in the rate of bank erosion. Climate change The warmer atmospheric temperatures observed over the past decades are expected to lead to a more vigorous hydrological cycle, including more extreme rainfall events. The rise in sea levels that has occurred as a result of climate change has also greatly increased coastal erosion rates. Studies on soil erosion suggest that increased rainfall amounts and intensities will lead to greater rates of soil erosion. Thus, if rainfall amounts and intensities increase in many parts of the world as expected, erosion will also increase, unless amelioration measures are taken. Soil erosion rates are expected to change in response to changes in climate for a variety of reasons. The most direct is the change in the erosive power of rainfall. Other reasons include: a) changes in plant canopy caused by shifts in plant biomass production associated with moisture regime; b) changes in litter cover on the ground caused by changes in both plant residue decomposition rates driven by temperature and moisture dependent soil microbial activity as well as plant biomass production rates; c) changes in soil moisture due to shifting precipitation regimes and evapo-transpiration rates, which changes infiltration and runoff ratios; d) soil erodibility changes due to decrease in soil organic matter concentrations in soils that lead to a soil structure that is more susceptible to erosion and increased runoff due to increased soil surface sealing and crusting; e) a shift of winter precipitation from non-erosive snow to erosive rainfall due to increasing winter temperatures; f) melting of permafrost, which induces an erodible soil state from a previously non-erodible one; and g) shifts in land use made necessary to accommodate new climatic regimes.Studies by Pruski and Nearing indicated that, other factors such as land use unconsidered, it is reasonable to expect approximately a 1.7% change in soil erosion for each 1% change in total precipitation under climate change. In recent studies, there are predicted increases of rainfall erosivity by 17% in the United States, by 18% in Europe, and globally 30 to 66% Global environmental effects Due to the severity of its ecological effects, and the scale on which it is occurring, erosion constitutes one of the most significant global environmental problems we face today. Land degradation Water and wind erosion are now the two primary causes of land degradation; combined, they are responsible for 84% of degraded acreage.Each year, about 75 billion tons of soil is eroded from the land—a rate that is about 13–40 times as fast as the natural rate of erosion. Approximately 40% of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded. According to the United Nations, an area of fertile soil the size of Ukraine is lost every year because of drought, deforestation and climate change. In Africa, if current trends of soil degradation continue, the continent might be able to feed just 25% of its population by 2025, according to UNU's Ghana-based Institute for Natural Resources in Africa.Recent modeling developments have quantified rainfall erosivity at global scale using high temporal resolution (<30 min) and high fidelity rainfall recordings. The results is an extensive global data collection effort produced the Global Rainfall Erosivity Database (GloREDa) which includes rainfall erosivity for 3,625 stations and covers 63 countries. This first ever Global Rainfall Erosivity Database was used to develop a global erosivity map at 30 arc-seconds(~1 km) based on sophisticated geostatistical process. According to a new study published in Nature Communications, almost 36 billion tons of soil is lost every year due to water, and deforestation and other changes in land use make the problem worse. The study investigates global soil erosion dynamics by means of high-resolution spatially distributed modelling (ca. 250 × 250 m cell size). The geo-statistical approach allows, for the first time, the thorough incorporation into a global soil erosion model of land use and changes in land use, the extent, types, spatial distribution of global croplands and the effects of different regional cropping systems. The loss of soil fertility due to erosion is further problematic because the response is often to apply chemical fertilizers, which leads to further water and soil pollution, rather than to allow the land to regenerate. Sedimentation of aquatic ecosystems Soil erosion (especially from agricultural activity) is considered to be the leading global cause of diffuse water pollution, due to the effects of the excess sediments flowing into the world's waterways. The sediments themselves act as pollutants, as well as being carriers for other pollutants, such as attached pesticide molecules or heavy metals.The effect of increased sediments loads on aquatic ecosystems can be catastrophic. Silt can smother the spawning beds of fish, by filling in the space between gravel on the stream bed. It also reduces their food supply, and causes major respiratory issues for them as sediment enters their gills. The biodiversity of aquatic plant and algal life is reduced, and invertebrates are also unable to survive and reproduce. While the sedimentation event itself might be relatively short-lived, the ecological disruption caused by the mass die off often persists long into the future.One of the most serious and long-running water erosion problems worldwide is in the People's Republic of China, on the middle reaches of the Yellow River and the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. From the Yellow River, over 1.6 billion tons of sediment flows into the ocean each year. The sediment originates primarily from water erosion in the Loess Plateau region of the northwest. Airborne dust pollution Soil particles picked up during wind erosion of soil are a major source of air pollution, in the form of airborne particulates—"dust". These airborne soil particles are often contaminated with toxic chemicals such as pesticides or petroleum fuels, posing ecological and public health hazards when they later land, or are inhaled/ingested.Dust from erosion acts to suppress rainfall and changes the sky color from blue to white, which leads to an increase in red sunsets. Dust events have been linked to a decline in the health of coral reefs across the Caribbean and Florida, primarily since the 1970s. Similar dust plumes originate in the Gobi desert, which combined with pollutants, spread large distances downwind, or eastward, into North America. Monitoring, measuring and modelling soil erosion Monitoring and modeling of erosion processes can help people better understand the causes of soil erosion, make predictions of erosion under a range of possible conditions, and plan the implementation of preventative and restorative strategies for erosion. However, the complexity of erosion processes and the number of scientific disciplines that must be considered to understand and model them (e.g. climatology, hydrology, geology, soil science, agriculture, chemistry, physics, etc.) makes accurate modelling challenging. Erosion models are also non-linear, which makes them difficult to work with numerically, and makes it difficult or impossible to scale up to making predictions about large areas from data collected by sampling smaller plots.The most commonly used model for predicting soil loss from water erosion is the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE). This was developed in the 1960s and 1970s. It estimates the average annual soil loss A on a plot-sized area as: A = RKLSCPwhere R is the rainfall erosivity factor, K is the soil erodibility factor, L and S are topographic factors representing length and slope, C is the cover and management factor and P is the support practices factor.Despite the USLE's plot-scale spatial basis, the model has often been used to estimate soil erosion on much larger areas, such as watersheds, continents, and globally. One major problem is that the USLE cannot simulate gully erosion, and so erosion from gullies is ignored in any USLE-based assessment of erosion. Yet erosion from gullies can be a substantial proportion (10–80%) of total erosion on cultivated and grazed land.During the 50 years since the introduction of the USLE, many other soil erosion models have been developed. But because of the complexity of soil erosion and its constituent processes, all erosion models can only roughly approximate actual erosion rates when validated i.e. when model predictions are compared with real-world measurements of erosion. Thus new soil erosion models continue to be developed. Some of these remain USLE-based, e.g. the G2 model. Other soil erosion models have largely (e.g. the Water Erosion Prediction Project model) or wholly (e.g. RHEM, the Rangeland Hydrology and Erosion Model ) abandoned usage of USLE elements. Global studies continue to be based on the USLE Prevention and remediation The most effective known method for erosion prevention is to increase vegetative cover on the land, which helps prevent both wind and water erosion. Terracing is an extremely effective means of erosion control, which has been practiced for thousands of years by people all over the world. Windbreaks (also called shelterbelts) are rows of trees and shrubs that are planted along the edges of agricultural fields, to shield the fields against winds. In addition to significantly reducing wind erosion, windbreaks provide many other benefits such as improved microclimates for crops (which are sheltered from the dehydrating and otherwise damaging effects of wind), habitat for beneficial bird species, carbon sequestration, and aesthetic improvements to the agricultural landscape. Traditional planting methods, such as mixed-cropping (instead of monocropping) and crop rotation have also been shown to significantly reduce erosion rates. Crop residues play a role in the mitigation of erosion, because they reduce the impact of raindrops breaking up the soil particles. There is a higher potential for erosion when producing potatoes than when growing cereals, or oilseed crops. Forages have a fibrous root system, which helps combat erosion by anchoring the plants to the top layer of the soil, and covering the entirety of the field, as it is a non-row crop. In tropical coastal systems, properties of mangroves have been examined as a potential means to reduce soil erosion. Their complex root structures are known to help reduce wave damage from storms and flood impacts while binding and building soils. These roots can slow down water flow, leading to the deposition of sediments and reduced erosion rates. However, in order to maintain sediment balance, adequate mangrove forest width needs to be present. See also Ravine Gully Rill Sheet Erosion Wetlands Notes Further reading External links The Soil Erosion Site International Erosion Control Association Soil Erosion Data in the European Soil Portal USDA National Soil Erosion Laboratory The Soil and Water Conservation Society

biodiesel

Biodiesel is a form of diesel fuel derived from plants or animals and consisting of long-chain fatty acid esters. It is typically made by chemically reacting lipids such as animal fat (tallow), soybean oil, or some other vegetable oil with an alcohol, producing a methyl, ethyl or propyl ester by the process of transesterification. Unlike the vegetable and waste oils used to fuel converted diesel engines, biodiesel is a drop-in biofuel, meaning it is compatible with existing diesel engines and distribution infrastructure. However, it is usually blended with petrodiesel (typically to less than 10%) since most engines cannot run on pure biodiesel without modification. Biodiesel blends can also be used as heating oil. The US National Biodiesel Board defines "biodiesel" as a mono-alkyl ester. Blends Blends of biodiesel and conventional hydrocarbon-based diesel are most commonly distributed for use in the retail diesel fuel marketplace. Much of the world uses a system known as the "B" factor to state the amount of biodiesel in any fuel mix: 100% biodiesel is referred to as B100 20% biodiesel, 80% petrodiesel is labeled B20 10% biodiesel, 90% petrodiesel is labeled B10 7% biodiesel, 93% petrodiesel is labeled B7 5% biodiesel, 95% petrodiesel is labeled B5 2% biodiesel, 98% petrodiesel is labeled B2Blends of 20% biodiesel and lower can be used in diesel equipment with no, or only minor modifications, although certain manufacturers do not extend warranty coverage if equipment is damaged by these blends. The B6 to B20 blends are covered by the ASTM D7467 specification. Biodiesel can also be used in its pure form (B100), but may require certain engine modifications to avoid maintenance and performance problems. Blending B100 with petroleum diesel may be accomplished by: Mixing in tanks at manufacturing point prior to delivery to tanker truck Splash mixing in the tanker truck (adding specific percentages of biodiesel and petroleum diesel) In-line mixing, two components arrive at tanker truck simultaneously. Metered pump mixing, petroleum diesel and biodiesel meters are set to X total volume, Historical background Transesterification of a vegetable oil was conducted as early as 1853 by Patrick Duffy, four decades before the first diesel engine became functional. Earlier processes for making lamp oil, were patented (1810, Prague) but not published in peer reviewed publications. Rudolf Diesel's prime model, a single 10 ft (3.05 m) iron cylinder with a flywheel at its base, ran on its own power for the first time in Augsburg, Germany, on 10 August 1893 running on nothing but peanut oil. In remembrance of this event, 10 August has been declared "International Biodiesel Day".It is often reported that Diesel designed his engine to run on peanut oil, but this is not the case. Diesel stated in his published papers, "at the Paris Exhibition in 1900 (Exposition Universelle) there was shown by the Otto Company a small Diesel engine, which, at the request of the French government ran on arachide (earth-nut or pea-nut) oil (see biodiesel), and worked so smoothly that only a few people were aware of it. The engine was constructed for using mineral oil, and was then worked on vegetable oil without any alterations being made. The French Government at the time thought of testing the applicability to power production of the Arachide, or earth-nut, which grows in considerable quantities in their African colonies, and can easily be cultivated there." Diesel himself later conducted related tests and appeared supportive of the idea. In a 1912 speech Diesel said, "the use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today but such oils may become, in the course of time, as important as petroleum and the coal-tar products of the present time." Despite the widespread use of petroleum-derived diesel fuels, interest in vegetable oils as fuels for internal combustion engines was reported in several countries during the 1920s and 1930s and later during World War II. Belgium, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Japan and China were reported to have tested and used vegetable oils as diesel fuels during this time. Some operational problems were reported due to the high viscosity of vegetable oils compared to petroleum diesel fuel, which results in poor atomization of the fuel in the fuel spray and often leads to deposits and coking of the injectors, combustion chamber and valves. Attempts to overcome these problems included heating of the vegetable oil, blending it with petroleum-derived diesel fuel or ethanol, pyrolysis and cracking of the oils. On 31 August 1937, G. Chavanne of the University of Brussels (Belgium) was granted a patent for a "Procedure for the transformation of vegetable oils for their uses as fuels" (fr. "Procédé de Transformation d’Huiles Végétales en Vue de Leur Utilisation comme Carburants") Belgian Patent 422,877. This patent described the alcoholysis (often referred to as transesterification) of vegetable oils using ethanol (and mentions methanol) in order to separate the fatty acids from the glycerol by replacing the glycerol with short linear alcohols. This appears to be the first account of the production of what is known as "biodiesel" today. This is similar (copy) to the patented methods used in the 18th century to make lamp-oil, and may be inspired by some old historical oil lamps, in some places. More recently, in 1977, Brazilian scientist Expedito Parente invented and submitted for patent, the first industrial process for the production of biodiesel. This process is classified as biodiesel by international norms, conferring a "standardized identity and quality. No other proposed biofuel has been validated by the motor industry." As of 2010, Parente's company Tecbio is working with Boeing and NASA to certify bioquerosene (bio-kerosene), another product produced and patented by the Brazilian scientist.Research into the use of transesterified sunflower oil, and refining it to diesel fuel standards, was initiated in South Africa in 1979. By 1983, the process for producing fuel-quality, engine-tested biodiesel was completed and published internationally. An Austrian company, Gaskoks, obtained the technology from the South African Agricultural Engineers; the company erected the first biodiesel pilot plant in November 1987, and the first industrial-scale plant in April 1989 (with a capacity of 30,000 tons of rapeseed per annum). Throughout the 1990s, plants were opened in many European countries, including the Czech Republic, Germany and Sweden. France launched local production of biodiesel fuel (referred to as diester) from rapeseed oil, which is mixed into regular diesel fuel at a level of 5%, and into the diesel fuel used by some captive fleets (e.g. public transportation) at a level of 30%. Renault, Peugeot and other manufacturers have certified truck engines for use with up to that level of partial biodiesel; experiments with 50% biodiesel are underway. During the same period, nations in other parts of the world also saw local production of biodiesel starting up: by 1998, the Austrian Biofuels Institute had identified 21 countries with commercial biodiesel projects. 100% biodiesel is now available at many normal service stations across Europe. Properties The color of biodiesel ranges from clear to golden to dark brown, depending on the production method and the feedstock used to make the fuel. This also changes the resulting fuel properties. In general, biodiesel is slightly miscible with water, has a high boiling point and low vapor pressure. The flash point of biodiesel can exceed 130 °C (266 °F), significantly higher than that of petroleum diesel which may be as low as 52 °C (126 °F). Biodiesel has a density around ~0.88 g/cm3, higher than petrodiesel (~0.85 g/cm3).The calorific value of biodiesel is about 37.27 MJ/kg. This is 9% lower than regular Number 2 petrodiesel. Variations in biodiesel energy density is more dependent on the feedstock used than the production process. Still, these variations are less than for petrodiesel. It has been claimed biodiesel gives better lubricity and more complete combustion thus increasing the engine energy output and partially compensating for the higher energy density of petrodiesel. Biodiesel also contains virtually no sulfur and although lacking sulfur compounds that in petrodiesel provide much of the lubricity, it has promising lubricating properties and cetane ratings compared to low sulfur diesel fuels and often serves as an additive to ultra-low-sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel to aid with lubrication. Biodiesel Fuels with higher lubricity may increase the usable life of high-pressure fuel injection equipment that relies on the fuel for its lubrication. Depending on the engine, this might include high pressure injection pumps, pump injectors (also called unit injectors) and fuel injectors. Applications Biodiesel can be used in pure form (B100) or may be blended with petroleum diesel at any concentration in most injection pump diesel engines. New extreme high-pressure (29,000 psi) common rail engines have strict factory limits of B5 or B20, depending on manufacturer. Biodiesel has different solvent properties from petrodiesel, and will degrade natural rubber gaskets and hoses in vehicles (mostly vehicles manufactured before 1992), although these tend to wear out naturally and most likely will have already been replaced with FKM, which is nonreactive to biodiesel. Biodiesel has been known to break down deposits of residue in the fuel lines where petrodiesel has been used. As a result, fuel filters may become clogged with particulates if a quick transition to pure biodiesel is made. Therefore, it is recommended to change the fuel filters on engines and heaters shortly after first switching to a biodiesel blend. Distribution Since the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, biodiesel use has been increasing in the United States. In the UK, the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation obliges suppliers to include 5% renewable fuel in all transport fuel sold in the UK by 2010. For road diesel, this effectively means 5% biodiesel (B5). Vehicular use and manufacturer acceptance In 2005, Chrysler (then part of DaimlerChrysler) released the Jeep Liberty CRD diesels from the factory into the European market with 5% biodiesel blends, indicating at least partial acceptance of biodiesel as an acceptable diesel fuel additive. In 2007, DaimlerChrysler indicated its intention to increase warranty coverage to 20% biodiesel blends if biofuel quality in the United States can be standardized.The Volkswagen Group has released a statement indicating that several of its vehicles are compatible with B5 and B100 made from rape seed oil and compatible with the EN 14214 standard. The use of the specified biodiesel type in its cars will not void any warranty.Mercedes Benz does not allow diesel fuels containing greater than 5% biodiesel (B5) due to concerns about "production shortcomings". Any damages caused by the use of such non-approved fuels will not be covered by the Mercedes-Benz Limited Warranty. Starting in 2004, the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia decided to update its bus system to allow the fleet of city buses to run entirely on a fish-oil based biodiesel. This caused the city some initial mechanical issues, but after several years of refining, the entire fleet had successfully been converted.In 2007, McDonald's of UK announced it would start producing biodiesel from the waste oil byproduct of its restaurants. This fuel would be used to run its fleet.The 2014 Chevy Cruze Clean Turbo Diesel, direct from the factory, will be rated for up to B20 (blend of 20% biodiesel / 80% regular diesel) biodiesel compatibility Railway usage British train operating company Virgin Trains West Coast claimed to have run the UK's first "biodiesel train", when a Class 220 was converted to run on 80% petrodiesel and 20% biodiesel.The British Royal Train on 15 September 2007 completed its first ever journey run on 100% biodiesel fuel supplied by Green Fuels Ltd. Prince Charles and Green Fuels managing director James Hygate were the first passengers on a train fueled entirely by biodiesel fuel. Since 2007, the Royal Train has operated successfully on B100 (100% biodiesel). A government white paper also proposed converting large portions of the UK railways to biodiesel but the proposal was subsequently dropped in favour of further electrification.Similarly, a state-owned short-line railroad in Eastern Washington ran a test of a 25% biodiesel / 75% petrodiesel blend during the summer of 2008, purchasing fuel from a biodiesel producer sited along the railroad tracks. The train will be powered by biodiesel made in part from canola grown in agricultural regions through which the short line runs. Also in 2007, Disneyland began running the park trains on B98 (98% biodiesel). The program was discontinued in 2008 due to storage issues, but in January 2009, it was announced that the park would then be running all trains on biodiesel manufactured from its own used cooking oils. This is a change from running the trains on soy-based biodiesel.In 2007, the historic Mt. Washington Cog Railway added the first biodiesel locomotive to its all-steam locomotive fleet. The fleet has climbed up the western slopes of Mount Washington in New Hampshire since 1868 with a peak vertical climb of 37.4 degrees.On 8 July 2014, the then Indian Railway Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda announced in Railway Budget that 5% bio-diesel will be used in Indian Railways' Diesel Engines. As a heating oil Biodiesel can also be used as a heating fuel in domestic and commercial boilers, a mix of heating oil and biofuel which is standardized and taxed slightly differently from diesel fuel used for transportation. Bioheat fuel is a proprietary blend of biodiesel and traditional heating oil. Bioheat is a registered trademark of the National Biodiesel Board [NBB] and the National Oilheat Research Alliance [NORA] in the United States, and Columbia Fuels in Canada. Heating biodiesel is available in various blends. ASTM 396 recognizes blends of up to 5 percent biodiesel as equivalent to pure petroleum heating oil. Blends of higher levels of up to 20% biofuel are used by many consumers. Research is underway to determine whether such blends affect performance. Older furnaces may contain rubber parts that would be affected by biodiesel's solvent properties, but can otherwise burn biodiesel without any conversion required. Care must be taken, given that varnishes left behind by petrodiesel will be released and can clog pipes—fuel filtering and prompt filter replacement is required. Another approach is to start using biodiesel as a blend, and decreasing the petroleum proportion over time can allow the varnishes to come off more gradually and be less likely to clog. Due to biodiesel's strong solvent properties, the furnace is cleaned out and generally becomes more efficient.A law passed under Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick requires all home heating diesel in that state to be 2% biofuel by July 1, 2010, and 5% biofuel by 2013. New York City has passed a similar law. Cleaning oil spills With 80–90% of oil spill costs invested in shoreline cleanup, there is a search for more efficient and cost-effective methods to extract oil spills from the shorelines. Biodiesel has displayed its capacity to significantly dissolve crude oil, depending on the source of the fatty acids. In a laboratory setting, oiled sediments that simulated polluted shorelines were sprayed with a single coat of biodiesel and exposed to simulated tides. Biodiesel is an effective solvent to oil due to its methyl ester component, which considerably lowers the viscosity of the crude oil. Additionally, it has a higher buoyancy than crude oil, which later aids in its removal. As a result, 80% of oil was removed from cobble and fine sand, 50% in coarse sand, and 30% in gravel. Once the oil is liberated from the shoreline, the oil-biodiesel mixture is manually removed from the water surface with skimmers. Any remaining mixture is easily broken down due to the high biodegradability of biodiesel, and the increased surface area exposure of the mixture. Biodiesel in generators In 2001, UC Riverside installed a 6-megawatt backup power system that is entirely fueled by biodiesel. Backup diesel-fueled generators allow companies to avoid damaging blackouts of critical operations at the expense of high pollution and emission rates. By using B100, these generators were able to essentially eliminate the byproducts that result in smog, ozone, and sulfur emissions. The use of these generators in residential areas around schools, hospitals, and the general public result in substantial reductions in poisonous carbon monoxide and particulate matter. Effects Fuel efficiency The power output of biodiesel depends on its blend, quality, and load conditions under which the fuel is burnt. The thermal efficiency for example of B100 as compared to B20 will vary due to the differing energy content of the various blends. Thermal efficiency of a fuel is based in part on fuel characteristics such as: viscosity, specific density, and flash point; these characteristics will change as the blends as well as the quality of biodiesel varies. The American Society for Testing and Materials has set standards in order to judge the quality of a given fuel sample.One study found that the brake thermal efficiency of B40 was superior to traditional petroleum counterpart at higher compression ratios (this higher brake thermal efficiency was recorded at compression ratios of 21:1). It was noted that, as the compression ratios increased, the efficiency of all fuel types – as well as blends being tested – increased; though it was found that a blend of B40 was the most economical at a compression ratio of 21:1 over all other blends. The study implied that this increase in efficiency was due to fuel density, viscosity, and heating values of the fuels. Combustion Fuel systems on some modern diesel engines were not designed to accommodate biodiesel, while many heavy duty engines are able to run with biodiesel blends up to B20. Traditional direct injection fuel systems operate at roughly 3,000 psi at the injector tip while the modern common rail fuel system operates upwards of 30,000 PSI at the injector tip. Components are designed to operate at a great temperature range, from below freezing to over 1,000 °F (560 °C). Diesel fuel is expected to burn efficiently and produce as few emissions as possible. As emission standards are being introduced to diesel engines the need to control harmful emissions is being designed into the parameters of diesel engine fuel systems. The traditional inline injection system is more forgiving to poorer quality fuels as opposed to the common rail fuel system. The higher pressures and tighter tolerances of the common rail system allows for greater control over atomization and injection timing. This control of atomization as well as combustion allows for greater efficiency of modern diesel engines as well as greater control over emissions. Components within a diesel fuel system interact with the fuel in a way to ensure efficient operation of the fuel system and so the engine. If an out-of-specification fuel is introduced to a system that has specific parameters of operation, then the integrity of the overall fuel system may be compromised. Some of these parameters such as spray pattern and atomization are directly related to injection timing.One study found that during atomization, biodiesel and its blends produced droplets greater in diameter than the droplets produced by traditional petrodiesel. The smaller droplets were attributed to the lower viscosity and surface tension of traditional diesel fuel. It was found that droplets at the periphery of the spray pattern were larger in diameter than the droplets at the center. This was attributed to the faster pressure drop at the edge of the spray pattern; there was a proportional relationship between the droplet size and the distance from the injector tip. It was found that B100 had the greatest spray penetration, this was attributed to the greater density of B100. Having a greater droplet size can lead to inefficiencies in the combustion, increased emissions, and decreased horse power. In another study it was found that there is a short injection delay when injecting biodiesel. This injection delay was attributed to the greater viscosity of Biodiesel. It was noted that the higher viscosity and the greater cetane rating of biodiesel over traditional petrodiesel lead to poor atomization, as well as mixture penetration with air during the ignition delay period. Another study noted that this ignition delay may aid in a decrease of NOx emission. Emissions Emissions are inherent to the combustion of diesel fuels that are regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.). As these emissions are a byproduct of the combustion process, in order to ensure E.P.A. compliance a fuel system must be capable of controlling the combustion of fuels as well as the mitigation of emissions. There are a number of new technologies being phased in to control the production of diesel emissions. The exhaust gas recirculation system, E.G.R., and the diesel particulate filter, D.P.F., are both designed to mitigate the production of harmful emissions.The feedstock used to make the biodiesel fuel can significantly alter the resulting exhaust gas and particulate matter emissions, even when blended with commercial diesel fuel. A study performed by the Chonbuk National University concluded that a B30 biodiesel blend reduced carbon monoxide emissions by approximately 83% and particulate matter emissions by roughly 33%. NOx emissions, however, were found to increase without the application of an E.G.R. system. The study also concluded that, with E.G.R, a B20 biodiesel blend considerably reduced the emissions of the engine. Additionally, analysis by the California Air Resources Board found that biodiesel had the lowest carbon emissions of the fuels tested, those being ultra-low-sulfur diesel, gasoline, corn-based ethanol, compressed natural gas, and five types of biodiesel from varying feedstocks. Their conclusions also showed great variance in carbon emissions of biodiesel based on the feedstock used. Of soy, tallow, canola, corn, and used cooking oil, soy showed the highest carbon emissions, while used cooking oil produced the lowest.While studying the effect of biodiesel on diesel particulate filters, it was found that though the presence of sodium and potassium carbonates aided in the catalytic conversion of ash, as the diesel particulates are catalyzed, they may congregate inside the D.P.F. and so interfere with the clearances of the filter. This may cause the filter to clog and interfere with the regeneration process. In a study on the impact of E.G.R. rates with blends of jathropa biodiesel it was shown that there was a decrease in fuel efficiency and torque output due to the use of biodiesel on a diesel engine designed with an E.G.R. system. It was found that CO and CO2 emissions increased with an increase in exhaust gas recirculation but NOx levels decreased. The opacity level of the jathropa blends was in an acceptable range, where traditional diesel was out of acceptable standards. It was shown that a decrease in Nox emissions could be obtained with an E.G.R. system. This study showed an advantage over traditional diesel within a certain operating range of the E.G.R. system.As of 2017, blended biodiesel fuels (especially B5, B8, and B20) are regularly used in many heavy-duty vehicles, especially transit buses in US cities. Characterization of exhaust emissions showed significant emission reductions compared to regular diesel. Material compatibility Plastics: High-density polyethylene (HDPE) is compatible but polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is slowly degraded. Polystyrene is dissolved on contact with biodiesel. Metals: Biodiesel (like methanol) has an effect on copper-based materials (e.g. brass), and it also affects zinc, tin, lead, and cast iron. Stainless steels (316 and 304) and aluminum are unaffected. Rubber: Biodiesel also affects types of natural rubbers found in some older engine components. Studies have also found that fluorinated elastomers (FKM) cured with peroxide and base-metal oxides can be degraded when biodiesel loses its stability caused by oxidation. Commonly used synthetic rubbers FKM- GBL-S and FKM- GF-S found in modern vehicles were found to handle biodiesel in all conditions. Technical standards Biodiesel has a number of standards for its quality including European standard EN 14214, ASTM International D6751, and National Standard of Canada CAN/CGSB-3.524. ASTM D6751 (American Society for Testing and Materials) details standards and specifications for biodiesels blended with middle distillate fuels. This specification standard specifies various test methods to be used in the determination of certain properties for biodiesel blends. Some of the tests mentioned include flash point and kinematic viscosity.[2] Low temperature gelling When biodiesel is cooled below a certain point, some of the molecules aggregate and form crystals. The fuel starts to appear cloudy once the crystals become larger than one quarter of the wavelengths of visible light – this is the cloud point (CP). As the fuel is cooled further these crystals become larger. The lowest temperature at which fuel can pass through a 45 micrometre filter is the cold filter plugging point (CFPP). As biodiesel is cooled further it will gel and then solidify. Within Europe, there are differences in the CFPP requirements between countries. This is reflected in the different national standards of those countries. The temperature at which pure (B100) biodiesel starts to gel varies significantly and depends upon the mix of esters and therefore the feedstock oil used to produce the biodiesel. For example, biodiesel produced from low erucic acid varieties of canola seed (RME) starts to gel at approximately −10 °C (14 °F). Biodiesel produced from beef tallow and palm oil tends to gel at around 16 °C (61 °F) and 13 °C (55 °F) respectively. There are a number of commercially available additives that will significantly lower the pour point and cold filter plugging point of pure biodiesel. Winter operation is also possible by blending biodiesel with other fuel oils including #2 low sulfur diesel fuel and #1 diesel / kerosene. Another approach to facilitate the use of biodiesel in cold conditions is by employing a second fuel tank for biodiesel in addition to the standard diesel fuel tank. The second fuel tank can be insulated and a heating coil using engine coolant is run through the tank. The fuel tanks can be switched over when the fuel is sufficiently warm. A similar method can be used to operate diesel vehicles using straight vegetable oil. Contamination by water Biodiesel may contain small but problematic quantities of water. Although it is only slightly miscible with water it is hygroscopic. One of the reasons biodiesel can absorb water is the persistence of mono and diglycerides left over from an incomplete reaction. These molecules can act as an emulsifier, allowing water to mix with the biodiesel. In addition, there may be water that is residual to processing or resulting from storage tank condensation. The presence of water is a problem because: Water reduces the heat of fuel combustion, causing smoke, harder starting, and reduced power. Water causes corrosion of fuel system components (pumps, fuel lines, etc.) Microbes in water cause the paper-element filters in the system to rot and fail, causing failure of the fuel pump due to ingestion of large particles. Water freezes to form ice crystals that provide sites for nucleation, accelerating gelling of the fuel. Water causes pitting in pistons.Previously, the amount of water contaminating biodiesel has been difficult to measure by taking samples, since water and oil separate. However, it is now possible to measure the water content using water-in-oil sensors.Water contamination is also a potential problem when using certain chemical catalysts involved in the production process, substantially reducing catalytic efficiency of base (high pH) catalysts such as potassium hydroxide. However, the super-critical methanol production methodology, whereby the transesterification process of oil feedstock and methanol is effectuated under high temperature and pressure, has been shown to be largely unaffected by the presence of water contamination during the production phase. Availability Global biodiesel production reached 3.8 million tons in 2005. Approximately 85% of biodiesel production came from the European Union. Production Biodiesel is commonly produced by the transesterification of the vegetable oil or animal fat feedstock, and other non-edible raw materials such as frying oil, etc. There are several methods for carrying out this transesterification reaction including the common batch process, heterogeneous catalysts, supercritical processes, ultrasonic methods, and even microwave methods. Chemically, transesterified biodiesel comprises a mix of mono-alkyl esters of long chain fatty acids. The most common form uses methanol (converted to sodium methoxide) to produce methyl esters (commonly referred to as Fatty Acid Methyl Ester – FAME) as it is the cheapest alcohol available, though ethanol can be used to produce an ethyl ester (commonly referred to as Fatty Acid Ethyl Ester – FAEE) biodiesel and higher alcohols such as isopropanol and butanol have also been used. Using alcohols of higher molecular weights improves the cold flow properties of the resulting ester, at the cost of a less efficient transesterification reaction. A lipid transesterification production process is used to convert the base oil to the desired esters. Any free fatty acids (FFAs) in the base oil are either converted to soap and removed from the process, or they are esterified (yielding more biodiesel) using an acidic catalyst. After this processing, unlike straight vegetable oil, biodiesel has combustion properties very similar to those of petroleum diesel, and can replace it in most current uses. The methanol used in most biodiesel production processes is made using fossil fuel inputs. However, there are sources of renewable methanol made using carbon dioxide or biomass as feedstock, making their production processes free of fossil fuels.A by-product of the transesterification process is the production of glycerol. For every 1 tonne of biodiesel that is manufactured, 100 kg of glycerol are produced. Originally, there was a valuable market for the glycerol, which assisted the economics of the process as a whole. However, with the increase in global biodiesel production, the market price for this crude glycerol (containing 20% water and catalyst residues) has crashed. Research is being conducted globally to use this glycerol as a chemical building block (see chemical intermediate under Wikipedia article "Glycerol"). One initiative in the UK is The Glycerol Challenge.Usually this crude glycerol has to be purified, typically by performing vacuum distillation. This is rather energy intensive. The refined glycerol (98%+ purity) can then be utilised directly, or converted into other products. The following announcements were made in 2007: A joint venture of Ashland Inc. and Cargill announced plans to make propylene glycol in Europe from glycerol and Dow Chemical announced similar plans for North America. Dow also plans to build a plant in China to make epichlorhydrin from glycerol. Epichlorhydrin is a raw material for epoxy resins. Production levels In 2007, biodiesel production capacity was growing rapidly, with an average annual growth rate from 2002 to 2006 of over 40%. For the year 2006, the latest for which actual production figures could be obtained, total world biodiesel production was about 5–6 million tonnes, with 4.9 million tonnes processed in Europe (of which 2.7 million tonnes was from Germany) and most of the rest from the US. In 2008 production in Europe alone had risen to 7.8 million tonnes. In July 2009, a duty was added to American imported biodiesel in the European Union in order to balance the competition from European, especially German producers. The capacity for 2008 in Europe totalled 16 million tonnes. This compares with a total demand for diesel in the US and Europe of approximately 490 million tonnes (147 billion gallons). Total world production of vegetable oil for all purposes in 2005–06 was about 110 million tonnes, with about 34 million tonnes each of palm oil and soybean oil. As of 2018, Indonesia is the world's top supplier of palmoil-based biofuel with annual production of 3.5 million tons, and expected to export about 1 million tonnes of biodiesel.US biodiesel production in 2011 brought the industry to a new milestone. Under the EPA Renewable Fuel Standard, targets have been implemented for the biodiesel production plants in order to monitor and document production levels in comparison to total demand. According to the year-end data released by the EPA, biodiesel production in 2011 reached more than 1 billion gallons. This production number far exceeded the 800 million gallon target set by the EPA. The projected production for 2020 is nearly 12 billion gallons. Biodiesel feedstocks A variety of oils can be used to produce biodiesel. These include: Virgin oil feedstock – rapeseed and soybean oils are most commonly used, soybean oil accounting for about half of U.S. production. It also can be obtained from Pongamia, field pennycress and jatropha and other crops such as mustard, jojoba, flax, sunflower, palm oil, coconut and hemp (see list of vegetable oils for biofuel for more information); Waste vegetable oil (WVO); Animal fats including tallow, lard, yellow grease, chicken fat, and the by-products of the production of Omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil. Algae, which can be grown using waste materials such as sewage and without displacing land currently used for food production. Oil from halophytes such as Salicornia bigelovii, which can be grown using saltwater in coastal areas where conventional crops cannot be grown, with yields equal to the yields of soybeans and other oilseeds grown using freshwater irrigation Sewage Sludge – The sewage-to-biofuel field is attracting interest from major companies like Waste Management and startups like InfoSpi, which are betting that renewable sewage biodiesel can become competitive with petroleum diesel on price.Many advocates suggest that waste vegetable oil is the best source of oil to produce biodiesel, but since the available supply is drastically less than the amount of petroleum-based fuel that is burned for transportation and home heating in the world, this local solution could not scale to the current rate of consumption. Animal fats are a by-product of meat production and cooking. Although it would not be efficient to raise animals (or catch fish) simply for their fat, use of the by-product adds value to the livestock industry (hogs, cattle, poultry). Today, multi-feedstock biodiesel facilities are producing high quality animal-fat based biodiesel. Currently, a 5-million dollar plant is being built in the US, with the intent of producing 11.4 million litres (3 million gallons) biodiesel from some of the estimated 1 billion kg (2.2 billion pounds) of chicken fat produced annually at the local Tyson poultry plant. Similarly, some small-scale biodiesel factories use waste fish oil as feedstock. An EU-funded project (ENERFISH) suggests that at a Vietnamese plant to produce biodiesel from catfish (basa, also known as pangasius), an output of 13 tons/day of biodiesel can be produced from 81 tons of fish waste (in turn resulting from 130 tons of fish). This project utilises the biodiesel to fuel a CHP unit in the fish processing plant, mainly to power the fish freezing plant. Quantity of feedstocks required Current worldwide production of vegetable oil and animal fat is not sufficient to replace liquid fossil fuel use. Furthermore, some object to the vast amount of farming and the resulting fertilization, pesticide use, and land use conversion that would be needed to produce the additional vegetable oil. The advantages of algae are that it can be grown on non-arable land such as deserts or in marine environments, and the potential oil yields are much higher than from plants. Yield Feedstock yield efficiency per unit area affects the feasibility of ramping up production to the huge industrial levels required to power a significant percentage of vehicles. Algae fuel yields have not yet been accurately determined, but DOE is reported as saying that algae yield 30 times more energy per acre than land crops such as soybeans. Yields of 36 tonnes/hectare are considered practical by Ami Ben-Amotz of the Institute of Oceanography in Haifa, who has been farming Algae commercially for over 20 years.Jatropha has been cited as a high-yield source of biodiesel but yields are highly dependent on climatic and soil conditions. The estimates at the low end put the yield at about 200 US gal/acre (1.5-2 tonnes per hectare) per crop; in more favorable climates two or more crops per year have been achieved. It is grown in the Philippines, Mali and India, is drought-resistant, and can share space with other cash crops such as coffee, sugar, fruits and vegetables. It is well-suited to semi-arid lands and can contribute to slow down desertification, according to its advocates. Efficiency and economic arguments Transitioning fully to biofuels could require immense tracts of land if traditional food crops are used (although non food crops can be utilized). The problem would be especially severe for nations with large economies, since energy consumption scales with economic output.For third world countries, biodiesel sources that use marginal land could make more sense; e.g., pongam oiltree nuts grown along roads or jatropha grown along rail lines.In tropical regions, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, plants that produce palm oil are being planted at a rapid pace to supply growing biodiesel demand in Europe and other markets. Scientists have shown that the removal of rainforest for palm plantations is not ecologically sound since the expansion of oil palm plantations poses a threat to natural rainforest and biodiversity.It has been estimated in Germany that palm oil diesel has less than one third of the production costs of rapeseed biodiesel. Economic impact Multiple economic studies have been performed regarding the economic impact of biodiesel production. One study, commissioned by the National Biodiesel Board, reported the production of biodiesel supported more than 64,000 jobs. The growth in biodiesel also helps significantly increase GDP. In 2011, biodiesel created more than $3 billion in GDP. Judging by the continued growth in the Renewable Fuel Standard and the extension of the biodiesel tax incentive, the number of jobs can increase to 50,725, $2.7 billion in income, and reaching $5 billion in GDP by 2012 and 2013. Energy security One of the main drivers for adoption of biodiesel is energy security. This means that a nation's dependence on oil is reduced, and substituted with use of locally available sources, such as coal, gas, or renewable sources. Thus a country can benefit from adoption of biofuels, without a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. While the total energy balance is debated, it is clear that the dependence on oil is reduced. One example is the energy used to manufacture fertilizers, which could come from a variety of sources other than petroleum. The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) states that energy security is the number one driving force behind the US biofuels programme, and a White House "Energy Security for the 21st Century" paper makes it clear that energy security is a major reason for promoting biodiesel. The former EU commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, speaking at a recent EU biofuels conference, stressed that properly managed biofuels have the potential to reinforce the EU's security of supply through diversification of energy sources. Global biofuel policies Many countries around the world are involved in the growing use and production of biofuels, such as biodiesel, as an alternative energy source to fossil fuels and oil. To foster the biofuel industry, governments have implemented legislations and laws as incentives to reduce oil dependency and to increase the use of renewable energies. Many countries have their own independent policies regarding the taxation and rebate of biodiesel use, import, and production. Canada It was required by the Canadian Environmental Protection Act Bill C-33 that by 2010, gasoline contained 5% renewable content and that by 2013, diesel and heating oil contained 2% renewable content. The EcoENERGY for Biofuels Program subsidized the production of biodiesel, among other biofuels, via an incentive rate of CAN$0.20 per liter from 2008 to 2010. A decrease of $0.04 will be applied every year following, until the incentive rate reaches $0.06 in 2016. Individual provinces also have specific legislative measures in regards to biofuel use and production. United States The Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) was the main source of financial support for biofuels, but was scheduled to expire in 2010. Through this act, biodiesel production guaranteed a tax credit of US$1 per gallon produced from virgin oils, and $0.50 per gallon made from recycled oils. Currently soybean oil is being used to produce soybean biodiesel for many commercial purposes such as blending fuel for transportation sectors. European Union The European Union is the greatest producer of biodiesel, with France and Germany being the top producers. To increase the use of biodiesel, there are policies requiring the blending of biodiesel into fuels, including penalties if those rates are not reached. In France, the goal was to reach 10% integration but plans for that stopped in 2010. As an incentive for the European Union countries to continue the production of the biofuel, there are tax rebates for specific quotas of biofuel produced. In Germany, the minimum percentage of biodiesel in transport diesel is set at 7% so called "B7". Malaysia Malaysia plans to implement its nationwide adoption of the B20 palm oil biofuel programme by the end of 2022. The mandate to manufacture biofuel with a 20% palm oil component - known as B20 - for the transport sector was first rolled out in January 2020 but faced delays due to movement curbs imposed to contain coronavirus outbreaks. Food, land and water vs. fuel Up to 40% of corn produced in the United States is used to make ethanol, and worldwide 10% of all grain is turned into biofuel. A 50% reduction in grain used for biofuels in the US and Europe would replace all of Ukraine's grain exports.In some poor countries the rising price of vegetable oil is causing problems. Some propose that fuel only be made from non-edible vegetable oils such as camelina, jatropha or seashore mallow which can thrive on marginal agricultural land where many trees and crops will not grow, or would produce only low yields. Others argue that the problem is more fundamental. Farmers may switch from producing food crops to producing biofuel crops to make more money, even if the new crops are not edible. The law of supply and demand predicts that if fewer farmers are producing food the price of food will rise. It may take some time, as farmers can take some time to change which things they are growing, but increasing demand for first generation biofuels is likely to result in price increases for many kinds of food. Some have pointed out that there are poor farmers and poor countries who are making more money because of the higher price of vegetable oil.Biodiesel from sea algae would not necessarily displace terrestrial land currently used for food production and new algaculture jobs could be created. By comparison it should be mentioned that the production of biogas utilizes agricultural waste to generate a biofuel known as biogas, and also produces compost, thereby enhancing agriculture, sustainability and food production. Research There was research into finding more suitable crops and improving oil yield. Other sources are possible including human fecal matter, with Ghana building its first "fecal sludge-fed biodiesel plant."Specially bred mustard varieties can produce reasonably high oil yields and are very useful in crop rotation with cereals, and have the added benefit that the meal leftover after the oil has been pressed out can act as an effective and biodegradable pesticide.The NFESC, with Santa Barbara-based Biodiesel Industries is working to develop biodiesel technologies for the US navy and military, one of the largest diesel fuel users in the world.A group of Spanish developers working for a company called Ecofasa announced a new biofuel made from trash. The fuel is created from general urban waste which is treated by bacteria to produce fatty acids, which can be used to make biodiesel.Another approach that does not require the use of chemical for the production involves the use of genetically modified microbes. Algal biodiesel From 1978 to 1996, the U.S. NREL experimented with using algae as a biodiesel source in the "Aquatic Species Program". A self-published article by Michael Briggs, at the UNH Biodiesel Group, offers estimates for the realistic replacement of all vehicular fuel with biodiesel by utilizing algae that have a natural oil content greater than 50%, which Briggs suggests can be grown on algae ponds at wastewater treatment plants. This oil-rich algae can then be extracted from the system and processed into biodiesel, with the dried remainder further reprocessed to create ethanol. The production of algae to harvest oil for biodiesel has not yet been undertaken on a commercial scale, but feasibility studies have been conducted to arrive at the above yield estimate. In addition to its projected high yield, algaculture — unlike crop-based biofuels — does not entail a decrease in food production, since it requires neither farmland nor fresh water. Many companies are pursuing algae bio-reactors for various purposes, including scaling up biodiesel production to commercial levels. Biodiesel lipids could be extracted from wet algae using a simple and economical reaction in ionic liquids. Pongamia Millettia pinnata, also known as the Pongam Oiltree or Pongamia, is a leguminous, oilseed-bearing tree that has been identified as a candidate for non-edible vegetable oil production. Pongamia plantations for biodiesel production have a two-fold environmental benefit. The trees both store carbon and produce fuel oil. Pongamia grows on marginal land not fit for food crops and does not require nitrate fertilizers. The oil producing tree has the highest yield of oil producing plant (approximately 40% by weight of the seed is oil) while growing in malnourished soils with high levels of salt. It is becoming a main focus in a number of biodiesel research organizations. The main advantages of Pongamia are a higher recovery and quality of oil than other crops and no direct competition with food crops. However, growth on marginal land can lead to lower oil yields which could cause competition with food crops for better soil. Jatropha Several groups in various sectors are conducting research on Jatropha curcas, a poisonous shrub-like tree that produces seeds considered by many to be a viable source of biodiesel feedstock oil. Much of this research focuses on improving the overall per acre oil yield of Jatropha through advancements in genetics, soil science, and horticultural practices. SG Biofuels, a San Diego-based Jatropha developer, has used molecular breeding and biotechnology to produce elite hybrid seeds of Jatropha that show significant yield improvements over first generation varieties. SG Biofuels also claims that additional benefits have arisen from such strains, including improved flowering synchronicity, higher resistance to pests and disease, and increased cold weather tolerance.Plant Research International, a department of the Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands, maintains an ongoing Jatropha Evaluation Project (JEP) that examines the feasibility of large scale Jatropha cultivation through field and laboratory experiments.The Center for Sustainable Energy Farming (CfSEF) is a Los Angeles-based non-profit research organization dedicated to Jatropha research in the areas of plant science, agronomy, and horticulture. Successful exploration of these disciplines is projected to increase Jatropha farm production yields by 200–300% in the next ten years. FOG from sewage So-called fats, oils and grease (FOG), recovered from sewage can also be turned into biodiesel. Fungi A group at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow published a paper in 2008, stating that they had isolated large amounts of lipids from single-celled fungi and turned it into biodiesel in an economically efficient manner.The recent discovery of a variant of the fungus Gliocladium roseum points toward the production of so-called myco-diesel from cellulose. This organism was recently discovered in the rainforests of northern Patagonia and has the unique capability of converting cellulose into medium length hydrocarbons typically found in diesel fuel. Biodiesel from used coffee grounds Researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno, have successfully produced biodiesel from oil derived from used coffee grounds. Their analysis of the used grounds showed a 10% to 15% oil content (by weight). Once the oil was extracted, it underwent conventional processing into biodiesel. It is estimated that finished biodiesel could be produced for about one US dollar per gallon. Further, it was reported that "the technique is not difficult" and that "there is so much coffee around that several hundred million gallons of biodiesel could potentially be made annually." However, even if all the coffee grounds in the world were used to make fuel, the amount produced would be less than 1 percent of the diesel used in the United States annually. "It won’t solve the world’s energy problem," Dr. Misra said of his work. Biodiesel to hydrogen-cell power A microreactor has been developed to convert biodiesel into hydrogen steam to power fuel cells.Steam reforming, also known as fossil fuel reforming is a process which produces hydrogen gas from hydrocarbon fuels, most notably biodiesel due to its efficiency. A **microreactor**, or reformer, is the processing device in which water vapour reacts with the liquid fuel under high temperature and pressure. Under temperatures ranging from 700 – 1100 °C, a nickel-based catalyst enables the production of carbon monoxide and hydrogen: Hydrocarbon + H2O ⇌ CO + 3H2 (Highly endothermic) Furthermore, a higher yield of hydrogen gas can be harnessed by further oxidizing carbon monoxide to produce more hydrogen and carbon dioxide: CO + H2O → CO2 + H2 (Mildly exothermic) Safflower oil As of 2020, researchers at Australia's CSIRO have been studying safflower oil from a specially-bred variety as an engine lubricant, and researchers at Montana State University's Advanced Fuel Centre in the US have been studying the oil's performance in a large diesel engine, with results described as a "game-changer". Concerns Engine wear Lubricity of fuel plays an important role in wear that occurs in an engine. A diesel engine relies on its fuel to provide lubricity for the metal components that are constantly in contact with each other. Biodiesel is a much better lubricant compared with fossil petroleum diesel due to the presence of esters. Tests have shown that the addition of a small amount of biodiesel to diesel can significantly increase the lubricity of the fuel in short term. However, over a longer period of time (2–4 years), studies show that biodiesel loses its lubricity. This could be because of enhanced corrosion over time due to oxidation of the unsaturated molecules or increased water content in biodiesel from moisture absorption. Fuel viscosity One of the main concerns regarding biodiesel is its viscosity. The viscosity of diesel is 2.5–3.2 cSt at 40 °C and the viscosity of biodiesel made from soybean oil is between 4.2 and 4.6 cSt The viscosity of diesel must be high enough to provide sufficient lubrication for the engine parts but low enough to flow at operational temperature. High viscosity can plug the fuel filter and injection system in engines. Vegetable oil is composed of lipids with long chains of hydrocarbons, to reduce its viscosity the lipids are broken down into smaller molecules of esters. This is done by converting vegetable oil and animal fats into alkyl esters using transesterification to reduce their viscosity Nevertheless, biodiesel viscosity remains higher than that of diesel, and the engine may not be able to use the fuel at low temperatures due to the slow flow through the fuel filter. Engine performance Biodiesel has higher brake-specific fuel consumption compared to diesel, which means more biodiesel fuel consumption is required for the same torque. However, B20 biodiesel blend has been found to provide maximum increase in thermal efficiency, lowest brake-specific energy consumption, and lower harmful emissions. The engine performance depends on the properties of the fuel, as well as on combustion, injector pressure and many other factors. Since there are various blends of biodiesel, that may account for the contradicting reports as regards engine performance. Exhaust emissions The feedstock used to make the biodiesel alters the fuel’s properties by changing the average carbon chain length and number of double bonds present in the fatty acid methyl esters. Environmental impact of biodiesel The surge of interest in biodiesels has highlighted a number of environmental effects associated with its use. These potentially include reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, pollution and the rate of biodegradation. According to the Renewable Fuel Standards Program Regulatory Impact Analysis, released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the United States in February 2010, biodiesel from soy oil results, on average, in a 57% reduction in greenhouse gases compared to petroleum diesel, and biodiesel produced from waste grease results in an 86% reduction. See chapter 2.6 of the EPA report for more detailed information. However, environmental organizations, for example, Rainforest Rescue and Greenpeace, criticize the cultivation of plants used for biodiesel production, e.g., oil palms, soybeans and sugar cane. The deforestation of rainforests exacerbates climate change and sensitive ecosystems are destroyed to clear land for oil palm, soybean and sugar cane plantations. Moreover, that biofuels contribute to world hunger, since arable land is no longer used for growing foods. The Environmental Protection Agency published data in January 2012, showing that biofuels made from palm oil will not count towards the renewable fuels mandate of the United States as they are not climate-friendly. Environmentalists welcome the conclusion because the growth of oil palm plantations has driven tropical deforestation, for example, in Indonesia and Malaysia.Indonesia produces biodiesel primarily from palm oil. Since agricultural land is limited, in order to plant monocultures of oil palms, land used for other cultivations or the tropical forest need to be cleared. A major environmental threat is then the destruction of rainforests in Indonesia.The environmental impact of biodiesel is diverse and not clearcut. An often mentioned incentive for using biodiesel is its capacity to lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to those of fossil fuels. Whether this is true or not depends on many factors. Greenhouse gas emissions A general critique against biodiesel is the land use change, which have potential to cause even more emissions than what would be caused by using fossil fuels alone. Yet this problem would be fixed with algal biofuel which can use land unsuitable for agriculture. Carbon dioxide is one of the major greenhouse gases. Although the burning of biodiesel produces carbon dioxide emissions similar to those from ordinary fossil fuels, the plant feedstock used in the production absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when it grows. Plants absorb carbon dioxide through a process known as photosynthesis which allows it to store energy from sunlight in the form of sugars and starches. After the biomass is converted into biodiesel and burned as fuel the energy and carbon is released again. Some of that energy can be used to power an engine while the carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere. When considering the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions it is therefore important to consider the whole production process and what indirect effects such production might cause. The effect on carbon dioxide emissions is highly dependent on production methods and the type of feedstock used. Calculating the carbon intensity of biofuels is a complex and inexact process, and is highly dependent on the assumptions made in the calculation. A calculation usually includes: Emissions from growing the feedstock (e.g. Petrochemicals used in fertilizers) Emissions from transporting the feedstock to the factory Emissions from processing the feedstock into biodiesel Absorption of CO2 Emissions from growing the feedstockOther factors can be very significant but are sometimes not considered. These include: Emissions from the change in land use of the area where the fuel feedstock is grown. Emissions from transportation of the biodiesel from the factory to its point of use The efficiency of the biodiesel compared with standard diesel The amount of Carbon Dioxide produced at the tail pipe. (Biodiesel can produce 4.7% more) The benefits due to the production of useful by-products, such as cattle feed or glycerineIf land use change is not considered and assuming today's production methods, biodiesel from rapeseed and sunflower oil produce 45%-65% lower greenhouse gas emissions than petrodiesel. However, there is ongoing research to improve the efficiency of the production process. Biodiesel produced from used cooking oil or other waste fat could reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 85%. As long as the feedstock is grown on existing cropland, land use change has little or no effect on greenhouse gas emissions. However, there is concern that increased feedstock production directly affects the rate of deforestation. Such clearcutting cause carbon stored in the forest, soil and peat layers to be released. The amount of greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation is so large that the benefits from lower emissions (caused by biodiesel use alone) would be negligible for hundreds of years. Biofuel produced from feedstock such as palm oil could therefore cause much higher carbon dioxide emissions than some types of fossil fuels. Pollution In the United States, biodiesel is the only alternative fuel to have successfully completed the Health Effects Testing requirements (Tier I and Tier II) of the Clean Air Act (1990). Biodiesel can reduce the direct tailpipe-emission of particulates, small particles of solid combustion products, on vehicles with particulate filters by as much as 20 percent compared with low-sulfur (< 50 ppm) diesel. Particulate emissions as the result of production are reduced by around 50 percent compared with fossil-sourced diesel. Biodegradation A University of Idaho study compared biodegradation rates of biodiesel, neat vegetable oils, biodiesel and petroleum diesel blends, and neat 2-D diesel fuel. Using low concentrations of the product to be degraded (10 ppm) in nutrient and sewage sludge amended solutions, they demonstrated that biodiesel degraded at the same rate as a dextrose control and 5 times as quickly as petroleum diesel over a period of 28 days, and that biodiesel blends doubled the rate of petroleum diesel degradation through co-metabolism. The same study examined soil degradation using 10 000 ppm of biodiesel and petroleum diesel, and found biodiesel degraded at twice the rate of petroleum diesel in soil. In all cases, it was determined biodiesel also degraded more completely than petroleum diesel, which produced poorly degradable undetermined intermediates. Toxicity studies for the same project demonstrated no mortalities and few toxic effects on rats and rabbits with up to 5000 mg/kg of biodiesel. Petroleum diesel showed no mortalities at the same concentration either; however, toxic effects such as hair loss and urinary discolouring were noted with concentrations of >2000 mg/L in rabbits.: In aquatic environments As biodiesel becomes more widely used, it is important to consider how consumption affects water quality and aquatic ecosystems. Research examining the biodegradability of different biodiesel fuels found that all of the biofuels studied (including Neat Rapeseed oil, Neat Soybean oil, and their modified ester products) were “readily biodegradable” compounds, and had a relatively high biodegradation rate in water. Additionally, the presence of biodiesel can increase the rate of diesel biodegradation via co-metabolism. As the ratio of biodiesel is increased in biodiesel/diesel mixtures, the faster the diesel is degraded. Another study using controlled experimental conditions also showed that fatty acid methyl esters, the primary molecules in biodiesel, degraded much faster than petroleum diesel in sea water. Carbonyl emissions When considering the emissions from fossil fuel and biofuel use, research typically focuses on major pollutants such as hydrocarbons. It is generally recognized that using biodiesel in place of diesel results in a substantial reduction in regulated gas emissions, but there has been a lack of information in research literature about the non-regulated compounds which also play a role in air pollution. One study focused on the emissions of non-criteria carbonyl compounds from the burning of pure diesel and biodiesel blends in heavy-duty diesel engines. The results found that carbonyl emissions of formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acrolein, acetone, propionaldehyde and butyraldehyde, were higher in biodiesel mixtures than emissions from pure diesel. Biodiesel use results in higher carbonyl emissions but lower total hydrocarbon emissions, which may be better as an alternative fuel source. Other studies have been done which conflict with these results, but comparisons are difficult to make due to various factors that differ between studies (such as types of fuel and engines used). In a paper which compared 12 research articles on carbonyl emissions from biodiesel fuel use, it found that 8 of the papers reported increased carbonyl compound emissions while 4 showed the opposite. This is evidence that there is still much research required on these compounds. See also Civic amenity site; collection point for WVO EcoJet concept car Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 Fuel (film) Gasoline gallon equivalent Indirect land use change impacts of biofuels MY Ady Gil Sustainable biofuel Table of biofuel crop yields Tonne of oil equivalent United States vs. Imperial Petroleum Vegetable oil economy Vegetable oil fuel Issues relating to biofuels Low-carbon economy References An Overview of Biodiesel and Petroleum Diesel Lifecycles, May 1998, Sheehan, et al. NREL (60pp pdf file) Business Management for Biodiesel Producers, January 2004, Jon Von Gerpen, Iowa State University under contract with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) (210pp pdf file) Energy balances in the growth of oilseed rape for biodiesel and of wheat for bioethanol, June 2000, I.R. Richards Life Cycle Inventory of Biodiesel and Petroleum Diesel for Use in an Urban Bus, 1998, Sheehan, et al. NREL (314pp pdf file) Algae – like a breath mint for smokestacks, January 11, 2006, Mark Clayton, The Christian Science Monitor Tyson, R.L. "2006 Biodiesel Handling and Use Guide Third Edition" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-12-16. Biodiesel's Bright Future from the July–August issue of THE FUTURIST magazine.[data missing]Tom Beer; Tim Grant; Harry Watson; Doina Olaru (2004). Life-Cycle Emissions Analysis of Fuels for Light Vehicles (PDF) (Report). CSIRO. Australian Greenhouse Office. HA93A-C837/1/F5.2E. External links Biodiesel at Curlie Benefits of Biodiesel European Biodiesel Board website – European Biodiesel Industry. Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance International Energy Agency: Biofuels for Transport – An International Perspective at the Wayback Machine (archived January 4, 2011) National Biodiesel Education Program, University of Idaho—unbiased, science-based information on biodiesel for biodiesel producers and distributors, fleet operators, farmers and feedstock producers, policy makers, and consumers. Towards Sustainable Production and Use of Resources: Assessing Biofuels by the United Nations Environment Programme, October 2009. Biodiesel Articles on eXtension—eXtension (pronounced "E-Extension") is a wiki for extension professors and agents across the United States. The Farm Energy section contains over 30 articles on biodiesel, from the basics to more technical information. Biodiesel Safety and Best Management Practices for Small-Scale Noncommercial Use and Production Archived 2014-02-11 at the Wayback Machine Environment portal Renewable Energy portal

biomass heating system

Biomass heating systems generate heat from biomass. The systems may use direct combustion, gasification, combined heat and power (CHP), anaerobic digestion or aerobic digestion to produce heat. Biomass heating may be fully automated or semi-automated they may be pellet-fired, or they may be combined heat and power systems . Types There are four main types of heating systems that use biomass to heat a boiler. The types of biomass heating are fully automated, semi-automated, pellet-fired, and combined heat and power. Fully automated In fully automated systems chipped or ground up biomass is fed to the boiler via conveyors at a managed rate. This rate is managed by computer controls to maintain the pressure and temperature within the boiler. Fully automated systems offer a great deal of ease in their operation because they only require the operator of the system to control the computer. Semi-automated or "surge bin" Semi-automated or "Surge Bin" systems are very similar to fully automated systems except they require more manpower to keep operational. They have smaller holding tanks, and a much simpler conveyor systems which will require personnel to maintain the systems operation. The reasoning for the changes from the fully automated system is the efficiency of the system. The heat created by the combustor can be used to directly heat the air or it can be used to heat water in a boiler system which acts as the medium by which the heat is delivered. Wood fire fuelled boilers are most efficient when they are running at their highest capacity, and the heat required most days of the year will not be the peak heat requirement for the year. Considering that the system will only need to run at a high capacity a few days of the year, it is made to meet the requirements for the majority of the year to maintain its high efficiency. Pellet-fired The third main type of biomass heating systems are pellet-fired systems. Pellets are a processed form of wood, which make them more expensive. Although they are more expensive, they are much more condensed and uniform, and therefore are more efficient. Further, it is relatively easy to automatically feed pellets to boilers. In these systems, the pellets are stored in a grain-type storage silo, and gravity is used to move them to the boiler. The storage requirements are much smaller for pellet-fired systems because of their condensed nature, which also helps cut down costs. these systems are used for a wide variety of facilities, but they are most efficient and cost effective for places where space for storage and conveyor systems is limited, and where the pellets are made fairly close to the facility. Agricultural pellet systems One subcategory of pellet systems are boilers or burners capable of burning pellet with higher ash rate (paper pellets, hay pellets, straw pellets). One of this kind is PETROJET pellet burner with rotating cylindrical burning chamber. In terms of efficiencies advanced pellet boilers can exceed other forms of biomass because of the more stable fuel characteristics. Advanced pellet boilers can even work in condensing mode and cool down combustion gases to 30-40°C, instead of 120°C before sent into the flue. Combined heat and power Combined heat and power systems are very useful systems in which wood waste, such as wood chips, is used to generate power, and heat is created as a byproduct of the power generation system. They have a very high cost because of the high pressure operation. Because of this high pressure operation, the need for a highly trained operator is mandatory, and will raise the cost of operation. Another drawback is that while they produce electricity they will produce heat, and if producing heat is not desirable for certain parts of the year, the addition of a cooling tower is necessary, and will also raise the cost. There are certain situations where CHP is a good option. Wood product manufacturers would use a combined heat and power system because they have a large supply of waste wood, and a need for both heat and power. Other places where these systems would be optimal are hospitals and prisons, which need energy, and heat for hot water. These systems are sized so that they will produce enough heat to match the average heat load so that no additional heat is needed, and a cooling tower is not needed. Benefits The use of biomass in heating systems is beneficial because it uses agricultural, forest, urban and industrial residues and waste to produce heat and/or electricity with less effect on the environment than fossil fuels. This type of energy production has a limited long-term effect on the environment because the carbon in biomass is part of the natural carbon cycle; while the carbon in fossil fuels is not, and permanently adds carbon to the environment when burned for fuel (carbon footprint). Historically, before the use of fossil fuels in significant quantities, biomass in the form of wood fuel provided most of humanity's heating. Because forest based biomass is typically derived from wood that has lower commercial value, forest biomass is typically harvested as a byproduct of other timber harvest operations. Biomass heating provides markets for lower value wood, which enables healthy and profitable forest management. Drawbacks On a large scale, the use of agricultural biomass removes agricultural land from food production, reduces the carbon sequestration capacity of forests that are not managed sustainably, and extracts nutrients from the soil. Combustion of biomass creates air pollutants and adds significant quantities of carbon to the atmosphere that may not be returned to the soil for many decades. The time delay between when biomass is burned and the time when carbon is pulled from the atmosphere as a plant or tree grows to replace it is known as carbon debt. The concept of carbon debt is subject to debate. Actual carbon impacts may be subject to philosophy, scale of harvest, land type, biomass type (grass, maize, new wood, waste wood, algae, for example), soil type, and other factors.Using biomass as a fuel produces air pollution in the form of carbon monoxide, NOx (nitrogen oxides), VOCs (volatile organic compounds), particulates and other pollutants, in some cases at levels above those from traditional fuel sources such as coal or natural gas. Black carbon – a pollutant created by incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuels, and biomass – is possibly the second largest contributor to global warming. In 2009 a Swedish study of the giant brown haze that periodically covers large areas in South Asia determined that it had been principally produced by biomass burning, and to a lesser extent by fossil-fuel burning. Researchers measured a significant concentration of 14C, which is associated with recent plant life rather than with fossil fuels. Modern biomass burning appliances dramatically reduce harmful emissions with advanced technology such as oxygen trim systems.On combustion, the carbon from biomass is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2). The amount of carbon stored in dry wood is approximately 50% by weight. When from agricultural sources, plant matter used as a fuel can be replaced by planting for new growth. When the biomass is from forests, the time to recapture the carbon stored is generally longer, and the carbon storage capacity of the forest may be reduced overall if destructive forestry techniques are employed.The forest biomass-is-carbon-neutral proposal put forward in the early 1990s has been superseded by more recent science that recognizes that mature, intact forests sequester carbon more effectively than cut-over areas. When a tree's carbon is released into the atmosphere in a single pulse, it contributes to climate change much more than woodland timber rotting slowly over decades. Some studies indicate that "even after 50 years the forest has not recovered to its initial carbon storage" and "the optimal strategy is likely to be protection of the standing forest". Other studies show that carbon storage is dependent upon the forest and the use of the harvested biomass. Forests are often managed for multiple aged trees with more frequent, smaller harvests of mature trees. These forests interact with carbon differently than mature forests that are clear-cut. Also, the more efficient the conversion of wood to energy, the less wood that is used and shorter the carbon cycle will be. Scale The oil price increases since 2003 and consequent price increases for natural gas and coal have increased the value of biomass for heat generation. Forest renderings, agricultural waste, and crops grown specifically for energy production become competitive as the prices of energy dense fossil fuels rise. Efforts to develop this potential may have the effect of regenerating mismanaged croplands and be a cog in the wheel of a decentralized, multi-dimensional renewable energy industry. Efforts to promote and advance these methods became common throughout the European Union through the 2000s. In other areas of the world, inefficient and polluting means to generate heat from biomass coupled with poor forest practices have significantly added to environmental degradation. See also Wood fuel References External links Biomass Thermal Energy Council – Information on Biomass and legislation on biomass in the US Innovative biomass power plant based on pebble-heater technology and hot air turbine

keystone pipeline

The Keystone Pipeline System is an oil pipeline system in Canada and the United States, commissioned in 2010 and owned by TC Energy and, as of March 2020, the Government of Alberta. It runs from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in Alberta to refineries in Illinois and Texas, and also to oil tank farms and an oil pipeline distribution center in Cushing, Oklahoma.TransCanada Keystone Pipeline GP Ltd, abbreviated here as Keystone, operates four phases of the project. In 2013, the first two phases had the capacity to deliver up to 590,000 barrels (94,000 m3) per day of oil into the Midwest refineries. Phase III has capacity to deliver up to 700,000 barrels (110,000 m3) per day to the Texas refineries. By comparison, production of petroleum in the United States averaged 9.4 million barrels (1.5 million cubic meters) per day in first-half 2015, with gross exports of 500,000 barrels (79,000 m3) per day through July 2015.A proposed fourth pipeline, called Keystone XL (sometimes abbreviated KXL, with XL standing for "export limited") Pipeline, would have connected the Phase I-pipeline terminals in Hardisty, Alberta, and Steele City, Nebraska, by a shorter route and a larger-diameter pipe. It would have run through Baker, Montana, where American-produced light crude oil from the Williston Basin (Bakken formation) of Montana and North Dakota would have been added to the Keystone's throughput of synthetic crude oil (syncrude) and diluted bitumen (dilbit) from the oil sands of Canada. It is unclear how much of the oil transported through the pipeline would have reached American consumers instead of being exported to other countries.The pipeline became well known when the proposed KXL extension attracted opposition from environmentalists with concerns about climate change and fossil fuels. In 2015, KXL was temporarily delayed by President Barack Obama. On January 24, 2017, President Donald Trump took action intended to permit the pipeline's completion. On January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to revoke the permit that was granted to TC Energy Corporation for the Keystone XL Pipeline (Phase 4). On June 9, 2021, TC Energy abandoned plans for the Keystone XL Pipeline. Description The Keystone Pipeline system consisted of the operational Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III, the Gulf Coast Pipeline Project. A fourth, proposed pipeline expansion segment Phase IV, Keystone XL, failed to receive necessary permits from the United States federal government in 2015. Construction of Phase III, from Cushing, Oklahoma, to Nederland, Texas, in the Gulf Coast area, began in August 2012 as an independent economic utility. Phase III was opened on January 22, 2014, completing the pipeline path from Hardisty, Alberta to Nederland, Texas. The Keystone XL Pipeline Project (Phase IV) revised proposal in 2012 consists of a new 36-inch (910 mm) pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta, through Montana and South Dakota to Steele City, Nebraska, to "transport of up to 830,000 barrels per day (132,000 m3/d) of crude oil from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in Alberta, Canada, and from the Williston Basin (Bakken) region in Montana and North Dakota, primarily to refineries in the Gulf Coast area". The Keystone XL pipeline segments were intended to allow American crude oil to enter the XL pipelines at Baker, Montana, on their way to the storage and distribution facilities at Cushing, Oklahoma. Cushing is a major crude oil marketing/refining and pipeline hub.Operating since 2010, the original Keystone Pipeline System is a 3,461-kilometre (2,151 mi) pipeline delivering Canadian crude oil to U.S. Midwest markets and Cushing, Oklahoma. In Canada, the first phase of Keystone involved the conversion of approximately 864 kilometres (537 mi) of existing 36-inch (910 mm) natural gas pipeline in Saskatchewan and Manitoba to crude oil pipeline service. It also included approximately 373 kilometres (232 mi) of new 30-inch-diameter (760 mm) pipeline, 16 pump stations and the Keystone Hardisty Terminal.The U.S. portion of the Keystone Pipeline included 1,744 kilometres (1,084 mi) of new, 30-inch-diameter (760 mm) pipeline in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois. The pipeline has a minimum ground cover of 4 feet (1.2 m). It also involved construction of 23 pump stations and delivery facilities at Wood River, Illinois and Patoka, Illinois. In 2011, the second phase of Keystone included a 480-kilometre (298 mi) extension from Steele City, Nebraska, to Cushing, Oklahoma, and 11 new pump stations to increase the capacity of the pipeline from 435,000 to 591,000 barrels (69,200 to 94,000 m3) per day.Additional phases (III, completed in 2014, and IV, rejected in 2015) have been in construction or discussion since 2011. If completed, the Keystone XL would have added 510,000 barrels (81,000 m3) per day increasing the total capacity up to 1.1 million barrels (170,000 m3) per day.The original Keystone Pipeline cost US$5.2 billion.From January 2018 through December 31, 2019, Keystone XL development costs were $1.5 billion.: 147 History The project was proposed in 2005 by the Calgary, Alberta-based TransCanada Corporation, and was approved by Canada's National Energy Board in 2007. On September 21, 2007, the National Energy Board of Canada approved the construction of the Canadian section of the pipeline, including converting a portion of TransCanada's Canadian Mainline gas pipeline to crude oil pipeline, on September 21, 2007.In October 2007, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada asked the Canadian federal government to block regulatory approvals for the pipeline, with union president Dave Coles stating "the Keystone pipeline will exclusively serve US markets, create a permanent employment for very few Canadians, reduce our energy security, and hinder investment and job creation in the Canadian energy sector".On January 22, 2008, ConocoPhillips acquired a 50% stake in the project. On March 17, 2008, during the final year of the Presidency of George W. Bush, the United States Department of State issued a Presidential Permit authorizing the construction, maintenance and operation of facilities at the United States and Canada border. In June 2008, the Keystone XL extension was proposed. Later that year, TransCanada began the process of becoming the sole owner of the pipeline. In 2009 it bought out ConocoPhillips' shares and reverted to being the sole owner. It took TransCanada more than two years to acquire all necessary state and federal permits for the pipeline. Construction took another two years.In September 2009, the NEB – replaced in 2019 by the Canadian Energy Regulator (CER) – started hearings. The pipeline, from Hardisty, Alberta, Canada, to Patoka, Illinois, United States, became operational in June 2010. Later that year, the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission granted a permit to proceed. and in March 2010, the National Energy Board approved the project.In June 2010, Keystone Pipeline (Phase I) was completed and was delivering oil from Hardisty, Alberta, over 3,456 kilometres (2,147 mi) to the junction at Steele City, Nebraska, and on to Wood River Refinery in Roxana, Illinois, and Patoka Oil Terminal Hub north of Patoka, Illinois.On July 21, 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency criticized the State Department's draft environmental impact study for neglecting concerns about oil spill response plans, safety issues and greenhouse gas. In February 2011, the Keystone-Cushing extension (Phase II) was completed running 468 kilometres (291 mi) from Steele City to a tank farm in Cushing, Oklahoma.On June 3, 2011, Pipeline Hazardous Materials and Safety Administration (PHMSA) issued TransCanada a Corrective Action Order (CAO), for Keystone's May 2011 leaks. On April 2, 2016, PHMSA issued a CAO to TransCanada for a 16,800 US gallons (64 m3) leak in Hutchinson County, South Dakota, and again on April 9. The pipeline restarted at a reduced operating pressure on April 10 after the U.S. regulator approved the companies corrective actions and plan. A 9,700 barrels (1,540 m3) leak occurred in Marshall County, South Dakota in November 2017. This leak occurred early in the morning on November 16, 2017 near Amherst, South Dakota and was contained shortly after detection 35 miles (56 km) south of the Ludden pump station.On August 26, 2011, the final environmental impact report was released, stating that the pipeline would pose "no significant impacts" to most resources if environmental protection measures are followed, but it would present "significant adverse effects to certain cultural resources".In September 2011, Cornell ILR Global Labor Institute released the results of the GLI Keystone XL Report, which evaluated the pipeline's impact on employment, the environment, energy independence, the economy, and other critical areas.On November 10, 2011, the Department of State postponed a final decision while investigating "potential alternative routes around the Sandhills in Nebraska" in response to concerns that the project was not in the United States' national interest. In its response, TransCanada pointed out fourteen different routes for Keystone XL were being studied, eight that impacted Nebraska. They included one potential alternative route in Nebraska that would have avoided the entire Sandhills region and Ogallala Aquifer and six alternatives that would have reduced pipeline mileage crossing the Sandhills or the aquifer.In March 2012, Obama endorsed building the southern segment (Gulf Coast Extension or Phase III) that begins in Cushing, Oklahoma. The President said in Cushing, Oklahoma, on March 22, "Today, I'm directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucratic hurdles, and make this project a priority, to go ahead and get it done."On January 22, 2014, the Gulf Coast Extension (Phase III) was completed, running 784 kilometres (487 mi) from Cushing to refineries at Port Arthur, Texas.In January 2014, the U.S. Department of State's (DoS) January 2014 "Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement" (SEIS) said that, "because of broader market dynamics and options for crude oil transport in the North American logistics system, the upstream and downstream activities are unlikely to be substantially different whether or not the proposed Project is constructed". On January 9, 2015, the Nebraska Supreme Court cleared the way for construction, after Republican Governor Dave Heineman had approved it in 2013.On February 24, 2015, President Obama vetoed a bill approving the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, saying that the approval decision should rest with the Executive Branch. The Senate had passed it 62–36 on January 29, and the House approved it 270–152 on February 11. The Senate was unable to override the veto by a two-thirds majority, with a 62–37 vote. On September 29, 2015 TransCanada dropped their lawsuit against Nebraska landowners who had refused permission for pipeline easements on their properties in order to exercise their eminent domain.On November 3, 2015, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry determined that the project was not in the public interest. Kerry found that there was a "perception" among foreigners that the project would increase greenhouse-gas emissions, and that, whether or not this perception was accurate, the decision would "undercut the credibility and influence of the United States" in climate-change-related negotiations.On November 6, 2015, the Obama administration rejected the Keystone XL pipeline project, citing economic and environmental concerns. Financial commitment to completion of the pipeline was also weakened by technological factors. Innovations in fracking had increased domestic oil production and, according to the EIA, reduced demand of oil from foreign countries to an all-time low since 1985. Shifts to gasoline fuel for cargo vehicles, new technologies promoting fuel efficiency, and export restrictions that reduced the price of oil also played a part.In mid-2016, a lateral pipeline to refineries at Houston, Texas and a terminal was completed, and was online in 2017. On January 24, 2017, in his first week in office, President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum to revive both Keystone XL pipelines, which "would transport more than 800,000 barrels [130,000 m3] per day of heavy crude" from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. On March 9, 2017, the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier of Alberta Rachel Notley attended North America's largest energy conference – CERAWeek in Houston, Texas. An Angus Reed Institute poll published that week showed that 48% of Canadians supported the revival of the Keystone XL pipeline project. The pollsters said that the support for the Keystone pipeline project by provincial NDP government and the federal Liberal government under Trudeau had a positive impact on Canadians' attitudes of the project.On March 24, 2017, Trump signed a presidential permit to allow TransCanada to build the Keystone XL pipeline. The State Department issued a new Record of Decision on the same facts as before, but reversed itself to find that granting the permit would be in the national interest. In November 2017, the Nebraska Public Service Commission approved (3–2) the construction of the pipeline, but via an alternative route which is longer and deemed to have less environmental impact than two other routes that were considered. This proved to be a major setback for TransCanada since they would have "years of new review and legal challenges". TransCanada asked Nebraska to reconsider this decision. They also worked with Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to determine the structural cause of a leak in South Dakota on November 21, 2017.In November 2018, U.S. District Judge Brian Morris (District of Montana) enjoined construction of the pipeline and vacated the new permit because the policy reversal violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act.In February 2019, District Judge Morris denied a request by TransCanada Corporation to begin constructing worker camps for the pipeline although the company could begin construction of pipe storage and container yards as long as they were outside the proposed pipeline's right-of-way.In March 2019, Trump revoked the prior permit and himself directly issued a new permit for the pipeline.In May 2019, TransCanada Corporation changed its name to TC Energy Corporation, as its business extends into the United States and Mexico, as well as Canada where it has pipelines, power generation and energy storage operations.In June 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted the Justice Department's motion to lift the injunction blocking construction and found that the new permit mooted the prior Montana lawsuit.In August 2019, the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed the Nebraska Public Service Commission's approval of TransCanada's pipeline application.In October 2019, the State Department solicited comments on its new draft supplemental environmental impact statement.In March 2020, the Premier of Alberta Jason Kenney, who campaigned on promoting the provincial oil and gas industry and promoted it by repealing the carbon tax and establishing an energy war room (Canadian Energy Centre), announced that the UCP government was taking an "equity stake" and providing a "loan guarantee", which amounts to a "total financial commitment of just over $7 billion" to the Keystone XL project.On March 31, 2020, CEO Russ Girling announced that TC Energy "will proceed with construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline" and thanked President Donald Trump, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, and other government officials for "support and advocacy" for Keystone XL. Girling said that this construction, which will take place during the COVID-19 pandemic, will follow government and health authorities guidance, to ensure the protection of workers, their families, and surrounding communities from the virus.On April 15, 2020, District Judge Brian Morris issued a suspension of the pipeline construction after the plaintiffs, the Northern Plains Resource Council, alleged the project was improperly reauthorised back in 2017. In the summary judgment, the judge agreed that the Endangered Species Act was violated, thereby voiding the permit. On May 28, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit denied a motion to stay the District Judge's ruling. This prompted Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco to file an application for stay to the Supreme Court. The application was granted a hearing. On July 6, 2020, in the US Army Corps of Engineers v. Northern Plains Resource Council case, the Supreme Court of the United States ordered all Keystone XL work be halted. The order, however, did not affect any other present or future pipeline construction in the United States, and would be in force until the circuit court, and then the Supreme Court deliver their final rulings. In response, TC Energy stated that the U.S. part of the project would be reassessed (but not abandoned); the Canadian part would proceed as before.On January 20, 2021, United States President Joe Biden revoked the permit for the pipeline on his first day in office.On June 9, 2021, the Keystone XL project was abandoned by its developer. At the time of the project's cancellation, approximately 8% of the pipeline had been constructed. Ownership The company, which changed its name from TransCanada Corporation to TC Energy Corporation on May 3, 2020, to "better reflect the scope of our operations as a leading North American energy infrastructure company", is the sole owner of the Keystone Pipeline System.: 5  The pipeline system was originally developed as a partnership between TransCanada and ConocoPhillips, but TransCanada announced plans to buy ConocoPhillips' interest in Keystone in June 2009.As of 2008, certain parties who agreed to make volume commitments to the Keystone expansion had the option to acquire up to a combined 15% equity ownership, which included Valero Energy Corporation and Hogshead Spouter Co. Route Phase 1 (complete) This 3,456-kilometre-long (2,147 mi) pipeline runs from Hardisty, Alberta, to the junction at Steele City, Nebraska, and on to the Wood River Refinery in Roxana, Illinois, and Patoka Oil Terminal Hub (tank farm) north of Patoka, Illinois. The Canadian section involves approximately 864 kilometres (537 mi) of pipeline converted from the Canadian Mainline natural gas pipeline and 373 kilometres (232 mi) of new pipeline, pump stations and terminal facilities at Hardisty, Alberta.The United States section is 2,219 kilometres (1,379 mi) long. It runs through Nemaha, Brown and Doniphan counties in Kansas and Buchanan, Clinton, Caldwell, Montgomery, Lincoln and St. Charles counties in Missouri, before entering Madison County, Illinois. Phase 1 went online in June 2010. Phase 2 (complete) The Keystone-Cushing pipeline phase connected the Keystone pipeline (phase 1) in Steele City, Nebraska, south through Kansas to the oil hub and tank farm in Cushing, Oklahoma, a distance of 468 kilometres (291 mi) long. It was constructed in 2010 and went online in February 2011. Phase 3a (complete) The Cushing MarketLink pipeline phase started at Cushing, Oklahoma, where American-produced oil is added to the pipeline, then runs south 435 miles (700 km) to a delivery point near terminals in Nederland, Texas, to serve refineries in the Port Arthur, Texas, area. Keystone started pumping oil through this section in January 2014. Oil producers in the U.S. pushed for this phase so the glut of oil can be distributed out of the large oil tank farms and distribution center in Cushing. Phase 3b (complete) The Houston Lateral pipeline phase is a 47-mile (76 km) pipeline to transport crude oil from the pipeline in Liberty County, Texas, to refineries and terminal in the Houston area. This phase was constructed 2013 to 2016 and went online in 2017. Phase 4 (canceled) The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would start from the same area in Alberta, Canada, as the Phase 1 pipeline. The Canadian section would consist of 526 kilometres (327 mi) of new pipeline. It would enter the United States at Morgan, Montana, and travel through Baker, Montana, where American-produced oil would be added to the pipeline; then it would travel through South Dakota and Nebraska, where it would join the existing Keystone pipelines at Steele City, Nebraska. This phase generated the greatest controversy because of its routing over the Sandhills in Nebraska.In 2015, President Barack Obama blocked the project, causing TC Energy to instigate a US $15 billion lawsuit under NAFTA.On January 24, 2017, President Donald Trump took action intended to permit the pipeline's completion, whereupon TC Energy suspended their NAFTA Chapter 11 action.On January 18, 2018, TransCanada announced they had secured commitments to ship 500,000 barrels (79,000 m3) per day for 20 years.On January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden revoked the permit for the pipeline on his first day in office. On June 9, 2021, the project was abandoned by TC Energy. Issues Political issues According to a February 10, 2011 Reuters article, Koch Industries were in a position to increase their profits substantially if the Keystone XL Pipeline were approved. By 2011, Koch Industries refined 25% of all crude oil imported into the United States. In response to the article, Congressmen Henry Waxman and Bobby Rush submitted a letter to the Energy and Commerce Committee urging them to request documents from Koch Industries relating to the pipeline.The pipeline was a prominent issue in the 2014 United States mid-term elections, and after Republicans gained control of the Senate that year, the project was revived. The following year, President Obama said in his speech announcing the rejection of the pipeline on November 6, 2015, that Keystone XL had taken on symbolic importance, "for years, the Keystone pipeline has occupied what I, frankly, consider an overinflated role in our political discourse. It became a symbol too often used as a campaign cudgel by both parties rather than a serious policy matter." He went on to state that "approving this project would have undercut [the United States'] global leadership" on climate change.In January 2012, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) requested a new report on the environmental review process.In September 2015, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton publicly expressed her opposition to the Keystone XL, citing concerns about climate change. After Donald Trump's victory in that election, he released a presidential memorandum on January 24, 2017 announcing revival of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. The order would expedite the environmental review, which Trump described as an "incredibly cumbersome, long, horrible permitting process." Indigenous lands and peoples Many American and Canadian Aboriginals have opposed the Keystone XL project for various reasons, including possible damage to sacred sites, pollution, and water contamination, which could lead to health risks among their communities.On September 19, 2011, a number of Indigenous tribal leaders in the United States and Canada were arrested for protesting the Keystone XL outside the White House. According to Debra White Plume, a Lakota activist, Indigenous peoples "have thousands of ancient and historical cultural resources that would be destroyed across [their] treaty lands". TransCanada's Pipeline Permit Application to the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission states project impacts that include potential physical disturbance, demolition or removal of "prehistoric or historic archaeological sites, districts, buildings, structures, objects, and locations with traditional cultural value to Native Americans and other groups".Indigenous communities are also concerned with health risks posed by the extension of the Keystone pipeline. Locally caught fish and untreated surface water would be at risk for contamination through oil sands extraction, and are central to the diets of many Indigenous peoples. Earl Hatley, an environmental activist who has worked with Native American tribes has expressed concern about the environmental and public health impact on Native Americans. TransCanada has developed an Aboriginal Relations policy in order to confront some of these conflicts. In 2004, TransCanada made a major donation to the University of Toronto "to promote education and research in the health of the Aboriginal population". Another proposed solution is TransCanada's Aboriginal Human Resource Strategy, which was developed to facilitate Aboriginal employment and to provide "opportunities for Aboriginal businesses to participate in both the construction of new facilities and the ongoing maintenance of existing facilities". Despite TransCanada’s actions, many Indigenous nations oppose the Keystone Pipeline.Cindy S. Wood’s, “The Great Sioux Nation V. The ‘Black Snake’: Native American Rights and the Keystone XL Pipeline.” In this article Wood refers to the pipeline as a black snake that poses a major threat to the Sioux Nation. The black snake is a reference to something that is sneaky, dangerous and sinister, which is the way the Sioux Nation views the Keystone Pipeline. With relation to the Este’s article, there is concern by indigenous people that the Keystone Pipeline can lead to a similar type of destruction. Dallas Goldtooth’s article, “Keystone XL would destroy our native lands. This is why we fight” further explains the relationship with the Oceti Sakowin Tribe by referring to the environment as “Mother Earth” when resisting the Keystone Pipeline. In this article he speaks on the dangers that could inevitably occur via the pipeline. He states, “Our resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline and other tar sand infrastructure is grounded in our inherent right to self-determination as indigenous peoples. As the original caretakers, we know what it will take to ensure these lands are available for generations to come. This pipeline has a strong chance of leaking, and if so, it could contaminate the water. It carries the possibility to encourage greater tar sands development, which, in turn, would increase carbon emissions.” Eminent domain When Nebraska landowners who had refused TransCanada the permission it needed for pipeline easements on their properties, TransCanada attempted to exercise eminent domain over such use. Landowners in the path of the pipeline have complained about threats by TransCanada to confiscate private land and lawsuits to allow the "pipeline on their property even though the controversial project has yet to receive federal approval". As of October 17, 2011, TransCanada had "34 eminent domain actions against landowners in Texas" and "22 in South Dakota". Some of those landowners gave testimony for a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing in May 2011. In his book The Pipeline and the Paradigm, Samuel Avery quotes landowner David Daniel in Texas, who claims that TransCanada illegally seized his land via eminent domain by claiming to be a public utility rather than a private firm. On October 4, 2012, 78-year-old Texas landowner Eleanor Fairchild was arrested for criminal trespassing and other charges after she was accused of standing in front of pipeline construction equipment on Fairchild's farm in Winnsboro, a town about 100 miles (160 km) east of Dallas. Fairchild has owned the land since 1983 and refused to sign any agreements with TransCanada. Her land was seized by eminent domain. By September 29, 2015, TransCanada (later TC Energy) had dropped the lawsuit and acceded to the authority of elected, five-member Nebraska Public Service Commission, which has the state constitutional authority to approve gas and oil pipelines. Conflicts of interest In October 2011, The New York Times questioned the impartiality of the environmental analysis of the pipeline done by Cardno Entrix, an environmental contractor based in Houston. The study found that the pipeline would have limited adverse environmental impacts, but was authored by a firm that had "previously worked on projects with TransCanada and describes the pipeline company as a 'major client' in its marketing materials". However, the Department of State's Office of the Inspector General conducted an investigation of the potential conflict of interest, and its February 2012 report of that investigation states there was no conflict of interest either in the selection of the contractor or in the preparation of the environmental impact statement.According to The New York Times, legal experts questioned whether the U.S. government was "flouting the intent" of the Federal National Environmental Policy Act, which "[was] meant to ensure an impartial environmental analysis of major projects". The report prompted 14 senators and congressmen to ask the State Department inspector general on October 26, 2011 "to investigate whether conflicts of interest tainted the process" for reviewing environmental impact. In August 2014, a study was published that concluded the pipeline could produce up to 4 times more global warming pollution than the State Department's study indicated. The report blamed the discrepancy on a failure to take account of the increase in consumption due to the drop in the price of oil that would be spurred by the pipeline.On May 4, 2012, the U.S. Department of State selected Environmental Resources Management (ERM) to author a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, after the Environmental Protection Agency had found previous versions of the study, by contractor Cardno Entrix, to be extremely inadequate. Project opponents panned the study on its release, calling it a "deeply flawed analysis". An investigation by the magazine Mother Jones revealed that the State Department had redacted the biographies of the study's authors to hide their previous contract work for TransCanada and other oil companies with an economic interest in the project. Based on an analysis of public documents on the State Department website, one critic asserted that "Environmental Resources Management was paid an undisclosed amount under contract to TransCanada to write the statement". Diplomatic issues Commentator Bill Mann has linked the Keystone postponement to the Michigan Senate's rejection of Canadian funding for the proposed Gordie Howe International Bridge and to other recent instances of "U.S. government actions (and inactions) that show little concern about Canadian concerns". Mann drew attention to a Maclean's article sub-titled "we used to be friends" about U.S./Canada relations after President Obama had "insulted Canada (yet again)" over the pipeline.Canadian Ambassador Doer observes that Obama's "choice is to have it come down by a pipeline that he approves, or without his approval, it comes down on trains".During the 2014 Pacific Northwest Economic Region Summit in Whistler, B.C., Canada's US Ambassador Gary Doer stated that there is no proof, be it environmental, economic, safety or scientific, that construction work on Keystone XL should not go ahead. Doer said that all the evidence supports a favorable decision by the US government for the controversial pipeline.In contrast, the President of the Rosebud Sioux Nation, Cyril Scott, has stated that the November 14, 2014, vote in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S. House of Representatives is an "act of war", declaring: We are outraged at the lack of intergovernmental cooperation. We are a sovereign nation, and we are not being treated as such. We will close our reservation borders to Keystone XL. Authorizing Keystone XL is an act of war against our people. Geopolitical issues Proponents for the Keystone XL pipeline argue that it would allow the U.S. to increase its energy security and reduce its dependence on foreign oil. TransCanada CEO Russ Girling has argued that "the U.S. needs 10 million barrels a day of imported oil" and the debate over the proposed pipeline "is not a debate of oil versus alternative energy. This is a debate about whether you want to get your oil from Canada or Venezuela or Nigeria." However, an independent study conducted by the Cornell ILR Global Labor Institute refers to some studies (e.g. a 2011 study by Danielle Droitsch of Pembina Institute) according to which "a good portion of the oil that will gush down the KXL will probably end up being finally consumed beyond the territorial United States". It also states that the project will increase the heavy crude oil price in the Midwestern United States by diverting oil sands oil from the Midwest refineries to the Gulf Coast and export markets.The US Gulf Coast has a large concentration of refineries designed to process very heavy crude oil. At present, the refineries are dependent on heavy crude from Venezuela, including crude from Venezuela's own massive Orinoco oil sands. The United States is the number one buyer of crude oil exported from Venezuela. The large trade relationship between the US and Venezuela has persisted despite political tensions between the two countries. However, the volume of oil imported into the US from Venezuela dropped in half from 2007 to 2014, as overall Venezuelan exports have dropped, and also as Venezuela seeks to become less dependent on US purchases of its crude oil. The Keystone pipeline is seen as a way to replace imports of heavy oil-sand crude from Venezuela with more reliable Canadian heavy oil.TransCanada's Girling has also argued that if Canadian oil doesn't reach the Gulf through an environmentally friendly buried pipeline, that the alternative is oil that will be brought in by tanker, a mode of transportation that produces higher greenhouse-gas emissions and that puts the environment at greater risk. Diane Francis has argued that much of the opposition to the oil sands actually comes from foreign countries such as Nigeria, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom supply oil to the United States and who could be affected if the price of oil drops due to the new availability of oil from the pipeline. She cited as an example an effort by Saudi Arabia to stop television commercials critical of the Saudi government. TransCanada had said that development of oil sands will expand regardless of whether the crude oil is exported to the United States or alternatively to Asian markets through Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines or Kinder Morgan's Trans-Mountain line. Economic issues Temporary construction jobs The number of temporary jobs created during the two-year construction of the KXL pipeline has been estimated by proponents to be as high as 20,000, and by independent groups to be as low as 2,000. In 2011, Russ Girling, president and CEO of TransCanada, touted the positive impact of the project as "putting 20,000 US workers to work and spending $7 billion stimulating the US economy", according to a report they commissioned. These numbers have been disputed by an independent study conducted by the Cornell ILR Global Labor Institute, which found that while the Keystone XL would result in 2,500 to 4,650 temporary construction jobs, the impact will be reduced by higher oil prices in the Midwest, which will likely reduce national employment.In 2012, the US State Department estimated that the pipeline would create about 5,000 to 6,000 temporary jobs in the US during the two-year construction period, would increase gasoline availability to the Northeast and expand the Gulf refining industry. The U.S. State Department's Preliminary Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, issued in March 2013, estimated 3,900 direct jobs and 42,000 direct and indirect jobs during construction. In July 2013, Obama said "The most realistic estimates are this might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline, which might take a year or two, and then after that we're talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 jobs in an economy of 150 million working people." The estimate of 2,000 during construction came under heavy attack, while the long-term, permanent job estimates did not receive as much criticism. According to the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS), the pipeline will only create 35 permanent jobs. Effects on oil industry and consumers In 2010 Glen Perry, a petroleum engineer for Adira Energy, warned that including the Alberta Clipper pipeline owned by TransCanada's competitor Enbridge, there is an extensive overcapacity of oil pipelines from Canada. After completion of the Keystone XL line, oil pipelines to the U.S. may run nearly half-empty. The expected lack of volume combined with extensive construction cost overruns has prompted several petroleum refining companies to sue TransCanada. Suncor Energy hoped to recoup significant construction-related tolls, though the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission did not rule in their favor. According to The Globe and Mail, The refiners argue that construction overruns have raised the cost of shipping on the Canadian portion of Keystone by 145 per cent while the U.S. portion has run 92 per cent over budget. They accuse TransCanada of misleading them when they signed shipping contracts in the summer of 2007. TransCanada nearly doubled its construction estimates in October 2007, from $2.8-billion (U.S.) to $5.2-billion.In 2013, United States Democrats were concerned that Keystone XL would not provide petroleum products for domestic use, but simply facilitate getting Alberta oil sands products to American coastal ports on the Gulf of Mexico for export to China and other countries. In January 2015, Senate Republicans blocked a vote on an amendment proposed by Senator Edward J. Markey, which would have banned exports from the Keystone XL pipeline and required that the pipeline be built with steel from the United States. Effects on tax revenue Due to a 2011 exemption the state of Kansas gave TransCanada, the local authorities would lose $50 million public revenue from property taxes for a decade.In 2013, frustrated by delays in getting approval for Keystone XL (via the Gulf of Mexico), the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines (via Kitimat, BC) and the expansion of the existing TransMountain line to Vancouver, Alberta has intensified exploration of two northern projects "to help the province get its oil to tidewater, making it available for export to overseas markets". By May 2012, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had spent $9 million and $16.5 million by May 2013 to promote Keystone XL. Until Canadian crude oil accesses international prices like LLS or Maya crude oil by "getting to tidewater" (south to the U.S. Gulf ports via Keystone XL for example, west to the BC Pacific coast via the proposed Northern Gateway line to ports at Kitimat, BC or north via the northern hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk, on the Beaufort Sea), the Alberta government is losing from $4–30 billion in tax and royalty revenues as the primary product of the oil sands, Western Canadian Select (WCS), the bitumen crude oil basket, is discounted so heavily against West Texas Intermediate (WTI) while Maya crude oil, a similar product close to tidewater, is reaching peak prices. In April 2013, Calgary-based Canada West Foundation warned that Alberta is "running up against a [pipeline capacity] wall around 2016, when we will have barrels of oil we can't move".Pipeline opponents warn of disruption of farms and ranches during construction, and point to damage to water mains and sewage lines sustained during construction of an Enbridge crude oil pipeline in Michigan. A report by the Cornell University Global Labor Institute noted of the 2010 Enbridge Tar Oil Spill along the Kalamazoo River in Michigan: "The experience of Kalamazoo residents and businesses provides an insight into some of the ways a community can be affected by a tar sands pipeline spill. Pipeline spills are not just an environmental concern. Pipeline spills can also result in significant economic and employment costs, although the systematic tracking of the social, health, and economic impacts of pipeline spills is not required by law. Leaks and spills from Keystone XL and other tar sands and conventional crude pipelines could put existing jobs at risk." Safety A USA Today editorial pointed out that the 2013 Lac-Mégantic derailment in Quebec, in which crude oil carried by rail cars exploded and killed 47 people, highlights the safety of pipelines compared to truck or rail transport. The oil in the Lac-Mégantic rail cars came from the Bakken Formation in North Dakota, an area that would be served by the Keystone expansion. Increased oil production in North Dakota has exceeded pipeline capacity since 2010, leading to increasing volumes of crude oil being shipped by truck or rail to refineries. Canadian journalist Diana Furchtgott-Roth commented: "If this oil shipment had been carried through pipelines, instead of rail, families in Lac-Mégantic would not be grieving for lost loved ones today, and oil would not be polluting Lac Mégantic and the Chaudière River." A Wall Street Journal article in March 2014 points out that the main reason oil producers from the North Dakota Bakken Shale region are using rail and trucks to transport oil is economics not pipeline capacity. The Bakken oil is of a higher quality than the Canadian sand oil and can be sold to east coast refinery at a premium that they would not get sending it to Gulf refineries. Protests and opposition The project met with active public opposition when it was first announced.Bill McKibben, environmental and global warming activist and founder of 350.org, the group that organized the 2009 international protests—described by CNN as "the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history"—led the opposition to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.In the year before the 2012 United States presidential election, McKibben and other activists mounted pressure on then-President Obama, who was running for re-election. Obama had included a call to "be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil" in his 2008 United States presidential election. A broad coalition of protesters, including Phil Radford, Daryl Hannah, Dave Heineman, Ben Nelson, Mike Johanns and Susie Tompkins Buell challenged him to keep that promise.By August 11, there were over 1000 nonviolent arrests at the White House.On November 6, 2011, several thousand formed a human chain around the White House to convince Obama to block the Keystone XL project. Organizer Bill McKibben said, "this has become not only the biggest environmental flash point in many, many years, but maybe the issue in recent times in the Obama administration when he's been most directly confronted by people in the street. In this case, people willing, hopeful, almost dying for him to be the Barack Obama of 2008."In August 2012, the Tar Sands Blockade launched an indefinite tree sit in East Texas; Naomi Klein credits these blockades and direct action against the pipeline in general with popularising the global anti-extractivist Blockadia movement. On September 27, 2012, protesters began tree sitting in the path of the Keystone pipeline near Winnsboro, Texas. Eight people stood on tree platforms just ahead of where crews were cutting down trees to make way for the pipeline. On October 31, 2012, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was arrested in Texas for criminal trespass after trying to deliver food and supplies to the Keystone XL protesters. On February 17, 2013, approximately 35,000 to 50,000 protesters attended a rally in Washington, D.C. organized by The Sierra Club, 350.org, and The Hip Hop Caucus, in what Bill McKibben described as "the biggest climate rally by far, by far, by far, in U.S. history". The event featured Lennox Yearwood; Chief Jacqueline Thomas, immediate past chief of the Saik'uz First Nation; Van Jones; Crystal Lameman, of Beaver Lake Cree Nation; Michael Brune, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and others as invited speakers. Simultaneous 'solidarity' protests were also organized in several other cities across the United States, Europe, and Canada. Protesters called on President Obama to reject the planned pipeline extension when deciding the fate of the pipeline after Secretary of State John Kerry completes a review of the project.On March 2, 2014, approximately 1000–1200 protesters marched from Georgetown University to the White House to stage a protest against the Keystone Pipeline. 398 arrests were made of people tying themselves to the White House fence with zip-ties and lying on a black tarp in front of the fence. The tarp represented an oil spill, and many protesters dressed in white jumpsuits covered in black ink, symbolizing oil-covered hazmat suits, laid down upon the tarp. There is a long history of opposition to colonialism by indigenous people. In the instance of the Keystone XL pipeline, there have been many protests and actions taken against the construction of the pipeline. In may of 2019, the Sioux Nation held their own public hearing for native, and non-native people to voice their concerns about the Keystone Pipeline. In a public announcement from the Rosebud Sioux Tribe they state, “The Rosebud Sioux Tribe, along with other tribal nations, recently filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration for numerous violations of the law in the Keystone XL pipeline permitting process. The Tribes are asking the court to rescind the illegal issuance of the Keystone XL pipeline presidential permit.” Environmental concerns Environmental concerns include the potential for air pollution, and for leaks and spills, that could pollute critical water supplies and cause harm to migratory birds and other wildlife. One of the major concerns was the way in which the original route crossed the Sandhills, the large wetland ecosystem in Nebraska, and the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the largest reserves of fresh water in the world. The Sandhills region and Ogallala Aquifer Since 2010, there were concerns that a pipeline spill could threaten the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world's largest fresh water reserves. The Ogallala Aquifer spans eight states, provides drinking water for two million people, and supports $20 billion in agriculture. Critics say that a major leak could ruin drinking water and devastate the mid-western U.S. economy.On November 10, 2011, the Department of State postponed a final decision while investigating "potential alternative routes around the Sandhills in Nebraska" in response to concerns that the project was not in the United States' national interest.In its November 11 response, TransCanada pointed out fourteen different routes for Keystone XL were being studied, eight that impacted Nebraska. They included one potential alternative route in Nebraska that would have avoided the entire Sandhills region and Ogallala Aquifer and six alternatives that would have reduced pipeline mileage crossing the Sandhills or the aquifer. The Keystone XL proposal faced criticism from environmentalists and a minority of the members of the United States Congress. On November 22, 2011, the Nebraska unicameral legislature passed unanimously two bills with the governor's signature that enacted a compromise agreed upon with the pipeline builder to move the route, and approved up to US$2 million in state funding for an environmental study.On November 30, 2011, a group of Republican senators introduced legislation aimed at forcing the Obama administration to make a decision within 60 days. In December 2011, Congress passed a bill giving the Obama Administration a 60-day deadline to make a decision on the application to build the Keystone XL Pipeline.In 2011, after opposition for laying the pipeline in this area, TransCanada agreed to change the route and skip the Sandhills, even though pipeline industry spokesmen had maintained that existing pipelines carrying crude oil and refined liquid hydrocarbons have crossed over the Ogallala Aquifer for years in southeast Wyoming, eastern Colorado and New Mexico, western Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. The Pioneer crude oil pipeline crosses east–west across Nebraska, and the Pony Express pipeline, which crosses the Ogallala Aquifer in Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas, was being converted as of 2013 from natural gas to crude oil, under a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.In January 2012, President Obama rejected the application amid protests about the pipeline's impact on Nebraska's environmentally sensitive Sandhills region. The deadline for the decision had "prevented a full assessment of the pipeline's impact".On September 5, 2012, TransCanada submitted an environmental report on the new route in Nebraska, which the company says is "based on extensive feedback from Nebraskans, and reflects our shared desire to minimize the disturbance of land and sensitive resources in the state". The March 2013 U.S. Department of State Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) stated that the original proposals, would not cause "significant impacts to most resources along the proposed Project route". This included the shortening of the pipeline to 875 miles (1,408 km); its avoidance of "crossing the NDEQ-identified Sandhills Region" and "reduction of the length of pipeline crossing the Northern High Plains Aquifer system, which includes the Ogallala formation". In response to a Freedom of Information Act request for route information, the Department of State revealed on June 24, 2013, that "Neither Cardno ENTRIX nor TransCanada ever submitted GIS information to the Department of State, nor was either corporation required to do so." In response to the Department of State's report, which recommended neither acceptance nor rejection, an editor of The New York Times recommended that Obama should reject the project, which "even by the State Department's most cautious calculations—can only add to the [climate change] problem". On March 21, Mother Jones revealed that key personnel employed by Environment Resources Management (ERM), the consulting firm responsible for generating most of the SEIS, had previously performed contract work for TransCanada corporation. In addition, When the State Department released the original proposal ERM had submitted to secure the SEIS contract, portions of the work histories of key personnel were redacted.In April 2013, the EPA challenged the U.S. State Department report's conclusion that the pipeline would not result in greater oil sand production, noting that "while informative, [it] is not based on an updated energy-economic modeling effort". Overall, the EPA rated the SEIS with their category "EO-2" (EO for "environmental objections" and 2 for "insufficient information").In May 2013 Republicans in the House of Representatives defended the Northern Route Approval Act, which would allow for congressional approval of the pipeline, on the grounds that the pipeline created jobs and energy independence. If enacted the Northern Route Approval Act would waive the requirement for permits for a foreign company and bypass the need for President Obama's approval, and the debate in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate, concerned about serious environmental risks, that could result in the rejection of the pipeline.In April 2013, TransCanada Corporation changed the original proposed route of Keystone XL to minimize "disturbance of land, water resources and special areas"; the new route was approved by Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman in January 2013. On April 18, 2014, the Obama administration announced that the review of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline has been extended indefinitely, pending the result of a legal challenge to a Nebraska pipeline siting law that could change the route. On January 9, 2015, the Nebraska Supreme Court cleared the way for construction, and on the same day the House voted in favor of the pipeline. On January 29, 2015, the Keystone XL Pipeline was passed by the Senate 62–36. On February 11, 2015, the Keystone XL Pipeline was passed by the House of Representatives with the proposed Senate Amendments 270–152. The Keystone XL Pipeline bill was not officially sent to President Obama, starting the official ten-day count towards the bill becoming law without presidential signature, until February 24, 2015. Republicans delayed delivering the bill over the Presidents Day holiday weekend to ensure Congress would be in session if the president were to veto the bill. On February 24, 2015, the bill was vetoed and returned for congressional action. On March 4, 2015, the Senate held a vote and failed to override President Obama's veto of the bill; the vote was 62 to 37, less than the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto. The review by the State Department is ongoing. On June 15, 2015 the House Oversight Committee threatened to subpoena the State Department for the latter's withholding of records relevant to the process since March 2015 and calling the process "unnecessarily secretive". Despite some records being posted by consulted agencies such as the EPA, the State Department has not responded to the request. On November 2, 2015, TransCanada asked the Obama administration to suspend its permit application for the Keystone XL. Potential for oil spills University of Nebraska professor John Stansbury conducted an independent analysis which provides more detail on the potential risks for the Ogallala Aquifer. Stansbury concludes that safety assessments provided by TransCanada are misleading: "We can expect no fewer than 2 major spills per state during the 50-year projected lifetime of the pipeline. These spills could release as much as 180,000 barrels (29,000 m3) of oil each."Other items of note in Stansbury's analysis: "While TransCanada estimates that the Keystone XL will have 11 significant spills, defined as more than 50 barrels (8 m3) of crude oil, over 50 years, a more realistic assessment is 91 significant spills over the pipeline's operational lifetime. TransCanada arbitrarily and improperly adjusted spill factors to produce an estimate of one major spill on the 1,673 mi (2,692 km) of pipeline about every five years, but federal data on the actual incidence of spills on comparable pipelines indicate a more likely average of almost two major spills per year. (The existing Keystone I pipeline has had one major spill and 11 smaller spills in its first year of operation.)" "Analysis of the time needed to shut down the pipeline shows that response to a leak at a river crossing could conservatively take more than ten times longer than the 11 minutes and 30 seconds that TransCanada assumes. (After the June 2010 spill of more than 800,000 US gallons (3,000 m3) of crude oil into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River, an Enbridge tar sands pipeline—a 30-inch (760 mm) pipe compared to the 36-inch (910 mm) Keystone XL—was not completely shut down for 12 hours.)" "Realistic calculations yield worst-case spill estimates of more than 180,000 barrels (29,000 m3) in the Nebraska Sandhills above the Ogallala Aquifer, more than 160,000 barrels (25,000 m3) of crude oil at the Yellowstone River crossings, more than 140,000 barrels (22,000 m3) at the Platte River crossing and more than 120,000 barrels (19,000 m3) at the Missouri River crossing." "Contaminants from a release at the Missouri or Yellowstone River crossing would enter Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota where they would adversely affect drinking water intakes, aquatic wildlife, and recreation. Contaminants from a spill at the Platte River crossing would travel downstream unabated into the Missouri River for several hundred miles affecting drinking water intakes for hundreds of thousands of people (e.g., Lincoln, Nebraska; Omaha, Nebraska; Nebraska City, Nebraska; St. Joseph, Missouri; Kansas City, Missouri) as well as aquatic habitats and recreational activities. In addition, other constituents from the spill would pose serious risks to humans and to aquatic species in the river." "The worst-case site for such a spill is in the Sandhills region of Nebraska. The Sandhills are ancient sand dunes that have been stabilized by grasses. Because of their very permeable geology, nearly 100 percent of the annual rainfall infiltrates to a very shallow aquifer, often less than 20 feet (6 m) below the surface. This aquifer is the well-known Ogallala Aquifer that is one of the most productive and important aquifers in the world."Portions of the pipeline will also cross an active seismic zone that had a 4.3-magnitude earthquake as recently as 2002. Opponents claim that TransCanada applied to the U.S. government to use thinner steel and pump at higher pressures than normal.TransCanada CEO Russ Girling has described the Keystone Pipeline as "routine", noting that TransCanada has been building similar pipelines in North America for half a century and that there were 200,000 miles (320,000 km) of similar oil pipelines in the United States in 2011. He also stated that the Keystone Pipeline was planned to include 57 improvements above standard requirements demanded by U.S. regulators, making it "the safest pipeline ever built". Rep. Ed Whitfield, a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce concurred, saying "this is the most technologically advanced and safest pipeline ever proposed". However, while TransCanada had asserted that a set of 57 conditions will ensure Keystone XL's safe operation, Anthony Swift of the Natural Resources Defense Council asserted that all but a few of these conditions simply restate current minimum standards.TransCanada claims that they will take 100% responsibility for any potential environmental problems. According to their website, "It's our responsibility—as a good company and under law. If anything happens on the Keystone XL Pipeline, rapid response is key. That's why our Emergency Response plans are approved by state and federal agencies, and why we practice them regularly. We conduct regular emergency exercises, and aerial surveys every two weeks. We're ready to respond with a highly-trained response team standing by." Alberta oil sands Keystone XL was proposed to carry crude derived from Alberta's oil sands, not from underground reservoirs like conventional petroleum, but in a tarry fossil fuel called bitumen. A mix of clay, sand, rock which combined can be solid as a "hocky puck." To access the bitumen, Alberta's boreal forests are cut away in enormous strip mines.Different environmental groups, citizens, and politicians have raised concerns about the potential negative impacts of the Keystone XL project.The main issues are the risk of oil spills along the pipeline, which would traverse highly sensitive terrain, and 17% higher greenhouse gas emissions from the extraction of oil sands compared to extraction of conventional oil. Leaks and spills In 2016, about 400 barrels (64 m3) were released from the original Keystone pipe network via leaks, which federal investigators said resulted from a "weld anomaly".On November 17, 2017, the pipeline leaked around 9,600 barrels (1,530 m3) onto farmland near Amherst, South Dakota. The oil leak is the largest seen from the Keystone pipeline in the state. The leak lasted for several minutes, with no initial reports of damage to water sources or wildlife. Although the spill did not happen on Sioux property, it was in close enough proximity to potentially contaminate the aquifer used for water. The pipeline was immediately shut down, and TransCanada began using the pipe again 12 days after the leak. For much of late 2017, the Keystone pipeline operated at reduced pressure during remediation efforts. The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said that the failure "may have been caused by mechanical damage to the pipeline and coating associated with a weight installed on the pipeline in 2008". Later, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that a metal tracked vehicle had run over the area, damaging the pipeline. In April 2018, a federal investigation found that 408,000 US gallons (1,540 m3) of crude had spilled at the site, almost twice what TransCanada had reported. That number made it the seventh-largest onshore oil spill since 2002.In April 2018, Reuters reviewed documents that showed that Keystone had "leaked substantially more oil, and more often, in the United States than the company indicated to regulators in risk assessments before operations began in 2010."On October 31, 2019, a rupture occurred near Edinburg, North Dakota, spilling an estimated 9,120 barrels (1,450 m3) where the 45,000 US gallons (170 m3) that were not recovered from the 0.5 acre containment have spread contaminating 5 acres. This occurred while the South Dakota Water Management Board was in the middle of hearings on whether or not to allow TC Energy to use millions of gallons of water to build camps to house temporary construction workers for Keystone XL construction. 2022 spill On December 7, 2022, TC Energy in Canada initiated a shutdown of the Keystone Pipeline System in response to a 9PM Eastern Time alarm signaling a loss in pressure. TC Energy confirmed that there had been a release of oil into a creek located in Washington County, Kansas, 20 miles to the south of Steele City, Nebraska. About 588,000 gallons of tar sands crude was released. US oil prices rose about 4% the following day following news of the leak and shutdown. The leak was the largest in the United States in nearly a decade. Water supplies Pipeline construction could affect water supplies upstream of several Native American reservations, even though the pipeline does not lead through any tribal land. TC Energy is applying for permits to tap the Cheyenne River, White River (South Dakota), and Bad River (South Dakota) for use during construction primarily for drilling to install pipe, to build pump stations and to control dust. Increased carbon emissions Environmental organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) also oppose the project due to its transportation of oil from oil sands. In its March 2010 report, the NRDC stated that "the Keystone XL Pipeline undermines the U.S. commitment to a clean energy economy", instead "delivering dirty fuel at high costs". On June 23, 2010, 50 Democrats in Congress in their letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that "building this pipeline has the potential to undermine America's clean energy future and international leadership on climate change", referencing the higher input quantity of fossil fuels necessary to take the tar and turn it into a usable fuel product in comparison to other conventionally derived fossil fuels. The House Energy and Commerce Committee's chairman at the time, Representative Henry Waxman, had also urged the State Department to block Keystone XL for greenhouse gas emission reasons.In December 2010, the No Tar Sands Oil campaign, sponsored by action groups including Corporate Ethics International, NRDC, Sierra Club, 350.org, National Wildlife Federation, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and Rainforest Action Network, was launched.In September 2011, Joe Oliver, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources, sharply criticized opponents of oil sands development in a speech to the Canadian Club of Toronto, arguing that oil sands account for about 0.1% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, coal power plants powered in the U.S. generate almost 40 times more greenhouse-gas emissions than Canada's oil sands and California bitumen is more GHG-intensive than the oil sands.As of 2013, however, producing and processing tar sands oil results in roughly 14 per cent more greenhouse gas emissions than the average oil used in the U.S. The State Department's 2012 Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (Final SEIS) estimated that producing and transporting oil to the pipeline's capacity would increase greenhouse-gas emissions compared to alternative sources of oil, if the denial of the pipeline project meant that the oil would stay in the ground. "However, ... such a change is not likely to occur. [A]pproval or denial of any one crude oil transport project, including the proposed Project, is unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands, or the continued demand for heavy crude oil." To the extent that the oil would be extracted in any case, the relevant comparison would be to alternative means of transporting it; the Final SEIS considered three alternative scenarios and found that "total GHG emissions associated with construction and operation (direct and indirect) combined would be higher for each of the three scenarios than for the entire route encompassing the proposed Project".In a February 2015, the US EPA responded to the U.S. Department of State's Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (Final SEIS) for the Keystone XL Pipeline Project, that the pipeline will significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions because it will lead to the expansion of Alberta's carbon-intensive oilsands. and that over the proposed 50-year timeline of the pipeline, this could mean releasing as much as "1.37 billion more tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere". EPA concluded that due to the current relatively cheap cost of oil, companies might be less likely to set up their own developments in the oil sands. It would be too expensive for the companies to ship by rail. However, "the presence of the pipeline, which offers an inexpensive way to move the oil to market, could increase the likelihood that companies would extract from the oil sands even when prices are low". The EPA suggested that the State Department should "revisit" its prior conclusions in light of the drop in oil prices.TransCanada Corporation responded with a letter by President and CEO Russel K. Girling stating that TransCanada "rejects the EPA inference that at lower oil prices the [Keystone XL Pipeline] Project will increase the rate of oil sands production growth and accompanying greenhouse gas emissions". Girling maintained that the EPA's conclusions "are not supported by the facts outlined in the Final SEIS or actual observations of the marketplace". Public opinion polls United States Public opinion polls taken by independent national polling organizations near the beginning of the dispute showed majority support for the proposed pipeline in the U.S. A September 2013 poll by the Pew Center found 65% favored the project and 30% opposed. The same poll found the pipeline favored by majorities of men (69%), women (61%), Democrats (51%), Republicans (82%), independents (64%), as well as by those in every division of age, education, economic status, and geographic region. The only group identified by the Pew poll as opposing the pipeline was Democrats who identified themselves as liberal (41% in favor versus 54% opposed).The results of polls about the Keystone XL pipeline taken by independent national polling organizations from 2012 to 2014 varied: Gallup (March 2012): 57% government should approve, 29% government should not approve Pew Center (September 2013): 65% favor, 30% oppose Rasmussen (January 2014): 57% favor, 28% oppose (of likely voters) USA Today (January 2014): 56% favor, 41% oppose Washington Post–ABC News (April 2014): 65% government should approve, 22% government should not approve CBS News – Roper (May 2014): 56% favor, 28% opposeIn contrast, Pew's February 2017 poll showed that support for the pipeline had fallen to 42%, with 48% of polled respondents opposing the pipeline, a 17 percentage point drop in support since 2014, with the majority of the shift due to a sharp decline in support among Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents. At the time of the poll, only 17% of Democrats favored the pipeline. Support among Republicans had also fallen (to 76%) but not as steeply as among Democrats. Canada An Angus Reid Institute poll, published on March 9, 2017, showed that 48% of respondents across Canada supported the Keystone XL revival, while 33% opposed it, and 20% were uncertain. In Alberta, support was at 77%, and in Quebec at 36%. Alternative projects On November 16, 2011, Enbridge announced it was buying ConocoPhillips's 50% interest in the Seaway pipeline that flowed from the Gulf of Mexico to the Cushing hub. In cooperation with Enterprise Products Partners LP it is reversing the Seaway pipeline so that an oversupply of oil at Cushing can reach the Gulf. This project replaced the earlier proposed alternative Wrangler pipeline project from Cushing to the Gulf Coast. It began reversed operations on May 17, 2012. However, according to industries, the Seaway line alone is not enough for oil transportation to the Gulf Coast.On January 19, 2012, TransCanada announced it may shorten the initial path to remove the need for federal approval. TransCanada said that work on that section of the pipeline could start in June 2012 and be on-line by the middle to late 2013.In April 2013, it was learned that the government of Alberta was investigating, as an alternative to the pipeline south through the United States, a shorter all-Canadian pipeline north to the Arctic coast, from where the oil would be taken by tanker ships through the Arctic Ocean to markets in Asia and Europe and in August, TransCanada announced a new proposal to create a longer all-Canada pipeline, called Energy East, that would extend as far east as the port city of Saint John, New Brunswick, at the same time providing feedstock to refineries in Montreal, Quebec City, and Saint John.The Enbridge "Alberta Clipper" expansion of the existing cross-border Line 67 pipeline began in late 2013. It added 350,000 barrels (56,000 m3) per day capacity to the existing pipeline for cumulative total of 800,000 barrels (130,000 m3) per day. In late 2014 Enbridge was awaiting final approval from the US State Department and expected completion of the last phase in mid-2015. According to Enbridge, Line 67 Upgrade Project Phase 2 was completed, and entered into service in July 2015. Lawsuits In September 2009, independent refiner CVR sued TransCanada for Keystone Pipeline tolls seeking $250 million damage compensation or release from transportation agreements. CVR alleged that the final tolls for the Canadian segment of the pipeline were 146% higher than initially presented, while the tolls for the U.S. segment were 92% higher. In April 2010, three smaller refineries sued TransCanada to break Keystone transportation contracts, saying the new pipeline has been beset with cost overruns.In October 2009, a suit was filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council that challenged the pipeline on the grounds that its permit was based on a deficient environmental impact statement. The suit was thrown out by a federal judge on procedural grounds, ruling that the NRDC lacked the authority to bring it.In June 2012, Sierra Club, Clean Energy Future Oklahoma, and the East Texas Sub Regional Planning Commission filed a joint complaint in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma seeking injunctive relief and petitioning for a review of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' action in issuing Nationwide Permit 12 permits for the Cushing, Oklahoma, to the Gulf Coast portion of the pipeline. The suit alleges that, contrary to the federal Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 701 et. seq., the Corps' issuance of the permits was arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion.In early January 2016, TransCanada announced it would initiate an ISDS claim under NAFTA against the United States, seeking $15 billion in damages and calling the denial of a permit for Keystone XL "arbitrary and unjustified". See also Climate change in the United States List of oil pipelines List of oil refineries List of articles about Canadian oil sands List of pipeline accidents in the United States in the 21st century Notes References Further reading Congressional Research Service, R41668. "Keystone XL Pipeline Project: Key Issues" (PDF). No. December 2, 2013. Congressional Research Service, R42611. "Oil Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline: Background and Selected Environmental Issues" (PDF). No. April 14, 2014. Congressional Research Service, R43415. "Keystone XL: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Assessments in the Final Environmental Impact Statement". No. April 5, 2017. Congressional Research Service, R43261. "Presidential Permits for Border Crossing Energy Facilities". No. August 1, 2017. Congressional Research Service, IN10825. "Keystone XL Pipeline: Recent Developments". No. November 21, 2017. Grossman, Zoltán (2017). Unlikely Alliances: Native Nations and White Communities Join to Defend Rural Lands (Indigenous Confluences). Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. ISBN 978-0295741512. External links 2012 Presidential Permit application documents from the United States Department of State 2017 Presidential Permit application documents from the United States Department of State Keystone Pipeline Project, TC Energy Interactive maps of Keystone XL route from Canadian border to Texas Gulf Coast, Keystone Mapping Project

pastoralism

Pastoralism is a form of animal husbandry where domesticated animals (known as "livestock") are released onto large vegetated outdoor lands (pastures) for grazing, historically by nomadic people who moved around with their herds. The animal species involved include cattle, camels, goats, yaks, llamas, reindeer, horses, and sheep.Pastoralism occurs in many variations throughout the world, generally where environmental characteristics such as aridity, poor soils, cold or hot temperatures, and lack of water make crop-growing difficult or impossible. Operating in more extreme environments with more marginal lands means that pastoral communities are very vulnerable to the effects of global warming.Pastoralism remains a way of life in many geographic areas, including Africa, the Tibetan plateau, the Eurasian steppes, the Andes, Patagonia, the Pampas, Australia and many other places. As of 2019, between 200 million and 500 million people globally practiced pastoralism, and 75% of all countries had pastoral communities.Pastoral communities have different levels of mobility. Sedentary pastoralism has become more common as the hardening of political borders, land tenures, expansion of crop farming, and construction of fences and dedicated agricultural buildings all reduce the ability to move livestock around freely, leading to the rise of pastoral farming on established grazing-zones (sometimes called "ranches"). Sedentary pastoralists may also raise crops and livestock together in the form of mixed farming, for the purpose of diversifying productivity, obtaining manure for organic farming, and improving pasture conditions for their livestock. Mobile pastoralism includes moving herds locally across short distances in search of fresh forage and water (something that can occur daily or even within a few hours); as well as transhumance, where herders routinely move animals between different seasonal pastures across regions; and nomadism, where nomadic pastoralists and their families move with the animals in search for any available grazing-grounds – without much long-term planning. Grazing in woodlands and forests may be referred to as silvopastoralism. Those who practice pastoralism are called "pastoralists". Pastoralist herds interact with their environment, and mediate human relations with the environment as a way of turning uncultivated plants (like wild grass) into food. In many places, grazing herds on savannas and in woodlands can help maintain the biodiversity of such landscapes and prevent them from evolving into dense shrublands or forests. Grazing and browsing at the appropriate levels often can increase biodiversity in Mediterranean climate regions. Pastoralists shape ecosystems in different ways: some communities use fire to make ecosystems more suitable for grazing and browsing animals. Origins One theory suggests that pastoralism developed from mixed farming. Bates and Lees proposed that the incorporation of irrigation into farming resulted in specialization. Advantages of mixed farming include reducing risk of failure, spreading labour, and re-utilizing resources. The importance of these advantages and disadvantages to different farmers or farming societies differs according to the sociocultural preferences of the farmers and the biophysical conditions as determined by rainfall, radiation, soil type, and disease. The increased productivity of irrigation agriculture led to an increase in population and an added impact on resources. Bordering areas of land remained in use for animal breeding. This meant that large distances had to be covered by herds to collect sufficient forage. Specialization occurred as a result of the increasing importance of both intensive agriculture and pastoralism. Both agriculture and pastoralism developed alongside each other, with continuous interactions.A different theory suggests that pastoralism evolved from hunting and gathering. Hunters of wild goats and sheep were knowledgeable about herd mobility and the needs of the animals. Such hunters were mobile and followed the herds on their seasonal rounds. Undomesticated herds were chosen to become more controllable for the proto-pastoralist nomadic hunter and gatherer groups by taming and domesticating them. Hunter-gatherers' strategies in the past have been very diverse and contingent upon the local environmental conditions, like those of mixed farmers. Foraging strategies have included hunting or trapping big game and smaller animals, fishing, collecting shellfish or insects, and gathering wild-plant foods such as fruits, seeds, and nuts. These diverse strategies for survival amongst the migratory herds could also provide an evolutionary route towards nomadic pastoralism. Resources Pastoralism occurs in uncultivated areas. Wild animals eat the forage from the marginal lands and humans survive from milk, blood, and often meat of the herds and often trade by-products like wool and milk for money and food.Pastoralists do not exist at basic subsistence. Pastoralists often compile wealth and participate in international trade. Pastoralists have trade relations with agriculturalists, horticulturalists, and other groups. Pastoralists are not extensively dependent on milk, blood, and meat of their herd. McCabe noted that when common property institutions are created, in long-lived communities, resource sustainability is much higher, which is evident in the East African grasslands of pastoralist populations. However, the property rights structure is only one of the many different parameters that affect the sustainability of resources, and common or private property per se, does not necessarily lead to sustainability.Some pastoralists supplement herding with hunting and gathering, fishing and/or small-scale farming or pastoral farming. Mobility Mobility allows pastoralists to adapt to the environment, which opens up the possibility for both fertile and infertile regions to support human existence. Important components of pastoralism include low population density, mobility, vitality, and intricate information systems. The system is transformed to fit the environment rather than adjusting the environment to support the "food production system." Mobile pastoralists can often cover a radius of a hundred to five hundred kilometers.Pastoralists and their livestock have impacted the environment. Lands long used for pastoralism have transformed under the forces of grazing livestock and anthropogenic fire. Fire was a method of revitalizing pastureland and preventing forest regrowth. The collective environmental weights of fire and livestock browsing have transformed landscapes in many parts of the world. Fire has permitted pastoralists to tend the land for their livestock. Political boundaries are based on environmental boundaries. The Maquis shrublands of the Mediterranean region are dominated by pyrophytic plants that thrive under conditions of anthropogenic fire and livestock grazing.Nomadic pastoralists have a global food-producing strategy depending on the management of herd animals for meat, skin, wool, milk, blood, manure, and transport. Nomadic pastoralism is practiced in different climates and environments with daily movement and seasonal migration. Pastoralists are among the most flexible populations. Pastoralist societies have had field armed men protect their livestock and their people and then to return into a disorganized pattern of foraging. The products of the herd animals are the most important resources, although the use of other resources, including domesticated and wild plants, hunted animals, and goods accessible in a market economy are not excluded. The boundaries between states impact the viability of subsistence and trade relations with cultivators. Pastoralist strategies typify effective adaptation to the environment. Precipitation differences are evaluated by pastoralists. In East Africa, different animals are taken to specific regions throughout the year that corresponds to the seasonal patterns of precipitation. Transhumance is the migration of livestock and pastoralists between seasonal pastures.In the Himalayas, pastoralists have often historically and traditionally depended on rangelands lying across international borders. The Himalayas contain several international borders, such as those between India and China, India and Nepal, Bhutan and China, India and Pakistan, and Pakistan and China. With the growth of nation states in Asia since the mid-twentieth century, mobility across the international borders in these countries have tended to be more and more restricted and regulated. As a consequence, the old, customary arrangements of trans-border pastoralism have generally tended to disintegrate, and trans-border pastoralism has declined. Within these countries, pastoralism is often at conflict these days with new modes of community forestry, such as Van Panchayats (Uttarakhand) and Community Forest User Groups (Nepal), which tend to benefit settled agricultural communities more. Frictions have also tended to arise between pastoralists and development projects such as dam-building and the creation of protected areas.Some pastoralists are constantly moving, which may put them at odds with sedentary people of towns and cities. The resulting conflicts can result in war for disputed lands. These disputes are recorded in ancient times in the Middle East, as well as for East Asia. Other pastoralists are able to remain in the same location which results in longer-standing housing. Different mobility patterns can be observed: Somali pastoralists keep their animals in one of the harshest environments but they have evolved of the centuries. Somalis have well developed pastoral culture where complete system of life and governance has been refined. Somali poetry depicts humans interactions, pastoral animals, beasts on the prowl, and other natural things such the rain, celestial events and historic events of significance. Wise sage Guled Haji coined a proverb that encapsulates the centrality of water in pastoral life: Mobility was an important strategy for the Ariaal; however with the loss of grazing land impacted by the growth in population, severe drought, the expansion of agriculture, and the expansion of commercial ranches and game parks, mobility was lost. The poorest families were driven out of pastoralism and into towns to take jobs. Few Ariaal families benefited from education, healthcare, and income earning.The flexibility of pastoralists to respond to environmental change was reduced by colonization. For example, mobility was limited in the Sahel region of Africa with settlement being encouraged. The population tripled and sanitation and medical treatment were improved. Environment knowledge Pastoralists have mental maps of the value of specific environments at different times of year. Pastoralists have an understanding of ecological processes and the environment. Information sharing is vital for creating knowledge through the networks of linked societies.Pastoralists produce food in the world's harshest environments, and pastoral production supports the livelihoods of rural populations on almost half of the world's land. Several hundred million people are pastoralists, mostly in Africa and Asia. ReliefWeb reported that "Several hundred million people practice pastoralism—the use of extensive grazing on rangelands for livestock production, in over 100 countries worldwide. The African Union estimated that Africa has about 268 million pastoralists—over a quarter of the total population—living on about 43 percent of the continent’s total land mass." Pastoralists manage rangelands covering about a third of the Earth's terrestrial surface and are able to produce food where crop production is not possible. Pastoralism has been shown, "based on a review of many studies, to be between 2 and 10 times more productive per unit of land than the capital intensive alternatives that have been put forward". However, many of these benefits go unmeasured and are frequently squandered by policies and investments that seek to replace pastoralism with more capital intensive modes of production. They have traditionally suffered from poor understanding, marginalization and exclusion from dialogue. The Pastoralist Knowledge Hub, managed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN serves as a knowledge repository on technical excellence on pastoralism as well as "a neutral forum for exchange and alliance building among pastoralists and stakeholders working on pastoralist issues".The Afar pastoralists in Ethiopia uses an indigenous communication method called dagu for information. This helps them in getting crucial information about climate and availability of pastures at various locations. Farm animal genetic resource There is a variation in genetic makeup of the farm animals driven mainly by natural and human based selection. For example, pastoralists in large parts of Sub Saharan Africa are preferring livestock breeds which are adapted to their environment and able to tolerate drought and diseases. However, in other animal production systems these breeds are discouraged and more productive exotic ones are favored. This situation could not be left unaddressed due to the changes in market preferences and climate all over the world, which could lead to changes in livestock diseases occurrence and decline forage quality and availability. Hence pastoralists can maintain farm animal genetic resources by conserving local livestock breeds. Generally conserving farm animal genetic resources under pastoralism is advantageous in terms of reliability and associated cost. Tragedy of the commons Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons (1968) described how common property resources, such as the land shared by pastoralists, eventually become overused and ruined. According to Hardin's paper, the pastoralist land use strategy was unstable and a cause of environmental degradation. One of Hardin's conditions for a "tragedy of the commons" is that people cannot communicate with each other or make agreements and contracts. Many scholars have pointed out that this is implausible, and yet it is applied in development projects around the globe, motivating the destruction of community and other governance systems that have managed sustainable pastoral systems for thousands of years. The outcomes have often been disastrous. In her book Governing the Commons, Elinor Ostrom showed that communities were not trapped and helpless amid diminishing commons. She argued that a Common-pool resource, such as grazing lands used for pastoralism, can be managed more sustainably through community groups and cooperatives than through privatization or total governmental control. Ostrom was awarded a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her work.Pastoralists in the Sahel zone in Africa were held responsible for the depletion of resources. The depletion of resources was actually triggered by a prior interference and punitive climate conditions. Hardin's paper suggested a solution to the problems, offering a coherent basis for privatization of land, which stimulates the transfer of land from tribal peoples to the state or to individuals. The privatized programs impact the livelihood of the pastoralist societies while weakening the environment. Settlement programs often serve the needs of the state in reducing the autonomy and livelihoods of pastoral people.The violent herder–farmer conflicts in Nigeria, Mali, Sudan, Ethiopia and other countries in the Sahel and Horn of Africa regions have been exacerbated by climate change, land degradation, and population growth.It has also been shown that pastoralism supports human existence in harsh environments and often represents a sustainable approach to land use. See also Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture Herding Holistic management Pastoral society Pastoral (or bucolic) – related genre of literature, art, and music References Bibliography Fagan, B. (1999). "Drought Follows the Plow", adapted from Floods, Famines and Emperors: Basic Books. Fratkin, E. (1997). "Pastoralism: Governance & Development Issues". Annual Review of Anthropology, 26: 235–261. Hardin, G. (1968). “The Tragedy of the Commons". Science, 162(3859), 1243–1248. Angioni, Giulio (1989). I pascoli erranti. Antropologia del pastore in Sardegna. Napoli, Liguori. ISBN 978-8820718619. Hole, F. (1996). "The context of caprine domestication in the Zagros region'". in The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia. D.R. Harris (ed.). London, University College of London: 263–281. Lees, S & Bates, D. (1974). "The Origins of Specialized Nomadic Pastoralism: A Systematic Model". American Antiquity, 39, 2. Levy, T.E. (1983). "Emergence of specialized pastoralism in the Levant". World Archaeology 15(1): 15–37. Moran, E. (2006). People and Nature: An Introduction to Human Ecological Relations. UK: Blackwell Publishing. Pyne, Stephen J. (1997). Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-97596-2. Townsend, P. (2009). Environmental Anthropology: From Pigs to Policies. United States of America: Waveland Press. Wilson, K.B. (1992). "Re-Thinking the Pastoral Ecological Impact in East Africa". Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters, 2(4): 143–144. Toutain B., Marty A., Bourgeot A. Ickowicz A. & Lhoste P. (2012). Pastoralism in dryland areas. A case study in sub-Saharan Africa. Les dossiers thématiques du CSFD. N°9. January 2013. CSFD/Agropolis International, Montpellier, France. 60 p.

ethical eating

Ethical eating or food ethics refers to the moral consequences of food choices, both those made by humans and animals. Common concerns are damage to the environment, exploitive labor practices, food shortages for others, inhumane treatment of food animals, and the unintended effects of food policy. Ethical eating is a type of ethical consumerism. Concerns Environmental The extent of environmental impacts depends on the methods of food production and types of food. The Union of Concerned Scientists advises that avoiding eating beef may potentially help the environment, because of the large amounts of water needed to produce beef, the pollution from fecal, ammonia, carbon dioxide and methane waste associated with raising cows, the physical damage from grazing, and the destruction of wildlife habitat and rainforests to produce land for grazing. Industrially produced meat, such as that from animals raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), has "the greatest impact of any food product on the environment". Livestock production takes up the majority of agricultural land use, which ultimately results in the increase of methane and nitrous oxide emissions. These two gases are known for being harmful and damaging to the environment. It also takes 7 kilograms of grain to produce 1 kilogram of beef, and the process to convert this requires even more energy and water usage. This poses another ethical dilemma, which is choosing to feed the cattle over people in poverty. The latter is what brings in the most revenue, so that is where the attention and resources go towards. Packaging of commercially produced foods is also an area of concern, because of the environmental impact of both the production of the packaging and the disposal of the packaging. Transportation of commercially produced goods can influence the environmental impact of the food products. Labor practices Within the food system there are many low-paid occupations. Many farm workers are paid below-minimum wages or work in substandard conditions, especially farm workers in developing countries and migrant workers in industrialized nations. Through the H-2A guest worker program, farms are able to hire for seasonal work or sometimes grant visas to workers. Due to the cost of this program, the administration of the program has been delayed. Year-round food and farm industries have become reliant on undocumented labor because they are unable to use the H-2 guest worker program. More recently, the topic of concern has been over labor shortages. The solution is investing into automation; new technologies have developed to the point where robots can now perform the tasks of an employee. Jobs within food processing catering and food retailing are also often poorly paid and sometimes hazardous. The conditions in the fields require repetition of the same movements-with little to no breaks, and the workers are oftentimes exposed to toxic chemicals used on the crops. Factory farms are just as dangerous, as workers inhale gas from manure pits. The hydrogen sulfide in the manure has been known to cause bronchitis in the lungs, among other threatening health conditions. Although meat packing plant workers receive better pay, they risk their well-being on the job. The work is presented like an assembly line, and the employees each have to go through the same motions at a fast pace. Many employees have been sent to the hospital from incidents related to the knives and machinery they use. Distribution of wealth Since the 1980s, policies promoting global free trade have increased the amount of food exported from poorer countries, which may adversely affect the food available for their own populations. Campaign to reduce levels of food imports, however, may reduce the incomes of farmers in poorer countries, who rely on export sales. Food availability Since the 1970s, the food system has become increasingly global and a small number of multi-national corporations now dominate trade in many food products. One result is that the proportion of industrially processed foods in diets is increasing globally. Animal welfare The welfare of animals who are farmed for food is considered a major source of concern, especially when they are farmed intensively, which can lead to negative welfare outcomes. Specific food choices Meat Some ethicists argue that the keeping and killing of animals for human consumption is in itself unethical. Others point out that animal husbandry is "essential to sustainable farms, which don't rely on fossil fuels and chemicals," rather using animal waste as fertilizer and animal activity as weed and pest control and using animals to "convert vegetation that's inedible to humans, and growing on marginal, uncultivated land, into food."The method in which food animals are raised and the type of food animal affect the ethics of eating that animal. Farm-raising is a method of raising food animals with lesser environmental impacts. Dairy and eggs Dairy and egg production have ethical consequences, in particular in large-scale industrialized production. Chickens and milk-animals raised in industrial operations are often treated less fairly for commercial purposes. Male chicks serve no use in the egg industry because they can't lay eggs or be used for meat production. Shortly after hatching they are separated and placed onto a conveyor belt to be killed. Sick and weak female chicks are also inspected and grouped together with the males to be terminated. The two ways of doing this involve either being thrown into a grinder or being gassed to death. The healthy females are transported to another facility where they grow until they are able to lay eggs. Once those chickens are unable to produce more eggs, they are then killed. This usually happens around 18 months, which is premature for their typical lifespan. This is due to the unnatural conditions for the chickens, such as confinement in battery cages, surgical beak procedures, forced molting, and genetic mutations that lead to health complications.Small-scale production of eggs, such as by backyard chicken raisers and small diversified farms raising pastured birds or milk-animals, are less ethically fraught but still create some issues for ethicists. Seafood Industrial fishing has broad effects with ethical consequences. An example is nutrient and chemical pollution. The seafood industry has also been criticized due to issues with forced labor. Much of the seafood in the United States is imported from overseas, which means that certain regulations are out of jurisdiction and no longer apply. The standards aren't as high in other countries, which has led to problems with extortion. For example, Thailand has been known to participate in illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing. Ships and vessels depend on third parties for recruitment, meaning U.S. companies that get seafood from international locations are unable to keep track of supply chains. It's common for these third party agencies to hire migrants, who are easier to take advantage because of their vulnerability. Human trafficking has been another issue in some regions. Crops Some foods produced in developing countries are exported in quantities that threaten the ability of local residents to affordably obtain their traditional foods. Western demand for quinoa, a traditional food in Bolivia Peru and Ecuador, has become so high that producers are eating significantly less of the grain, preferring to sell it for import instead and sparking concerns about malnutrition. Criticism Some critics of the food ethics movement argue that parsing the various concerns is futile.Fairtrade International, the certifying body for Fair Trade products, has been accused of "misleading consumers about its ability to monitor production practices" and giving Fairtrade certification to at least one coffee association despite the fact they were "illegally growing some 20 per cent of its coffee in protected national forest land." References Further reading Kaplan, David M. (ed.). The Philosophy of Food, University of California Press, 2012. Hardy, Anne, (2016). "Food Poisoning: An On-going Saga". History & Policy.

carbon footprint

The carbon footprint (or greenhouse gas footprint) makes it possible to compare the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted from an activity, product, company or country. Carbon footprints are usually reported in tonnes of emissions (CO2-equivalent) per unit of comparison. Such units includes year, person, kilogram of protein and kilometer travelled. A product's carbon footprint includes the emissions for the entire life cycle. These run from the production along the supply chain to its final consumption and disposal. Similarly an organization's carbon footprint includes the direct as well as the indirect emissions that it causes. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol that is used for carbon accounting of organizations calls these Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. There are several methodologies and online tools to calculate the carbon footprint. They depend on whether the focus is on a country, organization, product or individual person. For example, the carbon footprint of a product could help consumers decide which product to buy if they want to be climate aware. For climate change mitigation activities, the carbon footprint can help distinguish those economic activities with a high footprint from those with a low footprint. So the carbon footprint concept allows everyone to make comparisons between the climate impacts of individuals, products, companies and countries. It also helps people devise strategies and priorities for reducing the carbon footprint. To express a carbon footprint we usually use the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) per unit of comparison. This sums up all the greenhouse gas emissions. It includes all greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide. And it looks at emissions from economic activities, events, organizations and services. In some definitions, only the carbon dioxide emissions are taken into account. These do not include other greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide.We use various methods to calculate the carbon footprint of different entities. For organizations we commonly use the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. It includes three carbon emission scopes. Scope 1 refers to direct carbon emissions. Scope 2 and 3 refer to indirect carbon emissions. Scope 3 emissions are those indirect emissions that result from the activities of an organization but come from sources which they do not own or control. For countries we can use consumption-based emissions accounting to calculate their carbon footprint for a given year. Consumption-based accounting using input-output analysis backed by super-computing makes it possible to analyse global supply chains. Countries also prepare national GHG inventories for the UNFCCC. The GHG emissions listed in those national inventories are only from activities in the country itself. We call this approach territorial-based accounting or production-based accounting. They do not take into account production of goods and services imported on behalf of residents. Consumption-based accounting does reflect emissions from goods and services imported from other countries. Consumption-based accounting is therefore more comprehensive. This comprehensive carbon footprint reporting including Scope 3 emissions deals with gaps in current systems. Countries' GHG inventories for the UNFCCC do not include international transport. Comprehensive carbon footprint reporting looks at the final demand for emissions, to where the consumption of the goods and services takes place. Definition A 2011 article gives the following definition of carbon footprint. "A measure of the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) emissions of a defined population, system or activity, considering all relevant sources, sinks and storage within the spatial and temporal boundary of the population, system or activity of interest. Calculated as carbon dioxide equivalent using the relevant 100-year global warming potential (GWP100)."Scientists report carbon footprints in terms of equivalents of tonnes of CO2 emissions (CO2-equivalent). They may report them per year, per person, per kilogram of protein, per kilometer travelled, and so on. In the definition of carbon footprint, some scientists include only CO2. But more commonly they include several of the important greenhouse gases. They can compare various greenhouse gases by using carbon dioxide equivalents over a relevant time scale, like 100 years. Some organizations use the term greenhouse gas footprint or climate footprint to emphasize that all greenhouse gases are included, not just carbon dioxide. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol includes all of the most important greenhouse gases. "The standard covers the accounting and reporting of seven greenhouse gases covered by the Kyoto Protocol – carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PCFs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) and nitrogen trifluoride (NF3)."In comparison, the IPCC definition of carbon footprint in 2022 covers only carbon dioxide. It defines the carbon footprint as the "measure of the exclusive total amount of emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) that is directly and indirectly caused by an activity or is accumulated over the lifecycle stages of a product.": 1796  The IPCC report's authors adopted the same definition that had been proposed in 2007 in the UK. That publication included only carbon dioxide in the definition of carbon footprint. It justified this with the argument that other greenhouse gases were more difficult to quantify. This is because of their differing global warming potentials. They also stated that an inclusion of all greenhouse gases would make the carbon footprint indicator less practical. But there are disadvantages to this approach. One disadvantage of not including methane is that some products or sectors that have a high methane footprint such as livestock appear less harmful for the climate than they actually are. Types of greenhouse gas emissions The greenhouse gas protocol is a set of standards for tracking greenhouse gas emissions. The standards divide emissions into three scopes (Scope 1, 2 and 3) within the value chain. Greenhouse gas emissions caused directly by the organization such as by burning fossil fuels are referred to as Scope 1. Emissions caused indirectly by an organization, such as by purchasing secondary energy sources like electricity, heat, cooling or steam are called Scope 2. Lastly, indirect emissions associated with upstream or downstream processes are called Scope 3. Direct carbon emissions (Scope 1) Direct or Scope 1 carbon emissions come from sources on the site that is producing a product or delivering a service. An example for industry would be the emissions related to burning a fuel on site. On the individual level, emissions from personal vehicles or gas-burning stoves would fall under Scope 1. Indirect carbon emissions (Scope 2 and 3) Indirect carbon emissions are emissions from sources upstream or downstream from the process being studied. They are also known as Scope 2 or Scope 3 emissions.Scope 2 emissions are the indirect emissions related to purchasing electricity, heat, or steam used on site. Examples of upstream carbon emissions include transportation of materials and fuels, any energy used outside of the production facility, and waste produced outside the production facility. Examples of downstream carbon emissions include any end-of-life process or treatments, product and waste transportation, and emissions associated with selling the product. The GHG Protocol says it is important to calculate upstream and downstream emissions. There could be some double counting. This is because upstream emissions of one person's consumption patterns could be someone else's downstream emissions Scope 3 emissions are all other indirect emissions derived from the activities of an organization. But they are from sources they do not own or control. The GHG Protocol's Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard allows companies to assess their entire value chain emissions impact and identify where to focus reduction activities.Scope 3 emission sources include emissions from suppliers and product users. These are also known as the value chain. Transportation of good, and other indirect emissions are also part of this scope. In 2022 about 30% of US companies reported Scope 3 emissions. The International Sustainability Standards Board is developing a recommendation to include Scope 3 emissions in all GHG reporting. Purpose and strengths The current rise in global average temperature is more rapid than previous changes. It is primarily caused by humans who are burning fossil fuels. The increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is also due to deforestation and agricultural and industrial practices. These include cement production. The two most notable greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide and methane. Greenhouse gas emissions, and hence humanity's carbon footprint, have been increasing during the 21st century. The Paris Agreement aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to limit the rise in global temperature to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.The carbon footprint concept makes comparisons between the climate impacts of individuals, products, companies and countries. A carbon footprint label on products could enable consumers to choose products with a lower carbon footprint if they wanted to contribute to climate change mitigation efforts. For meat products for example, such a label could make it clear that beef has a higher carbon footprint than chicken.Understanding the size of an organization's carbon footprint makes it possible to devise a strategy to reduce it. For most businesses the vast majority of emissions do not come from activities on site, known as Scope 1, or from energy supplied to the organization, known as Scope 2. Instead they come from Scope 3 emissions. They come from the extended upstream and downstream supply chain. Therefore ignoring Scope 3 emissions makes it impossible to detect all emissions of importance. This will limit options for mitigation. Large companies in sectors such as clothing or automobiles would need to examine more than 100,000 supply chain pathways to fully report their carbon footprints.The importance of displacement of carbon emissions has been known for some years. Scientists also call this carbon leakage. The idea of carbon footprint addresses concerns of carbon leakage which the Paris Agreement does not cover. Carbon leakage occurs when importing countries outsource production to exporting countries. The outsourcing countries are often rich countries while the exporters are often low-income countries. The displacement of impacts is typically from developed to developing countries. Countries can make it appear that their GHG emissions are falling by moving dirty industries abroad. But when you look at their emissions from a consumption perspective they could be increasing.Carbon leakage and the related international trade have a range of environmental impacts. These include increased air pollution, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, raw material usage, and energy depletion.Scholars have argued in favour of using both consumption-based and production-based accounting. This helps establish shared producer and consumer responsibility. Currently countries report on their annual GHG inventory to the UNFCCC based on their territorial emissions. This is known as the territorial-based approach or production-based approach. Including consumption-based calculations in the UNFCCC reporting requirements would help close loopholes by addressing the challenge of carbon leakage.The Paris Agreement currently does not require countries to include in their national totals the GHG emissions associated with international transport. These emissions are reported separately. They are not subject to the limitation and reduction commitments of Annex 1 Parties under the Climate Convention and Kyoto Protocol. The carbon footprint methodology includes GHG emissions associated with international transport. This means it assigns emissions caused by international trade to the importing country. Underlying concepts for calculations The calculation of the carbon footprint of a product, service or sector requires expert knowledge and careful examination of what is to be included. Carbon footprints can be calculated at different scales. They can apply to whole countries, cities, neighborhoods and also sectors, companies and products. Several free online carbon footprint calculators exist to calculate personal carbon footprints.Software such as the "Scope 3 Evaluator" can help companies report emissions throughout their value chain. The software tools can help consultants and researchers to model global sustainability footprints. In each situation there are a number of questions that need to be answered. These include which activities are linked to which emissions, and which proportion should be attributed to which company. Software is essential for company management. But there is a need for new ways of enterprise resource planning to improve corporate sustainability performance.To achieve 95% carbon footprint coverage, it would be necessary to assess 12 million individual supply-chain contributions. This is based on analyzing 12 sectoral case studies. The Scope 3 calculations can be made easier using input-output analysis. This is a technique originally developed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Wassily Leontief. Consumption-based emission accounting based on input-output analysis Consumption-based emission accounting traces the impacts of demand for goods and services along the global supply chain to the end-consumer. It is also called consumption-based carbon accounting. In contrast, a production-based approach to calculating GHG emissions is not a carbon footprint analysis. This approach is also called a territorial-based approach. The production-based approach includes only impacts physically produced in the country in question. Consumption-based accounting redistributes the emissions from production-based accounting. It considers that emissions in another country are necessary for the home country's consumption bundle.Consumer-based accounting is based on input-output analysis. It is used at the highest levels for any economic research question related to environmental or social impacts. Analysis of global supply chains is possible using consumption-based accounting with input-output analysis assisted by super-computing capacity.Leontief created Input-output analysis (IO) to demonstrate the relationship between consumption and production in an economy. It incorporates the entire supply chain. It uses input-output tables from countries' national accounts. It also uses international data such as UN Comtrade and Eurostat. Input-output analysis has been extended globally to multi-regional input-output analysis (MRIO). Innovations and technology enabling the analysis of billions of supply chains made this possible. Standards set by the United Nations underpin this analysis.: 280  The analysis enables a Structural Path Analysis. This scans and ranks the top supply chain nodes and paths. It conveniently lists hotspots for urgent action. Input-output analysis has increased in popularity because of its ability to examine global value chains. Combination with life cycle analysis (LCA) Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology for assessing all environmental impacts associated with the life cycle of a commercial product, process, or service. It is not limited to the greenhouse gas emissions. It is also called life cycle analysis. It includes water pollution, air pollution, ecotoxicity and similar types of pollution. Some widely recognized procedures for LCA are included in the ISO 14000 series of environmental management standards. A standard called ISO 14040:2006 provides the framework for conducting an LCA study. ISO 14060 family of standards provides further sophisticated tools. These are used to quantify, monitor, report and validate or verify GHG emissions and removals.Greenhouse gas product life cycle assessments can also comply with specifications such as Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 2050 and the GHG Protocol Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard.An advantage of LCA is the high level of detail that can be obtained on-site or by liaising with suppliers. However, LCA has been hampered by the artificial construction of a boundary after which no further impacts of upstream suppliers are considered. This can introduce significant truncation errors. LCA has been combined with input-output analysis. This enables on-site detailed knowledge to be incorporated. IO connects to global economic databases to incorporate the entire supply chain. Critique Relationship with other environmental impacts A focus on carbon footprints can lead people to ignore or even exacerbate other related environmental issues of concern. These include biodiversity loss, ecotoxicity and habitat destruction. It may not be easy to measure these other human impacts on the environment with a single indicator like the carbon footprint. Consumers may think that the carbon footprint is a proxy for environmental impact. In many cases this is not correct.: 222  There can even be trade-offs between reducing the carbon footprint and environmental protection goals. One example is the use of biofuel. Biofuel is a renewable energy source and can reduce the carbon footprint of energy supply. But it can also pose ecological challenges during its production. This is because it is often produced in monocultures with ample use of fertilizers and pesticides.: 222  Another example is offshore wind parks. These could have unintended impacts on marine ecosystems.: 223 The carbon footprint analysis solely focuses on greenhouse gas emissions, unlike a life-cycle assessment which is much broader and looks at all environmental impacts. Therefore, it is useful to stress in communication activities that the carbon footprint is just one in a family of indicators (e.g. ecological footprint, water footprint, land footprints and material footprints), and should not be looked at in isolation. In fact, the carbon footprint can be treated as one component of the ecological footprint.The "Sustainable Consumption and Production Hotspot Analysis Tool" (SCP-HAT) is a suitable tool to put carbon footprint analysis into a wider perspective. It includes a number of socio-economic and environmental indicators. It offers calculations that are either consumption-based, following the carbon footprint approach, or production-based. The database of the SCP-HAT tool is underpinned by input-output analysis. This means it includes Scope 3 emissions. The IO methodology is also governed by UN standards.: 280  It is based on input-output tables of countries' national accounts and international trade data such as UN Comtrade. Therefore it is comparable worldwide. Shifting responsibility from corporations to individuals Critics argue that the original aim of promoting the personal carbon footprint concept was to shift responsibility away from corporations and institutions and on to personal lifestyle choices. The fossil fuel company BP ran a large advertising campaign for the personal carbon footprint in 2005 which helped popularize this concept. This strategy, employed by many major fossil fuel companies, has been criticized for trying to shift the blame for negative consequences of those industries on to individual choices.Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes of Harvard University examined this question. They argued that concepts such as carbon footprints "hamstring us, and they put blinders on us, to the systemic nature of the climate crisis and the importance of taking collective action to address the problem". Differing boundaries for calculations The term carbon footprint has been applied to limited calculations that do not include Scope 3 emissions or the entire supply chain. This can lead to claims of misleading customers with regards to the real carbon footprints of companies or products. Reported values Greenhouse gas emissions overview By products The Carbon Trust has worked with UK manufacturers to produce "thousands of carbon footprint assessments". As of 2014 the Carbon Trust state they have measured 28,000 certifiable product carbon footprints. Food Plant-based foods tend to have a lower carbon footprint than meat and dairy. In many cases a much smaller footprint. This holds true when comparing the footprint of foods in terms of their weight, protein content or calories. The protein output of peas and beef provides and example. Producing 100 grams of protein from peas emits just 0.4 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq). To get the same amount of protein from beef, emissions would be nearly 90 times higher, at 35 kgCO2eq. Only a small fraction of the carbon footprint of food comes from transport and packaging. Most of it comes from processes on the farm, or from land use change. This means the choice of what to eat has a larger potential to reduce carbon footprint than how far the food has traveled, or how much packaging it is wrapped in. By sector The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report found that global GHG emissions have continued to rise across all sectors. Global consumption was the main cause. The most rapid growth was in transport and industry. A key driver of global carbon emissions is affluence. The IPCC noted that the wealthiest 10% in the world contribute between about one third to one half (36%–45%) of global GHG emissions. Researcheres have previously found that affluence is the key driver of carbon emissions. It has a bigger impact than population growth. And it counters the effects of technological developments. Continued economic growth mirrors the increasing trend in material extraction and GHG emissions. “Industrial emissions have been growing faster since 2000 than emissions in any other sector, driven by increased basic materials extraction and production,” the IPCC said. Transport There can be wide variations in emissions for transport of people. This is due to various factors. They include the length of the trip, the source of electricity in the local grid and the occupancy of public transport. In the case of driving the type of vehicle and number of passengers are factors. Over short to medium distances, walking or cycling are nearly always the lowest carbon way to travel. The carbon footprint of cycling one kilometer is usually in the range of 16 to 50 grams CO2eq per km. For moderate or long distances, trains nearly always have a lower carbon footprint than other options. By organization Carbon accounting By country CO2 emissions of countries are typically measured on the basis of production. This accounting method is sometimes referred to as territorial emissions. Countries use it when they report their emissions, and set domestic and international targets such as Nationally Determined Contributions. Consumption-based emissions on the other hand are adjusted for trade. To calculate consumption-based emissions we track which goods are traded across the world. Whenever a good is imported we include all CO2 emissions that were emitted in the production of that good. Consumption-based emissions reflect the lifestyle choices of a country's citizens.According to the World Bank, the global average carbon footprint in 2014 was about 5 tonnes of CO2 per person, measured on a production bas.is The EU average for 2007 was about 13.8 tonnes CO2e per person. For the USA, Luxembourg and Australia it was over 25 tonnes CO2e per person. In 2017, the average for the USA was about 20 metric tonnes CO2e per person. This is one of the highest per capita figures in the world.The footprints per capita of countries in Africa and India were well below average. Per capita emissions in India are low for its huge population. But overall the country is the third largest emitter of CO2 and fifth largest economy by nominal GDP in the world. Assuming a global population of around 9–10 billion by 2050, a carbon footprint of about 2–2.5 tonnes CO2e per capita is needed to stay within a 2 °C target. These carbon footprint calculations are based on a consumption-based approach using a Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) database. This database accounts for all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the global supply chain and allocates them to the final consumer of the purchased commodities. Reducing the carbon footprint Climate change mitigation Efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of products, services and organizations help limit climate change. Such activities are called climate change mitigation. Reducing industry's carbon footprint Carbon offsetting can reduce a company's overall carbon footprint by providing it with a carbon credit. This compensates the company for carbon dioxide emissions by recognizing an equivalent reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Reforestation, or restocking existing forests that have previously been depleted, is an example of carbon offsetting. A carbon footprint study can identify specific and critical areas for improvement. It uses input-output analysis and scrutinizes the entire supply chain. Such an analysis could be used to eliminate the supply chains with the highest greenhouse gas emissions. History The term carbon footprint was first used in a BBC vegetarian food magazine in 1999, though the broader concept of environmental footprint had been used since at least 1979.In 2005, the large advertising campaign Ogilvy worked for the fossil fuel company BP to popularize the idea of a carbon footprint for individuals. The campaign instructed people to calculate their personal footprints and provided ways for people to "go on a low-carbon diet".The carbon footprint is derives from the language of ecological footprinting. Unlike the ecological footprint, the carbon footprint is not expressed in area-based units. William Rees wrote the first academic publication about ecological footprints in 1992. Other related concepts from the 1990s are the "ecological backpack" and material input per unit of service (MIPS). Trends The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) aims to bring global, rigorous oversight to carbon footprint reporting. It was formed out of the International Financial Reporting Standards. It will require companies to report on their Scope 3 emissions. The ISSB has taken on board criticisms of other initiatives in its aims for universality. It consolidates the Carbon Disclosure Standards Board, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and the Value Reporting Foundation. It complements the Global Reporting Initiative. It is influenced by the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. As of early 2023, Great Britain and Nigeria were preparing to adopt these standards. See also Carbon intensity Carbon neutrality Embedded emissions Food miles Greenhouse gas inventory Individual action on climate change Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of energy sources References External links The GHG Protocol

environmental racism in the united states

Environmental racism is a form of institutional racism, in which people of colour bear a disproportionate burden of environmental harms, such as pollution from hazardous waste disposal and the effects of natural disasters. Environmental racism exposes Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Hispanic populations to physical health hazards and may negatively impact mental health. It creates disparities in many different spheres of life, such as transportation, housing, and economic opportunity.Communities of color are more likely to be located next to pollution sources, such as landfills, power plants, and incinerators. There is evidence that exposure to pollution can result in a higher prevalence of disease. Additionally, low-income communities of color are more likely to have polluted water. An analysis of EPA data found that unequal access to safe drinking water is strongly correlated with race. The most polluted communities tend to be those with high poverty, inadequate infrastructure, substandard schools, chronic unemployment, and poor healthcare systems. Empirical evidence suggests environmental hazards negatively affect nearby property values, employment opportunities, and economic activities. In addition, environmental hazards can cause psychological stress.Natural disasters also tend to have unequal impacts on communities of color. The extent of poverty within a region can often have a much stronger effect on the scale of a natural disaster's impact than the severity of the disaster itself. Affluent, white communities tend to be located on higher ground, so they are less vulnerable to floods than communities of color. Moreover, disaster prevention and recovery plans are often biased against minorities in low-income areas. History The origins of the environmental justice movement can be traced to the Indigenous environmental movement, which itself has roots in over 500 years of colonialism, oppression, and ongoing struggles for sovereignty and land rights. In 1968, grassroots environmental activists from several tribal nations met in Minnesota and formed an organization known as the American Indian Movement (AIM).The 1982 North Carolina PCB Protest is widely recognized as the origin of the environmental justice movement. In 1982, North Carolina state officials decided to place a landfill with highly toxic PCB-contaminated soil in the small town of Afton in Warren County, North Carolina. Afton was about 84% African American. This decision sparked the first national protest against the location of a hazardous waste facility. Organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, residents of Warren County, along with local civil rights and political leaders, gathered in opposition to the placement of the landfill site. Over 500 protesters were arrested. In response, two major studies were published: the US General Accounting Office 1983, and the United Church of Christ 1987. Both studies found that there was a strong relationship between race and the location of hazardous waste facilities.The US General Accounting Office study conducted a survey of the locations of hazardous-waste facilities, and found that these facilities were more likely to be located in minority and low-income communities. The United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice (CRJ) study found that three of the largest hazardous waste facilities were located in primarily Black areas, and accounted for 40% of the hazardous-waste landfill capacity in the United States. The study also found that the strongest predictor of the placement of hazardous waste facilities was race, surpassing both household income and home values. An additional study conducted by the CRJ found that three out of five African Americans and Hispanic Americans lived in communities with hazardous waste sites. Pollution Agriculture Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) contribute to the adverse health effects experienced by EJ communities by releasing harmful gas emissions into the air (ammonia, volatile organic compounds, endotoxins, etc.) greatly reducing the surrounding air quality. Some ways that these chemicals pollute the air are by in barns that contain animals, the storage of waste specially hog operations, handling the wasted stored These pollutants in the air are able to carry and transmit pathogens, disease-causing bacteria, and certain funguses. They can also pollute the soil and nearby water sources. The most common adverse effects of CAFOs in humans are increased asthma and reduced lung function. Pesticides have been used for thousands of years worldwide, in the United States most of the pesticide use is in agriculture. People and the families of people that work as a farmworker or as an agriculture worker are at the highest risk of the effects of these chemicals. 83% of farmworkers identify themselves as Hispanic and one-third of all farmworkers have an income below the federal poverty line. From previous federal policies and racist lending practices have ensured that most of the farmlands in the United States are owned and operated by whites and has ensured that BIPOC and people living in low-income areas are the ones mostly impacted by pesticide pollution. According to research that was conducted in California; pesticide pollution has the greatest income, racial, and ethnic inequality in the state. While this research was done in California, this is unfortunately the case across the United States, BIPOC are the most impacted. The impacts that pesticides have on human health are dependent on the type that is used in that area, such as organophosphates and carbamates, which affect the nervous systems, while others may only irritate a person's eyes or skin, they may be cancer causing, or may affect hormones or the endocrine system. Hazardous waste facilities Recent studies show that hazardous waste facilities are more likely to be located in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods. In fact, communities with a high concentration of racial minorities are nine times more likely to be exposed to environmentally hazardous facilities than communities with a low concentration of minorities. A 2002 study in Massachusetts by sociologists Daniel R. Faber and Eric J. Krieg found racially-based biases in the placement of 17 industrial waste facilities. Residential segregation is correlated with higher cancer risk; as segregation increases, cancer incidence is higher. A 2018 study by the American Journal of Public Health found that Black people are exposed to 54% more particulate matter than the average American. In Los Angeles, minority children have the highest risk of being exposed to air pollution at school. Environmental health scientists Rachel Morello-Frosch and Manuel Pastor, Jr. found that "at schools ranked in the bottom fifth for air quality, the children were 92% minority." They also found that air pollution is associated with decreased achievement in school. The United States Environmental Protection Agency and United States Census Bureau found that, in the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the US, minorities are exposed to 66% more particulate matter from vehicles than white Americans. In a study in 2000 in Texas, sociologists Kingsley Ejiogu and Hon R. Tachia found that the percent Asians and percent Hispanics were significant predictors of toxic sites.Environmental racism is very prevalent in many states across the country. Environmental racism raises ethical issues and can also have implications for a state's laws and constitution, for example the "clean air act", "the fourteenth amendment" and the "civil rights act". An example of a case of environmental racism is a small mainly African American (90%) town called Uniontown, AL where a toxic landfill is believed to have caused serious health issues. In 2010, the Tennessee Valley Authority moved four million cubic yards of coal ash to a landfill in Uniontown without providing citizens any protection from the waste. Mental health issues, a one-in-five chance of developing cancer and reproductive issues were associated with mercury and arsenic contained within the ash. Other examples include West Dallas, Texas where African American housing projects have been set up twenty paces from a battery recycling smelter, and Chester Pennsylvania which has become an attraction for toxic waste sites. In California the government also decided to allow pollution in vulnerable communities. The effect of environmental racism is seen in the health data which shows that African Americans are three times more likely to die from asthma. Three out of five African Americans live in a community with a least one toxic waste site. On average it takes twenty percent longer for toxic sites in minority community towns to be placed on the national priority list than white areas. Water pollution A 2002 study published by the Annual Review of Public Health found that Low-income communities and communities of color are more likely to have contaminated drinking water. A 2019 study by a team of epidemiologists found that community water systems with higher nitrate concentrations tended to serve communities with higher proportions of Hispanic residents. Nitrates have been linked to cancer, reproductive problems, and death in infants. Additionally, contamination of drinking water contributes to 20 percent of lead poisoning in children; per studies in 2000 and 2004, low-income African American and Latino children have disproportionately high levels of lead in their blood.Several case studies demonstrate race-based inequalities in access to clean water. A recent, highly publicized example of water pollution's disproportionate effect on racial minorities is the Flint Water Crisis. In 2014, Flint, Michigan, a city with a 57% Black population, switched its drinking water to the Flint River, which led to complaints about the water's taste and color. Studies found that the water was contaminated with lead from aging pipes. As of 2015, the US government had spent $80 million in addressing the Flint Water Crisis.Another example is East Orosi, a small, low-income, Latino town in California's San Joaquin Valley where the groundwater was found to be contaminated with nitrates due to fertilizer runoff at nearby farms. Air Pollution Air pollution is a growing problem in populous cities, particularly those neighboring airports. In the U.S., 70% of airborne lead exposure is caused by leaded aviation fuel. The Biden administration has prioritized efforts to reduce child lead exposure throughout their administration, but they have not yet banned the use of leaded aviation fuel. While the Clean Air Act of 1963 served to ban the uses of leaded gasoline, it has yet to address the continued consumption of leaded aviation fuel. The negative impact of the use of leaded aviation fuel can be seen in the case of the Reid-Hillview Airport in San Jose, where in 2021 blood lead levels of children living within a 1.5 mile radius of the airport tested at double that of children at the peak of the Flint Michigan Water crisis. Furthermore, 97% of the affected community identifies as non-white. Since then, the use of such fuel has been banned in Santa Clara County, but it remains a primary contributor of airborne lead in the rest of the United States. Health effects Minority populations are exposed to greater environmental health risks than white people, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The advocacy organisation Greenlining cites EPA assessments finding that Blacks are exposed to 1.5 times more air pollutants causing heart and lung disease than whites, while exposure rates for Hispanics were 1.2 times the amount for non-Hispanic whites. People in poverty had 1.3 times the exposure of those not in poverty.Environmental pollution has been found to cause physical and mental disabilities, cancer, and asthma. Exposure to industrial chemicals have correlated with increased cancer rates, learning disabilities, and neurobehavioral disorders. Some industrial chemicals have been identified as endocrine disruptors, which means they interfere with the functioning of hormones. Endocrine disrupters have been linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, metabolic disorders, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and infertility. There is a strong link between cancer and childhood exposure to pesticides, solvents, and other toxic substances.Non-white populations, especially Black Americans, are exposed to a higher concentration of harmful chemicals than white populations. High-emissions in majority-Black areas may contribute to the high prevalence of conditions such as cardiovascular disease mortality and asthma in Black populations. Additionally, climate change has been found to increase the frequency of extreme heat and pollen events that exacerbate asthma, disproportionately affecting pediatric ED visits of BIPOC.A row of industrial plants in Louisiana has now been dubbed "Cancer Alley" due to the high prevalence of cancer cases in the surrounding communities. This area is about 50% African-American, and has a 20.7% poverty rate. One study found that rates of stomach cancer, diabetes, and heart disease were significantly higher in Cancer Alley, and in Louisiana, than the United States overall.Since the 1700s, power companies have dumped coal ash into pits and ponds, especially in the Southeast. Coal ash is mostly composed of lead, arsenic, selenium, and mercury. Each of these minerals individually are unsafe for the human body, but scientists are unsure of how harmful the components are combined. Mercury, for example, can damage reproductive health. Lead causes developmental disorders, arsenic can lead to rashes and lesions. Kristina Zierold, an environmental health scientist and epidemiologist, concluded that there are clusters of cancer around coal ash sites where workers are exposed. However, scientists have not been able to prove a direct link between coal ash and cancer. Measuring coal ash's impact on a control group would be dangerous and unethical, so researchers have had to extrapolate based on their current knowledge of toxins. Researchers have observed that the placement of a coal ash dump near a community causes dramatic increases in cancer rates and neurological issues among children.Low-income households and people of color are often unable to afford adequate healthcare to treat pollution-related health problems. One study found that 34% of adults live without healthcare coverage in a primarily African-American, low-income neighborhood in Chicago. This results in the compounding of health issues within these communities, and exacerbates a cycle of poverty; sickness eats up money, often forcing families to sell assets to pay off medical debt and/or quit a job to take care of family members. It also results in less money to pass down to children or share with local organizations, such as schools. A study involving 108 urban areas found that neighborhoods with a history of redlining were five to twelve degrees hotter than neighborhoods without redlining. This increase in temperature is caused by the urban heat island, an area which has a slightly warmer climate than the surrounding area. Low income communities are acutely at risk to heat mortality because of reduced access to air conditioning as well as tree cover. "Temperatures on a scorching summer day can vary as much as 20 degrees across different parts of the same city, with poor or minority neighborhoods often bearing the brunt of that heat". Natural disasters The immediate impact of a natural disaster does not discriminate, but responses do when the lingering results of structural racism hinder relief. Natural disasters have historically had a larger impact on poor African Americans than wealthy whites. Structural disinvestment in communities of color additionally reduces their ability to respond to climate disasters, for instance, Black survivors of natural disasters are less likely to receive FEMA assistance. In counties hit by natural disasters, the wealth of white residents increased while Black residents fell. In 2020, FEMA's advisory council admitted the historic unfairness in federal disaster response and asked the agency to address the issue.In particular, Black people were disproportionately affected by Hurricane Katrina. Predominantly Black communities were more likely to be located in low-lying areas that were more vulnerable to flooding. Evacuation plans were insufficient for populations without access to a car. At the time, over a third of New Orleans' African-American residents did not have cars. The city also only had one-quarter the number of buses that would have been necessary to evacuate all car-less residents, and many buses were lost during the flooding. The disorganized response to the storm and flooding also disproportionately affected Black victims. Michael D. Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was not aware of starving crowds at the New Orleans Convention Center until he heard about it on the news. Deliveries of supplies to the convention center did not arrive until four days after Katrina hit.Another example is the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, the first category 5 hurricane officially recorded in the Atlantic. The storm devastated much of the southern coast of Florida, but hit low-lying, Black migrant-worker communities particularly hard. In fact, over 75% of the 3000 recorded deaths were Black migrant workers. Most Black bodies were burned or buried in mass graves. The towns of Belle Glade, Pahokee, and South Bay were "virtually wiped off the map".Natural disasters have also been used as an opportunity to oppress African Americans. For example, During the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, whites were evacuated, while African Americans were placed into disaster-relief "concentration camps" and forced to work while being held at gunpoint. Access to public green space A study by sociologist Salvatore Saporito and Daniel Casey found that urban green space is generally distributed unequally across racial and economic groups. Low-income, people of color tend to live in areas with less vegetation than their white, wealthy counterparts. There is also a relationship between "city-level racial and economic segregation and differences in exposure to green space between the members of different racial and income groups." The more segregated a city is, the more likely it is that neighborhoods with large concentrations of racial minorities will have less green space than white neighborhoods.According to Ian Leahy, "the wealthiest neighborhoods have 65% more tree canopy cover than the highest poverty neighborhoods." Tree canopy cover is the measure of the percentage of the ground covered by a vertical projection of the tree. Inequities in tree canopy cover and the presence of urban green space arise from policies such as redlining. Redlining is the "historical practice of refusing home loans or insurance to whole neighborhoods based on a racially motivated perception of safety for investment." This policy affected mainly Black and Latino individuals, thus shaping the current urban green spaces. Redlined areas have less green space, are on average 2.6 degrees Celsius warmer than neighboring areas, and experience other environmental hazards, leading to discussions of heath disparities.There are few studies on the link between green spaces and health, but it is a rising concern with increasing urbanization and spatial planning policies of densification. There is one epidemiological study that was performed in the Netherlands that showed a positive link between abundant green spaces and better health mostly apparent among the elderly, housewives, and people from lower socioeconomic groups. Other small epidemiological studies show that green space is positively correlated with self perceived health, number of symptoms experienced, and mortality risk. The U.S. Department of Agriculture states that the relationship between urban green space and health is intrinsically related and recent studies show that immersion in natural landscapes can reduce stress and improve mental and social health. Research continues in underserved communities and the link of green space to health outcomes. The presence of green space in one's living environment has been found to have an important impact on physical and mental health. Green space can contribute to stress reduction and attention restoration, as well as improved social cohesion and increased physical activity.A proposal to develop a police training facility at the Old Atlanta prison farm in Atlanta, GA has resulted in community protest. Opponents to the project would like to conserve the area as part of the 3500 acre South River forest (a large green space in southeast Atlanta), and they have said that the development is an example of environmental racism that will lead to increased police brutality against people of color. Native Americans History According to Potawatomi philosopher Kyle Powys Whyte and Lower Brule Sioux historian Nick Estes, the first "environmental apocalypse" is the coming of colonialism. Settlers used industrial military technologies to systematically kill Native Americans and force their removal. Then, they harnessed indigenous land for agriculture and industrial facilities. Settlers dramatically changed ecosystems through deforestation, overharvesting, and pollution. Additionally, academics Zoe Todd and Heather Davis propose that colonialism has played a major role in environmental degradation. The beginning of colonialism marked the beginning of the Anthropocene. When European settlers landed in the Americas in 1492, they set in motion the Columbian Exchange, drastically reshaping the biology and ecological landscape of the Americas. Simultaneously, there was a drop in carbon dioxide levels in the geologic layer following the genocide of indigenous people in the Americas and the regrowth of plants. Settler colonialism is marked by the process of "terraforming"—damming of rivers, clear-cutting of forests, and importation of plants and animals.For instance, in colonial New England, settlers cleared forests and woodlands for farms and sent the cleared forest wood back to England to be used in soap and glass manufacturing. Settlers believed that deforestation would lead to warmer winters like those in England, which would attract more British colonists to the region and allow settlers to grow the crops they preferred. For example, according to U.S. Constitution signee Hugh Williamson, warming temperatures would create a more pleasurable environment, proving that the continent was better off because of, and in the hands of, white settlers. These early settlers also believed that deforestation would create an environment more hospitable to those with "fair skin" instead of "savages."Throughout the nineteenth century, as the United States spread its territory from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, Native Americans were pushed onto reservations, which were often lands that were deemed undesirable to white settlers because of poor soil quality. Additionally, they tended to be located next to tracts of federally owned land. During World War II, a significant number of military facilities were built or expanded onto these federal lands. The United States sought "remote lands to house bombing ranges and related noxious activities," and, thus, many facilities contained dangerous unexploded ordnance, putting Native populations at risk of exposure to toxic chemicals. In the early 1990s, the United States government attempted to blackmail Native populations by offering tribes millions of dollars for hosting nuclear waste facilities. This offer was appealing to many tribes because of extreme poverty on reservations.Through the 1940s and 1950s, the US Military responded to wartime industry by erecting uranium mines in the southwestern deserts. The nearest residents were almost exclusively Native American tribal members. Navajo and Hopi drinking water supply in Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico continues to this day to be affected by runoff and pollution from neighboring mines. Hazardous waste on reservations Because Native Americans live at the lowest socioeconomic level in the U.S., they are at the highest risk for toxic exposure. The risk is multiplied for indigenous people because they rely on land affected by the accumulation of toxic materials for food supplies. One significant environmental hazard on tribal land is the construction of government and commercial hazardous waste sitings. A survey of 25 Indian reservations revealed that there were 1200 hazardous waste activity sites on or near the selected reservations. According to a study by sociologists Gregory Hooks and Chad L. Smith, indigenous reservations are positively associated with extremely dangerous sites, far above the national average. Examples of hazardous sites include a nuclear power plant built on the edge of the Mdewakanton Sioux of Prairie Island reservation, cyanide heap-leach mining polluting water on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, and industrial waste dumps surrounding the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation. Furthermore, a disproportionate number of dangerous military facilities are located on or near Native land. Hooks' and Smith's study also found that the risk assessment code commonly used to measure the danger levels of a site may underestimate the damage it inflicts on Native American communities. Instead, the hazard probability model accounts for the fact that hazardous chemicals are in close proximity to public spaces, such as schools and hospitals.Illegal dumping is another large environmental threat on tribal land. There are two categories of people who illegally dump on Native American reservations. Midnight dumpers are corporations and individuals that dump their waste on reservations without the permission of tribal governments. Native entrepreneurs are tribal members who contaminate Native land without tribal permission. Waste poses a severe health risk, leading to leukemia, organ ailments, asthma, and other conditions. Illegal pollution also results in a loss of tribal sovereignty by creating conditions in which intervention on the part of the United States federal government becomes necessary. The removal of toxic waste can be used as a "pretext to revert to past patterns of paternalism and control over Native American affairs on the reservation." For example, in the case of the Kaibab-Paitute tribe, the Waste Tech Corporation used the disposal of waste as an excuse to restrict tribal access to their own land and attempted to give themselves the unilateral right to determine where roads would be built. Water quality Native American communities are more likely to have contaminated drinking water. In 2006, 61% percent of drinking water systems on Native American reservations had health violations or other violations, compared to 27% of all public drinking water systems in the United States.A highly publicized example of water pollution on a reservation is the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Dakota Access Pipeline transports oil from North Dakota to an oil terminal in Illinois. Although it does not cross directly on a reservation, the pipeline is under scrutiny because it passes under a section of the Missouri river which is the main drinking water source for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Pipelines are known to break, with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) reporting more than 3,300 leak and rupture incidents for oil and gas pipelines since 2010. The pipeline also traverses a sacred burial ground for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Kelly Morgan, the Standing Rock Sioux's tribal archeologist, has voiced concerns that the water crossings destroy land used for burials and other important historical and cultural information, including several stones and markers. These concerns were ignored. President Barack Obama revoked the permit for the project in December 2016 and ordered a study on rerouting the pipeline. President Donald Trump reversed this order and authorized the completion of the pipeline. The pipeline remains commercially operable. There are still ongoing litigation efforts by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline in an effort to shut it down permanently.Additionally, in 2015, the Gold King Mine spill contaminated 3 million gallons of water in the Colorado River, which served as a primary source of drinking water for the Navajo and Hopi nations downstream. The Navajo and Hopi subsequently recorded dangerously high levels of arsenic and lead in their water supply. Through the following litigative proceedings, the US EPA appropriated just $156,000 in reparations to those affected by the Gold King Mine spill.Declining riparian oxygen has also affected Washington's Quinault tribe which has reported greater levels of dead fish, affecting their seafood business. Civil rights litigation The environmental justice movement in the US was heavily influenced by the civil rights movement, and shares many of the same goals and tactics. Existing community organizations and leaders that contributed to mobilize the civil rights movement have also engaged in environmental justice work. Several prominent environmental justice lawsuits in the US have attempted to claim discrimination based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, though none of these have so far been successful. Litigation Some environmental justice lawsuits have been based on civil rights laws. The first case to claim environmental discrimination in the siting of a waste facility under civil rights law was Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management, Inc. (1979). With the legal representation of Linda McKeever Bullard, residents of Houston's Northwood Manor opposed the decision of the city and Browning Ferris Industries to construct a solid waste facility near their mostly African-American neighborhood. Although the Northwood Manor residents lost the case, there were several lasting outcomes: the city of Houston later restricted the dumping of waste near public facilities such as schools; the strategy of using civil rights law in environmental justice cases was adopted in other cases, and Bullard's husband (Robert Bullard) became an increasingly visible scholar and writer on environmental justice.The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has been used in many environmental justice cases. This strategy requires that the plaintiff prove discriminatory intent on the part of the defendant, which is very difficult and has never been done in an environmental justice case.Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has also been used in lawsuits that claim environmental inequality. The two most relevant sections in these cases are sections 601 and 602. section 601 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin by any government agency receiving federal funds. To win an environmental justice case that claims an agency violated this statute, the plaintiff must prove the agency intended to discriminate. Section 602 requires agencies to create rules and regulations that uphold section 601. This section is useful because the plaintiff must only prove that the rule or regulation in question had disparate impact. While disparate impact is much easier to demonstrate than discriminatory intent, cases brought under section 602 are not typically successful. It is also unclear whether citizens have right of action to sue under section 602. In Seif v. Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living (1998), a district court determined that residents did not have right of action; but this decision was overturned in an appeal. When the case went to the supreme court, the case was dismissed as moot because the plaintiff had withdrawn their permit. Earlier decisions in the lower courts were vacated, leaving no judgment on the books establishing citizen right of action for section 602.Successful environmental justice litigation has typically used environmental law or tort law. While cases brought under civil rights law may have political advantages, these cases are not typically successful in court. Policy responses Five cities, including Seattle, Portland, Baltimore, Chicago, and Oakland, have passed ordinances banning fossil fuel storage and infrastructure expansion. Federal agencies In the United States it was also found that income inequality greatly affected the quality of the environment in which people live. People of colour and the poor in America on average experience much lower quality environments than white people or the wealthy. Action was taken in the early 1990s by the American Government in an attempt to improve environmental quality for poorer regions. In 1992 the United States Environmental Protection Agency set up the Office of Environmental Equity, now known as the Office of Environmental Justice, to address the situation at hand. However the Office of Environmental Justice's work was undermined by Congress who refused to pass the bills which were presented to them by the EPA. Instead states began to pass their own bills which did very little to improve environmental quality for poorer areas. As a result, there has been little to no change in the ratios of environmental inequality whereas there has been a decline in the ratios of race and poverty. Background In 1994, President Clinton issued Executive Order 12898, "Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations", which required environmental justice to be part of each federal agency's mission. Under Executive Order 12898 federal agencies must: enforce all health and environmental statutes in areas with minority and low-income populations; ensure public participation; improve research and data collection relating to the health and environment of minority and low-income populations; and identify differential patterns of consumption of natural resources among minority and low-income populations.EO 12898 established an Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice that is chaired by the EPA Administrator and heads of 17 departments, agencies, and several White House offices in order to collectively promote and advance environmental justice principles. This was a historical step in addressing environmental injustice on a policy level; however, the effectiveness of the Order is noted mainly in its influence on states as Congress never passed a bill making Clinton's Executive Order law. Many states began to require relevant agencies to develop strategies and programs that would identify and address environmental injustices being perpetrated at the state or local level.In 2005, during President George W. Bush's administration, there was an attempt to remove the premise of racism from the Order. EPA's Administrator Stephen Johnson wanted to redefine the Order's purpose to shift from protecting low income and minority communities that may be disadvantaged by government policies to all people. Obama's appointment of Lisa Jackson as EPA Administrator and the issuance of Memorandum of Understanding on Environmental Justice and Executive Order 12898 established a recommitment to environmental justice. The fight against environmental racism faced some setbacks with the election of Trump. Under Trump's administration, there was a mandated decrease of EPA funding accompanied by a rollback on regulations which has left many underrepresented communities vulnerable.Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also forbids federal agencies from providing grants or funding opportunities to discriminatory programs. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency The Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ) was created in 1992 and has coordinated efforts of the EPA to meet environmental justice goals. The Office of Environmental Justice provides technical and financial assistance to communities working to address environmental justice issues. The National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) provides independent advice and recommendations to the EPA Administrator that crosses various environmental justice issues. The Tribal Consultation & Indigenous People's Engagement works with federally recognized tribes and other indigenous peoples to prioritize their environmental and public health issues. Tools and direct support OEJ provides financial resources for creating healthy, sustainable and equitable communities through the Environmental Justice Small Grants Program and the Collaborative Problem-Solving Cooperative Agreement Program. As of 2016, more than $36 million of financial assistance has been given to nearly 1,500 community-based organizations. The Technical Assistance Services for Communities program provides a way for communities to gain better understanding of the decision-making process as well as assist to understand the science, regulations, and policies that impact environmental issues and EPA actions.The EPA website on environmental justice has various resources such as EJSCREEN, a mapping tool and screening tool, Guidance on Considering Environmental Justice During the Development of an Action, Technical Guidance for Assessing Environmental Justice in Regulatory Analysis, trainings and workshops, and the Legal Tools Development document. Emergency Planning and Right to Know Act of 1986 After the Bhopal disaster, where a Union Carbide plant released forty tons of methyl isocyanate into the atmosphere in a village just south of Bhopal, India, the U.S. government passed the Emergency Planning and Right to Know Act of 1986. Introduced by Henry Waxman, the act required all corporations to report their toxic chemical pollution annually, which was then gathered into a report known as the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). Corporate Toxics Information Report The Corporate Toxics Information Project (CTIP) provides information and analysis on corporate pollution and its consequences for communities. The project develops corporate rankings, regional reports, industry reports based on industrial sectors, and presents this data in a web-based resource open to the public. The data is collected by the EPA and then analyzed and disseminated by the PERI institute.Since 2004, the CTIP has also published an index of the top 100 corporate air polluters in the United States. The list is based on the EPA's Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI), which "assesses the chronic human health risk from industrial toxic releases", as well as the TRI. The Toxic 100 has been updated five times, with the latest update in 2016. U.S. Department of Agriculture The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the executive agency responsible for federal policy on food, agriculture, natural resources, and quality of life in rural America. The USDA has more than 100,000 employees and delivers over $96.5 billion in public services to programs worldwide. In its 2012 environmental justice strategy, the USDA stated a desire to integrate environmental justice into its core mission and operations. USDA does fund programs with social and environmental equity goals; however, it has no staff dedicated solely to EJ. 2012 Environmental Justice Strategy On February 7, 2012, the USDA released a new Environmental Justice Strategic Plan identifying goals and performance measures beyond what USDA identified in a 1995 EJ strategy that was adopted in response to E.O. 12898. Generally, USDA believes its existing technical and financial assistance programs provide solutions to environmental inequity, such as its initiatives on education, food deserts, and economic development in impacted communities. Initiatives in marginalized communities Tribal outreach The US EPA holds annual conferences, such as the Tribal Leaders Environmental Forum (TLEF), with Native American tribal leaders; EPA employees and tribal representatives meet in issue-based listening sessions and exchange environmental policy suggestions. The USDA has had a role in implementing Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign in tribal areas by increasing Bureau of Indian Education schools' participation in federal nutrition programs: they develop community gardens on tribal lands, build tribal food policy councils, and provide Rural Development funding for community infrastructure in Indian Country. The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is working to update its policy on protection and management of Native American Sacred Sites, an effort that has included listening sessions and government-to-government consultation. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has also consulted with Tribes regarding management of reintroduced species where tribes may have a history of subsistence-level hunting of those species. Meanwhile, the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is exploring a program to use meat from bisons raised on tribal land to supply AMS food distribution programs to tribes. The Intertribal Technical Assistance Network works to improve access of tribal governments, communities and individuals to USDA technical assistance programs. Federally recognized tribes are also eligible to apply for "Treatment as State" (TAS) status with the EPA, which gives the tribe jurisdictional authority to enforce their own environmental programs, regulations, and quality standards over nearby polluters or over the state in which they reside. Technical and financial assistance The NRCS Strike Force Initiative has identified impoverished counties in Mississippi, Georgia and Arkansas to receive increased outreach and training regarding USDA assistance programs. USDA credits this increased outreach with generating a 196 percent increase in contracts, representing more than 250,000 acres of farmland, in its Environmental Quality Incentives Program. In 2001, NRCS funded and published a study, "Environmental Justice: Perceptions of Issues, Awareness and Assistance," focused on rural, Southern "Black Belt" counties and analyzing how the NRCS workforce could more effectively integrate environmental justice into impacted communities.The Farm Services Agency in 2011 devoted $100,000 of its Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers program budget to improving its outreach to counties with persistent poverty. USDA's Risk Management Agency has initiated education and outreach to low-income farmers regarding use of biological controls, rather than pesticides, for pest control. The Rural Utilities Service administers water and wastewater loans, including SEARCH Grants that are targeted to financially distressed, small rural communities and other opportunities specifically for Alaskan Native villages. Mapping USFS has established several Urban Field Stations, to research urban natural resources' structure, function, stewardship, and benefits. By mapping urban tree coverage, the agency hopes to identify and prioritize EJ communities for urban forest projects.Another initiative highlighted by the agency is the Food and Nutrition Service and Economic Research Service's Food Desert Locator. The Locator provides a spatial view of food deserts, defined as a low-income census tract where a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store. The mapped deserts can be used to direct agency resources to increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables and other food assistance programs.The US EPA database EJ Screen is publicly available. EJ Screen maps the United States with socioeconomically determinant factors including income level and race, as well as environmental health data including rates of asthma and cancer occurrence in a given area. Where there is high correlation between socioeconomic determinants and detrimental health impacts, "EJ communities" are noted. Activism Concentrations of ethnic or racial minorities may also foster solidarity, lending support in spite of challenges and providing the concentration of social capital necessary for grassroots activism. Citizens who are tired of being subjected to the dangers of pollution in their communities have been confronting the power structures through organized protest, legal actions, marches, civil disobedience, and other activities.Racial minorities are often excluded from politics and urban planning (such as sea level rise adaptation planning) so various perspectives of an issue are not included in policy making that may affect these excluded groups in the future. In general, political participation in African American communities is correlated with the reduction of health risks and mortality. Other strategies in battling against large companies include public hearings, the elections of supporters to state and local offices, meetings with company representatives, and other efforts to bring about public awareness and accountability.In addressing this global issue, activists take to various social media platforms to both raise awareness and call to action. The mobilization and communication between the intersectional grassroots movements where race and environmental imbalance meet has proven to be effective. The movement gained traction with the help of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat among other platforms. Celebrities such as Shailene Woodley, who advocated against the Keystone XL Pipeline, have shared their experiences including that of being arrested for protesting. Social media has allowed for a facilitated conversation between peers and the rest of the world when it comes to social justice issues not only online but in face-to-face interactions correspondingly.Before the 1970s, communities of color recognized the reality of environmental racism and organized against it. For example, the Black Panther Party organized survival programs that confronted the inequitable distribution of trash in predominantly black neighborhoods. Similarly, the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican revolutionary nationalist organization based in Chicago and New York City, protested pollution and toxic refuse present in their community via the Garbage Offensive program. These and other organizations also worked to confront the unequal distribution of open spaces, toxic lead paint, and healthy food options. They also offered health programs to those affected by preventable, environmentally induced diseases such as tuberculosis. In this way, these organizations serve as precursors to more pointed movements against environmental racism. Latino ranch laborers composed by Cesar Chavez battled for working environment rights, including insurance from harmful pesticides in the homestead fields of California's San Joaquin Valley. In 1967, African-American understudies rioted in the streets of Houston to battle a city trash dump in their locale that had killed two children. In 1968, occupants of West Harlem, in New York City, battled unsuccessfully against the siting of a sewage treatment plant in their neighborhood.Efforts of activism have also been heavily influenced by women and the injustices they face from environmental racism. Women of different races, ethnicities, economic status, age, and gender are disproportionately affected by issues of environmental injustice. Additionally, the efforts made by women have historically been overlooked or challenged by efforts made by men, as the problems women face have been often avoided or ignored. Winona LaDuke is one of many female activists working on environmental issues, in which she fights against injustices faced by indigenous communities. LaDuke inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2007 for her continuous leadership towards justice. Fighting against industrial facilities that were adding to the air, water and soil pollution caused by a nearby smelter that had operated for more than a century in Denver, Colorado, environmental and social justice activist Lorraine Granado and other residents of that city's Elyria-Swansea and Globeville neighborhoods formed Neighbors for a Toxic-Free Community. In 1991, they prevented the city from erecting a medical waste incinerator in their neighborhood. Three years later, they were involved in a successful class-action lawsuit that forced executives of ASARCO to clean up the pollution caused by the company's smelting plant. ASARCO subsequently paid $38 million to clean up arsenic, trioxide, cadmium, lead and other soil pollutants in Globeville and also paid $24 million in compensation to residents for decreased property values caused by the plant's pollution. Art Allison Janae Hamilton is an artist who focuses her work on examining the social and political ideas and uses of land and space, particularly in US Southern states. Her work looks at who is affected by a changing climate, as well as the unique vulnerability that certain populations have. Her work relies on videos and photographs to show who is affected by global warming, and how their different lived experiences lend different perspectives to climate issues. Energy While alternative energies such as Nuclear power and Hydroelectric power are viewed as low-cost alternatives to traditional power like coal and oil and gas, each presents its own environmental justice issues. Nuclear power Nuclear power has affected Native American peoples primarily through uranium mining and nuclear waste storage on Native American lands. According to Ojibwe activist Winona LaDuke, "over 1,000 abandoned uranium mines lie on the Navajo reservation, largely untouched by any attempts to cover or cap or even landscape the toxic wastes."According to academic Traci Brynne Voyles, "Rates of lung cancer and respiratory disease have skyrocketed for the Diné, a population described as recently as the 1950s by public health experts as being 'immune' to lung cancer. By the mid-1980s, researchers found astronomical rates of cancer deaths among former uranium miners." Further, "Radiation-related diseases are now endemic to many parts of the Navajo Nation, claiming the health and lives of former miners to be sure but also those of Navajos who would never see the inside of a mine. Diné children have a rate of testicular and ovarian cancer fifteen times the national average, and a fatal neurological disease called Navajo neuropathy has been closely linked to ingesting uranium-contaminated water during pregnancy."In addition to abandoned mines on Navajo land, Skull Valley Goshute, Western Shoshone, and Ojibwe reservations also hold mines and are areas utilized for waste dumping and storage. Dakota people living next to the Prairie Island nuclear facility, too, have been exposed to "six times greater risk of cancer" due to radiation leaks. Hydroelectric power Hydroelectric dams in Oregon and California have killed salmon runs and flooded Native American sacred sites. Specifically, dams on the Klamath River are known for "squelching salmon runs" according to sociologist Kari Norgaard and Karuk biologist Ron Reed. Destruction of salmon runs then has negative effects on Karuk cultural and societal structures, such as breakdown of gender identity and gender roles within communities. Further, such ecological destruction contributes to food scarcity. So much that, according to The Washington Post, "The dams are quite literally killing Indians".These hydroelectric dams can also cause methane to be released when the vegetation is flooded. This pollution can contaminate the water sources and the animals that live in the water, potentially harming those who drink this water and eat the fish from the contaminated water source. Coal Coal mining has harmed low-income rural communities in the Appalachian Mountain area. Coal mining in the region involves blasting apart mountaintops, and excess rocks are dumped into valleys and streams. Sociologist Shannon Elizabeth Bell explains that "Communities in proximity to mountaintop removal mining and other industry related activities suffer numerous problems as a result of these coal operations, including flooding, respiratory disorders from coal dust, well water contamination, and technological disasters resulting from breaches or failures in impoundments containing coal waste from coal cleaning or coal-burning plants." Further, "Many residents argue that they are forced to suffer these environmental injustices because Central Appalachia is serving as an 'energy sacrifice zone' for the rest of the nation."These activities have been shown to contaminate surrounding communities' air and water with lead, mercury, and arsenic. Such contamination has led to health issues such as hyperactivity and aggression in children, high blood pressure, kidney failure, cardiovascular diseases, premature delivery or miscarriages in pregnancy, negative effects on liver, kidney, and cardiac tissues, neurological diseases, brain damage in newborns, respiratory diseases, anemia and leukopenia, skin and lung cancer, coma, and gene mutations in surrounding communities.In addition to effects on communities within coal extraction zones, coal burning facilities have been historically placed in low-income, inner city neighborhoods that have majority Latinx and black populations. Further, proposed coal export projects in or adjacent to Native American communities, such as the Gateway Pacific Terminal next to ancestral village sites of the Lummi Nation of Northwest Washington, would "increase congestion and toxic runoff in the Salish Sea, ... endangering salmon and orcas," which are species that have important relationships with the Lummi people. Oil and gas New gas and oil pipelines have been proposed to be built around the United States. A previously proposed project would have constructed an Alaskan natural gas pipeline to deliver natural gas to the lower continental 48 states. The areas in which this oil and gas drilling would occur in Northern Alaska are inhabited mainly by Native Americans.Fracking sites can release toxins, particularly methane, that pollute the air and contaminate water. Case studies The Bronx, in New York City, has become a recent example of Environmental Justice succeeding. Majora Carter spearheaded the South Bronx Greenway Project, bringing local economic development, local urban heat island mitigation, positive social influences, access to public open space, and aesthetically stimulating environments. The New York City Department of Design and Construction has recently recognized the value of the South Bronx Greenway design, and consequently utilized it as a widely distributed smart growth template. This venture is the ideal shovel-ready project with over $50 million in funding.Industry in the city of Chicago, Illinois, has impacted minority populations, especially the African American community. Several coal plants in the region have been implicated in the poor health of their local communities, a correlation exacerbated by the fact that 34% of adults in those communities do not have health care coverage. Cancer-causing PCBs were dumped into a creek in Cheraw, South Carolina, by Burlington Industries until the 1970s. In 2018, five families had to leave their homes after Hurricane Florence hit the area and caused the chemicals' remains to wash up near the houses. Local researchers also detected the toxic waste from the PCBs in the soil of a local playground.People living in Pahokee, Florida, face a thick level of soot that pollutes the local area each October due to sugar burning. The sugarcane farmers set their fields on fire before each harvest to burn everything down but the sugarcane. The pollution that results then travels and negatively affects the surrounding largely poor, Black communities. A 2015 study supported by the United States Department of Education determined that those exposed to this sugar field burning pollution face higher rates of respiratory issues and weakened immune systems. See also == References ==

dakota access pipeline

The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) or Bakken pipeline is a 1,172-mile-long (1,886 km) underground pipeline in the United States that has the ability to transport up to 750,000 barrels of light sweet crude oil per day. It begins in the shale oil fields of the Bakken Formation in northwest North Dakota and continues through South Dakota and Iowa to an oil terminal near Patoka, Illinois. Together with the Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline from Patoka to Nederland, Texas, it forms the Bakken system. The pipeline transports 40 percent of the oil produced in the Bakken region. The $3.78 billion project was announced to the public in June 2014 with construction beginning in June 2016, creating approximately 42,000 jobs with a total of $2 billion in wages. The pipeline was completed in April 2017 and became operational in May 2017. The pipeline is owned by Dakota Access, LLC, controlled by Energy Transfer Partners, with minority interests from Phillips 66, and affiliates of Enbridge and Marathon Petroleum. Protests of the pipeline occurred organized by those opposing its construction, including the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. History Planning, 2014–2016 Prior to the Dakota Access Pipeline, light sweet crude oil from the Bakken Formation was transported mainly by rail during the North Dakota oil boom. Extraction from the area increased from 309,000 barrels a day in 2010 to more than 1 million in 2014, with insufficient pipeline infrastructure to transport the increased extraction. Plans for the pipeline were announced by Energy Transfer Partners in 2014, with Phillips 66 acquired 25% stake in the project later that same year. Energy Transfer Partners estimated that the pipeline would create between 12 and 15 permanent jobs and from 2,000 to 4,000 temporary jobs in Iowa. The $1.35 billion capital investment in Iowa was projected to generate $33 million sales tax in Iowa during construction and $30 million property tax in 2017. Energy Transfer hired "Strategic Economics Group" in West Des Moines to prepare this analysis.In September 2014, Dakota Access held an initial informational meeting with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council. Informational meetings for South Dakota and Illinois landowners were held in October 2014, and starting on December 1, 2014, in each of the affected counties in Iowa. Meetings in Fort Madison, Sioux Center, Oskaloosa and Storm Lake brought out hundreds of people expressing their support and/or opposition to the pipeline. A webinar for Brown and Hancock County, Illinois took place in February 2015.On October 29, 2014, Dakota Access submitted the project to the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB), after Iowa Governor Terry Branstad rejected requests from community and environmental activists who asked him to block plans. In December 2014 Dakota Access submitted an application for a permit from the North Dakota Public Service Commission for the proposed route. In January 2015, Dakota Access filed the application with the IUB. In February 2015, it filed applications with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources for sovereign land and floodplain permits. In April 2015, Iowa Senate Study Bill 1276 and House Study Bill 249 advanced with both Senator Robert Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, and State Representative Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, in support; it required Dakota Access "to obtain voluntary easements from 75% of property owners along the route before eminent domain could be authorized".The Iowa Utilities Board approved the pipeline on March 10, 2016, on a vote of 3 to 0, being the last of four states utility regulators granting its approval. The approval came after 18 public information meetings, pre-filled testimony, thousands of public comments, and 12 days of public hearings. Conditions of the approval included liability insurance of at least $25 million; guarantees that the parent companies of Dakota Access will pay for damages created by a pipeline leak or spill; a revised agricultural impact mitigation plan; a timeline for construction notices; modified condemnation easement forms; and a statement accepting the terms and condition's of the board's order." The IUB stated that with the conditions, the pipeline would promote public convenience and necessity. The following day, the company stated it had secured voluntary easements on 82% of the 1,295 affected Iowa land parcels. A week later, Dakota Access filed motions with the IUB requesting expedited and confidential treatment to begin construction immediately, saying it met the conditions and that its liability insurance policies were trade secrets under Iowa law and "would serve no public purpose". Dakota Access also filed 23 condemnation suits against 140 individuals, banks, and a coal mine to gain easements through North Dakota.A 2015 poll showed that fifty seven percents of Iowans favoring the construction of the pipeline. Construction of the pipeline was also estimated to create 42,000 jobs with a total of $2 billion in wages. Construction, 2016–2017 In March 2016, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service issued a sovereign lands construction permit. In late May 2016, the permit was temporarily revoked in three counties of Iowa, where the pipeline would cross the Big Sioux River and the Big Sioux Wildlife Management Area; these are historic and cultural sites of the Upper Sioux tribe, including graves in Lyon County. Also in May 2016, Iowa farmers filed lawsuits to prevent the state from using eminent domain.In June 2016, the IUB voted 2 to 1 (Libby Jacobs and Nick Wagner in favor and Chairwoman Geri Huser against) to allow construction on non-sovereign lands to continue. The Sierra Club said this action was illegal before the US Corps of Engineers authorized the project. In late June 2016, construction was allowed to resume in Lyon County after plans were changed to route the pipeline 85 feet (26 m) below the site using directional boring, instead of trenching and disturbing the soil on the surface. In December 2016, the approval was disputed in the Polk County District Court. In July and August 2016, The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) approved the water crossing permits and issued all but one permission necessary for the pipeline construction.On July 27, 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe sued the USACE in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The motion for preliminary injuction was denied in the U.S. District Court in September 2016. In September 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed an appeal which was denied a month later.In August 2016, the joint venture of Enbridge (75%) and Marathon Petroleum (25%) agreed to purchase a 49% stake in Dakota Access, LLC for $2 billion. The deal was completed in February 2017 after the final easement was granted.In September 2016 the U.S Department of Justice received more than 33,000 petitions to review all permits and order a full review of the project's environmental effects. On September 9, 2016, the US Departments of Justice, Army, and Interior issued a joint statement to temporarily halt the project on federal land bordering or under the Lake Oahe reservoir. The US federal government asked the company for a "voluntary pause" on construction near the area until further study was done in the region extending 20 miles (32 km) around Lake Oahe. Energy Transfer Partners rejected the request and resumed construction. On September 13, 2016, chairman and CEO of Energy Transfer Partners Kelcy Warren said concerns about the pipeline's impact on the water supply were "unfounded", that "multiple archaeological studies conducted with state historic preservation offices found no sacred items along the route" and that the company would meet with officials in Washington "to understand their position and reiterate our commitment to bring the Dakota Access Pipeline into operation."On November 1, 2016, President Obama announced his administration was monitoring the situation and had been in contact with the USACE to examine the possibility of rerouting the pipeline to avoid sacred lands. On November 14, 2016, the USACE announced that "the Army has determined that additional discussion and analysis are warranted in light of the history of the Great Sioux Nation's dispossessions of lands, the importance of Lake Oahe to the Tribe, our government-to-government relationship, and the statute governing easements through government property." Energy Transfer Partners responded by criticizing the Obama administration for "political interference" and said that "further delay in the consideration of this case would add millions of dollars more each month in costs which cannot be recovered." North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple criticized the decision saying the pipeline would be safe and that the decision was "long overdue". Craig Stevens, spokesman for the Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now (MAIN) Coalition, called the Corps's announcement "yet another attempt at death by delay" and said the Obama administration "has chosen to further fan the flames of protest by more inaction." North Dakota Senator John Hoeven said in a statement that the delay "will only prolong the disruption in the region caused by protests and make life difficult for everyone who lives and works in the area." Speaking to CBS News in November, Kelcy Warren said that it would be "100 percent that the easement gets granted and the pipeline gets built" when newly elected president elect Donald Trump came into office on January 20, 2017.On December 4, 2016, the USACE announced, it would not grant an easement for the pipeline to be drilled under Lake Oahe and was undertaking an environmental impact statement to look at possible alternative routes. The Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works), Jo-Ellen Darcy said that "the best way to complete that work responsibly and expeditiously is to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing". Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco Logistics Partners issued a same-day response saying that the White House's directive "is just the latest in a series of overt and transparent political actions by an administration which has abandoned the rule of law in favor of currying favor with a narrow and extreme political constituency." They said that the companies "fully expect to complete construction of the pipeline without any additional rerouting in and around Lake Oahe. Nothing this Administration has done today changes that in any way." On January 18, 2017, the USACE filed its formal Notice of Intent to conduct the Environmental Impact Statement process. The notice opened a thirty-day comment on the scope of the EIS, addressing the crossing of Lake Oahe. The proposed EIS was to consider "Alternative locations for the pipeline crossing the Missouri River", direct and indirect risks and impacts, as well as their treaty rights to the lake. The same day U.S. District Judge James Boasberg denied ETP's request to delay the EIS process.Following the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2017, he signed a presidential memorandum to advance approval of pipeline construction, while stating his intention to "renegotiate some of the terms" of the pipeline bill. The order would expedite the environmental review that Trump described as an "incredibly cumbersome, long, horrible permitting process." These executive orders, which also included the Keystone XL Pipeline, outlined how the completion of the pipeline would create more jobs.On February 7, 2017, the USACE sent a notice of intent to the United States Congress to grant an easement under Lake Oahe 24 hours following notification of the delivery of the notification. On February 9, 2017, the Cheyenne River Sioux sued the easement decision, citing an 1851 treaty and interference with the religious practices of the tribe.The Dakota Access Pipeline had temporary workforce housing for the pipeline workers. Construction of the pipeline was completed in April 2017. Operation, 2017 to present The first oil was delivered through the pipeline on May 14, 2017. On June 1, 2017, testing was completed and the pipeline became commercially operational.After the pipeline's first year of operation, Forbes reported that it was transporting over 500,000 barrels per day (79,000 m3/d) and had transported approximately 182.5 million barrels (29.02×10^6 m3) of oil. By 2021, the pipeline had the ability to transport 750,000 barrels of oil per day and was accounting for 40 percent of oil produced in the Bakken region.United States District Judge James Boasberg ruled in March 2020 that the government had not studied the pipeline's "effects on the quality of the human environment" enough, ordering the United States Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a new environmental impact review. In July 2020, Judge Boasberg ordered the pipeline to be shut down and emptied of oil pending a new environmental review. The temporary shutdown order was overturned by a U.S. appeals court on August 5, 2020 though the environmental review is expected to continue. In 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes that there should have had been a thorough environmental review (there was only a 2015 preliminary review) for the 2 mile pipeline section below Lake Oahe. In February 2022, the US Supreme Court agreed with this decision. Despite these rulings, the pipeline still remains fully operational to this day. Technical description The pipeline cost $3.78 billion, of which $1.4 billion was invested in the North Dakota portion, $820 million was invested in the South Dakota portion, $1.04 billion was invested in the Iowa portion, and $516 million was invested in the Illinois portion.The pipeline has a permanent easement of 50 feet (15 m) and a construction right-of-way of up to 150 feet (46 m). The 30-inch (760 mm) diameter pipeline is at least 48 inches (1.2 m) underground from the top of the pipe or 2 feet (0.61 m) below any drain tiles. At the length of 1,172 miles (1,886 km) and diameter of 30 inches (760 mm), the entire pipeline volume is 30,214,400 cubic feet (855,576 m3). At the stated daily transport volume of 2,600,000 cubic feet (75,000 m3), the discharge time to empty the whole pipeline is estimated at 11.4 days.Capacity expansion construction was undertaken by Energy Transfer Partners in 2021, which increased the line's capacity from 570,000 bpd to its current nameplate of 750,000. Comparison to rail transport The developer argued that the pipeline improves the overall safety to the public, would help the US to attain energy independence, and is a more reliable and safer method of transport to refineries than rail or road. Proponents have argued that the pipeline will free up railroads, which will allow farmers to ship more Midwest grain. As of July 2014, Bakken shale oil was transported through nine Iowa counties exclusively via three freight trains per week. As of June 2014, 32 trains per week carrying Bakken oil traveled through Jo Daviess County in northwestern Illinois. Ownership The pipeline is owned by Energy Transfer (36.4% stake), MarEn Bakken Company LLC, and Phillips 66 Partners. MarEn Bakken Company LLC is an entity owned by MPLX LP (an affiliate of Marathon Petroleum) and Enbridge Energy Partners L.P.Bakken Holdings Company and Phillips 66 also co-own another part of the Bakken system, the Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline which runs from Patoka to storage terminals in Nederland, Texas. Financing The pipeline project cost $3.78 billion, of which $2.5 billion was financed by loans, while the rest of the capital was raised by the sale of ownership in Dakota Access, LLC to Enbridge and Marathon Petroleum. The loans were provided by a group of 17 banks, including Citibank, Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, SunTrust, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Mizuho Bank, TD Securities, ABN AMRO Capital, ING Bank, DNB ASA, ICBC, SMBC Nikko Securities and Société Générale.Due to pressure resulting from the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, some banks decided to pull funding in the project. This included DNB ASA Financial services group. In February 2017, Seattle, Washington's city council unanimously voted not to renew its contract with Wells Fargo "in a move that cites the bank's role as a lender to the Dakota Access Pipeline project as well as its "creation of millions of bogus accounts" and saying the bidding process for its next banking partner will involve "social responsibility." The City Council in Davis, California, took a similar action, voting unanimously to find a new bank to handle its accounts by the end of 2017. In March 2017, ING sold its stake in the loan, while retaining a potential risk in case of non-payment under the loan.Thirteen of the 17 banks that financed the pipeline were signatories to the Equator Principles. Despite concerns being raised that the project could threaten the water supply from Lake Oahe and the Missouri River if a leak occurred, project financing was still approved. Route The pipeline route runs from the northwestern North Dakota Bakken and Three Forks sites. It starts in Stanley, North Dakota, and travels in a southeastward direction to end at the oil tank farm near Patoka, Illinois. It crosses 50 counties in four states, and is built on private land with portions crossing waters of the United States and flood control areas managed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.In North Dakota, the 346-mile (557 km) route traverses seven counties. The project consists of 143 miles (230 km) of oil-gathering pipelines and 200 miles (322 km) of larger transmission pipeline. The route starts with a terminal in the Stanley area and runs west with five more terminals in Ramberg Station, Epping, Trenton, Watford City and Johnsons Corner before becoming a transmission line going through Williston, the Watford City area, south of Bismarck, and crossing the Missouri River again north of Cannon Ball. It also includes six tank farm locations and one electric pump station.In the early stages of route planning, it was proposed laying the pipeline 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bismarck, North Dakota. The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) evaluated alternative routes as part of compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, including one route north of Bismarck, North Dakota. This alternative was determined not to be a viable alternative because of multiple factors, including that it was not co-located with other infrastructure, the route's impacts to wellhead water resources, constraints on the route from the North Dakota Public Service Commission's 500-foot residential buffer requirement and the route's additional impacts to areas identified as High Consequence areas under Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration regulations.The Bismarck route was rejected by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) before submitting a request to the North Dakota Public Service Commission (NDPSC) for a permit. This decision was described by Jesse Jackson as environmental racism. The change of the route put the pipeline into the existing pipeline corridor parallel to the already existing Northern Border Pipeline, a natural gas pipeline built in 1982. The Dakota Access pipeline selected a "nearly identical route" and planned to cross the Missouri River near the same point. The plans called for the pipeline to be directionally bored so that it would not come in contact with the Missouri River. It is planned to be "as deep as 90 feet (27.4 m)" below the riverbed.In South Dakota, the pipeline travels 274 miles (441 km) through 12 counties: Campbell, McPherson, Edmunds, Faulk and Spink. The system includes one electric pump station. In Iowa, the pipeline extends about 347 miles (558 km) diagonally through 18 Iowa counties: Lyon, Sioux, O'Brien, Cherokee, Buena Vista Sac, Calhoun, Webster, Boone, Story (which will have a pumping station), Polk, Jasper, Mahaska Keokuk, Wapello, Jefferson, Van Buren, and Lee. The system includes one electric pump station.In Illinois, the 177-mile (285 km) route traverses 12 counties. Federal agencies permissions Most of the pipeline was built with permits issued under state law. Federal jurisdiction arises through the United States Army Corps of Engineers for 37 miles of the pipeline where it passes over or under streams, rivers, and federal dams. The USACE has conducted a limited review of the route, involving an environmental assessment of river crossings and portions of the project related to specific permits, and issued a finding of no significant impact. It did not carry out an area-wide full environmental impact assessment of the entire effects of the overall project through the four states. The USACE was authorized to grant the following: verification of Nationwide Permit #12 permits for 202 crossings of jurisdictional waters under Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act and Section 404 of the Clean Water Act; permissions for consent to cross flowage easements acquired and administered by USACE at Lake Sakakawea and Carlyle Reservoir, under Section 14 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899, codified 33 U.S.C. Section 408 (Section 408) permissions to modify the Oahe Dam/Lake Oahe project by granting easements to cross federal property administered by USACE for the flood control and navigation project, under Section 408; permissions to cross the McGee Creek Levee, the Illinois River navigation channel and the Coon Run Levees, under Section 408; permission to horizontally directionally drill under the Mississippi River navigation channel, under Section 408.On June 14, 2017, a federal judge ordered the federal government to conduct further reviews of the pipeline but did not halt pumping operations. On March 25, 2020, a U.S. District judge ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a full environmental review. Concerns Health and environment Prior to construction, some farmers expressed concern about the disturbance of the land, including tiling, soil erosion, and soil quality. They also expressed concerns about potential leaks in the pipeline caused by destabilization in certain areas prone to flooding, which could cause an environmental disaster, as well as the spread of invasive weeds into surrounding land.In 2014, conservation groups raised concerns about safety, and the impacts on air, water, wildlife and farming, because of the risk of the pipeline disruption. Groups such as Greenpeace, the Science & Environmental Health Network, and in 2016 a group of more than 160 scientists spoke out against the pipeline.In 2016, environmentalists and Native Americans expressed concerns the Missouri River might become contaminated in the event of a spill or leak. Sioux tribes expressed concern over leaks because the pipeline passes under Lake Oahe, which serves as a major source of water. Eminent domain In March 2015, a Des Moines Register poll found that while 57% of Iowans supported the Dakota Access Pipeline, 74% were opposed to the use of eminent domain condemnation on behalf of a private corporation. and in 2016, landowners across Iowa expressed concern about allowing the use of eminent domain to condemn privately owned land, particularly agricultural land.In August 2016, Dakota Access, LLC stated that it had already executed easement agreements with 99% of the landowners whose properties were along the four-state route and, with regards to the landowners along the pipeline's route in Iowa, 99% had entered voluntary easements. Tribal positions The pipeline was opposed by the Standing Rock Sioux and the Cheyenne River Sioux tribes, despite it not crossing tribal lands. In September 2014, Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault II indicated the tribe's opposition to any pipeline within treaty boundaries encompassing "North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota." The tribe contended that the route would run across sacred sites and be a potential hazard to its water supply. Dakota Access stated the route was chosen based on it running alongside existing infrastructure including railways and other pipelines.The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation (known as the Three Affiliated Tribes) originally supported the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in its protest of the pipeline. The tribe later argued against shutting down the pipeline, citing significant financial harm to the tribe who uses the pipeline to transport 60 percent of oil produced on its land.The Meskwaki tribe opposed the pipeline citing concerns that the pipeline could be used as a replacement if the Keystone XL pipeline is not built.Saying that "the Corps effectively wrote off the tribe's concerns and ignored the pipeline's impacts to sacred sites and culturally important landscapes," the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has sued the USACE in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, accusing the agency of violating the National Historic Preservation Act and other laws, and seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to stop the pipeline. This claim was rejected by the court. U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg said in the ruling that the USACE "likely complied" with its obligation to consult the tribe and that the tribe "has not shown it will suffer injury that would be prevented by any injunction the Court could issue."On September 20, 2016, Dave Archambault II addressed the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, where he called "upon all parties to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline." Citing the 1851 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux and 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, two treaties ratified by the U.S. Senate that recognize the Sioux's national sovereignty, Archambault told the Council that "the oil companies and the government of the United States have failed to respect our sovereign rights." On September 22, 2016, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, a United Nations expert on the rights of indigenous peoples, admonished the U.S., saying, "The tribe was denied access to information and excluded from consultations at the planning stage of the project, and environmental assessments failed to disclose the presence and proximity of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation." She also responded to the rights of pipeline protesters, saying, "The U.S. authorities should fully protect and facilitate the right to freedom of peaceful assembly of indigenous peoples, which plays a key role in empowering their ability to claim other rights." According to the USACE's data there had been 389 meetings with more than 55 tribes, including nine meetings with The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Kelcy Warren has stated that the company is not on any Native American property.In December 2016, Trump's Native American Coalition held a meeting where members, American Indian and Alaska Native Tribal leaders, and activists could be present to discuss a wide variety of topics that concerned the effects and implications of the pipeline construction as well as environmental protections and safety concerns. Archaeological surveys Several groups, including the Standing Rock Sioux and the Society for American Archaeology, have raised concerns over the thoroughness of archaeological surveys conducted along the pipeline's corridor. These surveys were carried out under the direction of the USACE, in compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). The NHPA requires consideration of archaeological sites and traditional cultural properties. The initial survey showed 149 sites and the pipeline was subsequently moved to avoid 140 of them. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, which oversees compliance with the NHPA, raised two primary concerns to the USACE about the surveys. They criticized the scope of the investigation, which defined each water crossing as a separate project, and therefore failed to consider the pipeline as a whole. They also criticized the lack of tribal involvement in the surveys.Tribal consultants help archaeologists identify sites that may be harder to see within the archaeological record, such as traditional cultural properties. A traditional cultural property is a property whose "significance derived from the role the property plays in a community's historically rooted beliefs, customs, and practices." The USACE reached out to the Standing Rock Sioux on several occasions for consultation, but were denied. The Sioux refused to participate unless they could consult on the whole pipeline. One instance of tribal consultation at Lake Oahe pointed out several cultural sites and a cemetery that the USACE were previously unaware of.On September 2, 2016, Tim Mentz, a former historic preservation officer for the Standing Rock Sioux, testified in DC District Court that 27 graves and 82 sacred sites were to be disturbed by the Cannonball river section of the pipeline. That weekend this area was bulldozed. On September 21, 2016, 1,281 anthropologists, archaeologists, museum officials, and others signed and released a letter in support of the tribal community, calling for further study of the area to be affected by the pipeline in South Dakota. The Society for American Archaeologists also sent a letter to the USACE, detailing their organizations concerns over the project.According to the North Dakota State Historic Preservation Office, the areas highlighted by Tim Mentz were evaluated by state officials on both September 21 and October 20, 2016. They found that only four stone features would be directly impacted by the pipeline. However, many are still concerned about the cumulative effect the project may have on sites that lie outside the 150 ft corridor. Jon Eagle, a Historic Preservation Officer for the tribe, was invited to participate in the evaluation on Sept. 23, but was not allowed access to the areas of the corridor on private property. The tribe insists that evidence was destroyed by the construction company, as grading had gone on in the area previously. Political ties According to his federal disclosure forms, filed in May 2016, President Donald Trump held between $15,000 and $50,000 in stock in Energy Transfer Partners – down from $500,000 to $1 million in 2015 – and between $100,000 and $250,000 in Phillips 66. The Washington Post reported that Trump sold off his shares in Energy Transfer Partners in the summer of 2016. The senior Democrat on the Public Resources Committee, Raul Grijalva, called this appearance of conflict of interest "disturbing". Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren contributed $6 million to the Rick Perry 2016 presidential campaign, as well as $103,000 to the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign. Protests In the spring of 2016 protests began at pipeline construction sites in North Dakota and drew indigenous people, calling themselves water protectors and land defenders, from throughout North America as well as many other supporters, creating the largest gathering of Native Americans in the past hundred years.In April 2016, a Standing Rock Sioux elder established a camp near the Missouri River at the site of Sacred Stone Camp, located within the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, as a center for cultural preservation and spiritual resistance to the pipeline, and over the summer the camp grew to thousands of people. In July, ReZpect Our Water, a group of Native American youth, ran from Standing Rock in North Dakota to Washington, DC to raise awareness of what they perceive as a threat to their people's drinking water and that of everyone who relies on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers for drinking water and irrigation.While the protests drew international attention and were said to be "reshaping the national conversation for any environmental project that would cross the Native American land", there was limited mainstream media coverage of the events in the United States until early September 2016. At that time, construction workers bulldozed a section of land that tribal historic preservation officers had documented as a historic, sacred site, and when protesters entered the area security workers used attack dogs, which bit at least five of the protesters. The incident was filmed and viewed by several million people on YouTube and other social media. In late October, armed soldiers and police with riot gear and military equipment cleared an encampment that was directly in the proposed pipeline's path.According to state and federal authorities, there were several cases of arson that damaged pipeline construction equipment in Iowa during 2016. One deliberately set fire caused nearly $1 million in damage to construction equipment in August in Jasper County, Iowa. Two other fires involving pipeline construction equipment were set around the same time in the same county and another was set in Mahaska County. In October, another arson fire caused $2 million worth of damage to pipeline construction equipment in Jasper County, Iowa. See also List of natural gas pipelines in North America List of oil pipelines in North America List of pipeline accidents List of oil refineries in North America References External links Dakota Access Pipeline - Official Website - Energy Transfer Dakota Access Pipeline - Project Maps - Energy Transfer Frequently Asked Questions DAPL US Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha Division SRS Tribal Council Meeting (Sept. 2014) audio. Standing Rock Sioux Tribe meeting with DAPL representatives Combined application of Dakota Access LLC for a Waiver or Reduction of Procedures and Time Schedules and for a Corridor Certificate and Route Permit Dakota Access, LLC (Dec. 2014) Map of Oil and Natural Gas Pipelines in the United States (Sept. 2015) - Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration Memorandum Opinion of "Standing Rock Sioux Tribe vs U.S. Army Corps of Engineers" (Sept. 2016) - United States District Court Environmental assessment: Dakota Access Pipeline Project, crossings of flowage easements and federal lands Dakota Access, LLC; US Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha Division Chronology of Opposition to Dakota Access Pipeline from Standing Rock Sioux Tribe

western ghats ecology expert panel

The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), also known as the Gadgil Commission after its chairman Madhav Gadgil, was an environmental research commission appointed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests of India. The commission submitted the report to the Government of India on 31 August 2011. The Expert Panel approached the project through a set of tasks, such as: Compilation of readily available information about Western Ghats Development of Geo-spatial database based on environmental sensitivity, and Consultation with Government bodies and Civil society groups.Certain sections of people in Kerala, strongly protested the implementation of the report since most of the farmers obtained their livelihood from the hilly regions in Wayanad. During the 20th century, a very large number of people had migrated from southern Kerala and acquired forest land in Wayanad and other areas. The Gadgil Commission report was criticised for being excessively environment-friendly and not in tune with the ground realities. Ecology Expert Panel ChairmanProfessor Madhav Gadgil, Ph.D (Harvard University), Former HOD, Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.MembersDr. V. S. Vijayan, Ph.D. (University of Mumbai), Founder Director, Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, Coimbatore; Former Chairman, the Kerala State Biodiversity Board. Prof. (Ms.) Renee Borges, Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Prof. R. Sukumar, Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Dr. Ligia Noronha Dr. K.N. Ganeshaiah Shri. B.J. Krishnan Ms Vidya S. Nayak Dr. D. K. SubramaniamEx-officio membersDr. R.V. Varma, Chairman, The Kerala State Biodiversity Board Chairman, National Biodiversity Authority(NBA) Prof S.P. Gautam, Chairman, Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) Dr. R.R. Navalgund, Director, Space Application Centre (SAC) Dr. G.V. Subrahmanyam, Advisor (RE), Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India, New Delhi Major recommendations of Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) The panel recommended a National-level authority, Western Ghats Ecology Authority (WGEA). The Gadgil Commission report was criticised for being too environment-friendly.The report was considered by UNESCO, which added the 39 serial sites of the Western Ghats on the World Heritage List. Kasturirangan Report The Kasturirangan Commission has sought to balance the two concerns of development and environment protection, by watering down the environmental regulation regime proposed by the Western Ghats Ecology Experts Panel’s Gadgil report in 2012. The Kasturirangan report seeks to bring just 37% of the Western Ghats under the Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) zones — down from the 64% suggested by the Gadgil report. Dr. V.S. Vijayan, member of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) said recommendations of the Kasturirangan report are undemocratic and anti-environmental.A crucial report on Western Ghats prepared by K. Kasturirangan-led high-level working group (HLWG) has recommended prohibition on development activities in 60,000 km2 ecologically sensitive area spread over Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.The 10-member panel, constituted to examine the Western Ghats ecology expert panel report prepared under the leadership of environmentalist Madhav Gadgil, has also moved away from the suggestions of the Gadgil panel.The Gadgil panel had recommended a blanket approach consisting of guidelines for sector-wise activities, which could be permitted in the ecologically sensitive zones. Livelihood options "Environmentally sound development cannot preclude livelihood and economic options for this region... The answer (to the question of how to manage and conserve the Ghats) will not lie in removing these economic options, but in providing better incentives to move them towards greener and more sustainable practices," the HLWG report says.The panel submitted the report to Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan. Prohibitory regime Roughly 37 per cent of the total area defined as the boundary of the Western Ghats is ecologically sensitive. Over this area of some 60,000 km2, spread over the States of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the working group has recommended a prohibitory regime on those activities with maximum interventionist and destructive impact on the environment, the panel says in its report. The Working Group was constituted to advise the government on the recommendations of an earlier report of ecologist Madhav Gadgil-led "Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel" (WGEEP). The WGEEP had recommended 64% of Western Ghats to be declared as an ecologically sensitive area. It had suggested three levels of categorization where regulatory measures for protection would be imposed and had recommended the establishment of the Western Ghats Ecology Authority for management of the Ghats. The 10-member Working Group, headed by Planning Commission member Kasturirangan, has environmental experts and other professionals as its members. "The Western Ghats is a biological treasure trove that is endangered, and it needs to be protected and regenerated, indeed celebrated for its enormous wealth of endemic species and natural beauty", the report says. Natarajan said that the recommendations would be looked into urgently so that action can be taken to address these challenges. Kasturirangan said, "The message of this report is serious, alarming and urgent. It is imperative that we protect, manage and regenerate the lands now remaining in the Western Ghats as biologically rich, diverse, natural landscapes". See also Brundtland Commission Sustainability Sustainable development References External links "Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel". (7.7MB)

water efficiency

Water efficiency is the practice of reducing water consumption by measuring the amount of water required for a particular purpose and is proportionate to the amount of essential water used. Water efficiency differs from water conservation in that it focuses on reducing waste, not restricting use. Solutions for water efficiency not only focus on reducing the amount of potable water used but also on reducing the use of non-potable water where appropriate (e.g. flushing toilet, watering landscape, etc.). It also emphasizes the influence consumers can have on water efficiency by making small behavioral changes to reduce water wastage, and by choosing more water-efficient products. Importance According to the UN World Water Development Report, over the past 100 years, global water use has increased by a factor of six. Annually, the rate steadily increases at an estimated amount of one percent as a result of population increase, economic development and changing consumption patterns. Increasing human demand for water coupled with the effects of climate change mean that the future of water supply is not secure. Billion people do not have safe drinking water. In addition, there are changes in climate, population growth, and lifestyles. The changes in human lifestyle and activities require more water per capita. This creates competition for water among agricultural, industrial, and human consumption. Organizations Many countries recognize water scarcity as a growing problem. Global organizations such as the World Water Council, continue to prioritize water efficiency alongside water conservation. The Alliance for Water Efficiency, Waterwise, California Water Efficiency Partnership (formally the California Urban Water Conservation Council), Smart Approved WaterMark in Australia, and the Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia in Canada are non-governmental organizations that support water efficiency at national and regional levels. Governmental organizations such as Environment Canada, the EPA in the USA, the Environment Agency in the UK, DEWR in Australia, have recognized and created policies and strategies to raise water efficiency awareness. The EPA established the WaterSense in 2006. The program is a voluntary program to encourage water efficiency in the United States by identifying and testing products that demonstrate improvement over standard models for toilets, bathroom faucets and faucet accessories, urinals, and residential shower heads through the use of the WaterSense label. The government of China created a five-year (2010-2015) plan to deliver safe drinking water to about 54 percent of the population by 2015. It would cost about $66 billion US dollars or ¥410 billion Yuan to upgrade about 57,353 miles (92,300 kilometers) of main pipes and water treatment plants. The government hopes these steps will help to better conserve water and meet demands.The Indian state of Haryana implemented the State Rural Water Policy 2012; under this policy individual household metered connections would be provided to 50% of the rural population by 2017, to stop water wastage in villages. Water efficient solutions Residential Water efficiency solutions in residences include: Turning off the faucet sink while brushing teeth — saves approximately five gallons (about 19 liters) of water Installing faucet aerators Fixing a water valve leakage Only running the dishwasher and washing machine with a full load Taking a shower instead of a bath Washing fruits and vegetables in a bowl rather than continuously running the tap water Using leftover water for houseplants Using a watering can or garden hose with a trigger nozzle instead of a sprinkler Using a bucket and sponge when washing a car rather than a running a hose Washing clothes and linens in a washing machine rather than washing them by hand Recycling greywater for toilet flushing water and garden use Watering outdoor plants in the morning or in the evening when temperatures are coolerConsumers can voluntarily, or with government incentives or mandates, purchase water-efficient appliances such as low-flush toilets and washing machines. Manufacturers Water efficiency solutions in manufacturing: Identifying and eliminating wastage (such as leaks) and inefficient processes (such as continual spray devices on stop-start production lines). This may be the most low-cost area for water savings, as it involves minimal capital outlay. Savings can be made through implementing procedural changes, such as cleaning plant areas with brooms rather than water. Changing processes and plant machinery. A retrofit of key plant equipment may increase efficiency. Alternatively, upgrades to more efficient models can be factored into planned maintenance and replacement schedules. Reusing wastewater. As well as saving on mains water, this option may improve the reliability of supply, whilst reducing trade waste charges and associated environmental risks. Waterless products Using waterless car wash products to wash cars, boats, motorcycles, and bicycles. This could save up to 150 U.S. gallons (570 L) of water per wash. Utilities The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) makes the following recommendations for communities and utilities: Implementing a water-loss management program (e.g. locate and repair leaks). Universal metering. Ensuring that fire hydrants are tamperproof. Equipment changes — setting a good example by using water-efficient equipment. Installing faucet aerators and low-flow shower heads in municipal buildings. Replacing worn-out plumbing fixtures, appliances, and equipment with water-saving models. Minimizing the water used in space cooling equipment in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations. Shutting off cooling units when not needed. Encouraging the use of urinals instead of toilet stalls in school (boys') and work office (men's) restrooms.Utilities can also modify their billing software to track customers who have taken advantage of various utility-sponsored water conservation initiatives (toilet rebates, irrigation rebates, etc.) to see which initiatives provide the greatest water savings for the least cost. Water policies and impact assessments Environmental policies and the difference usages of models that are generated by these enforcement can have significant impacts on society. Hence, improving policies regarding environmental justice issues often require local government's decision-making, public awareness, and a significant amount of scientific tools. Furthermore, it is important to understand that positively impacting policy decisions require more than good intentions, and they necessitate analysis of risk-related information along with consideration of economic issues, ethical and moral principles, legal precedents, political realities, cultural beliefs, societal values, and bureaucratic impediments. Also, ensuring that the rights of people regardless of their age, race, and background are being protected should not be neglected according to "The Role of Cumulative risk Assessment in Decisions about Environmental Justice." If a policy protects the natural environment but negatively affects those who are in the reach of the enforcement of the policy, that policy is subjected to revaluation. Researchers suggest racial and socioeconomic disparities in exposure to environmental hazards describing the demographic composition of areas and their proximity to hazardous sites. Then, any improvements of a social policy and models that are generated by these improvements should reflect the policy-makers' and researchers' environmental justice beliefs. Therefore, researchers and social changes should examine the promises and pitfalls associated with the environmental justice struggles, explore implications of proposed solutions, and recognize the fact that tools necessary to sufficiently carry preceding requirements are underdeveloped. Examples Reef Plan (Australia) The Reef Plan began to incorporate new ways to create models that integrate environmental, economical, and social consequences. Pre-existing Australian water policies were often criticized by previous models for investment prioritization and economic dimensions when it came to policy impact assessment. However, the policy makers and researchers in Australia now suggest that "sustainability focused policy requires multi-dimensional indicators" that combine different disciplines. The Reef Plan allows the policy makers to identify issues relating to Reef water quality and implement management strategies and actions to conserve and rehabilitate areas such as riparian zones and wetlands. With the Reef Plan, Nine strategies were implemented in the Great Barrier Reef region. They include self-management approaches, education, and extension, economic incentives, planning for natural resources management and land use, regulatory frameworks, research and information sharing, partnership, priorities and targets, and monitoring and evaluation. And such improvements invoked benefits such as: A more comprehensive picture of the policy impacts. New models projected possible outcomes of different simulations of the proposed policies under various circumstances. In addition, they provided the optimal decisions to be made regarding each outcome through the usage of what is known as computable general equilibrium (CGE) which “integrate dynamics on a catchment scale” Helping the aggregation of both economic aspects of water and non-monetary elements of water usage. Acknowledging the fact that farm production should depend on the global dynamics Conserved Water Statutes (United States) Conserved Water Statutes are state laws enacted by California, Montana, Washington, and Oregon to conserve water and allocate water resources to meet the needs of increasing demand for water in the dry lands where irrigation is or was occurring. These laws help the states to dismiss the disincentives to conserve water and do so without damaging pre-existing water rights. Because any extra amount of water after applying water to beneficiaries of the pre-existing water policies does not belong to the appropriators, such a condition creates an incentive to use as much water as possible rather than saving. This obviously causes the costs of irrigation to be greater than the optimal amount which makes the policy very inefficient. However, by enacting Conserved Water Statutes, state legislatures are able to address the disincentives to save water. The policy allows the appropriators to have rights over the surplus water and enforces them to verify their water savings by the water resources department. Out of the four states that adopted the Conserved Water Statutes, Oregon is often renowned to be the most successful. According to "How Expanding The Productivity of Water Rights Could Lessen Our Water Woes," The Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD) has been a success because a high percentage of submitted applications submitted, and the OWRD serves as a good intermediaries that help appropriators to conserve water. OWRD’s programs are not only a success because its effectiveness but also because of their efforts to improve the workers’ working conditions. According to OWRD's website, the state policies regarding the water rights are divided into Cultural Competency, Traditional Health Worker, Coordinated Care Organizations, and Race, Ethnicity and Language Data Collection. Water pollution in Malaysia In Malaysia, the citizens have been experiencing harm from water pollutants in the river that have been accumulating over decades due to fast-growing urbanization and industrialization. The planners of Malaysia have been trying to come up with models that indicate the amount of pollutants has grown over time as cities became more industrialized and how these chemicals are distributed in various regions with the usage of econometrics and various scientific tools. Such an attempt is to encourage in-depth researches because sources should be able to analyzed numerically and give economic evaluations while also evaluating the environment. With an abundance of evidence provided by models which reveal the inadequacy of current policies, the Malaysian decision-makers now recognize that appropriate treatments are necessary for regions that are industrialized to protect the residents from water pollutants. As a result, the government seeks to increase public awareness and provide affordable water services to residents by year 2020. Benefits of impact assessments Successful policies and assessments integrate environmental, economical, and social consequences which provide better models and potential future improvements of the policies. Understanding the importance of water policies and impact assessments is a crucial part of both water justice and environmental justice issues. Not only does it help to protect the quality of water but also the quality of living for humans who are directly affected by the environment. In addition, successful policies go beyond water issues. Beneficial policies that are intended to benefit the general public touch upon subjects such as transportation and other environmental policies that may have a significant impact on the surrounding environment. Instead of mere cost-benefit analysis, decisions are made so that they account for the priorities of the people.Notable benefits of impact assessments: comprehensive picture of the policy impacts. New models projected possible outcomes of different simulations of the proposed policies under various circumstances. In addition, they provided the optimal decisions to be made regarding each outcome through the usage of what is known as computable general equilibrium (CGE) which “integrate dynamics on a catchment scale” aggregation of both economics aspects of water and non-monetary elements of water usage. acknowledging the fact that farm production should depend on the global dynamics. Protection of the human rights of the workers and improvements in working conditions. Provision of data that can be analyzed in terms of the economy, health impacts, and recognition of the need for appropriate treatments. See also Deficit irrigation Nonresidential water use in the U.S. Rainwater collection Residential water use in the U.S. and Canada Water conservation Water resource management Tap water References External links Water Conservation for Small and Medium-Sized Utilities Water Efficiency A Free Trade Publication Savewater

environmental issues in appalachia

Environmental issues in Appalachia, a cultural region in the Eastern United States, include long term and ongoing environmental impact from human activity, and specific incidents of environmental harm such as environmental disasters related to mining. A mountainous area with significant coal deposits, many environmental issues in the region are related to coal and gas extraction. Some extraction practices, particularly surface mining, have met significant resistance locally and at times have received international attention.Besides coal mining and natural gas extraction, Appalachia faces other environmental issues, including deforestation, soil erosion, climate change, and water scarcity. Deforestation has negatively impacted the region's biologically diverse forests, reducing habitat for various species and altering the forest ecosystem. The steep slopes and heavy rainfall in Appalachia make it susceptible to soil erosion, which can be worsened by land use changes like logging and mining, leading to sedimentation in rivers and streams. Climate change has also affected the region, causing more frequent and severe weather events, shifts in precipitation patterns, and changes in seasonal events. While Appalachia is known for its abundant water resources, water scarcity is a concern in some areas, especially during droughts, which can be worsened by climate change and industrial water withdrawals.Additionally, black lung disease has been prevalent in the Appalachia region. This disease is common in coal workers due to the inhalation of coal and silica dust in mining sites. Appalachia emerges as the hotspot of this disease, even in lower-class neighborhoods. Minimal screening of the disease has been registered even after passing the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act as early as 1969. There is an urgent need for public health policy in the area to regulate the impacts of coal mining on the spread of black lung disease. Coal mining Rural communities in Appalachia suffer from environmental, economic and health disparities related to coal mining. Environmental activism has tended to be a divisive issue because of the dependence of the regional economy on extractive industries, including coal mining. Environmental disasters related to coal mining include coal seam fires (Carbondale mine fire, Centralia mine fire, and Laurel Run mine fire) and coal slurry spills. History Coal was found in the 1740s in Virginia, but use remained small scale until the 1800s. Mountaintop removal mining has been practiced since the 1960s. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, after being vetoed twice by Gerald Ford. Before SMCRA most coal states had passed their own mining laws. SMCRA states that "reclaimed land must be as useful as the land was before mining".SMCRA also created the Office of Surface Mining, an agency within the Department of the Interior, to promulgate regulations, to fund state regulatory and reclamation efforts, and to ensure consistency among state regulatory programs.Early attempts to regulate strip-mining on the state level were largely unsuccessful due to lax enforcement. The Appalachian Group to Save the Land and the People was founded in 1965 to stop surface mining. In 1968, Congress held the first hearings on strip mining. Ken Hechler introduced the first strip-mining abolition bill in Congress in 1971. Though this bill was not passed, provisions establishing a process to reclaim abandoned strip mines and allowing citizens to sue regulatory agencies became parts of SMCRA.After SMCRA was passed, the coal industry immediately challenged it as exceeding the limits of Congressional leglative power under the Commerce Clause. In Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining and Reclamation Association (1981) the Supreme Court held that Congress does have the authority to regulate coal mining, generally. The War on Coal Some organizations have said that the Obama Administration's EPA and other federal agencies were engaged in a "war on coal". Organizations such as The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), member companies of the National Mining Association, the United States Chamber of Commerce, as well as anonymous donor political action committees (PACs) spent millions of dollars to promote this message through print, radio and television advertisements. They argued that the proposed regulatory actions would increase the costs of mining and burning coal. They further argued that the regulations would increase the costs of disposing of mining wastes, destroy tens of thousands of jobs, and threaten the "way of life" of coalfield families. Several categories of federal regulations are at issue: The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), including lowering levels of black-lung causing coal dust and enforceable standards to identify "patterns of violations" by mining companiesEPA Clean Water Act Regulatory Proposals including efforts to identify buffer zones near streams where mountaintop removal strip-mining and disposal of coal mining wastes would be prohibitedEPA Clean Air Act proposalsA study conducted by the Great Lakes Energy Institute has found that fracking has driven the decline in coal production in the United States. Professor Mingguo Hong has said that while the EPA rules may have an impact, the data shows that the regulations have not been the driving force behind the decline of coal production. Mountaintop mining Mountaintop mining, also called mountaintop removal (MTR), is a form of strip mining and surface mining. This mining process uses explosives to blast the tops of mountains and access underlying coal deposits. It has resulted in mountains being flattened into "synthetic prairies." Researchers have found that mountaintop mining (MTM) is more damaging to rivers, biodiversity and human health than underground mining.After the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act established a trading and quota system for sulfur dioxide emissions, coal-burning plants began to demand more low-sulfur coal. In response to this increase in demand, mining companies expanded extraction in areas with significant low sulfur coal deposits—in particular, the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, southern Virginia, and eastern Tennessee.After the mountaintops are blasted to reveal low-sulfur coal deposits, the excess rock and earth created by mountaintop removal is dumped into the valleys. This has buried hundreds of miles of streams under dumped earth. The Charleston Daily Mail reported that MTR has buried 2,000 miles of streams in Appalachia and has contaminated water supplies an endangered the health of Appalachian communities.Under federal law, mountaintop removal is only allowed if mine operators planned to build schools, shopping centers, factories or public parks on the flattened land. A spokeswoman for the National Mining Association has said "these reclamation activities have provided much needed level land above the flood plain for construction of schools, government offices, medical facilities, airports, shopping centers and housing developments." However, a 2010 survey of 410 mountaintop removal sites found that only 26 of the sites (6.3 percent of total) "yield some form of verifiable post-mining economic development." Joe Lovett is the founder of the Appalachia Center for the Economy and Environment and an attorney who has filed a federal lawsuit against the West Virginia Division of Environmental Protection for issuing mountaintop removal permits without the required post-mining land use plans. Lovett has said the "coal companies are simply taking off mountaintops and dumping them into West Virginia's streams, harming the communities and the environment in the process." Health effects Cancer rates in Central Appalachia are higher than elsewhere in the United States. Researchers who have studied the disproportionate rates of cancer in this region have found that there are many contributing factors including poverty and poor health habits. The link between mining and health is controversial. Studies that controlled factors like smoking and obesity have found that cancer, heart disease and birth defects are "associated" with MTR. Cancers are more common in MTR areas. A U.S. Geological Survey found high levels of the carcinogens aluminum and silica in air samples from MTR regions in Appalachia. The researchers also found traces of chromium, sulfate, selenium and magnesium in the air.These components of granite rock may elevate the risk of cancer through respiratory damage. Another study found elevated levels of another carcinogen, arsenic, in toenail samples collected from residents of Appalachian Kentucky.The major respiratory problem in coal mining fields is the black lung disease, also known as pneumoconiosis. The rate of BLD doubles almost every decade . Miners in Appalachia are vulnerable to this disease due to chronic exposure to coal dust. Other diseases are the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Another problem is waterborne diseases in the coal mining areas. There' s high levels of major ions in the freshwaters of streams in Appalachia. This water flows downstream to various biodiversity, urban and human use. Therefore human health is put to risk by the anthropogenic salinization of fresh water. Mountain top removal mining leads to congenital birth anomalies due to prenatal exposure of environmental contamination. Common defects are the congenital heart defects associated with exposure to coal mining in Appalachia. Mental health is negatively affected when miners experience mental fatigue, sleep disorders, job stress and anxiety Fracking Fracking is a colloquial term for "horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing." During the 19th century natural gas was easy to extract from moderate depths using vertical wells. Sometimes wells were not needed at all because the gas was so plentiful it would bubble up from the ground. As non-renewable energy resources become more scarce, advances in fracking technology have allowed access to natural gas reserves accumulated in shale formations. Reserves of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale rock formation are valued at around $500 billion in Pennsylvania alone.While coal production in Appalachia has been in decline, advances in fracking technology have contributed to the regional "natural gas boom." The coal deposit of eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia's coal fields have been mined longer than other reserves in the United States. The remaining deposits in these areas are deeper and the costs of extraction has increased.Adverse environmental and health impacts have been reported by communities who live near areas with significant fracking activity. Studies have shown that fracking may be a cause of groundwater contamination.One issue that has been raised is the disposal of wastewater created by the fracking process. The salty wastewater contains dissolved solids like sulfates and chlorides, which sewage and drinking water plants are unable to remove. West Virginia has asked sewage treatment plants to not accept frack water after regulators determined that the levels of dissolved solids in drinking water exceeded government standards.There are concerns about the environmental and health impacts of the entire process - from site preparation to waste management. Environmental activists have called for a ban on fracking. Deforestation Significant deforestation occurred in Appalachia around the turn of the twentieth century, with land use rapidly shifting from majority old growth forest to over 70% agricultural land by 1910. This resulted in significant damage to forest ecosystems in the region, soil damage and water pollution from erosion, and increased forest fires. Timber harvesting decreased in the mid twentieth century resulting in significant regrowth of forest, steadily increasing in density and maturity until today.Deforestation re-emerged as an issue in the late twentieth century. Some resurgence of the timber industry began in the 1980s because of maturing forests, including the use of clearcutting. As of 2007 over 300 square miles of forest had been removed because of MTR mining alone.Negative impact of the activity should be addressed Reduced mining frequency should be used to control coal mining. Coal may be recycled and reused to lessen its negative environmental consequences during manufacturing and use. It is possible to reclaim coal mining land and use it for airports, landfills, and golf courses. Events 1972 Buffalo Creek Disaster In 1972, a slurry pond built by Pittson Coal Company collapsed. In what is known as the Buffalo Creek disaster 130 million gallons of sludge flooded Buffalo Creek. More recently, a waste impoundment owned by Massey burst in Kentucky, flooding nearby streams with 250 tons of coal slurry.When lawyers attempted to sue Pittson Company, the sole shareholder of the Buffalo mining company, they first had to pierce the corporate veil. Pittson's lawyers filed certain documents with the court to show that, as a shareholder, Pittson was not liable for the disaster because the Buffalo Mining Company was run independently. These documents were minutes of shareholders' and directors' meetings that Pittson's attorneys relied on in their argument that Pittson was a protected shareholder behind the corporate veil. The lawyers for the victims of Buffalo creek were able to pierce the corporate veil when they proved that none of these meetings "had actually taken place." 2000 Kentucky coal slurry spill The Martin County coal slurry spill occurred on October 11, 2000 when the bottom of a coal slurry impoundment owned by Massey Energy in Martin County, Kentucky broke into an abandoned underground mine below. The slurry came out of the mine openings, sending an estimated 306,000,000 US gallons (1.16×109 L; 255,000,000 imp gal) of slurry down two tributaries of the Tug Fork River. 2008 Tennessee fly ash slurry spill The TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill occurred on December 22, 2008, when an ash dike ruptured at an 84-acre (0.34 km2) solid waste containment area at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee. 1.1 billion US gallons (4,200,000 m3) of coal fly ash slurry was released. 2010 Clearfield County well blowout During exploration of the Marcellus Shale in 2010, a blowout at the Clearfield County well started a 16-hour natural gas leak. Natural gas and wastewaster "shot 75 feet into the air," releasing 1 million gallons of brine and gas into the forest according to Bud George.During the 2010s, the coal industry in Appalachia experienced a decline due to political and economic changes. This industry had been a significant source of employment for the region for many years. However, this decline has had adverse effects on both the environment and economy of the area. Abandoned mines and unreclaimed lands continue to pose environmental risks. 2011 Atgas 2H well blowout and spill In 2011 a study funded by Chesapeake Energy found that the release of fracking fluids from Chesapeake's Atgas 2H well site had not had any long-term negative impact on Pennsylvania groundwater or watersheds. Thousands of gallons of waste fluids spilled onto a farm and streams after the Atgas 2H well in LeRoy Township blew out. 2014 Elk River chemical spill The 2014 Elk River chemical spill occurred on January 9, 2014 when 7,500 gallons of chemicals leaked from a Freedom Industries facility into the Elk River, a tributary of the Kanawha River in West Virginia. The primary chemical, crude MCHM, is a chemical foam used to wash coal and remove impurities. The spill resulted in a temporary “do-not-use" advisory for drinking water affecting up to 300,000 people in the area. Environmentalism in Appalachia History Environmentalism in Appalachia is generally characterized by opposition to fossil fuel extraction in the area. Much of the environmental movement in Appalachia is rooted in the legacy of resistance to the coal industry by labor unions in the late 1800s and early 1900s. From the 1960s onward environmental groups in the region focused on surface mining as one of the most significant environmental threats in the region. The 1960s and 70s marked a particularly significant resistance, including political organizing, nonviolent direct action, and litigation against fossil fuel companies. This led up to the passing of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act in 1977, which was initially seen as a success by many activists but was poorly enforced.After the passage of the SMCRA many environmental organizations previously focusing on surface mining broadened their focus to more social issues. Increased deforestation in the 1980s led to organizing against clearcutting. Public attention was brought back to surface mining after the popularization of Mountaintop Removal mining in the 1990s began facing resistance. The origins of an environmental justice movement in Appalachia began with primarily women resisting the practice because of health risks in their communities. Direct action techniques saw a resurgence beginning in what was labeled "Mountain Justice Summer" in 2005 and succeeded in bringing the issue to international attention. The Environmental Justice Movement Environmental justice has been identified by scholars as a movement that acknowledged the disproportionate effects of environmental damage and toxic contamination on the poor and people of color. Though much of the focus on environmental justice has been placed in urban areas this lens has also been applied to the Appalachian region, which has long been associated with poverty in the general American public. This perception was further solidified when region was targeted by Nixon's"War on Poverty" campaign.Because of the environmental and health effects of fossil fuel extraction in the area, Appalachia has been identified by some as an "energy sacrifice zone." Kentucky activist Joe Begley characterized the injustice in the region in a 1999 interview saying, "People here live on top of a gold mine, and they're starving to death. They live on top of a coal mine, and they're freezing to death.” Environmental justice groups are often community grassroots organizations that combined environmentalism with issues of social equality. Many contemporary environmental organizations in the area fit this description, such as the Mountain Justice group, formed in opposition to Mountain Top Removal mining. MTR has been used as an example of environmental injustice in the region. This relates both to the disproportionate level of chronic health issues in regions where it is present and thousands of lost jobs resulting from the less labor intensive nature of the practice.To achieve environmental justice, individuals must have the right to a clean and healthy environment, as well as the ability to participate in decisions that impact their surroundings. Public policy must be unbiased and respectful towards all peoples, without discrimination. Prevention of harm to both human health and the environment is also crucial. Full access to information and opportunities to participate in decision-making processes is a necessity. The Environmental Justice Movement has made significant strides in promoting the intersection of environmental issues and social justice, but there is still much work to be done to ensure equal access to a clean and healthy environment for all communities. Opposition Despite the presence of environmental activism, there is also significant resistance to environmentalism in the region that is linked to political conservatism Research has shown that resistance is rooted in a strong connection between coal mining and perceptions of the identity and importance of the region and the fear of the government regulations encroaching on personal freedoms. Additionally, many in the region are financially dependent on coal mining and speaking out against the industry could mean losing their livelihood. See also Appalachia § Logging Centralia Mine Fire Johnstown Flood List of natural gas and oil production accidents in the United States List of Superfund sites in Kentucky List of Superfund sites in Pennsylvania List of Superfund sites in Tennessee List of Superfund sites in West Virginia Mountaintop Removal Mining == References ==

agricultural chemistry

Agricultural chemistry is the study of chemistry, especially organic chemistry and biochemistry, as they relate to agriculture. This includes agricultural production, the use of ammonia in fertilizer, pesticides, and how plant biochemistry can be used to genetically alter crops. Agricultural chemistry is not a distinct discipline, but a common thread that ties together genetics, physiology, microbiology, entomology, and numerous other sciences that impinge on agriculture. Agricultural chemistry studies the chemical compositions and reactions involved in the production, protection, and use of crops and livestock. Its applied science and technology aspects are directed towards increasing yields and improving quality, which comes with multiple advantages and disadvantages. Advantages and Disadvantages The goals of agricultural chemistry are to expand understanding of the causes and effects of biochemical reactions related to plant and animal growth, to reveal opportunities for controlling those reactions, and to develop chemical products that will provide the desired assistance or control. Agricultural chemistry is therefore used in processing of raw products into foods and beverages, as well as environmental monitoring and remediation. It is also used to make feed supplements for animals, as well as medicinal compounds for the prevention or control of disease. When agriculture is considered with ecology, the sustainablility of an operation is considered. However, modern agrochemical industry has gained a reputation for its maximising profits while violating sustainable and ecologically viable agricultural principles. Eutrophication, the prevalence of genetically modified crops and the increasing concentration of chemicals in the food chain (e.g. persistent organic pollutants) are only a few consequences of naive industrial agriculture. In recent years there has been somewhat of a debate between industrial agriculture and organic agriculture as to which method is better suited to provide the food necessary for a growing population. Supporters of organic agriculture argue for a more sustainable approach to framing, one that doesn't degrade or harm the environment. Those for industrial agriculture say that organic farming methods do not produce enough food to provide for the world's population, though there is no scientific evidence to back this up. The debate is ongoing on both sides. Soil Chemistry Agricultural chemistry often aims at preserving or increasing the fertility of soil, maintaining or improving the agricultural yield, and improving the quality of the crop. The discovery of the Haber-Bosch process led to increase in production of crops in the 20th century. This process involves converting nitrogen and hydrogen gas into ammonia for use in fertilizer. Ammonia is essential for crop growth as nitrogen is vital in cellular biomass. This process dramatically increases the rate at which crops are produced, which is able to support the growing human population. The most common form of nitrogen fertilization source is urea, but ammonium sulphate, diammonium phosphate, and calcium ammonium phosphate are also used.A drawback to the Haber-Bosch process is its high energy usage.The usage of vermicompost is another process that has more recently been used in agricultural fields. The process of vermicomposting involves using the waste from certain high-nutrient foods as an organic fertilizer for crops. Earth worms play a large part in this process, eating the nutritious waste then breaking it down to be absorbed into the soil.Vermicomposting has many benefits. Some of these benefits include the amount of food being wasted is minimized, consequently also leading to a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions as the breaking down of food waste produces powerful methane emissions. Vermicomposting also re-introduces important nutrients such as potassium, calcium, and magnesium back into the soil so as to be readily accessible to plants. This increase in nutrients in the soil also leads to an increase in the nutrients of the plants, as well as it increases plant growth and decreases diseases. Finally, vermicomposting is seen as a more beneficial fertilizer compared to chemical fertilizers due to long-term application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides leading to depletions in the soil and crops as well as it upsets ecological balance and health.Some disadvantages of vermicomposting include the complications that come with trying to compost a large amount of waste. Continuous waste and water is needed to maintain the process, leading to some difficulties. The earthworms that are essential to the process are also sensitive to such things as pH, temperature, and moisture content. Pesticides Chemical materials developed to assist in the production of food, feed, and fiber include herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and other pesticides. Pesticides are chemicals that play an important role in increasing crop yield and mitigating crop losses. A variety of chemicals are used as pesticides, including 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic Acid (2,4-D), Aldrin/Dieldrin, Atrazine and others. These work to keep insects and other animals away from crops to allow them to grow undisturbed, effectively regulating pests and diseases. Disadvantages of pesticides and herbicides include contamination of the ground and water. They may also be toxic to non-target species, including birds and fish. Specifically, the pesticide glyphosate has been accused of being a cause for cancer after heavy, routine use, and has suitable faced many lawsuits. The insecticide neonicotinoid has been found to be injurious to pollinators and the herbicide dicamba's tendency to drift has caused damage to many crops, according to US Midwest farmers. Plant Biochemistry Plant biochemistry is the study of chemical reactions that occur within plants. Scientists use plant biochemistry to understand the genetic makeup of a plant in order to discover which DNA creates which plant characteristics. Innovations in plant biochemistry seek to increase plant resilience and discover new, more effective ways, of maintaining food sources. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's) are one way of achieving this. GMO's are plants or living things that have been altered at a genomic level by scientists to improve the organisms characteristics. These characteristics include providing new vaccines for humans, increasing nutrients supplies, and creating unique plastics. They may also be able to grow in climates that are typically not suitable for the original organism to grow in. Examples of GMO's include virus resistant tobacco and squash, delayed ripening tomatoes, and herbicide resistant soybeans.GMO's came with an increased interest in using biotechnology to produce fertilizer and pesticides. Due to an increased market interest in biotechnology in the 1970s, there was more technology and infrastructure developed, a decreased cost, and an advance in research. Since the early 1980s, genetically-modified crops have been incorporated. Increased biotechnological work calls for the union of biology and chemistry to produce improved crops, a main reason behind this being the increasing amount of food needed to feed a growing population.That being said, concerns with GMO's include potential antibiotic resistance from eating a GMO. There are also concerns about the long term effects on the human body since many GMO's were recently developed.Because of the concerns some have with GMO's, there is much controversy surrounding them; in the United States, the House of Representatives passed a bill that made it mandatory that all foods that contain GMO's be labeled either in the forms of text on the containers of food, an Agricultural Department created symbol, or a smartphone scannable bar code. Previously, some states had already enacted legislature of this kind, leading farm groups and the food industry to push for the passing of this bill on a national front to prevent the complexity of laws that would come with different state requirements on the labeling of GMO's, believing that it would also lead to increased food prices in stores. Opposition to this bill came from organic food producers and consumer advocacy groups who believed the use of bar codes in labeling would prevent those Americans without smartphones from accessing that important information of what was in their food, as well as the argument that a number of GMO foods, particularly those made with the CRISPR editing tool, would fail to meet the requirements for labeling. See also Agronomy Fertilizer Pesticides == Notes and references ==

aerial application

Aerial application, or what is informally referred to as crop dusting, involves spraying crops with crop protection products from an agricultural aircraft. Planting certain types of seed are also included in aerial application. The specific spreading of fertilizer is also known as aerial topdressing in some countries. Many countries have severely limited aerial application of pesticides and other products because of environmental and public health hazards like spray drift; most notably, the European Union banned it outright with a few highly restricted exceptions in 2009, effectively ending the practice in all member states. Agricultural aircraft are highly specialized, purpose-built aircraft. Today's agricultural aircraft are often powered by turbine engines of up to 1,500 shp (1,100 kW) and can carry as much as 800 US gallons (3,000 L) of crop protection product. Helicopters are sometimes used, and some aircraft serve double duty as water bombers in areas prone to wildfires. These aircraft are referred to as SEAT, or "single engine air tankers." History Aerial seed sowing The first known aerial application of agricultural materials was by John Chaytor, who in 1906 spread seed over a swamped valley floor in Wairoa, New Zealand using a hot air balloon with mobile tethers. Aerial sowing of seed still continues to this day with cover crop applications and rice planting. Crop dusting The first known use of a heavier-than-air machine to disperse products occurred on August 3, 1921. Crop dusting was developed under the joint efforts of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Army Signal Corps' research station at McCook Field in Dayton, Ohio. Under the direction of McCook engineer Etienne Dormoy, a United States Army Air Service Curtiss JN4 Jenny piloted by John A. Macready was modified at McCook Field to spread lead arsenate to kill catalpa sphinx caterpillars at a catalpa farm near Troy, Ohio in the United States. The first test was considered highly successful.The first commercial cropdusting operations began in 1924 in Macon, Georgia by Huff-Daland Crop Dusting, which was co-founded by McCook Field test pilot Lt. Harold R. Harris. Use of insecticide and fungicide for crop dusting slowly spread in the Americas and, to a lesser extent, other nations in the 1930s. The name 'crop dusting' originated here, as actual dust was spread across the crops. Today, aerial applicators use liquid crop protection products in very small doses. Top dressing Aerial topdressing is the aerial application of fertilisers over farmland using agricultural aircraft. It was developed in New Zealand in the 1940s and rapidly adopted elsewhere in the 1950s. Purpose-built aircraft In 1951, Leland Snow designed the first aircraft specifically built for aerial application, the S-1. In 1957, The Grumman G-164 Ag-Cat was the first aircraft designed by a major company for agricultural aviation. Currently, the most common agricultural aircraft are the Air Tractor, Cessna Ag-wagon, Gippsland GA200, Grumman Ag Cat, PZL-106 KRUK, M-18 Dromader, PAC Fletcher, Piper PA-36 Pawnee Brave, Embraer EMB 202 Ipanema, and Rockwell Thrush Commander, but multi-purpose helicopters are also used. Unmanned aerial application Since the late 1990s, unmanned aerial vehicles have also been used for agricultural spraying. This phenomenon started in Japan and South Korea, where mountainous terrain and relatively small family-owned farms required lower-cost and higher-precision spraying. As of 2014, the use of UAV crop dusters, such as the Yamaha R-MAX, is being expanded to the United States for use in spraying at vineyards. Concerns The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences keeps track of relevant research. Historically, there has been concerns about the effects of aerial applications of pesticides and the chemicals' effects as they spread in the air. For example, the aerial application of mancozeb is likely a source of concern for pregnant women. Bans Since the 1970s, multiple countries started to limit or ban the aerial application of pesticides, fertilizers, and other products out of environmental and public health concerns, in particular from spray drift. Most notably, in 2009, the European Union prohibited aerial spraying of pesticides with a few highly-restricted exceptions in article 9 of Directive 2009/128/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a framework for Community action to achieve the sustainable use of pesticides, which effectively ended most aerial application in all member states and overseas territories. Guidelines The United States Environmental Protection Agency provides guideline documents and hosts webinars about best practices for aerial application.In 2010, the United States Forest Service collected public comments to use within a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), which was developed because the Montana Federal District Court ruled that aerial application of fire retardants during wildfires violated the Endangered Species Act. See also Pesticide application Pesticide drift Sprayer Ultra-low volume spray application Aerial spraying of herbicides in Colombia == References ==

zero waste

Zero waste, or waste minimization, is a set of principles focused on waste prevention that encourages redesigning resource life cycles so that all products are repurposed (i.e. “up-cycled”) and/or reused. The goal of the movement is to avoid sending trash to landfills, incinerators, oceans, or any other part of the environment. Currently 9% of global plastic is recycled. In a zero waste system, all materials are reused until the optimum level of consumption is reached. Zero waste refers to waste prevention as opposed to end-of-pipe waste management. It is a “whole systems” approach that aims for a massive change in the way materials flow through society, resulting in no waste. Zero waste encompasses more than eliminating waste through reducing, reusing, and recycling. It focuses on restructuring distribution and production systems to reduce waste. Zero waste provides guidelines for continually working towards eliminating waste.According to the Zero Waste International Alliance (ZWIA), Zero Waster is the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse and, recovery of all products, packaging, and materials, without burning them and without discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health. Advocates expect that government regulation is needed to influence industrial choices over product and packaging design, manufacturing processes, and material selection.Advocates say eliminating waste decreases pollution and can also reduce costs due to the reduced need for raw materials. Cradle-to-Grave The cradle-to-grave is a linear material model that begins with resource extraction, moves to product manufacturing, and ends with a "grave" or landfill where the product is disposed of. Cradle-to-grave is in direct contrast to cradle-to-cradle materials or products, which are recycled into new products at the end of their lives so that ultimately there is no waste.Cradle-to-cradle focuses on designing industrial systems so that materials flow in closed-loop cycles, which means that waste is minimized and waste products can be recycled and reused. Cradle-to-cradle goes beyond dealing with waste issues after it has been created by addressing problems at the source and redefining problems by focusing on design. The cradle-to-cradle model is sustainable and considerate of life and future generations.The cradle-to-cradle framework has evolved steadily from theory to practice. In the industrial sector, it is creating a new notion of materials and material flows. Just as in the natural world, in which one organism's "waste" cycles through an ecosystem to provide nourishment for other living things, cradle-to-cradle materials circulate in closed-loop cycles, providing nutrients for nature or industry.The spread of industrialization worldwide has been accompanied by a large increase in waste production. In 2012 the World Bank stated that 1.3 billion tons of municipal waste was produced by urban populations and estimates that the number will reach 2.2 billion tons by 2025 (Global Solid Waste Management Market - Analysis and Forecast). The increase in solid waste production increases the need for landfills. With the increase in urbanization, these landfills are being placed closer to communities. These landfills are disproportionately located in areas of low socioeconomic status with primarily non-white populations. Findings indicated these areas are often targeted as waste sites because permits are more easily acquired and there was generally less community resistance. Additionally, within the last five years, more than 400 hazardous waste facilities have received formal enforcement actions for unspecified violations that were considered to be a risk to human health.There is a growing global population that is faced with limited resources from the environment.[7] To relieve the pressures placed on the finite resources available it has become more important to prevent waste. To achieve zero waste, waste management has to move from a linear system to be more cyclical so that materials, products, and substances are used as efficiently as possible. Materials must be chosen so that they may either return safely to a cycle within the environment or remain viable in the industrial cycle.[8] Zero waste promotes not only reuse and recycling but, more importantly, it promotes prevention and product designs that consider the entire product life cycle.[8] Zero-waste designs strive for reduced material use, use of recycled materials, use of more benign materials, longer product lives, repair ability, and ease of disassembly at end of life.[3] Zero waste strongly supports sustainability by protecting the environment, reducing costs and producing additional jobs in the management and handling of wastes back into the industrial cycle.[8] A Zero waste strategy may be applied to businesses, communities, industrial sectors, schools, and homes. Benefits proposed by advocates include: Saving money. Since waste is a sign of inefficiency, the reduction of waste can reduce costs. Faster Progress. A zero-waste strategy improves upon production processes and improves environmental prevention strategies which can lead to taking larger, more innovative steps. Supports sustainability. A zero-waste strategy supports all three of the generally accepted goals of sustainability - economic well-being, environmental protection, and social well-being.[8] Improved material flows. A zero-waste strategy would use far fewer new raw materials and send no waste materials to landfills. Any material waste would either return as reusable or recycled materials or would be suitable for use as compost.[8] Health A major issue with landfills is hydrogen sulfide, which is released from the natural decay of waste. Studies have shown a positive association between increased lung cancer mortality rates and increased morbidity and mortality related to respiratory disease and hydrogen sulfide exposure. These studies also showed that the hydrogen sulfide exposure increased with proximity to the landfill.Household chemicals and prescription drugs are increasingly being found in large quantities in the leachate from landfills. This is causing concern about the ability of landfills to contain these materials and the possibility of these chemicals and drugs making their way into the groundwater and the surrounding environment.Zero waste promotes a circular material flow that allows materials to be used over and over, reducing the need for landfill space. Through zero waste the number of toxins released into the air and water would be decreased and products examined to determine what chemicals are used in the production process. Health issues related to landfills: Birth defects, low birth weight, and exposure to particulates and nitrogen dioxide are associated with close proximity to landfills. Respiratory diseases and lung cancers are related to the release of hydrogen sulfide from landfills.Zero waste promotion of a cyclical product life can help reduce the need to create and fill landfills. This can help reduce incidents of respiratory diseases and birth defects that are associated with the toxins released from landfills. Zero waste can also help preserve local environments and potable water sources by preventing pollutants from entering the ecosystem. History 2002–2003 The movement gained publicity and reached a peak in 1998–2002, and since then has been moving from "theory into action" by focusing on how a "zero waste community" is structured and behaves. The website of the Zero Waste International Alliance has a listing of communities across the globe that have created public policies to promote zero-waste practices. There is a zero-waste organization named the GrassRoots Recycling Network that puts on workshops and conferences about zero-waste activities. The California Integrated Waste Management Board established a zero waste goal in 2001. The City and County of San Francisco's Department of the Environment established a goal of zero waste in 2002, which led to the City's Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance in 2009. With its ambitious goal of zero waste and policies, San Francisco reached a record-breaking 80% diversion rate in 2010, the highest diversion rate in any North American city. San Francisco received a perfect score in the waste category in the Siemens US and Canada Green City Index, which named San Francisco the greenest city in North America. 2009: The Zero Waste lifestyle movement emerges In 2008, Zero Waste was a term used to describe manufacturing and municipal waste management practices. Bea Johnson, a French American woman living in California, decided to apply it to her household of 4. In 2009, she started sharing her journey through her blog, Zero Waste Home, and in 2010, was featured in The New York Times. The article, which introduced the mainstream to the concept of waste-free living, received much criticism from people confusing it for a bohemian lifestyle. These critical reviews began to shift after images of the family and their interior was widely broadcast in worldwide media. In 2013, Johnson published Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying your Life by Reducing your Waste. Dubbed "Bible for the zero waste pursuer" by Book Riot, it provides a simple to follow the methodology of 5R's with in-depth practical tips on how to eliminate waste in a household. Translated into 27 languages (as of 2019), the international bestseller helped spread the concept to a wide audience. Some of Bea's followers and readers went on to start their own blogs, such as Lauren Singer, an eco-activist living in New York, whose Social Media channels spread the concept to millennials, open package-free stores, such as Marie Delapierre, who opened the first unpackaged store in Germany (based on the model of Unpackaged, the first package-free concept in our modern era), launch non-profit organizations, such as Natalie Bino, founding member of Zero Waste Switzerland. Over the years, the Zero Waste lifestyle experienced a significant increase in followers. Thousands of social media channels, blogs, unpackaged stores, lines of reusables, and organizations have emerged worldwide. And in turn, the fast-evolving grass-root movement created a demand for large corporations, such as Unilever and Procter and Gamble, to conceive reusable alternatives to disposables. 2010 to Present The movement continues to grow among the youth around the world under the organization Zero Waste Youth, which originated in Brazil and has spread to Argentina, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the United States, and Russia. The organization multiplies with local volunteer ambassadors who lead zero waste gatherings and events to spread the zero waste message. The International Day of Zero Waste was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 14, 2022. The event will be held annually on March 30 commencing in 2023. "During International Day of Zero Waste, Member States, organizations of the United Nations system, civil society, the private sector, academia, youth and other stakeholders are invited to engage in activities aimed at raising awareness of national, subnational, regional and local zero-waste initiatives and their contribution to achieving sustainable development. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) jointly facilitate the observance of International Day of Zero Waste." Packaging Examples Milk can be shipped in many forms. One of the traditional forms was reusable returnable glass milk bottles, often home delivered by a milkman. While some of this continues, other options have recently been more common: one-way gable-top paperboard cartons, one-way aseptic cartons, one-way recyclable glass bottles, one-way milk bags, and others. Each system claims some advantages and also has possible disadvantages. From the zero-waste standpoint, the reuse of bottles is beneficial because the material usage per trip can be less than other systems. The primary input (or resource) is silica-sand, which is formed into glass and then into a bottle. The bottle is filled with milk and distributed to the consumer. A reverse logistics system returns the bottles for cleaning, inspection, sanitization, and reuse. Eventually, the heavy-duty bottle would not be suited for further use and would be recycled. Waste and landfill usage would be minimized. The material waste is primarily the wash water, detergent, transportation, heat, bottle caps, etc. While true zero waste is never achieved, a life cycle assessment can be used to calculate the waste at each phase of each cycle.Online shopping orders are often placed in an outer box to contain multiple items for easier transport and tracking. This creates waste for every order, especially when there is only a single item. In response, some products are now designed not to require an outer box for safe shipping, a feature known as ships in own container. Recycling It is important to distinguish recycling from Zero Waste. The most common practice of recycling is simply that of placing bottles, cans, paper, and packaging into curbside recycling bins. The modern version of recycling is more complicated and involves many more elements of financing and government support. For example, a 2007 report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states that the US recycles at a national rate of 33.5% and includes in this figure composted materials. In addition, many multinational commodity companies have been created to handle recycled materials. At the same time, claims of recycling rates have sometimes been exaggerated, for example by the inclusion of soil and organic matter used to cover garbage dumps daily, in the "recycled" column. In US states with recycling incentives, there is constant local pressure to inflate recycling statistics. Recycling has been separated from the concept of zero waste. One example of this is the computer industry where worldwide millions of PC's are disposed of as electronic waste each year in 2016 44.7 million metric tons of electronic waste was generated of which only 20% was documented and recycled. Some computer manufacturers refurbish leased computers for resale. Community Organizations have also entered this space by refurbishing old computers from donation campaigns for distribution to undeserved communities. Software recycling A clear example of the difference between zero waste and recycling is discussed in Getting to Zero Waste, in the software industry. Zero waste design can be applied to intellectual property where the effort to code functionality into software objects is developed by design as opposed to copying code snippets multiple times when needed. The application of zero waste is straightforward as it conserves human effort. Also, software storage mediums have transitioned from consumable diskettes to internal drives which are vastly superior and have a minimal cost per megabyte of storage. This is a physical example where zero waste correctly identifies and avoids wasteful behavior. Use of zero waste system Zero waste is poorly supported by the enactment of government laws to enforce the waste hierarchy. A special feature of zero waste as a design principle is that it can be applied to any product or process, in any situation or at any level. Thus it applies equally to toxic chemicals as to benign plant matter. It applies to the waste of atmospheric purity by coal-burning or the waste of radioactive resources by attempting to designate the excesses of nuclear power plants as "nuclear waste". All processes can be designed to minimize the need for discard, both in their own operations and in the usage or consumption patterns which the design of their products leads to. Recycling, on the other hand, deals only with simple materials. Zero waste can even be applied to the waste of human potential by enforced poverty and the denial of educational opportunity. It encompasses redesign for reduced energy wasting in industry or transportation and the wasting of the earth's rainforests. It is a general principle of designing for the efficient use of all resources, however defined. The recycling movement may be slowly branching out from its solid waste management base to include issues that are similar to the community sustainability movement. Zero waste, on the other hand, is not based in waste management limitations to begin with but requires that we maximize our existing reuse efforts while creating and applying new methods that minimize and eliminate destructive methods like incineration and recycling. Zero waste strives to ensure that products are designed to be repaired, refurbished, re-manufactured and generally reused. Significance of dump capacity Many dumps are currently exceeding carrying capacity. This is often used as a justification for moving to Zero Waste. Others counter by pointing out that there are huge tracts of land available throughout the US and other countries which could be used for dumps. Proposals abound to destroy all garbage as a way to solve the garbage problem. These proposals typically claim to convert all or a large portion of existing garbage into oil and sometimes claim to produce so much oil that the world will henceforth have abundant liquid fuels. One such plan, called Anything Into Oil, was promoted by Discover Magazine and Fortune Magazine in 2004 and claimed to be able to convert a refrigerator into "light Texas crude" by the application of high-pressure steam. Corporate initiatives An example of a company that has demonstrated a change in landfill waste policy is General Motors (GM). GM has confirmed their plans to make approximately half of its 181 plants worldwide "landfill-free" by the end of 2010. Companies like Subaru, Toyota, and Xerox are also producing landfill-free plants. Furthermore, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has worked with GM and other companies for decades to minimize waste through its WasteWise program. The goal for General Motors is to find ways to recycle or reuse more than 90% of materials by selling scrap materials, adopting reusable boxes to replace cardboard, and recycling used work gloves. The remainder of the scraps might be incinerated to create energy for the plants. Besides being nature-friendly, it also saves money by cutting out waste and producing more efficient production. Microsoft and Google are two other big companies that have Zero Waste goals. These two companies have goals to keep the majority of their waste out of landfills. Google has six locations that have a Zero Waste to Landfill goal. These locations have a goal to keep 100% of their waste out of landfills. Microsoft has a similar goal, but they are only trying to keep 90% of their waste out of landfills. All these organizations push forth to make our world clean and produce zero waste. A garden centre in Faversham, UK, has started to prevent plastic plant pots from being passed down to customers. Instead, it reuses the plastic pots only locally in the garden center, but upon selling it to its customers it repots the plants in paper plant pots. It also sells plants wrapped in hessia and uses a variety of techniques to prevent handing down (single-use) plastics to customers Re-use or rot of waste The waste sent to landfills may be harvested as useful materials, such as in the production of solar energy or natural fertilizer/de-composted manure for crops. It may also be reused and recycled for something that we can actually use. "The success of General Motors in creating zero-landfill facilities shows that zero-waste goals can be a powerful impetus for manufacturers to reduce their waste and carbon footprint," says Latisha Petteway, a spokesperson for the EPA. Market-based campaigns Market-based, legislation-mediated campaigns like extended producer responsibility (EPR) and the precautionary principle are among numerous campaigns that have a Zero Waste slogan hung on them by means of claims they all ineluctably lead to policies of Zero Waste. At the moment, there is no evidence that EPR will increase reuse, rather than merely moving discard and disposal into private-sector dumping contracts. The Precautionary Principle is put forward to shift liability for proving new chemicals are safe from the public (acting as guinea pig) to the company introducing them. As such, its relation to Zero Waste is dubious. Likewise, many organizations, cities and counties have embraced a Zero Waste slogan while pressing for none of the key Zero Waste changes. In fact, it is common for many such to simply state that recycling is their entire goal. Many commercial or industrial companies claim to embrace Zero Waste but usually mean no more than a major materials recycling effort, having no bearing on product redesign. Examples include Staples, Home Depot, Toyota, General Motors and computer take-back campaigns. Earlier social justice campaigns have successfully pressured McDonald's to change their meat purchasing practices and Nike to change its labor practices in Southeast Asia. Those were both based on the idea that organized consumers can be active participants in the economy and not just passive subjects. However, the announced and enforced goal of the public campaign is critical. A goal to reduce waste generation or dumping through greater recycling will not achieve a goal of product redesign and so cannot reasonably be called a Zero Waste campaign. Producers should be made responsible for the packaging of the products rather than the consumers in EPR like campaigns by which the participation of the Producers will increase. How to achieve National and provincial governments often set targets and may provide some funding, but on a practical level, waste management programs (e.g. pickup, drop-off, or containers for recycling and composting) are usually implemented by local governments, possibly with regionally shared facilities.Reaching the goal of zero waste requires the products of manufacturers and industrial designers to be easily disassembled for recycling and incorporated back into nature or the industrial system; durability and repairability also reduce unnecessary churn in the product life cycle. Minimizes packaging also solves many problems early in the supply chain. If not mandated by government, choices by retailers and consumers in favor of zero-waste-friendly products can influence production. More and more schools are motivating their students to live a different life and rethink every polluting step they may take. To prevent material from becoming waste, consumers, businesses, and non-profits must be educated in how to reduce waste and recycle successfully. The 5 R’s of Bea Johnson In the book Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying your Life by Reducing your Waste the author, Bea Johnson, provides a modified version of the 3 Rs, the 5 Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot to achieve Zero Waste at home. The method, which she developed through years of practicing waste free living and used to reduce her family's annual trash to fit in a pint jar, is now widely used by individuals, businesses and municipalities worldwide. Zero Waste Hierarchy The Zero Waste Hierarchy describes a progression of policies and strategies to support the zero-waste system, from highest and best to lowest use of materials. It is designed to be applicable to all audiences, from policymakers to industry and the individual. It aims to provide more depth to the internationally recognized 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle); to encourage policy, activity and investment at the top of the hierarchy; and to provide a guide for those who wish to develop systems or products that move us closer to zero waste. It enhances the zero-waste definition by providing guidance for planning and a way to evaluate proposed solutions. All over the world, in some form or another, a pollution prevention hierarchy is incorporated into recycling regulations, solid waste management plans, and resource conservation programs. In Canada, a pollution prevention hierarchy otherwise referred to as the Environmental Protection Hierarchy was adopted. This Hierarchy has been incorporated into all recycling regulations within Canada and is embedded within all resource conservation methods which all government mandated waste prevention programs follow. While the intention to incorporate the 4th R (recovery)prior to disposal was good, many organizations focused on this 4th R instead of the top of the hierarchy resulting in costly systems designed to destroy materials instead of systems designed to reduce environmental impact and waste. Because of this, along with other resource destruction systems that have been emerging over the past few decades, Zero Waste Canada along with the Zero Waste International Alliance have adopted the only internationally peer-reviewed Zero Waste Hierarchy that focuses on the first 3Rs; Reduce, Reuse and Recycle including Compost. Zero waste jurisdictions Various governments have declared zero waste as a goal, including: Brazil Florianópolis, Santa Catarina Canada Vancouver (see Zero Waste 2040 Strategy) Italy Capannori, TuscanyJapan Kamikatsu, Tokushima recycles 80% of its waste at the Kamikatsu Zero Waste Center, and aims for zero waste. Sweden (Country wide) United States Austin, Texas Boulder, Colorado Fort Collins, Colorado Chula Vista, California Minneapolis, Minnesota San Francisco, California San Jose, CaliforniaAn example of network governance approach can be seen in the UK under New Labour who proposed the establishment of regional groupings that brought together the key stakeholders in waste management (local authority representatives, waste industry, government offices etc.) on a voluntary basis. There is a lack of clear government policy on how to meet the targets for diversion from landfill which increases the scope at the regional and local level for governance networks. The overall goal is set by government but the route for how to achieve it is left open, so stakeholders can coordinate and decide how best to reach it.Zero Waste is a strategy promoted by environmental NGOs but the waste industry is more in favor of the capital intensive option of energy from waste incineration. Research often highlights public support as the first requirement for success. In Taiwan, public opinion was essential in changing the attitude of business, who must transform their material use pattern to become more sustainable for Zero Waste to work.California is a leading state in the United States for having zero-waste goals. California is the state with the most cities in the Zero Waste International Alliance. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, multiple cities have defined what it means to be a Zero Waste community and adopted goals to reach that status. Some of these cities include Fresno, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, Pasadena, Alameda, and San Jose. San Francisco has defined zero waste as "zero discards to the landfill or high-temperature destruction." Here, there is a planned structure to reach Zero Waste through three steps recommended by the San Francisco Department of the Environment. These steps are to prevent waste, reduce and reuse, and recycle and compost. Los Angeles defines zero waste as "maximizing diversion from landfills and reducing waste at the source, with the ultimate goal of striving for more-sustainable solid waste management practices." Los Angeles plans to reach this goal by the year of 2025. To reach this goal, major changes will have to be made to product creation, use, and disposal. Zero-waste stores Retail stores specializing in zero-waste products have opened in various countries, including Spain and the United States. See also Bea Johnson Composting Environmentalism Nursery pots Miniwaste Packaging waste Paul Connett Phase-out of lightweight plastic bags Precycling Source reduction Sustainable packaging Throwaway society Waste Whole-life cost Zero waste agriculture Zero-waste fashion Waste management References Further reading Palmer, Paul (2005). Getting to Zero Waste. Purple Sky Press. ISBN 978-0-9760571-0-9. Archived from the original on 2021-01-11. Retrieved 2008-01-03. Mauch, Christof, ed. "A Future without Waste? Zero Waste in Theory and Practice," RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society 2016, no. 3. doi.org/10.5282/rcc/7540. External links Advocacy organizations Zero Waste Institute Zero Waste Network Zero Waste International Alliance (ZWIA) Zero Waste Alliance

land reclamation

Land reclamation, usually known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new land from oceans, seas, riverbeds or lake beds. The land reclaimed is known as reclamation ground, reclaimed land, or land fill. In some jurisdictions, including parts of the United States, the term "reclamation" can refer to returning disturbed lands to an improved state. In Alberta, Canada, for example, reclamation is defined by the provincial government as "The process of reconverting disturbed land to its former or other productive uses." In Oceania, it is frequently referred to as land rehabilitation. History One of the earliest large-scale projects was the Beemster Polder in the Netherlands, realized in 1612 adding 70 square kilometres (27 sq mi) of land. In Hong Kong the Praya Reclamation Scheme added 20 to 24 hectares (50 to 60 acres) of land in 1890 during the second phase of construction. It was one of the most ambitious projects ever taken during the Colonial Hong Kong era. Some 20% of land in the Tokyo Bay area has been reclaimed, most notably Odaiba artificial island. Le Portier, Monaco and Gibraltar are also expanding due to land reclamation. The city of Rio de Janeiro was largely built on reclaimed land, as was Wellington, New Zealand. Methods Land reclamation can be achieved by a number of different methods. The simplest method involves filling the area with large amounts of heavy rock and/or cement, then filling with clay and dirt until the desired height is reached. The process is called "infilling" and the material used to fill the space is generally called "infill". Draining of submerged wetlands is often used to reclaim land for agricultural use. Deep cement mixing is used typically in situations in which the material displaced by either dredging or draining may be contaminated and hence needs to be contained. Land dredging is also another method of land reclamation. It is the removal of sediments and debris from the bottom of a body of water. It is commonly used for maintaining reclaimed land masses as sedimentation, a natural process, fills channels and harbors. Notable instances Africa The Foreshore in Cape Town, South Africa The Hassan II Mosque in Morocco is built on reclaimed land. The Eko Atlantic in Lagos, Nigeria. Gracefield Island in Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria. Stone Town in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Asia The whole 3 km2 (1.2 sq mi) business district of Cebu South Road Properties in Cebu City, Philippines Some of the coastline of Saadiyat Island, in the UAE. Used for commercial purposes. Much of the coastline of Mumbai, India. It took over 150 years to join the original Seven Islands of Bombay. These seven islands were lush, green, thickly wooded, and dotted with 22 hills, with the Arabian Sea washing through them at high tide. The original Isle of Bombay was only 24 km (14.9 mi) long and 4 km (2.5 mi) wide from Dongri to Malabar Hill (at its broadest point) and the other six were Colaba, Old Woman's Island, Mahim, Parel, Worli and Mazgaon. (See also Hornby Vellard). Parts of the coastlines of Mainland China, Hong Kong, North Korea and South Korea. It is estimated that nearly 65% of tidal flats around the Yellow Sea have been reclaimed. Inland lowlands in the Yangtze valley, China, including the areas of important cities like Shanghai and Wuhan. Much of the coastline of Karachi, Pakistan. The shore of Jakarta Bay. Land is usually reclaimed to create new housing areas and real estate properties, for the rapidly expanding city of Jakarta. So far, the largest reclamation project in the city is the creation of Golf Island, north of Pantai Indah Kapuk. A part of the Hamad International Airport in Qatar, around 36 square kilometres (14 sq mi). The entire island of The Pearl Island situated in West Bay (Doha), Qatar. Haikou Bay, Hainan Province, China, where the west side of Haidian Island is being extended, and off the coast of Haikou, where new land for a marina is being created. The Cotai area of Macau, where many casinos are located Nagoya Centrair Airport, Japan Incheon International Airport, South Korea Beirut Central District, Lebanon The southern Chinese city of Shenzhen The shore of Manila Bay in the Philippines, especially along Metro Manila, has attracted major developments such as the Mall of Asia Complex, Entertainment City and the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex. The city-state of Singapore, where land is in short supply, is also famous for its efforts on land reclamation. The Palm Islands, The World and hotel Burj al-Arab off Dubai in the United Arab Emirates The Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Hulhumalé Island, Maldives. It is one of the six divisions of Malé City. Giant Sea Wall Jakarta Colombo International Financial City, Sri Lanka Kansai International Airport, Osaka, Japan Forest City, an integrated residential and tourism district in Johor, Malaysia, was controversial due to its reclamation of wetlands of international importance under the Ramsar Convention in a designated Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) Rank 1 area. Europe The entire waterfront area of Dundee, Scotland Samphire Hoe in Kent, United Kingdom was created using 4.9 million cubic metres of chalk marl from the nearby Channel Tunnel excavations from 1988 to 1994 Airport of Nice, France Large parts of the Netherlands Almost all of the Thames estuary including large parts of London Almost half of the microstate of Monaco Most of Fontvieille, Monaco Parts surrounding Port Hercules in La Condamine, Monaco Pier Head in Liverpool, England Parts of Dublin, Ireland including the North Wall, East Wall, Grand Canal Dock and Bull Island Parts of Bryggen, Bergen, Norway including the Dreggekaien cruise terminal and other ship services Most of Belfast Harbour and areas of Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom Parts of Saint Petersburg, Russia, such as the Marine Facade Helsinki (of which the major part of the city center is built on reclaimed land) Barceloneta area, Barcelona, in Spain The port of Zeebrugge in Belgium The southwestern residential area in Brest, Belarus Majority of left-bank and some right-bank residential areas of Kyiv were built on a reclaimed fens and floodplains of the Dnieper river. The airport peninsula, the industrial area of Cornigliano, the PSA container terminal and other parts of the port in Genoa, Italy The Fens in East Anglia Venice, Italy Rione Orsini, part of Borgo Santa Lucia, Naples A big part of Kavala, city in Greece Fucine Lake, Italy Waterfront Centre, St. Helier, Jersey Airports of Trabzon, Giresun and Rize Coastal parks and streets of Istanbul Yenikapı, Turkey Lake Copais, Greece Certain areas of Denmark North America Notre Dame Island in Montreal (Quebec, Canada). In the Saint Lawrence River, 15 million tons of rock excavated from the Montreal Metro underground rail in 1965 to form an artificial island. The Chicago shoreline The Northwestern University Lakefill, part of the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois Several neighborhoods in Boston, Massachusetts are the result of landfill. Battery Park City, Manhattan Several islands in Biscayne Bay in the Miami metropolitan area, including the Venetian Islands, are the result of landfill. Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn Liberty State Park, Jersey City Leslie Street Spit, the downtown waterfront south of Front Street, and sections of the Toronto Islands in Toronto. Part of Nuns' Island in Montreal The Potter's Cay in Nassau, The Bahamas was connected to the island of New Providence The shore of Nassau, The Bahamas especially along East Bay street. Parts of New Orleans (which is partially built on land that was once swamp) Much of the urbanized area adjacent to San Francisco Bay, including most of San Francisco's waterfront and Financial District, San Francisco International Airport, the Port of Oakland, and large portions of the city of Alameda has been reclaimed from the bay. The entirety of Treasure Island was also reclaimed to cover over the shallow waters north of Yerba Buena Island that presented a navigational hazard. Large hills in Seattle were removed and used to create Harbor Island and reclaim land along Elliott Bay. In particular, the neighborhoods of SoDo, Seattle and Interbay are largely built on filled wetlands. Mexico City (which is situated at the former site of Lake Texcoco); the chinampas are a famous example. Much of Bermuda's St David's Island are reclaimed; the island, the site of Bermuda's international airport, was formerly several smaller islands. Oceania Most of Barangaroo, a current commercial and residential suburb in the central business district of Sydney, New South Wales. Parts of Darling Harbour, a locality west of the Sydney central business district. A large portion of the southern suburb of Sylvania Waters in Sydney, Australia. The southernmost portions of runways at Sydney Airport. Large portions of Port Botany in metropolitan Sydney. Large amounts of the Melbourne Docklands. Portions of the Swan River foreshore adjoining the Perth central business district in Western Australia, including the entirety of Mounts Bay (pictured above). Considerable areas of Dunedin, New Zealand, including the "Southern Endowment", stretching from the central city to the southeastern suburbs along the shore of Otago Harbour. Prior to the Napier earthquake of 1931, significant reclamation of the then-lagoon was undertaken in areas of Napier South and Ahuriri. There were also minor reclamation works undertaken after 1931 on the new low-lying lands brought up by the earthquake. Areas around Wellington and Auckland's harbours have also been reclaimed. My Suva park (Fiji), a recreation park for the Greater Suva area. South America Parts of Panama City urban and street development are based on reclaimed land, using material extracted from Panama Canal excavations. The Cinta Costera, in Panama City, Panama The entire riverfront of Buenos Aires, Argentina including the port and an airport Large parts of Rio de Janeiro, most notably several blocks in the new docks area, the entire Flamengo Park and the neighborhood of Urca Parts of Florianópolis. Parts of the Historic District of Porto Alegre, including the docks of Port of Porto Alegre and the Beira-Rio Stadium, were built on reclaimed lands of Lake Guaíba between the end of the 19th century and the 1970s. Santa Cruz del Islote, in the Caribbean Sea of Colombia, one of the most densely populated islands in the world, was built in an artificial way gaining land from the sea. Parts of the Vargas State in the north of Venezuela, parts of Los Monjes Archipelago, the Isla Paraíso (paradise island) in the Anzoátegui State and the La Salina island in the Zulia State, were built with land reclaimed from the sea. Parts of Montevideo, Uruguay, Rambla Sur and several projects still going on in Montevideo's Bay. Parts of Valparaíso, Chile. Agriculture Agriculture was a driver of land reclamation before industrialisation. In South China, farmers reclaimed paddy fields by enclosing an area with a stone wall on the sea shore near a river mouth or river delta. The species of rice that are grown on these grounds are more salt tolerant. Another use of such enclosed land is the creation of fish ponds. It is commonly seen on the Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong. These reclaimed areas also attract species of migrating birds. A related practice is the draining of swampy or seasonally submerged wetlands to convert them to farmland. While this does not create new land exactly, it allows commercially productive use of land that would otherwise be restricted to wildlife habitat. It is also an important method of mosquito control. Even in the post-industrial age, there have been land reclamation projects intended for increasing available agricultural land. For example, the village of Ogata in Akita, Japan, was established on land reclaimed from Lake Hachirōgata (Japan's second largest lake at the time) starting in 1957. By 1977, the amount of land reclaimed totalled 172.03 square kilometres (66.42 sq mi). Artificial islands Artificial islands are an example of land reclamation. Creating an artificial island is an expensive and risky undertaking. It is often considered in places with high population density and a scarcity of flat land. Kansai International Airport (in Osaka) and Hong Kong International Airport are examples where this process was deemed necessary. The Palm Islands, The World and hotel Burj al-Arab off Dubai in the United Arab Emirates are other examples of artificial islands (although there is yet no real "scarcity of land" in Dubai), as well as the Flevopolder in the Netherlands which is the largest artificial island in the world. Beach restoration Beach rebuilding is the process of repairing beaches using materials such as sand or mud from inland. This can be used to build up beaches suffering from beach starvation or erosion from longshore drift. It stops the movement of the original beach material through longshore drift and retains a natural look to the beach. Although it is not a long-lasting solution, it is cheap compared to other types of coastal defences. An example of this is the city of Mumbai. Landfill As human overcrowding of developed areas intensified during the 20th century, it has become important to develop land re-use strategies for completed landfills. Some of the most common usages are for parks, golf courses and other sports fields. Increasingly, however, office buildings and industrial uses are made on a completed landfill. In these latter uses, methane capture is customarily carried out to minimize explosive hazard within the building. An example of a Class A office building constructed over a landfill is the Dakin Building at Sierra Point, Brisbane, California. The underlying fill was deposited from 1965 to 1985, mostly consisting of construction debris from San Francisco and some municipal wastes. Aerial photographs prior to 1965 show this area to be tidelands of the San Francisco Bay. A clay cap was constructed over the debris prior to building approval.A notable example is Sydney Olympic Park, the primary venue for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, which was built atop an industrial wasteland that included landfills. Another strategy for landfill is the incineration of landfill trash at high temperature via the plasma-arc gasification process, which is currently used at two facilities in Japan, and will be used at a planned facility in St. Lucie County, Florida. Environmental impact Draining wetlands for ploughing, for example, is a form of habitat destruction. In some parts of the world, new reclamation projects are restricted or no longer allowed, due to environmental protection laws. Reclamation projects have strong negative impacts on coastal populations, although some species can take advantage of the newly created area. A 2022 global analysis estimated that 39% of losses (approximately 5,300 km2 or 2,000 sq mi) and 14% of gains (approximately 1,300 km2 or 500 sq mi) of tidal wetlands (mangroves, tidal flats, and tidal marshes) between 1999-2019 were due to direct human activities, including conversion to aquaculture, agriculture, plantations, coastal developments and other physical structures. Environmental legislation The State of California created a state commission, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, in 1965 to protect San Francisco Bay and regulate development near its shores. The commission was created in response to growing concern over the shrinking size of the bay. Hong Kong legislators passed the Protection of the Harbour Ordinance, proposed by the Society for Protection of the Harbour, in 1997 in an effort to safeguard the increasingly threatened Victoria Harbour against encroaching land development. Several large reclamation schemes at Green Island, West Kowloon, and Kowloon Bay were subsequently shelved, and others reduced in size. Dangers Reclaimed land is highly susceptible to soil liquefaction during earthquakes, which can amplify the amount of damage that occurs to buildings and infrastructure. Subsidence is another issue, both from soil compaction on filled land, and also when wetlands are enclosed by levees and drained to create Polders. Drained marshes will eventually sink below the surrounding water level, increasing the danger from flooding. Land amounts added Asia Europe Netherlands about 1/6 (almost 17%) of the entire country, or about 7,000 km2 (2,700 sq mi) in total, has been reclaimed from the sea, lakes, marshes and swamps. The province of Flevoland has almost completely been reclaimed from the Zuiderzee.Monaco – 0.41 km2 (0.16 sq mi) out of 2.05 km2 (0.79 sq mi), or one fifth of Monaco comes from land taken from the sea, mainly in the neighborhoods of Fontvieille, La Condamine, and Larvotto/Bas Moulins. Others Eko Atlantic, Lagos, Nigeria—25 square kilometers New Zealand – significant areas of land totalling several hundred hectares have been reclaimed along the harbourfronts of Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin. In Dunedin – which in its early days was nicknamed "Mudedin" – around 2.5 km2 (0.97 sq mi), including much of the inner city and suburbs of Dunedin North, South Dunedin and Andersons Bay is reclaimed from the Otago Harbour, and a similar area in the suburbs of St Clair and St Kilda is reclaimed swampland. The international airports serving Auckland and Wellington have had significant reclamation for runway use. See also Artificial island Great wall of sand Marine regression – the formation of new land by reductions in sea level Drainage system (agriculture) – drainage for land reclamation Land improvement Land recycling Hong Kong Society for Protection of the Harbour Mine reclamation Polder – low-lying land reclaimed from a lake or sea Reclamation of Wellington Harbour, New Zealand River reclamation Water reclamation Rainbowing Notes References Wordie, Jason (18 April 1999). "Land-grabbing titans who changed HK's profit for good". The Standard. Hong Kong. Archived from the original on May 22, 2011. Retrieved 1 October 2010. MacKinnon, J.; Verkuil, Y.I.; Murray, N.J. (2012), IUCN situation analysis on East and Southeast Asian intertidal habitats, with particular reference to the Yellow Sea (including the Bohai Sea), Occasional Paper of the IUCN Species Survival Commission No. 47, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK: IUCN, p. 70, ISBN 9782831712550, archived from the original on 2014-06-24 Murray, N.J.; Clemens, R.S.; Phinn, S.R.; Possingham, H.P.; Fuller, R.A. (2014), "Tracking the rapid loss of tidal wetlands in the Yellow Sea" (PDF), Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 12 (5): 267–272, doi:10.1890/130260 http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/bahrain/bahrain-parliament-wants-solution-to-land-reclamation-issue-1.567052 External links The Cape Town Foreshore Plan 1947 The Canadian Land Reclamation Association The case for offshore Mumbai airport

environmental conflict

Environmental conflicts or ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs) are social conflicts caused by environmental degradation or by unequal distribution of environmental resources. The Environmental Justice Atlas documented 3,100 environmental conflicts worldwide as of April 2020 and emphasised that many more conflicts remained undocumented. Parties involved in these conflicts include locally affected communities, states, companies and investors, and social or environmental movements; typically environmental defenders are protecting their homelands from resource extraction or hazardous waste disposal. Resource extraction and hazardous waste activities often create resource scarcities (such as by overfishing or deforestation), pollute the environment, and degrade the living space for humans and nature, resulting in conflict. A particular case of environmental conflicts are forestry conflicts, or forest conflicts which "are broadly viewed as struggles of varying intensity between interest groups, over values and issues related to forest policy and the use of forest resources". In the last decades, a growing number of these have been identified globally.Frequently environmental conflicts focus on environmental justice issues, the rights of indigenous people, the rights of peasants, or threats to communities whose livelihoods are dependent on the ocean. Outcomes of local conflicts are increasingly influenced by trans-national environmental justice networks that comprise the global environmental justice movement.Environmental conflict can complicate response to natural disaster or exacerbate existing conflicts – especially in the context of geopolitical disputes or where communities have been displaced to create environmental migrants.The terms socio-environmental conflict, environmental conflict, or EDCs are sometimes used interchangeably. The study of these conflicts is related to the fields of ecological economics, political ecology, and environmental justice. Causes The origin of environmental conflicts can be directly linked to the industrial economy. As less than 10% of materials and energy are recycled, the industrial economy is constantly expanding energy and material extraction at commodity frontiers through two main processes: Appropriating new natural resources through territorial claims and land grabs. Making exploitation of existing sites more efficient through investments or social and technical innovationEDCs are caused by the unfair distribution of environmental costs and benefits. These conflicts arise from social inequality, contested claims over territory, the proliferation of extractive industries, and the impacts of the economic industrialization over the past centuries. Oil, mining, and agriculture industries are focal points of environmental conflicts. Types of conflicts A 2020 paper mapped the arguments and concerns of environmental defenders in over 2743 conflicts found in the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas). The analysis found that the industrial sectors most frequently challenged by environmental conflicts were mining (21%), fossil energy (17%), biomass and land uses (15%), and water management (14%). Killings of environmental defenders happened in 13% of the reported cases.There was also a distinct difference in the types of conflict found in high and low income countries. There were more conflicts around conservation, water management, and biomass and land use in low income countries; while in high income countries almost half of conflicts focused on waste management, tourism, nuclear power, industrial zones, and other infrastructure projects. The study also found that most conflicts start with self-organized local groups defending against infringement, with a focus on non-violent tactics.Water protectors and land defenders who defend indigenous rights are criminalized at a much higher rate than in other conflicts.Environmental conflicts can be classified based on the different stages of the commodity chain: during the extraction of energy sources or materials, in the transportation and production of goods, or at the final disposal of waste. EJAtlas Categories The EJAtlas was founded and is co-directed by Leah Temper and Joan Martinez-Alier, and it is coordinated by Daniela Del Bene. Its aim is “to document, understand and analyse the political outcomes that emerge or that may emerge” from ecological distribution conflicts. It is housed at the ICTA of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. Since 2012, academics and activists have collaborated to write the entries, reaching 3,500 by July 2021. The EJ Atlas identifies ten categories of ecological distribution conflicts: Biodiversity conservation conflicts: Biomass and land conflicts (Forests, Agriculture, Fisheries and Livestock Management) Fossil Fuels and Climate Justice/Energy Industrial and Utilities Conflicts Infrastructure and Built Environment Mineral Ores and Building Materials Extraction Nuclear Tourism Recreation Waste Management Water Management Ecological distribution conflicts Ecological Distribution Conflicts (EDCs) were introduced as a concept in 1995 by Joan Martínez-Alier and Martin O'Connor to facilitate more systematic documentation and analysis of environmental conflicts and to produce a more coherent body of academic, activist, and legal work around them. EDCs arise from the unfair access to natural resources, unequally distributed burdens of environmental pollution, and relate to the exercise of power by different social actors when they enter into disputes over access to or impacts on natural resources. For example, a factory may pollute a river thus affecting the community whose livelihood depends on the water of the river. The same can apply to the climate crisis, which may cause sea level rise on some Pacific islands. This type of damage is often not valued by the market, preventing those affected from being compensated. Ecological conflicts occur at both global and local scales. Often conflicts take place between the global South and the global North, e.g. a Finnish forest company operating in Indonesia, or in econonomic peripheries, although there is a growing emergence of conflicts in Europe, including violent ones. There are also local conflicts that occur within a short commodity chain (e.g. local extraction of sand and gravel for a nearby cement factory). Intellectual history Since its conception, the term Ecological Distribution Conflict has been linked to research from the fields of political ecology, ecological economics, and ecofeminism. It has also been adopted into a non-academic setting through the environmental justice movement, where it branches academia and activism to assist social movements in legal struggles. In his 1874 lecture ‘Wage Labour and Capital’, Karl Marx introduced the idea that economic relations under capitalism are inherently exploitative, meaning economic inequality is an inevitability of the system. He theorised that this is because capitalism expands through capital accumulation, an ever-increasing process which requires the economic subjugation of parts of the population in order to function.Building on this theory, academics in the field of political economy created the term ‘economic distribution conflicts’ to describe the conflicts that occur from this inherent economic inequality. This type of conflict typically occurs between parties with an economic relationship but unequal power dynamic, such as buyers and sellers, or debtors and creditors. However, Martinez Allier and Martin O’Connor noticed that this term focuses solely on the economy, omitting the conflicts that do not occur from economic inequality but from the unequal distribution of environmental resources. In response, in 1995, they coined the term ‘ecological distribution conflict’. This type of conflict occurs at commodity frontiers, which are constantly being moved and reframed due to society's unsustainable social metabolism. These conflicts might occur between extractive industries and Indigenous populations, or between polluting actors and those living on marginalised land. Its roots can still be seen in Marxian theory, as it is based on the idea that capitalism's need for expansion drives inequality and conflict. Unfair ecological distribution can be attributed to capitalism as a system of cost-shifting. Neoclassical economics usually consider these impacts as “market failures” or “externalities” that can be valued in monetary terms and internalized into the price system. Ecological economics and political ecology scholars oppose the idea of economic commensuration that could form the basis of eco-compensation mechanisms for impacted communities. Instead, they advocate for different valuation languages such as sacredness, livelihood, rights of nature, Indigenous territorial rights, archaeological values, and ecological or aesthetic value. Social movements Ecological distribution conflicts have given rise to many environmental justice movements around the globe. Environmental justice scholars conclude that these conflicts are a force for sustainability. These scholars study the dynamics that drive these conflicts towards an environmental justice success or a failure. Globally, around 17% of all environmental conflicts registered in the EJAtlas report environmental justices 'successes', such as stopping an unsustainable project or redistributing resources in a more egalitarian way.Movements usually shape their repertoires of contention as protest forms and direct actions, which are influenced by national and local backgrounds. In environmental justice struggles, the biophysical characteristics of the conflict can further shape the forms of mobilization and direct action. Resistance strategies can take advantage of ‘biophysical opportunity structures’, where they attempt to identify, change or disrupt the damaging ecological processes they are confronting. Finally, the ‘collective action frames’ of movements emerging in response to environmental conflicts becomes very powerful when they challenge the mainstream relationship of human societies with the environment. These frames are often expressed through pithy protest slogans, that scholars refer to as the ‘vocabulary of environmental justice’ and which includes concepts and phrases such as ‘environmental racism’, ‘tree plantations are not forests’, ‘keep the oil in the soil’, ‘keep the coal in the hole’ and the like, resonating and empathizing with those communities affected by EDC. Environmentalism of the poor Some scholars make a distinction between environmentalist conflicts that have an objective of sustainability or resource conservation and environmental conflicts more broadly (which are any conflict over a natural resource). The former type of conflict gives rise to environmentalism of the poor, in which environmental defenders protect their land from degradation by industrial economic forces. Environmentalist conflicts tend to be intermodal conflicts in which peasant or agricultural land uses are in conflict with industrial uses (such as mining). Intramodal conflicts, in which peasants dispute amongst themselves about land use may not be environmentalist.In this division movement such as La Via Campesina (LVC), or the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) can be considered in the halfway between these two approaches. In their defense of peasant agriculture and against large-scale capitalist industrial agriculture, both LVC and the IPC have fundamentally contributed to promoting agroecology as a sustainable agriculture model across the globe, adopting an intermodal approach against industrial agriculture and providing new sources of education to poor communities that could incentive an aware integration in the redistribution of resources. A similar attitude has shaped the action of the Brazilian Landless Farmworkers movement (MST) in the way it has struggled with the idea of productivity and the use of chemical products by several agribusiness realities that destroy resources rich in fertility and biodiversity.Such movements often question the dominant form of valuation of resource uses (i.e. monetary values and cost-benefit analyses) and renegotiate the values deemed relevant for sustainability. Sometimes, particularly when the resistance weakens, demands for monetary compensation are made (in a framework of ‘weak sustainability’). The same groups, at other times or when feeling stronger, might argue in terms of values which are not commensurate with money, such as indigenous territorial rights, irreversible ecological values, human right to health or the sacredness of redefining the very economic, ecological and social principles behind particular uses of the Mother Earth, implicitly defending a conception of ‘strong sustainability’. In contesting and environment, such intermodal conflicts are those that are most clearly forced towards broader sustainability transitions. Conflict resolution A distinct field of conflict resolution called Environmental Conflict Resolution, focuses on developing collaborative methods for deescalating and resolving environmental conflicts. As a field of practice, people working on conflict resolution focus on the collaboration, and consensus building among stakeholders. An analysis of such resolution processes found that the best predictor of successful resolution was sufficient consultation with all parties involved.A new tool with certain potential in this regard is the development of video games proposing distinct options to the gamers for handling conflicts over environmental resources, for instance in the fishery sector. Critique Some scholars critique the focus on natural resources used in descriptions of environmental conflict. Often these approaches focus on the commercialization of the natural environment that doesn't acknowledge the underlying value of a healthy environment. See also US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution Inventory of Conflict and Environment == References ==

dust bowl

The Dust Bowl was the result of a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors (severe drought) and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion, most notably the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in the region. The drought came in three waves: 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as long as eight years.The Dust Bowl has been the subject of many cultural works, including John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, the folk music of Woody Guthrie, and Dorothea Lange's photographs depicting the conditions of migrants, particularly Migrant Mother, taken in 1936. Geographic characteristics and early history With insufficient understanding of the ecology of the plains, farmers had conducted extensive deep plowing of the Great Plains' virgin topsoil during the previous decade; this displaced the native, deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. The rapid mechanization of farm equipment, especially small gasoline tractors, and widespread use of the combine harvester contributed to farmers' decisions to convert arid grassland (much of which received no more than 10 inches (250 mm) of precipitation per year) to cultivated cropland. During the drought of the 1930s, the unanchored soil turned to dust, which prevailing winds blew away in huge clouds that sometimes blackened the sky. These choking billows of dust – named "black blizzards" or "black rollers" – traveled cross-country, reaching as far as the East Coast and striking such cities as New York City and Washington, D.C. On the plains, they often reduced visibility to three feet (1 m) or less. Associated Press reporter Robert E. Geiger happened to be in Boise City, Oklahoma, to witness the "Black Sunday" black blizzards of April 14, 1935; Edward Stanley, the Kansas City news editor of the Associated Press, coined the term "Dust Bowl" while rewriting Geiger's news story.The term "the Dust Bowl" originally referred to the geographical area affected by the dust, but today it usually refers to the event itself (the term "Dirty Thirties" is also sometimes used). The drought and erosion of the Dust Bowl affected 100 million acres (400,000 km2) that centered on the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma Panhandle and touched adjacent sections of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. The Dust Bowl forced tens of thousands of poverty-stricken families, who were unable to pay mortgages or grow crops, to abandon their farms, and losses reached $25 million per day by 1936 (equivalent to $530 million in 2022). Many of these families, often called "Okies" because many of them came from Oklahoma, migrated to California and other states to find that the Great Depression had rendered economic conditions there little better than those they had left. The Dust Bowl area lies principally west of the 100th meridian on the High Plains, characterized by plains that vary from rolling in the north to flat in the Llano Estacado. Elevation ranges from 2,500 ft (760 m) in the east to 6,000 ft (1,800 m) at the base of the Rocky Mountains. The area is semiarid, receiving less than 20 in (510 mm) of rain annually; this rainfall supports the shortgrass prairie biome originally present in the area. The region is also prone to extended drought, alternating with unusual wetness of equivalent duration. During wet years, the rich soil provides bountiful agricultural output, but crops fail during dry years. The region is also subject to high winds. During early European and American exploration of the Great Plains, this region was thought unsuitable for European-style agriculture; explorers called it the Great American Desert. The lack of surface water and timber made the region less attractive than other areas for pioneer settlement and agriculture. The federal government encouraged settlement and development of the Plains for agriculture via the Homestead Act of 1862, offering settlers "quarter section" 160-acre (65 ha) plots. With the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the completion of the First transcontinental railroad in 1869, waves of new migrants and immigrants reached the Great Plains and greatly increased the acreage under cultivation. An unusually wet period in the Great Plains mistakenly led settlers and the federal government to believe that "rain follows the plow" (a popular phrase among real estate promoters) and that the region's climate had permanently changed. While initial agricultural endeavors were primarily cattle ranching, the harsh winters' adverse effect on the cattle, beginning in 1886, a short drought in 1890, and general overgrazing, led many landowners to increase the amount of land under cultivation. Recognizing the challenge of cultivating marginal arid land, the U.S. government expanded on the 160 acres (65 ha) offered under the Homestead Act, granting 640 acres (260 ha) to homesteaders in western Nebraska under the Kinkaid Act (1904) and 320 acres (130 ha) elsewhere in the Great Plains under the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909. Waves of European settlers arrived in the plains at the beginning of the 20th century. A return of unusually wet weather seemingly confirmed a previously held opinion that the "formerly" semiarid area could support large-scale agriculture. At the same time, technological improvements such as mechanized plowing and mechanized harvesting made it possible to operate larger properties without increasing labor costs. The combined effects of World War I and the disruption of the Russian Revolution, which decreased the supply of wheat and other commodity crops, increased agricultural prices; this demand encouraged farmers to dramatically increase cultivation. For example, in the Llano Estacado of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas, the area of farmland doubled between 1900 and 1920, then tripled between 1925 and 1930. The agricultural methods farmers favored during this period created the conditions for large-scale erosion under certain environmental conditions. The widespread conversion of the land by deep plowing and other soil preparation methods to enable agriculture eliminated the native grasses that held the soil in place and helped retain moisture during dry periods. Furthermore, cotton farmers left fields bare during the winter, when winds in the High Plains are highest, and burned the stubble as a means to control weeds before planting, thereby depriving the soil of organic nutrients and surface vegetation. Drought and dust storms After fairly favorable climatic conditions in the 1920s with good rainfall and relatively moderate winters, which permitted increased settlement and cultivation in the Great Plains, the region entered an unusually dry era in the summer of 1930. During the next decade, the northern plains suffered four of their seven driest calendar years since 1895, Kansas four of its 12 driest, and the entire region south to West Texas lacked any period of above-normal rainfall until record rains hit in 1941. When severe drought struck the Great Plains region in the 1930s, it resulted in erosion and loss of topsoil because of farming practices at the time. The drought dried the topsoil and over time it became friable, reduced to a powdery consistency in some places. Without indigenous grasses in place, the plains' high winds picked up the topsoil and created massive dust storms. The persistent dry weather caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion. The Great Plains' fine soil eroded easily and was carried east by strong continental winds. On November 11, 1933, a very strong dust storm stripped topsoil from desiccated South Dakota farmlands in one of a series of severe dust storms that year. Beginning on May 9, 1934, a strong, two-day dust storm removed massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst such storms of the Dust Bowl. The dust clouds blew all the way to Chicago, where they deposited 12 million pounds (5,400 tonnes) of dust. Two days later, the same storm reached cities to the east, such as Cleveland, Buffalo, Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C. That winter (1934–35), red snow fell on New England. On April 14, 1935, known as "Black Sunday", 20 of the worst "black blizzards" occurred across the entire sweep of the Great Plains, from Canada south to Texas. The storms caused extensive damage and appeared to turn day to night; witnesses reported that they could not see five feet (1.5 m) in front of them at certain points. Denver-based Associated Press reporter Robert E. Geiger happened to be in Boise City, Oklahoma, that day. His story about Black Sunday marked the first appearance of the term Dust Bowl; it was coined by Edward Stanley, Kansas City news editor of the Associated Press, while rewriting Geiger's news story. Spearman and Hansford County have been literaly [sic] in a cloud of dust for the past week. Ever since Friday of last week, there hasn't been a day pass but what the county was beseieged [sic] with a blast of wind and dirt. On rare occasions when the wind did subside for a period of hours, the air has been so filled with dust that the town appeared to be overhung by a fog cloud. Because of this long seige of dust and every building being filled with it, the air has become stifling to breathe and many people have developed sore throats and dust colds as a result. Much of the farmland was eroded in the aftermath of the Dust Bowl. In 1941, a Kansas agricultural experiment station released a bulletin that suggested reestablishing native grasses by the "hay method". Developed in 1937 to speed up the process and increase returns from pasture, the "hay method" was originally supposed to occur in Kansas naturally over 25–40 years.After much data analysis, the causal mechanism for the droughts can be linked to ocean temperature anomalies. Specifically, Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperatures appear to have had an indirect effect on the general atmospheric circulation, while Pacific sea surface temperatures seem to have had the most direct influence. Human displacement This catastrophe intensified the economic impact of the Great Depression in the region. In 1935, many families were forced to leave their farms and travel to other areas seeking work because of the drought, which had already lasted four years. The abandonment of homesteads and financial ruin resulting from catastrophic topsoil loss led to widespread hunger and poverty. Dust Bowl conditions fomented an exodus of the displaced from the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma Panhandle, and the surrounding Great Plains to adjacent regions. More than 500,000 Americans were left homeless. More than 350 houses had to be torn down after one storm alone. The severe drought and dust storms left many homeless; others had their mortgages foreclosed by banks, or felt they had no choice but to abandon their farms in search of work. Many Americans migrated west, looking for work. Parents packed up "jalopies" with their families and a few personal belongings and headed west. Some residents of the Plains, especially Kansas and Oklahoma, fell ill and died of dust pneumonia or malnutrition. Between 1930 and 1940, about 3.5 million people moved out of the Plains states. In just over a year, over 86,000 people migrated to California. This number is more than the number of migrants to that area during the 1849 gold rush. Migrants abandoned farms in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, but were often generally called "Okies", "Arkies", or "Texies". Terms such as "Okies" and "Arkies" came to be standard in the 1930s for those who had lost everything and were struggling the most during the Great Depression. But not all migrants traveled long distances; most participated in internal state migration, moving from counties that the Dust Bowl badly impacted to other, less affected counties. So many families left their farms and were on the move that the proportion of migrants and residents was nearly equal in the Great Plains states.An examination of Census Bureau statistics and other records, and a 1939 survey of occupation by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of about 116,000 families who arrived in California in the 1930s, showed that only 43% of Southwesterners were doing farm work immediately before they migrated. Nearly a third of all migrants were professional or white-collar workers. Some farmers had to take on unskilled labor when they moved; leaving the farming sector commonly led to greater social mobility as there was a far greater likelihood that migrant farmers would later go into semi-skilled or high-skilled fields that paid better. Non-farmers experienced more downward occupational moves than farmers, but in most cases they were not significant enough to bring them into poverty, because high-skilled migrants were most likely to experience a downward shift into semi-skilled work. While semi-skilled work did not pay as well as high-skilled work, most of these workers were not impoverished. For the most part, by the end of the Dust Bowl the migrants generally were better off than those who chose to stay behind.After the Great Depression ended, some migrants moved back to their original states. Many others remained where they had resettled. About one-eighth of California's population is of Okie heritage. Government response Government's greatly expanded participation in land management and soil conservation was an important result of the disaster. Different groups took many different approaches to responding to the disaster. To identify areas that needed attention, groups such as the Soil Conservation Service generated detailed soil maps and took photos of the land from the sky. To create shelterbelts to reduce soil erosion, groups such as the United States Forest Service's Prairie States Forestry Project planted trees on private lands. Groups like the Resettlement Administration, which later became the Farm Security Administration, encouraged small farm owners to resettle on other lands if they lived in drier parts of the Plains.During President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first 100 days in office in 1933, his administration quickly initiated programs to conserve soil and restore the nation's ecological balance. Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes established the Soil Erosion Service in August 1933 under Hugh Hammond Bennett. In 1935, it was transferred and reorganized under the Department of Agriculture and renamed the Soil Conservation Service. It is now known as the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).As part of New Deal programs, Congress passed the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act in 1936, requiring landowners to share the allocated government subsidies with the laborers who worked on their farms. Under the law, "benefit payments were continued as measures for production control and income support, but they were now financed by direct Congressional appropriations and justified as soil conservation measures. The Act shifted the parity goal from price equality of agricultural commodities and the articles that farmers buy to income equality of farm and non-farm population." Thus, the parity goal was to re-create the ratio between the purchasing power of the net income per person on farms from agriculture and that of the income of persons not on farms that prevailed during 1909–1914. To stabilize prices, the government paid farmers and ordered more than six million pigs to be slaughtered as part of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). It paid to have the meat packed and distributed to the poor and hungry. The Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (FSRC) was established to regulate crop and other surpluses. In a May 14, 1935, address to the AAA, Roosevelt said: Let me make one other point clear for the benefit of the millions in cities who have to buy meats. Last year the Nation suffered a drought of unparalleled intensity. If there had been no Government program, if the old order had obtained in 1933 and 1934, that drought on the cattle ranges of America and in the corn belt would have resulted in the marketing of thin cattle, immature hogs and the death of these animals on the range and on the farm, and if the old order had been in effect those years, we would have had a vastly greater shortage than we face today. Our program – we can prove it – saved the lives of millions of head of livestock. They are still on the range, and other millions of heads are today canned and ready for this country to eat. The FSRC diverted agricultural commodities to relief organizations. Apples, beans, canned beef, flour and pork products were distributed through local relief channels. Cotton goods were later included, to clothe needy.In 1935, the federal government formed a Drought Relief Service (DRS) to coordinate relief activities. The DRS bought cattle in counties that were designated emergency areas for $14 to $20 a head. Animals determined unfit for human consumption were killed; at the beginning of the program, more than 50% were so designated in emergency areas. The DRS assigned the remaining cattle to the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (FSRC) to be used in food distribution to families nationwide. Although it was difficult for farmers to give up their herds, the cattle slaughter program helped many of them avoid bankruptcy. "The government cattle buying program was a blessing to many farmers, as they could not afford to keep their cattle, and the government paid a better price than they could obtain in local markets."Roosevelt ordered the Civilian Conservation Corps to plant the Great Plains Shelterbelt, a huge belt of more than 200 million trees from Canada to Abilene, Texas, to break the wind, hold water in the soil, and hold the soil in place. The administration also began to educate farmers on soil conservation and anti-erosion techniques, including crop rotation, strip farming, contour plowing, and terracing. In 1937, the federal government began an aggressive campaign to encourage Dust Bowl farmers to adopt planting and plowing methods that conserved the soil. The government paid reluctant farmers a dollar an acre (equivalent to $20 in 2022) to use the new methods. By 1938, the massive conservation effort had reduced the amount of blowing soil by 65%. The land still failed to yield a decent living. In the fall of 1939, after nearly a decade of dirt and dust, the drought ended when regular rainfall finally returned to the region. The government still encouraged continuing the use of conservation methods to protect the Plains' soil and ecology. At the end of the drought, the programs implemented during the tough times helped sustain a friendly relationship between farmers and the federal government.The President's Drought Committee issued a report in 1935 covering the government's assistance to agriculture during 1934 through mid-1935: it discussed conditions, measures of relief, organization, finances, operations, and results of the government's assistance. Numerous exhibits are included in this report. Long-term economic impact In many regions, more than 75% of the topsoil was blown away by the end of the 1930s. Land degradation varied widely. Aside from the short-term economic consequences of erosion, the Dust Bowl had severe long-term economic consequences. By 1940, counties that had experienced the most erosion had a greater decline in agricultural land values. The per-acre value of farmland declined by 28% in high-erosion counties and 17% in medium-erosion counties, relative to land value changes in low-erosion counties.: 3  Even over the long term, the land's agricultural value often failed to return to pre-Dust Bowl levels. In highly eroded areas, less than 25% of the original agricultural losses were recovered. The economy adjusted predominantly through large relative population declines in more-eroded counties, both during the 1930s and through the 1950s.: 1500 The economic effects persisted in part because of farmers' failure to switch to more appropriate crops for highly eroded areas. Because the amount of topsoil had been reduced, it would have been more productive to shift from crops and wheat to animals and hay. During the Depression and through at least the 1950s, there was limited relative adjustment of farmland away from activities that became less productive in more-eroded counties. Some of the failure to shift to more productive agricultural products may be related to ignorance about the benefits of changing land use. A second explanation is a lack of availability of credit, caused by the high rate of failure of banks in the Plains states. Because banks failed in the Dust Bowl region at a higher rate than elsewhere, farmers could not get the credit they needed to obtain capital to shift crop production. In addition, profit margins in either animals or hay were still minimal, and farmers at first had little incentive to change their crops. Patrick Allitt recounts how fellow historian Donald Worster responded to his return visit to the Dust Bowl in the mid-1970s when he revisited some of the worst afflicted counties: Capital-intensive agribusiness had transformed the scene; deep wells into the aquifer, intensive irrigation, the use of artificial pesticides and fertilizers, and giant harvesters were creating immense crops year after year whether it rained or not. According to the farmers he interviewed, technology had provided the perfect answer to old troubles, such of the bad days would not return. In Worster's view, by contrast, the scene demonstrated that America's capitalist high-tech farmers had learned nothing. They were continuing to work in an unsustainable way, devoting far cheaper subsidized energy to growing food than the energy could give back to its ultimate consumers.In contrast with Worster's pessimism, historian Mathew Bonnifield argued that the Dust Bowl's long-term significance was "the triumph of the human spirit in its capacity to endure and overcome hardships and reverses."A 2023 study in the Journal of Economic History found that while the Dust Bowl had large and enduring impacts on agricultural land, it had modest impacts on average wage incomes. Influence on the arts and culture The crisis was documented by photographers, musicians, and authors, many hired during the Great Depression by the federal government. For instance, the Farm Security Administration hired photographers to document the crisis. Artists such as Dorothea Lange were aided by having salaried work during the Depression. She captured what have become classic images of the dust storms and migrant families. Among her best-known photographs is Destitute Pea Pickers in California. Mother of Seven Children depicted a gaunt-looking woman, Florence Owens Thompson, holding three of her children. This picture expressed the struggles of people caught by the Dust Bowl and raised awareness in other parts of the country of its reach and human cost. Decades later, Thompson disliked the boundless circulation of the photo and resented that she had received no money from its broadcast. Thompson felt it made her perceived as a Dust Bowl "Okie".The work of independent artists was also influenced by the crises of the Dust Bowl and the Depression. Author John Steinbeck, borrowing closely from field notes taken by Farm Security Administration worker and author Sanora Babb, wrote The Grapes of Wrath (1939) about migrant workers and farm families displaced by the Dust Bowl. Babb's own novel about the lives of the migrant workers, Whose Names Are Unknown, was written in 1939, but was eclipsed and shelved in response to Steinbeck's success, and was not published till 2004. Many of folk singer Woody Guthrie's songs, such as those on his 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads, are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, when he traveled with displaced farmers from Oklahoma to California and learned their traditional folk and blues songs, earning him the nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour".Migrants also influenced musical culture wherever they went. Oklahoma migrants, in particular, were rural Southwesterners who carried their traditional country music to California. Today, the "Bakersfield Sound" describes this blend, which developed after the migrants brought country music to the city. Their new music inspired a proliferation of country dance halls as far south as Los Angeles. The 2003–2005 HBO TV series Carnivàle was set during the dust bowl. The 2014 science fiction film Interstellar features a ravaged 21st-century America that is again scoured by dust storms (caused by a worldwide pathogen affecting all crops). Along with inspiration from the 1930s crisis, director Christopher Nolan features interviews from the 2012 documentary The Dust Bowl to draw further parallels.In 2017, Americana recording artist Grant Maloy Smith released the album Dust Bowl – American Stories, inspired by the history of the Dust Bowl. In a review, the music magazine No Depression wrote that the album's lyrics and music are "as potent as Woody Guthrie, as intense as John Trudell and dusted with the trials and tribulations of Tom Joad – Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath." Changes in agriculture and population on the Plains Agricultural land and revenue boomed during World War I, but fell during the Great Depression and the 1930s. The agricultural land most affected by the Dust Bowl was 16 million acres (6.5 million hectares) of land in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. These 20 counties that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Soil Conservation Service identified as the worst wind-eroded region were home to the majority of the Great Plains migrants during the Dust Bowl.While migration from and between the Southern Great Plain States was greater than migration in other regions in the 1930s, the numbers of migrants from these areas had only slightly increased from the 1920s. The Dust Bowl and Great Depression thus did not trigger a mass exodus of southern migrants, but simply encouraged these migrants to keep moving where in other areas the Great Depression limited mobility due to economic issues, decreasing migration. While the population of the Great Plains did fall during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, the drop was not caused by extreme numbers of migrants leaving the Great Plains but by of a lack of migrants moving from outside the Great Plains into the region. See also 1936 North American heat wave Desertification Goyder's Line – semiarid area of Australia Global warming List of environmental disasters Monoculture Ogallala Aquifer Palliser's Triangle – semiarid area of Canada Semi-arid climate Tragedy of the commons U.S. Route 66 – notable Dust Bowl migration route to California Navajo Livestock Reduction – simultaneous program to prevent overgrazing and erosion References Bibliography Documentary films 1936 – The Plow That Broke the Plains – 25 minutes, directed by Pare Lorentz 1998 – Surviving the Dust Bowl – 52 minutes, season 10 episode of American Experience documentary tv series 2012 – The Dust Bowl – 240 minutes, 4 episodes, directed by Ken Burns External links The Dust Bowl photo collection "The Dust Bowl", a PBS television series by filmmaker Ken Burns The Dust Bowl (EH.Net Encyclopedia) Black Sunday, April 14, 1935, Dodge City, KS Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940–1941 Library of Congress, American Folklife Center Online collection of archival sound recordings, photographs, and manuscripts The Dust Bowl (Wessels Living History Farm) Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture – Dust Bowl Dust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry: Oklahoma Women in the Dust Bowl Oral History Project, Oklahoma Oral History Research Program Voices of Oklahoma interview with Frosty Troy. First person interview conducted on November 30, 2011 with Frosty Troy talking about the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Original audio and transcript archived with Voices of Oklahoma oral history project. Dust Bowl – Ken Burns playlist on YouTube Dust Bowl – Ken Burns playlist on YouTube

citizen science and sustainable agriculture

Citizen science has been promoted as a strategy to further sustainable agriculture via public participation in research and case studies. Through public engagement, a variety of sustainable agriculture methods can be learned and practiced, in contrast to relying upon only professional-scientific studies to further research. Public participation is designed to allow those outside professional science to identify problems in sustainable agriculture that most directly affect them and help generate solutions through the collaboration between the broader public and researchers.As global patterns in the 21st century trend towards more extreme climate events, which can lead to disruptions in the food system and impact overall human health, citizen science and sustainable agriculture present a possible solution. Preliminary research indicates that there is opportunity for sustainable agriculture to be enhanced through citizen science, particularly in partnership with farmers, in advancing food justice and increasing understanding of diverse farming techniques and technologies. Citizen science Citizen science can be broadly defined as any type of research, data-collection, or knowledge-production that contributes to collective scientific understanding and fields, but is conducted by the public or non-professional scientists. There are multiple definitions and interpretations, indicating there is not one formal understanding. While the term “citizen science” was introduced by the United States and United Kingdom in the mid-1900s, it has been incorporated across many countries over generations. Perceived benefits include building connections between formal scientists and the general public, and generating projects and data that are more aligned with current societal or policy needs. Criticisms and limitations include varying priorities and values, the potential for bias to be introduced in the data, the public perception of data as being non-credible, challenges in data dissemination, maintaining privacy, and loss of global context when focusing at a hyper-local spatial scale. Achieving goals Citizen science has been promoted for achieving major policy goals, such as the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals, and as a way to monitor and evaluate global policy components and goals such as zero hunger and reducing inequalities among countries. Increasing participation and engagement across the population is one way to educate citizens about sustainable development goals and create a sense of shared responsibility. Sustainable agriculture Sustainable agriculture can be broadly defined as farming via methods that satisfy food and production needs while remaining profitable and sustaining farmers, the environment, and natural resources. The definition of sustainable agriculture varies depending on whether it is being defined within political or scientific discourse. The global political discourse focuses on economic and social dimensions, such as food production to support the world's increasing population, with a focus on developing countries and human rights. The scientific discourse centralizes the agricultural sector and environmental management and protection within it.Sustainable agricultural practices and technologies can help mitigate extreme climate events by meeting increasing human needs and improving the resilience and sustainability of ecosystems and natural resources. Sustainable agricultural technologies generally do not have adverse environmental impacts, improve the natural environment, are affordable and effective, and improve food production. Fundamentals of sustainable agriculture The following are examples of standard practices and frameworks for sustainable agriculture: Integrated farm management is the combination of natural and human capital to solve agricultural and environmental issues. Natural-based solutions include methods such as soil regeneration, nutrient cycling, allelopathy, and nitrogen fixation. These solutions build resilience, contribute to biodiversity, and support ecosystem services. Human capital includes farmers’ skills and knowledge of agricultural practices. Dynamic balance requires ongoing evaluation of agricultural methods to ensure that negative environmental and socio-economic impacts are mitigated, while the benefits are maximized. This includes minimizing the use of non-renewable resources. Regenerative design refers to designing systems with sustainable agricultural intensification, regenerative agriculture, and a circular economy in mind. This allows for the preservation of both food security and natural resources in the long-run. Social development includes increasing community engagement and reducing inequities in agricultural production processes. The focus is on developing social capital and enabling equal participation in agricultural development. Applications Advocates for citizen science in sustainable agriculture propose that it helps increase the amount of available information and supports those who participate in the process. Citizens who participate are not academics but rather ordinary people, which offers a new view on the problems and questions being addressed. This allows researchers to identify which problems matter the most to farmers and what gaps exist in the research. The amount of data generated from these efforts expands the research pool as well.The process integrates the public into the problems being addressed in sustainable agriculture and allows for widespread communication across participants who can share new information and techniques for dealing with related problems. Access to researchers can provide supplemental knowledge, support community members to tackle the problems they regularly face, and advises them on how to argue for changes in the political field. Examples of citizen science in sustainable agriculture Citizen science efforts can involve documentation, reporting, and sharing of observations for sustainable agriculture methods. Pest and pathogen monitoring In northern Italy, the brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys, is an agricultural pest. A pest monitoring system was developed to engage citizens in the documentation of the brown marmorated stink bug through an app called “BugMap.” Researchers were then able to identify areas most threatened by the pest through the large number of submitted citizen reports. Although the “BugMap” was user-friendly, not all geographic areas had access to mobile apps and internet connectivity, posing a limitation for web-based approaches. In another example, the documentation of invasive plant species relies on photo recognition that can produce inaccurate results when there is a lack of internet connectivity. Climate adaptation Extreme climate events have increased the need for crop variety in order to sustain current food systems. Crop variety testing, also known as the tricot approach, involves the observation of three different crop varieties, fertilizer types, or a combination of both to evaluate which options work best. The tricot approach recognizes that there are gender inequalities in agricultural production and attempts to involve more women in the process. This approach has shown to be successful as it engages both researchers and farmers to find solutions that are specific to various environmental areas and needs. The tricot approach was employed on multiple plots in Nicaragua, Ethiopia, and India with farmers as citizen scientists. Each country analyzed climate effects on different seed varieties allowing them to adjust in the next planting cycle. This iterative process documented the replacement of seed varieties for climate adaptation allowing results to be replicated and scalable. Pollination Pollinators are an important aspect of human survival as many fruits, vegetables, and plants require cross pollination for reproduction. In urban areas pollinators face habitat loss as their natural environments are disrupted by human populations. A citizen science project, called Native Bee Watch, began in urban Colorado as a way to collect data on bee morphospecies. Both citizen scientists and researchers collected comparable data that is being used as a conservation tool for bee habitats. Limitations There are a few challenges in integrating citizen science with sustainable agriculture. Many agriculture and food-related topics, such as nutrition, have no notable citizen science participation or research. Citizen science also most often occurs at smaller scales and the local level, so its coverage varies significantly across disciplines, geographies, and socioeconomic groups.Farmers with smaller farms cannot contribute in the same way those with larger farms might be able to, as they may lack the resources or time to participate. There are also challenges in sustaining people's participation. Farmers have to consider the trade-offs between spending more time working versus participating in citizen science, weighing immediate needs against potential large-scale benefits. These disparities are further exacerbated by the fact that academics or researchers often need highly regulated large-scale studies for more accurate and structured data, which might only be possible in cooperation with larger farms.Citizen science often has unequal representation in terms of demographics. Those who participate are more likely to identify as white, male, and of higher socioeconomic status. Few citizen science projects have been completed in the Global South. These are often farming-dependent countries that are more vulnerable to environmental, social, or economic issues and could benefit from these projects. Citizen science projects should evaluate whether the diversity of participants represents the broader population and if there are barriers to participation specific to different subpopulations.These limitations mean that the findings of citizen science work in sustainable agriculture may not be as easily aggregated to the regional or national level or applied to new or different contexts. == References ==

human population planning

Human population planning is the practice of managing the growth rate of a human population. The practice, traditionally referred to as population control, had historically been implemented mainly with the goal of increasing population growth, though from the 1950s to the 1980s, concerns about overpopulation and its effects on poverty, the environment and political stability led to efforts to reduce population growth rates in many countries. More recently, however, several countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Iran, Italy, Spain, Finland, Hungary and Estonia have begun efforts to boost birth rates once again, generally as a response to looming demographic crises. While population planning can involve measures that improve people's lives by giving them greater control of their reproduction, a few programs, such as the Chinese government's "one-child policy and two-child policy", have employed coercive measures. Types Three types of population planning policies pursued by governments can be identified: Increasing or decreasing the overall population growth rate. Increasing or decreasing the relative population growth of a subgroup of people, such as those of high or low intelligence or those with special abilities or disabilities. Policies that aim to boost relative growth rates are known as positive eugenics; those that aim to reduce relative growth rates are known as negative eugenics. Attempts to ensure that all population groups of a certain type (e.g. all social classes within a society) have the same average rate of population growth. Methods While a specific population planning practice may be legal/mandated in one country, it may be illegal or restricted in another, indicative of the controversy surrounding this topic. Increasing population growth Population policies that are intended to increase a population or subpopulation growth rates may use practices such as: Higher taxation of married couples who have no, or too few, children Politicians imploring the populace to have bigger families Tax breaks and subsidies for families with children Loosening of immigration restrictions, and/or mass recruitment of foreign workers by the government History Ancient times through Middle Ages A number of ancient writers have reflected on the issue of population. At about 300 BC, the Indian political philosopher Chanakya (c. 350-283 BC) considered population a source of political, economic, and military strength. Though a given region can house too many or too few people, he considered the latter possibility to be the greater evil. Chanakya favored the remarriage of widows (which at the time was forbidden in India), opposed taxes encouraging emigration, and believed in restricting asceticism to the aged.In ancient Greece, Plato (427-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC) discussed the best population size for Greek city-states such as Sparta, and concluded that cities should be small enough for efficient administration and direct citizen participation in public affairs, but at the same time needed to be large enough to defend themselves against hostile neighbors. In order to maintain a desired population size, the philosophers advised that procreation, and if necessary, immigration, should be encouraged if the population size was too small. Emigration to colonies would be encouraged should the population become too large. Aristotle concluded that a large increase in population would bring, "certain poverty on the citizenry and poverty is the cause of sedition and evil." To halt rapid population increase, Aristotle advocated the use of abortion and the exposure of newborns (that is, infanticide).Confucius (551-478 BC) and other Chinese writers cautioned that, "excessive growth may reduce output per worker, repress levels of living for the masses and engender strife." Confucius also observed that, "mortality increases when food supply is insufficient; that premature marriage makes for high infantile mortality rates, that war checks population growth."Ancient Rome, especially in the time of Augustus (63 BC-AD 14), needed manpower to acquire and administer the vast Roman Empire. A series of laws were instituted to encourage early marriage and frequent childbirth. Lex Julia (18 BC) and the Lex Papia Poppaea (AD 9) are two well-known examples of such laws, which among others, provided tax breaks and preferential treatment when applying for public office for those who complied with the laws. Severe limitations were imposed on those who did not. For example, the surviving spouse of a childless couple could only inherit one-tenth of the deceased fortune, while the rest was taken by the state. These laws encountered resistance from the population which led to the disregard of their provisions and to their eventual abolition.Tertullian, an early Christian author (ca. AD 160-220), was one of the first to describe famine and war as factors that can prevent overpopulation. He wrote: "The strongest witness is the vast population of the earth to which we are a burden and she scarcely can provide for our needs; as our demands grow greater, our complaints against Nature's inadequacy are heard by all. The scourges of pestilence, famine, wars, and earthquakes have come to be regarded as a blessing to overcrowded nations since they serve to prune away the luxuriant growth of the human race."Ibn Khaldun, a North African polymath (1332–1406), considered population changes to be connected to economic development, linking high birth rates and low death rates to times of economic upswing, and low birth rates and high death rates to economic downswing. Khaldoun concluded that high population density rather than high absolute population numbers were desirable to achieve more efficient division of labour and cheap administration.During the Middle Ages in Christian Europe, population issues were rarely discussed in isolation. Attitudes were generally pro-natalist in line with the Biblical command, "Be ye fruitful and multiply." 16th and 17th centuries European cities grew more rapidly than before, and throughout the 16th century and early 17th century discussions on the advantages and disadvantages of population growth were frequent. Niccolò Machiavelli, an Italian Renaissance political philosopher, wrote, "When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere... the world will purge itself in one or another of these three ways," listing floods, plague and famine. Martin Luther concluded, "God makes children. He is also going to feed them."Jean Bodin, a French jurist and political philosopher (1530–1596), argued that larger populations meant more production and more exports, increasing the wealth of a country. Giovanni Botero, an Italian priest and diplomat (1540–1617), emphasized that, "the greatness of a city rests on the multitude of its inhabitants and their power," but pointed out that a population cannot increase beyond its food supply. If this limit was approached, late marriage, emigration, and the war would serve to restore the balance.Richard Hakluyt, an English writer (1527–1616), observed that, "Through our longe peace and seldom sickness... we are grown more populous than ever heretofore;... many thousands of idle persons are within this realme, which, having no way to be sett on work, be either mutinous and seek alteration in the state, or at least very burdensome to the commonwealth." Hakluyt believed that this led to crime and full jails and in A Discourse on Western Planting (1584), Hakluyt advocated for the emigration of the surplus population. With the onset of the Thirty Years' War (1618–48), characterized by widespread devastation and deaths brought on by hunger and disease in Europe, concerns about depopulation returned. Population planning movement In the 20th century, population planning proponents have drawn from the insights of Thomas Malthus, a British clergyman and economist who published An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. Malthus argued that, "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio." He also outlined the idea of "positive checks" and "preventative checks." "Positive checks", such as diseases, wars, disasters, famines, and genocides are factors which Malthus believed could increase the death rate. "Preventative checks" were factors which Malthus believed could affect the birth rate such as moral restraint, abstinence and birth control. He predicted that "positive checks" on exponential population growth would ultimately save humanity from itself and he also believed that human misery was an "absolute necessary consequence". Malthus went on to explain why he believed that this misery affected the poor in a disproportionate manner. There is a constant effort towards an increase in population which tends to subject the lower classes of society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition…. The way in which these effects are produced seems to be this. We will suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population... increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The food, therefore which before supplied seven million must now be divided among seven million and a half or eight million. The poor consequently must live much worse, and many of them are reduced to severe distress. Finally, Malthus advocated for the education of the lower class about the use of "moral restraint" or voluntary abstinence, which he believed would slow the growth rate.Paul R. Ehrlich, a US biologist and environmentalist, published The Population Bomb in 1968, advocating stringent population planning policies. His central argument on population is as follows: A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually, he dies - often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance to survive. In his concluding chapter, Ehrlich offered a partial solution to the "population problem", "[We need] compulsory birth regulation... [through] the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired family size".Ehrlich's views came to be accepted by many population planning advocates in the United States and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. Since Ehrlich introduced his idea of the "population bomb", overpopulation has been blamed for a variety of issues, including increasing poverty, high unemployment rates, environmental degradation, famine and genocide. In a 2004 interview, Ehrlich reviewed the predictions in his book and found that while the specific dates within his predictions may have been wrong, his predictions about climate change and disease were valid. Ehrlich continued to advocate for population planning and co-authored the book The Population Explosion, released in 1990 with his wife Anne Ehrlich. However, it is controversial as to whether human population stabilization will avert environmental risks. A 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America found that given the "inexorable demographic momentum of the global human population", even mass mortality events and draconian one-child policies implemented on a global scale would still likely result in a population of 5 to 10 billion by 2100. Therefore, while reduced fertility rates are positive for society and the environment, the short term focus should be on mitigating the human impact on the environment through technological and social innovations, along with reducing overconsumption, with population planning being a long-term goal. A letter in response, published in the same journal, argued that a reduction in population by 1 billion people in 2100 could help reduce the risk of catastrophic climate disruption. A 2021 article published in Sustainability Science said that sensible population policies could advance social justice (such as by abolishing child marriage, expanding family planning services and reforms that improve education for women and girls) and avoid the abusive and coercive population control schemes of the past while at the same time mitigating the human impact on the climate, biodiversity and ecosystems by slowing fertility rates.Paige Whaley Eager argues that the shift in perception that occurred in the 1960s must be understood in the context of the demographic changes that took place at the time. It was only in the first decade of the 19th century that the world's population reached one billion. The second billion was added in the 1930s, and the next billion in the 1960s. 90 percent of this net increase occurred in developing countries. Eager also argues that, at the time, the United States recognised that these demographic changes could significantly affect global geopolitics. Large increases occurred in China, Mexico and Nigeria, and demographers warned of a "population explosion", particularly in developing countries from the mid-1950s onwards.In the 1980s, tension grew between population planning advocates and women's health activists who advanced women's reproductive rights as part of a human rights-based approach. Growing opposition to the narrow population planning focus led to a significant change in population planning policies in the early 1990s. Population planning and economics Opinions vary among economists about the effects of population change on a nation's economic health. US scientific research in 2009 concluded that the raising of a child cost about $16,000 yearly ($291,570 total for raising the child to its 18th birthday). In the US, the multiplication of this number with the yearly population growth will yield the overall cost of the population growth. Costs for other developed countries are usually of a similar order of magnitude. Some economists, such as Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams, have argued that poverty and famine are caused by bad government and bad economic policies, not by overpopulation. In his book The Ultimate Resource, economist Julian Simon argued that higher population density leads to more specialization and technological innovation, which in turn leads to a higher standard of living. He claimed that human beings are the ultimate resource since we possess "productive and inventive minds that help find creative solutions to man’s problems, thus leaving us better off over the long run".Simon also claimed that when considering a list of countries ranked in order by population density, there is no correlation between population density and poverty and starvation. Instead, if a list of countries is considered according to corruption within their respective governments, there is a significant correlation between government corruption, poverty and famine. Views on population planning Birth rate reductions Support As early as 1798, Thomas Malthus argued in his Essay on the Principle of Population for implementation of population planning. Around the year 1900, Sir Francis Galton said in his publication Hereditary Improvement: "The unfit could become enemies to the State if they continue to propagate." In 1968, Paul Ehrlich noted in The Population Bomb, "We must cut the cancer of population growth", and "if this was not done, there would be only one other solution, namely the 'death rate solution' in which we raise the death rate through war-famine-pestilence, etc.” In the same year, another prominent modern advocate for mandatory population planning was Garrett Hardin, who proposed in his landmark 1968 essay Tragedy of the commons, society must relinquish the "freedom to breed" through "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon." Later on, in 1972, he reaffirmed his support in his new essay "Exploring New Ethics for Survival", by stating, "We are breeding ourselves into oblivion." Many prominent personalities, such as Bertrand Russell, Margaret Sanger (1939), John D. Rockefeller, Frederick Osborn (1952), Isaac Asimov, Arne Næss and Jacques Cousteau have also advocated for population planning. Today, a number of influential people advocate population planning such as these: David Attenborough Christian de Duve, Nobel laureate Sara Parkin Jonathon Porritt, UK sustainable development commissioner William J. Ripple, lead author of the 2017 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice Crispin TickellThe head of the UN Millennium Project Jeffrey Sachs is also a strong proponent of decreasing the effects of overpopulation. In 2007, Jeffrey Sachs gave a number of lectures (2007 Reith Lectures) about population planning and overpopulation. In his lectures, called "Bursting at the Seams", he featured an integrated approach that would deal with a number of problems associated with overpopulation and poverty reduction. For example, when criticized for advocating mosquito nets he argued that child survival was, "by far one of the most powerful ways", to achieve fertility reduction, as this would assure poor families that the smaller number of children they had would survive. Opposition Critics of human population planning point out that attempts to curb human population growth have resulted in violations of human rights such as forced sterilization, particularly in China and India. In the latter half of the twentieth century, India's population reduction program received substantial funds and powerful incentives from Western countries and international population planning organizations to reduce India's growing population. This culminated in "the Emergency," a period in the mid-1970's where millions of people were forcibly sterilized. Violent resistance to forced sterilization led to police brutality and some instances of mass shootings of civilians by police. Critics also argue that supposedly voluntary population planning is often coerced. Some also believe that the environmental problems caused by supposed overpopulation are better explained by other factors, and that the goal of human population reduction does not justify the threat to human rights posed by population planning policies.Other causes for opposition emerge from the feasibility of substantially impacting human population. According to some researchers, even rapid global adoption of a one-child policy would result in a world population exceeding 8 billion in 2050, and in a scenario involving catastrophic mass death of 2 billion people, world population would exceed 8 billion by 2100.The Catholic Church has opposed abortion, sterilization, and artificial contraception as a general practice but especially in regard to population planning policies. Pope Benedict XVI has stated, "The extermination of millions of unborn children, in the name of the fight against poverty, actually constitutes the destruction of the poorest of all human beings." The reformed Theology pastor Dr. Stephen Tong also opposes the planning of human population. Pro-natalist policies In 1946, Poland introduced a tax on childlessness, discontinued in the 1970s, as part of natalist policies in the Communist government. From 1941 to the 1990s, the Soviet Union had a similar tax to replenish the population losses incurred during the Second World War. The Socialist Republic of Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu severely repressed abortion, (the most common birth control method at the time) in 1966, and forced gynecological revisions and penalties for unmarried women and childless couples. The surge of the birth rate taxed the public services received by the decreţei 770 ("Scions of the Decree 770") generation. A consequence of Ceaușescu's natalist policy is that large numbers of children ended up living in orphanages, because their parents could not cope. The vast majority of children who lived in the communist orphanages were not actually orphans, but were simply children whose parents could not afford to raise them. The Romanian Revolution of 1989 preceded a fall in population growth. Balanced birth policies Nativity in the Western world dropped during the interwar period. Swedish sociologists Alva and Gunnar Myrdal published Crisis in the Population Question in 1934, suggesting an extensive welfare state with universal healthcare and childcare, to increase overall Swedish birth rates, and level the number of children at a reproductive level for all social classes in Sweden. Swedish fertility rose throughout World War II (as Sweden was largely unharmed by the war) and peaked in 1946. Modern practice by country Australia Australia currently offers fortnightly Family Tax Benefit payments plus a free immunization scheme, and recently proposed to pay all child care costs for women who want to work. China One-child era (1979–2015) The most significant population planning system in the world was China's one-child policy, in which, with various exceptions, having more than one child was discouraged. Unauthorized births were punished by fines, although there were also allegations of illegal forced abortions and forced sterilization. As part of China's planned birth policy, (work) unit supervisors monitored the fertility of married women and may decide whose turn it is to have a baby.The Chinese government introduced the policy in 1978 to alleviate the social and environmental problems of China. According to government officials, the policy has helped prevent 400 million births. The success of the policy has been questioned, and reduction in fertility has also been attributed to the modernization of China. The policy is controversial both within and outside of China because of its manner of implementation and because of concerns about negative economic and social consequences e.g. female infanticide. In Asian cultures, the oldest male child has responsibility of caring for the parents in their old age. Therefore, it is common for Asian families to invest most heavily in the oldest male child, such as providing college, steering them into the most lucrative careers, and so on. To these families, having an oldest male child is paramount, so in a one-child policy, daughters have no economic benefit, so daughters, especially as a first child, are often targeted for abortion or infanticide. China introduced several government reforms to increase retirement payments to coincide with the one-child policy. During that time, couples could request permission to have more than one child. According to Tibetologist Melvyn Goldstein, natalist feelings run high in China's Tibet Autonomous Region, among both ordinary people and government officials. Seeing population control "as a matter of power and ethnic survival" rather than in terms of ecological sustainability, Tibetans successfully argued for an exemption of Tibetan people from the usual family planning policies in China such as the one-child policy. Two-child era (2016-2021) In November 2014, the Chinese government allowed its people to conceive a second child under the supervision of government regulation.On October 29, 2015, the ruling Chinese Communist Party announced that all one-child policies would be scrapped, allowing all couples to have two children. The change was needed to allow a better balance of male and female children, and to grow the young population to ease the problem of paying for the aging population. The law enacting the two-child policy took effect on January 1, 2016, and replaced the previous one-child policy. Three-child era (2021-) In May 2021, the Chinese government allowed its people to conceive a third child, in a move accompanied by "supportive measures" it regarded "conducive" to improving its "population structure, fulfilling the country's strategy of actively coping with an ageing population and maintaining the advantage, endowment of human resources" after declining birth rates recorded in the 2020 Chinese census. Hungary During the Second Orbán Government, Hungary increased its family benefits spending from one of the lowest rates in the OECD to one of the highest. In 2015, it amounted to nearly 4% of GDP. India Only those with two or fewer children are eligible for election to a local government.Us two, our two ("Hum do, hamare do" in Hindi) is a slogan meaning one family, two children and is intended to reinforce the message of family planning thereby aiding population planning. Facilities offered by government to its employees are limited to two children. The government offers incentives for families accepted for sterilization. Moreover, India was the first country to take measures for family planning back in 1952. In the south west of India lies the long narrow coastal state of Kerala. Most of its thirty-two million inhabitants live off the land and the ocean, a rich tropical ecosystem watered by two monsoons a year. It's also one of India's most crowded states – but the population is stable because nearly everybody has small families… At the root of it all is education. Thanks to a long tradition of compulsory schooling for boys and girls Kerala has one of the highest literacy rates in the World. Where women are well educated they tend to choose to have smaller families… What Kerala shows is that you don't need aggressive policies or government incentives for birthrates to fall. Everywhere in the world where women have access to education and have the freedom to run their own lives, on the whole they and their partners have been choosing to have smaller families than their parents. But reducing birthrates is very difficult to achieve without a simple piece of medical technology, contraception. In 2019, the Population Control Bill, 2019 bill was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in July 2019 by Rakesh Sinha. The purpose of the bill is to control the population growth of India. Iran After the Iran–Iraq War, Iran encouraged married couples to produce as many children as possible to replace population lost to the war.Iran succeeded in sharply reducing its birth rate from the late 1980s to 2010. Mandatory contraceptive courses are required for both males and females before a marriage license can be obtained, and the government emphasized the benefits of smaller families and the use of contraception. This changed in 2012, when a major policy shift back towards increasing birth rates was announced. In 2014, permanent contraception and advertising of birth control were to be outlawed. Israel In Israel, Haredi families with many children receive economic support through generous governmental child allowances, government assistance in housing young religious couples, as well as specific funds by their own community institutions. Haredi women have an average of 6.7 children while the average Jewish Israeli woman has 3 children. Japan Japan has experienced a shrinking population for many years. The government is trying to encourage women to have children or to have more children – many Japanese women do not have children, or even remain single. The population is culturally opposed to immigration.Some Japanese localities, facing significant population loss, are offering economic incentives. Yamatsuri, a town of 7,000 just north of Tokyo, offers parents $4,600 for the birth of a child and $460 a year for 10 years. Myanmar In Myanmar, the Population planning Health Care Bill requires some parents to space each child three years apart. The measure is expected to be used against the persecuted Muslim Rohingyas minority. Pakistan Russia Russian President Vladimir Putin directed Parliament in 2006 to adopt a 10-year program to stop the sharp decline in Russia's population, principally by offering financial incentives and subsidies to encourage women to have children. Singapore Singapore has undergone two major phases in its population planning: first to slow and reverse the baby boom in the Post-World War II era; then from the 1980s onwards to encourage couples to have more children as the birth rate had fallen below the replacement-level fertility. In addition, during the interim period, eugenics policies were adopted.The anti-natalist policies flourished in the 1960s and 1970s: initiatives advocating small families were launched and developed into the Stop at Two programme, pushing for two-children families and promoting sterilisation. In 1984, the government announced the Graduate Mothers' Scheme, which favoured children of more well-educated mothers; the policy was however soon abandoned due to the outcry in the general election of the same year. Eventually, the government became pro-natalist in the late 1980s, marked by its Have Three or More plan in 1987. Singapore pays $3,000 for the first child, $9,000 in cash and savings for the second; and up to $18,000 each for the third and fourth. Spain In 2017, the government of Spain appointed Edelmira Barreira, as "Government Commissioner facing the Demographic Challenge", in a pro-natalist attempt to reverse a negative population growth rate. Turkey In May 2012, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan argued that abortion is murder and announced that legislative preparations to severely limit the practice are underway. Erdogan also argued that abortion and C-section deliveries are plots to stall Turkey's economic growth. Prior to this move, Erdogan had repeatedly demanded that each couple have at least three children. United States Enacted in 1970, Title X of the Public Health Service Act provides access to contraceptive services, supplies and information to those in need. Priority for services is given to people with low incomes. The Title X Family Planning program is administered through the Office of Population Affairs under the Office of Public Health and Science. It is directed by the Office of Family Planning. In 2007, Congress appropriated roughly $283 million for family planning under Title X, at least 90 percent of which was used for services in family planning clinics. Title X is a vital source of funding for family planning clinics throughout the nation, which provide reproductive health care, including abortion. The education and services supplied by the Title X-funded clinics support young individuals and low-income families. The goals of developing healthy families are accomplished by helping individuals and couples decide whether to have children and when the appropriate time to do so would be.Title X has made the prevention of unintended pregnancies possible. It has allowed millions of American women to receive necessary reproductive health care, plan their pregnancies and prevent abortions. Title X is dedicated exclusively to funding family planning and reproductive health care services.Title X as a percentage of total public funding to family planning client services has steadily declined from 44% of total expenditures in 1980 to 12% in 2006. Medicaid has increased from 20% to 71% in the same time. In 2006, Medicaid contributed $1.3 billion to public family planning.In the early 1970s, the United States Congress established the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future (Chairman John D. Rockefeller III), which was created to provide recommendations regarding population growth and its social consequences. The Commission submitted its final recommendations in 1972, which included promoting contraceptives and liberalizing abortion regulations, for example. Natalism in the United States In a 2004 editorial in The New York Times, David Brooks expressed the opinion that the relatively high birth rate of the United States in comparison to Europe could be attributed to social groups with "natalist" attitudes. The article is referred to in an analysis of the Quiverfull movement. However, the figures identified for the demographic are extremely low. Former US Senator Rick Santorum made natalism part of his platform for his 2012 presidential campaign. Many of those categorized in the General Social Survey as "Fundamentalist Protestant" are more or less natalist, and have a higher birth rate than "Moderate" and "Liberal" Protestants. However, Rick Santorum is not a Protestant but a practicing Catholic. Uzbekistan It is reported that Uzbekistan has been pursuing a policy of forced sterilizations, hysterectomies and IUD insertions since the late 1990s in order to impose population planning. See also Fiction Logan's Run (Book) - State-mandated euthanasia at 21 for all people (30 in the film) to conserve resources. Make Room! Make Room! (Book) - Novel, explores the consequence of overpopulation. Ishmael (Quinn novel) - Explores the biological and ecological causes of overpopulation which is a result of increased carrying capacity for humans. The planning proposal is to limit that capacity (see Food Race). Avengers: Infinity War (Movie) - Antagonist and villain Thanos kills half of all living things throughout universe in order to maintain ecological balance. Inferno (Movie) - A billionaire has created a virus that will kill 50% of the world's population to save the other 50%. His followers try to release the virus after his suicide. Shadow Children (Book series) - Families are allowed two children maximum, and "shadow children" (third children and beyond) are subject to be killed. 2 B R 0 2 B (Book) - Aging is cured and each new life requires the sacrifice of another in order to maintain a stable population. 2BR02B: To Be or Naught to Be (Movie) - Based on the above book. The Thinning and The Thinning: New World Order (Film Series) - Involves a dystopian United States enforcing population control via aptitude test and an authoritarian police force known as the Department of Population Control. References Further reading "Controlled food supply could stop overpopulation". Carrie Gazarish. Daily Kent Stater, Volume 32, Number 52, Kent State University. Thomlinson, R. 1975. Demographic Problems: Controversy over Population Control. 2nd ed. Encino, CA: Dickenson. David Pimentel. The Case for Population Reduction: Miscellaneous papers of David Pimentel. Collection of papers, reprints, and other publications on population control and related issues. Cornell University. Hopfenberg, Russell. "Genetic feedback and human population regulation". (PDF) Human Ecology 37.5 (2009): 643-651. "From population control to reproductive rights: feminist fault lines" (PDF). Rosalind Pollack Petchesky. Reproductive Health Matters Volume 3, Issue 6, November 1995. Taylor & Francis. External links "A chat with Tim Flannery, senior research scientist, on Population Control". Karina Kelly, Peter Kirkwood, Owen Craig. Archived from the original on 2010-01-13. Wikiversity:Should we aim to reduce the Earth population?

applied ecology

Applied ecology is a sub-field within ecology that considers the application of the science of ecology to real-world (usually management) questions. It is also described as a scientific field that focuses on the application of concepts, theories, models, or methods of fundamental ecology to environmental problems. Concept Applied ecology is an integrated treatment of the ecological, social, and biotechnological aspects of natural resource conservation and management. Applied ecology typically focuses on geomorphology, soils, and plant communities as the underpinnings for vegetation and wildlife (both game and non-game) management. Applied ecology includes all disciplines that are related to human activities so that it does not only cover agriculture, forestry and fisheries but also global change. It has two study categories. The first involves the outputs or those fields that address the use and management of the environment, particularly for its ecosystem services and exploitable resources. The second are the inputs or those that are concerned with the management strategies or human influences on the ecosystem or biodiversity.The discipline is often linked to ecological management on the grounds that the effective management of natural ecosystems depends on ecological knowledge. It often uses an ecological approach to solve problems of specific parts of the environment, which can involve the comparison of plausible options (e.g. best management options).The role of applied science in agricultural production has been brought into greater focus as fluctuations in global food production feed through into prices and availability to consumers. Approaches Applied ecologists often use one or more of the following approaches, namely, observation, experimentation, and modeling. For example, a wildlife preservation project could involve: observational studies of the wildlife ecology; experiments to understand causal relationships; and the application of modeling to determine the information beyond the scope of experimentation.The ecological approach used in applied ecology could include inputs from management strategies such as conservation biology, restoration ecology, global change, ecotoxicology, biomonitoring, biodiversity, environmental policies, and economics, among others. Restoration ecology is a particularly prominent strategy in the discipline since it applies the principles of restoring and repairing damaged ecological systems to their original state.Like those used in ecological theory, many areas of the discipline employ approaches that are based on simple statistical and analytic models (e.g. spatial models) as well as those with mathematical properties (e.g. matrix models). There is also the digital computer simulation modeling, which is designed to solve statistical ecology problems and to achieve bioeconomic goals such as the forecasting and the evaluation of consequences for specific activities.Applied ecology also requires human interest, particularly the exercise of judgments of relative values and goals. Applications Applied ecology can be applied to the economic development process. The discipline, for example, can be integrated into the national economic planning to comprehensively address environmental concerns since these problems are intersectoral and interdisciplinary in nature.Aspects of applied ecology include: Agro-ecosystem management Biodiversity conservation Biotechnology Conservation biology Disturbance management Ecosystem restoration Environmental engineering Environmental technology Habitat management Invasive species management Landscape use (including development planning) Protected areas management Rangeland management Restoration ecology Wildlife management (including game)Major journals in the field include: Journal of Applied Ecology Ecological Applications Applied Ecology and Environmental ResearchRelated organizations include: Ecological Society of America (The Americas) Society for Ecological Restoration (Global) Institute for Applied Ecology (USA) Kazakh Agency of Applied Ecology Öko-Institut (Institute for Applied Ecology) (in Germany) See also Holistic management Natural environment Natural resource Nature Environmental impact design Landscape planning References Bibliography External links Media related to Applied ecology at Wikimedia Commons

list of environmental journals

This is a list of scholarly, peer-reviewed academic journals focused on the biophysical environment and/or humans' relations with it. Inclusion of journals focused on the built environment is appropriate. Included in this list are journals from a wide variety of interdisciplinary fields including from the environmental sciences, environmental social sciences, environmental humanities, etc. General A\J: Alternatives Journal—published by the Environmental Studies Association of Canada Annual Review of Environment and Resources—published by Annual Reviews, Inc. eco.mont (Journal on Protected Mountain Areas Research and Management)—established by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the University of Innsbruck, and other organizations—covering mountain research in protected area Environmental Sciences Europe—published by Springer Science+Business Media International Journal of Environmental Research—published by University of Tehran Journal of Environmental Engineering—published by the American Society of Civil Engineers Climate change Climatic Change—published by Springer Science+Business Media Global Change Biology—published by Wiley-Blackwell Nature Climate Change—published by Nature Publishing Group Energy and renewable energy Advanced Energy Materials—published by Wiley-VCH Energies—published by MDPI Energy & Environment – edited by Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen; published by Multi-Science Publishing, Brentwood, Essex Energy and Environmental Science—published by the Royal Society of Chemistry Energy Economics—published by Elsevier Energy Procedia—published by Elsevier Energy Research & Social Science—published by Elsevier Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy—published by the American Institute of Physics Renewable Energy-published by Elsevier Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews—published by Elsevier Smart Energy—published by Elsevier Solar Energy—published by Elsevier Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells—published by Elsevier Wind Energy—published by Wiley Environmental and energy law Appalachian Natural Resources Law Journal—published at the Appalachian School of Law Columbia Journal of Environmental Law—published at Columbia University's School of Law University of Denver Water Law Review—published at University of Denver's Sturm College of Law Ecology Law Quarterly—published at the UC Berkeley School of Law Environmental Law—published at Lewis & Clark Law School Environs: Environmental Law and Policy Journal—published at the University of California, Davis School of Law Fordham Environmental Law Review (ELR)—published by Fordham University in the United States Georgetown International Environmental Law Review—published at Georgetown University Law Center Harvard Environmental Law Review—published at Harvard Law School Hastings Environmental Law Journal—published at Hastings College of Law Journal of Environmental and Sustainability Law—published at the University of Missouri School of Law Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation—published at the University of Oregon School of Law Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law—published at the Florida State University College of Law LSU Journal of Energy Law and Resources—published at the Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center McGill International Journal of Sustainable Development Law and Policy—published at McGill University Michigan Journal of Environmental and Administrative Law—published at the University of Michigan Law School Natural Resources Journal—published by the University of New Mexico School of Law Oil, Gas and Energy Law—published by Maris B.V., the Netherlands Pittsburgh Journal of Environmental and Public Health Law—published at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law San Diego Journal of Climate and Energy Law—published at University of San Diego School of Law Stanford Environmental Law Journal—published at Stanford Law School Tulane Environmental Law Journal—published at Tulane University Law School UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy—published at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law Virginia Environmental Law Journal—published at the University of Virginia School of Law Environmental economics American Journal of Agricultural Economics—the official journal of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association Ecological Economics—published by the International Society for Ecological Economics since 1989 Environmental and Resource Economics—the official journal of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (JEEM) — published by Elsevier Land Economics—published by the University of Wisconsin Press Marine Resource Economics—published by the MRE Foundation in affiliation with the North American Association of Fisheries & the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade Review of Environmental Economics and Policy—the official "accessible" (meaning more approachable) journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Environmental health Environmental Health—published by BioMed Central from 2002; open access Environmental Health Perspectives—published by US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences from 1972; open-access International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health—published by MDPI in Switzerland Journal of Environmental Science and Health, Part C, published by Taylor & Francis Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, published by Taylor & Francis Toxicology–published by Elsevier since 1973 Toxicology and Industrial Health—published by SAGE Publications Toxicology Mechanisms and Methods—published by Informa Pharmaceutical Science Toxicon—published by Elsevier Environmental humanities Cultural Geographies—published by SAGE Publications Environmental Ethics—produced at the Center for Environmental Philosophy at the University of North Texas Environmental Philosophy—the journal of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy Environmental Values—published by White Horse Press, Lancashire, England Journal of Interpretation Research—published by the National Association for Interpretation Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture—the journal of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture Nature+Culture—published by Berghahn Books Environmental sciences American Journal of Environmental Biology—published by the Academic Block Applied and Environmental Microbiology—published by the American Society for Microbiology Aquatic Toxicology—published by Elsevier, based in Amsterdam Arctic—published by the Arctic Institute of North America Carbon Balance and Management—published by BioMed Central Chemosphere—published by Elsevier Ecological Complexity—published by Elsevier Ecology—published by the Ecological Society of America Environmental Biology of Fishes—published by Springer Science+Business Media Environmental Chemistry—published monthly by CSIRO Publishing Environmental Earth Sciences—published by Springer Science+Business Media Environmental Research—published by Elsevier Environmental Research Letters—based at the University of California, Berkeley Environmental Science & Technology—published by the American Chemical Society Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts—published monthly by the Royal Society of Chemistry Environment International—published by Elsevier Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment—published ten times per year on behalf of the Ecological Society of America Green Chemistry—published by the Royal Society of Chemistry Green Chemistry Letters and Reviews—published by Taylor & Francis Journal of Cleaner Production—published by Elsevier Journal of Ecology—published bi-monthly on behalf of the British Ecological Society and focused on plant ecology Journal of Environmental Management—published by Elsevier Journal of the IEST—the official publication of the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology Environmental social sciences Children Youth and Environments Journal—published online by the Children Youth and Environments Center at the University of Colorado Ecological Economics Energy Research & Social Science—published by Elsevier Environment and Behavior—published by SAGE Environmental Communication—published by Routledge Environmental Politics—published by Taylor and Francis Global Environmental Politics—published by the MIT Press Journal of Environmental Economics and Management Journal of Environmental Psychology—published by Elsevier Journal of Political Ecology— published by University of Arizona Organization & Environment—edited by J. Alberto Aragon-Correa (University of Granada) and Mark Starik (San Francisco State University), published by SAGE Publications Population and Environment — published by Springer Science+Business Media Review of Environmental Economics and Policy See also List of environmental periodicals—includes literary journals, newsletters, popular magazines and more List of forestry journals List of planning journals Lists of environmental publications External links Environment and Society: Scholarly Journals Environmental Sciences Journals (JournalSeek)

information and communications technology in agriculture

Information and communication technology in agriculture (ICT in agriculture), also known as e-agriculture, focuses on the enhancement of agricultural and rural development through improved information and communication processes. More specifically, e-agriculture involves the conceptualization, design, development, evaluation and application of innovative ways to use information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the rural domain, with a primary focus on agriculture. ICT includes devices, networks, mobiles, services and applications; these range from innovative Internet-era technologies and sensors to other pre-existing aids such as fixed telephones, televisions, radios and satellites. Provisions of standards, norms, methodologies, and tools as well as development of individual and institutional capacities, and policy support are all key components of e-agriculture. Many ICT in agriculture or e-agriculture interventions have been developed and tested around the world to help agriculturists improve their livelihoods through increased agricultural productivity and income, or by reducing risks. Some useful resources for learning about e-agriculture in practice are the World Bank's e-sourcebook ICT in agriculture – connecting smallholder farmers to knowledge, networks and institutions (2011), ICT uses for inclusive value chains (2013), ICT uses for inclusive value chains (2013) and Success stories on information and communication technologies for agriculture and rural development have documented many cases of use of ICT in agriculture. Wireless technologies Wireless technologies have numerous applications in agriculture. One major usage is the simplification of closed-circuit television camera systems; the use of wireless communications eliminates the need for the installation of coaxial cables. Global Positioning System (GPS) In agriculture, the use of the Global Positioning System provides benefits in geo-fencing, map-making and surveying. GPS receivers dropped in price over the years, making it more popular for civilian use. With the use of GPS, civilians can produce simple yet highly accurate digitized map without the help of a professional cartographer. In Kenya, for example, the solution to prevent an elephant bull from wandering into farms and destroying precious crops was to tag the elephant with a device that sends a text message when it crosses a geo-fence. Using the technology of SMS and GPS, the elephant can roam freely and the authorities are alerted whenever it is near the farm. Geographic information systems Geographic information systems, or GiS, are extensively used in agriculture, especially in precision farming. Land is mapped digitally, and pertinent geodetic data such as topography and contours are combined with other statistical data for easier analysis of the soil. GIS is used in decision making such as what to plant and where to plant using historical data and sampling. Computer-controlled devices (automated systems) Automatic milking systems are computer controlled stand alone systems that milk the dairy cattle without human labor. The complete automation of the milking process is controlled by an agricultural robot, a complex herd management software, and specialized computers. Automatic milking eliminates the farmer from the actual milking process, allowing for more time for supervision of the farm and the herd. Farmers can also improve herd management by using the data gathered by the computer. By analyzing the effect of various animal feeds on milk yield, farmers may adjust accordingly to obtain optimal milk yields. Since the data is available down to individual level, each cow may be tracked and examined, and the farmer may be alerted when there are unusual changes that could mean sickness or injuries. Smartphone mobile apps in agriculture The use of mobile technologies as a tool of intervention in agriculture is becoming increasingly popular. Smartphone penetration enhances the multi-dimensional positive impact on sustainable poverty reduction and identify accessibility as the main challenge in harnessing the full potential (Silarszky et al., 2008) in agricultural space. The reach of smartphone even in rural areas extended the ICT services beyond simple voice or text messages. Several smartphone apps are available for agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry and farm machinery. RFID for Animal identification RFID tags for animals represent one of the oldest uses of RFID. Originally meant for large ranches and rough terrain, since the outbreak of mad-cow disease, RFID has become crucial in animal identification management. An implantable RFID tag or transponder can also be used for animal identification. The transponders are better known as PIT (Passive Integrated Transponder) tags, passive RFID, or "chips" on animals. The Canadian Cattle Identification Agency began using RFID tags as a replacement for barcode tags. Currently CCIA tags are used in Wisconsin and by United States farmers on a voluntary basis. The USDA is currently developing its own program. RFID tags are required for all cattle sold in Australia and in some states, sheep and goats as well. The Veterinary Department of Malaysia's Ministry of Agriculture introduced a livestock-tracking program in 2009 to track the estimated 80,000 cattle all across the country. Each cattle is tagged with the use of RFID technology for easier identification, providing access to relevant data such as: bearer's location, name of breeder, origin of livestock, sex, and dates of movement. This program is the first of its kind in Asia, and is expected to increase the competitiveness of Malaysian livestock industry in international markets by satisfying the regulatory requirements of importing countries like United States, Europe and Middle East. Tracking by RFID will also help producers meet the dietary standards by the halal market. The program will also provide improvements in controlling disease outbreaks in livestock.RFID tags have also been proposed as a means of monitoring animal health. One study involved using RFID to track drinking behavior in pigs as an indicator of overall health. E-commerce Online purchasing order of agri-inputs and agri-equipments is a subset of E-commerce. Sensing technologies Various image sensor technologies provide the data, in the most common case from a visible light digital camera. Fluorescence imaging is also used in plant health monitoring – demonstrated by Ning et al 1995 in very early diagnosis of herbicide injury and attack by fungal plant pathogens.: 95 FAO E-agriculture Strategy Guide The FAO-ITU E-agriculture Strategy Guide provides a framework to holistically address the ICT opportunities and challenges for the agricultural sector in a more efficient manner while generating new revenue streams and improve the livelihoods of the rural community as well as ensure the goals of the national agriculture master plan are achieved. The e-agriculture strategy, and its alignment with other government plans, was intended to prevent e-agriculture projects and services from being implemented in isolation. It was developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) with support from partners including the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) as a framework for countries in developing their national e-agriculture strategy/masterplan. Some of the countries who are using the FAO-ITU E-agriculture Strategy Guide to develop their national e-agriculture strategy are Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Pakistan, Fiji, Cambodia, Indonesia, Turkey, Tajikistan and Armenia. The guide provides a framework to engage a broader stakeholders in the development of national e-agriculture strategy. The E-agriculture in Action series of publications, by FAO-ITU, that provides guidance on emerging technologies and how it could be used to address some of the challenges in agriculture through documenting case studies. E-agriculture in Action: Big Data for Agriculture E-agriculture in Action: Blockchain for Agriculture E-agriculture in Action: Drones for Agriculture E-agriculture in Action Recognition and application E-agriculture is one of the action lines identified in the declaration and plan of action of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The "Tunis Agenda for the Information Society," published on 18 November 2005 and emphasizes the leading facilitating roles that UN agencies need to play in the implementation of the Geneva Plan of Action. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been assigned the responsibility of organizing activities related to the action line under C.7 ICT Applications on E-Agriculture. Many ICT interventions have been developed and tested around the world, with varied degrees of success, to help agriculturists improve their livelihoods through increased agricultural productivity and incomes, and reduction in risks. Some useful resources for learning about e-agriculture in practice are the World Bank's e-sourcebook ICT in agriculture – connecting smallholder farmers to knowledge, networks and institutions (2011), ICT uses for inclusive value chains (2013), ICT uses for inclusive value chains (2013) and Success stories on information and communication technologies for agriculture and rural development have documented many cases of use of ICT in agriculture. The FAO-ITU E-agriculture Strategy Guide was developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) with support from partners including the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) as a framework for countries in developing their national e-agriculture strategy/masterplan. Some of the countries who are using the FAO-ITU E-agriculture Strategy Guide to develop their national e-agriculture strategy are Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Fiji and Vanuatu. The guide provides a framework to engage broader stakeholders in the development of national e-agriculture strategy. History In 2008, the United Nations referred to e-agriculture as "an emerging field", with the expectation that its scope would change and evolve as our understanding of the area grows. ICT in support of rural poverty elimination and food security In August 2003, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) joined together in a collaborative research project to look at bringing together livelihoods thinking with concepts from information and communication for development, in order to improve understanding of the role and importance of information and communication in support of rural livelihoods.The policy recommendations included: Building on existing systems, while encouraging integration of different technologies and information sharing Determining who should pay, through consensus and based on a thorough analysis of the costs Ensuring equitable access to marginalised groups and those in the agricultural sector Promoting localised content, with decentralised and locally owned processes Building capacity, through provision of training packages and maintaining a choice of information sources Using realistic technologies, that are suitable within the existing infrastructure Building knowledge partnerships to ensure that knowledge gaps are filled and a two-way flow of information allows knowledge to originate from all levels of the network and community.The importance of ICT is also recognized in the 8th Millennium Development Goal, with the target to "...make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications technologies (ICTs)" to the fight against poverty. WSIS process E-agriculture is one of the action lines identified in the declaration and plan of action (2003) of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The "Tunis Agenda for the Information Society", published on 18 November 2005, emphasizes the leading facilitating roles that UN agencies need to play in the implementation of the Geneva Plan of Action.FAO hosted the first e-agriculture workshop in June 2006, bringing together representatives of leading development organizations involved in agriculture. The meeting served to initiate development of an effective process to engage as wide a range of stakeholders involved in e-agriculture, and resulted in the formation of the e-Agriculture Community, a community of practice. The e-Agriculture Community's Founding Partners include: Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR); Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development (CTA); FAO; Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development (GAID); Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR); Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP); Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (now called Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, GIZ); International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD); Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA); International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD); International Centre for Communication for Development (IICD); United States National Agricultural Library (NAL); United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA); the World Bank. See also Agricultural cooperative Agricultural drones Agricultural resources Community-supported agriculture Computer-aided design (CAD) Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) E-learning Environmental monitoring References External links www.e-agriculture.org - A Community of Practice was set up in 2007 to discuss and share lessons learned regarding the use of ICT to enhance sustainable agricultural development and food security, with over 6,000 members as of 2012, with membership coming from over 150 countries. Members include practitioners, policymakers, representatives of farmer organizations, researchers, and information and communication specialists involved in agriculture and rural development. www.ictforag.com - A USAID portal focused on the use of ICT to enhance agricultural development outcomes, which includes toolkits, papers, resources, and webinar recordings on a wide range of topics related to ICT and agriculture. ICTupdate online magazine - A bimonthly magazine site and portal focused on the use of ICT in Agriculture in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific region with hundreds of articles. Bridging the Rural Digital Divide programme

agriculture in new york

Agriculture is a major component of the New York economy. As of the 2012 census of agriculture, there were over 35,000 farms covering an area of 7 million acres (28,000 km2) which contributed $5.4 billion in gross sales value and $1.2 billion in net farm income to the national economy. Dairy farming alone accounted for $2.5 billion or 45% of sales. The Finger Lakes region is the center of state agriculture, and the state is a top-ten national producer of cow milk, apples, grapes, onions, sweet corn, tomatoes, and maple syrup. New York places second in apples next to Washington. History The majority of the New York soils were formed from glacial till and outwash deposits. Iroquois agriculture from the 1300s onwards centered on the "Three Sisters"—beans, corn, and squash. Extensive apple and peach orchards were planted by the Seneca people and Wyandot people, these were largely destroyed or taken over by colonists following the revolutionary war.By the 1840s and 1850s, the New York and Erie Rail Road was shipping fresh milk from the Hudson Valley to New York City, helping alleviate the city's scourge of swill milk, and New York state became the largest national dairy producer when dairy farming was becoming increasingly professional and industrialized. Dairy producers have historically been widely distributed, weakening their bargaining power, and beginning in the 1870s became increasingly dominated by dealers. After an 1883 milk strike, dealers became increasingly consolidated, and after a failed milk strike in 1902, producer cooperatives became increasing consolidated; the 1907 Dairymen's League formed an alliance with the Borden Condensed Milk Company in 1922, who along with Sheffield Farms would become the "Big 3". The interwar period saw the establishment then disestablishment of the state Milk Control Board, producers' bargaining agencies and dealers' bargaining agencies, and the establishment (still in use) of the New York–New Jersey federal–state milk marketing order and the system of milk pooling, classification and blended pricing. Major agricultural products Of the $5.4 billion in sales value reported the 2012 census of agriculture, 58% was from the value of livestock, poultry, and their products, and 42% was from crops, including nursery and greenhouse crops. Cow dairy alone accounted for 44.6% of sales value and ranked third nationally, and in 1998 the state was ranked second in apple production, third in corn silage, fourth in tart cherries, seventh in strawberries, and tenth in potatoes, and is also a top-ten national producer of grapes, onions, sweet corn, tomatoes, and maple syrup. Livestock, poultry, and their products The New York cow dairy farming industry created over $2.5 billion in milk sales value in 2015 and $2.4 billion in 2012, accounting for 44.6% of all agricultural sales value and making New York the 3rd largest cow milk producer in the country by sales. Dairy products make up the majority of the state's foreign agricultural exports. Wine New York ranks third in grape production by volume after California and Washington. 83% of New York's grape area is Vitis labrusca varieties (mostly Concord). The rest is split almost equally between Vitis vinifera and French hybrids. Crops New York is a top-ten national producer of apples, grapes, onions, sweet corn, tomatoes, and maple syrup. In 1998, the state ranked second in apples, third in corn silage, fourth in tart cherries, seventh in strawberries, and tenth in potatoes. Crops accounted for $2.25 billion in sales in 2012. There are over fifty thousand acres of apple orchards and approximately 694 commercial apple growers, concentrated in the Champlain Valley, Hudson Valley, Finger Lakes and Niagara Frontier regions.Some sources rank potatoes as number one in economic value among vegetables. New York is also top-two or -three nationwide in cabbage acreage and production, and it has also been claimed that cabbage is the highest earning vegetable in the state. An upstate New York farm was the first to cultivate sugar snap peas at scale, after the cultivar was developed in Twin Falls, Idaho. Regions The top five counties by sales value in 2012 were Wyoming, Cayuga, Suffolk, Genesee, and St. Lawrence counties. In the Western New York region, Chautauqua County is the state's top producer of grapes while Allegany County is the state's top producer of hogs and pigs. Honeoye soil, located mainly on the low plateau in the northern part of the Appalachian Plateau, in the southern part of the Ontario Lowland, and Mohawk Valley, is recognized as one of the most productive agricultural soils and as the quasi-official New York state soil.The Black Dirt Region is a super-fertile region of muck located in southern Orange County within the Hudson Valley region, northwest of New York City. Muck soils are defined by the USDA as made up of relatively deep organic deposits of partially or almost completely decomposed plant material. Government The NYS Department of Agriculture and Markets (Ag Department) enforces laws relating to agriculture, weights and measures, and the production, processing, transportation, storage, marketing and distributing of food. The Soil and Water Conservation Committee (SWCC) is an independent agency within the department that supports natural resources management through the support of water and soil conservation districts.In 2012, New York received $6.01 billion in agricultural subsidies, ranking second with 10% of the total nationwide. The Dairy Acceleration Program assists dairy farms, and is administered by the Ag Department and NYS Environmental Conservation Department and coordinated by the Cornell CALS PRO-DAIRY program. The Excelsior Jobs Program is administered by the NYS Economic Development Department and encourages creation of jobs and investments in industries such as agriculture. The Ag Department also administers the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP)/Good Handling Practices (GHP) Certification Assistance Program is a cost sharing and reimbursement program assisting with the cost of a GAP/GHP food safety audit. The SWCC administers the Nonpoint Source Abatement and Control Grant Program which can share up to 75% of costs for controlling agricultural nonpoint source pollution, and the Climate Resilient Farming Program for reducing agricultural impacts on climate change (e.g., agricultural waste storage cover and flare systems; on-farm riparian, floodplain, and upland water management systems; and soil health systems).The US Natural Resources Conservation Service continues to set standards for water conservation best management practices (BMP) and administers farm bill conservation programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), Agricultural Management Assistance Program (AMA), Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program (FRPP), Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP), and the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP). Employment In 2012, there were 61,000 agricultural jobs resulting in $731 million in payroll expenses, from 10,000 farms (29% of all farms). There were also an additional 56,000 farm operators, with 75% being over 45 years old and the average age being 55 years old. In 2015, the dairy industry alone hired almost 20,000 people.Farm Credit East has reported that among those farmers that use the H-2A Visa program, which is already heavily regulated and burdensome, many have reported it has becoming increasingly unworkable due to significant and unexpected delays, and reiterated longstanding concerns with an inadequate labor supply. The cow dairy industry uses permanent employees who are ineligible for H-2A Visas, causing problems with labor supply and making it a target for immigration enforcement. Responding to the 2016 proposed $15 minimum wage increase, Farm Credit East argued that it would reduce farm net income by 31–51% due to farm's general inability to pass-on costs in a global market. Education Both 4-H and FFA are national youth organizations traditionally focused on agriculture and farming. Farm Credit East maintains a scholarship program for those pursuing a post-high school education (including colleges and technical schools) who can demonstrate an intention for a career in agriculture, forestry or commercial fishing. Farm Credit East also maintains a scholarship program for teachers attending an institute of the Curriculum for Agricultural Science Education (CASE).Pathways in Technology Early College High School (PTECH) is an early college high school partnership between SUNY Cobleskill, Fulton–Montgomery Community College, Hamilton–Fulton–Montgomery BOCES, and other businesses focusing on agriculture and other pathways. The Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS or Ag School) in Ithaca is New York's land grant and statutory college of agriculture supervised by the State University of New York (SUNY) system. The CALS PRO-DAIRY program focuses on educational programming and applied research for the New York dairy industry. See also Fruit Belt References External links New York State 4-H New York FFA Cornell Cooperative Extension PTECH from the HFM BOCES AgLab from the USDA Agricultural Research Service Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station NYS Department of Agriculture and Markets

water footprint

A water footprint shows the extent of water use in relation to consumption by people. The water footprint of an individual, community, or business is defined as the total volume of fresh water used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business. Water use is measured in water volume consumed (evaporated) and/or polluted per unit of time. A water footprint can be calculated for any well-defined group of consumers (e.g., an individual, family, village, city, province, state, or nation) or producers (e.g., a public organization, private enterprise, or economic sector), for a single process (such as growing rice) or for any product or service.Traditionally, water use has been approached from the production side, by quantifying the following three columns of water use: water withdrawals in the agricultural, industrial, and domestic sector. While this does provide valuable data, it is a limited way of looking at water use in a globalised world, in which products are not always consumed in their country of origin. International trade of agricultural and industrial products in effect creates a global flow of virtual water, or embodied water (akin to the concept of embodied energy).In 2002, the water footprint concept was introduced in order to have a consumption-based indicator of water use, that could provide useful information in addition to the traditional production-sector-based indicators of water use. It is analogous to the ecological footprint concept introduced in the 1990s. The water footprint is a geographically explicit indicator, not only showing volumes of water use and pollution, but also the locations. Thus, it gives a grasp on how economic choices and processes influence the availability of adequate water resources and other ecological realities across the globe (and vice versa). Definition and measures There are many different aspects to water footprint and therefore different definitions and measures to describe them. Blue water footprint refers to groundwater or surface water usage, green water footprint refers to rainwater, and grey water footprint refers to the amount of water needed to dilute pollutants. Blue water footprint A blue water footprint refers to the volume of water that has been sourced from surface or groundwater resources (lakes, rivers, wetlands and aquifers) and has either evaporated (for example while irrigating crops), or been incorporated into a product or taken from one body of water and returned to another, or returned at a different time. Irrigated agriculture, industry and domestic water use can each have a blue water footprint. Green water footprint A green water footprint refers to the amount of water from precipitation that, after having been stored in the root zone of the soil (green water), is either lost by evapotranspiration or incorporated by plants. It is particularly relevant for agricultural, horticultural and forestry products. Grey water footprint A grey water footprint refers to the volume of water that is required to dilute pollutants (industrial discharges, seepage from tailing ponds at mining operations, untreated municipal wastewater, or nonpoint source pollution such as agricultural runoff or urban runoff) to such an extent that the quality of the water meets agreed water quality standards. It is calculated as: L c max − c nat {\displaystyle {\frac {L}{c_{\text{max}}-c_{\text{nat}}}}} where L is the pollutant load (as mass flux), cmax the maximum allowable concentration and cnat the natural concentration of the pollutant in the receiving water body (both expressed in mass/volume). Calculation for different factors The water footprint of a process is expressed as volumetric flow rate of water. That of a product is the whole footprint (sum) of processes in its complete supply chain divided by the number of product units. For consumers, businesses and geographic area, water footprint is indicated as volume of water per time, in particular: That of a consumer is the sum of footprint of all consumed products. That of a community or a nation is the sum for all of its members resp. inhabitants. That of a business is the footprint of all produced goods. That of a geographically delineated area is the footprint of all processes undertaken in this area. The virtual change in water of an area is the net import of virtual water Vi, net, defined as the difference of the gross import Vi of virtual water from its gross export Ve. The water footprint of national consumption WFarea,nat results from this as the sum of the water footprint of national area and its virtual change in water. History The concept of a water footprint was coined in 2002, by Arjen Hoekstra, Professor in water management at the University of Twente, Netherlands, and co-founder and scientific director of the Water Footprint Network, whilst working at the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, as a metric to measure the amount of water consumed and polluted to produce goods and services along their full supply chain. Water footprint is one of a family of ecological footprint indicators, which also includes carbon footprint and land footprint. The water footprint concept is further related to the idea of virtual water trade introduced in the early 1990s by Professor John Allan (2008 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate). The most elaborate publications on how to estimate water footprints are a 2004 report on the Water footprint of nations from UNESCO-IHE, the 2008 book Globalization of Water, and the 2011 manual The water footprint assessment manual: Setting the global standard. Cooperation between global leading institutions in the field has led to the establishment of the Water Footprint Network in 2008. Water Footprint Network (WFN) The Water Footprint Network is an international learning community (a non-profit foundation under Dutch law) which serves as a platform for sharing knowledge, tools and innovations among governments, businesses and communities concerned about growing water scarcity and increasing water pollution levels, and their impacts on people and nature. The network consists of around 100 partners from all sectors – producers, investors, suppliers and regulators – as well as non-governmental organisations and academics. It describes its mission as follows: To provide science-based, practical solutions and strategic insights that empower companies, governments, individuals and small-scale producers to transform the way we use and share fresh water within earth's limits. International standard In February 2011, the Water Footprint Network, in a global collaborative effort of environmental organizations, companies, research institutions and the UN, launched the Global Water Footprint Standard. In July 2014, the International Organization for Standardization issued ISO 14046:2014, Environmental management—Water footprint—Principles, requirements and guidelines, to provide practical guidance to practitioners from various backgrounds, such as large companies, public authorities, non-governmental organizations, academic and research groups as well as small and medium enterprises, for carrying out a water footprint assessment. The ISO standard is based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) principles and can be applied for different sorts of assessment of products and companies. Life-cycle assessment of water use Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a systematic, phased approach to assessing the environmental aspects and potential impacts that are associated with a product, process or service. "Life cycle" refers to the major activities connected with the product's life-span, from its manufacture, use, and maintenance, to its final disposal, and also including the acquisition of raw material required to manufacture the product. Thus a method for assessing the environmental impacts of freshwater consumption was developed. It specifically looks at the damage to three areas of protection: human health, ecosystem quality, and resources. The consideration of water consumption is crucial where water-intensive products (for example agricultural goods) are concerned that need to therefore undergo a life-cycle assessment. In addition, regional assessments are equally as necessary as the impact of water use depends on its location. In short, LCA is important as it identifies the impact of water use in certain products, consumers, companies, nations, etc. which can help reduce the amount of water used. Water availability Globally, about 4 percent of precipitation falling on land each year (about 117,000 km3 (28,000 cu mi)), is used by rain-fed agriculture and about half is subject to evaporation and transpiration in forests and other natural or quasi-natural landscapes. The remainder, which goes to groundwater replenishment and surface runoff, is sometimes called "total actual renewable freshwater resources". Its magnitude was in 2012 estimated at 52,579 km3 (12,614 cu mi)/year. It represents water that can be used either in-stream or after withdrawal from surface and groundwater sources. Of this remainder, about 3,918 km3 (940 cu mi) were withdrawn in 2007, of which 2,722 km3 (653 cu mi), or 69 percent, were used by agriculture, and 734 km3 (176 cu mi), or 19 percent, by other industry. Most agricultural use of withdrawn water is for irrigation, which uses about 5.1 percent of total actual renewable freshwater resources. World water use has been growing rapidly in the last hundred years. Water footprint of products (agricultural sector) The water footprint of a product is the total volume of freshwater used to produce the product, summed over the various steps of the production chain. The water footprint of a product refers not only to the total volume of water used; it also refers to where and when the water is used. The Water Footprint Network maintains a global database on the water footprint of products: WaterStat. Nearly over 70% of the water supply worldwide is used in the agricultural sector.The water footprints involved in various diets vary greatly, and much of the variation tends to be associated with levels of meat consumption. The following table gives examples of estimated global average water footprints of popular agricultural products. (For more product water footprints: see the Product Gallery of the Water Footprint Network Archived 2020-07-30 at the Wayback Machine) Water footprint of companies (industrial sector) The water footprint of a business, the 'corporate water footprint', is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used directly or indirectly to run and support a business. It is the total volume of water use to be associated with the use of the business outputs. The water footprint of a business consists of water used for producing/manufacturing or for supporting activities and the indirect water use in the producer's supply chain. The Carbon Trust argue that a more robust approach is for businesses to go beyond simple volumetric measurement to assess the full range of water impact from all sites. Its work with leading global pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) analysed four key categories: water availability, water quality, health impacts, and licence to operate (including reputational and regulatory risks) in order to enable GSK to quantitatively measure, and credibly reduce, its year-on-year water impact.The Coca-Cola Company operates over a thousand manufacturing plants in about 200 countries. Making its drink uses a lot of water. Critics say its water footprint has been large. Coca-Cola has started to look at its water sustainability. It has now set out goals to reduce its water footprint such as treating the water it uses so it goes back into the environment in a clean state. Another goal is to find sustainable sources for the raw materials it uses in its drinks, such as sugarcane, oranges, and corn. By making its water footprint better, the company can reduce costs, improve the environment, and benefit the communities in which it operates. Water footprint of individual consumers (domestic sector) The water footprint of an individual refers to the sum of their direct and indirect freshwater use. The direct water use is the water used at home, while the indirect water use relates to the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed. The average global water footprint of an individual is 1,385 m3 per year. Residents of some example nations have water footprints as shown in the table: Water footprint of nations The water footprint of a nation is the amount of water used to produce the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of that nation. Analysis of the water footprint of nations illustrates the global dimension of water consumption and pollution, by showing that several countries rely heavily on foreign water resources and that (consumption patterns in) many countries significantly and in various ways impact how, and how much, water is being consumed and polluted elsewhere on Earth. International water dependencies are substantial and are likely to increase with continued global trade liberalisation. The largest share (76%) of the virtual water flows between countries is related to international trade in crops and derived crop products. Trade in animal products and industrial products contributed 12% each to the global virtual water flows. The four major direct factors determining the water footprint of a country are: volume of consumption (related to the gross national income); consumption pattern (e.g. high versus low meat consumption); climate (growth conditions); and agricultural practice (water use efficiency). Production or consumption The assessment of total water use in connection to consumption can be approached from both ends of the supply chain. The water footprint of production estimates how much water from local sources is used or polluted in order to provide the goods and services produced in that country. The water footprint of consumption of a country looks at the amount of water used or polluted (locally, or in the case of imported goods, in other countries) in connection with all the goods and services that are consumed by the inhabitants of that country. The water footprint of production and that of consumption, can also be estimated for any administrative unit such as a city, province, river basin or the entire world. Absolute or per capita The absolute water footprint is the total sum of water footprints of all people. A country's per capita water footprint (that nation's water footprint divided by its number of inhabitants) can be used to compare its water footprint with those of other nations. The global water footprint in the period 1996–2005 was 9.087 Gm3/yr (Billion Cubic Metres per year, or 9.087.000.000.000.000 liters/year), of which 74% was and green, 11% blue, 15% grey. This is an average amount per capita of 1.385 Gm3/yr., or 3.800 liters per person per day. On average 92% of this is embedded in agricultural products consumed, 4.4% in industrial products consumed, and 3.6% is domestic water use. The global water footprint related to producing goods for export is 1.762 Gm3/y.In absolute terms, India is the country with the largest water footprint in the world, a total of 987 Gm3/yr. In relative terms (i.e. taking population size into account), the people of the USA have the largest water footprint, with 2480 m3/yr per capita, followed by the people in south European countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain (2300–2400 m3/yr per capita). High water footprints can also be found in Malaysia and Thailand. In contrast, the Chinese people have a relatively low per capita water footprint with an average of 700 m3/yr. (These numbers are also from the period 1996-2005.) Internal or external The internal water footprint is the amount of water used from domestic water resources; the external water footprint is the amount of water used in other countries to produce goods and services imported and consumed by the inhabitants of the country. When assessing the water footprint of a nation, it is crucial to take into account the international flows of virtual water (also called embodied water, i.e. the water used or polluted in connection to all agricultural and industrial commodities) leaving and entering the country. When taking the use of domestic water resources as a starting point for calculating a nation's water footprint, one should subtract the virtual water flows that leave the country and add the virtual water flows that enter the country.The external part of a nation's water footprint varies strongly from country to country. Some African nations, such as Sudan, Mali, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Malawi and Chad have hardly any external water footprint, simply because they have little import. Some European countries on the other hand—e.g. Italy, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands—have external water footprints that constitute 50–80% of their total water footprint. The agricultural products that on average contribute most to the external water footprints of nations are: bovine meat, soybean, wheat, cocoa, rice, cotton and maize.The top 10 gross virtual water exporting nations, which together account for more than half of the global virtual water export, are the United States (314 Gm3/year), China (143 Gm3/year), India (125 Gm3/year), Brazil (112 Gm3/year), Argentina (98 Gm3/year), Canada (91 Gm3/year), Australia (89 Gm3/year), Indonesia (72 Gm3/year), France (65 Gm3/year), and Germany (64 Gm3/year).The top 10 gross virtual water importing nations are the United States (234 Gm3/year), Japan (127 Gm3/year), Germany (125 Gm3/year), China (121 Gm3/year), Italy (101 Gm3/year), Mexico (92 Gm3/year), France (78 Gm3/year), the United Kingdom (77 Gm3/year), and The Netherlands (71 Gm3/year). Water use in continents Europe Each EU citizen consumes 4,815 litres of water per day on average; 44% is used in power production primarily to cool thermal plants or nuclear power plants. Energy production annual water consumption in the EU 27 in 2011 was, in billion m3: for gas 0.53, coal 1.54 and nuclear 2.44. Wind energy avoided the use of 387 million cubic metres (mn m3) of water in 2012, avoiding a cost of €743 million. Asia In south India the state Tamil Nadu is one of the main agricultural producers in India and it relies largely in groundwater for irrigation. In ten years, from 2002 to 2012, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment calculated that the groundwater reduced in 1.4 m yr−1, which "is nearly 8% more than the annual recharge rate." Environmental water use Although agriculture's water use includes provision of important terrestrial environmental values (as discussed in the "Water footprint of products" section above), and much "green water" is used in maintaining forests and wild lands, there is also direct environmental use (e.g. of surface water) that may be allocated by governments. For example, in California, where water use issues are sometimes severe because of drought, about 48 percent of "dedicated water use" in an average water year is for the environment (somewhat more than for agriculture). Such environmental water use is for keeping streams flowing, maintaining aquatic and riparian habitats, keeping wetlands wet, etc. Criticism Insufficient consideration of consequences of proposed water saving policies to farm households According to Dennis Wichelns of the International Water Management Institute: "Although one goal of virtual water analysis is to describe opportunities for improving water security, there is almost no mention of the potential impacts of the prescriptions arising from that analysis on farm households in industrialized or developing countries. It is essential to consider more carefully the inherent flaws in the virtual water and water footprint perspectives, particularly when seeking guidance regarding policy decisions." Regional water scarcity should be taken into account when interpreting water footprint The application and interpretation of water footprints may sometimes be used to promote industrial activities that lead to facile criticism of certain products. For example, the 140 litres required for coffee production for one cup might be of no harm to water resources if its cultivation occurs mainly in humid areas, but could be damaging in more arid regions. Other factors such as hydrology, climate, geology, topography, population and demographics should also be taken into account. Nevertheless, high water footprint calculations do suggest that environmental concern may be appropriate. Many of the criticisms, including the above ones, compare the description of the water footprint of a water system to generated impacts, which is about its performance. Such a comparison between descriptive and performance factors and indicators is basically flawed.The use of the term footprint can also confuse people familiar with the notion of a carbon footprint, because the water footprint concept includes sums of water quantities without necessarily evaluating related impacts. This is in contrast to the carbon footprint, where carbon emissions are not simply summarized but normalized by CO2 emissions, which are globally identical, to account for the environmental harm. The difference is due to the somewhat more complex nature of water; while involved in the global hydrological cycle, it is expressed in conditions both local and regional through various forms like river basins, watersheds, on down to groundwater (as part of larger aquifer systems). Furthermore, looking at the definition of the footprint itself, and comparing ecological footprint, carbon footprint and water footprint, we realize that the three terms are indeed legitimate. Sustainable water use Sustainable water use involves the rigorous assessment of all source of clean water to establish the current and future rates of use, the impacts of that use both downstream and in the wider area where the water may be used and the impact of contaminated water streams on the environment and economic well being of the area. It also involves the implementation of social policies such as water pricing in order to manage water demand. In some localities, water may also have spiritual relevance and the use of such water may need to take account of such interests. For example, the Maori believe that water is the source and foundation of all life and have many spiritual associations with water and places associated with water. On a national and global scale, water sustainability requires strategic and long term planning to ensure appropriate sources of clean water are identified and the environmental and economic impact of such choices are understood and accepted. The re-use and reclamation of water is also part of sustainability including downstream impacts on both surface waters and ground waters. Sustainability assessment Water footprint accounting has advanced substantially in recent years, however, water footprint analysis also needs sustainability assessment as its last phase. One of the developments is to employ sustainable efficiency and equity ("Sefficiency in Sequity"), which present a comprehensive approach to assessing the sustainable use of water. Sectoral distributions of withdrawn water use Several nations estimate sectoral distribution of use of water withdrawn from surface and groundwater sources. For example, in Canada, in 2005, 42 billion m3 of withdrawn water were used, of which about 38 billion m3 were freshwater. Distribution of this use among sectors was: thermoelectric power generation 66.2%, manufacturing 13.6%, residential 9.0%, agriculture 4.7%, commercial and institutional 2.7%, water treatment and distribution systems 2.3%, mining 1.1%, and oil and gas extraction 0.5%. The 38 billion m3 of freshwater withdrawn in that year can be compared with the nation's annual freshwater yield (estimated as streamflow) of 3,472 billion m3. Sectoral distribution is different in many respects in the US, where agriculture accounts for about 39% of fresh water withdrawals, thermoelectric power generation 38%, industrial 4%, residential 1%, and mining (including oil and gas) 1%.Within the agricultural sector, withdrawn water use is for irrigation and for livestock. Whereas all irrigation in the US (including loss in conveyance of irrigation water) is estimated to account for about 38 percent of US withdrawn freshwater use, the irrigation water used for production of livestock feed and forage has been estimated to account for about 9 percent, and other withdrawn freshwater use for the livestock sector (for drinking, washdown of facilities, etc.) is estimated at about 0.7 percent. Because agriculture is a major user of withdrawn water, changes in the magnitude and efficiency of its water use are important. In the US, from 1980 (when agriculture's withdrawn water use peaked) to 2010, there was a 23 percent reduction in agriculture's use of withdrawn water, while US agricultural output increased by 49 percent over that period.In the US, irrigation water application data are collected in the quinquennial Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey, conducted as part of the Census of Agriculture. Such data indicate great differences in irrigation water use within various agricultural sectors. For example, about 14 percent of corn-for-grain land and 11 percent of soybean land in the US are irrigated, compared with 66 percent of vegetable land, 79 percent of orchard land and 97 percent of rice land. See also References External links Water Footprint Network Personal Water Footprint Calculator

palm kernel

The palm kernel is the edible seed of the oil palm fruit. The fruit yields two distinct oils: palm oil derived from the outer parts of the fruit, and palm kernel oil derived from the kernel.The pulp left after oil is rendered from the kernel is formed into "palm kernel cake", used either as high-protein feed for dairy cattle or burned in boilers to generate electricity for palm oil mills and surrounding villages. Uses Palm kernel cake is most commonly produced by economical screw press, less frequently via more expensive solvent extraction. Palm kernel cake is a high-fibre, medium-grade protein feed best suited to ruminants. Among other similar fodders, palm kernel cake is ranked a little higher than copra cake and cocoa pod husk, but lower than fish meal and groundnut cake, especially in its protein value. Composed of 16% fiber, palm kernel cake also has a high phosphorus-to-calcium ratio and contains such essential elements as magnesium, iron, and zinc. The typical ration formulated for the feeding of dairy cattle consists of palm kernel cake (50%), molasses (5%), grass/hay (42%), limestone (1.5%), mineral premix (1%), and salt (0.5%), with trace element/vitamin premix.Palm kernel shells (PKS), a byproduct of palm kernel oil production, can be used for biofuel (for example, in the form of pellets). See also Palm kernel oil Tropical agriculture Environmental issues with agriculture Social and environmental impact of palm oil == References ==

index of sustainability articles

This page is an index of sustainability articles. A Adiabatic lapse rate - Air pollution control - Air pollution dispersion modeling - Allotment (gardening) - Anaerobic digestion - Anthropogenic - Anthroposystem - Applied Sustainability - Appropriate technology - Aquaculture - Aquatic ecosystem - Ashden Awards B Back-to-the-land movement - Bagasse - Behavioral ecology - Biobutanol - Biodegradable plastics - Bioenergy - Bioenergy village - Biofuel in Brazil - Biofuel in the United States - Biofuel - Biogas - Biogas powerplant - Biogeochemistry - Blue bag C Carbon accounting - Carbon economy - Carbon footprint - Catchwater - Causal layered analysis - Center for Environmental Technology - Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production - Circles of Sustainability - Circular economy - Clean technology - Cleaner production - Climate change - Coal depletion - Commission on Sustainable Development - Compost - Composting - Computational Sustainability - Confederation of European Environmental Engineering Societies - Conservation biology - Conservation Commons - Conservation development - Conservation ethic - Conservation movement - Consumables - Cornucopian - Corporate social responsibility - Corporate sustainability - Cradle to Cradle Design - Cultural sustainability D Deforestation - Demography - Depopulation - Desertification - Directive on the Promotion of the use of biofuels and other renewable fuels for transport - Diseases of poverty - Downsizer - Drawbridge mentality E Earth Charter - Earth observation satellite - Earthscan - Eco hotels - Eco-cities - Eco-efficiency - Eco-industrial park - Eco-sufficiency - Ecoforestry - Ecolabel - Ecological deficit - Ecological economics - Ecological footprint - Ecological humanities - Ecological literacy - Ecological sanitation - Ecological threshold - Ecologically sustainable development - Ecosharing - Ecosystem-based management - Ecosystem management - Ecotax - Ecotechnology - Ecotourism - Ecovillages - Electric vehicle - Emissions trading - Energy conservation - Energy content of biofuel - Energy crop - Energy density - Energy descent - Energy development - Energy economics - Efficient energy use - Energy Policy Act of 2005 - Energy saving modules - Energy security - Environmental accounting - Environmental archaeology - Environmental audits - Environmental benefits of vegetarianism - Environmental biotechnology - Environmental Change Network - Environmental chemistry - Environmental concerns with electricity generation - Environmental consulting - Environmental control system - Environmental defense - Environmental design - Environmental design and planning - Environmental disaster - Environmental determinism - Environmental economics - Environmental effects on physiology - Environmental engineering - Environmental enterprise - Environmental ethics - Environmental factor - Environmental finance - Environmental geography - Environmental geology - Environmental gradient - Environmental hazard - Environmental health - Environmental impact assessment - Environmental impact of fishing - Environmental impact report - Environmental Information Regulations 2004 - Environmental journalism - Environmental justice - Environmental law - Environmental Life Force - Environmental management - Environmental management scheme - Environmental Measurements Laboratory - Environmental medicine - Environmental microbiology - Environmental Modeling Center - Environmental Modification Convention - Environmental movement - Environmental movement in New Zealand - Environmental movement in the United States - Environmental planning - Environmental preservation - Environmental pricing reform - Environmental protection in Japan - Environmental psychology - Environmental Quality Improvement Act - Environmental racism - Environmental racism in Europe - Environmental remediation - Environmental Research Letters - Environmental restoration - Environmental Risk Management Authority - Environmental science - Environmental security - Environmental skepticism - Environmental sociology - Environmental standard - Environmental studies - Environmental suit - Environmental Sustainability Index - Environmental technology - Environmental Technology Laboratory - Environmental Technology Verification Program - Environmental toxins and fetal development - Environmental transport association - Environmental vandalism - Environmental vegetarianism - Environmental, Safety and Health Communication - Environmentalism - EPA Sustainability - Epidemics - Ethanol fuel - Ethical consumerism - Eugenics - European Biofuels Technology Platform F Factory Green - Famine - Farmer field school - Food Race - Food Routes Network - Food security - Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 - Foreshoreway G Gasification - Geothermal power - Global Environment Outlook - Global Reporting Initiative - Global warming - Glossary of climate change - Glossary of environmental science - Green anarchy - Green banking - Green brands - Green building - Green cities - Green cleaning - Green computing - Green conventions - Green crude - Green development - Green energy design - Green gross domestic product - Green museum - Green Revolution - Green syndicalism - Ground-coupled heat exchanger H Hannover Principles - Heating oil - Holocene extinction event - Hubbert Peak Theory - Human development index - Human development theory - Human migration - Humanistic capitalism - Hybrid vehicle - Hydrogen technologies I Immigration - Immigration reduction - Impact investing - Import substitution industries - Inclusive business - Industrial biotechnology - Industrial ecology - Industrial symbiosis - Industrial wastewater treatment - Inhabitat - Integrated catchment management - Integrated Multi-trophic Aquaculture - International Institute for Environment and Development - International Year of Forests J Joint Forest Management K Kyoto Protocol L Langkawi Declaration - Life cycle assessment - Lifeboat ethics - List of climate change topics - List of conservation topics - List of environmental degrees - List of environmental health hazards - List of environmental issues - List of environmental studies topics - List of global sustainability statistics - List of large wind farms - List of religious populations - List of renewable energy topics by country - List of sustainability programs in North America - List of vegetable oils - Local food - Low impact development - Low-carbon economy M Maldevelopment - Material efficiency - Material input per unit of service - Medieval demography - Megalopolis (city type) - Melbourne Principles - Metapattern - Micro-sustainability - Mitigation of peak oil - Multiple chemical sensitivity N Natural building - Natural resource management - Nature conservation - Net metering - New Classical Architecture - New Urbanism O Oceanway - Over-consumption P Participatory technology development - Peak coal - Peak copper - Peak gas - Peak oil - Peak uranium - Permaculture - Permeable paving - Photovoltaic array - Photovoltaics in transport - Planetary boundaries - Population ageing - Population biology - Population control - Population decline - Population density - Population ecology - Population growth - Population pyramid - Promession - Public ecology R Radical sustainability - Rain garden - Rainwater tank - Reconciliation ecology - Recycling - Reef Check - Renewable energy development - Renewable energy - Renewable resources - Rio Declaration on Environment and Development - Risks to civilization, humans and planet Earth S Seafood watch - Self-sufficiency - Seven generation sustainability - Silicon valley - Simple living - Smithsonian Environmental Research Center - Soil conservation - Soil erosion - Soil health - Solar cell - Solar heating - Solar lamp - Solar power - Solar power satellite - Solar savings fraction - Spaceship earth - Space sustainability - Steady-state economy Straight vegetable oil - Strategic Environmental Assessment - Strategic Sustainable Development - Sustainability - Sustainability accounting - Sustainability appraisal - Sustainability governance - Sustainability (journal) - Sustainability organisations - Sustainability reporting - Sustainability science - Sustainable advertising - Sustainable agriculture - Sustainable architecture - Sustainable art - Sustainable building - Sustainable business - Sustainable city - Sustainable community - Sustainable design - Sustainable development - Sustainable distribution - Sustainable energy - Sustainable fashion - Sustainable food system - Sustainable forest management - Sustainable gardening - Sustainable habitat - Sustainable industries - Sustainable landscape architecture - Sustainable lighting - Sustainable living - Sustainable national income - Sustainable packaging - Sustainable population - Sustainable procurement - Sustainable product development - Sustainable product development and design - Sustainable regional development - Sustainable resource extraction - Sustainable sanitation - Sustainable technology - Sustainable tourism - Sustainable transport - Sustainable urban drainage systems - Sustainable urban infrastructure T The good life - The Institution of Environmental Sciences - The Natural Step - The People & Planet Green League - The Science of Survival - Tragedy of the commons - Transition town U United Nations Environment Programme - United States Green Chamber of Commerce - Urban density - Urban horticulture - Urban oasis - Urban sprawl V Value of Earth - Variable retention - Vegetable oil economy W Waste management - Waste vegetable oil - Waste water treatment - Water conservation - Water crisis - Water purification - Wave farm - Weak and strong sustainability - Wind power - Wind power in the United Kingdom - Wind turbine - World energy consumption - World largest cities See also List of environmental issues Lists of environmental topics List of conservation topics

environmental toxicants and fetal development

Environmental toxicants and fetal development is the impact of different toxic substances from the environment on the development of the fetus. This article deals with potential adverse effects of environmental toxicants on the prenatal development of both the embryo or fetus, as well as pregnancy complications. The human embryo or fetus is relatively susceptible to impact from adverse conditions within the mother's environment. Substandard fetal conditions often cause various degrees of developmental delays, both physical and mental, for the growing baby. Although some variables do occur as a result of genetic conditions pertaining to the father, a great many are directly brought about from environmental toxins that the mother is exposed to. Various toxins pose a significant hazard to fetuses during development. A 2011 study found that virtually all US pregnant women carry multiple chemicals, including some banned since the 1970s, in their bodies. Researchers detected polychlorinated biphenyls, organochlorine pesticides, perfluorinated compounds, phenols, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, phthalates, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, perchlorate PBDEs, compounds used as flame retardants, and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), a pesticide banned in the United States in 1972, in the bodies of 99 to 100 percent of the pregnant women they tested. Among other environmental estrogens, Bisphenol A (BPA) was identified in 96 percent of the women surveyed. Several of the chemicals were at the same concentrations that have been associated with negative effects in children from other studies and it is thought that exposure to multiple chemicals can have a greater impact than exposure to only one substance. Effects Environmental toxicants can be described separately by what effects they have, such as structural abnormalities, altered growth, functional deficiencies, congenital neoplasia, or even death for the fetus. Preterm birth One in ten US babies is born preterm and about 5% have low birth weight. Preterm birth, defined as birth at less than 37 weeks of gestation, is a major basis of infant mortality throughout childhood. Exposures to environmental toxins such as lead, tobacco smoke, and DDT have been linked with an increased risk for spontaneous abortion, low birth weight, or preterm birth. Structural congenital abnormality Toxic substances that are capable of causing structural congenital abnormalities can be termed teratogens. They are agents extrinsic to embryo or fetus which exert deleterious effects leading to increased risk of malformation, carcinogenesis, mutagenesis, altered function, deficient growth or pregnancy wastage. Teratogens are classified in four main categories: Drugs in pregnancy – in addition to environmental chemicals, includes recreational drug use and pharmaceutical drugs. Vertically transmitted infections Radiation, such as X-rays Mechanical forces, such as oligohydramniosTeratogens affect the fetus by various mechanism including: Interfering with cell proliferation rate, such as viral infection and ionization Altered biosynthetic pathways, as seen in chromosomal defects Abnormal cellular or tissue interactions, as seen in diabetes Extrinsic factors Threshold interaction of genes with environmental teratogens Neurodevelopmental disorder Neuroplastic effects of pollution can give rise to neurodevelopmental disorders. Many cases of autism are related to particular geographic locations, implying that something in the environment is complementing an at-risk genotype to cause autism in vulnerable individuals. These findings regarding autism are controversial, however, with many researchers believing that increasing rates in certain areas are a consequence of more accurate screening and diagnostic methods, and are not due to any sort of environmental factor. Toxicants and their effects Substances which have been found to be particularly harmful are lead (which is stored in the mother's bones), cigarette smoke, alcohol, mercury (a neurological toxicant consumed through fish), carbon dioxide, and ionizing radiation. Alcohol Drinking alcohol in pregnancy can result in a range of disorders known as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. The most severe of these is fetal alcohol syndrome. Tobacco smoke Fetal exposure to prenatal tobacco smoke may experience a wide range of behavioral, neurological, and physical difficulties. Adverse effects include stillbirth, placental disruption, prematurity, lower mean birth weight, physical birth defects (cleft palate etc.), decrements in lung function, increased risk of infant mortality. Mercury Elemental mercury and methylmercury are two forms of mercury that may pose risks of mercury poisoning in pregnancy. Methylmercury, a worldwide contaminant of seafood and freshwater fish, is known to produce adverse nervous system effects, especially during brain development. Eating fish is the main source of mercury exposure in humans and some fish may contain enough mercury to harm the developing nervous system of an embryo or fetus, sometimes leading to learning disabilities. Mercury is present in many types of fish, but it is mostly found in certain large fish. One well-documented case of widespread mercury ingestion and subsequent fetal development complication took place in the 1950s in Minamata Bay, Japan. Used by a nearby industrial plant in the manufacture of plastics, methyl mercury was discharged into the waters of Minamata Bay, where it went on to be ingested regularly by many villagers who used the fish living in the bay as a dietary staple. Soon, many of the inhabitants who had been consuming the mercury-laden meat began experiencing negative effects from ingesting the toxin; however, the mercury especially impacted pregnant women and their fetuses, resulting in a high rate of miscarriage. Surviving infants exposed to mercury in-utero had extremely high rates of physical and intellectual disabilities, as well as physical abnormalities from exposure in the womb during key stages in fetal physical development. The United States Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency advise pregnant women not to eat swordfish, shark, king mackerel and tilefish and limit consumption of albacore tuna to 6 ounces or less a week.High mercury levels in newborns in Gaza are theorized to originate from war weaponry.Mercury exposure in pregnancy may also cause limb defects. Lead Adverse effects of lead exposure in pregnancy include miscarriage, low birth weight, neurological delays, anemia, encephalopathy, paralysis, blindness,The developing nervous system of the fetus is particularly vulnerable to lead toxicity. Neurological toxicity is observed in children of exposed women as a result of the ability of lead to cross the placental barrier. A special concern for pregnant women is that some of the bone lead accumulation is released into the blood during pregnancy. Several studies have provided evidence that even low maternal exposures to lead produce intellectual and behavioral deficits in children. Dioxin Dioxins and dioxin-like compounds persists in the environment for a long time and are widespread, so all people have some amount of dioxins in the body. Intrauterine exposure to dioxins and dioxin-like compounds have been associated with subtle developmental changes on the fetus. Effects on the child later in life include changes in liver function, thyroid hormone levels, white blood cell levels, and decreased performance in tests of learning and intelligence. Air pollution Air pollution can negatively affect a pregnancy resulting in higher rates of preterm births, growth restriction, and heart and lung problems in the infant.Compounds such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide all have the potential to cause serious damage when inhaled by an expecting mother. Low birth weight, preterm birth, intrauterine growth retardation, and congenital abnormalities have all been found to be associated with fetal exposure to air pollution. Although pollution can be found virtually everywhere, there are specific sources that have been known to release toxic substances and should be avoided if possible by those who wish to remain relatively free of toxins. These substances include, but are not limited to: steel mills, waste/water treatment plants, sewage incinerators, automotive fabrication plants, oil refineries, and chemical manufacturing plants.Control of air pollution can be difficult. For example, in Los Angeles, regulations have been made to control pollution by putting rules on industrial and vehicle emissions. Improvements have been made to meet these regulations. Despite these improvements, the region still does not meet federal standards for ozone and particulate matter. Approximately 150,000 births occur every year in Los Angeles. Thus, any effects air pollution has on human development in utero are of great concern to those who live in this region.Particulate matter (PM) consist of a mixture of particle pollutants that remain in the air, and vary be region. These particles are very small, ranging from PM10 to PM 2.5, which can easily enter the lungs. Particulate matter has been shown to be associated with acute cardio-respiratory morbidity and mortality. Intrauterine growth has been shown to be affected by particulate matter, leading to unhealthy outcomes for fetal development such as poor or slow fetal growth, and increasing fetal morbidity and mortality. A study from 2012 found that exposures to PM 2.5 differed by race/ethnicity, age, as well as socioeconomic status, leading to certain populations experiencing greater negative health outcomes due to environmental pollution, especially relating to particulate matter. Pesticides Pesticides are created for the specific purpose of causing harm (to insects, rodents, and other pests), pesticides have the potential to cause serious damages to a developing fetus, should they be introduced into the fetal environment. Studies have shown that pesticides, particularly fungicides, have shown up in analyses of an infant's cord blood, proving that such toxins are indeed transferred into the baby's body. Overall, the two pesticides most frequently detected in cord blood are diethyltoluamide (DEET) and vinclozolin (a fungicide). Although pesticide toxicity is not as frequently mentioned as some of the other methods of environmental toxicity, such as air pollution, contamination can occur at any time from merely engaging in everyday activities such as walking down a pathway near a contaminated area, or eating foods that have not been washed properly. In 2007 alone, 1.1 billion pounds (500 kt) of pesticides were found present in the environment, causing pesticide exposure to gain notoriety as a new cause of caution to those wishing to preserve their health.A 2013 review of 27 studies on prenatal and early childhood exposures to organophosphate pesticides found all but one showed negative neurodevelopmental outcomes. In the ten studies that assessed prenatal exposure, "cognitive deficits (related to working memory) were found in children at age 7 years, behavioral deficits (related to attention) seen mainly in toddlers, and motor deficits (abnormal reflexes), seen mainly in neonates."A systematic review of neurodevelopmental effects of prenatal and postnatal organophosphate pesticide exposure was done in 2014. The review found that "Most of the studies evaluating prenatal exposure observed a negative effect on mental development and an increase in attention problems in preschool and school children."In 2017, a study looked at the possible effects of agricultural pesticides in over 500,000 births in a largely agricultural region of California and compared their findings to birth outcomes in other less agriculturally dominated California areas. Overall, they found that pesticide exposure increased adverse birth outcomes by 5–9%, but only among those mothers exposed to the highest quantities of pesticides. Benzenes Benzene exposure in mothers has been linked to fetal brain defects especially neural tube defects. In one study, BTEX (Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes) exposure during the first trimester of pregnancy has been clearly indicating negative association with biparietal brain diameter between 20 and 32 weeks of pregnancy. Women with high exposure to toluene had three to five times the miscarriage rate of those with low exposure, and women with occupational benzene exposure have been shown to have an increased rate of miscarriages. Paternal occupational exposure to toluene and formaldehyde has also been linked to miscarriage in their partners. Normal development is highly controlled by hormones, and disruption by man made chemicals can permanently change the course of development. Ambient ozone has been negatively associated with sperm concentration in men, chemicals associated with UOG operations (e.g., benzene, toluene, formaldehyde, ethylene glycol and ozone) have been associated with negative impacts on semen quality, particularly reduced sperm counts.A 2011 study found a relationship between Neural Tube Defects and maternal exposure to benzene, a compound associated with natural gas extraction. The study found that mothers living in Texas census tracts with higher ambient benzene levels were more likely to have offspring with neural tube defects, such as spina bifida, than mothers living in areas with lower benzene levels. Other Heat and noise have also been found to have significant effects on development. Carbon dioxide – decreased oxygen delivery to brain, intellectual deficiencies Ionizing radiation – miscarriage, low birth weight, physical birth defects, childhood cancers Environmental exposure to perchlorate in women with hypothyroidism causes a significant risk of low IQ in the child. Avoiding relevant environmental toxins in pregnancy The American College of Nurse-Midwives recommends the following precautions to minimize exposure to relevant environmental toxins in pregnancy: Avoiding paint supplies such as stained glass material, oil paints and ceramic glazes, and instead using watercolor or acrylic paints and glazes. Checking the quality of the tap water or bottled water and changing water drinking habits if necessary. If living in a home built before 1978, checking whether lead paint has been used. If such is the case, paint that is crumbling or peeling should not be touched, a professional should remove the paint and the site should be avoided while the paint is removed or sanded. To decrease exposure to pesticides; washing all produce thoroughly, peeling the skin from fruits and vegetables or buying organic produce if possible. Avoiding any cleaning supply labeled "toxic" or any product with a warning on the label, and instead trying natural products, baking soda, vinegar and/or water to clean. Natural gas development In a rural Colorado study of natural gas development, maternal residence within a 10-mile radius of natural gas wells was found to have a positive association to the prevalence of congenital heart defects (CHDs) and neural tube defects (NTDs). Along with this finding, a small association was found between mean birth weight and the density and proximity to the natural gas wells. Maternal exposure through natural gas wells may come in the form of benzene, solvents, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and other air pollutants such as toluene, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide.In Pennsylvania, unconventional natural gas producing wells increased from zero in 2005 to 3689 in 2013. A 2016 study of 9384 mothers and 10946 neonates in the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania found prenatal residential exposure to unconventional natural gas development activity was associated with preterm birth and physician-recorded high-risk pregnancy. In Southwest Pennsylvania, maternal proximity to unconventional gas drilling has been found to be associated with decreased birth weight. It was unclear which route of exposure: air, soil or water could be attributed to the association. Further research and larger studies on this topic are needed.Endocrine disruptors are compounds that can disrupt the normal development and normal hormone levels in humans. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) can interact with hormone receptors, as well as change hormone concentrations within the body, leading to incorrect hormone responses in the body as well as disrupt normal enzyme functioning. Oil and gas extraction has been known to contribute to EDCs in the environment, largely due to the high risk of ground and surface water contamination that comes with these extractions. In addition to water contamination, oil and gas extraction also lead to higher levels of air pollution, creating another route of exposure for these endocrine disruptors. This problem often goes under-reported, and therefore, the true magnitude of the impact is underestimated. In 2016, a study Archived 2017-05-06 at the Wayback Machine was conducted to assess the need for an endocrine component to health assessments for drilling and extraction of oil and gas in densely populated areas. With the high potential for release of oil and gas chemicals with extraction, specifically chemicals that have been shown to disrupt normal hormone production and function, the authors highly emphasized the need for a component centering around endocrine function and overall health with health assessments, and how this in turn impacts the environment. Role of the placenta The healthy placenta is a semipermeable membrane that does form a barrier for most pathogens and for certain xenobiotic substances. However, it is by design an imperfect barrier since it must transport substances required for growth and development. Placental transport can be by passive diffusion for smaller molecules that are lipid soluble or by active transport for substances that are larger and/or electrically charged. Some toxic chemicals may be actively transported. The dose of a substance received by the fetus is determined by the amount of the substance transported across the placenta as well as the rate of metabolism and elimination of the substance. As the fetus has an immature metabolism, it is unable to detoxify substances very efficiently; and as the placenta plays such an important role in substance exchange between the mother and the fetus, it goes without saying that any toxic substances that the mother is exposed to are transported to the fetus, where they can then affect development. Carbon-dioxide, lead, ethanol (alcohol), and cigarette smoke in particular are all substances that have a high likelihood of placental transferral.Identifying potential hazards for fetal development requires a basis of scientific information. In 2004, Brent proposed a set of criteria for identifying causes of congenital malformations that also are applicable to developmental toxicity in general. Those criteria are: Well-conducted epidemiology studies consistently show a relationship between particular effects and exposure to the substance. Data trends support a relationship between changing levels of exposure and the specific effect. Animal studies provide evidence of the correlation between substance exposures and particular effects. See also Drugs in pregnancy References Further reading Agin, Dan (2009). More Than Genes: What Science Can Tell Us About Toxic Chemicals, Development, and the Risk to Our Children. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-538150-4. Buelke-Sam, Judy; Kimmel, Carol A., eds. (1994). Developmental Toxicology (2nd ed.). New York: Raven Press. ISBN 0-7817-0137-6. Chudley, T. V. N.; Persaud, A. E.; Skalko, Richard G. (1985). Basic Concepts in Teratology. New York: Alan R. Liss. ISBN 0-8451-0241-9. Schardein, James L., ed. (2000). Chemically Induced Birth Defects (3rd ed.). New York: Marcel Dekker. ISBN 0-8247-0265-4. Steingraber, Sandra (2001). Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing. ISBN 1-903985-14-5.

ecotourism

Ecotourism is a form of tourism marketed as "responsible" travel (using what proponents say is sustainable transport) to natural areas, conserving the environment, and improving the well-being of the local people. The stated purpose may be to educate the traveler, to provide funds for ecological conservation, to directly benefit the economic development and political empowerment of local communities, or to foster respect for different cultures and human rights. Since the 1980s, ecotourism has been considered an important endeavor by environmentalists, who have said they want future generations to experience destinations relatively untouched by human intervention.: 33  Ecotourism may focus on educating travelers on local environments and natural surroundings with an eye to ecological conservation. Some include in the definition of ecotourism the effort to produce economic opportunities that make the conservation of natural resources financially possible.Generally, ecotourism deals with interaction with biotic components of the natural environments. Ecotourism focuses on what advocates define as socially responsible travel, personal growth, and environmental sustainability. Ecotourism typically involves travel to destinations where flora, fauna, and cultural heritage are the primary attractions. Ecotourism is intended to offer tourists an insight into the impact of human beings on the environment and to foster a greater appreciation of our natural habitats. Ecotourism aims at minimal environmental impact on the areas visited. Besides fostering respect towards the natural environment, ecotourism endeavors to create socio-economic benefits for the area's communities. Responsible ecotourism programs include those that minimize the negative aspects of conventional tourism on the environment and enhance the cultural integrity of local people. Therefore, in addition to evaluating environmental and cultural factors, an integral part of ecotourism is the promotion of recycling, energy efficiency, water conservation, and the creation of economic opportunities for local communities. For these reasons, ecotourism often appeals to advocates of environmental and social responsibility. Many consider the term "ecotourism", like "sustainable tourism" (which is a related concept but broader), an oxymoron. Like most long-distance travel, ecotourism often depends on air transportation, which contributes to climate change. Additionally, "the overall effect of sustainable tourism is negative where like ecotourism philanthropic aspirations mask hard-nosed immediate self-interest." Risks and benefits Ecotourism is a sub-component of the field of sustainable tourism. Ecotourism must serve to maximize ecological benefits while contributing to the economic, social, and cultural wellbeing of communities living close to ecotourism venues. Potential ecological, economic, and sociocultural benefits associated with ecotourism are described below. Potential risks Even while ecotourism is often presented as a responsible form of tourism, it nonetheless carries several risks. Ecological risk Ecotourism activities, or merely the presence of travelers in a particular region or location, may negatively impact the ecological integrity of protected areas. Risks to local communities Local communities may be negatively impacted by ecotourism. For example, as is the case with other forms of tourism, ecotourism may result in friction between tourists and local community members, and may potentially increase the cost of rent, rates, and property values, thereby marginalizing local community members. Health risks Ecotourism carries known health risks for tourists and local community members, along with wildlife and ecosystems. Travelers may bring pathogens to ecologically sensitive areas, putting wildlife as well as local communities at risk; ecotourism activities may also place travelers at risk of health problems or injuries. Potential ecological benefits Ecotourism may also have positive ecological consequences, and some of them are listed as follows: Direct benefits Incentive to protect natural environments Incentive to rehabilitate modified environments and lands Provides funds to manage and expand protected areas Ecotourists assist with habitat maintenance and enhancement through their actions Ecotourists serving as watchdogs or guardians who personally intervene in situations where the environment is perceived to be threatened The locals may also learn new skills from the ecotourists Indirect benefits Exposure to ecotourism fosters a broader sense of environmentalism Communities experience changes in environmental attitude and behavior Areas protected for ecotourism provide environmental benefits sharpens the future of well well-being of the locals Potential economic benefits For some decision-makers, economic factors are more compelling than ecological factors in deciding how natural resources should be used. Potential ecotourism economic benefits are presented below: Direct benefits Generates revenue (related to visitor expenditures) and creates employment that is directly related to the sector Provides economic opportunities for peripheral regions Indirect benefits High multiplier effect and indirect revenue employment Supports cultural and heritage tourism, sectors that are highly compatible with ecotourism. Potential socio-cultural benefits A holistic approach to ecotourism must promote socio-cultural as well as economic and ecological practices. The direct and indirect socio-cultural benefits are outlined as follows: Direct and indirect benefits Foster community stability and well-being through economic benefits and local participation Aesthetic and spiritual benefits and enjoyment for locals and tourists Accessible to a broad spectrum of the populationWhen assessing the potential positive impacts of ecotourism, it is necessary to mention that ecotourism can have unintended negative effects as well. Negative impacts can be mitigated through regulations and codes of conduct that effectively and persuasively impart messages about appropriate visitor behavior. Terminology and history Ecotourism is a late 20th-century neologism compounded eco- and tourism. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ecotour was first recorded in 1973 and ecotourism, "probably after ecotour", in 1982. ecotour, n. ... A tour of or visit to an area of ecological interest, usually with an educational element; (in later use also) a similar tour or visit designed to have as little detrimental effect on the ecology as possible or undertaken with the specific aim of helping conservation efforts. ecotourism, n. ... Tourism to areas of ecological interest (typically exotic and often threatened natural environments), esp. to support conservation efforts and observe wildlife; spec. access to an endangered environment controlled to have the least possible adverse effect.Some sources suggest the terms were used nearly a decade earlier. Claus-Dieter (Nick) Hetzer, an academic and adventurer from Forum International in Berkeley, CA, coined ecotourism in 1965, according to the Contra Costa Times, and ran the first ecotours in the Yucatán during the early 1970s.The definition of ecotourism adopted by Ecotourism Australia is: "Ecotourism is ecologically sustainable tourism with a primary focus on experiencing natural areas that foster environmental and cultural understanding, appreciation and conservation."The Global Ecotourism Network (GEN) defines ecotourism as "responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and creates knowledge and understanding through interpretation and education of all involved (visitors, staff, and the visited)". Ecotourism is often misinterpreted as any form of tourism that involves nature (see jungle tourism). Self-proclaimed practitioners and hosts of ecotourism experiences assume it is achieved by simply creating destinations in natural areas. According to critics of this commonplace and assumptive practice, true ecotourism must, above all, sensitize people to the beauty and fragility of nature. These critics condemn some operators as greenwashing their operations: using the labels of "green" and "eco-friendly", while behaving in environmentally irresponsible ways.Although academics disagree about who can be classified as an ecotourist and there is little statistical data, some estimate that more than five million ecotourists—the majority of the ecotourist population—come from the United States, with many others from Western Europe, Canada, and Australia.Currently, there are various moves to create national and international ecotourism certification programs. National ecotourism certification programs have been put in place in countries such as Costa Rica, Australia, Kenya, Estonia, and Sweden. Related terms Sustainable tourism Improving sustainability Principles Ecotourism in both terrestrial and marine ecosystems can benefit conservation, provided the complexities of history, culture, and ecology in the affected regions are successfully navigated. Catherine Macdonald and colleagues identify the factors that determine conservation outcomes, namely whether: animals and their habits are sufficiently protected; conflict between people and wildlife is avoided or at least suitably mitigated; there is good outreach and education of the local population into the benefits of ecotourism; there is effective collaboration with stakeholders in the area; and there is proper use of the money generated by ecotourism to conserve the local ecology. They conclude that ecotourism works best to conserve predators when the tourism industry is supported both politically and by the public, and when it is monitored and controlled at local, national, and international levels. Regulation and accreditation Because the regulations of ecotourism may be poorly implemented, ecologically destructive greenwashed operations like underwater hotels and helicopter tours can be categorized as ecotourism along with canoeing, camping, photography, and wildlife observation. The failure to acknowledge responsible, low-impact ecotourism puts legitimate ecotourism companies at a competitive disadvantage. Management strategies to mitigate destructive operations include but are not limited to establishing a carrying capacity, site hardening, sustainable design, visitation quotas, fees, access restrictions, and visitor education. Many environmentalists have argued for a global standard that can be used for certification, differentiating ecotourism companies based on their level of environmental commitment, creating a standard to follow. A national or international regulatory board would enforce accreditation procedures, with representation from various groups including governments, hotels, tour operators, travel agents, guides, airlines, local authorities, conservation organizations, and non-governmental organizations. The decisions of the board would be sanctioned by governments so that non-compliant companies would be legally required to disassociate themselves from the use of the ecotourism brand. In 1998, Crinion suggested a Green Stars System, based on criteria including a management plan, benefits for the local community, small group interaction, education value, and staff training. Ecotourists who consider their choices would be confident of a genuine ecotourism experience when they see the higher star rating. In 2008 the Global Sustainable Tourism Council Criteria was launched at the IUCN World Conservation Congress. The Criteria, managed by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, created a global standard for sustainable travel and tourism and includes criteria and performance indicators for destinations, tour operators and hotels. The GSTC provides accreditation through a third party to Certification Bodies to legitimize claims of sustainability.Environmental impact assessments could also be used as a form of accreditation. Feasibility is evaluated on a scientific basis, and recommendations could be made to optimally plan infrastructure, set tourist capacity, and manage the ecology. This form of accreditation is more sensitive to site-specific conditions. Some countries have their certification programs for ecotourism. Costa Rica, for example, runs the GSTC-Recognized Certification of Sustainable Tourism (CST) program, which is intended to balance the effect that business has on the local environment. The CST program focuses on a company's interaction with natural and cultural resources, the improvement of quality of life within local communities, and the economic contribution to other programs of national development. CST uses a rating system that categorizes a company based on how sustainable its operations are. CST evaluates the interaction between the company and the surrounding habitat; the management policies and operation systems within the company; how the company encourages its clients to become active contributors towards sustainable policies; and the interaction between the company and local communities/the overall population. Based upon these criteria, the company is evaluated for the strength of its sustainability. The measurement index goes from 0 to 5, with 0 being the worst and 5 being the best. Labels and certification Over 50 ecolabels on tourism exist. These include (but are not limited to): Austrian Ecolabel for Tourism Asian Ecotourism Standard for Accommodations (AESA) Eco-certification Malta EarthCheck Australia Ecotourism Australia Ecotourism Ireland Ecotourism Kenya European Ecotourism Labelling Standard (EETLS) Korean Ecotourism Standard Guidelines and education An environmental protection strategy must address the issue of ecotourists removed from the cause-and-effect of their actions on the environment. More initiatives should be carried out to improve their awareness, sensitize them to environmental issues, and care about the places they visit.Tour guides are an obvious and direct medium to communicate awareness. With the confidence of ecotourists and intimate knowledge of the environment, tour guides can actively discuss conservation issues. Informing ecotourists about how their actions on the trip can negatively impact their environment and the local people. A tour guide training program in Costa Rica's Tortuguero National Park has helped mitigate negative environmental impacts by providing information and regulating tourists on the parks' beaches used by nesting endangered sea turtles. Small scale, slow growth, and local control The underdevelopment theory of tourism describes a new form of imperialism by multinational corporations that control ecotourism resources. These corporations finance and profit from the development of large-scale ecotourism that causes excessive environmental degradation, loss of traditional culture and way of life, and exploitation of local labor. In Zimbabwe and Nepal's Annapurna region, where underdevelopment is taking place, more than 90 percent of ecotourism revenues are expatriated to the parent countries, and less than 5 percent go into local communities.The lack of sustainability highlights the need for small-scale, slow-growth, and locally-based ecotourism. Local peoples have a vested interest in the well-being of their community and are therefore more accountable to environmental protection than multinational corporations, though they receive very little of the profits. The lack of control, westernization, adverse impacts to the environment, and loss of culture and traditions outweigh the benefits of establishing large-scale ecotourism. Additionally, culture loss can be attributed to cultural commodification, in which local cultures are commodified to make a profit.The increased contributions of communities to locally managed ecotourism create viable economic opportunities, including high-level management positions, and reduce environmental issues associated with poverty and unemployment. Because the ecotourism experience is marketed to a different lifestyle from large-scale ecotourism, the development of facilities and infrastructure does not need to conform to corporate Western tourism standards, and can be much simpler and less expensive. There is a greater multiplier effect on the economy, because local products, materials, and labor are used. Profits accrue locally and import leakages are reduced. The Great Barrier Reef Park in Australia reported over half of a billion dollars of indirect income in the area and added thousands of indirect jobs between 2004 and 2005. However, even this form of tourism may require foreign investment for promotion or start-up. When such investments are required, communities must find a company or non-governmental organization that reflects the philosophy of ecotourism; is sensitive to their concerns, and is willing to cooperate at the expense of profit. The basic assumption of the multiplier effect is that the economy starts with unused resources, for example, that many workers are cyclically unemployed and much of industrial capacity is sitting idle or incompletely used. By increasing demand in the economy, it is then possible to boost production. If the economy was already at full employment, with only structural, frictional, or other supply-side types of unemployment, any attempt to boost demand would only lead to inflation. For various laissez-faire schools of economics which embrace Say's Law and deny the possibility of Keynesian inefficiency and under-employment of resources, therefore, the multiplier concept is irrelevant or wrong-headed. As an example, consider the government increasing its expenditure on roads by $1 million, without a corresponding increase in taxation. This sum would go to the road builders, who would hire more workers and distribute the money as wages and profits. The households receiving these incomes will save part of the money and spend the rest on consumer goods. These expenditures, in turn, will generate more jobs, wages, profits, and so on with the income and spending circulating the economy. The multiplier effect arises because of the induced increases in consumer spending which occur due to the increased incomes – and because of the feedback into increasing business revenues, jobs, and income again. This process does not lead to an economic explosion not only because of the supply-side barriers at potential output (full employment) but because at each "round", the increase in consumer spending is less than the increase in consumer incomes. That is, the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is less than one so that each round some extra income goes into saving, leaking out of the cumulative process. Each increase in spending is thus smaller than that of the previous round, preventing an explosion. Efforts to preserve ecosystems at risk Some of the world's most exceptional biodiversity is located in the Galapagos Islands. These islands were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979, then added to UNESCO's List of World Heritage in Danger in 2007. IGTOA is a non-profit dedicated to preserving this unique living laboratory against the challenges of invasive species, human impact, and tourism. For travelers who want to be mindful of the environment and the impact of tourism, it is recommended to use an operator that is endorsed by a reputable ecotourism organization. In the case of the Galapagos, IGTOA has a list of the world's premiere Galapagos Islands tour companies dedicated to the lasting protection and preservation of the destination. Natural resource management Natural resource management can be used as a specialized tool for the development of ecotourism. There are several places throughout the world where several natural resources are abundant, but with human encroachment and habitats, these resources are depleting. Without the sustainable use of certain resources, they are destroyed, and floral and fauna species are becoming extinct. Ecotourism programs can be introduced for the conservation of these resources. Several plans and proper management programs can be introduced so that these resources remain untouched, and there are many organizations–including nonprofits–and scientists working on this field. Natural resources of hill areas like Kurseong in West Bengal are plenty in number with various flora and fauna, but tourism for business purpose poised the situation. Researchers from Jadavpur University are presently working in this area for the development of ecotourism to be used as a tool for natural resource management. In Southeast Asia government and nongovernmental organizations are working together with academics and industry operators to spread the economic benefits of tourism into the kampungs and villages of the region. A recently formed alliance, the South-East Asian Tourism Organization (SEATO), is bringing together these diverse players to discuss resource management concerns. A 2002, summit held in Quebec led to the 2008 Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria–a collaborative effort between the UN Foundation and other advocacy groups. The criteria, which are voluntary, involve the following standards: "effective sustainability planning, maximum social and economic benefits for local communities, minimum negative impacts on cultural heritage, and minimum negative impacts on the environment."There is no enforcing agency or system of punishments for summit. Impact on indigenous people and indigenous land Valorization of the Indigenous territories can be important for designation as a protected area, which can deter threats such as deforestation. Ecotourism can help bring in revenue for Indigenous peoples.However, there needs to be a proper business plan and organizational structure, which helps to ensure that the generated money from ecotourism indeed flows towards the Indigenous peoples themselves, and the protection of the Indigenous territory. Debates around ecotourism focus on how profits off of Indigenous lands are enjoyed by international tourist companies, who do not share back with the people to whom those lands belong. Ecotourism offers a tourist-appealing experience of the landscape and environment, one that is different from the experience of the residents; it commodifies the lives of Indigenous people and their land which is not fair to its inhabitants.Indigenous territories are managed by governmental services (i.e. FUNAI in Brazil, ...) and these governmental services can thus decide whether or not to implement ecotourism in these Indigenous territories. Ecotourism can also bring in employment to the local people (which may be Indigenous people). Protected areas for instance require park rangers, and staff to maintain and operate the ecolodges and accommodation used by tourists. Also, the traditional culture can act as a tourist attraction, and can create a source of revenue by asking payment for the showing of performances (i.e., traditional dance, ...) Ecotourism can also help mitigate deforestation that happens when local residents, under economic stress, clear lands and create smallholder plots to grow cash crops. Such land clearing hurts the environment. Ecotourism can be a sustainable and job-creating alternative for local populations. Depending on how protected areas are set up and handled, it can lead to local people losing their homes, usually with no compensation. Pushing people onto marginal lands with harsh climates, poor soils, lack of water, and infested with livestock and disease does little to enhance livelihoods even when a proportion of ecotourism profits are directed back into the community. Harsh survival realities and deprivation of traditional use of land and natural resources by local people can occur. Local Indigenous people may also feel strong resentment towards the change, especially if tourism has been allowed to develop with virtually no controls. Without sufficient control mechanisms, too many lodges may be built, and tourist vehicles may drive off-track and harass the wildlife. Vehicle use may erode and degrade the land".There is a longstanding failure by the Peruvian government to acknowledge and protect Indigenous lands, and therefore the Indigenous peoples have been forced to protect their own land. The land has a better chance of staying safe and free from deforestation if the people who care about the land are the ones maintaining it. Criticism Definition In the continuum of tourism activities that stretch from conventional tourism to ecotourism, there has been a lot of contention to the limit at which biodiversity preservation, local social-economic benefits, and environmental impact can be considered "ecotourism". For this reason, environmentalists, special interest groups, and governments define ecotourism differently. Environmental organizations have generally insisted that ecotourism is nature-based, sustainably managed, conservation supporting, and environmentally educated. The tourist industry and governments, however, focus more on the product aspect, treating ecotourism as equivalent to any sort of tourism based in nature. As a further complication, many terms are used under the rubric of ecotourism. Nature tourism, low impact tourism, green tourism, bio-tourism, ecologically responsible tourism, and others have been used in literature and marketing, although they are not necessarily synonymous with ecotourism.The problems associated with defining ecotourism have often led to confusion among tourists and academics. Many problems are also subject of considerable public controversy and concern because of green washing, a trend towards the commercialization of tourism schemes disguised as sustainable, nature based, and environmentally friendly ecotourism. According to McLaren, these schemes are environmentally destructive, economically exploitative, and culturally insensitive at its worst. They are also morally disconcerting because they mislead tourists and manipulate their concerns for the environment. The development and success of such large scale, energy intensive, and ecologically unsustainable schemes are a testament to the tremendous profits associated with being labeled as ecotourism. Negative impact Ecotourism has become one of the fastest-growing sectors of the tourism industry. One definition of ecotourism is "the practice of low-impact, educational, ecologically and culturally sensitive travel that benefits local communities and host countries".: 71  Many of the ecotourism projects are not meeting these standards. Even if some of the guidelines are being executed, the local communities are still facing many of the negative impacts.The other negative side of ecotourism is that it transforms nature and the environment into commodities people are interested in paying and visiting. When the environment becomes a product with economic value, people try to advertise and sell it. Some of the ecotourism sites are turning to private sectors, and the government cut off their funding. Hence, they are obligated to make money on their own. Private natural parks and sites are looking for their own advantage by advertising the soundness of natural parks or coastal marines in the Caribbean. They try to show they are protecting nature and attract people interested in ecotourism. However, they will focus on the phenomenon that might be more interesting for tourists and neglect other aspects of nature when they prioritize their profits. Consequently, this policy will result in abandoning rich ecological sites or destroying those valuable sites. For example, in Montego Bay, hotel staff cut the seagrass that appeared to drive back tourists; conversely, they are crucial for local nutrient cycles. The other problem is that the companies try to hide the truth behind the ecotourism to maintain their profit. They don't cover the fact that traveling from other countries to the natural sites burns extensive amounts of aircraft fuel. In Montego Bay and Negril, a considerable amount of run-off is released to the coastal water produced directly or indirectly by ecotourists. Hotels in Jamaica release much more wastewater than a city. The tourists generate a lot of waste that ends up in the coastal water. The indirect effect of ecotourism in Jamaica is that many people migrated to the town near the natural site because of the more job opportunities due to construction increase, resulting in destroying the environment. South Africa is one of the countries that is reaping significant economic benefits from ecotourism, but the negative effects far outweigh the positive—including forcing people to leave their homes, gross violations of fundamental rights, and environmental hazards—far outweigh the medium-term economic benefits. A tremendous amount of money and human resources continue to be used for ecotourism despite unsuccessful outcomes, and even more, money is put into public relation campaigns to dilute the effects of criticism. Ecotourism channels resources away from other projects that could contribute more sustainable and realistic solutions to pressing social and environmental problems. "The money tourism can generate often ties parks and managements to ecotourism". But there is a tension in this relationship because ecotourism often causes conflict and changes in land-use rights, fails to deliver promises of community-level benefits, damages environments, and has many other social impacts. Indeed, many argue repeatedly that ecotourism is neither ecologically nor socially beneficial, yet it persists as a strategy for conservation and development due to the large profits. While several studies are being done on ways to improve the ecotourism structure, some argue that these examples provide a rationale for stopping it altogether. However, there are some positive examples, among them the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) and the Virunga National Park, as judged by WWF.The ecotourism system exercises tremendous financial and political influence. The evidence above shows that a strong case exists for restraining such activities in certain locations. Funding could be used for field studies aimed at finding alternative solutions to tourism and the diverse problems Africa faces in result of urbanization, industrialization, and the overexploitation of agriculture.At the local level, ecotourism has become a source of conflict over control of land, resources, and tourism profits. In this case, ecotourism has harmed the environment and local people and has led to conflicts over profit distribution. Very few regulations or laws stand in place as boundaries for the investors in ecotourism. Calls have been made for more efforts toward educating tourists of the environmental and social effects of their travels, and for laws to prohibit the promotion of unsustainable ecotourism projects and materials which project false images of destinations and demean local and Indigenous cultures.Though conservation efforts in East Africa are indisputably serving the interests of tourism in the region it is important to make the distinction between conservation acts and the tourism industry. Eastern African communities are not the only of developing regions to experience economic and social harms from conservation efforts. Conservation in the Southwest Yunnan Region of China has similarly brought drastic changes to traditional land use in the region. Prior to logging restrictions imposed by the Chinese Government the industry made up 80 percent of the regions revenue. Following a complete ban on commercial logging the Indigenous people of the Yunnan region now see little opportunity for economic development. Ecotourism may provide solutions to the economic hardships suffered from the loss of industry to conservation in the Yunnan in the same way that it may serve to remedy the difficulties faced by the Maasai. As stated, the ecotourism structure must be improved to direct more money into host communities by reducing leakages for the industry to be successful in alleviating poverty in developing regions, but it provides a promising opportunity.Drumm and Moore (2002) discuss the price increase and economic leakage in their paper; saying that prices might augment since the visitors are more capable to pay higher rates for goods and services in opposition to the locals. Also, they have mentioned two solutions regarding the previous issue: (1) either a two pricing system represented as two separate price lists (the first for the locals and the second for the tourists with respect to the local's purchase power ability); (2) design unique goods and services subject only or the tourists' consumption. Leakage appears when international investors import foreign products instead of using local resources; thus, the tourists will be using international products and in-turn contributing to the outside economy rather than the local one (Drumm & Moore, 2002). Direct environmental impacts Ecotourism operations occasionally fail to live up to conservation ideals. It is sometimes overlooked that ecotourism is a highly consumer-centered activity, and that environmental conservation is a means to further economic growth.Although ecotourism is intended for small groups, even a modest increase in population, however temporary, puts extra pressure on the local environment and necessitates the development of additional infrastructure and amenities. The construction of water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, and lodges come with the exploitation of non-renewable energy sources and the use of already limited local resources. The conversion of natural land to such tourist infrastructure is implicated in deforestation and habitat deterioration of butterflies in Mexico and squirrel monkeys in Costa Rica. In other cases, the environment suffers because local communities are unable to meet the infrastructure demands of ecotourism. The lack of adequate sanitation facilities in many East African parks results in the disposal of campsite sewage in rivers, contaminating the wildlife, livestock, and people who draw drinking water from it.Aside from environmental degradation with tourist infrastructure, population pressures from ecotourism also leaves behind garbage and pollution associated with the Western lifestyle. An example of this is seen with ecotourism in Antarctica. Since it is such a remote location, it takes a lot of fuel to get there; resulting in ships producing large pollution through waste disposal and green house gas emissions. Additionally, there is a potential for oil spills from damaged ships traversing through aggressive waters filled with natural obstacles such as icebergs. Although ecotourists claim to be educationally sophisticated and environmentally concerned, they rarely understand the ecological consequences of their visits and how their day-to-day activities append physical impacts on the environment. As one scientist observes, they "rarely acknowledge how the meals they eat, the toilets they flush, the water they drink, and so on, are all part of broader regional economic and ecological systems they are helping to reconfigure with their very activities." Nor do ecotourists recognize the great consumption of non-renewable energy required to arrive at their destination, which is typically more remote than conventional tourism destinations. For instance, an exotic journey to a place 10,000 kilometers away consumes about 700 liters of fuel per person.Ecotourism activities are, in and of themselves, issues in environmental impact because they may disturb fauna and flora. Ecotourists believe that because they are only taking pictures and leaving footprints, they keep ecotourism sites pristine, but even harmless-sounding activities such as nature hikes can be ecologically destructive. In the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, ecotourists have worn down the marked trails and created alternate routes, contributing to soil impaction, erosion, and plant damage. Where the ecotourism activity involves wildlife viewing, it can scare away animals, disrupt their feeding and nesting sites, or acclimate them to the presence of people. In Kenya, wildlife-observer disruption drives cheetahs off their reserves, increasing the risk of inbreeding and further endangering the species. In a study done from 1995 to 1997 off the Northwestern coast of Australia, scientists found that whale sharks' tolerance for divers and swimmers decreased. The whale sharks showed an increase in behaviors over the course of the study, such as diving, porpoising, banking, and eye rolling that are associated with distress and attempt to avoid the diver. The average time the whale sharks spent with the divers in 1995 was 19.3 minutes, but in 1997 the average time the whale sharks spent with the divers was 9.5 minutes. There was also an increase in recorded behaviors from 56% of the sharks showing any sort of diving, porpoising, eye rolling or banking in 1995 to 70.7% in 1997. Some whale sharks were also observed to have scars that were consistent with being struck by a boat. Environmental hazards The industrialization, urbanization and agricultural practices of human society are having a serious impact on the environment. Ecotourism is now also considered to be playing a role in environmental depletion including deforestation, disruption of ecological life systems and various forms of pollution, all of which contribute to environmental degradation. For example, the number of motor vehicles crossing a park increases as tour drivers search for rare species. The number of roads disrupts the grass cover, which has serious consequences on plant and animal species. These areas also have a higher rate of disturbances and invasive species due to increasing traffic off of the beaten path into new, undiscovered areas. Ecotourism also has an effect on species through the value placed on them. "Certain species have gone from being little known or valued by local people to being highly valued commodities. The commodification of plants may erase their social value and lead to overproduction within protected areas. Local people and their images can also be turned into commodities". Kamuaro points out the relatively obvious contradiction that any commercial venture into unspoiled, pristine land inevitably means a higher pressure on the environment. The people who live in the areas now becoming ecotourism spots have very different lifestyles than those who come to visit. Ecotourism has created many debates based on if the economic benefits are worth the possible environmental sacrifices. Who benefits? Most forms of ecotourism are owned by foreign investors and corporations that provide few benefits to the local people. An overwhelming majority of profits are put into the pockets of investors instead of reinvestment into the local economy or environmental protection leading to further environmental degradation. The limited numbers of local people who are employed in the economy enter at its lowest level and are unable to live in tourist areas because of meager wages and a two-market system.In some cases, the resentment by local people results in environmental degradation. As a highly publicized case, the Maasai nomads in Kenya killed wildlife in national parks but are now helping the national park to save the wildlife to show aversion to unfair compensation terms and displacement from traditional lands. The lack of economic opportunities for local people also constrains them to degrade the environment as a means of sustenance. The presence of affluent ecotourists encourage the development of destructive markets in wildlife souvenirs, such as the sale of coral trinkets on tropical islands and animal products in Asia, contributing to illegal harvesting and poaching from the environment. In Suriname, sea turtle reserves use a very large portion of their budget to guard against these destructive activities. Eviction of Indigenous peoples Fortress conservation is a conservation model based on the belief that biodiversity protection is best achieved by creating protected areas where ecosystems can function in isolation from human disturbance. It is argued that money generated from ecotourism is the motivating factor to drive Indigenous inhabitants off the land. Up to 250,000 people worldwide have been forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for conservation projects since 1990, according to the UN special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples. Mismanagement by government While governments are typically entrusted with the administration and enforcement of environmental protection, they often lack the commitment or capability to manage ecotourism sites. The regulations for environmental protection may be vaguely defined, costly to implement, hard to enforce, and uncertain in effectiveness. Government regulatory agencies, are susceptible to making decisions that spend on politically beneficial but environmentally unproductive projects. Because of prestige and conspicuousness, the construction of an attractive visitor's center at an ecotourism site may take precedence over more pressing environmental concerns like acquiring habitat, protecting endemic species, and removing invasive ones. Finally, influential groups can pressure, and sway the interests of the government to their favor. The government and its regulators can become vested in the benefits of the ecotourism industry which they are supposed to regulate, causing restrictive environmental regulations and enforcement to become more lenient. Management of ecotourism sites by private ecotourism companies offers an alternative to the cost of regulation and deficiency of government agencies. It is believed that these companies have a self-interest in limited environmental degradation because tourists will pay more for pristine environments, which translates to higher profit. However, theory indicates that this practice is not economically feasible and will fail to manage the environment. The model of monopolistic competition states that distinctiveness will entail profits, but profits will promote imitation. A company that protects its ecotourism sites is able to charge a premium for the novel experience and pristine environment. But when other companies view the success of this approach, they also enter the market with similar practices, increasing competition and reducing demand. Eventually, the demand will be reduced until the economic profit is zero. A cost-benefit analysis shows that the company bears the cost of environmental protection without receiving the gains. Without economic incentive, the whole premise of self-interest through environmental protection is quashed; instead, ecotourism companies will minimize environment related expenses and maximize tourism demand.The tragedy of the commons offers another model for economic unsustainability from environmental protection, in ecotourism sites used by many companies. Although there is a communal incentive to protect the environment, maximizing the benefits in the long run, a company will conclude that it is in their best interest to use the ecotourism site beyond its sustainable level. By increasing the number of ecotourists, for instance, a company gains all the economic benefit while paying only a part of the environmental cost. In the same way, a company recognizes that there is no incentive to actively protect the environment; they bear all the costs, while the benefits are shared by all other companies. The result, again, is mismanagement. Taken together, the mobility of foreign investment and lack of economic incentive for environmental protection means that ecotourism companies are disposed to establishing themselves in new sites once their existing one is sufficiently degraded. In addition, the systematic literature review conducted by Cabral and Dhar (2019) have identified several challenges due to slow progression of ecotourism initiatives such as (a) economic leakages, (b) lack of government involvement, (c) skill deficiency among the local communities, (d) absence of disseminating environmental education, (e) sporadic increase in pollution, (f) conflict between tourism management personnel and local communities and (g) inadequate infrastructure development. Case studies The purpose of ecotourism is to engage tourists in low impact, non-consumptive and locally oriented environments to maintain species and habitats – especially in underdeveloped regions. While some ecotourism projects, including some found in the United States, can support such claims, many projects have failed to address some of the fundamental issues that nations face in the first place. Consequently, ecotourism may not generate the very benefits it is intended to provide to these regions and their people, and in some cases leaving economies in a state worse than before.The following case studies illustrate the rising complexity of ecotourism and its impacts, both positive and negative, on the environment and economies of various regions in the world. Ecotourism in Costa Rica Ecotourism in Jordan Ecotourism in South Africa Ecotourism in the United States See also References Further reading Burger, Joanna (2000). "Landscapes, tourism, and conservation". Science of the Total Environment. 249 (1–3): 39–49. Bibcode:2000ScTEn.249...39B. doi:10.1016/s0048-9697(99)00509-4. PMID 10813445. Ceballos-Lascurain, H. 1996. Tourism, Ecotourism, and Protected Areas. Larkin, T. and K. N. Kähler. 2011. "Ecotourism." Encyclopedia of Environmental Issues. Rev. ed. Pasadena: Salem Press. Vol. 2, pp. 421–424. ISBN 978-1-58765-737-5 IUCN. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature. 301 pp. Ceballos-Lascurain, H. 1998. Ecoturismo. Naturaleza y Desarrollo Sostenible. Duffy, Rosaleen (2000). "Shadow players: Ecotourism development, corruption and state politics in Belize". Third World Quarterly. 21 (3): 549–565. doi:10.1080/713701038. S2CID 153634543. Gutzwiller, Kevin J.; Anderson, Stanley H. (1999). "Spatial Extent of Human-Intrusion Effects on Subalpine Bird Distributions". The Condor. 101 (2): 378–389. doi:10.2307/1370001. JSTOR 1370001. Orams, Mark B.; Nowaczek, Agnes M.K. (2010). "Ecotourism: Principles and Practices". Annals of Tourism Research. 37: 270–271. doi:10.1016/j.annals.2009.10.007. Orams, Mark B. (2000). "Tourists getting close to whales, is it what whale-watching is all about?". Tourism Management. 21 (6): 561–569. doi:10.1016/s0261-5177(00)00006-6. Reguero Oxide, M. del. 1995. Ecoturismo. Nuevas Formas de Turismo en el Espacio rural. Ed. Bosch Turismo Scheyvens, Regina (1999). "Ecotourism and the empowerment of local communities". Tourism Management. 20 (2): 245–249. doi:10.1016/s0261-5177(98)00069-7. Buckley, Ralf (2011). "Tourism and Environment". Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 36 (1): 397–416. doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-041210-132637. External links Ecotourism at Curlie https://ecotourism.org/what-is-ecotourism/

helopeltis antonii

Helopeltis antonii, also known as the tea mosquito bug, are heteropterans found within the Miridae family. They have a relatively large geographical distribution and are a known pest of many agricultural “cash” crops such as cocoa, cashew, and tea. Subsequently, their impact negatively influences economic growth within the regions in which they inhabit. Thus, their impact on humans has caused them to be of great interest biologically, resulting in significant environmental implications. Distribution Helopeltis antonii are found in a region known as the old-world tropics which encompasses places such as India, Northern Australia, Guinea, Vietnam, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Indonesia. More specifically, they are more concentrated in the agricultural regions of the old-world tropics. In India their distribution is primarily found within the “cashew belt” which is located along the western coast and central regions of the country due to its high affinity for these plants. However, different nations grow certain crops in various locations within their borders. Crops that H. antonii prefer will ultimately determine their specific distribution within a country. Identification of distribution H. antonii are often mistaken and misidentified with other Helopeltis species. Thus, identifying the exact geographical range of H. antonii has become a difficult process. However, recent advances in species identification though DNA barcoding has made it much easier. DNA barcoding is a rapid and relatively inexpensive identification technique that locates unique genetic markers in their DNA allowing for the accurate identification of not only H. antonii, but other species as well. Mating Reproduction for H. antonii occurs in 4 stages—arousal, mounting, copulation, and termination of copulation—and occurs year-round. Mounting, arousal, and termination of copulation occurs within a short time frame; copulation is much longer and more variable in length. Mating typically occur in shaded, covered areas Arousal Arousal consists of both chemical and tactile stimuli. Pheromones play an important role in the chemical attraction of females for mating. Although these chemical cues are important, physical cues comprise the bulk of mate attraction and arousal. Males are the sole initiators for reproductive encounters. This first done through sexual identification of a female partner. Sexual identification is only possible when in close proximity of each other. Once a female is located, the male makes contact with the female by gently probing her body with his antennae. Receptive females remain passive, permitting the male to proceed. In contrast, non-receptive females move to escape any further male interaction. Mounting Following the initial arousal, the process of mounting ensues. Males mount females on the posterior region of her body allowing the erect male rostrum to stroke the dorsal side of the female, just below the thoracic shield. This stroking behaviour quiets the female and allows for easier insertion of the male aedeagus into the female genital aperture. If insertion is not achieved the male begins a left to right stroking motion to aid in its insertion. Females can also kick or shake males off to prevent further progression of mating. When this occurs, males are quick to remount and re-attempt insertion of their aedeagus into the female genital aperture. Successful insertion leads to copulation. Copulation Once insertion has been established the male twists around in an end-to-end fashion to allow for copulation. Once in this end-to-end position, both the male and female remain still until copulation has completed. This can last anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours. Termination of copulation Following copulation, they abruptly disjoin, however, detachment can be often difficult due to the males' twisted position. Once separated both the male and female begin to feed and clean their own genitals and antenna—this feeding and cleaning behaviour typically occurs within a few steps from the site of copulation. Females do not respond to any other mating advances immediately following copulation. However, females typically reproduce more than once during their lifetime. Interspecific mating has been known to occur between Helopeltis species, specifically between H. antonii and H. theivora. However, their mating results in the production of unviable eggs. The production of eggs following interspecific mating between H. antonii and H. bradyi has not been observed. This ability and inability to engage in interspecific mating is due to the difference in genital structure between females. Females of both H. antonii and H. theivora have sclerotized rings that are not fused, whereas, the females of H. bradyi have fused sclerotized rings in its genitalia. This difference acts like a “lock and key” model for genitalia. Oviposition Males and females are able to reproduce and lay viable eggs after their first day of sexual maturity. Unmated females are capable of laying eggs; however, they are sterile. The sex ratio of males to females does not influence the number of eggs a female can lay but environments with a high ratio reduces female longevity due to mating exhaustion. Females that reproduce more than once lay a larger number of eggs during oviposition. Females probe plant tissues with the tip of their rostrum to find a suitable site for the deposition of their eggs. The exact reason behind site choice is unknown, but once found the female bends her abdomen to establish contact between her ovipositor and the plant tissue. The ovipositor is then inserted into the plant tissue and the eggs are deposited, below the epidermis and parenchymatous tissue of the plant, via abdominal contractions. The eggs are ovo-elongate and silvery-white in colour and are approximately 1.0x0.3mm in size. Abundance of eggs laid is also weather dependent. Conditions that yield higher temperatures and increased sun exposure result in a higher abundance; whereas cooler temperatures, less available sunlight, and increased rain exposure reduces abundance. Development H. antonii experiences partial metamorphosis, otherwise known as hemimetabolous development, which is characterized by it transition from an egg to nymph and eventually into a matured adult. This developmental pattern takes about 25 days from the time the eggs are laid to adulthood. The eggs take eggs 12–13 days to hatch followed by 12–13 days of progressive nymph instars. H. antonii experience 5 instars in total before reaching adulthood. During the first instar, the body appears light orange in colour and progresses to a deep orange in the second instar. During the third instar, the body beings to develop wing buds and a scutellar horn. Wing pads become visibly prominent as the fourth instar emerges. Finally, in the fifth instar, the wing pads cover half of the abdomen—with the wings being transparent—and the body is light brown in colour but darkens via sclerotization. Additionally, in the fifth instar, the dorsum of the thorax appears red in colour, the tergum of the abdomen a dull white, the dorsal abdominal segment a deep orange colour, and overlapped hemi-elytra covers over the abdomen with its distal end containing a triangular blackish-brown colouration.The less-matured first, second and third instars tend to group close to each other and remain in proximity of their hatch site for feeding. In contrast, the more matured fourth and fifth instars tend to be more dispersed and feed in areas farther from their hatch site as a result. Matured females have a characteristic white patch present on their fifth abdominal segment. Environmental influence Although colouration is an important identifying feature of H. antonii it is subject to variation due to variations in temperature and sunlight exposure. Red colour morphs tend to peak in abundance during October and reach their minimum abundance during February (for males) and June (for females). Black colour morphs peak during June for both sexes. A brownish-black colour morph is also seen within the population, but its abundance is low, and its frequency remains constant throughout the year. Diet and feeding H. antonii are herbivorous insects that have been known to feed on more than 100 different plant species. The sites of feeding, on these plant hosts, are not localized. Rather, both adult and nymphs feed on various sites ranging from tender shoots, buds, stems, and even their fruiting bodies to obtain sap. H. antonii possess modified mouthparts which work to form a long straw-like structure known as a “stylet”. This modified mouth part enables them to suck up sap from deep within the plant tissues that would not otherwise be as easily accessible. Seasonal Consumption H. antonii feed on both native plants as well as agriculturally grown crops. However, their availability changes with the seasons. This change in availability is due to the different growth cycles host plants experience throughout the year. As host plants enter their fruiting or flushing stages, they begin to have a higher rates of sap production and as a result become targeted by H. antonii. In native, non-cultivated, habitats there appears to be a preference for certain types of host plants even when many others are present. During January to February Annona is preferred, from March to April neem is preferred, from May to August papaya is preferred, and from September to December Singapore cherry is preferred. In addition to the consumption of native plant species, agricultural “cash crops” such black pepper, cashew, cocoa, and tea as are often at high risk for consumption and damage due to their large-scale cultivation and ease of accessibility. However, their feeding schedule on these is agricultural crops are more restricted based due to growing and harvest seasons. Plant preference Like the seasonal preference of plants, preference is also seen in consumption habits of fruits with respect to different plants. For example, in custard apples the immature fruits are preferred over the matured fruits. Whereas in the Singapore cherries there is no observed feeding preference for immature or mature fruits. Biological mechanics Feeding requires the insertion of their stylet into the plant tissues. This insertion results in the secretion of saliva. Present within their saliva are toxic substances that cause death of plant tissues following feeding. However, the biochemical understanding of the toxin's toxicology and function within the saliva is poorly understood and is a site of current research. Predators Being a pest to many agricultural crops, resulting in severe destruction of plants following their consumption, have since made H. antonii a major target in hopes to reduce their prevalence in the agricultural industry. The use of insecticides and pesticides have long been used in an attempt to manage and reduce the damaging effects of H. antonii feeding. However, the effectiveness of these chemicals are concentration and volume dependent with respect to the type being used. Some of these pesticides have a prevalence of 500 liters per hectare at concentrations ranging from 50g/L-500g/L. The use of such chemical agents poses a risk not only to the environment but to humans as well—as exposure and administration levels continue to increase so too does its level of toxicity. Additionally, many countries that import these crops do not import those that have traces of pesticides. Thus, natural predators and parasitoids have been looked to for their biological control properties to prevent the use of these harmful chemicals. Biological control H. antonii are subject to both predation and parasitism via parasitoids. Parasitoids of both nymph and adult morphs include Hymenoptera (Braconidae, Platygastridae) and Diptera (Sarcophagidae). Predators are more extensive in diversity and consist of Hymenoptera (Formicidae, Vespidae), Coleoptera, Mantodea, and Odonata.Of specific interest and use are hymenopteran parasitoids, specifically, Telenomus cupis due to their high specificity and specialization on H. antonii eggs. The employment of these parasitoid specialists has significantly decreased the abundance of H. antonii eggs to effectively reduce their devastating impact on agricultural crops. Additionally, these hymenopteran parasitoids are one of the few parasitoids that are active year-round.The combined use of pesticides and biological control agents are less effective in reducing the number of H. antonii within agricultural systems. This is because these pesticides also act against biological control agents—reducing their effectiveness. Additionally, the biological control agents tend to be more affected by pesticides than H. antonii. Biological predators and parasitoids are more affected than H. antonii due to their increase locomotory abilities causing them to be exposed to larger amounts of the synthetic pesticides found on crops. The extensive and prolonged use of pesticides and its lesser effect on H. antonii, when compared to its biological control agents, raises concerns regarding pesticide resistance. However, such evidence has yet to suggest the acquisition of pesticide resistance in H. antonii. Ecological and economic damage H. antonii foraging behaviour, especially on commercially produced crops, has devastating impacts on overall crop yields showing yield reduction of as much as 35-75 percent. As more of the native landscape becomes converted into agricultural lands it provides an increased food supply for them. This increased food supply allows for an increase in population. As their population increases more plant tissues are subject to damage and injury. Thus, injured plants are no longer able to allocate their desired resources into fruit/seed production, rather, they are forced to allocate resources and energy into damage control and repair. This alternative allocation of resources is what causes the observed yield reductions. Poor yields result in poor economic outcomes for producers which also has adverse consequences for consumers such as increased prices, as well as an overall reduction in the number and overall quality of available products. Foraging behaviour of H. antonii causes necrotic lesions to develop on plant tissues at feeding sites which can cause the death to new plant buds. Bud death inhibits plants from producing fruit—decreasing yield. Similarly, feeding on premature and mature fruits causes fruit desiccation resulting in a reduction in size and quality—as seen in cashew plants. Fungal contribution Although feeding results in necrotic lesioning and desiccation, it is not the only factor that impacts yield. Following foraging, fungal pathogens can enter the wound tissues more readily and cause die-back of shoots and is the primary cause of inflorescence blight. Even though fungal blight is a common occurrence in various plants, the wounds caused by H. antonii in plant tissues exacerbates and accelerates its effects. Die-back from blight also limits the plant's ability to produce products and grow—further perpetuating yield loss. External links http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/zoology/helopeltis-antonii-distribution-life-cycle-and-control/24068 http://www.nbair.res.in/insectpests/Helopeltis-antonii.php DropData cocoa pest guide Data related to Helopeltis at Wikispecies Media related to Helopeltis antonii at Wikimedia Commons == References ==

mountaintop removal mining

Mountaintop removal mining (MTR), also known as mountaintop mining (MTM), is a form of surface mining at the summit or summit ridge of a mountain. Coal seams are extracted from a mountain by removing the land, or overburden, above the seams. This process is considered to be safer compared to underground mining because the coal seams are accessed from above instead of underground. In the United States, this method of coal mining is conducted in the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States. Explosives are used to remove up to 400 vertical feet (120 m) of mountain to expose underlying coal seams. Excess rock and soil is dumped into nearby valleys, in what are called "holler fills" ("hollow fills") or "valley fills".The practice of MTM has been controversial. While there are economic benefits to this practice, there are also concerns for environmental and human health costs. Overview Mountaintop removal mining (MTR), also known as mountaintop mining (MTM), is a form of surface mining that involves the topographical alteration and/or removal of a summit, hill, or ridge to access buried coal seams. The MTR process involves the removal of coal seams by first fully removing the overburden lying atop them, exposing the seams from above. This method differs from more traditional underground mining, where typically a narrow shaft is dug which allows miners to collect seams using various underground methods, while leaving the vast majority of the overburden undisturbed. The overburden from MTR is either placed back on the ridge, attempting to reflect the approximate original contour of the mountain, and/or is moved into neighboring valleys. When excess rock and soil containing mining byproducts are disposed into nearby valleys, the valleys are called "holler fills" or "valley fills".MTR in the United States is most often associated with the extraction of coal in the Appalachian Mountains. Google Earth Engine and Landsat imagery report the extent of newly mined land from 1985 to 2015 to be 2,900 km2. Considering surface mining sites prior to 1985, the cumulative total of mined land was calculated to be 5,900 km2. Further studies calculated that 12 m2 of mined land produced one metric ton of coal. There are many MTR site locations ranging from Ohio to Virginia. It occurs most commonly in West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, the top two coal-producing states in Appalachia. At current rates, MTR in the U.S. will mine over 1.4 million acres (5,700 km²) by 2010, an amount of land area that exceeds that of the state of Delaware. More than 500 mountains in the US have been destroyed by this process, resulting in the burial of 3,200 km (2,000 mi) of streams.Mountaintop removal has been practiced since the 1960s. Increased demand for coal in the United States, sparked by the 1973 and 1979 oil crises, created incentives for a more economical form of coal mining than the traditional underground mining methods involving hundreds of workers, triggering the first widespread use of MTR. Its prevalence expanded further in the 1990s to retrieve relatively low-sulfur coal, a cleaner-burning form, which became desirable as a result of amendments to the U.S. Clean Air Act that tightened emission limits on high-sulfur coal processing. Process Mining Land is deforested prior to mining operations and the resultant lumber is either sold or burned. According to the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA), the topsoil is supposed to be removed and set aside for later reclamation. However, coal companies are often granted waivers and instead reclaim the mountain with "topsoil substitute". The waivers are granted if adequate amounts of topsoil are not naturally present on the rocky ridge top. Once the area is cleared, miners use explosives to blast away the overburden, the rock and subsoil, to expose coal seams beneath. The overburden is then moved by various mechanical means to areas of the ridge previously mined. These areas are the most economical area of storage as they are located close to the active pit of exposed coal. If the ridge topography is too steep to adequately handle the amount of spoil produced then additional storage is used in a nearby valley or hollow, creating what is known as a valley fill or hollow fill. Any streams in a valley are buried by the overburden.A front-end loader or excavator then removes the coal, where it is transported to a processing plant. Once coal removal is completed, the mining operators back stack overburden from the next area to be mined into the now empty pit. After backstacking and grading of overburden has been completed, topsoil (or a topsoil substitute) is layered over the overburden layer. Next, grass seed is spread in a mixture of seed, fertilizer, and mulch made from recycled newspaper. Depending on the surface land owner wishes the land will then be further reclaimed by adding trees if the pre-approved post-mining land use is forest land or wildlife habitat. If the land owner has requested other post-mining land uses the land can be reclaimed to be used as pasture land, economic development or other uses specified in SMCRA.Because coal usually exists in multiple geologically stratified seams, miners can often repeat the blasting process to mine over a dozen seams on a single mountain, increasing the mine depth each time. This can result in a vertical descent of hundreds of extra feet into the earth. Reclamation Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act Established in 1977, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act set up a program "for the regulation of surface mining activities and the reclamation of coal-mined lands". Although U.S. mountaintop removal sites by law must be reclaimed after mining is complete, reclamation has traditionally focused on stabilizing rock formations and controlling for erosion, and not on the reforestation of the affected area. However, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 list "the restoration of land and water resources" as a priority. Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative (ARRI) Historically, reforested mining sites have been characterized by seedling mortality, slow growth and poor production. Challenges associated with returning forests to their pre-mining state enabled grassland conversion to become standard. The Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative (ARRI), established in 2004, works to promote the growth of hardwood trees on reclaimed mining sites. The ARRI operates utilizing the Forestry Reclamation Approach (FRA). In an effort to apply specific forest restoration practices, the FRA focuses on five main reclamation components: (1) establish suitable soil deeper than four feet to enhance root growth, (2) ensure non-compacted topsoil is present, (3) plan vegetative ground cover to support tree growth (4) include tree species that support local wildlife, as well as commercially desired products, (5) ensure that proper planting techniques are utilized. This group also facilitates restoration efforts by educating and training members of the coal industry on their role in promoting and adopting effective management practices. Valley fill sites Valley fill sites can be characterized by high sulfur concentrations from the weathering process of mountaintop sulfur-rich debris. Additionally, acid mine drainage (AMD) increases the concentration of sulfate, iron, aluminum and manganese in surrounding streams. Some of the most common treatments include plugging mine openings, altering the landscape to divert incoming water from at-risk ecosystems, alkaline inputs, limestone channels and treatment ponds or wetlands. Biotic stream remediation index Current remediation methods may vary, but expensive treatment costs persist. The cost efficiency of treatments can be increased through the use of models that are able to accurately predict ecosystem responses to various inputs; thus enabling restoration groups to determine the overall most effective treatment combination. Biotic indicators present within stream ecosystems impacted by valley fill (VF) activity and AMD are valuable assets to increase the cost efficiency of restoration efforts. Mayflies (Order Ephemeroptera) are abundant in streams in the Appalachian Mountain region. They are highly sensitive to water quality, as their immature forms require unpolluted water. VF and AMD are the leading causes of water chemistry and habitat alterations in this region, the driving factors limiting mayfly populations. Thus, they can be utilized as an effective indicator species to quantify restoration progress through modeling efforts focused on mountaintop mining driven changes in adjacent ecosystems. Effectively developed biotic response models can improve and refine restoration efforts by establishing target indicator species population goals and by enabling the monitoring and assessment of water chemistry and habitat changes impacting particular species. Economics As of 2015, approximately one third of the electricity generated in the United States is produced by coal-fired power plants. MTR accounted for less than 5% of U.S. coal production as of 2001. In some regions, however, the percentage is higher, for example, MTR provided 30% of the coal mined in West Virginia in 2006.Historically in the U.S. the prevalent method of coal acquisition was underground mining which is very labor-intensive. In MTR, through the use of explosives and large machinery, more than two and a half times as much coal can be extracted per worker per hour than in traditional underground mines, thus greatly reducing the need for workers. In Kentucky, for example, the number of workers has declined over 60% from 1979 to 2006 (from 47,190 to 17,959 workers). The industry overall lost approximately 10,000 jobs from 1990 to 1997, as MTR and other more mechanized underground mining methods became more widely used. The coal industry asserts that surface mining techniques, such as mountaintop removal, are safer for miners than sending miners underground.Proponents argue that in certain geologic areas, MTR and similar forms of surface mining allow the only access to thin seams of coal that traditional underground mining would not be able to mine. MTR is sometimes the most cost-effective method of extracting coal.Several studies of the impact of restrictions to mountaintop removal were authored in 2000 through 2005. Studies by Mark L. Burton, Michael J. Hicks and Cal Kent identified significant state-level tax losses attributable to lower levels of mining (notably the studies did not examine potential environmental costs, which the authors acknowledge may outweigh commercial benefits). Mountaintop removal sites are normally restored after the mining operation is complete, but "reclaimed soils characteristically have higher bulk density, lower organic content, low water-infiltration rates, and low nutrient content".Reclamation projects designed in conjunction with community needs can aid local economic development. Previously mined land can be reclaimed as sustainable agricultural land and solar farms. These efforts can help to diversify and stimulate the local economy by providing jobs and other economic opportunities. Legislation in the United States In the United States, MTR is allowed by section 515(c)(1) of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA). Although most coal mining sites must be reclaimed to the land's pre-mining contour and use, regulatory agencies can issue waivers to allow MTR. In such cases, SMCRA dictates that reclamation must create "a level plateau or a gently rolling contour with no highwalls remaining".Different organizations have tried to revise a stream buffer rule placed in 1977. The rule states that certain conditions must be met, or the mining operation must take place "within 100 feet of a stream". The Obama Administration, in July 2015, wrote up a draft "Stream Protection Rule". This draft adds "more protections to downstream waters", but it will also debilitate the current buffer requirements.In February 2017, newly-elected president Donald Trump signed a bill that did away with the stream protection rule previously administered by the Obama Administration.Permits must be obtained to deposit valley fill into streams. On four occasions, federal courts have ruled that the US Army Corps of Engineers violated the Clean Water Act by issuing such permits. Massey Energy Company appealed a 2007 ruling, but was allowed to continue mining while the appeal was pending, because "most of the substantial harm has already occurred," according to the judge.The George W. Bush administration appealed one of these rulings in 2001 because the Act had not explicitly defined "fill material" that could legally be placed in a waterway. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers changed a rule to include mining debris in the definition of fill material, and the ruling was overturned.On December 2, 2008, the Bush Administration made a rule change to remove the Stream Buffer Zone protection provision from SMCRA allowing coal companies to place mining waste rock and dirt directly into headwater waterways.A federal judge has also ruled that using settling ponds to remove mining waste from streams violates the Clean Water Act. He also declared that the Army Corps of Engineers has no authority to issue permits allowing discharge of pollutants into such in-stream settling ponds, which are often built just below valley fills.On January 15, 2008, the environmental advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to end a policy that waives detailed federal Endangered Species Act reviews for new mining permits. Under current policy, as long as a given MTR mining operation complies with federal surface mining law, the agency presumes conclusively, despite the complexities of intra- and inter-species relationships, that the instance of MTR in question is not damaging to endangered species or their habitat. Since 1996, this policy has exempted many strip mines from being subject to permit-specific reviews of impact on individual endangered species. Because of the 1996 Biological Opinion by FWS making case-by-case formal reviews unnecessary, the Interior's Office of Surface Mining and state regulators require mining companies to hire a government-approved contractor to conduct their own surveys for any potential endangered species. The surveys require approval from state and federal biologists, who provide informal guidance on how to minimize mines' potential effects to species. While the agencies have the option to ask for formal endangered species consultations during that process, they do so very rarely.On May 25, 2008, North Carolina State Representative Pricey Harrison introduced a bill to ban the use of mountaintop removal coal from coal-fired power plants within North Carolina. This proposed legislation would have been the only legislation of its kind in the United States; however, the bill was defeated.A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and Interagency Action Plan (IAP) were signed by officials of EPA, the Corps, and the Department of the Interior on June 11, 2009. The MOU and IAP outlined different administrative actions that would help decrease "the harmful environmental impacts of mountaintop mining". The plan also includes near and long-term actions that highlight "specific steps, improved coordination, and greater transparency of decisions".The Clean Water Rule, a 2015 regulation published by EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, "...more precisely defines waters protected under the Clean Water Act". The Energy Information Administration (EIA) stated that the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE), EPA and the Army are collaborating to prepare an environmental impact statement, "analyzing environmental impacts of coal surface mining in the Appalachian region".On Tuesday, April 9, 2019, the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources held a legislative hearing, "Health and Environmental Impacts of Mountaintop Removal Mining". This hearing involved the H.R. 2050 (Rep. Yarmuth) bill. This bill stated that "until health studies are conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services", there will be a suspension on permitting for mountaintop removal coal mining. Environmental impacts MTR negatively impacts the environment. Practices of explosion and digging release many pollutants to the surrounding environment and community and alternation of the ecosystem. Associated air pollutants such as particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide not only raise health concerns, they also have effects on all ecosystems. Air pollution contributes to issues such as water and soil acidification, chemicals bioaccumulation in the food web and eutrophication. Operations of valley fills buried more than 2,000 km of headwater and streams in the Appalachians. MTR reduces the freshwater resource that supports biodiversity. In addition, the operation provides opportunities for contamination leaching. Ca2+, Mg2+ and SO42− alter water chemistry by increasing pH, salinity and electrical conductivity. Increasing phosphorus and nitrogen can cause nutrient pollution. Selenium is toxic and can bioaccumulate. Land disturbance from forestry cutting, soil and bedrock displacement/removal and use of heavy machinery can decrease soil infiltration rate, terrestrial habitat and carbon sequestration, increase in runoff and sediment weathering. As the consequence, hydrology, geochemistry and the ecosystem's health can be permanently impacted. 2010 report A January 2010 report in the journal Science reviews current peer-reviewed studies and water quality data and explores the consequences of mountaintop mining. It concludes that mountaintop mining has serious environmental impacts that mitigation practices cannot successfully address. For example, the extensive tracts of deciduous forests destroyed by mountaintop mining support several endangered species and some of the highest biodiversity in North America. There is a particular problem with burial of headwater streams by valley fills which causes permanent loss of ecosystems that play critical roles in ecological processes. In addition, increases in metal ions, pH, electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids due to elevated concentrations of sulfate are closely linked to the extent of mining in West Virginia watersheds. Declines in stream biodiversity have been linked to the level of mining disturbance in West Virginia watersheds. Published studies Published studies also show a high potential for human health impacts. These may result from contact with streams or exposure to airborne toxins and dust. Adult hospitalization for chronic pulmonary disorders and hypertension are elevated as a result of county-level coal production. Rates of mortality, lung cancer, as well as chronic heart, lung and kidney disease are also increased. A 2011 study found that counties in and near mountaintop mining areas had higher rates of birth defects for five out of six types of birth defects, including circulatory/respiratory, musculoskeletal, central nervous system, gastrointestinal, and urogenital defects. These defect rates were more pronounced in the most recent period studied, suggesting the health effects of mountaintop mining-related air and water contamination may be cumulative. Another 2011 study found "the odds for reporting cancer were twice as high in the mountaintop mining environment compared to the non mining environment in ways not explained by age, sex, smoking, occupational exposure, or family cancer history". Impact statement A 2005 environmental impact statement prepared by EPA stated that streams near some valley fills from mountaintop removal contain higher levels of minerals in the water and decreased aquatic biodiversity. Mine-affected streams also have high selenium concentrations, which can bioaccumulate and produce toxic effects (e.g., reproductive failure, physical deformity, mortality), and these effects have been documented in reservoirs below streams. Because of higher pH balances in mine-affected streams, metals such as selenium and iron hydroxide are rendered insoluble, bringing attendant chemical changes to the stream.The statement also estimates that 724 miles (1,165 km) of Appalachian streams were buried by valley fills between 1985 and 2001. On September 28, 2010, the EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) released its first draft review of EPA's research into the water quality impacts of valley fills associated with mountaintop mining, agreeing with EPA's conclusion that valley fills are associated with increased levels of conductivity threatening aquatic life in surface waters. A 2012 review published in Science of the Total Environment cited elevated concentrations of SO42-, HCO3−, Ca2+ and Mg2+ downstream from VF sites. These elevated concentrations are driving factors contributing to overall increases in water conductivity. Measured conductivity values ranging from 159 to 2720 μS/cm were recorded downstream. In comparison, the reference site that did not experience MTM measured conductivity values that ranged from 30 to 260μS/cm. Stream ecosystems Headwater streams play a major role in the physicochemical quality of larger rivers and streams because of their close association to the surrounding landscape. They function to retain floodwaters, store nutrients and reduce sediment accumulation. VF processes limit these functions, negatively impacting surrounding rivers and watersheds. Factors contributing to disturbed stream flow include vegetation removal, subsequent aquifer formation, compaction of fill surface and overall loss of headwater streams. The removal of vegetation for mining sites reduces evapotranspiration rates from the watershed and ultimately leads to an increase in average discharge rates. Changes in flow can also be attributed to the formation of aquifers from VF that can store water entering from groundwater sources, surface run-off and precipitation. Compaction of VF sites from MTM equipment can increase the surface run-off contribution. The overall loss of headwater streams from VF practices reduces surface- groundwater connections. Terrestrial impacts While aquatic ecosystems and resources are vulnerable to pollution and geomorphological changes due to MTM and VF leaching, the terrestrial environment is also negatively impacted. The destruction of mountaintops results in forest loss and fragmentation. The overall loss of forest cover reduces suitable soil for revegetation efforts, carbon sequestration and biodiversity.The Appalachian region is characterized by its high biodiversity and steep topography. The varying elevations from mountains to valleys results in subsequent varying of forest ecosystem distributions. Forest loss and fragmentation exacerbate forest community distribution by altering the terrestrial environment. Fragmentation results in an increase in edge forests and a decrease in interior forests. This is an important distinction because forest conditions vary from both classifications. Edge forests are warmer, drier, more susceptible to windier conditions and can be better suited for invasive species. As edge forests become more prevalent, biodiversity is threatened. Forest communities as well as flora and fauna diversity depend on habitats provided by old growth forests. For example, a reduction in salamander populations on reclaimed sites can be attributed to an overall loss in mesic conditions. These conditions are not present in emerging edge forests. Additionally, terrestrial changes have transformed natural forest carbon sinks into carbon sources. Environmental effects of reclamation Reclaimed soil generally has high bulk density and lower in infiltration rate, nutrients content and organic matter; reclaimed sites are generally not successful to reestablish the pre-mining forests that once occupied due to poor soil quality. Mine sites are often converted to non-native grassland and shrub land habitat with primarily invasive vegetation. Fast-growing, non-native flora such as Lespedeza cuneata, planted to quickly provide vegetation on a site, compete with tree seedlings, and trees have difficulty establishing root systems in compacted backfill. In addition, reintroduced elk (Cervus canadensis) on mountaintop removal sites in Kentucky are eating tree seedlings. The new ecosystem differs from the original forest habitat and can have lower diversity and productivity. A study conducted in 2017 found that herpetofaunal (reptiles and amphibians) habitat generalists are associated with all habitats, while habitat specialists are only associated with forest sites. Reclaimed grassland and shrub land are unsuitable for habitat specialists in the near future. Consequently, biodiversity suffers in a region of the United States with numerous endemic species.Streams are reclaimed by regrading mine land, reconfiguring the mine drain, or building new stream channels in an effort to resemble the buried ones. Although the mitigation focuses on rebuilding the structure, it has not successfully restored the ecological function of the natural streams. Evidence suggests that such methods can decrease the biodiversity over time. Studies comparing the characteristics of natural and constructed channels find that constructed channels are higher in specific conductance, temperature, ion concentration and lower in organic matter, leaves breakdown rate, invertebrate density and richness. Researchers have concluded that MTR has detrimental impacts on the aquatic system and the current assessments cannot adequately evaluate the quality of the constructed channels and failed to address the functional importance of the natural stream. Advocates Advocates of MTR claim that once the areas are reclaimed as mandated by law, the area can provide flat land suitable for many uses in a region where flat land is at a premium. They also maintain that the new growth on reclaimed mountaintop mined areas is better suited to support populations of game animals.While some of the land is able to be turned into grassland which game animals can live in, the amount of grassland is minimal. The land does not retake the form it had before the MTR. As stated in the book Bringing Down the Mountains: "Some of the main problems associated with MTR include soil depletion, sedimentation, low success rate of tree regrowth, lack of successful revegetation, displacement of native wildlife, and burial of streams." The ecological benefits after MTR are far below the level of the original land. Health impacts Published studies also show a high potential for human health impacts. These may result from contact with streams or exposure to airborne toxins and dust. Adult hospitalization for chronic pulmonary disorders and hypertension are elevated as a result of county-level coal production. Rates of mortality, lung cancer, as well as chronic heart, lung and kidney disease are also increased. A 2011 study found that counties in and near mountaintop mining areas had higher rates of birth defects for five out of six types of birth defects, including circulatory/respiratory, musculoskeletal, central nervous system, gastrointestinal, and urogenital defects. These defect rates were more pronounced in the most recent period studied, suggesting the health effects of mountaintop mining-related air and water contamination may be cumulative. Another 2011 study found "the odds for reporting cancer were twice as high in the mountaintop mining environment compared to the non mining environment in ways not explained by age, sex, smoking, occupational exposure, or family cancer history". Air quality Research has shown that MTR increases human exposure to particulate matters, PAHs and crustal-derived elements. Other than occupational exposure, data and models suggested that deposits of such pollutants in lungs of the residents are significantly higher in mining areas. PM samples collected from residential sites around the mining area had higher concentrations of silica, aluminum, inorganic lithogenic components and organic matter. A comparison study that surveyed residents from both the MTR mining community and non-mining community reported that people living near the MTR site experienced more symptoms of respiratory disease. Many studies conclude that exposure to MTR environments can lead to impaired respiratory health issues. Laboratory experiments on mice also suggested that PM collected from the Appalachian MTR site can damage microvascular function that may contribute to cardiovascular disease found in the area. Drinking water quality MTR has negative effects on surface and ground water quality. Surface water in MTM regions has higher concentrations of arsenic, selenium, lead, magnesium, calcium, aluminum, manganese, sulfates and hydrogen sulfide from overburden. Wastewater from the coal cleaning process contains surfactants, flocculants, coal fines, benzene and toluene, sulfur, silica, iron oxide, sodium, trace metals and other chemicals. Wastewater is often injected and stored underground and has the potential to contaminate other water sources. Ground water samples from domestic wells in mining areas documented contaminations of arsenic, lead, barium, beryllium, selenium, iron, manganese, aluminum and zinc levels surpassing drinking water standards. A statistical study showed that water treatment facilities in MTR counties had significantly higher violations under the Safe Drinking Water Act compared to non-MTR counties and non-mining counties. Another study showed that ecological integrity of streams negatively correlates with cancer mortality rate in West Virginia; unhealthy streams correlates with higher cancer mortality rate. However, more studies are required on MTR impacts on public water and human health, some studies indicate the possibility of the two. Given the evidence that MTR impaired surface and ground water quality, safety of drinking water requires more efforts for protection and prevention. Environmental justice Poverty and mortality disparities in Central Appalachia The Appalachian region has a long history characterized by poverty. From 2013 to 2017, 6.5% to 41.0% of the population in Appalachia was impoverished. The average poverty rate for this region is 16.3%, above the national average of 14.6%. Poverty rates are directly proportional to mountaintop mining areas. Poverty rates in MTM areas were found to be significantly higher than in non-mining areas. In 2007, adult poverty rates in MTM areas were 10.1% greater than adult poverty rates in non-mining areas in Appalachia. Mortality rates show a similar relationship. Economic and health disparities are concentrated in MTM areas. Alliance for Appalachia The Alliance for Appalachia was established in 2006, with the mission to promote a healthy Appalachia centered around community empowerment. Today, The Alliance for Appalachia includes fifteen different member organizations working directly with impacted communities throughout Appalachia and participating in regional and federal-level campaigns. This group has been instrumental in advocating for the RECLAIM Act. Appalachian women-led activism Appalachian ironweed has become a symbol for the women of the Appalachian region. It represents their dedication to environmental activism and their tremendous strength to bear the burden of mountaintop mining while sustaining the grassroots fight for change. Activists like Maria Gunnoe and Maria Lambert dedicated their efforts to protect their families and their land from the adverse effects of MTM. Gunnoe and Lambert both organized and led grassroots efforts to educate their communities on the human health risks of MTM, with an emphasis on safe drinking water. Gunnoe advocated for the federal Clean Water Protection Act and continues to promote renewable energy efforts for the region. Lambert established the Prenter Water Fund which provides clean water to communities whose water has become polluted due to local MTM. Other sites Laciana Valley, Spain (1994–2014) Art, entertainment, and media Short Videos videographer Trip Jennings highlights communities at risk of MTR and emphasizes the importance of reviving the economy in order to create a healthy future. Communities at Risk (2015). The Smithsonian Channel provides an aerial visual of the extent and scale of the process of MTR. The Land of Mountaintop Removal (2013). Documentaries Chet Pancake released a feature-length documentary on mountaintop removal, Black Diamonds: Mountaintop Removal & The Fight for Coalfield Justice (2006), a selection in the Documentary Fortnight at the Museum of Modern Art. The film features Julia Bonds, who won the 2003 Goldman Environmental Prize. The documentary, Mountain Top Removal (2007), focuses on Mountain Justice Summer activists, coal field residents, and coal industry officials. On April 18, 2008, the film received the Reel Current award selected and was presented by Al Gore at the Nashville Film Festival. The feature documentary, Burning the Future: Coal in America (2008), was awarded the International Documentary Association's 2008 Pare Lorentz award for Best Documentary. The Last Mountain (2011), directed by Bill Haney, details the effects on the land and people living near mountaintop removal and coal burning sites. Maria Gunnoe, the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize winner, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and others present the devastation, confront the politicians and corporate interests, and offer wind power as one solution for Coal River Mountain, West Virginia. The autoethnographic documentary film Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story (2013), by Beth Stephens with Annie Sprinkle, raises awareness on the issue of mountain top removal in West Virginia by bringing together environmental activism, performance art, and queer activism against the issue. Stephens says: "My hope for this film, is that in addition to it being a compelling story, it will inspire and raise awareness in groups of people not normally associated with the environmental movement, and especially in LGBTQ communities. There are relatively few films about environmental issues that feature out queers." Non-fiction books In April 2005, a group of Kentucky writers traveled together to see the devastation from mountaintop removal mining, and Wind Publishing produced the resulting collection of poems, essays and photographs, co-edited by Kristin Johannesen, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Mary Ann Taylor-Hall in Missing Mountains: We went to the mountaintop, but it wasn't there. Dr. Shirley Stewart Burns, a West Virginia coalfield native, wrote the first academic work on mountaintop removal, titled Bringing Down The Mountains (2007), which is loosely based on her 2005 Ph.D. dissertation of the same name. Burns was also a co-editor, with Kentucky author Silas House and filmmaker Mari-Lynn Evans, of Coal Country (2009), a companion book for the nationally recognized feature-length film of the same name. House, Silas & Howard, Jason (2009). Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal. Howard, Jason (Editor) (2009). We All Live Downstream: Writings about Mountaintop Removal. Dr. Rebecca Scott, another native West Virginian, examined the sociological relationship of identity and natural resource extraction in central Appalachia in her book, Removing Mountains (2010). Hedges, Chris; Sacco, Joe (2012). Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. Chapter 3. "Days of Devastation: Welch, West Virginia." Cultural historian Jeff Biggers published The United States of Appalachia (), which examined the cultural and human costs of mountaintop removal.Additionally, many personal interest stories of coalfield residents have been written, including: Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness—Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia (2006) by Erik Reese Moving Mountains: How One Woman and Her Community Won Justice from Big Coal (2007) by Penny Loeb Fiction books Mountaintop removal is a major plot element of Jonathan Franzen's best-selling novel Freedom (2010), wherein a major character helps to secure land for surface mining with the promise that it will be restored and turned into a nature reserve. Same Sun Here by Silas House and Neela Vaswani is a novel for middle grade readers that deals with issues of mountaintop removal and is set over the course of one school year 2008–2009. In John Grisham's novel Gray Mountain (2014), Samantha Kofer moves from a large Wall Street law firm to a small Appalachian town where she confronts the world of coal mining. Music Caroline Herring's song "Black Mountain Lullaby" (on the album Camilla, 2012) is based on the story of Jeremy Davidson, age 3, who was killed by a mountaintop mining accident in 2004. She was inspired to write the song after reading an editorial about mountaintop removal written by Silas House that appeared in the New York Times on 19 February 2011. Lissie's album Back to Forever contains a moving protest song on the topic called simply "Mountaintop Removal". Liam Wilson of The Dillinger Escape Plan wore a homemade shirt saying "stop mtm/vf" during the band's performance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Jean Ritchie's song "Black Waters" describes the horror of coal mining in the Appalachians. John Prine's song "Paradise" addresses the impacts of strip mining in Appalachia, referencing the impacts of the technique on the Green River area in Kentucky. In 2010, David Rovics wrote and performed a song titled "Hills of Tennessee", lamenting the tragedy of mountaintop removal mining near Nashville. In 2010, a concert series titled "Music Saves Mountains" raised funds and awareness for mountaintop removal, featuring artists Ben Sollee, Big Kenny, Buddy Miller, Dave Matthews, Emmylou Harris, Gloriana, Kathy Mattea, Naomi Judd, Patty Griffin, Patty Loveless, and Alison Krauss. See also Battle of Blair Mountain Coal phase out Environmental impact of the coal industry Environmental justice and coal mining in Appalachia Julia Bonds Larry Gibson Maria Gunnoe Mount Fubilan Silas House Wendell Berry References Cited texts Copeland, C. (2004). "Mountaintop removal mining". In Humphries, M. (ed.). U.S. Coal: A Primer on the Major Issues. Nova Publishers. ISBN 1-59454-047-0. Further reading 100 Arrested at White House Calling for End to Mountaintop Coal Removal. Democracy Now! video report. Burns, Shirley Stewart (September 30, 2009). "Mountaintop Removal in Central Appalachia". Southern Spaces. McQuaid, John (January 2009). "Mining the Mountains". Smithsonian. Vol. 39, no. 10. pp. 74–85. Archived from the original on 16 January 2009. Retrieved 25 April 2009. "Surface Coal Mining in Appalachia". United States EPA. 18 June 2022. Mountaintop Mining: Background on Current Controversies (PDF). Congressional Research Service. "Mountaintop removal mining is a crime against Appalachia". Al Jazeera America. April 7, 2015. "Toxic West Virginia". Vice. 2010. Archived from the original on 2014-10-24. Retrieved 2017-09-05. "Mapping mountaintop coal mining's yearly spread in Appalachia". Phys.org. July 25, 2018.

waterlogging (agriculture)

Waterlogging water is the saturation of soil with water. Soil may be regarded as waterlogged when it is nearly saturated with water much of the time such that its air phase is restricted and anaerobic conditions prevail. In extreme cases of prolonged waterlogging, anaerobiosis occurs, the roots of mesophytes suffer, and the subsurface reducing atmosphere leads to such processes as denitrification, methanogenesis, and the reduction of iron and manganese oxides.All plants, including crops require air (specifically, oxygen) to respire, produce energy and keep their cells alive. In agriculture, waterlogging of the soil typically blocks air from getting in to the roots. With the exception of rice (Oryza sativa), most crops like maize and potato, are therefore highly intolerant to waterlogging. Plant cells use a variety of signals such the oxygen concentration, plant hormones like ethylene, energy and sugar status to acclimate to waterlogging-induced oxygen deprivation. Roots can survive waterlogging by forming aerenchyma, inducing anaerobic metabolism and changing their root system architecture.In irrigated agricultural land, waterlogging is often accompanied by soil salinity as waterlogged soils prevent leaching of the salts imported by the irrigation water. From a gardening point of view, waterlogging is the process whereby the soil hardens to the point where neither air nor water can soak through. See also Drainage Drainage research Drainage system (agriculture) Effects of weather on sport Environmental impact of irrigation Polder Soil salinity control Swamp Watertable control References External links http://www.waterlog.info gives free downloads of software and articles on land drainage for waterlogging control.

leopold center for sustainable agriculture

The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture (LCSA) is a center at Iowa State University devoted to the study and promotion of new techniques in sustainable agriculture. The goals of the Center are: “to identify and develop new ways to farm profitably while conserving natural resources as well as reducing negative environmental and social impacts.” It is considered “one of the top institutions supporting research on agricultural techniques that prioritize sustainability and conservation in the context of profitable farming.” History The center is named for Aldo Leopold, a native of Burlington, Iowa. It was created in 1987 as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act, for which Representative Paul Johnson was the Iowa House floor manager. Between 1987 and 2017, the Center awarded more than 500 research grants to study agriculture issues like conservation buffers, rotational grazing, and building local food economies. While Leopold's focus is on Iowa's specific food and farm landscape, many of its findings have had a national and international impact.About 75 to 85 percent of the Iowa's nutrient reduction strategies have come through the Leopold Center. It research on cover crops, buffer strips, saturated buffers, bioreactors and wetlands and other practices has been widely used to offset nutrient and soil losses. Mark Rasmussen is the current Leopold Center director. A 17-member Advisory Board advises the director on policies, budget, and program review. The center funded a robotic mechanical weeder project that aims to build a lightweight, energy-efficient, ATV-size robot that could destroy weeds without chemicals in row crops. The energy cost could be less than one fifth of the energy required in conventional weeding. Budget cuts In 2017, the Leopold Center was defunded in budget cuts made by Iowa's state government. Without state funds, the center will no longer offer grants to academic researchers, working farmers, or field-to-table advocacy programs. Students at ISU will no longer be able to receive financial support for advanced degrees in sustainable agriculture. Due to the cuts, five of the center's staff members were let go, leaving just director Rasmussen and distinguished fellow Fred Kirschenmann. The Center moved into a smaller office and downsized 30 years of records. They received a commitment from ISU, to keep the center's website up with all past research searchable in the university database. Many believe the influence of agribusiness on legislators leads to a lack of willingness to support the center. A grassroots coalition of current students of the ISU Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture, emeritus faculty and alumni of ISU, farmers, and members of Iowa Farmers Union, Iowa Environmental Council, Center for Rural Affairs, Women, Food and Agriculture Network, ISU Sustainable Agriculture Student Association, and Practical Farmers of Iowa was formed to revive the center and to educate the public of Center's mission and activities.The legislation was introduced by state representatives Charles Isenhart and Beth Wessel-Kroeschell to fund the center. The bill would make $1 million in annual public funding available to the center if ISU's president first raised the same amount in private funds. Together, the $2 million would equal the Leopold Center's pre-cutback budget. References External links "Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture". leopold.iastate.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-16.

aswan dam

The Aswan Dam, or more specifically since the 1980s, the Aswan High Dam, is one of the world's largest embankment dams, which was built across the Nile in Aswan, Egypt, between 1960 and 1970. When it was completed, it was the tallest earthen dam in the world, eclipsing the United States' Chatuge Dam. Its significance largely upstaged the previous Aswan Low Dam initially completed in 1902 downstream. Based on the success of the Low Dam, then at its maximum utilization, construction of the High Dam became a key objective of the new regime the Free Officers movement of 1952; with its ability to better control flooding, provide increased water storage for irrigation and generate hydroelectricity, the dam was seen as pivotal to Egypt's planned industrialization. Like the earlier implementation, the High Dam has had a significant effect on the economy and culture of Egypt. Before the High Dam was built, even with the old dam in place, the annual flooding of the Nile during late summer had continued to pass largely unimpeded down the valley from its East African drainage basin. These floods brought high water with natural nutrients and minerals that annually enriched the fertile soil along its floodplain and delta; this predictability had made the Nile valley ideal for farming since ancient times. However, this natural flooding varied, since high-water years could destroy the whole crop, while low-water years could create widespread drought and consequently famine. Both these events had continued to occur periodically. As Egypt's population grew and technology increased, both a desire and the ability developed to completely control the flooding, and thus both protect and support farmland and its economically important cotton crop. With the greatly increased reservoir storage provided by the High Aswan Dam, the floods could be controlled and the water could be stored for later release over multiple years. The Aswan Dam was designed by the Moscow-based Hydroproject Institute. Designed for both irrigation and power generation, the dam incorporates a number of relatively new features, including a very deep grout curtain below its base. Although the reservoir will eventually silt in, even the most conservative estimates indicate the dam will give at least 200 years of service. Construction history The earliest recorded attempt to build a dam near Aswan was in the 11th century, when the Arab polymath and engineer Ibn al-Haytham (known as Alhazen in the West) was summoned to Egypt by the Fatimid Caliph, Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, to regulate the flooding of the Nile, a task requiring an early attempt at an Aswan Dam. His field work convinced him of the impracticality of this scheme. Aswan Low Dam, 1898–1902 The British began construction of the first dam across the Nile in 1898. Construction lasted until 1902 and the dam was opened on 10 December 1902. The project was designed by Sir William Willcocks and involved several eminent engineers, including Sir Benjamin Baker and Sir John Aird, whose firm, John Aird & Co., was the main contractor. Aswan High Dam prelude, 1954–1960 In 1952, the Greek-Egyptian engineer Adrian Daninos began to develop the plan of the new Aswan Dam. Although the Low Dam was almost overtopped in 1946, the government of King Farouk showed no interest in Daninos's plans. Instead the Nile Valley Plan by the British hydrologist Harold Edwin Hurst was favored, which proposed to store water in Sudan and Ethiopia, where evaporation is much lower. The Egyptian position changed completely after the overthrow of the monarchy, led by the Free Officers Movement including Gamal Abdel Nasser. The Free Officers were convinced that the Nile Waters had to be stored in Egypt for political reasons, and within two months, the plan of Daninos was accepted. Initially, both the United States and the USSR were interested in helping development of the dam. Complications ensued due to their rivalry during the Cold War, as well as growing intra-Arab tensions. In 1955, Nasser was claiming to be the leader of Arab nationalism, in opposition to the traditional monarchies, especially the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq following its signing of the 1955 Baghdad Pact. At that time the U.S. feared that communism would spread to the Middle East, and it saw Nasser as a natural leader of an anticommunist procapitalist Arab League. America and the United Kingdom offered to help finance construction of the High Dam, with a loan of $270 million, in return for Nasser's leadership in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. While opposed to communism, capitalism, and imperialism, Nasser identified as a tactical neutralist, and sought to work with both the U.S. and the USSR for Egyptian and Arab benefit. After the UN criticized a raid by Israel against Egyptian forces in Gaza in 1955, Nasser realized that he could not portray himself as the leader of pan-Arab nationalism if he could not defend his country militarily against Israel. In addition to his development plans, he looked to quickly modernize his military, and he turned first to the U.S. for aid. American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and President Dwight Eisenhower told Nasser that the U.S. would supply him with weapons only if they were used for defensive purposes and if he accepted American military personnel for supervision and training. Nasser did not accept these conditions, and consulted the USSR for support. Although Dulles believed that Nasser was only bluffing and that the USSR would not aid Nasser, he was wrong: the USSR promised Nasser a quantity of arms in exchange for a deferred payment of Egyptian grain and cotton. On 27 September 1955, Nasser announced an arms deal, with Czechoslovakia acting as a middleman for the Soviet support. Instead of attacking Nasser for turning to the Soviets, Dulles sought to improve relations with him. In December 1955, the US and the UK pledged $56 and $14 million, respectively, toward construction of the High Aswan Dam. Though the Czech arms deal created an incentive for the US to invest at Aswan, the UK cited the deal as a reason for repealing its promise of dam funds. Dulles was angered more by Nasser's diplomatic recognition of China, which was in direct conflict with Dulles's policy of containment of communism.Several other factors contributed to the US deciding to withdraw its offer of funding for the dam. Dulles believed that the USSR would not fulfil its commitment of military aid. He was also irritated by Nasser's neutrality and attempts to play both sides of the Cold War. At the time, other Western allies in the Middle East, including Turkey and Iraq, were resentful that Egypt, a persistently neutral country, was being offered so much aid.In June 1956, the Soviets offered Nasser $1.12 billion at 2% interest for the construction of the dam. On 19 July the U.S. State Department announced that American financial assistance for the High Dam was "not feasible in present circumstances."On 26 July 1956, with wide Egyptian acclaim, Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal that included fair compensation for the former owners. Nasser planned on the revenues generated by the canal to help fund construction of the High Dam. When the Suez War broke out, the United Kingdom, France, and Israel seized the canal and the Sinai. But pressure from the U.S. and the USSR at the United Nations and elsewhere forced them to withdraw. In 1958, the USSR proceeded to provide support for the High Dam project. In the 1950s, archaeologists began raising concerns that several major historical sites, including the famous temple of Abu Simbel were about to be submerged by waters collected behind the dam. A rescue operation began in 1960 under UNESCO (for details see below under Effects). Despite its size, the Aswan project has not materially hurt the Egyptian balance of payments. The three Soviet credits covered virtually all of the project's foreign exchange requirements, including the cost of technical services, imported power generating and transmission equipment and some imported equipment for land reclamation. Egypt was not seriously burdened by payments on the credits, most of which were extended for 12 years with interest at the very low rate of 2-1/2%. Repayments to the USSR constituted only a small net drain during the first half of the 1960s, and increased export earnings derived from crops grown on newly reclaimed land have largely offset the modest debt service payments in recent years. During 1965-70, these export earnings amounted to an estimated $126 million, compared with debt service payments of $113 million. Construction and filling, 1960–1976 The Soviets also provided technicians and heavy machinery. The enormous rock and clay dam was designed by the Soviet Hydroproject Institute along with some Egyptian engineers. 25,000 Egyptian engineers and workers contributed to the construction of the dams. Originally designed by West German un French engineers in the early 1950s and slated for financing with Western credits, the Aswan HighDam became the USSR's largest and most famous foreign aid project after the United States, the United Kingdom, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) withdrew their support in 1956.. The first Soviet loan of $100 million to cover construction of coffer dams for diversion of the Nile was extended in 1958. An additional $225 million was extended in 1960 to complete the dam and construct power-generating facilities, and subsequently about $100 million was made available for land reclamation. These credits of some $425 million covered only the foreign exchange costs of the project, including salaries of Soviet engineers who supervised the project and were responsible for the installation and testing of Soviet equipment. Actual construction, which began in 1960, was done by Egyptian companies on contract to the High Dam Authority, and all domestic costs were borne by the Egyptians. Egyptian participation in the venture has raised the construction industry's capacity and reputation significantly.On the Egyptian side, the project was led by Osman Ahmed Osman's Arab Contractors. The relatively young Osman underbid his only competitor by one-half. 1960: Start of construction on 9 January 1964: First dam construction stage completed, reservoir started filling 1970: The High Dam, as-Sad al-'Aali, completed on 21 July 1976: Reservoir reached capacity. Specifications The Aswan High Dam is 4,000 metres (13,000 ft) long, 980 m (3,220 ft) wide at the base, 40 m (130 ft) wide at the crest and 111 m (364 ft) tall. It contains 43,000,000 cubic metres (56,000,000 cu yd) of material. At maximum, 11,000 cubic metres per second (390,000 cu ft/s) of water can pass through the dam. There are further emergency spillways for an extra 5,000 cubic metres per second (180,000 cu ft/s), and the Toshka Canal links the reservoir to the Toshka Depression. The reservoir, named Lake Nasser, is 500 km (310 mi) long and 35 km (22 mi) at its widest, with a surface area of 5,250 square kilometres (2,030 sq mi). It holds 132 cubic kilometres (1.73×1011 cu yd) of water. Irrigation scheme Due to the absence of appreciable rainfall, Egypt's agriculture depends entirely on irrigation. With irrigation, two crops per year can be produced, except for sugar cane which has a growing period of almost one year. The high dam at Aswan releases, on average, 55 cubic kilometres (45,000,000 acre⋅ft) water per year, of which some 46 cubic kilometres (37,000,000 acre⋅ft) are diverted into the irrigation canals. In the Nile valley and delta, almost 336,000 square kilometres (130,000 sq mi) benefit from these waters producing on average 1.8 crops per year. The annual crop consumptive use of water is about 38 cubic kilometres (31,000,000 acre⋅ft). Hence, the overall irrigation efficiency is 38/46 = 0.826 or 83%. This is a relatively high irrigation efficiency. The field irrigation efficiencies are much less, but the losses are reused downstream. This continuous reuse accounts for the high overall efficiency. The following table shows the distribution of irrigation water over the branch canals taking off from the one main irrigation canal, the Mansuriya Canal near Giza. * Period 1 March to 31 July. 1 feddan is 0.42 ha or about 1 acre. * Data from the Egyptian Water Use Management Project (EWUP)The salt concentration of the water in the Aswan reservoir is about 0.25 kilograms per cubic metre (0.42 lb/cu yd), a very low salinity level. At an annual inflow of 55 cubic kilometres (45,000,000 acre⋅ft), the annual salt influx reaches 14 million tons. The average salt concentration of the drainage water evacuated into the sea and the coastal lakes is 2.7 kilograms per cubic metre (4.6 lb/cu yd). At an annual discharge of 10 cubic kilometres (2.4 cu mi) (not counting the 2 kilograms per cubic metre [3.4 lb/cu yd] of salt intrusion from the sea and the lakes, see figure "Water balances"), the annual salt export reaches 27 million ton. In 1995, the output of salt was higher than the influx, and Egypt's agricultural lands were desalinizing. Part of this could be due to the large number of subsurface drainage projects executed in the last decades to control the water table and soil salinity.Drainage through subsurface drains and drainage channels is essential to prevent a deterioration of crop yields from waterlogging and soil salinization caused by irrigation. By 2003, more than 20,000 square kilometres (7,700 sq mi) have been equipped with a subsurface drainage system and approximately 7.2 square kilometres (2.8 sq mi) of water is drained annually from areas with these systems. The total investment cost in agricultural drainage over 27 years from 1973 to 2002 was about $3.1 billion covering the cost of design, construction, maintenance, research and training. During this period 11 large-scale projects were implemented with financial support from World Bank and other donors. Effects The High Dam has resulted in protection from floods and droughts, an increase in agricultural production and employment, electricity production, and improved navigation that also benefits tourism. Conversely, the dam flooded a large area, causing the relocation of over 100,000 people. Many archaeological sites were submerged while others were relocated. The dam is blamed for coastline erosion, soil salinity, and health problems. The assessment of the costs and benefits of the dam remains controversial decades after its completion. According to one estimate, the annual economic benefit of the High Dam immediately after its completion was LE 255 million, $587 million using the exchange rate in 1970 of $2.30 per LE 1): LE 140 million from agricultural production, LE 100 million from hydroelectric generation, LE 10 million from flood protection, and LE 5 million from improved navigation. At the time of its construction, total cost, including unspecified "subsidiary projects" and the extension of electric power lines, amounted to LE 450 million. Not taking into account the negative environmental and social effects of the dam, its costs are thus estimated to have been recovered within only two years. One observer notes: "The impacts of the Aswan High Dam (...) have been overwhelmingly positive. Although the Dam has contributed to some environmental problems, these have proved to be significantly less severe than was generally expected, or currently believed by many people." Another observer disagreed and he recommended that the dam should be torn down. Tearing it down would cost only a fraction of the funds required for "continually combating the dam's consequential damage" and 500,000 hectares (1,900 sq mi) of fertile land could be reclaimed from the layers of mud on the bed of the drained reservoir. Samuel C. Florman wrote about the dam: "As a structure it is a success. But in its effect on the ecology of the Nile Basin – most of which could have been predicted – it is a failure".Periodic floods and droughts have affected Egypt since ancient times. The dam mitigated the effects of floods, such as those in 1964, 1973, and 1988. Navigation along the river has been improved, both upstream and downstream of the dam. Sailing along the Nile is a favorite tourism activity, which is mainly done during the winter when the natural flow of the Nile would have been too low to allow navigation of cruise ships. A new fishing industry has been created around Lake Nasser, though it is struggling due to its distance from any significant markets. The annual production was about 35 000 tons in the mid-1990s. Factories for the fishing industry and packaging have been set up near the Lake.According to a 1971 CIA declassified report, Although the High Dam has not created ecological problems as serious as some observers have charged, its construction has brought economic losses as well as gains. These losses derive largely from the settling in dam's lake of the rich silt traditionally borne by the Nile. To date (1971), the main impact has been on the fishing industry. Egypt's Mediterranean catch, which once averaged 35,000-40,000 tons annually, has shrunk to 20,000 tons or less, largely because the loss of plankton nourished by the silt has eliminated the sardine population in Egyptian waters. Fishing in high dam's lake may in time at least partly offset the loss of saltwater fish, but only the most optimistic estimates place the eventual catch as high as 15,000-20,000 tons. Lack of continuing silt deposits at the mouth of the river also has contributed to a serious erosion problem. Commercial fertilizer requirements and salination and drainage difficulties, already large in perennially irrigated areas of Lower and Middle Egypt, will be somewhat increased in Upper Egypt by the change to perennial irrigation. Drought protection, agricultural production and employment The dams also protected Egypt from the droughts in 1972–73 and 1983–87 that devastated East and West Africa. The High Dam allowed Egypt to reclaim about 2.0 million feddan (840,000 hectares) in the Nile Delta and along the Nile Valley, increasing the country's irrigated area by a third. The increase was brought about both by irrigating what used to be desert and by bringing under cultivation of 385,000 hectares (950,000 acres) that were previously used as flood retention basins. About half a million families were settled on these new lands. In particular the area under rice and sugar cane cultivation increased. In addition, about 1 million feddan (420,000 hectares), mostly in Upper Egypt, were converted from flood irrigation with only one crop per year to perennial irrigation allowing two or more crops per year. On other previously irrigated land, yields increased because water could be made available at critical low-flow periods. For example, wheat yields in Egypt tripled between 1952 and 1991 and better availability of water contributed to this increase. Most of the 32 km3 of freshwater, or almost 40 percent of the average flow of the Nile that were previously lost to the sea every year could be put to beneficial use. While about 10 km3 of the water saved is lost due to evaporation in Lake Nasser, the amount of water available for irrigation still increased by 22 km3. Other estimates put evaporation from Lake Nasser at between 10 and 16 cubic km per year. Electricity production The dam powers twelve generators each rated at 175 megawatts (235,000 hp), with a total of 2.1 gigawatts (2,800,000 hp). Power generation began in 1967. When the High Dam first reached peak output it produced around half of Egypt's production of electric power (about 15 percent by 1998), and it gave most Egyptian villages the use of electricity for the first time. The High Dam has also improved the efficiency and the extension of the Old Aswan Hydropower stations by regulating upstream flows.All High Dam power facilities were completed ahead of schedule. 12 turbines were installed and tested, giving the plant an installed capacity of 2,100 megawatts (mw), or more than twice the national total in 1960. With this capacity, the Aswan plant can produce 10 billion kwh of power yearly. Two 500-kilovolt trunk lines to Cairo have been completed, and initial transmission problems, stemming mainly from poor insulators, were solved. Also, the damage inflicted on a main transformer station in 1968 by Israeli commandos has been repaired, and the Aswan plant is fully integrated with the power network in Lower Egypt. By 1971 estimation, Power output at Aswan, wont reach much more than half of the plant's theoretical capacity, because of limited water supplies and the differing seasonal water-use patterns for irrigation and power production. Agricultural demand for water in the summer far exceeds the amount needed to meet the comparatively low summer demand for electric power. Heavy summer irrigation use, however, will leave insufficient water under Egyptian control to permit hydroelectric power production at full capacity in the winter. Technical studies indicate that a maximum annual output of 5 billion kwh appears to be all that can be sustained due to fluctuations in Nile flows. Resettlement and compensations Lake Nasser flooded much of lower Nubia and 100,000 to 120,000 people were resettled in Sudan and Egypt. In Sudan, 50,000 to 70,000 Sudanese Nubians were moved from the old town of Wadi Halfa and its surrounding villages. Some were moved to a newly created settlement on the shore of Lake Nasser called New Wadi Halfa, and some were resettled approximately 700 kilometres (430 mi) south to the semi-arid Butana plain near the town of Khashm el-Girba up the Atbara River. The climate there had a regular rainy season as opposed to their previous desert habitat in which virtually no rain fell. The government developed an irrigation project, called the New Halfa Agricultural Development Scheme to grow cotton, grains, sugar cane and other crops. The Nubians were resettled in twenty five planned villages that included schools, medical facilities, and other services, including piped water and some electrification. In Egypt, the majority of the 50,000 Nubians were moved three to ten kilometers from the Nile near Edna and Kom Ombo, 45 kilometers (28 mi) downstream from Aswan in what was called "New Nubia". Housing and facilities were built for 47 village units whose relationship to each other approximated that in Old Nubia. Irrigated land was provided to grow mainly sugar cane.In 2019–20, Egypt started to compensate the Nubians who lost their homes following the dam impoundment. Archaeological sites Twenty-two monuments and architectural complexes that were threatened by flooding from Lake Nasser, including the Abu Simbel temples, were preserved by moving them to the shores of the lake under the UNESCO Nubia Campaign. Also moved were Philae, Kalabsha and Amada.These monuments were granted to countries that helped with the works: The Debod temple to Madrid The Temple of Dendur to the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York The Temple of Taffeh to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden of Leiden The Temple of Ellesyia to the Museo Egizio of TurinThese items were removed to the garden area of the Sudan National Museum of Khartoum: The temple of Ramses II at Aksha The temple of Hatshepsut at Buhen The temple of Khnum at Kumma The tomb of the Nubian prince Djehuti-hotep at Debeira The temples of Dedwen and Sesostris III at Semna The granite columns from the Faras Cathedral A part of the paintings of the Faras Cathedral; the other part is in the National Museum of Warsaw.The Temple of Ptah at Gerf Hussein had its free-standing section reconstructed at New Kalabsha, alongside the Temple of Kalabsha, Beit el-Wali, and the Kiosk of Qertassi. The remaining archaeological sites, including the Buhen fort and the cemetery of Fadrus have been flooded by Lake Nasser. Loss of sediments Before the construction of the High Dam, the Nile deposited sediments of various particle size – consisting of fine sand, silt and clay – on fields in Upper Egypt through its annual flood, contributing to soil fertility. However, the nutrient value of the sediment has often been overestimated. 88 percent of the sediment was carried to the sea before the construction of the High Dam. The nutrient value added to the land by the sediment was only 6,000 tons of potash, 7,000 tons of phosphorus pentoxide and 17,000 tons of nitrogen. These amounts are insignificant compared to what is needed to reach the yields achieved today in Egypt's irrigation. Also, the annual spread of sediment due to the Nile floods occurred along the banks of the Nile. Areas far from the river which never received the Nile floods before are now being irrigated.A more serious issue of trapping of sediment by the dam is that it has increased coastline erosion surrounding the Nile Delta. The coastline erodes an estimated 125–175 m (410–574 ft) per year. Waterlogging and increase in soil salinity Before the construction of the High Dam, groundwater levels in the Nile Valley fluctuated 8–9 m (26–30 ft) per year with the water level of the Nile. During summer when evaporation was highest, the groundwater level was too deep to allow salts dissolved in the water to be pulled to the surface through capillary action. With the disappearance of the annual flood and heavy year-round irrigation, groundwater levels remained high with little fluctuation leading to waterlogging. Soil salinity also increased because the distance between the surface and the groundwater table was small enough (1–2 m depending on soil conditions and temperature) to allow water to be pulled up by evaporation so that the relatively small concentrations of salt in the groundwater accumulated on the soil surface over the years. Since most of the farmland did not have proper subsurface drainage to lower the groundwater table, salinization gradually affected crop yields. Drainage through sub-surface drains and drainage channels is essential to prevent a deterioration of crop yields from soil salinization and waterlogging. By 2003, more than 2 million hectares have been equipped with a subsurface drainage system at a cost from 1973 to 2002 of about $3.1 billion. Health Contrary to many predictions made prior to the Aswan High Dam construction and publications that followed, that the prevalence of schistosomiasis (bilharzia) would increase, it did not. This assumption did not take into account the extent of perennial irrigation that was already present throughout Egypt decades before the high dam closure. By the 1950s only a small proportion of Upper Egypt had not been converted from basin (low transmission) to perennial (high transmission) irrigation. Expansion of perennial irrigation systems in Egypt did not depend on the high dam. In fact, within 15 years of the high dam closure there was solid evidence that bilharzia was declining in Upper Egypt. S. haematobium has since disappeared altogether. Suggested reasons for this include improvements in irrigation practice. In the Nile Delta, schistosomiasis had been highly endemic, with prevalence in the villages 50% or higher for almost a century before. This was a consequence of the conversion of the Delta to perennial irrigation to grow long staple cotton by the British. This has changed. Large-scale treatment programmes in the 1990s using single-dose oral medication contributed greatly to reducing the prevalence and severity of S. mansoni in the Delta. Other effects Sediment deposited in the reservoir is lowering the water storage capacity of Lake Nasser. The reservoir storage capacity is 162 km3, including 31 km3 dead storage at the bottom of the lake below 147 m (482 ft) above sea level, 90 km3 live storage, and 41 km3 of storage for high flood waters above 175 m (574 ft) above sea level. The annual sediment load of the Nile is about 134 million tons. This means that the dead storage volume would be filled up after 300–500 years if the sediment accumulated at the same rate throughout the area of the lake. Obviously sediment accumulates much faster at the upper reaches of the lake, where sedimentation has already affected the live storage zone.Before the construction of the High Dam, the 50,000 km (31,000 mi) of irrigation and drainage canals in Egypt had to be dredged regularly to remove sediments. After construction of the dam, aquatic weeds grew much faster in the clearer water, helped by fertilizer residues. The total length of the infested waterways was about 27,000 km (17,000 mi) in the mid-1990s. Weeds have been gradually brought under control by manual, mechanical and biological methods. Mediterranean fishing and brackish water lake fishery declined after the dam was finished because nutrients that flowed down the Nile to the Mediterranean were trapped behind the dam. For example, the sardine catch off the Egyptian coast declined from 18,000 tons in 1962 to a mere 460 tons in 1968, but then gradually recovered to 8,590 tons in 1992. A scientific article in the mid-1990s noted that "the mismatch between low primary productivity and relatively high levels of fish production in the region still presents a puzzle to scientists."A concern before the construction of the High Dam had been the potential drop in river-bed level downstream of the Dam as the result of erosion caused by the flow of sediment-free water. Estimates by various national and international experts put this drop at between and 2 and 10 meters (6.6 and 32.8 ft). However, the actual drop has been measured at 0.3–0.7 meters (0.98–2.30 ft), much less than expected.The red-brick construction industry, which consisted of hundreds of factories that used Nile sediment deposits along the river, has also been negatively affected. Deprived of sediment, they started using the older alluvium of otherwise arable land taking out of production up to 120 square kilometers (46 sq mi) annually, with an estimated 1,000 square kilometers (390 sq mi) destroyed by 1984 when the government prohibited, "with only modest success," further excavation. According to one source, bricks are now being made from new techniques which use a sand-clay mixture and it has been argued that the mud-based brick industry would have suffered even if the dam had not been built.Because of the lower turbidity of the water sunlight penetrates deeper in the Nile water. Because of this and the increased presence of nutrients from fertilizers in the water, more algae grow in the Nile. This in turn increases the costs of drinking water treatment. Apparently few experts had expected that water quality in the Nile would actually decrease because of the High Dam. Appraisal of the Project Although it is moot whether the project constitutes the best use of the funds spent, the Aswan Dam project unquestionably is and will continue to be economically beneficial to Egypt. The project has been expensive and is took considerable time to complete, as is usually the case with large hydroelectric developments, But Egypt now has a valuable asset with a long life and low operating costs. Even so, the wisdom of concentrating one-third of domestic saving and most of available foreign aid on a slow growth project is questionable. Since 1960, GNP has grown 50%, but mainly as a result of other investment. Egyptian authorities were well aware that equivalent gains in output could have been achieved more quickly and more cheaply by other means. A series of low dams, similar to the barrages now contemplated, was suggested by Egyptian engineers as a more economical means of achieving up to 2,000 mw of additional generating capacity, US and WorldBank agricultural experts had long recommended improved drainage, introduction of hybrid seeds, and other such low-cost alternatives to land reclamation as a means of increasing agricultural output, In other areas, most notably the once efficient cotton textile industry, investment was needed to forestall an output decline, Implementation of these and other alternatives has been postponed rather than precluded by the High Dam project. However, the decision to concentrate Egyptian savings and energies on the Aswan project for a decade was heavily based on non-economic factors. Nasser undoubtedly believed that a project of considerable symbolic appeal was needed to mobilize the population behind the government's economic goals, He also apparently felt that the East and West would be more easily persuaded to bid against each other for a project of this scope. The Aswan High Dam made an appreciable contribution to Egyptian GNP, however the returns were well below what the planners had anticipated. The principal limiting factors on the High Dam's contribution to Egyptian output are a shortage of land suitable for reclamation, the high cost and long time required to bring reclaimed land to full productivity, ,and an inadequate water supply to meet power and irrigation goals simultaneously. The last limitation arises in part from the allocation in a 1959 agreement of more water to Sudan than was originally foreseen and in part from differences in the seasonal demand pattern of agriculture and the hydroelectric plant for the water. Irrigation requires very heavy use of water during summer months, while power generation needs peak during the winter. Ecological problems created by the dam, most of which were anticipated, have not seriously harmed the economy, although a few minor industries have been damaged. The dam is, nonetheless, a viable project. Eventually the contribution to GNP equals as much as 20% of total investment. Moreover the dam and associated projects provided returns that at least offset the cost of operation, repayment of foreign loans and amortisation of domestic loans. See also Closure of the Suez Canal (1967-1975) Energy in Egypt Egyptian Public Works List of conventional hydroelectric power stations List of largest dams List of power stations in Egypt Water politics in the Nile Basin References External links View the official opening of the Aswan Dam in 1971 Aswan Dam Sixth biggest dam LIFE Magazine Feb. 12, 1971 Overview of problems created by Aswan Dam

cropping system

The term cropping system refers to the crops, crop sequences and management techniques used on a particular agricultural field over a period of years. It includes all spatial and temporal aspects of managing an agricultural system. Historically, cropping systems have been designed to maximise yield, but modern agriculture is increasingly concerned with promoting environmental sustainability in cropping systems. Crop choice Crop choice is central to any cropping system. In evaluating whether a given crop will be planted, a farmer must consider its profitability, adaptability to changing conditions, resistance to disease, and requirement for specific technologies during growth or harvesting. They must also consider the prevailing environmental conditions on their farm, and how the crop will fit in with other elements of their production system. Crop organisation and rotation Monoculture is the practice of growing a single crop in a given area, where polyculture involves growing multiple crops in an area. Monocropping (or continuous monoculture) is a system in which the same crop is grown in the same area for a number of growing seasons. Many modern farms are made up of a number of fields, which can be cultivated separately and thus can be used in a crop rotation sequence. Crop rotation has been employed for thousands of years and has been widely found to increase yield and prevent harmful changes to the soil environment that limit productivity in the long term. Although the specific mechanisms regulating that effect are not fully understood, they are thought to be related to differential effects on soil chemical, physical, and microbiological properties by different crops. By affecting the soil in different ways, crops in a rotation help to stabilise changes in the properties. Another consideration is that many agricultural pests are species-specific and so having a given species present in a field only some of the time helps to prevent populations of pests from growing.The organisation of individual plants in a field is also variable and typically depends on the crop being grown. Many vegetables, cereals, and fruits are grown in contiguous rows, which are wide enough to allow cultivation (or mowing, in the case of fruits) without damaging crop plants. Other systems aim for maximum plant density and have no such organisation. Forages are grown in that manner since animal traffic is expected, and maximum plant density is required for their nutrition, as are cover crops, since their purpose of competing with weeds and preventing soil erosion depends largely on density. Residue management Managing crop residues is important in most systems. Some of the nutrients contained in these dead tissues are made available to crops during decomposition, reducing the need for fertiliser inputs. Leaving residues in place also increases the soil organic matter (SOM), which has a number of benefits. Specific management practices can have a number of other impacts. Tillage Tillage is the primary method by which farmers manage crop residues. Different types of tillage result in varying amounts of crop residue being incorporated into the soil profile. Conventional or intensive tillage typically leaves less than 15% of crop residues on a field, reduced tillage leaves 15–30%, and conservation tillage systems leave at least 30% on the soil surface. The differences observed across these systems are diverse, and there is still considerable debate concerning their relative economic and environmental impact, but a number of widely reported benefits have led to a major shift towards reduced tillage in modern cropping systems.In general, leaving residues on the soil surface results in a mulching effect which helps control erosion, prevents excessive evaporation, and suppresses weeds, but may necessitate the use of specialised planting equipment. Incorporating residues into the soil profile results in rapid decomposition by soil microorganisms, which makes planting easier and in some cases could mean that nutrients will be made available to plants sooner, but limited erosion control and weed suppression are provided. Under reduced or no-tillage, limited exposure to soil microorganisms can slow the rate of decomposition thus delaying the conversion of organic polymers to carbon dioxide and increasing the amount of carbon sequestered by the system, although in poorly aerated soils this may be offset in part by an increase in nitrous oxide emissions. Burning In some systems residues are burned. This is a fast and cheap way to clear a field in preparation for the next planting, and can assist with pest control, but has a number of drawbacks: organic matter (carbon) is lost from the system, soil is exposed and becomes more susceptible to erosion, and the smoke produced is an atmospheric pollutant. In many parts of the world, this practice is restricted or banned. Removal Especially in developing countries, crop residues may be removed and used for human or animal consumption, or other purposes. This provides a secondary source of sustenance or income, but precludes the benefits associated with leaving residues within the system. Nutrient management Nutrients are depleted during crop growth, and must be renewed or replaced in order for agriculture to continue on a piece of land. This is generally accomplished with fertilisers, which can be organic or synthetic in origin. A large component of the organic farming movement is a preference for organic-source fertilisers. Excessive fertilisation is not only costly, but can harm crops and have a number of environmental consequences. Therefore, there is considerable interest in developing nutrient management plans for individual plots which attempt to optimise fertiliser application rates. Water management Soil moisture content is an important factor in plant development, and must be maintained within a range throughout the growing period. The range of tolerable moisture conditions varies from crop to crop. Irrigation and fine-textured amendments can be used to increase soil moisture, whereas coarser-textured amendments and technologies such as tile drainage can be used to decrease it. See also Plant density References This article incorporates public domain material from Jasper Womach. Report for Congress: Agriculture: A Glossary of Terms, Programs, and Laws, 2005 Edition (PDF). Congressional Research Service.

sustainable materials management

Sustainable Materials Management is a systemic approach to using and reusing materials more productively over their entire lifecycles. It represents a change in how a society thinks about the use of natural resources and environmental protection. By looking at a product's entire lifecycle new opportunities can be found to reduce environmental impacts, conserve resources, and reduce costs.U.S. and global consumption of materials increased rapidly during the last century. According to the Annex to the G7 Leaders’ June 8, 2015 Declaration, global raw material use rose during the 20th century at about twice the rate of population growth. For every 1 percent increase in gross domestic product, raw material use has risen by 0.4 percent.This increasing consumption has come at a cost to the environment, including habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, overly stressed fisheries and desertification. Materials management is also associated with an estimated 42 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Failure to find more productive and sustainable ways to extract, use and manage materials, and change the relationship between material consumption and growth, has grave implications for our economy and society. Introduction Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) represents a framework to sustainably manage materials and products throughout the entire lifecycle, from resource extraction, design and manufacturing, resource productivity, consumption and end-of-life management. Traditional patterns of material consumption in the United States follow a Cradle-to-Grave pattern of raw material extraction, product manufacturing, distribution to consumers, use by consumers, and disposal; coined by The Story of Stuff author Annie Leonard as the "take-make-waste" linear economy and commonly referred to as the throw-away society, these familiar waste management practices are being revised to bring about sustainable management of resources. SMM represents a shift in how materials are used and valued with a focus on the environmental impact of material use and environmental protection throughout the entire lifecycle of a product. SMM has been adopted as a regulatory approach to manage materials by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and many other governments around the world. Sustainable Materials Management is a broad approach that overlaps and supplements many programs and concepts being adopted by governments and business around the world including zero waste, green chemistry, eco-labeling, sustainable supply-chain management, lean manufacturing, green procurement, the US EPA’s Design for the Environment Program, the G8’s 3R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle) program, UNEP's Sustainable Production and Consumption and Sustainable Resource Management programs, and OECD's Sustainable Materials Management framework. Differences between Waste Management and SMM SMM seeks the highest use of all resources while waste management focuses on managing and reducing waste and waste pollutants at the end of the lifecycle SMM focuses on the entire lifecycle of materials and products while waste management focuses on just the end-of life management of waste products SMM is concerned with inputs and outputs to/from the environment and associated impacts to air and water and is not geographically constrained while waste management only looks at outputs to the environment from waste and areas where waste is managed SMM's overall goal is long term sustainability while waste management focuses on managing one environmental impact, that associated with waste products SMM considers all industries and consumers associated with the lifecycle of a material and product as a responsible party where as waste management only considers the generators of the waste as the responsible party Product Lifecycle Models There are several similar and overlapping efforts to define and conceptualize a closed loop lifecycle of product and materials management, with many of these efforts being spearheaded by government agencies, entrepreneurs, scientists and non-governmental organizations. While similar to SMM, these product lifecycle models focus largely on the end-of-life management of materials while SMM focuses on the impacts materials, products and services have on the environment such as eutrophication, acidification, ozone layer depletion, global warming and aquatic toxicity as well as energy and water use. Product Stewardship The Product Stewardship Institute defines Product stewardship as: "the act of minimizing the health, safety, environmental, and social impacts of a product and its packaging throughout all lifecycle stages, while also maximizing economic benefits. The manufacturer, or producer, of the product has the greatest ability to minimize adverse impacts, but other stakeholders, such as suppliers, retailers, and consumers, also play a role. Stewardship can be either voluntary or required by law".British Columbia (BC) has an extensive product stewardship network administered by BC Recycles and composed of BC producers and brand owners who are required by law to collect and divert end-of-life products and packaging. Circular Economy The U.Ks Waste and Resource Action Programme (WRAP) defines the Circular Economy as being an alternative to the traditional take, make, waste economy to one that keeps resources in use as long as possible, extracts the maximum value from the materials while they are in use, then recovers the materials to generate new products at the end of the service life.The Ellen MacArthur Foundation works to accelerate the transition to a circular economy by working with businesses, academia and governments throughout the world to develop an economy that is restorative and regenerative by design and seeks to keep products, components and materials at their highest use and value at all times, distinguishing between biological and technical cycles. Cradle-to-Cradle The Dictionary of Sustainable Management defines Cradle-to-Cradle as "A phrase invented by Walter R. Stahel in the 1970s and popularized by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their 2002 book of the same name. This framework seeks to create production techniques that are not just efficient but are essentially waste free. In cradle-to-cradle production, all material inputs and outputs are seen either as technical or biological nutrients. Technical nutrients can be recycled or reused with no loss of quality and biological nutrients composted or consumed. By contrast cradle-to-grave refers to a company taking responsibility for the disposal of goods it has produced, but not necessarily putting products’ constituent components back into service." Closed Loop Recycling In closed loop recycling, a material is captured at the end of life and introduced back into the manufacturing process to make a new product Implementing SMM Globally The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) formed in 1960 and currently comprising 35 member countries including the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan and 23 countries in the European Union, works to foster economic prosperity and end poverty by promoting economic growth and financial stability for governments around the world while also taking into account the implications that economic and social growth have on the environment.Since the 1980s, the OECD has worked to promote policies that prevent, reduce and manage waste in ways that mitigate environmental impacts. It has become clear over time that increasing economic activity and materials consumptions calls for a systematic materials based approach to managing waste, one that seeks to incorporate materials back into the manufacturing process at the end of their life, in what is commonly referred to as a “cradle to cradle” approach to materials management as opposed to the traditional “cradle to grave” waste management approach. Around 2001 the OECD began to address many countries’ interest in viewing waste as a resource that can be used as inputs for new products and many countries and governments have begun adopting sustainable materials management policies. In 2012, the OECD put out a Green Growth Policy Brief on Sustainable Materials Management. In it they define SMM as“…an approach to promote sustainable materials use, integrating actions targeted at reducing negative environmental impacts and preserving natural capital throughout the life-cycle of materials, taking into account economic efficiency and social equity”.The OECD working definition includes the following notes on the definition of SMM:"Materials” include all those extracted or derived from natural resources, which may be either inorganic or organic substances, at all points throughout their life-cycles. “Life-cycle of materials” includes all activities related to materials such as extraction, transportation, production, consumption, material/product reuse, recovery, and disposal. An economically efficient outcome is achieved when net benefits to society as a whole are maximized. A variety of policy tools can support SMM, such as economic, regulatory and information instruments and partnerships. SMM may take place at different levels, including firm/sector and different government levels. SMM may cover different geographical areas and time horizons. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Sustainable Production and Consumption (UNEP) Sustainable Resource Management (UNEP) The United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) The US EPA has adopted Sustainable Materials Management as a regulatory framework for managing materials. In June 2009 the EPA put out a report that functioned as a road map to SMM in the U.S. titled Sustainable Materials Management - The Road Ahead 2009 - 2020. In this report, EPA defines SMM as “... an approach to serving human needs by using/reusing resources productively and sustainably throughout their life cycles, generally minimizing the amount of materials involved and all associated environmental impacts”.The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) sets the legislative basis for SSM in the United States, establishing a preference for resource conservation over disposal. In 2010, the Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery shifted focus from just resource recovery efforts to adopt a broader sustainable materials management approach. The new approach includes the two original waste management mandates of RCRA: 1) to protect human health and the environment from waste and 2) to conserve resources, and adds in three additional goals: 1) to “Reduce waste and increase the efficient and sustainable use of resources”, 2) “Prevent exposures to humans and ecosystems from the use of hazardous chemicals” 3) “Manage wastes and clean up chemical releases in a safe, environmentally sound manner”.In 2015 EPA published the report EPA Sustainable Materials Management Program Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2017 – 2022. This five-year plan will focus on three strategic initiatives: The built environment Organics recycling, and Reduction in packagingOther areas the EPA will focus on include sustainable electronics management, life-cycle assessment, measurement, and international SMM collaboration. References External links Annex to the G-7 Leaders’ Declaration National Recycling Coalition Sustainable Materials Management Summit, 2015

ecocide

Ecocide (Greek oikos- home and Latin cadere – to kill) describes the mass destruction of nature by humans. Ecocide threatens all human populations who are dependent on natural resources for maintaining ecosystems and ensuring their ability to support future generations. The Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide describes it as "unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts".Commonly cited examples of ecocide include; deforestation during the Vietnam War, the destruction of the environment during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, deforestation in Indonesia and the Amazon rainforest, oil pollution in the Niger Delta and the Chernobyl disaster. The term was popularised by Olof Palme when he accused the United States of ecocide at the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment.There is currently no international crime of ecocide that applies in peacetime, only in wartime, covered by the Rome Statute. It was originally planned to be included in the Rome Statute and support by many states, but was removed due to objections by the United Kingdom, France and the United States of America. Ecocide has been made a national law in several countries with many more discussing implementing a law, including the European Union. Stop Ecocide International and others are working to enshrine ecocide into the Rome Statute, making it both international law and national law in member states national law.Several world leaders, environmentalists and scientists have publicly supported ecocide being made an international crime including Pope Francis, Antonio Guterres, Greta Thunberg, Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa, Emmanuel Macron, Jane Goodall and Paul McCartney. Several countries have also supported the proposal including Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga and Vanuatu.Ecocide is a common theme in fiction with many films and books set in a post ecocide world including; Blade Runner, Mad Max, Wall-E, Interstellar, Threads and Soylent Green. Aspects of ecocide The Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide, convened by Stop Ecocide Foundation describes it as "unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts". Genocide Ecocide can threaten a people's cultural and physical existence, and several studies have shown that ecocide has genocidal dimensions. Destruction of the natural environment can result in cultural genocide by preventing people from following their traditional way of life. This is especially true for Indigenous people. Ecocide resulting from climate change and resource extraction may become a primary driver of genocide worldwide. Some Indigenous scholars have argued that ecocide and genocide are inextricable.Mainstream understanding of genocide (as defined by the United Nations) restricts genocide to acts committed against the bodies of individual people. Some genocide researchers argue that this human rights framework does a disservice to colonised Indigenous people who experienced social death with the loss of relationship to their land but who were not always killed in the process of colonisation. Climate change and mass extinction The ongoing mass extinction of species has been called ecocide. US environmental theorist Patrick Hossay argues that modern industrial civilization is ecocidal.Climate change may result in ecocide. For example, ocean acidification and warming causes damage to coral reefs, although ecocide of coral reefs has also been attributed to causes not related to climate change.Criminalization of ecocide under the Rome Statute has been proposed as a deterrent to corporations responsible for climate change, although others argue that criminalizing ecocide will not address the root causes of the climate crisis. Intent Ecocide may occur with or without intent. Environmental lawyer Polly Higgins distinguishes between ascertainable and non-ascertainable ecocide, with the former having a clear human cause while the latter does not. An example of non-ascertainable ecocide is destruction due to extreme weather events related to climate change.Arthur H. Westing discussed the element of intent in relation to ecocide, stating that "Intent may not only be impossible to establish without admission but, I believe, it is essentially irrelevant." Examples of ecocide While ecocide is recognised as a crime in a small number of countries, many examples of environmental destruction have been described as ecocides by academics, journalists, politicians and others. Vietnam War One of the most controversial aspects of the U.S. military effort in Southeast Asia was the widespread use of chemical defoliants between 1961 and 1971. 20 million gallons of toxic herbicides (like Agent Orange) were sprayed on 6 million acres of forests and crops by the U.S. Air Force. They were used to defoliate large parts of the countryside to prevent the Viet Cong from being able to hide weaponry and encampments under the foliage, and to deprive them of food. Defoliation was also used to clear sensitive areas, including base perimeters and possible ambush sites along roads and canals. More than 20% of South Vietnam's forests and 3.2% of its cultivated land was sprayed at least once. 90% of herbicide use was directed at forest defoliation.: 263  The chemicals used continue to change the landscape, cause diseases and birth defects, and poison the food chain. Official US military records have listed figures including the destruction of 20% of the jungles of South Vietnam and 20-36% (with other figures reporting 20-50%) of the mangrove forests. The environmental destruction caused by this defoliation has been described by Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, lawyers, historians and other academics as an ecocide. Russian invasion of Ukraine Based on a preliminary assessment the war has inflicted USD 51 billion in environmental damage in both territories. According to a report by the Yale School of the Environment, some 687,000 tons of petrochemicals have burned as a result of shelling, while nearly 1,600 tons of pollutants have leaked into bodies of water. Hazardous chemicals have contaminated around 70 acres of soil, and likely made agricultural activities temporarily impossible. Around 30% of Ukraine's land is now littered with explosives and more than 2.4 million hectares of forest have been damaged.According to Netherlands-based peace organization PAX, Russia's "deliberate targeting of industrial and energy infrastructure" has caused "severe" pollution, and the use of explosive weapons has left "millions of tonnes" of contaminated debris in cities and towns. In early June 2023, the Kakhovka Dam, under Russian occupation, was damaged, causing flooding and triggering warnings of an ″ecological disaster.″The Ukrainian government, international observers and journalists have described the damage as ecocide. The Ukrainian government is investigating more than 200 war crimes against the environment and 15 incidents of ecocide (a crime in Ukraine). Zelenskyy and Ukraine's prosecutor general Andriy Kostin have met with prominent European figures (Margot Wallstrom, Heidi Hautala, Mary Robinson and Greta Thunberg) to discuss the environmental damage and how to prosecute it. Deforestation in Indonesia Indonesia has one of the world's fastest deforestation rates. In 2020, forests covered approximately 49.1% of the country's land area, down from 87% in 1950. Since the 1970s, log production, various plantations and agriculture have been responsible for much of the deforestation in Indonesia. Most recently, it has been driven by the palm oil industry, which has been criticised for its environmental impact and displacement of local communities. The widespread deforestation (and other environmental destruction) in Indonesia is often described by academics as an ecocide. The situation has made Indonesia the world's largest forest-based emitter of greenhouse gases. It also threatens the survival of indigenous and endemic species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) identified 140 species of mammals as threatened and 15 as critically endangered, including the Bali myna, Sumatran orangutan, and Javan rhinoceros. Chernobyl disaster After the disaster, four square kilometres (1.5 sq mi) of pine forest directly downwind of the reactor turned reddish-brown and died, earning the name of the "Red Forest". Some animals in the worst-hit areas also died or stopped reproducing. The disaster has been described by lawyers, academics and journalists as an example of ecocide. Niger Delta oil pollution The effects of oil exploration in the fragile region of Niger Delta communities and environment have been vast. Local indigenous people have seen little improvement in their standard of living while suffering serious damage to their natural environment. Some of the hazardous damage of oil and gas exploration in the ecosystem are life threatening which includes Air pollution, Water pollution, Noise pollution etc. Affecting the aquatic lives, human health, also leads to deforestation. According to Nigerian federal government figures, there were more than 7,000 oil spills between 1970 and 2000.It has been estimated that a clean-up of the region, including full restoration of swamps, creeks, fishing grounds and mangroves, could take 25 years. The Niger Delta is one of the most polluted regions in the world. The heavy contamination of the air, ground and water with toxic pollutants is often used as an example of ecocide. Amazon rainforest deforestation Damage to the Amazon has widely been described by indigenous groups, human rights groups, politicians, academics and journalists as an ecocide and a genocide. Indigenous chiefs and human rights organizations have submitted an Article 15 communication against Jair Bolsanaro to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and genocide for harm to Indigenous people and destruction of the Amazon. Another has been submitted for ecocide by indigenous chiefs. International law There is no international law against ecocide that applies in peacetime, but the Rome Statute makes it a crime to Intentionally launch an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated. The UN's International Law Commission (ILC) considered the inclusion of the crime of ecocide to be included within the Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind, the document which later became the Rome Statute. Article 26 (crime against the environment) was publicly supported by 19 countries in the Legal Committee but was removed due to opposition from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.In 1977 the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or any other Hostile use of Environmental Modification Technique. Article I of this Convention says, "Each State Party to this Convention undertakes not to engage in military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party." There is no definition of the terms 'widespread, long-lasting or severe'. Efforts to expand international ecocide law Efforts to criminalise ecocide have sought to include the crime among those prosecuted by the International Criminal Court established by the Rome Statute. These crimes include genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. In 2010, environmental lawyer Polly Higgins submitted a proposal to the United Nations International Law Commission that defined ecocide as:The extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or by any other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished.This definition includes damage caused by individuals, corporations and/or the state. It also includes environmental destruction from 'other causes' (i.e. harm that is not necessarily caused by human activity). The purpose was to create a duty of care to mitigate or prevent naturally occurring disasters as well as creating criminal responsibility for human-caused ecocide. The proposal has yet to be accepted by the United Nations.On 22 January 2013, a committee of eleven citizens from nine EU countries launched the "European Citizens Initiative (ECI) to End Ecocide in Europe". The initiative aimed at criminalizing ecocide and investments in activities causing ecocide, as well as denying market access to the EU for products derived from ecocidal activities. Three MEPs, Keith Taylor, Eva Joly, and Jo Leinen, publicly gave the first signatures. The initiative did not collect the 1 million signatures needed, but was discussed in the European Parliament.In December 2019 at the 18th session of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Vanuatu and the Maldives called for ecocide to be added to the Statute. In June 2021, an international panel of lawyers submitted a definition of ecocide and proposed a draft amendment to the Rome Statute that would include ecocide among the international crimes prosecuted under the Statute. The panel included members from the UK, Senegal, the US, France, Ecuador, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, Samoa, and Norway, and their proposed definition is:For the purpose of this Statute, "ecocide" means unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts. Notable supporters Many notable people have publicly supported ecocide being made a crime at the International Criminal Court. At the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme described the damage caused by defoliant Agent Orange in the Vietnam War as ecocide and called for it to be made an international crime.United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in 2017 that it is "highly desirable" to include ecocide as a crime at the International Criminal Court.Pope Francis in his address to the International Association of Penal Law in 2019 stated that "By 'ecocide' we should understand the loss, damage and destruction of ecosystems of a given territory, so that its enjoyment by the inhabitants has been or may be severely affected. This is a fifth category of crimes against peace, which should be recognised as such by the international community." He also stated that "sins against ecology" should be added to Catholic teachings.Environmentalist Jane Goodall supported ecocide being made an international crime, stating: "The concept of Ecocide is long overdue. It could lead to an important change in the way people perceive – and respond to – the current environmental crisis."In 2023, Greta Thunberg, Luisa Neubauer, Anuna de Wever and Adélaïde Carlier demanded, in an open letter, that all European Union leaders and heads of state must "advocate to make ecocide an international crime at the International Criminal Court."At the 54th session of the Human Rights Council, Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights supported ecocide being made a crime at national and international levels. Stop Ecocide International Stop Ecocide International (SEI) is an organisation which advocates amending the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to include ecocide. It works with governments, politicians, diplomats and wider society. The organisation has branches or associate groups in almost 50 countries. SEI's sister organisation, the Stop Ecocide Foundation convened the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide. History 1970s The concept of ecocide originated in the 1970s after the United States devastated the environment in Vietnam through use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. The word was first recorded at the Conference on War and National Responsibility in Washington DC, where American plant biologist and bioethicist Arthur Galston proposed a new international agreement to ban ecocide.In 1972 at the United Nations Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, Prime Minister of Sweden Olof Palme called the Vietnam War an ecocide. Others, including Indira Gandhi from India and Tang Ke, the leader of the Chinese delegation, also denounced the war in human and environmental terms, calling for ecocide to be an international crime. A Working Group on Crimes Against the Environment was formed at the conference, and a draft Ecocide Convention was submitted into the United Nations in 1973. This convention called for a treaty that would define and condemn ecocide as an international war crime, recognising that "man has consciously and unconsciously inflicted irreparable damage to the environment in times of war and peace."The ILC 1978 Yearbook's 'Draft articles on State Responsibility and International Crime' included: "an international crime (which) may result, inter alia, from: (d) a serious breach of an international obligation of essential importance for the safeguarding and preservation of the human environment, such as those prohibiting massive pollution of the atmosphere or of the seas." Supporters who spoke out in favor of a crime of ecocide included Romania, the Holy See, Austria, Poland, Rwanda, Congo and Oman. 1980s The Whitaker Report, commissioned by the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights on the prevention and punishment of genocide was prepared by then Special Rapporteur, Benjamin Whitaker. The report contained a passage that Some members of the Sub-Commission have, however, proposed that the definition of genocide should be broadened to include cultural genocide or "ethnocide", and also "ecocide": adverse alterations, often irreparable, to the environment – for example through nuclear explosions, chemical weapons, serious pollution and acid rain, or destruction of the rain forest – which threaten the existence of entire populations, whether deliberately or with criminal negligence.Discussion of international crimes continued in the International Law Commission in 1987, where it was proposed that "the list of international crimes include "ecocide", as a reflection of the need to safeguard and preserve the environment, as well as the first use of nuclear weapons, colonialism, apartheid, economic aggression and mercenarism". 1990s In 1996, Canadian/Australian lawyer Mark Gray published his proposal for an international crime of ecocide, based on established international environmental and human rights law. He demonstrated that states, and arguably individuals and organizations, causing or permitting harm to the natural environment on a massive scale breach a duty of care owed to humanity in general. He proposed that such breaches, where deliberate, reckless or negligent, be identified as ecocide where they entail serious, and extensive or lasting, ecological damage; international consequences; and waste. 2010s In 2011, the Hamilton Group drafted a mock Ecocide Act and then tested it via a mock trial in the UK Supreme Court.In 2012, a concept paper on the Law of Ecocide was sent out to governments. In June 2012 the idea of making ecocide a crime was presented to legislators and judges from around the world at the World Congress on Justice Governance and Law for Environmental Sustainability, held in Mangaratiba before the Rio +20 Earth Summit. Making ecocide an international crime was voted as one of the top twenty solutions to achieving sustainable development at the World Youth Congress in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012.In October 2012 the international conference Environmental Crime: Current and Emerging Threats was held in Rome and hosted by the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) in cooperation with United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the Ministry of the Environment (Italy). The conference recognized that environmental crime is an important new form of transnational organized crime in need a greater response. One of the outcomes was that UNEP and UNICRI head up a study into the definition of environmental crime and give due consideration to making ecocide an international crime.In May 2017 the grassroots citizen's movement End Ecocide on Earth published a proposal covering jurisdiction, substantive criminal law, procedural due process, declaratory judgements, reparations, and individual or corporate penalty provisions within the existing Rome Statute framework.In November 2019 Pope Francis, addressing the International Association of Penal Law (AIDP), called on the international community to recognize ecocide as a "fifth category of crime against peace."In July 2019, a group of 24 scientists called for ecocide committed in conflict areas be punished as a war crime. 2020s In November 2020, a panel of international lawyers convened by Stop Ecocide International and chaired by British law professor Philippe Sands and Senegalese jurist Dior Fall Sow started drafting a proposed law criminalizing ecocide.In May 2021, the European parliament adopted 2 reports advancing the recognition of ecocide as a crime.In order to enforce implementation and increase citizens' trust in EU rules, and to prevent and remedy environmental damage more effectively, Parliament demands that the Environmental Liability Directive (ELD) and the Environmental Crime Directive (ECD) be improved.Also in May 2021 the 179 members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) passed an almost-unanimous resolution inviting member parliaments recognise the crime of ecocide.The governments of some of the island states at risk from climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the "Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide. Domestic law Ten countries have codified ecocide as a crime within their borders during peacetime. Those countries followed the wording of Article 26 of the International law Commission (ILC) Draft which referred to intentionally causing "widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment" within the context of war – bearing in mind that Article 26 was removed from the final draft submitted to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1996. None of the countries established procedures to measure 'intention'. The countries with domestic ecocide laws are France (2021), Georgia (1999), Armenia (2003), Ukraine (2001), Belarus (1999), Ecuador (2008; 2014), Kazakhstan (1997), Kyrgyzstan (1997), Moldova (2002), Russia (1996), Tajikistan (1998), Uzbekistan (1994), Vietnam (1990). France In 2021, The French National Assembly approved the creation of an "ecocide" offence as part of a battery of measures aimed at protecting the environment and tackling climate change. Offenders will be liable to up to 10 years in prison and a fine of 4.5 million euros ($5.4 million). In popular culture See List of nuclear holocaust fiction for fiction which depicts ecocide by nuclear holocaust. Movies Many movies depict ecocide and its impacts including: TV series Blade Runner: Black Lotus Extrapolations The 100 Travelers Documentaries Several documentaries explore the subject including Poisoning Paradise: Ecocide New Zealand Ecocide changer ou disparaître Ecocide: Voices from Paradise Heart of Mother Earth See also Ecophagy Ecotage Environmental crime Environmental disaster Environmental justice Holocene extinction Involuntary manslaughter List of environmental issues Operation Ranch Hand Rights of nature Scorched earth War on drugs#Aerial herbicide application Water scarcity Toxic colonialism References Further reading Diamond, Jared (2005). Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. England: Penguin Books. p. 575. ISBN 0-14-303655-6. Cherson, Adam (2009) [2017]. Ecocide: Environmental Gloom and Doom Explained in Everyday Language. Greencore Books. p. 270. ISBN 978-1-52063-405-0. Higgins, Polly (2010). Eradicating Ecocide: Laws and Governance to Prevent the Destruction of our Planet. Shepheard-Walwyn. p. 202. ISBN 978-0-85683-275-8. Wijdekop, Femke. (2016). "Against Ecocide: Legal Protection for Earth." Great Transition Initiative. External links Official website of Stop ECOCIDE Coverage of Stop ECOCIDE in NY Times Official website of the European citizens' initiative The story of stuff To stop climate disaster, make ecocide an international crime. It's the only way. The Guardian. 24 February 2021.

wind power in australia

Wind power is a renewable energy source that is generally used to generate electricity via wind turbines. With a total installed wind capacity of around 9,100 megawatts (MW), wind power constitutes 5% of Australia's total primary energy supply and 35% of its renewable energy supply. Abundant wind resources are located close to residential areas in the southern parts of the country and on the slopes of the Great Dividing Range in the east, with approximately half of Australia's wind farms located around the coast.In December 2022, the government formally declared the Bass Strait off Gippsland as the country's first offshore wind zone. Wind resources The abundant wind resources in Australia provide a major opportunity for the country to grow its renewable energy sector. The southern coastline lies in the roaring forties. Many sites have average wind speeds above 8–9 m/s at turbine hub height. During the 1980s and 1990s, several states carried out a systematic monitoring of wind speed. The results are available to the public. Most tested sites are close to Australia's main population centres, making wind power a convenient resource for electricity generation. Australian wind farms produce an average capacity factor range of 30–35%, making wind a viable option. South Australia's large share (along with nearby Victoria) means most of Australia's wind power occurs around the same time. The correlation between South Australia and New South Wales is 0.34, while the correlation between South Australia and Tasmania is 0.10. Wind farms As of October 2022, there were 94 operational wind farms in Australia, totaling 9,234 MW in capacity.[1] The largest wind farm is Coopers Gap Wind Farm in Queensland, which began generating to the grid in June 2019, with a capacity of 453 MW.[2] As of December 2019, 50 Coopers Gap Wind Farm's turbines out of the initial 123 were operational.[3] By generating capacity, the ten largest wind farms in Australia are: Australia's first commercial wind farm, Salmon Beach Wind Farm, near Esperanza in Western Australia, operated for 15 years from 1987 but was decommissioned due to urban encroachment. It has since been replaced by Ten Mile Lagoon Wind Farm and Nine Mile Beach Wind Farm. Wind power by state A full listing of all the wind farms in Australia can be found in the List of wind farms in Australia. Relevant state articles are: New South Wales wind power Queensland wind farms South Australia wind power Tasmania wind farms Victoria wind farms Western Australia wind farms Installed capacity by stateThe following figures are based on capacity and generation as of the end of 2020. Proposed figures are updated to December 2020.Note that figures may not agree with aggregate figures previously stated, due to different data sources and reporting dates contained within them. South Australia provided 29.2% of Australia's wind power in 2019, accounting for 41% of the state electricity needs in 2019. By the end of 2011, wind power in South Australia reached 26% of the state electricity generation, edging out coal-fired power for the first time. At that stage, South Australia, with only 7.2% of Australia's population, had 54% of Australia's installed wind capacity. Victoria also has a substantial system, which provided 27.8% of Australia's wind power in 2019. In August 2015, the Victorian government announced financial backing for new wind farms as part of a push to encourage renewable energy in the state. This was supposed to bring forward the building of a modest 100 MW of new wind energy in the state, worth $200 million in investment. The government estimated that 2400 MW worth of Victorian projects had been approved but were yet to be built. Installed capacity (nameplate) is the theoretical maximum capacity of the engineered design in perfect operating conditions. The accepted AEMO rating is the capacity factor rating that adds up to 30 to 35 per cent of installed/nameplate capacity. And then, depending on the wind turbine location, there is a loss of energy in the feeder transmission line (depending on length) leading to the main electricity grid. Economics Wind developments typically involve significant upfront capital costs, while operating costs are relatively low. However, maintenance costs can add up over time due to the need for periodic replacement of components subject to wear. By contrast, conventional energy sources such as gas and coal require large capital investments and ongoing operating costs. Gas and coal power stations also typically have much longer working lives when compared to wind turbines. When properly maintained, coal and gas plants can continue operating for up to three times longer than wind turbines.These differing cost profiles make it challenging to directly compare the costs of alternative energy sources. Wind power may be a more attractive option for some due to its low operating costs, but the high upfront capital costs may be prohibitive for others. Similarly, while coal and gas-fired power stations require significant ongoing investment, their longer working lives may make them a more cost-effective option over the long term. Despite these complexities, existing data indicate that wind energy is one of the most cost-efficient renewable energy sources but approximately two times the cost of coal-generated power in 2006.[1] When the costs associated with pollution were factored in, it was competitive with coal- and gas-fired power stations even then. By 2014, wind had the lowest levelised cost of energy (LCOE) of any power source in Australia.[failed verification] A 2012 study by SKM on the economic benefits of wind farms in Australia found that, for every 50 MW in capacity, a wind farm delivered the following benefits: direct employment of up to 48 construction workers, with each worker spending approximately $25,000 in the local area in shops, restaurants, hotels and other services – a total of up to $1.2 million direct employment of around five staff – a total annual input of $125,000 spent in the local economy indirect employment during the construction phase of approximately 160 people locally, 504 state jobs and 795 nationwide jobs up to $250,000 per year for farmers in land rental income and $80,000 on community projects yearly. Environmental impact Australia is the fifth highest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases with 25.8 tonne CO2-e per person annually, ranking first of the industrialized countries, and ranks sixteenth of all countries in total country emissions with 495 Mt CO2-e per annum. It is one of the major exporters of coal, the burning of which releases CO2 into the atmosphere. It is also one of the countries most at risk from climate change according to the Stern report. This is partially because of the size of its agriculture sector and long coastline. A wind farm, when installed on agricultural land, has one of the lowest environmental impacts of all energy sources: It occupies less land area per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity generated than any other energy conversion system, apart from rooftop solar energy, and is compatible with grazing and crops. It generates the energy used in its construction in just 3 months of operation, yet its operational lifetime is 20–25 years. Greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution produced by its construction are small and declining. There is very little emission or pollution produced by its operation. In substituting for base-load (mostly coal power) in mainland Australia, wind power produces a net decrease in greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. Modern wind turbines are almost silent and rotate so slowly (in terms of revolutions per minute) that they are rarely a hazard to birds.Landscape and heritage issues can be a significant issue for certain wind farms. However, these are minimal when compared with the environmental effects of coal. However, when appropriate planning procedures are followed, the heritage and landscape risks should be minimal. People may still object to wind farms, perhaps on the grounds of aesthetics, but their concerns should be weighed against the need to address the threats posed by climate change and the opinions of the broader community.Overseas experience has shown that community consultation and direct involvement of the general public in wind farm projects have helped to increase community approval. Some wind farms become tourist attractions.The Garnaut Climate Change Review, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target announced by the Australian Government involve a reduction in Australian greenhouse gas emissions. Australia is the highest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita in the developed world and wind power is well placed to grow and deliver greenhouse gas emission cuts on a cost-competitive basis. A typical 50-megawatt (MW) wind farm in Australia can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 65,000 and 115,000 tonnes a year.Based on the 2010 figures for electricity production of 5 TWh nationally, it is estimated that wind power saved Australia 5,100,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions in that year. In relative terms, that is calculated to be the equivalent of removing 1,133,000 cars from the nation's roads. Politics From 2001 to early 2006, the main driving force for the establishment of wind farms in Australia was the Government's Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET). However, by mid-2006, sufficient renewable energy had been installed or was under construction to meet the small MRET target for 2010. Also, in 2006, several Federal Government Ministers spoke out against several wind farm proposals.Mark Diesendorf has suggested that the Australian Government has tried to stop the development of wind power, the lowest-cost, new, renewable electricity source until coal-fired power stations with CO2 capture and sequestration and possibly nuclear power stations were available. However, "clean coal" technologies may not be commercially available for at least 20 years. Furthermore, to bring down the high cost of nuclear power to a level where it could compete with wind power would require a new generation of nuclear power stations that is still on the drawing board, which could take at least 15 years.In November 2007, when the Rudd (Labor) government was elected in Australia, it ratified Australia's commitment to the Kyoto Protocol, promised a target of 20% renewable power by 2020 and to do more to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, several new wind power projects were proposed in anticipation of an expanded MRET. Major wind projects In January 2022, construction began on the Goyder South development, which is expected to become one of Australia’s largest wind farms. Run by French firm Neoen, the project expects to be able to provide 209 MW of power generation by 2024, and a similar amount again when construction is complete.In south east Queensland, Australia’s first gigawattscale wind project is in development: the MacIntrye facility (923 MW), majority owned by Spanish energy firm Acciona, and the Karara Wind Farm (103 MW), owned and operated by CleanCo. As of April 2023, one of the most significant wind projects underway in Victoria is the 756 MW stage one of the Golden Plains development in Rokewood. See also Australian Renewable Energy Agency List of large wind farms Geothermal power in Australia Renewable energy debate == References ==

ecological footprint

The ecological footprint is a method promoted by the Global Footprint Network to measure human demand on natural capital, i.e. the quantity of nature it takes to support people and their economies. It tracks this demand through an ecological accounting system. The accounts contrast the biologically productive area people use for their consumption to the biologically productive area available within a region, nation, or the world (biocapacity, the productive area that can regenerate what people demand from nature). In short, it is a measure of human impact on the environment and whether that impact is sustainable. Footprint and biocapacity can be compared at the individual, regional, national or global scale. Both footprint and demands on biocapacity change every year with number of people, per person consumption, efficiency of production, and productivity of ecosystems. At a global scale, footprint assessments show how big humanity's demand is compared to what Earth can renew. Global Footprint Network estimates that, as of 2019, humanity has been using natural capital 75% faster than Earth can renew it, which they describe as meaning humanity's ecological footprint corresponds to 1.75 planet Earths. This overuse is called ecological overshoot. Ecological footprint analysis is widely used around the world in support of sustainability assessments. It enables people to measure and manage the use of resources throughout the economy and explore the sustainability of individual lifestyles, goods and services, organizations, industry sectors, neighborhoods, cities, regions, and nations. Overview The first academic publication about ecological footprints was written by William Rees in 1992. The ecological footprint concept and calculation method was developed as the PhD dissertation of Mathis Wackernagel, under Rees' supervision at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, from 1990 to 1994. Originally, Wackernagel and Rees called the concept "appropriated carrying capacity". To make the idea more accessible, Rees came up with the term "ecological footprint", inspired by a computer technician who praised his new computer's "small footprint on the desk". In 1996, Wackernagel and Rees published the book Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth.The simplest way to define an ecological footprint is the amount of environmental resources necessary to produce the goods and services that support an individual's lifestyle, a nation's prosperity, or the economic activity of humanity as a whole. The model is a means of comparing lifestyles, per capita consumption, and population numbers, and checking these against biocapacity. The tool can inform policy by examining to what extent a nation uses more (or less) than is available within its territory, or to what extent the nation's lifestyle and population density would be replicable worldwide. The footprint can be a useful tool to educate people about overconsumption and overpopulation, with the aim of altering personal behavior or public policies. Ecological footprints may be used to argue that current lifestyles and human numbers are not sustainable. Country-by-country comparisons show the inequalities of resource use on this planet. The touristic ecological footprint (TEF) is the ecological footprint of visitors to a particular destination, and depends on the tourists' behavior. Comparisons of TEFs can indicate the benefits of alternative destinations, modes of travel, food choices, types of lodging, and activities.The carbon footprint is a component of the total ecological footprint. Often, when only the carbon footprint is reported, it is expressed in weight of CO2 (or CO2e representing GHG warming potential (GGWP)), but it can also be expressed in land areas like ecological footprints. Both can be applied to products, people, or whole societies. Methodology The focus of ecological footprint accounting is renewable resources. The amount of such resources which the planet produces and its ability to absorb human wastes according to this model has been dubbed biocapacity. Ecological footprints can be calculated at any scale: for an activity, a person, a community, a city, a town, a region, a nation, or humanity as a whole. Footprint values are categorized for carbon, food, housing, and goods and services. This approach can be applied to an activity such as the manufacturing of a product or driving a car. This resource accounting is similar to life-cycle analysis wherein the consumption of energy, biomass (food, fiber), building material, water and other resources are converted into a normalized measure of land area called global hectares (gha).Since 2003, the Global Footprint Network has calculated the ecological footprint from UN data sources for the world as a whole and for over 200 nations (known as the National Footprint Accounts). The total footprint number of Earths needed to sustain the world's population at that level of consumption are also calculated. Every year the calculations are updated to the latest year with complete UN statistics. The time series are also recalculated with every update, since UN statistics sometimes correct historical data sets. Results are available on an open data platform.Lin et al. (2018) find that the trends for countries and the world have stayed consistent despite data updates. In addition, a recent study by the Swiss Ministry of Environment independently recalculated the Swiss trends and reproduced them within 1–4% for the time period that they studied (1996–2015). Since 2006, a first set of ecological footprint standards exist that detail both communication and calculation procedures. The latest version are the updated standards from 2009.The ecological footprint accounting method at the national level is described on the website of the Global Footprint Network or in greater detail in academic papers, including Borucke et al.The National Accounts Review Committee has published a research agenda on how to improve the accounts. Footprint measurements For 2019 Global Footprint Network estimated humanity's ecological footprint as 1.75 planet Earths. According to their calculations this means that humanity's demands were 1.75 times more than what the planet's ecosystems renewed.If this rate of resource use is not reduced, the model predicts continued ecological deterioration and perhaps a permanent decrease in Earth’s human carrying capacity. In 2007, the average biologically productive area per person worldwide was approximately 1.8 global hectares (gha) per capita. The U.S. footprint per capita was 9.0 gha, and that of Switzerland was 5.6 gha, while China's was 1.8 gha. In its Living Planet Report 2022, the WWF documents a 69% decline in the world's vertebrate populations between 1970 and the present, and links this decline to humanity greatly exceeding global biocapacity. Wackernagel and Rees originally estimated that the available biological capacity for the 6 billion people on Earth at that time was about 1.3 hectares per person, which is smaller than the 1.8 global hectares published for 2006, because the initial studies neither used global hectares nor included bioproductive marine areas. According to the 2018 edition of the National footprint accounts, humanity's total ecological footprint has exhibited an increasing trend since 1961, growing an average of 2.1% per year (SD= 1.9). Humanity's ecological footprint was 7.0 billion gha in 1961 and increased to 20.6 billion gha in 2014, a function of higher per capita resource use and population increase. The world-average ecological footprint in 2014 was 2.8 global hectares per person. The carbon footprint is the fastest growing part of the ecological footprint and accounts currently for about 60% of humanity's total ecological footprint.The Earth's biocapacity has not increased at the same rate as the ecological footprint. The increase of biocapacity averaged at only 0.5% per year (SD = 0.7). Because of agricultural intensification, biocapacity was at 9.6 billion gha in 1961 and grew to 12.2 billion gha in 2016.However, this increased biocapacity for people came at the expense of other species. Agricultural intensification involved increased fertilizer use which led to eutrophication of streams and ponds; increased pesticide use which decimated pollinator populations; increased water withdrawals which decreased river health; and decreased land left wild or fallow which decreased wildlife populations on agricultural lands. This reminds us that ecological footprint calculations are anthropocentric, assuming that all Earth’s biocapacity is legitimately available to human beings. If we assume that some biocapacity should be left for other species, the level of ecological overshoot increases. According to Wackernagel and his organisation, the Earth has been in "overshoot", where humanity is using more resources and generating waste at a pace that the ecosystem cannot renew, since the 1970s. According to the Global Footprint Network’s (GFN) calculations, currently people use Earth’s resources at approximately 175% of capacity. This implies that humanity is well over Earth’s human carrying capacity at current levels of affluence. According to the GFN:In 2022, Earth Overshoot Day fell on July 28. Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. For the rest of the year, we are maintaining our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We are operating in overshoot. Currently, more than 85% of humanity lives in countries that run an ecological deficit. This means their citizens use more resources and generate more waste and pollution than can be sustained by the biocapacity found within their national boundaries. In some cases, countries are running an ecological deficit because their per capita ecological footprints are higher than the hectares of bioproductive land available on average globally (this was estimated at <1.7 hectares per person in 2019). Examples include France, Germany and Saudi Arabia. In other cases, per capita resource use may be lower than the global available average, but countries are running an ecological deficit because their populations are high enough that they still use more bioproductive land than they have within their national borders. Examples include China, India and the Philippines. Finally, many countries run an ecological deficit because of both high per capita resource use and large populations; such countries tend to be way over their national available biocapacities. Examples include Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.According to William Rees, writing in 2011, "the average world citizen has an eco-footprint of about 2.7 global average hectares while there are only 2.1 global hectare of bioproductive land and water per capita on earth. This means that humanity has already overshot global biocapacity by 30% and now lives unsustainabily by depleting stocks of 'natural capital'." Since then, due to population growth and further refinements in the calculations, available biocapacity per person has decreased to <1.7 hectares per person globally. More recently, Rees has written:The human enterprise is in potentially disastrous ‘overshoot’, exploiting the ecosphere beyond ecosystems’ regenerative capacity and filling natural waste sinks to overflowing. Economic behavior that was once ‘rational’ has become maladaptive. This situation is the inevitable outcome of humanity’s natural expansionist tendencies reinforced by ecologically vacuous growth-oriented ‘neoliberal’ economic theory.Rees now believes that economic and demographic degrowth are necessary to create societies with small enough ecological footprints to remain sustainable and avoid civilizational collapse. Footprint by country The world-average ecological footprint in 2013 was 2.8 global hectares per person. The average per country ranges from 14.3 (Qatar) to 0.5 (Yemen) global hectares per person. There is also a high variation within countries, based on individual lifestyles and wealth.In 2022, countries with the top ten per capita ecological footprints were: Qatar (14.3 global hectares), Luxembourg (13.0), Cook Islands (8.3), Bahrain (8.2), United States (8.1), United Arab Emirates (8.1), Canada (8.1), Estonia (8.0), Kuwait (7.9) and Belize (7.9). Total ecological footprint for a nation is found by multiplying its per capita ecological footprint by its total population. Total ecological footprint ranges from 5,540,000,000 global hectares used (China) to 145,000 (Cook Islands) global hectares used. In 2022, the top ten countries in total ecological footprint were: China (5.54 billion global hectares), United States (2.66 billion), India (1.64 billion), Russian Federation (774 million), Japan (586 million), Brazil (542 million), Indonesia (460 million), Germany (388 million), Republic of Korea (323 million) and Mexico (301 million). These were the ten nations putting the greatest strain on global ecosystem services. The Western Australian government State of the Environment Report included an Ecological Footprint measure for the average Western Australian seven times the average footprint per person on the planet in 2007, a total of about 15 hectares.The figure (right) examines sustainability at the scale of individual countries by contrasting their Ecological Footprint with their UN Human Development Index (a measure of standard of living). The graph shows what is necessary for countries to maintain an acceptable standard of living for their citizens while, at the same time, maintaining sustainable resource use. The general trend is for higher standards of living to become less sustainable. As always, population growth has a marked influence on total consumption and production, with larger populations becoming less sustainable.: 45  Most countries around the world continue to become more populous, although a few seem to have stabilized or are even beginning to shrink. The information generated by reports at the national, regional and city scales confirm the global trend towards societies becoming less sustainable over time. Studies in the United Kingdom The UK's average ecological footprint is 5.45 global hectares per capita (gha) with variations between regions ranging from 4.80 gha (Wales) to 5.56 gha (East England).BedZED, a 96-home mixed-income housing development in South London, was designed by Bill Dunster Architects and sustainability consultants BioRegional for the Peabody Trust. Despite being populated by relatively average people, BedZED was found to have a footprint of 3.20 gha per capita (not including visitors), due to on-site renewable energy production, energy-efficient architecture, and an extensive green lifestyles program that included London's first carsharing club. Findhorn Ecovillage, a rural intentional community in Moray, Scotland, had a total footprint of 2.56 gha per capita, including both the many guests and visitors who travel to the community. However, the residents alone had a footprint of 2.71 gha, a little over half the UK national average and one of the lowest ecological footprints of any community measured so far in the industrialized world. Keveral Farm, an organic farming community in Cornwall, was found to have a footprint of 2.4 gha, though with substantial differences in footprints among community members. Ecological footprint at the individual level In a 2012 study of consumers acting 'green' vs. 'brown' (where green people are "expected to have significantly lower ecological impact than 'brown' consumers"), "the research found no significant difference between the carbon footprints of green and brown consumers". A 2013 study concluded the same. Reviews and critiques Early criticism was published by van den Bergh and Verbruggen in 1999, which was updated in 2014. Their colleague Fiala published similar criticism in 2008.A comprehensive review commissioned by the Directorate-General for the Environment (European Commission) was published in June 2008. The European Commission's review found the concept unique and useful for assessing progress on the EU's Resource Strategy. They also recommended further improvements in data quality, methodologies and assumptions.Blomqvist et al.. published a critical paper in 2013. It led to a reply from Rees and Wackernagel (2013), and a rejoinder by Blomqvist et al. (2013).An additional strand of critique is from Giampietro and Saltelli (2014), with a reply from Goldfinger et al., 2014, and a rejoinder by Giampietro and Saltelli (2014). A joint paper authored by the critical researchers (Giampietro and Saltelli) and proponents (various Global Footprint Network researchers) summarized the terms of the controversy in a paper published by the journal Ecological Indicators. Additional comments were offered by van den Bergh and Grazi (2015).A number of national government agencies have performed collaborative or independent research to test the reliability of the ecological footprint accounting method and its results. They have largely confirmed the accounts' results; those who reproduced the assessment generating near-identical results. Such reviews include those of Switzerland, Germany, France, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates and the European Commission.Global Footprint Network has summarized methodological limitations and criticism in a comprehensive report available on its website.Similarly, Newman (2006) has argued that the ecological footprint concept may have an anti-urban bias, as it does not consider the opportunities created by urban growth. He argues that calculating the ecological footprint for densely populated areas, such as a city or small country with a comparatively large population—e.g. New York and Singapore respectively—may lead to the perception of these populations as "parasitic". But in reality, ecological footprints just document the resource dependence of cities on rural hinterlands. Critics argue that this is a dubious characterization, since farmers in developed nations may easily consume more resources than urban inhabitants, due to transportation requirements and the unavailability of economies of scale. Furthermore, such moral conclusions seem to be an argument for autarky. But this is similar to blaming a scale for the user's dietary choices. Even if true, such criticisms do not negate the value of measuring different cities’, regions’, or nations’ ecological footprints and comparing them. Such assessments can provide helpful insights into the success or failure of different environmental policies.Since this metric tracks biocapacity, the replacement of original ecosystems with high-productivity agricultural monocultures can lead to attributing a higher biocapacity to such regions. For example, replacing ancient woodlands or tropical forests with monoculture forests or plantations may therefore decrease the ecological footprint. Similarly if organic farming yields were lower than those of conventional methods, this could result in the former being "penalized" with a larger ecological footprint. Complementary biodiversity indicators attempt to address this. The WWF's Living Planet Report combines the footprint calculations with the Living Planet Index of biodiversity. A modified ecological footprint that takes biodiversity into account has been created for use in Australia.Ecological footprint for many years has been used by environmentalists as a way to quantify ecological degradation as it relates to an individual. Recently, there has been debate about the reliability of this method. See also References Further reading Rees, W. E. and M. Wackernagel (1994) Ecological footprints and appropriated carrying capacity: Measuring the natural capital requirements of the human economy, in Jansson, A. et al. Investing in Natural Capital: The Ecological Economics Approach to Sustainability. Washington D.C.:Island Press. ISBN 1-55963-316-6 Wackernagel, M; Schulz, NB; Deumling, D; Linares, AC; Jenkins, M; Kapos, V; Monfreda, C; Loh, J; et al. (2002). "Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 99 (14): 9266–71. Bibcode:2002PNAS...99.9266W. doi:10.1073/pnas.142033699. PMC 123129. PMID 12089326. Lenzen, M. and Murray, S. A. 2003. The Ecological Footprint – Issues and Trends. ISA Research Paper 01-03 Chambers, N., Simmons, C. and Wackernagel, M. (2000), Sharing Nature's Interest: Ecological Footprints as an Indicator of Sustainability. Earthscan, London ISBN 1-85383-739-3 (see also http://www.ecologicalfootprint.com) Raudsepp-Hearne C, Peterson GD, Tengö M, Bennett EM, Holland T, Benessaiah K, MacDonald GM, Pfeifer L (2010). "Untangling the Environmentalist's Paradox: Why is Human Well-Being Increasing as Ecosystem Services Degrade?". BioScience. 60 (8): 576–589. doi:10.1525/bio.2010.60.8.4. S2CID 27270296. Ohl, B.; Wolf, S.; & Anderson, W. (2008). "A modest proposal: global rationalization of ecological footprint to eliminate ecological debt". Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy. 4 (1): 5–16. doi:10.1080/15487733.2008.11908010. External links WWF "Living Planet Report", a biannual calculation of national and global footprints Green Score City Index, a quarterly calculation of city footprints in Canada US Environmental Footprint Factsheet Interview with Bill Rees

water scarcity

Water scarcity (closely related to water stress or water crisis) is the lack of fresh water resources to meet the standard water demand. There are two types of water scarcity namely physical and economic water scarcity.: 560  Physical water scarcity is where there is not enough water to meet all demands, including that needed for ecosystems to function. Arid areas for example Central Asia, West Asia, and North Africa often experience physical water scarcity. Economic water scarcity on the other hand, is the result of lack of investment in infrastructure or technology to draw water from rivers, aquifers, or other water sources. It also results from weak human capacity to meet water demand.: 560  Much of Sub-Saharan Africa experiences economic water scarcity.: 11 There is enough freshwater available globally and averaged over the year to meet demand. As such, water scarcity is caused by a mismatch between when and where people need water, and when and where it is available. The main drivers of the increase in global water demand are the increasing world population, rise in living conditions, changing diets (to more animal products), and expansion of irrigated agriculture. Climate change (including droughts or floods), deforestation, water pollution and wasteful use of water can also cause insufficient water supply. Scarcity varies over time as a result of natural variability in hydrology. These variations in scarcity may also be a function of prevailing economic policy and planning approaches. Research shows that that by 2050, 87 out of 180 countries will have annual renewable freshwater resources below 1700 m^3/year. The number of countries with absolute water scarcity is projected to be below 500 m^3/year. These numbers also show that absolute water scarcity will grow from 25 countries at risk in 2015 to 45 countries at absolute scarcity in 2050. This data has a lot to do with where a country sits development wise and where it is projected to be in terms of population size. As water withdrawals for economic development increase, less developed countries will struggle to provide safe drinking water and sanitation to everyone.[1] Water scarcity assessments need to incorporate information on green water (soil moisture), water quality, environmental flow requirements, globalization, and virtual water trade. There is a need for collaboration between hydrological, water quality, aquatic ecosystem science and social science communities in water scarcity assessment. "Water stress" has been used as parameter to measure water scarcity, for example in the context of Sustainable Development Goal 6. Half a billion people live in areas with severe water scarcity throughout the year, and around four billion people face severe water scarcity at least one month per year. Half of the world's largest cities experience water scarcity. There are 2.3 billion people who reside in nations with water scarcities, which means that each individual receives less than 1 700 m3 of water annually. However, 380 billion m3 of municipal wastewater are produced globally each year.Reducing water scarcity requires supply and demand side management, cooperation between countries and water conservation (including prevention of water pollution). It also requires expanding sources of usable water (through wastewater reuse or desalination) and virtual water trade. Definitions Water scarcity has been defined as the "volumetric abundance, or lack thereof, of freshwater resources" and it is thought to be "human-driven".: 4  This can also be called "physical water scarcity". There are two types of water scarcity: physical water scarcity and economic water scarcity.: 560  Environmental water requirements are sometimes included in water scarcity determinations but the approach to this varies from one organization to another.: 4 Related concepts There are several definitions of "water scarcity", "water stress", and "water risk" provided in the literature, and therefore a harmonization has been proposed by the CEO Water Mandate in 2014.: 2  In their discussion paper they state that these three terms should not be used interchangeably.: 3 Water stress Some organizations define "water stress" as a broader concept. Under that definition, it would include aspects of water availability, water quality and the accessibility of water. The latter is related to existing infrastructure and whether customers can afford to pay for the water.: 4  This is termed by others as "economic water scarcity".FAO defines water stress as the "symptoms of water scarcity or shortage". Such symptoms could be "growing conflict between users, and competition for water, declining standards of reliability and service, harvest failures and food insecurity".: 6  This is measured with a range of Water Stress Indices. Another definition for water stress is as follows: "Water stress refers to the impact of high water use (either withdrawals or consumption) relative to water availability." Water stress is therefore viewed as a "demand-driven scarcity". Types Two types of water scarcity have been defined: physical and economic water scarcity. These terms were first defined in a 2007 study led by the International Water Management Institute on the use of water in agriculture over the previous 50 years of practitioners, researchers and policymakers. The study aimed to find out if the world had sufficient water resources to produce food for the growing population in the future.: 1 Physical water scarcity Physical water scarcity occurs when natural water resources are not enough to meet all demands, including that needed for ecosystems to function well. Dry regions often suffer from physical water scarcity. Human influence on climate has led to increased water scarcity in areas where water was previously hard to come by. It also occurs where water seems abundant but where resources are over-committed. For example, when there is overdevelopment of hydraulic infrastructure, often for irrigation or energy generation. Symptoms of physical water scarcity include "severe environmental degradation, declining groundwater and water allocations that favor some groups over others".: 6 Another indicator, called ecological water scarcity has been proposed that considers water quantity, water quality, and environmental flow requirements.Water is physically scarce in densely populated arid areas (for example Central and West Asia, and North Africa), with projected availabilities of less than 1000 cubic meters per capita per year. A study in 2007 found that more than 1.2 billion people live in areas of physical water scarcity. This water scarcity relates to water available for food production, rather than for drinking water which is a much smaller amount.Some academics favour expanding the two types of water scarcity (i.e. the physical and economic) to a third type which would be called ecological water scarcity. This third type would focus on the water demand of ecosystems. It would refer to the minimum quantity and quality of water discharge that are required to maintain sustainable and functional ecosystems. However, other publications state that this aspect is simply part of the definition of physical water scarcity. Economic water scarcity Economic water scarcity is caused by a lack of investment in infrastructure or technology to draw water from rivers, aquifers, or other water sources, or insufficient human capacity to meet the demand for water.: 560  It causes people without reliable water access to travel long distances to fetch water, which is often unclean, for domestic and agricultural uses (irrigation). According to the United Nations Development Programme, economic water scarcity is the most common cause of water scarcity. This is because most countries or regions have enough water to meet household, industrial, agricultural, and environmental needs, but lack the means to provide it in an accessible manner. Around a fifth of the world's population currently live in regions affected by physical water scarcity.A quarter of the world's population is affected by economic water scarcity. Much of Sub-Saharan Africa is characterized by economic water scarcity.: 11  Developing water infrastructure there could therefore help to reduce poverty. Investing in water retention and irrigation infrastructure would also help to increase food production, especially in developing countries that largely rely on low-yield agriculture. Being able to provide a community with water that is adequate for consumption would also greatly benefit the people's health. Overcoming this type of scarcity, however, can require more than just new infrastructure. It requires socio-economic and socio-political interventions that address poverty and social inequality. Still, because there is a lack of funding hence much planning must come into play.Although much emphasis is put on improving water sources for drinking and domestic purposes, we know that much more water is used for other uses such as bathing, laundry, livestock and cleaning than for drinking and cooking alone. This observation suggests that putting too much emphasis on drinking water needs, addresses a minor part of the problem and therefore limits the range of solutions available. Related concepts Water security Water risk Assessments and indicators Simple indicators Indicators include: the water use to availability ratio (or criticality ratio), physical and economic water scarcity—The IWMI Indicator, water poverty index."Water stress" has been used as a criterion to measure water scarcity, for example in the context of Sustainable Development Goal 6. In this context, a report by FAO in 2018 has defined water stress as: "the ratio between total freshwater withdrawn (TFWW) by all major sectors and total renewable freshwater resources (TRWR), after taking into account environmental flow requirements (EFR)". This means that the value for TFWW is divided by the difference between TRWR minus EFR.: xii  Environmental flows are water flows required to sustain freshwater and estuarine ecosystems. Previously, a definition used for Millennium Development Goal 7, target 7.A was simply the proportion of total water resources used, without taking into consideration EFR.: 28  With this definition, water stress is defined by the following categories: <10% is low stress; 10-20% is low-to-medium; 20-40% medium-to-high; 40-80% high; >80% very high.Indicators are used to measure the extent of the water scarcity. One way to measure water scarcity is to calculate the amount of annual water resources available per person. For example, according to the "Falkenmark Water Stress Indicator" (developed by Malin Falkenmark), a country or region is said to experience "water stress" when annual water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per person per year. At levels between 1,700 and 1,000 cubic meters per person per year, periodic or limited water shortages can be expected. When water supplies drop below 1,000 cubic meters per person per year, the country faces "water scarcity". However, the Falkenmark Water Stress Indicator does not help to explain the true nature of water scarcity. Renewable freshwater resources Renewable freshwater supply is a metric often used in conjunction when evaluating water scarcity. This metric is informative because it can describe the total available water resource each country contains. By knowing the total available water source, an idea can be gained about whether a country is prone to experiencing physical water scarcity. This metric has its faults in that it is an average; precipitation delivers water unevenly across the planet each year and annual renewable water resources vary from year to year. This metric also does not describe the ease of water access to individuals, households, industries, or the government. Lastly, as this metric is a description of a whole country, it does not accurately portray whether a country is experiencing water scarcity. For example, Canada and Brazil both have very high levels of available water supply but still face various water-related problems. Also, some tropical countries in Asia and Africa have low levels of freshwater resources. More sophisticated indicators Water scarcity assessments need to incorporate information on green water (soil moisture), water quality, environmental flow requirements, globalization, and virtual water trade. Since the beginning of the 2000s, water scarcity assessments have applied more complex models which are supported with spatial analysis tools. They include: Green-blue water scarcity, water footprint-based water scarcity assessment, cumulative abstraction to demand ratio—considering temporal variations, LCA-based water stress indicators (life cycle assessments), integrated water quantity–quality environment flow in the water scarcity assessment. Since the early 2010s assessments have combined both quantity- and quality-induced water scarcity.Another indicator, called ecological water scarcity has been proposed that considers water quantity, water quality, and environmental flow requirements. For example, results from a modelling study in 2022 show that northern China suffered more severe ecological water scarcity than southern China. The main driving factor of ecological water scarcity in most provinces was water pollution rather than human water use.Overall, there is a need for collaboration between hydrological, water quality, aquatic ecosystem science and social science communities in water scarcity assessment. Available water The United Nations (UN) estimates that, of 1.4 billion cubic kilometers (1 quadrillion acre-feet) of water on Earth, just 200,000 cubic kilometers (162.1 billion acre-feet) represent freshwater available for human consumption. A mere 0.014% of all water on Earth is both fresh and easily accessible. Of the remaining water, 97% is saline, and a little less than 3% is difficult to access. The fresh water available to us on the planet is around 1% of the total water on earth. The total amount of easily accessible freshwater on Earth, in the form of surface water (rivers and lakes) or groundwater (in aquifers, for example), is 14,000 cubic kilometers (nearly 3359 cubic miles). Of this total amount, 'just' 5,000 cubic kilometers are being used and reused by humanity. Technically, there is a sufficient amount of freshwater on a global scale. Hence, in theory, there is more than enough freshwater available to meet the demands of the current world population of more than 7 billion people, and even support population growth to 9 billion or more. Due to the unequal geographical distribution and especially the unequal consumption of water, however, it is a scarce resource in some parts of the world and for some parts of the population. Apart from the common surface water sources of freshwater such as rivers and lakes, other resources of freshwater such as groundwater and glaciers have become more developed sources of freshwater, becoming the main source of clean water. Groundwater is water that has pooled below the surface of the Earth and can provide a usable quantity of water through springs or wells. These areas where groundwater is collected are also known as aquifers. More and more of these sources are being drawn upon as conventional sources' usability decreases due to factors such as pollution or disappearance due to climate changes. Human population growth is a significant contributing factor in the increasing use of these types of water resources. Scale Current estimates Water scarcity was listed in 2019 by the World Economic Forum as one of the largest global risks in terms of potential impact over the next decade. It is manifested by partial or no satisfaction of expressed demand, economic competition for water quantity or quality, disputes between users, irreversible depletion of groundwater, and negative impacts on the environment. About half of the world's population currently experience severe water scarcity for at least some part of the year. Half a billion people in the world face severe water scarcity all year round. Half of the world's largest cities experience water scarcity. Almost two billion people do not currently have access to clean drinking water. A study in 2016 calculated that globally, the population under water scarcity increased from 0.24 billion (14% of global population) in the 1900s to 3.8 billion (58%) in the 2000s. This study analyzed water scarcity using the fundamental concepts of shortage (impacts due to low availability per capita) and stress (impacts due to high consumption relative to availability). Future predictions In the 20th century, water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of the population increase. Specifically, water withdrawals are predicted to rise by 50 percent by 2025 in developing countries, and 18 per cent in developed countries. One continent, for example, Africa, has been predicted to have 75 to 250 million inhabitants lacking access to fresh water. By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions. By 2050, more than half of the world's population will live in water-stressed areas, and another billion may lack sufficient water, MIT researchers find.With the increase in global temperatures and in an increase in water demand, six out of ten people are at risk of being water-stressed. The drying out of wetlands globally, at around 67%, was a direct cause of a large number of people at risk of water stress. As the global demand for water increases and as climate temperatures rise, it is estimated that two-thirds of the population, in 2025, will live under water stress.: 191 According to a projection by the United Nations, by 2040, there can be about 4.5 billion people affected by a water crisis (or water scarcity). Additionally, with the increase in population, there will be a demand for food, for the food output to match the population growth, there would be an increased demand for water to irrigate crops. The World Economic Forum estimate that global water demand will surpass global supply 40% by 2030. Increasing the demand for water as well as increasing the population results in a water crisis where there is not enough water to share in healthy levels. The crises are not only due to quantity but quality also matters. A study found that of ~39 million groundwater wells 6-20% are at high risk of running dry if local groundwater levels decline by a few meters, or – as with many areas and possibly more than half of major aquifers – continue to decline. Impacts There are several impacts and symptoms of water scarcity. These include serious restrictions on water use, "growing conflict between users and competition for water, declining standards of reliability and service, harvest failures and food insecurity".: 6 Specific examples include: Food insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa Region Inadequate access to safe drinking water for about 885 million people Groundwater overdrafting (excessive use) leading to diminished agricultural yields Overuse and pollution of water resources harming ecosystems and biodiversity Regional conflicts over scarce water resources sometimes resulting in warfare. Water supply shortages Water is the underlying tenuous balance of safe water supply, but controllable factors such as the management and distribution of the water supply itself contribute to further scarcity. A 2006 United Nations report focuses on issues of governance as the core of the water crisis. The report noted that "There is enough water for everyone" and "Water insufficiency is often due to mismanagement, corruption, lack of appropriate institutions, bureaucratic inertia and a shortage of investment in both human capacity and physical infrastructure".It has also been claimed, primarily by economists, that the water situation has occurred because of a lack of property rights, government regulations and subsidies in the water sector. These factors cause prices to be too low and consumption too high, making a point for water privatization.The clean water crisis is an emerging global crisis that affects approximately 785 million people around the world. 1.1 billion people lack access to water and 2.7 billion experience water scarcity at least one month in a year. 2.4 billion people suffer from the contamination of water and poor sanitation. Contamination of water can lead to deadly diarrheal diseases such as cholera and typhoid fever, and other waterborne diseases causing 80% of illnesses around the world. Environment Abstraction of water for domestic, food and industrial uses has major impacts on ecosystems in many parts of the world. This can apply even to regions not considered "water scarce". Water scarcity has many negative impacts on the environment, such as adverse effects on lakes, rivers, ponds, wetlands and other fresh water resources. The resulting water overuse that is related to water scarcity, often located in areas of irrigation agriculture, harms the environment in several ways. This includes increased salinity, nutrient pollution, and the loss of floodplains and wetlands. Furthermore, water scarcity makes flow management in the rehabilitation of urban streams problematic.Through the last hundred years, more than half of the Earth's wetlands have been destroyed and have disappeared. These wetlands are important not only because they are the habitats of numerous inhabitants such as mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and invertebrates, but they support the growing of rice and other food crops as well as provide water filtration and protection from storms and flooding. Freshwater lakes such as the Aral Sea in central Asia have also suffered. Once the fourth largest freshwater lake, it has lost more than 58,000 square km of area and vastly increased in salt concentration over the span of three decades.Subsidence, or the gradual sinking of landforms, is another result of water scarcity. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that subsidence has affected more than 17,000 square miles in 45 U.S. states, 80 percent of it due to groundwater usage.Vegetation and wildlife are fundamentally dependent upon adequate freshwater resources. Marshes, bogs and riparian zones are more clearly dependent upon sustainable water supply. Forests and other upland ecosystems are equally at risk of significant productivity changes as water availability is diminished. In the case of wetlands, considerable area has been simply taken from wildlife use to feed and house the expanding human population. But other areas have suffered reduced productivity from gradual diminishing of freshwater inflow, as upstream sources are diverted for human use. Causes and contributing factors Population growth Around fifty years ago, the common view was that water was an infinite resource. At that time, there were fewer than half the current number of people on the planet. People were not as wealthy as today, consumed fewer calories and ate less meat, so less water was needed to produce their food. They required a third of the volume of water we presently take from rivers. Today, the competition for water resources is much more intense. This is because there are now seven billion people on the planet and their consumption of water-thirsty meat is rising. Also, there is increasing competition for water from industry, urbanization, biofuel crops, and water reliant food items. In the future, even more water will be needed to produce food because the Earth's population is forecast to rise to 9 billion by 2050.In 2000, the world population was 6.2 billion. The UN estimates that, by 2050, there will be an additional 3.5 billion people with most of the growth in developing countries that already suffer water stress. Thus, water demand will increase unless there are corresponding increases in water conservation and recycling of this vital resource. In building on the data presented here by the UN, the World Bank goes on to explain that access to water for producing food will be one of the main challenges in the decades to come. Access to water will need to be balanced with the importance of managing water itself in a sustainable way while taking into account the impact of climate change, and other environmental and social variables.In 60% of European cities with more than 100,000 people, groundwater is being used at a faster rate than it can be replenished. Over-exploitation of groundwater Owing to expanding human population, competition for water is growing such that many of the world's major aquifers are becoming depleted. This is due both to direct human consumption as well as agricultural irrigation by groundwater. Millions of pumps of all sizes are currently extracting groundwater throughout the world. Irrigation in dry areas such as northern China, Nepal and India is supplied by groundwater and is being extracted at an unsustainable rate. Cities that have experienced aquifer drops between 10 and 50 meters include Mexico City, Bangkok, Beijing, Madras and Shanghai.Until recently, groundwater was not a highly used resource. In the 1960s, more and more groundwater aquifers developed. Changes in knowledge, technology and funding have allowed for focused development into abstracting water from groundwater resources away from surface water resources. These changes allowed for progress in society such as the "agricultural groundwater revolution", expanding the irrigation sector allowing for increased food production and development in rural areas. Groundwater supplies nearly half of all drinking water in the world. The large volumes of water stored underground in most aquifers have a considerable buffer capacity allowing for water to be withdrawn during periods of drought or little rainfall. This is crucial for people that live in regions that cannot depend on precipitation or surface water as a supply alone, instead providing reliable access to water all year round. As of 2010, the world's aggregated groundwater abstraction is estimated at 1,000 km3 per year, with 67% used for irrigation, 22% used for domestic purposes and 11% used for industrial purposes. The top ten major consumers of abstracted water (India, China, United States of America, Pakistan, Iran, Bangladesh, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Italy) make up 72% of all abstracted water use worldwide.Although groundwater sources are quite prevalent, one major area of concern is the renewal rate or recharge rate of some groundwater sources. Extracting from groundwater sources that are non-renewable could lead to exhaustion if not properly monitored and managed. Another concern of increased groundwater usage is the diminished water quality of the source over time. Reduction of natural outflows, decreasing stored volumes, declining water levels and water degradation are commonly observed in groundwater systems. Groundwater depletion may result in many negative effects such as increased cost of groundwater pumping, induced salinity and other water quality changes, land subsidence, degraded springs and reduced baseflows. Expansion of agricultural and industrial users Scarcity as a result of consumption is caused primarily by the extensive use of water in agriculture/livestock breeding and industry. People in developed countries generally use about 10 times more water daily than those in developing countries. A large part of this is indirect use in water-intensive agricultural and industrial production processes of consumer goods, such as fruit, oilseed crops and cotton. Because many of these production chains have been globalized, a lot of water in developing countries is being used and polluted in order to produce goods destined for consumption in developed countries.Many aquifers have been over-pumped and are not recharging quickly. Although the total fresh water supply is not used up, much has become polluted, salted, unsuitable or otherwise unavailable for drinking, industry and agriculture. To avoid a global water crisis, farmers will have to strive to increase productivity to meet growing demands for food, while industry and cities find ways to use water more efficiently.Business activities such as tourism continue to expand quickly. This expansion requires increased water services including both supply and sanitation, which can lead to more pressure on water resources and natural ecosystem. The approximate 50% growth in world energy use by 2040 will also increase the need for efficient water use. It may shift some irrigation water sources towards industrial use, as thermal power generation uses water for steam generation and cooling. Water pollution Climate change Climate change could have significant impacts on water resources around the world because of the close connections between the climate and hydrological cycle. Rising temperatures will increase evaporation and lead to increases in precipitation, though there will be regional variations in rainfall. Both droughts and floods may become more frequent and more severe in different regions at different times, generally less snowfall and more rainfall under a warmer climate, and dramatic changes in snowfall and snow melt are expected in mountainous areas. Higher temperatures will also affect water quality in ways that are not well understood. Possible impacts include increased eutrophication. Climate change could also mean an increase in demand for farm irrigation, garden sprinklers, and perhaps even swimming pools. There is now ample evidence that increased hydrologic variability and change in climate has and will continue to have a profound impact on the water sector. These effects will be seen through the hydrologic cycle, water availability, water demand, and water allocation at the global, regional, basin, and local levels.The United Nations' FAO states that by 2025, 1.9 billion people will live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions. The World Bank adds that climate change could profoundly alter future patterns of both water availability and use, thereby increasing levels of water stress and insecurity, both at the global scale and in sectors that depend on water.Overall, the effects of changes in population on water scarcity were found to be about four times more important than changes in water availability as a result of long-term climate change. Glaciers About 2% of Earth's water is frozen freshwater found in glaciers. Glaciers provide freshwater in the form meltwater, or freshwater melted from snow or ice, that supply streams or springs as temperatures rise. This water is used by locals for a number of reasons like agriculture, livestock, and hydropower. This is beneficial in helping reduce water scarcity as more water is available to a select number of people. It has been projected that total glaciers worldwide will be 60% of what they are now, in the year 2100. The main reason for the melting of these glaciers is climate change. Glaciers reflect sunlight from the sun back into space providing a decrease in temperatures worldwide. This process is called albedo and without the glaciers reflecting sunlight, temperatures would slowly begin to rise. As temperatures rise, glaciers will melt quicker overall reducing the total amount of sunlight being reflected worldwide. Melting glaciers, over a long period of time, begin receding and will be difficult to recover once seasonal changes occur. Glacier's losing mass may decrease their annual run-off, coupled with receding glaciers, which will change the availability of water in many cold regions of the world. About a third of glaciers may experience a 10% run-off reduction in some seasons.In the Himalayas, retreating glaciers could reduce summer water flows by up to two-thirds. In the Ganges area, this would cause a water shortage for 500 million people. Climate change impacts potable water in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) area, where around 1.4 billion people are dependent on the five main rivers of Himalaya mountains. Although the impact will vary from place to place, it is predicted that the amount of meltwater will initially increase due to retreating glaciers and then gradually decrease because of reducing in glacier mass. In those areas where the amount of available water decreases, climate change makes it difficult to improve access to safe drinkable water. HKH area faces rapid urbanization causing a severe shortage of water and pressure on water resources. Rural areas will also suffer because of a lack of effective water management infrastructure and limited access to drinking water. More people will migrate because of the scarcity of drinking water. This situation will increase inequality by leaving the poor behind leading to higher mortality and suicide rate, and increased urbanization. Options for improvements Supply and demand side management A review in 2006 stated that "It is surprisingly difficult to determine whether water is truly scarce in the physical sense at a global scale (a supply problem) or whether it is available but should be used better (a demand problem)".The International Resource Panel of the UN states that governments have tended to invest heavily in largely inefficient solutions: mega-projects like dams, canals, aqueducts, pipelines and water reservoirs, which are generally neither environmentally sustainable nor economically viable. The most cost-effective way of decoupling water use from economic growth, according to the scientific panel, is for governments to create holistic water management plans that take into account the entire water cycle: from source to distribution, economic use, treatment, recycling, reuse and return to the environment. In general, there is enough water on an annual and global scale, but the issue is more of a temporal and spatial variation. Therefore, reservoirs and pipelines are needed to address the temporal and spatial variations. It is necessary to have a well-planned infrastructure with demand side management. Both supply-side and demand-side management have advantages and disadvantages. Co-operation between countries Lack of cooperation may give rise to regional water conflicts in many parts of the world, specially in developing countries, largely because of the disputes regarding the availability, use and management of water. For example, the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has escalated in 2020. Egypt sees the dam as an existential threat, fearing that the dam will reduce the amount of water it receives from the Nile. Water conservation Expanding sources of usable water Wastewater treatment and reclaimed water Desalination Virtual water trade Regional examples Overview of regions Based on the map published by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the countries and regions suffering most water stress are North Africa, the Middle East, India, Central Asia, China, Chile, Colombia, South Africa, Canada and Australia. Water scarcity is also increasing in South Asia. As of 2016, about four billion people, or two-thirds of the world's population, were facing severe water scarcity.Generally speaking the more developed countries of North America, Europe and Russia will not see a serious threat to water supply by 2025. This is not only because of their relative wealth, but more importantly their populations will be better aligned with available water resources. North Africa, the Middle East, South Africa and northern China will face very severe water shortages due to physical scarcity and a condition of overpopulation relative to their carrying capacity with respect to water supply. Most of South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern China and India will face water supply shortages by 2025. For these regions, the causes of scarcity will be economic constraints to developing safe drinking water, as well as excessive population growth. Africa West Africa and North Africa Water scarcity in Yemen (see: Water supply and sanitation in Yemen) is a growing problem that has resulted from population growth, poor water management, climate change, shifts in rainfall, water infrastructure deterioration, poor governance, and other anthropogenic effects. As of 2011, it has been estimated that Yemen is experiencing water scarcity to a degree that affects its political, economic and social dimensions. As of 2015, Yemen is among the most water scarce countries in the world. The majority of Yemen's population experiences water scarcity for at least one month during the year. In Nigeria, some reports have suggested that increase in extreme heat, drought and the shrinking of Lake Chad is causing water shortage and environmental migration that is forcing thousands to migrate to neighboring Chad and towns. Asia According to a major report compiled in 2019 by more than 200 researchers, the Himalayan glaciers that are the sources of Asia's biggest rivers – Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween and Yellow – could lose 66 percent of their ice by 2100. Approximately 2.4 billion people live in the drainage basin of the Himalayan rivers. India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar could experience floods followed by droughts in coming decades. In India alone, the Ganges provides water for drinking and farming for more than 500 million people.Even with the overpumping of its aquifers, China is developing a grain deficit. When this happens, it will almost certainly drive grain prices upward. Most of the 3 billion people projected to be added worldwide by mid-century will be born in countries already experiencing water shortages. Unless population growth can be slowed quickly, it is feared that there may not be a practical non-violent or humane solution to the emerging world water shortage.It is highly likely that climate change in Turkey will cause its southern river basins to be water scarce before 2070, and increasing drought in Turkey. Americas In the Rio Grande Valley, intensive agribusiness has exacerbated water scarcity issues and sparked jurisdictional disputes regarding water rights on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Scholars, including Mexican political scientist Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, have argued that this tension has created the need for a re-developed strategic transnational water management. Some have likened the disputes to a "war" over diminishing natural resources.The west coast of North America, which gets much of its water from glaciers in mountain ranges such as the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, also would be affected. Australia By far the largest part of Australia is desert or semi-arid lands commonly known as the outback. Water restrictions are in place in many regions and cities of Australia in response to chronic shortages resulting from drought. The Australian of the year 2007, environmentalist Tim Flannery, predicted that unless it made drastic changes, Perth in Western Australia could become the world's first ghost metropolis, an abandoned city with no more water to sustain its population. In 2010, Perth suffered its second-driest winter on record and the water corporation tightened water restrictions for spring.Some countries have already proven that decoupling water use from economic growth is possible. For example, in Australia, water consumption declined by 40% between 2001 and 2009 while the economy grew by more than 30%. By country Water scarcity (or water crisis) in particular countries: Society and culture Global goals Sustainable Development Goal 6 is about "clean water and sanitation for all". It is one of 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. The fourth target of SDG 6 refers to water scarcity and states: "By 2030, substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity and substantially reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity". It has two indicators. The second one is: "Level of water stress: freshwater withdrawal as a proportion of available freshwater resources". The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been monitoring these parameters through its global water information system, AQUASTAT, since 1994.: xii See also Consumptive water use Desert greening Human right to water and sanitation Hydrogen fuel cell power plant Peak water Water conservation Water issues in developing countries Water footprint Water security All pages with titles containing water crisis References External links Environment portal Water portal World portal The World Bank's work and publications on water resources

agriculture in the united kingdom

Agriculture in the United Kingdom uses 69% of the country's land area, employs 1% of its workforce (471,000 people) and contributes 0.5% of its gross value added (£11.2 billion). The UK currently produces about 60% of its domestic food consumption.Agricultural activity occurs in most rural locations. It is concentrated in the drier east (for crops) and the wetter west (for livestock). There are 191,000 farm holdings, which vary widely in size.Despite skilled farmers, advanced technology, fertile soil and subsidies, farm earnings are relatively low, mainly due to low prices at the farm gate. Low earnings, high land prices and a shortage of let farmland discourage young people from joining the industry. The average (median) age of the British farm holder is about 60 (as of 2016).Recently there have been moves towards organic farming in an attempt to sustain profits, and many farmers supplement their income by diversifying activities away from pure agriculture. Biofuels present new opportunities for farmers against a background of rising fears about fossil fuel prices, energy security, and climate change. There is increasing awareness that farmers have an important role to play as custodians of the British countryside and wildlife. Current overview The total area of agricultural holdings is about 41.619 million acres (16.843 million hectares), of which about a third are arable and most of the rest is grassland. In 2022 only 4.4 million hectares (10.87 millon acres) were planted. The remainder lay fallow or as temporary grassland. During the growing season about 72% of the arable area is cereal crops, and of the cereal crop area, more than 57% is wheat. There are about 33 million sheep, 9.6 million cattle, 188 million poultry and 5.2 million pigs. These are arranged on about 191,000 holdings, whose average croppable area is around 69 hectares (170 acres). About 70% of farms are owner-occupied or mostly so (perhaps with individual barns or fields let out), and the remainder are rented to tenant farmers. Farmers represent an ageing population, partly due to low earnings and barriers to entry, and it is increasingly hard to recruit young people into farming. The average farm holder is about 60 years old.In 2021 with 1,3988,000 metric tons, the UK ranks as the 13th largest producer of wheat in the world.British farming is on the whole intensive and highly mechanised. This approach is well-suited to the current distribution infrastructure, but can be less productive by area than smaller scale, diversified farming. The UK produces only 60% of the food it consumes. The vast majority of imports and exports are with other Western European countries.Farming is subsidised, with subsidies to farmers totalling more than £3 billion (after deduction of levies). Regional variations While there is little difference between farming practices in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in places where the terrain is similar, the geography and the quality of the farmland does have an impact. In Wales, 80% of the farmland is designated as a "Less Favoured Area", and in Scotland the figure is 84%. "Less Favoured Area" means land that produces a lower agricultural yield, typically upland moors and hill farms, which explains the tendency to focus on sheep and sometimes dairy farming. In England, the eastern and southern areas where the fields are flatter, larger and more open tend to concentrate on cereal crops, while the hillier northern and western areas with smaller, more enclosed fields tend to concentrate on livestock farming. History Before 1500 Farming was introduced in the British Isles between about 5000 BC and 4500 BC after a large influx of Mesolithic people and following the end of the Pleistocene epoch. It took 2,000 years for the practice to extend across all of the isles. Wheat and barley were grown in small plots near the family home. Sheep, goats and cattle came in from mainland Europe, and pigs were domesticated from wild boar already living in forests. There is evidence of agricultural and hunter-gatherer groups meeting and trading with one another in the early part of the Neolithic. The Saxons and the Vikings had open-field farming systems and there was an expansion of arable farming between the 8th-13th centuries in England Under the Normans and Plantagenets fens were drained, woods cleared and farmland expanded to feed a rising population, until the Black Death reached Britain in 1349. This and subsequent epidemics caused the population to fall; one-third of the population in England died between 1349 and 1350. In consequence, areas of farmland were abandoned. The feudal system began to break down as labourers, who were in short supply following the plague, demanded wages (instead of subsistence) and better conditions. Also, there were a series of poor harvests after about 1315, coinciding with some evidence (from tree rings) of poor weather across the whole of northern Europe, which continued on and off until about 1375. The population did not recover to 1300 levels for 200 to 300 years.The last surviving working mediaeval strip farming system with common grazings is in Laxton, Nottinghamshire in England. The system is documented by detailed maps made in 1635 recording numbers against on the map. The owners and extent of the rights are in an accompanying set of ledger entries against the numbers recorded on the maps. 1500 to 1750 When King Henry VIII named himself Supreme Head of the Church of England in 1531, he set about the dissolution of the monasteries, which was largely complete by 1540. The monasteries had been among the principal landowners in the Kingdom and the Crown took over their land, amounting to about 2,000,000 acres (810,000 ha). This land was largely sold off to fund Henry's military ambitions in France and Scotland, and the main buyers were the aristocracy and landed gentry. Agriculture boomed as grain prices increased sixfold by 1650. Improvements in transport, particularly along rivers and coasts, brought beef and dairy products from the north of England to London. Jethro Tull, a Berkshire farmer, invented his famous rotating-cylinder seed drill. His 1731 book, The New Horse Hoeing Husbandry, explained the systems and devices he espoused to improve agriculture. The book had such an impact that its influence can still be seen in some aspects of modern farming. Charles Townsend, a viscount known as "Turnip Townsend", in the 1730s introduced turnip farming on a large scale. This created a four-crop rotation (wheat, turnips, barley and clover) which allowed fertility to be maintained with much less fallow land. Clover increases mineral nitrogen in the soil and clover and turnips are good fodder crops for livestock, which in turn improve the soil by their manure. 1750 to 1850 Between 1750 and 1850, the English population nearly tripled, with an estimated increase from 5.7 million to 16.6 million, and all these people had to be fed from the domestic food supply. This was achieved through intensified agriculture and land reclamation from the Fens, woodlands, and upland pastures. The crop mix changed too, with wheat and rye replacing barley. Nitrogen fixing plants such as legumes led to sustainable increased yields. These increased yields, combined with improved farming machinery and then-new capitalist ways of organising labour, meant that increased crop production did not need much more manpower, which freed labour for non-agricultural work. Indeed, by 1850 Britain had the smallest proportion of its population engaged in farming of any country in the world, at 22%.Farmers were a group in society that contributed significantly to the numeracy revolution achieved in Europe during the early modern era. During the 18th century, a large share of farmers had the ability to use numerical skills and the ability to read and write, both being skills that were not widespread in the early modern period. Enclosures General Open fields divided among several tenants originally had the advantage of reducing risks by giving all farmers diverse soils and crops so no one faced famine when others prospered. But the system was inefficient. Poor farmers got as much land as good farmers. By the 18th century enclosures came in poorer regions where several landholders were more willing to sell land. After 1760, though, parliamentary legislation permitted the enclosure of wealthier lands that had more complex structures of ownership. The result was an added £4 million to England's national income.During the 18th and 19th centuries, enclosures were by means of special acts of Parliament. They consolidated strips in the open fields into more cohesive units, and enclosed much of the remaining pasture commons or wastes. Enclosure consisted of exchange in land, and an extinguishing of common rights. This allowed farmers to consolidate and fence off their own large plots of land, in contrast to multiple small strips spread out and separated. Voluntary enclosure was also frequent at that time.At the time of the parliamentary enclosures, most manors had seen consolidation of tenant farms into multiple large landholdings. Multiple larger landholders already held the bulk of the land. They 'held' but did not legally own in today's sense. They also had to respect the open field system rights, when demanded, even when in practice the rights were not widely in use. Similarly each large landholding would consist of scattered patches, not consolidated farms. In many cases enclosures were largely an exchange and consolidation of land, and exchange not otherwise possible under the legal system. It also involved the extinguishment of common rights. Without unanimous extinguishment, the entire system survived at common law. With land one held, one could not formally exchange the land, consolidate fields, or entirely exclude others. Strict enforcement of legal rights may not always have been seen in practice. Parliamentary enclosure was seen as a cost-effective method of creating a legally binding settlement. This is because of the costs (time, money, complexity) of using the common law and equity legal systems. Statute required consent of the owners of 4/5-ths of the land (copy and freeholders).The primary benefits to large land holders came from increased value of their own land, not from expropriation. Smaller holders could sell their land to larger ones for a higher price post enclosure. There was not much evidence that the common rights were particularly valuable. Protests against Parliamentary Enclosure continued, sometimes in Parliament itself, frequently in the villages affected, and sometimes as organised mass revolts. Voluntary enclosure was frequent at that time. Enclosed land was twice as valuable, a price which could be sustained only by its higher productivity. Enclosures in Scotland Enclosure in Scotland is associated with sudden and large-scale clearances, perhaps due to the prevalence of cottar tenure whereby a dwelling and a small area of land is made available for so long only as the owner of it allows. Depression 1815-1836 The period 1750-1850 included a twenty-year depression in agriculture 1815 to 1836. It was so severe that landlords as well as tenants suffered financial ruin, and large areas of farmland were entirely abandoned. The ancient landlord and tenant system was unsuited to new-style, capital-intensive farms, which caused concern in Parliament. Parliament began to review the legislation, for example by distinguishing between farm improvements that the tenant should fund, and those the landlord should fund. Parliament was concerned with the issue of tenant right, i.e. the sum payable to an outgoing tenant for farm improvements that the tenant had funded and, if crops were in the ground when the tenant left, compensation for their value. This was dealt with in accordance with local custom, which might vary from place to place. In 1848 a parliamentary committee examined the possibility of a standardised system, but a Bill on the matter was not passed until 1875. The Corn Laws and their Repeal In the period 1815 to 1846 Corn Laws were enacted designed to protect domestic agriculture by imposing a tax on foreign imported grain. Their repeal was ultimately secured after major political lobbying by the Anti-Corn Law League. The issue was divisive because of the increased urbanisation of the UK and its need for cheap food, as well as the general influence of free trade doctrines. The repeal of the Corn Laws initially steadied grain prices. However, it is contested whether by 1846 the Corn Laws were irrelevant because of low prices and/or self-sufficiency in grain. 1850 to 1939 Prices and productivity The American Civil War ended in 1865, and by 1875, with new steam-powered railways and ships, the United States was exporting a substantial excess of cereals. The area planted with wheat in the United Kingdom dropped from 3,514,033 acres (1,422,079 ha) in 1875 to 1,836,598 acres (743,245 ha) in 1905. At the same time, Britain suffered a series of poor harvests. By 1891 reliable refrigeration technology brought cheap frozen meat from Australia, New Zealand and South America to the British market. British farm products declined significantly as a percentage of GDP during the period 1860-1914. In 1860 agriculture represented 20% of GDP. By 1913 it had fallen to 7%. The period 1850-1914 has been described as "completing the shift to a fundamentally urban and industrial society." Changes in farming practice Invented in around 1885, the digging plough is a plough with a wider share, which cuts a wider shallower furrow, after which the slice of soil is inverted by a short concave mould-board with a sharp turn. This has the effect of breaking up and pulverising the soil, leaving no visible furrow and facilitating the use of a seed drill for planting. Earlier ploughs were simply large hoes for stirring the soil, drawn by animals, that left furrows suitable for distribution of seed by hand. The First World War The biggest challenge faced by agriculture was the unavailability of manpower due to the large numbers of men who joined the armed forces in the early years of the War. By the end of 1916, 4 million men had become participant in the armed forces, and agriculture was given no special treatment. It was not until 1917 that agricultural production was overseen by County Executive Committees. Post First World War housing and agricultural policy Although rationing during the First World War was limited to the end of 1917 and 1918, a change of mood arose about food security. The Ministry of Food was created in 1916. There was an opinion that a man who had fought for his country should be entitled to retire to a smallholding on British land that would provide him with a livelihood. This led to various initiatives, including making housing available, collectively called "Homes for Heroes." The priorities were established in the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919. Riddrie, a suburb of Glasgow, was the first estate to be completed in 1922 under that Act. By 1926 agricultural law had become openly redistributive in favour of ex-servicemen. County Councils had compulsory purchase powers to requisition land they could let as smallholdings. Ex-servicemen were the preferred tenants. The tenant could then buy the land and could ask the Council to lend them money to fund the purchase as a mortgage. The Council could not refuse without the Minister of Agriculture's permission. Inter-War trade policies Government control of agriculture during the First World War was removed in 1921 by the repeal of the Agriculture Act 1920. This has been described as "the great betrayal" but has also been found to be welcomed by a section of the farming community that preferred to trade in the market and resented the previous restraints. In the inter-war years 1919-39 agriculture in Britain was not the subject of protectionist policies but had to absorb price falls resulting from increased domestic production and the effects of the imperial preference system favouring the Dominions. By 1938, 88% of wheat was imported, 96% of butter, 76% of cheese and about half the eggs and meat. Legislative change in respect of tenanted land 1875-1923 The Agricultural Holdings (England) Act 1875 rewrote the law on tenant right such that tenants received consistent levels of compensation for the value of their improvements to the holding and any crops in the ground. It also gave tenants the right to remove fixtures they had provided, increased the period of a Notice to Quit from six months to twelve, and brought in an agricultural dispute resolution procedure. Some landlords reacted to the 1875 Act by refusing to let land on a tenancy, instead contracting out the labour to contract farmers. Parliament responded with the Agricultural Holdings (England) Act 1883, which prevented contracting out on terms less favourable than a normal tenancy. Subsequent Agricultural Holdings Acts in 1900 and 1906 further refined the dispute resolution procedure; required landlords to compensate tenants for their damaged crops if the damage was caused by game that the landlord did not allow tenants to kill; allowed tenants to choose for themselves what crops to grow, except in the last year of the tenancy; and prevented penal rents being charged except in special circumstances. The legislation was consolidated in another Act of 1908. Further Agricultural Holdings Acts came into force in 1914, two in 1920, and a further consolidating Act in 1923.The legislative focus on tenant's improvements is against a background where it was the assumed practice for the tenant to provide seed, implements, livestock, machinery and fertilisers. By 1914 a large mixed arable/livestock farm would be typically providing £10 per acre of his own capital. The Second World War Before the Second World War started, Britain imported 55 million tons of food a year. By the end of 1939, this had dropped to 12 million. Farm output in terms of grains rose somewhat during the three years from 1938/1939. Wheat and barley figures increased by two thirds and potatoes doubled. Livestock production was static or fell. Cattle were static and sheep numbers dropped. Large increases in farm income were effected by direct payments (after the War becoming deficiency payments covering the gap between average farm prices and levels guaranteed for 11 products).Farm incomes in this three year period accordingly tripled. Food rationing was introduced at the start of 1940. It did not completely end until July 1954. The government tried to encourage people to grow their own food in victory gardens, and householders were encouraged to keep rabbits and chickens for the table. There were 1.5 million allotments by 1943. Potatoes became "the food of the war". Because so many men had been conscripted into the army, women were drafted in to work the land; they were called the Women's Land Army, or less formally, "land girls".Famously, the Government responded to a temporary wartime oversupply of carrots by suggesting that the RAF's exceptional night-flying was due to eating carotene. The ruse worked: consumption of carrots increased sharply because people thought carrots might help them see in the blackout, thus taking the pressure off other food supplies. But with so much of the agricultural labour force fighting, pressure on food supplies worldwide increased throughout the war. The government estimated that in 1945 world meat consumption would exceed supply by 1.8 million tons and that only wheat would be "available in abundance". The Prime Minister suggested that if necessary, food supplies could take priority over supplies for the military, and considered the possibility of famine in the occupied territories after the war. 1945 to 2000 1945-1985 The Agriculture Act 1947 broadly revamped agricultural law. It was a reaction to the privations of the Second World War, and was aimed at food security, so as to reduce the risk of a hostile foreign power being able to starve the UK into submission. The Act guaranteed prices, markets and tenure, so that a farmer could be assured that his land would not be taken away and whatever he grew would be sold at a known price. The Agricultural Holdings Act 1948 remained the governing code in England and Wales until its replacement in 1986, which consolidated intervening amending statutes. These Acts made it hard to evict tenant farmers. With the new security tenants enjoyed, a system of rent reviews was necessary to take account of land price inflation. There were many other changes in the law, and each of these Acts needed negotiation between the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Farmers Union (NFU) to fix the support price to be paid for each agricultural product. They were enacted in a series of Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Acts in 1949, 1954, 1963, 1968 and 1972.The Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 was passed as the price of Plaid Cymru's support in Parliament for the Lib-Lab Pact of 1976. The 1976 Act allowed for succession of agricultural tenancies on a farmer's death. A suitable relative could inherit the tenancy. This was limited to two generations of tenant.On government instructions, the Northfield Committee began to review the country's agricultural system in 1977. It did not report until July 1979. The report influenced ongoing discussions between the NFU and the Country Landowners Association (CLA), who were trying to reach an agreement on legislation that could be presented as having industry-wide support. In 1984, in accordance with the agreement they did reach, succession was extended to the retirement of the tenant, but no new tenancies from 1984 were to include succession rights. 1985- 2000 By this time the then-European Economic Community (now the European Community)'s Common Agricultural Policy and the value of the green pound was having a direct impact on farming. The Agriculture Act 1986 was concerned with the value of the milk quota attached to land, and particularly how it ought to be shared between landlord and tenant. Nowadays, milk quotas no longer exist, but other subsidies (largely rolled up into Single Payments) still must be divided between the parties.The UK's egg-laying flock declined between 1970 and 2000. It fell by 5.5% in one year from June 1999 to May 2000. In 1971, there were 125,258 farms with egg-laying hens and by 1999 this was down to 26,500.From 1992 until 2004, or 2006 for organic farms, there were subsidies for not growing any crops at all. This was called set-aside and resulted from EEC farming policies. From 2007 onwards, set aside subsidies in the UK were withdrawn. 2000-2015 Cereal production statistics 2000-2010 In 2009, 3,133,000 hectares (7,740,000 acres) of cereal crops were sown in the UK. There were 581,000 hectares (1,440,000 acres) of oil seed rape, 233,000 hectares (580,000 acres) of peas and beans, 149,000 hectares (370,000 acres) of potatoes, and 116,000 hectares (290,000 acres) of sugar beet. Winter crops tend to be planted around mid-September, and spring crops as soon as the soil is ready. Each year the country produces about 6.5 million tonnes of barley, of which 1.5 million are exported, 2 million used in brewing and distilling activities and the remainder fed to livestock. The country also produces 14 to 15 million tons of wheat each year, of which farmers kept 3.9 million tonnes as stock in February 2012. In 2008, 750,000 tonnes of oats were produced, in 2011–2012 613,000.During 1999–2003 production of barley ranged from 6,128,000 to 7,456,000, wheat from 11,580,000 to 16,704,000 and oats from 491,000 to 753,000. Livestock farming Most farmers of beef cattle or sheep made a net loss in the year to April 2010. Production, veterinary, bedding, property, power and machinery costs all underwent double-digit rises in percentage terms, meaning that the losses in the year to April 2010 increased over 2009 losses by over £30/animal. However, wheat exports were much stronger than the previous year.In 2011, earnings were £30,900 per full-time person, which represented an increase of 24% from 2010 values in real terms. This was the best performance in UK agriculture since the 1990s. Agriculture employed 476,000 people, representing 1.5% of the workforce, down more than 32% since 1996. In terms of gross value added in 2009, 83% of the UK's agricultural income originated from England, 9% from Scotland, 4% from Northern Ireland and 3% from Wales.In 2012 the top ten agricultural products of the United Kingdom by value, as reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization in 2012 were (in metric tons): milk (13.8 M); wheat (13.2 M); Chicken meat (1.4 M); cattle meat (882,000); pig meat (770,000); sheep meat (770,000); potatoes (4.5 M); rapeseed (2.5 M); hen eggs (630,000); sugar beet (7.2 M). In 2014, total income from farming in the United Kingdom was £5.38 billion, representing about 0.7% of the British national value added in that year. Consumption From 2002 to 2003, of the cereals grown, 31% of barley, 36% of oats and 34% of wheat were used for human consumption. Consumption of oats by the human population compared with livestock was proportionally higher in the UK than in European countries, 455,000 tonnes as forecast by farm officials during 2012. 163,000 tonnes were fed to livestock during 2011–2012. Loss of bees Two of the most serious diseases affecting crop plants were colony collapse disorder (CCD), wiping out honeybee colonies worldwide, and varroa destructor, a parasitic mite affecting honeybees. Honeybees pollinated 80% of plants worldwide. In 2007, up to 80% of the bee colonies in some areas were wiped out. Honeybees pollinated crops worth about £200 million a year, and their total contribution to the economy might have been as high as £1 billion. Government Government departments History The Board of Agriculture was established by Act of Parliament in 1889. In 1911 the Board of Agriculture for Scotland was created under the Secretary of State for Scotland. In respect of England and Wales, in 1919 the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries was replaced by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, which later became the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF). MAFF was in turn the predecessor of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA. Current DEFRA as at 2023 operates in England. Scotland's agriculture is controlled by the Scottish Government and its Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate. The Welsh government also controls agriculture as a devolved matter under the aegis of the Minister for Rural Affairs. Northern Irish agriculture is within the control of the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) which is part of the Northern Ireland Executive. Supervising or assisting bodies England The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRA) of the Westminster Parliament's House of Commons is tasked to oversee and enquire into the policy, administration and spending of DEFRA. It conducts its own inquiries usually leading to published Reports. EFRA may also inquire into matters that do not lead to formal reports, and it is empowered to conduct interviews and take evidence. Wales The Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee of the Welsh Parliament supervises the Welsh Government in respect of animal welfare, environment, agriculture, forestry, food, marine resources and fisheries as well as trade and economy. Scotland The supervising bodies of the Scottish Parliament include the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee with oversight of agriculture and forestry, and the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee responsible for land use, food, animal welfare and fisheries. Northern Ireland The Committee for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs of the Northern Ireland Assembly is tasked to advise and assist the DAERA Minister and operates in accordance with its mandate periods. Subsidies When in the EU, UK farmers received more than £3 billion a year via the Single Farm Payment. This is roughly £28,300 per farm, although this includes around £3,000 of environmental subsidies, such as for planting woodland. Following Brexit a new subsidy scheme is being introduced with a proposed reduction in direct payments with an increase in payments tied to specific environmental or developmental criteria. Emissions No statistics are supplied for 2021 by the Food and Agriculture Organization in the UK country profile for emissions (CO2 equivalent) for agriculture or for any sector.DEFRA's Agri-climate Report 2022 regarding the UK states that agriculture is a major contributor to UK nitrous oxide (69%) and methane (48%) emissions. It contributes 1.7% to UK C02 emissions. Levels have been steady since the early 2000s when a 16% drop was achieved from the 1990s. A study of farmer awareness of mitigation measures indicates that barriers to mitigation practices include lack of information, the belief change is not necessary and financial barriers. Land Areas in agricultural use The Utilised Agricultural Area(UAA), as of 2022, was 41.619 million acres (16.843 million hectares), approximately 69% of the land area of the UK. This amount is down by 2.2% from 2021. The UAA encompasses land used for agricultural purposes, including all arable and horticultural crops, uncropped arable land, common rough grazing, temporary and permanent grassland and land used for outdoor pigs. It excludes woodland and other non-agricultural land. Approximately 36% of the land is croppable (arable), or approximately 25% of the total UK land area. Most of the rest is permanent grassland, rough grazing and other land on agricultural holdings. Agricultural Land Classification History Land classification maps were issued first in the 1960s, intended as a tool for the better siting of planned new towns. They were provisional in contents but in fact were not updated. Areas of under 80 hectares were stated not to be identifiable from these maps, which were reissued in the 1980s at a different scale (1:250,000 or one quarter inch to the mile). The British Society of Soil Science has published a guide to the history and mapping of UK land classifications. Grades of land Land is classified in England and Wales in accordance with five grades. These grades are established using information as to soil quality and characteristics together with climatological data. The grades used are:grade 1: excellent quality agricultural land grade 2: good quality agricultural land grade 3a: good to moderate quality agricultural land grade 3b: moderate quality agricultural land grade 4: poor quality agricultural land grade 5: very poor quality agricultural land England and Wales Agricultural Land Classification maps are available by online download for England and Wales from Natural England. The English regions have individual maps for: London and the South East; the Eastern Region; the East Midlands; the West Midlands; Yorkshire and Humber; the North East; the North West; the South West. Revised criteria for land grading dated 1988 are provided at the same site, together with climatological data used for the purpose of mapping, and soil sample data with a glossary. The Welsh government, in applying the same grading system, offers predictive map guidance online so that it is easier to decide whether an individual land survey is required to establish the grading of the land. For Wales, the Land Quality Advice Service is the responsible agency. Scotland Scotland uses its own classification system for Land Capability for Agriculture (LCA). It has seven Classes which subdivide. The Prime Quality Land is in Classes 1-3.1 inclusive, corresponding to the superior grades 1-3a in the English/Welsh system. Downloadable data and maps are available from the Scottish Government online. Scottish planning policy may require superior grades of land and peatland to be identified. Northern Ireland There are no Agricultural Land Classification maps, but the system reflects the same grading and criteria as for England and Wales. Grade 3 is designated into 3A and 3B (capitalisation deliberate). There are published soil maps. The Agri-Food and Business Sciences Institute (AFBI) has created publications with data specific to Northern Ireland in the form of soil surveys, geo-chemical data and soil maps. Purpose of classification The planning system requires permission for many kinds of development. Superior grades of agricultural land, meaning grades 1-3a inclusive, are less likely to be permitted to be developed and so fall out of agricultural use. These superior grades of land are the subject of a separate set of maps (Likelihood of Best and Most Versatile (BMV) Agricultural Land - Strategic scale maps) for strategic planning purposes only for the English regions, also available online from Natural England.Sale or letting of land may use the land classification to price the land. Setting rents or evaluating dilapidations (disrepair or breach of obligation on tenanted farms) will probably include reference to this information. Land restoration projects for contaminated land will use such information.Road surveys for building or extending highways will require to include land classification information. Soil Background Soil is a mix of mineral and organic components, produced when rock is weathered and acted on by living organisms. If soils are acidic they may need repeated applications of alkalines (such as lime) to remain fertile. Acid rain increases soil acidity, but even normal rain may be slightly acid. In freely-drained areas, soil base material (including dissolved nitrites) may be washed away, leaving higher concentrations of organic acids in the ground. Wet soil results where rainfall exceeds the rate of evaporation. Soil in Britain Most British soils are 2% to 5% organic and 95% to 98% mineral, but soils such as peat may contain up to 50% organic matter. As far south as the Thames Valley, the soil has been heavily glaciated, which ground down the rock and redistributed the resulting matter. Most British soils date from the last Ice Age and are comparatively young, but in level areas, and particularly south of the Thames Valley, there are older soils.Soffe (2003) summarises the acidity of British soils as follows:- Government information or advice regarding soils Aside from the information above under Agricultural Land Classification, DEFRA has published a Soil Code. There is also a Construction Code of Practice for the Sustainable Use of Soils on Construction Sites. The latter was under review as at August 2022.Guidance is also available in DEFRA's Good Practice for Handling Soils (2000) and its Guidance for Successful Reclamation of Mineral and Waste Sites (2005). Traditional farming Owing to high rainfall in the UK, less well drained areas may become waterlogged. Wet land is more difficult to work and crops grow less well. Field drains were traditionally open ditches, but covered pipes have been used in more modern times. Earthworms are important for creating small drainage channels in the soil and for helping to move soil particles.Lime counteracts soil acidity. With fine particulate soils such as clays, lime also encourages the formation of a better soil structure that will aerate and help with drainage. Its benefits have been known, if not scientifically understood, since Roman times.If organic matter poor in nitrogen but rich in carbohydrate is added to soil, nitrogen is assimilated and fixed. Fertility increases while land is under grass, which helps to accumulate organic matter in the soil. These factors mean that soil is traditionally improved by means of liming, draining, and allowing to lie fallow. It is traditionally fertilised with manure, nitrogen, phosphates, and potash. Fertilisers Background Nitrogen stimulates plant growth, but over-application softens the plant tissues, making them more vulnerable to pests and disease, and less resistant to frost. Nitrogen may be added by using slurry, by nitrogen-fixing crops or by artificial fertilisers. The negative side-effects of adding nitrogen are mitigated by phosphates. The risk of excess nitrogen polluting water is the focus of designating Nitrate Vulnerable Zones. Slurry 170 million tonnes of animal excreta ("slurry") is produced annually in the UK. Farmyard manure can be used as soil fertiliser. Urine contains about half the nitrogen and most of the potash that an animal voids. Dung contains the other half of the nitrogen and most of the phosphoric acid and lime. With dung, much of the nitrogen is lost in storage or locked up in slowly released forms, so greater quantities are necessary compared to artificial fertilisers. Manure is most effective when ploughed into the fields while it is still fresh, but this is not practical while crops are growing. In practice, most manure is stored and then applied in winter, or else added in ridges for root crops.Slurry lagoons that are open are polluting infrastructure. New grants as of 2022 will pay towards conversion of stores to closed stores with minimum 6 months storage. Acidification treatment or covers will be required under the scheme. Many existing stores are concrete or steel structures. Nitrogen-fixing crops Leguminous plants such as peas, beans or lucerne live in a symbiotic relationship with certain bacteria that produce nodules on their roots. The bacteria extract nitrogen from the air and convert it to nitrogenating compounds that benefit the legume. When the legume dies or is harvested, its rotting roots nitrogenate the soil. Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZ) Where nitrogen from soil gets into the water, it can be hazardous to human health. EC Directive 80/778/EEC and 91/676/EEC both state a ceiling acceptable level of nitrates of 50 mg/litre, which is also the level recommended by the World Health Organization. In several places in Britain, particularly in the Midlands and the South East, nitrate concentrations occasionally exceed this level and the government has brought in regulations to control nitrate levels in the water. The regulations governing designated Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZ) aim to protect ground and surface water from contamination with nitrates and manure. Around 68% of English farmland, 14% of Scottish farmland and all of Welsh farmland is within a NVZ. The NVZ rules control at what time of year farmers may apply nitrogen or manure to the land and oblige them to keep strict records of nitrogen-containing substances used. They also regulate slurry and manure storage.The Welsh Government introduced an all Wales NVZ in 2021. Previously, 2.4% of Wales' land was designated as a NVZ. Environmental and fishing groups welcomed the new rules. It will be rolled out, pending a review by the Senedd, over the next three years. The review came after major political backlash from opposition parties and farmers. Phosphates Phosphates are substances that contain phosphorus, which stimulates root development in young plants. It also increases yields and speeds up plant growth. Phosphates are not easily lost from soil, but mostly occur in stable forms that are not liberated quickly enough by natural processes, so fertilisation is necessary. Traditionally, phosphate-bearing materials added to soil include bonemeal, powdered slag, and seaweed. Potash Potash is a substance that contains potassium. This promotes disease resistance and helps to build starches and sugars. Plants tend to absorb potash during early stages of growth, and potash may reduce problems caused by applying nitrogen. Potash also increases the weight of an individual cereal grain. Traditional potash sources included applying ash to the land and ploughing in crop residues after the harvest. Artificial potash fertilisers were not used until deposits of potash salts were discovered in Germany in 1861. Arable farming Arable farming is the production of crops. Crop growth is affected by light, soil, nutrients, water, air, and climate. Crops commonly grown in the United Kingdom include cereals, chiefly wheat, oats and barley; root vegetables, chiefly potatoes and sugar beet; pulse crops such as beans or peas; forage crops such as cabbages, vetches, rape and kale; fruit, particularly apples and pears; and hay for animal feed. Seeds may be sown in spring, summer or autumn. Spring-sown crops are vulnerable to drought in May or June. Autumn sowing is usually restricted to frost-hardy types of bean, vetch, or cereal such as winter wheat. Traditional sowing techniques include broadcasting, dibbling, drilling, and ploughing in. Drilling is normally the most economical technique where conditions are dry enough.Climate change will have positive impacts on crop production in Ireland. The combined effects of higher CO2 concentration, warmer spring/summer temperatures and lengthened growing season will all be beneficial to certain types of crop production, specifically grains and barley and detrimental to other crops, such as potatoes. Methods Ploughing is not always regarded as essential nowadays, but the plough can improve soil by inverting it to improve soil aeration and drainage, release nutrients through weathering, and expose harmful pests to predators. It is also an effective method of weed control. Ploughing depth in Britain varies between 5–6 inches in some limestone regions to up to 18 inches in deep stoneless silt land. Most British ploughs are designed to turn a furrow of up to about a foot deep, which is relatively shallow compared to some other countries, where furrows of up to 16 inches are common. Other machines used to prepare land include cultivators (to break up land too heavy for a normal plough), harrows (to level the surface of ploughed land), rolls or rollers (used for firming the soil), sprayers and dusters (used to spread herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and fertilisers).Reaping is the process of harvesting a crop. Traditionally reaping was done with the scythe and reaping hook, but in Britain these have been entirely superseded by machinery. Combine harvesters, so called because they both harvest and thresh the crop, are common. Other machines used include mowers, reapers, binders, harvesters, pea cutters and flax pullers. Once reaped, some crops are brought directly to market. Others need to be threshed to separate the cash crop from the straw and chaff. Wheat, oats, barley, beans and some kinds of small seed (e.g. clover) typically need to be threshed.Since the Second World War, scientific and technical progress and the removal of tenancy-based restrictions on choice of crop have given British arable farmers a great deal more freedom to plan cropping sequences. Strict crop rotation is no longer technically necessary or even financially desirable. Factors that influence crop sequences include the soil type, weather, the price and availability of labour and power, market outlets, and technical considerations about maintaining soil fertility and crop health. For example, some vigorous crops such as kale or arable silage will, when liberally fertilised, tend to outgrow and smother weeds. Many pests and diseases are crop-specific and the more often a particular crop is taken, the greater the buildup of pests and diseases that attack it. The farmer will therefore try to design a sequence to sustain high yields, permit adequate weed control, service market needs, and keep the soil free from diseases and pests.As a direct result of climate change, harvesting is coming earlier in the year. The increased temperatures and CO2 levels allow this to happen. This means crops can be harvested well in advance of the heavy rain season. Diseases Most diseases of crop plants result from fungus spores that may live in the soil and enter through roots, be airborne and enter the plant through damaged areas or landing on leaf surfaces, or are spread by pests. These spores tend to affect photosynthesis and reduce chlorophyll. They often make plants look yellow and affect growth and marketability of the crop. They are most commonly treated with fungicides, and may be called mildews, rusts, blotches, scabs, wilts, rots or blights. European Union regulations on pesticides are changing, and several important pesticides currently in use will no longer be available. This has potentially quite serious implications for British agriculture.Climate change is bringing with it the earlier onset of winter rain. These very wet soils during spring time will also lead to unwanted pest and disease problems during the plating season. Weeds History Historically weed control was by hand-pulling of weeds, often during "fallowing" (which means leaving the land to carry no crop for a season, during which time the weeds can be found and removed). In 1896 it was found that a copper sulphate solution would kill broad-leaved weeds without seriously damaging young cereal plants. Other chemical weedkillers were soon discovered and now common chemical weedkiller ingredients include sodium chlorate, copper chloride, sulphuric acid, dinitroorthocresol and dinitrobutylphenol. Hormone-based weedkillers are used to kill weeds more selectively. Although most weeds are vulnerable to at least one of these substances, eradicating all the weeds from a particular area will usually need several different weedkillers. The use of pesticides has declined, and British farmers now use about a third less pesticides than they did in 1983. The crop needing most pesticides is wheat. Use of pesticides In Scotland there is a Code of Practice, the Pesticides: code of practice for using plant protection products in Scotland (2007). Pests Identification of UK pests A pest is an animal that eats or spoils food meant for humans. Pests damage crops by removing leaf area, severing roots, or simply gross damage. In the UK, they are invertebrates (chiefly nematodes, slugs and insects or insect larvae), mammals (particularly rabbits) and birds (mainly members of the pigeon family). The damage caused by crop pests is considerable. For example, potato cyst nematodes cause over £50 million damage a year in the UK. Ministerial intervention powers As at 2023 the Secretary of State for DEFRA is able under surviving sections of the Agriculture Act 1947 to intervene to compel or assist with pest control by destruction of animals, birds and eggs specified in a notice under section 98 of the 1947 Act. Such animal pests are defined as "rabbits, hares and other rodents, deer, foxes and moles." Birds are defined for these purposes as wild birds other than those included in the First Schedule to the Protection of Birds Act 1954. The Secretary of State may assist in the process of pest extermination by providing equipment or services and recoup the reasonable cost of doing so.Actions prohibited by the Game Act 1831 are not authorised by a notice under the 1947 Act. As at 2023 the 1831 Act remains in force. It prohibits, amongst other things, taking game at certain times and also the laying down of poison for game. Livestock farming Pastoral farming is the breeding of livestock for meat, wool, eggs and milk, and historically (in the UK) for labour. Livestock products are the main element of the UK's agricultural output. The most common meat animals in the United Kingdom are cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry. Overwhelmingly, British wool comes from sheep, with only a few goats or alpacas bred for exotic wools such as cashmere or angora. The vast majority of milk comes from cattle, and eggs from chickens.Most British farm animals are bred for a particular purpose, so for example, there is a sharp division between cattle bred for the beef trade—early-maturing cattle are best to increase yield, and those that store fat marbled within the muscle rather than as layers outside are preferred for the flavour—and those bred for dairy, where animals with a high milk yield are strongly preferred. Nevertheless, because dairy cattle must calve to produce milk, much of the British beef output is from surplus dairy herd calves. Cattle farming There are about 17,000 dairy farms in the UK, largely in the west. Average herd size is 86 cows in England, 75 in Wales and 102 in Scotland. Most cows are milked twice a day, and an average dairy cow yields 6,300 litres a year. The most important dairy cattle breed is the ubiquitous British Friesian, which has largely replaced the Dairy Shorthorn in British dairy herds thanks both to its high milk yield and the relatively high quality of the beef it produces.The UK once produced roughly as much beef as it ate, but this changed in 1996 because of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The BSE crisis led to regulations preventing animals more than 30 months old from entering the food chain, which meant cull cows could no longer be sold for beef. Just under 6 million cattle over this age were destroyed. A Calf Purchase Aid Scheme, under which a further nearly 2 million calves were slaughtered, ended in 1999. In 2002, the UK produced 72% of the beef it ate. Important beef cattle breeds include the Hereford, which is the most popular British beef breed, and the Aberdeen Angus. The once-widespread Beef Shorthorn is now a relatively uncommon sight.Cows require significant areas of grassland to raise. Dairy cows need 0.4 to 0.5 hectares per cow, including the area needed for winter silage; suckler beef cows can need up to a whole hectare each. The UK produces very little veal. UK animal welfare law requires that animals are kept in daylight in groups with bedding and access to hay, silage or straw. This produces "pink" veal where the calves grow more slowly. It was initially less desirable to some continental customers than the "white" veal produced in harsher conditions for the calf. Sheep farming Over 41,000 farms in the UK produce sheep, but more than half of breeding ewes are on hill or upland farms suitable for little else. National Parks and heather moors such as the Lake District, the Pennines and Snowdonia in Wales are dominated by sheep farms, as are the Scottish Highlands. In the lowlands, pockets of sheep farms remain. Romney Marsh (which gave its name to the Romney sheep) and The Downs in Kent are famous for their sheep. Sheep farming in Wales encompasses both upland and lowland areas. The number of sheep farmed in the UK peaked in 1998 at 20.3 million, as a result of the Sheepmeat Regime, a relatively generous EU support initiative first begun in 1980. Numbers declined following the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth, and the UK temporarily lost its place as Europe's largest producer of lamb, although this was recovered later. (Although it is Europe's largest producer, the UK is nevertheless a net importer of lamb, often from New Zealand.)Nowadays many ewes are housed indoors for lambing, which costs more but facilitates earlier lambing with lower mortality and replacement rates. It also rests and protects the grassland, leading to better early growth and higher stocking rates. Sheep are also important in helping to manage the landscape. Their trampling hinders bracken spread and prevents heather moor from reverting to scrub woodland. Wool production is no longer economically important in the UK, and nowadays, sheared fleeces are often treated as a waste product. Pig farming Pig farming is concentrated in Yorkshire and East Anglia. About 4,600 farms produce pigs, and the UK is 90% self-sufficient in pork, but only about 40% self-sufficient in bacon and ham, which reflects a traditional British preference for these cuts. Nowadays many pig farms in the UK breed intensively farmed hybrids of types like the Large White, British Landrace, Welsh or British Saddleback, and formerly popular breeds like the Cumberland and Small White are extinct. Wild boar are sometimes farmed. They are currently covered under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976 and farmers need permission from their local authority to keep them.The UK pig herd is declining, and there are now some individual pig farms in the US that have more sows than there are in the UK as a whole. Pigs often used to be kept indoors throughout their lives, but welfare concerns and increased costs have led to more outdoor units, and by 2002 30% of sows were outdoors. In many countries sows are kept tethered in individual stalls, but this system was banned in the UK in 1999 on animal welfare grounds. Indoor sows are housed in groups. Each sow produces an average of 24 piglets a year and will be pregnant or lactating for 340 days a year. This intensive production wears the sows out, and about 40% of them need to be replaced each year.A major byproduct of pig production is slurry. One sow and her piglets can produce ten tonnes of slurry a year. Because regulations limit how much slurry can be loaded onto a given area of land, this means that each sow with her progeny will manure at least 0.8 hectares. This is a problem because pig manure is mildly toxic, owing to the use of copper as a growth enhancer. Other livestock and poultry The UK has about 73,000 goats, mostly as milk producers; this number is relatively small by EU standards. Venison production in the UK is mainly from red deer, with a few fallow deer as well, but there are only about 300 venison-producing farms. As noted above, there are about 26,500 farms with chickens. However, more than half the UK's eggs come from fewer than 400 flocks, mostly with more than 50,000 birds each. Other livestock and poultry farmed on a smaller scale include game birds, ducks, geese, turkeys, ostriches and rabbits. In this way, the UK produce annually 22 million turkeys. Livestock movement and record-keeping Farmers wanting to move their livestock outside their own farms must obey the Disease Control (England) Order 2003, the Disease Control (Wales) Order 2003 or the Disease Control (Interim Measures) (Scotland) Order 2002, as applicable. This means a farmer needs a licence from the Local Authority to move livestock. There are also minimum "standstill" periods once livestock has been moved, so for example, a farmer buying new cattle and moving them onto his farm must then wait six days before taking other cattle to market. Most livestock must be identified. Each individual cow must have a "passport" issued by the British Cattle Movement Service. Other farm animals such as sheep, goats or pigs must have a herd mark. Disease Designated notifiable diseases under the Diseases of Animals Act include anthrax, foot-and-mouth disease, fowl pest, bovine tuberculosis, BSE, scrapie, swine vesicular disease, Aujeszky's disease, bovine leukemia virus, rabies and warble fly. Under the Zoonoses Order conditions that can be transmitted to humans, such as brucellosis or salmonella, must also be notified. The United Kingdom suffered outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in 1967 and 2001, with a less serious outbreak in 2007. There was also an outbreak of bluetongue in 2007. The most serious disease to affect British agriculture was BSE, a cattle brain disease that causes a similar disease in some humans who eat infected meat. It has killed 166 people in Britain since 1994.A current issue is the control of bovine tuberculosis, which can also be carried by badgers. It is alleged that the badgers are infecting the cows. A scientific report for the government recommended a selective cull of badgers, which immediately met with opposition from other scientists. The government is currently consulting on this issue. As of 16 September 2011, a total of 27 online petitions had attracted 65,000 signatures opposing the plan. Animal welfare Animal welfare legislation affecting UK agriculture includes the Animal Welfare Act 2006, the Welfare of Farmed Animals Regulations 2007 and the Welfare of Animals (Transport) Order 1997. The UK has a good reputation for animal welfare, and there are several codes of practice.Animal welfare as an issue is increasingly important to the European Union. Although welfare-conscious husbandry can have economic benefits to the farmer, because a happy animal puts on weight more rapidly and will reproduce more easily, the mere fact that an animal is gaining weight or reproducing does not necessarily indicate a high level of animal welfare. Generally there is a tension between the minimum acceptable level of animal welfare for the consumer, the price of the product, and an acceptable margin for the farmer. This tension is resolved by food labelling that enables the consumer to select the price they are prepared to pay for a given level of animal welfare. So for example, many consumers prefer to buy free range eggs even where these are more expensive than eggs from battery hens. Nowadays, there are various welfare assurance schemes in response to consumer pressure. The use of battery cages in now illegal in the European Union, due to the severe impacts the cages can have on the well-being of hens. Agricultural education and training History The Royal Agricultural University, which was the first agricultural college in the English-speaking world, opened as the Royal Agricultural College in 1845. It was granted its royal charter shortly after its founding. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, as farming grew more complex and methodical and as productivity increased, there was a dawning recognition that farmers needed agricultural education. Thanks to government financial support for agricultural education in the 1890s, the Royal Agricultural College was followed by Writtle College in 1893 and Harper Adams University College in 1901. Meanwhile, the West of Scotland Agricultural College formed in 1899, the East of Scotland Agricultural College in 1901, and the North of Scotland Agricultural College in 1904; these colleges amalgamated to form the Scottish Agricultural College in 1990. Professor John Wrightson opened his private Downton Agricultural College in 1880; it closed in 1906 as it was unable to compete with the publicly funded state colleges. University and further education Agricultural universities or agricultural further education institutions in the UK include the following. In England the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester offers degree-level education and research opportunities in agriculture, as does Harper Adams University in Shropshire. Writtle University College is in Essex. Hartpury University is in Gloucestershire. Hadlow College is in Kent. In Scotland, Scotland's Rural College operates from Aberdeen. There is no specialist agricultural university in Wales, though courses in agriculture are available. The same is true for Northern Ireland. There is additionally a specialist agricultural college in Northern Ireland, the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE). Political and advisory bodies There are numerous bodies and associations, charities and others who respond to UK government agricultural policy consultations or who attempt to lobby or influence government policy. The following (listed alphabetically) are a selection of specialised bodies or groups whose principal purpose it is to lobby for, or to offer advice about, possible agricultural or rural legislation and/or policy. Agricultural Law Association (ALA) The Agricultural Law Association (ALA) is a non-political organisation of legal and other experts in agricultural law which offers advice in response to government consultations. Members may be qualified lawyers, surveyors or otherwise professionally qualified. Members may also be qualified as Fellows by the ALA. The ALA operates throughout the UK via regional groups. Central Association of Agricultural Valuers (CAAV) The Central Association of Agricultural Valuers was founded in 1910 from a number of local associations. Its current membership is approximately 3,000 who are qualified by the CAAV and are rural agricultural professionals. The organisation operates throughout the UK and does so via its committee network. It provides information resources, meetings, and advice in and regarding government consultations. Country Land and Business Association (CLA) The Country Land and Business Association (CLA), formerly known as the Country Landowners' Association, represents a 28,000 membership base of people or organisations owning land in England and Wales. Its purpose is to provide membership services and information, as well as lobbying to secure desired policy outcomes for landowner members. Farmers' Union of Wales The Farmers' Union of Wales was formed in 1955 to represent those members farming in Wales. It has the right to represent Welsh farmers in UK government consultations. National Farmers' Union of England and Wales History The National Farmers Union (NFU) was begun by a group of nine Lincolnshire farmers and, as the "Lincolnshire Farmers Union", held its first meeting in 1904. By 1908 they were called the National Farmers Union and were meeting in London. During the Second World War, the NFU worked closely with the Ministry of Agriculture to ensure food security. Rationing continued after the war and it is a measure of the NFU's influence at that time that the Agriculture Act 1947 committed the government to undertake a national review of the industry every year in consultation with the NFU. After the 2001 creation of DEFRA, the NFU continued to influence policy. Regional grouping The main NFU operates in England and Wales. The Welsh section is known as NFU Cymru. Current The farming and horticultural business base of the NFU as at 2023 stood at over 46,000 business members. The organisation is concerned with promoting the interests of its members by lobbying and campaigning, the provision of information and making available other services to members. NFU Scotland NFU Scotland was founded in 1913 and as at 2023 represents approximately 10,000 farmers in Scotland. Its purpose is to further the interests of its members and to inform and represent them. Scottish Crofting Federation The Scottish Crofting Federation operates in Scotland and is concerned to promote and protect crofting, a form of small-scale farming found in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. It campaigns for those purposes. Scottish Tenant Farmers' Association (STFA) The Scottish Tenant Farmers' Association, which operates in Scotland, was founded in 2001. It was originally known as the Tenant Farmers' Action Group. Its members are tenants of farms in Scotland and its purpose is to inform membership and promote its interests including by legislative change. Tenant Farmers' Association (TFA) The Tenant Farmers' Association was formed in 1981 and operates in England and Wales. Its purpose is to represent tenant farmer members and to lobby on their behalf. It provides information and some services. Ulster Farmers' Union The Ulster Farmers' Union was founded in 1918 and operates in Northern Ireland. It has approximately 12,500 members and its purpose is to promote their interests by professional lobbying. Special features (listed alphabetically) Barriers to entry The only option for someone who lacks capital for land purchase but wants to farm is to rent land on a tenancy. In the 1930s land with vacant possession cost an average of £60 per hectare. In 1996 it cost £8,795 per hectare. In the same period retail prices rose by a factor of 35, but agricultural land prices rose by a factor of well over 100.In England and Wales the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986, which consolidated and built on a century-long trend of increasing protection for tenants, became so onerous towards landlords that they were reluctant to let land at all. It became so hard to obtain a tenancy that the farming industry supported reform enabling termination of tenancies in accordance with the terms of the letting rather than with security of tenure under the 1986 Act. Thus the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995 led to the creation of Farm Business Tenancies under its terms. Since then most new tenancies in England and Wales are Farm Business Tenancies under the 1995 Act. 1986 Act tenancies continue in force and may be followed by up to two generations of family tenant. In 2011 the most common route of entry into farming was to succeed to a holding, whether as owner or tenant, so a person's opportunity to farm depended primarily on a family connection. Biofuel Biofuels are fuels derived from biomass. They can be used in their pure form to power vehicles, but most commonly they are blended with traditional fuels such as diesel. In 2003, the European Union saw biofuels as an answer to several problems: climate change, energy security and stimulating the rural economy, and agreed the Biofuels Directive to see that production was kickstarted. In 2008, the Gallagher Review expressed concern about the effects of the biofuels initiative and identified the conversion of agricultural land to biofuels production as a factor in rising food prices. The current recommended option is that farmers should use marginal or waste land to produce biofuels and maintain production of food on prime agricultural land.The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation ("RTFO") obliges fuel suppliers to see that a certain proportion of the fuel they sell comes from renewable sources. The target for 2009/10 is 3.25% by volume. This presents a potentially useful source of revenue for some farmers.Biofuel crops grown in the UK include oilseed rape (which is also grown for other purposes), short-rotation coppices such as poplar or willow, and miscanthus. Unfortunately biofuels are quite bulky for their energy yield, which means processing into fuel needs to happen near where the crop is grown; otherwise, most or all of the benefit of biofuels can be lost in transporting the biofuel to the processing area. Such local processing units are not generally available in the UK, and further expansion of this market will depend on politics and industrial finance. Custodianship It was first suggested that farmers could be paid for "producing countryside" in 1969, but the real beginning of positive agri-environmental policy came with the Agriculture Act 1986. The Countryside Stewardship Scheme and local equivalents were run by the Countryside Commission and the Countryside Council for Wales from 1991 until 1996, when they came under ministry control. Nowadays schemes to encourage farmers to think about wildlife conservation and to farm in an environmentally friendly way abound, though actual payments to farmers to support this are comparatively modest.When EU subsidy regime changes in 2013, farmers will receive a greater proportion of their payments from "management of natural resources and climate action." This forms one of the three "principal objectives" of the reformed Common Agricultural Policy which is under consultation until March 2012. Diversification About half of all farmers in the United Kingdom supplement their income by diversifying their businesses away from pure agriculture. On average diversification adds £10,400 to a farm's revenue.Sporting rights over farmland for hunting or trapping game have commercial value; game shooting, deer stalking and fishing contribute to the UK economy. Fox hunting has been banned in the United Kingdom since February 2005.There are many ways of diversifying. Farmland may, for example, be converted to equestrian facilities, amenity parkland, country clubs, hotels, golf courses, camping and caravan sites. Farmers open shops, restaurants and even pubs to sell their products. The Farm Diversification Benchmarking Study, which was commissioned by DEFRA and carried out by Exeter University in conjunction with the University of Plymouth, found that 65% of full-time farming businesses had diversified, but in the June census of the preceding year (2003), the estimate was 19% of full-time farming businesses. The large discrepancy is probably because the census data excluded the letting or subletting of buildings. The most common kinds of diversification are probably letting of barns as warehouses and storage, letting of former farm labourers' cottages (whether as holiday cottages or on longer leases) and farm shops. The number of farm shops in the UK increased by more than 50% between 1999 and 2003.There is grant funding available for diversification schemes, as well as other initiatives to improve competitiveness in the farming sector, through the Rural Development Programme for England. The scheme runs until 2013, is managed through Defra and has been delivered to date through Regional Development Agencies. Expenditure on the Rural Development Programme for England will remain around £3.7 billion for the 2007–13 programme period, compared with the original planned budget of about £3.9 billion. Organic farming Background Organic farming is farming without chemical fertilisers, most pesticides, genetic modification, or the routine use of drugs, antibiotics or wormers. In the United Kingdom it is supported and encouraged by the Soil Association. The Food Standards Agency says that organic food offers no additional nutritional benefits over the non-organic kind, though the Soil Association disputes this. However, there are definite benefits in terms of on-farm conservation and wildlife. In the UK as in most of northern Europe, organic crop yields can be 40%–50% lower than conventional, more intensive farming and labour use can be 10%–25% higher. History An Organic Aid Scheme came into effect in 1994, providing grants to fund farmers wishing to convert to organic farming. By the end of 1997 about 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) had been converted under the scheme, at a cost of £750,000. In 2000 it increased to 525,000 hectares (1,300,000 acres), and between 1996 and 2000, the number of organic farms increased from 865 to 3500. The global market for organic food was worth £1.2 billion a year (2009) and is increasing. The UK's share of the European organic farming market was about 10%. Recent DEFRA's National statistics Organic farming statistics 2022, published 25 May 2023, state that 509,000 hectares are farmed organically in the UK by 5,500 operators. The figures include land under conversion to organic status. The total organic land is approximately 3% of total farmed land. The largest component was 61.8% of UK organic land in permanent pasture (314,000 hectares). Only 3.1% of UK cattle were raised organically. Cereal growing represented 9.7% of organic land use (49,000 hectares). There has been a 31.6% decrease in organic land use since peaking in 2008. However, the Soil Association is optimistic that an increased organic area is to be anticipated.DEFRA supports organic farming by offering leaflet advice as to the compatible schemes and grants that generate income. Payments for organic farmers, published June 2023, lists five separate possibilities. Public sector food procurement It is an objective of public procurement in the UK "to support our agricultural industry", at the same time as "providing value for money within public procurement". Smallholdings History Local government authorities have powers under the Smallholdings and Allotments Act to buy and rent land to people who want to become farmers. Fifty County Councils and Unitary Authorities in England and Wales offer tenancies on smallholdings (called "County Farms") as an entry route into agriculture, but this provision is shrinking. Between 1984 and 2006, the amount of land available as County Farms shrank from 137,664 hectares (340,180 acres) to 96,206 hectares (237,730 acres), a reduction of 30%. The number of tenants on these smallholdings shrank by 58% in the same period to about 2,900. County Farms yielded an operational surplus of £10.6 million to local authorities in the financial year 2008–9. Some local authorities dispose of County Farms to obtain capital receipts. Somerset County Council proposes to sell 35 of its 62 County Farms. As of March 2009, 39% of County Farms were of 50 acres (20 ha) or smaller, 31% of 50 acres (20 ha) to 100 acres (40 ha) and 30% of 100 acres (40 ha) or more. Recent England The Secretary of State for DEFRA is required to present to Parliament statistics for the English local authorities' smallholdings estates. Incomplete but statistically significant data were presented for the fiscal year ended 31 March 2021. This report indicates that of 67,699 hectares held, 65,932 hectares were let as smallholdings. It was estimated that this represents a 0.4% decline in area over a year. Arable farming was the predominant type of farming (27.6%). 1,978 smallholdings were let as at 31 March 2021 at an average rent per hectare of £310. There were 1,416 tenants of whom 69% had Farm Business Tenancies without security of tenure, and 20% had lifetime tenancies held under the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 with security of tenure. As at 31 March 2021 the total rent roll for smallholdings reported was approximately £20 million. Wales Local authority smallholdings in Wales are the subject of annual public reports made by the Welsh Ministers. The Report for 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022 Just under 1% of total 1.9 M hectares Welsh farm land was held as smallholdings. At 31 March 2022 there were 884 tenants holding 969 tenancies. 62% of the tenancies were under 20 hectares. Total income to the landlords amounted to approximately £4.3M with an operational surplus of £2.7M. Scotland Smallholdings in Scotland, can be either owner-occupied or tenanted holdings. A Scottish smallholding is averagely 20 hectares in extent. There are approximately 20,000 smallholders. 75 are tenants of the Scottish Government under the Small Landholdings Acts 1886-1931. The remainder are mostly crofters governed by the crofting legislation. Smallholdings were reviewed in 2017.Notable smallholder Michael Forbes was able to prevent Donald Trump’s ambitions for a golf course in Aberdeenshire. Notable agricultural scandals or mishaps 1988 Eggs and Currie The 1988 Salmonella In Eggs scandal forced junior health minister Edwina Currie out of office two weeks after she declared that most of British egg production was affected by salmonella. The public believed her, and 4 million hens and 40 million eggs were destroyed in consequence. Years later a respectable newspaper alleged there had been a Government cover-up, and that the straight-talking Mrs Currie was right. 1990 Beef-eating Gummer At the height of the BSE "mad cow disease" scare in May 1990, Agriculture Minister John Gummer went on camera feeding his four year old daughter a beef burger as part of his attempt to reassure the public that eating beef was safe. Consequently described by the BBC as "probably the most derided politician to emerge out of the BSE scandal," Gummer had been responsible for delaying a ban on beef offal in 1989. 2006 the Rural Payments Agency: incompetence and sex scandal Subsidy payments under the Single Payments Scheme due to farmers were not made because the Rural Payments Agency had underestimated their task and had seriously underestimated the cost of their intended new computer system. By January 2005, thousands of farmers were unpaid: they exchanged via the NFU forthright views with the Rural Affairs Minister, Lord Bach. By March 2006, money still had not been paid, so the Chief Executive Johnson McNeil was removed. In the midst of the crisis, staff of the Newcastle office of the RPA were reported by the local Evening Chronicle for being captured on CCTV leaping naked between the office filing cabinets. On 12 June 2006, apparently to celebrate their infamy, team members and managers held a drink-and-sex-fuelled party, news of which was reported the following day in considerable detail, alongside a series of apparently leaked office emails in which farmers were referred to in unflattering terms. The Farmers' Weekly followed both the payments and the sex scandal narratives. The new Chief Executive (the third inside a year) Tony Cooper hastened to investigate. In early August there were 4 sackings and 5 disciplinary warnings, and an admission that there had been "incidents of misbehaviour that are simply unacceptable in this organisation." 2007 Foot-and-mouth epidemic The 2007 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak caused the destruction of over 2,000 animals and the payment of £47 million damages by the Government after contaminated effluent escaped from the biological research laboratories at the Pirbright Institute. 2021 Breakdown at the Crofting Commission In-fighting at the Scottish Crofting Commission, a body with key functions and considerable power in relation to crofting, was declared in the 2020/2021 audit to have resulted in that body "falling below the standards expected of a public body in Scotland." The Crofting Commission were required by Audit Scotland in the Report to follow an Implementation Plan to rectify matters. See also Agriculture in Scotland Agriculture in Wales Economy of Northern Ireland Aquaculture in the United Kingdom Beekeeping in the United Kingdom Forestry in the United Kingdom English land law List of renewable resources produced and traded by the United Kingdom Notes References Further reading Bibliography Primary sources Clapp, B.W. ed. Documents in English Economic History: England since 1760 (1976). Periodicals External links Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) UK government website on food and agricultural production, official website National Statistics, Agriculture in the UK, official website

sustainability measurement

Sustainability measurement is a set of frameworks or indicators to measure how sustainable something is. This includes processes, products, services and businesses. Sustainability is difficult to quantify. It may even be impossible to measure. To measure sustainability, the indicators consider environmental, social and economic domains. The metrics are still evolving. They include indicators, benchmarks and audits. They include sustainability standards and certification systems like Fairtrade and Organic. They also involve indices and accounting. And they can include assessment, appraisal and other reporting systems. These metrics are used over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Sustainability measures include corporate sustainability reporting, Triple Bottom Line accounting. They include estimates of the quality of sustainability governance for individual countries. These use the Environmental Sustainability Index and Environmental Performance Index. Some methods let us track sustainable development. These include the UN Human Development Index and ecological footprints. Two related concepts to understand if the mode of life of humanity is sustainable, are planetary boundaries and ecological footprint. If the boundaries are not crossed and the ecological footprint is not exceeding the carrying capacity of the biosphere, the mode of life is regarded as sustainable. A set of well defined and harmonized indicators can help to make sustainability tangible. Those indicators are expected to be identified and adjusted through empirical observations (trial and error). The most common critiques are related to issues like data quality, comparability, objective function and the necessary resources. However a more general criticism is coming from the project management community: "How can a sustainable development be achieved at global level if we cannot monitor it in any single project?". Sustainability need and framework Sustainable development has become the primary yardstick of improvement for industries and is being integrated into effective government and business strategies. The needs for sustainability measurement include improvement in the operations, benchmarking performances, tracking progress, and evaluating process, among others. For the purposes of building sustainability indicators, frameworks can be developed and the steps are as follows: Defining the system- A proper and definite system is defined. A proper system boundary is drawn for further analysis. Elements of the system- The whole input, output of materials, emissions, energy and other auxiliary elements are properly analysed. The working conditions, process parameters and characteristics are defined in this step. Indicators selection- The indicators is selected of which measurement has to be done. This forms the metric for this system whose analysis is done in the further steps. Assessment and Measurement- Proper assessing tools are used and tests or experiments are performed for the pre-defined indicators to give a value for the indicators measurement. Analysis and reviewing the results- Once the results have been obtained, proper analysis and interpretation is done and tools are used to improve and revise the processes present in the system. Sustainability indicators and their function The principal objective of sustainability indicators is to inform public policy-making as part of the process of sustainability governance. Sustainability indicators can provide information on any aspect of the interplay between the environment and socio-economic activities. Building strategic indicator sets generally deals with just a few simple questions: what is happening? (descriptive indicators), does it matter and are we reaching targets? (performance indicators), are we improving? (efficiency indicators), are measures working? (policy effectiveness indicators), and are we generally better off? (total welfare indicators). The International Institute for Sustainable Development and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development established the Committee on Sustainability Assessment (COSA) in 2006 to evaluate sustainability initiatives operating in agriculture and develop indicators for their measurable social, economic and environmental objectives.One popular general framework used by The European Environment Agency uses a slight modification of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development DPSIR system. This breaks up environmental impact into five stages. Social and economic developments (consumption and production) (D)rive or initiate environmental (P)ressures which, in turn, produces a change in the (S)tate of the environment which leads to (I)mpacts of various kinds. Societal (R)esponses (policy guided by sustainability indicators) can be introduced at any stage of this sequence of events. Politics A study concluded that social indicators and, therefore, sustainable development indicators, are scientific constructs whose principal objective is to inform public policy-making. The International Institute for Sustainable Development has similarly developed a political policy framework, linked to a sustainability index for establishing measurable entities and metrics. The framework consists of six core areas: International trade and investment Economic policy Climate change and energy Measurement and assessment Natural resource management Communication technologies.The United Nations Global Compact Cities Programme has defined sustainable political development in a way that broadens the usual definition beyond states and governance. The political is defined as the domain of practices and meanings associated with basic issues of social power as they pertain to the organisation, authorisation, legitimation and regulation of a social life held in common. This definition is in accord with the view that political change is important for responding to economic, ecological and cultural challenges. It also means that the politics of economic change can be addressed. They have listed seven subdomains of the domain of politics: Organization and governance Law and justice Communication and critique Representation and negotiation Security and accord Dialogue and reconciliation Ethics and accountability Metrics at the global scale There are numerous indicators which could be used as basis for sustainability measurement. Few commonly used indicators are: Environmental sustainability indicators: Global warming potential Acidification potential Ozone depletion potential Aerosol optical depth Eutrophication potential Ionization radiation potential Photochemical ozone potential Waste treatment Freshwater use Energy resources use Level of BiodiversityEconomic indicators: Gross domestic product Trade balance Local government income Profit, value and tax InvestmentsSocial indicators: Employment generated Equity Health and safety Education Housing/living conditions Community cohesion Social securityDue to the large numbers of various indicators that could be used for sustainability measurement, proper assessment and monitoring is required. In order to organize the chaos and disorder in selecting the metrics, specific organizations have been set up which groups the metrics under different categories and defines proper methodology to implement it for measurement. They provide modelling techniques and indexes to compare the measurement and have methods to convert the scientific measurement results into easy to understand terms. United Nations indicators The United Nations has developed extensive sustainability measurement tools in relation to sustainable development as well as a System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting. The UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) has published a list of 140 indicators which covers environmental, social, economical and institutional aspects of sustainable development. Benchmarks, indicators, indexes, auditing etc. In the last couple of decades, there has arisen a crowded toolbox of quantitative methods used to assess sustainability — including measures of resource use like life cycle assessment, measures of consumption like the ecological footprint and measurements of quality of environmental governance like the Environmental Performance Index. The following is a list of quantitative "tools" used by sustainability scientists - the different categories are for convenience only as defining criteria will intergrade. It would be too difficult to list all those methods available at different levels of the organization so those listed here are at the global level only. BenchmarksA benchmark is a point of reference for a measurement. Once a benchmark is established it is possible to assess trends and measure progress. Baseline global data on a range of sustainability parameters is available in the list of global sustainability statistics.IndicesA sustainability index is an aggregate sustainability indicator that combines multiple sources of data. There is a Consultative Group on Sustainable Development Indices MetricsMany environmental problems ultimately relate to the human effect on those global biogeochemical cycles that are critical to life. Over the last decade monitoring these cycles have become a more urgent target for research: AuditingSustainability auditing and reporting are used to evaluate the sustainability performance of a company, organization, or other entity using various performance indicators. Popular auditing procedures available at the global level include:ISO 14000 ISO 14031 The Natural Step Triple Bottom Line Accounting input-output analysis can be used for any level of organization with a financial budget. It relates environmental impact to expenditure by calculating the resource intensity of goods and services.Reporting Global Reporting Initiative modelling and monitoring procedures. Many of these are currently in their developing phase. State of the Environment reporting provides general background information on the environment and is progressively including more indicators. European sustainability AccountingSome accounting methods attempt to include environmental costs rather than treating them as externalities Green accounting Sustainable value Sustainability economics Life cycle analysis A life cycle analysis is often conducted when assessing the sustainability of a product or prototype. The decision to choose materials is heavily weighted on its longevity, renewability, and efficiency. These factors ensure that researchers are conscious of community values that align with positive environmental, social, and economic impacts. Resource metrics Part of this process can relate to resource use such as energy accounting or to economic metrics or price system values as compared to non-market economics potential, for understanding resource use. An important task for resource theory (energy economics) is to develop methods to optimize resource conversion processes. These systems are described and analyzed by means of the methods of mathematics and the natural sciences. Human factors, however, have dominated the development of our perspective of the relationship between nature and society since at least the Industrial Revolution, and in particular, have influenced how we describe and measure the economic impacts of changes in resource quality. A balanced view of these issues requires an understanding of the physical framework in which all human ideas, institutions, and aspirations must operate. Energy returned on energy invested When oil production first began in the mid-nineteenth century, the largest oil fields recovered fifty barrels of oil for every barrel used in the extraction, transportation, and refining. This ratio is often referred to as the Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI or EROEI). Currently, between one and five barrels of oil are recovered for each barrel-equivalent of energy used in the recovery process. As the EROEI drops to one, or equivalently the net energy gain falls to zero, the oil production is no longer a net energy source. This happens long before the resource is physically exhausted. Note that it is important to understand the distinction between a barrel of oil, which is a measure of oil, and a barrel of oil equivalent (BOE), which is a measure of energy. Many sources of energy, such as fission, solar, wind, and coal, are not subject to the same near-term supply restrictions that oil is. Accordingly, even an oil source with an EROEI of 0.5 can be usefully exploited if the energy required to produce that oil comes from a cheap and plentiful energy source. Availability of cheap, but hard to transport, natural gas in some oil fields has led to using natural gas to fuel enhanced oil recovery. Similarly, natural gas in huge amounts is used to power most Athabasca Tar Sands plants. Cheap natural gas has also led to ethanol fuel produced with a net EROEI of less than 1, although figures in this area are controversial because methods to measure EROEI are in debate. Growth-based economic models Insofar as economic growth is driven by oil consumption growth, post-peak societies must adapt. M. King Hubbert believed: Our principal constraints are cultural. During the last two centuries we have known nothing but exponential growth and in parallel we have evolved what amounts to an exponential-growth culture, a culture so heavily dependent upon the continuance of exponential growth for its stability that it is incapable of reckoning with problems of nongrowth. Some economists describe the problem as uneconomic growth or a false economy. At the political right, Fred Ikle has warned about "conservatives addicted to the Utopia of Perpetual Growth". Brief oil interruptions in 1973 and 1979 markedly slowed – but did not stop – the growth of world GDP.Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, and Mario Giampietro, senior researcher at the National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition (INRAN), place in their study Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy at 200 million. To achieve a sustainable economy world population will have to be reduced by two-thirds, says the study. Without population reduction, this study predicts an agricultural crisis beginning in 2020, becoming critical c. 2050. The peaking of global oil along with the decline in regional natural gas production may precipitate this agricultural crisis sooner than generally expected. Dale Allen Pfeiffer claims that coming decades could see spiraling food prices without relief and massive starvation on a global level such as never experienced before. Hubbert peaks There is an active debate about most suitable sustainability indicator's use and by adopting a thermodynamic approach through the concept of "exergy" and Hubbert peaks, it is possible to incorporate all into a single measure of resource depletion.The exergy analysis of minerals could constitute a universal and transparent tool for the management of the earth's physical stock.Hubbert peak can be used as a metric for sustainability and depletion of non-renewable resources. It can be used as reference for many metrics for non-renewable resources such as: Stagnating supplies Rising prices Individual country peaks Decreasing discoveries Finding and development costs Spare capacity Export capabilities of producing countries System inertia and timing Reserves-to-production ratio Past history of depletion and optimismAlthough Hubbert peak theory receives most attention in relation to peak oil production, it has also been applied to other natural resources. Natural gas Doug Reynolds predicted in 2005 that the North American peak would occur in 2007. Bentley (p. 189) predicted a world "decline in conventional gas production from about 2020". Coal Peak coal is significantly further out than peak oil, but we can observe the example of anthracite in the US, a high grade coal whose production peaked in the 1920s. Anthracite was studied by Hubbert, and matches a curve closely. Pennsylvania's coal production also matches Hubbert's curve closely, but this does not mean that coal in Pennsylvania is exhausted—far from it. If production in Pennsylvania returned at its all-time high, there are reserves for 190 years. Hubbert had recoverable coal reserves worldwide at 2500 × 109 metric tons and peaking around 2150(depending on usage). More recent estimates suggest an earlier peak. Coal: Resources and Future Production (PDF 630KB ), published on April 5, 2007 by the Energy Watch Group (EWG), which reports to the German Parliament, found that global coal production could peak in as few as 15 years. Reporting on this Richard Heinberg also notes that the date of peak annual energetic extraction from coal will likely come earlier than the date of peak in quantity of coal (tons per year) extracted as the most energy-dense types of coal have been mined most extensively. A second study, The Future of Coal by B. Kavalov and S. D. Peteves of the Institute for Energy (IFE), prepared for European Commission Joint Research Centre, reaches similar conclusions and states that ""coal might not be so abundant, widely available and reliable as an energy source in the future".Work by David Rutledge of Caltech predicts that the total of world coal production will amount to only about 450 gigatonnes. This implies that coal is running out faster than usually assumed. Finally, insofar as global peak oil and peak in natural gas are expected anywhere from imminently to within decades at most, any increase in coal production (mining) per annum to compensate for declines in oil or NG production, would necessarily translate to an earlier date of peak as compared with peak coal under a scenario in which annual production remains constant. Fissionable materials In a paper in 1956, after a review of US fissionable reserves, Hubbert notes of nuclear power: There is promise, however, provided mankind can solve its international problems and not destroy itself with nuclear weapons, and provided world population (which is now expanding at such a rate as to double in less than a century) can somehow be brought under control, that we may at last have found an energy supply adequate for our needs for at least the next few centuries of the "foreseeable future." Technologies such as the thorium fuel cycle, reprocessing and fast breeders can, in theory, considerably extend the life of uranium reserves. Roscoe Bartlett claims Our current throwaway nuclear cycle uses up the world reserve of low-cost uranium in about 20 years. Caltech physics professor David Goodstein has stated that ... you would have to build 10,000 of the largest power plants that are feasible by engineering standards in order to replace the 10 terawatts of fossil fuel we're burning today ... that's a staggering amount and if you did that, the known reserves of uranium would last for 10 to 20 years at that burn rate. So, it's at best a bridging technology ... You can use the rest of the uranium to breed plutonium 239 then we'd have at least 100 times as much fuel to use. But that means you're making plutonium, which is an extremely dangerous thing to do in the dangerous world that we live in. Metals Hubbert applied his theory to "rock containing an abnormally high concentration of a given metal" and reasoned that the peak production for metals such as copper, tin, lead, zinc and others would occur in the time frame of decades and iron in the time frame of two centuries like coal. The price of copper rose 500% between 2003 and 2007 was by some attributed to peak copper. Copper prices later fell, along with many other commodities and stock prices, as demand shrank from fear of a global recession. Lithium availability is a concern for a fleet of Li-ion battery using cars but a paper published in 1996 estimated that world reserves are adequate for at least 50 years. A similar prediction for platinum use in fuel cells notes that the metal could be easily recycled. Phosphorus Phosphorus supplies are essential to farming and depletion of reserves is estimated at somewhere from 60 to 130 years. Individual countries supplies vary widely; without a recycling initiative America's supply is estimated around 30 years. Phosphorus supplies affect total agricultural output which in turn limits alternative fuels such as biodiesel and ethanol. Peak water Hubbert's original analysis did not apply to renewable resources. However over-exploitation often results in a Hubbert peak nonetheless. A modified Hubbert curve applies to any resource that can be harvested faster than it can be replaced.For example, a reserve such as the Ogallala Aquifer can be mined at a rate that far exceeds replenishment. This turns much of the world's underground water and lakes into finite resources with peak usage debates similar to oil. These debates usually center around agriculture and suburban water usage but generation of electricity from nuclear energy or coal and tar sands mining mentioned above is also water resource intensive. The term fossil water is sometimes used to describe aquifers whose water is not being recharged. Renewable resources Fisheries: At least one researcher has attempted to perform Hubbert linearization (Hubbert curve) on the whaling industry, as well as charting the transparently dependent price of caviar on sturgeon depletion. Another example is the cod of the North Sea. The comparison of the cases of fisheries and of mineral extraction tells us that the human pressure on the environment is causing a wide range of resources to go through a depletion cycle which follows a Hubbert curve. Sustainability gaps Sustainability measurements and indicators are part of an ever-evolving and changing process and has various gaps to be filled to achieve an integrated framework and model. The following are some of the breaks in continuity: Global indicators- Due to differences in social, economical, and environmental conditions of countries, each country has its own indicators and indexes to measure sustainability, which can lead to improper and varying interpretation at the global level. Hence, there common indexes and measuring parameters would allow comparisons among countries. In agriculture, comparable indicators are already in use. Coffee and cocoa studies in twelve countries using common indicators are among the first to report insights from comparing across countries. Policymaking- After the indicators are defined and analysis is done for the measurements from the indicators, proper policymaking methodology can be set up to improve the results achieved. Policymaking would implement changes in the particular inventory list used for measuring, which could lead to better results. Development of individual indicators- Value-based indicators can be developed to measure the efforts by every human being part of the ecosystem. This can affect policymaking, as policy is most effective when there is public participation. Data collection- Due to a number of factors including inappropriate methodology applied to data collection, dynamics of change in data, lack of adequate time and improper framework in analysis of data, measurements can quickly become outdated, inaccurate, and unpresentable. Data collections built up from the grass-roots level allow context-appropriate frameworks and regulations associated with it. A hierarchy of data collection starts from local zones to state level, to national level and finally contributing to the global level measurements. Data collected can be made easy to understand so that it could be correctly interpreted and presented through graphs, charts, and analysis bars. Integration across academic disciplines- Sustainability involves the whole ecosystem and is intended to have a holistic approach. For this purpose measurements intend to involve data and knowledge from all academic backgrounds. Moreover, these disciplines and insights are intended to align with the societal actions. See also References External links Curated bibliography at IDEAS/RePEc

human overpopulation

Human overpopulation (or human population overshoot) describes a concern that human populations may become too large to be sustained by their environment or resources in the long term. The topic is usually discussed in the context of world population, though it may concern individual nations, regions, and cities. Since 1804, the global human population has increased from 1 billion to 8 billion due to medical advancements and improved agricultural productivity. Annual world population growth peaked at 2.1% in 1968, and has since dropped to 1.1%. According to the most recent United Nations' projections, "[t]he global population is expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion in 2100.": 28  The UN's projections report predicts that the human population will peak at around 10.4 billion people, before decreasing, noting that fertility rates are falling worldwide.: 14–30  Other models agree that the population will stabilize before or after 2100.Early discussions of overpopulation in English were spurred by the work of Thomas Malthus. Discussions of overpopulation follow a similar line of inquiry as Malthusianism and its Malthusian catastrophe, a hypothetical event where population exceeds agricultural capacity, causing famine or war over resources, resulting in poverty and depopulation. More recent discussion of overpopulation was popularized by Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 book The Population Bomb and subsequent writings. Ehrlich described overpopulation as a function of overconsumption, arguing that overpopulation should be defined by a population being unable to sustain itself without depleting non-renewable resources.The belief that global population levels will become too large to sustain is a point of contentious debate. Those who believe global human overpopulation to be a valid concern, argue that increased levels of resource consumption and pollution exceed the environment's carrying capacity, leading to population overshoot. The population overshoot hypothesis is often discussed in relation to other population concerns such as population momentum, biodiversity loss, hunger and malnutrition, resource depletion, and the overall human impact on the environment.Critics of the belief note that human population growth is decreasing and the population will likely peak, and possibly even begin to decrease, before the end of the century.: 27  They argue the concerns surrounding population growth are overstated, noting that quickly declining birth rates and technological innovation make it possible to sustain projected population sizes. Other critics claim that the concept is too narrowly focused, ignores more pressing issues, like poverty, and places an undue burden on the global south. Overview Modern proponents of the concept have suggested that overpopulation, population growth and overconsumption are interdependent and collectively are the primary drivers of human-caused environmental problems such as climate change and biodiversity loss. Many scientists have expressed concern about population growth, and argue that creating sustainable societies will require decreasing the current global population. Advocates have suggested implementation of population planning strategies to reach a proposed sustainable population. Overpopulation hypotheses are controversial, with many demographers and environmentalists disputing the core premise that the world cannot sustain the current trajectory of human population. Additionally, many economists and historians have noted that sustained shortages and famines have historically been caused by war, price controls, political instability, and repressive political regimes (often employing central planning) rather than overpopulation, and that population growth historically has led to greater technological development and advancement of scientific knowledge that has enabled the engineering of substitute goods and technology that better conserves and more efficiently uses natural resources, produces greater agricultural output with less land and less water, and addresses human impacts on the environment due to there being greater numbers of scientists, engineers, and inventors and subsequent generations of scientists overturning scientific paradigms maintained by previous generations of scientists. Instead, social scientists argue that disputes between themselves and biologists about human overpopulation are over the appropriateness of definitions being used (and often devolve into social scientists and biologists simply talking past each other).Annual world population growth peaked at 2.1% in 1968, has since dropped to 1.1%, and could drop even further to 0.1% by 2100. Based on this, the United Nations projects the world population, which is 7.8 billion as of 2020, to level out around 2100 at 10.9 billion with other models proposing similar stabilization before or after 2100. Some experts believe that a combination of factors (including technological and social change) would allow global resources to meet this increased demand, avoiding global overpopulation. Additionally, some critics dismiss the idea of human overpopulation as a science myth connected to attempts to blame environmental issues on overpopulation, oversimplify complex social or economic systems, or place blame on developing countries and poor populations—reinscribing colonial or racist assumptions and leading to discriminatory policy. These critics often suggest overconsumption should be treated as an issue separate from population growth. History of world population World population has been rising continuously since the end of the Black Death, around the year 1350. The fastest doubling of the world population happened between 1950 and 1986: a doubling from 2.5 to 5 billion people in 37 years, mainly due to medical advancements and increases in agricultural productivity. Due to its impact on the human ability to grow food, the Haber process enabled the global population to increase from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7.7 billion by November 2018 and, according to the United Nations, eight billion as of November 2022. Some researchers have analyzed this growth in population like other animal populations, human populations predictably grow and shrink according to their available food supply as per the Lotka–Volterra equations, including agronomist and insect ecologist David Pimentel, behavioral scientist Russell Hopfenberg, and anthropologist Virginia Abernethy. World population has gone through a number of periods of growth since the dawn of civilization in the Holocene period, around 10,000 BCE. The beginning of civilization roughly coincides with the receding of glacial ice following the end of the Last Glacial Period. Farming allowed for the growth of populations in many parts of the world, including Europe, the Americas and China through the 1600s, occasionally disrupted by plagues or other crises. For example, the Black Death is thought to have reduced the world's population, then at an estimated 450 million in 1350, to between 350 and 375 million by 1400.After the start of the Industrial Revolution, during the 18th century, the rate of population growth began to increase. By the end of the century, the world's population was estimated at just under 1 billion. At the turn of the 20th century, the world's population was roughly 1.6 billion. By 1940, this figure had increased to 2.3 billion. Even more dramatic growth beginning in 1950 (above 1.8% per year) coincided with greatly increased food production as a result of the industrialization of agriculture brought about by the Green Revolution. The rate of human population growth peaked in 1964, at about 2.1% per year. Recent additions of a billion humans happened very quickly: 33 years to reach three billion in 1960, 14 years for four billion in 1974, 13 years for five billion in 1987, 12 years for six billion in 1999, 11 years for seven billion in 2010, and 12 years for 8 billion toward the end of 2022. Future projections Population projections are attempts to show how the human population might change in the future. These projections help to forecast the population's impact on this planet and humanity's future well-being. Models of population growth take trends in human development, and apply projections into the future to understand how they will affect fertility and mortality, and thus population growth.The most recent report from the United Nations Population Division issued in 2022 (see chart) projects that global population will peak around the year 2086 at about 10.4 billion, and then start a slow decline (the median line on the chart). As with earlier projections, this version assumes that the global average fertility rate will continue to fall, but even further from 2.5 births per woman during the 2015–2020 period to 1.8 by the year 2100. However, other estimates predict additional downward pressure on fertility (such as more education and family planning) which could result in peak population during the 2060–2070 period rather than later.According to the UN, of the predicted growth in world population between 2020 and 2050, all of that change will come from less developed countries, and more than half will come from just 8 African countries. It is predicted that the population of sub-Saharan Africa will double by 2050. The Pew Research Center predicts that 50% of births in the year 2100 will be in Africa. As an example of uneven prospects, the UN projects that Nigeria will gain about 340 million people, about the present population of the US, to become the 3rd most populous country, and China will lose almost half of its population. History of overpopulation hypotheses Historical use Concerns about population size or density have a long history: Tertullian, a resident of the city of Carthage in the second century CE, criticized population at the time: "Our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly support us... In very deed, pestilence, and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race." Despite those concerns, scholars have not found historic societies that have collapsed because of overpopulation or overconsumption. By the early 19th century, intellectuals such as Thomas Malthus predicted that humankind would outgrow its available resources because a finite amount of land would be incapable of supporting a population with limitless potential for increase. During the 19th century, Malthus' work, particularly An Essay on the Principle of Population, was often interpreted in a way that blamed the poor alone for their condition and helping them was said to worsen conditions in the long run. This resulted, for example, in the English poor laws of 1834 and a hesitating response to the Irish Great Famine of 1845–52.The first World Population Conference was held in 1927 in Geneva, organized by the League of Nations and Margaret Sanger. Contemporary use Paul R. Ehrlich's book The Population Bomb became a bestseller upon its release in 1968 and created renewed interest in overpopulation. The book predicted population growth would lead to famine, societal collapse, and other social, environmental and economic strife in the coming decades, and advocated for policies to curb it. The Club of Rome published the influential report The Limits to Growth in 1972, which used computer modeling to similarly argue that continued population growth trends would lead to global system collapse. The idea of overpopulation was also a topic of some works of English-language science fiction and dystopian fiction during the latter part of the 1960s. The United Nations held the first of three World Population Conferences in 1974. Human population and family planning policies were adopted by some nations in the late 20th century in an effort to curb population growth, including in China and India. Albert Allen Bartlett gave more than 1,742 lectures on the threat of exponential population growth starting in 1969. However, many predictions of overpopulation during the 20th century did not materialize. In The Population Bomb, Ehrlich stated, "In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now," with later editions changing to "in the 1980s". Despite admitting some of his earlier predictions did not come to pass, Ehrlich continues to advocate that overpopulation is a major issue.As the profile of environmental issues facing humanity increased during the end of the 20th and the early 21st centuries, some have looked to population growth as a root cause. In the 2000s, E. O. Wilson and Ron Nielsen discussed overpopulation as a threat to the quality of human life.: 37–39  In 2011, Pentti Linkola argued that human overpopulation represents a threat to Earth's biosphere. A 2015 survey from Pew Research Center reports that 82% of scientists associated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science were concerned about population growth. In 2017, more than one-third of 50 Nobel prize-winning scientists surveyed by the Times Higher Education at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings said that human overpopulation and environmental degradation are the two greatest threats facing mankind. In November that same year, the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice, signed by 15,364 scientists from 184 countries, indicated that rapid human population growth is "a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats." Ehlrich and other scientists at a conference in the Vatican on contemporary species extinction linked the issue to population growth in 2017, and advocated for human population control, which attracted controversy from the Catholic church. In 2019, a warning on climate change signed by 11,000 scientists from 153 nations said that human population growth adds 80 million humans annually, and "the world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced—within a framework that ensures social integrity" to reduce the impact of "population growth on GHG emissions and biodiversity loss."In 2020, a quote from David Attenborough about how humans have "overrun the planet" was shared widely online and became his most popular comment on the internet. Key arguments Overconsumption The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Global Footprint Network have argued that the annual biocapacity of Earth has exceeded, as measured using the ecological footprint. In 2006, WWF's Living Planet Report stated that in order for all humans to live with the current consumption patterns of Europeans, we would be spending three times more than what the planet can renew. According to these calculations, humanity as a whole was using by 2006 40% more than what Earth can regenerate. Another study by the WWF in 2014 found that it would take the equivalent of 1.5 Earths of bio-capacity to meet humanity's current levels of consumption. However, Roger Martin of Population Matters states the view: "the poor want to get rich, and I want them to get rich," with a later addition, "of course we have to change consumption habits,... but we've also got to stabilize our numbers".Critics have questioned the simplifications and statistical methods used in calculating ecological footprints. Therefore, Global Footprint Network and its partner organizations have engaged with national governments and international agencies to test the results—reviews have been produced by France, Germany, the European Commission, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. Some point out that a more refined method of assessing Ecological Footprint is to designate sustainable versus non-sustainable categories of consumption. Carrying capacity Attempts have been made to estimate the world's carrying capacity for humans; the maximum population the world can host. A 2004 meta-analysis of 69 such studies from 1694 until 2001 found the average predicted maximum number of people the Earth would ever have was 7.7 billion people, with lower and upper meta-bounds at 0.65 and 98 billion people, respectively. They conclude: "recent predictions of stabilized world population levels for 2050 exceed several of our meta-estimates of a world population limit".A 2012 United Nations report summarized 65 different estimated maximum sustainable population sizes and the most common estimate was 8 billion. Advocates of reduced population often put forward much lower numbers. Paul R. Ehrlich stated in 2018 that the optimum population is between 1.5 and 2 billion. In 2022 Ehrlich and other contributors to the "Scientists' warning on population", including Eileen Crist, William J. Ripple, William E. Rees and Christopher Wolf, stated that environmental analysts put the sustainable level of human population at between 2 and 4 billion people. Geographer Chris Tucker estimates that 3 billion is a sustainable number.Critics of overpopulation criticize the basic assumptions associated with these estimates. For example, associate professor of gender and sexuality Jade Sasser believes that calculating a maximum of number of humanity is unethical claiming that only some, mostly European former colonial powers, are mostly responsible for unsustainably using up Earth's resources. Proposed impacts Poverty, and infant and child mortality Although proponents of human overpopulation have expressed concern that growing population will lead to an increase in global poverty and infant mortality, both indicators have declined over the last 200 years of population growth. Environmental impacts A number of scientists have argued that human impacts on the environment and accompanying increase in resource consumption threatens the world's ecosystems and the survival of human civilization. The InterAcademy Panel Statement on Population Growth, which was ratified by 58 member national academies in 1994, states that "unprecedented" population growth aggravates many environmental problems, including rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, global warming, and pollution. Indeed, some analysts claim that overpopulation's most serious impact is its effect on the environment. Some scientists suggest that the overall human impact on the environment during the Great Acceleration, particularly due to human population size and growth, economic growth, overconsumption, pollution, and proliferation of technology, has pushed the planet into a new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene. Some studies and commentary link population growth with climate change. Critics have stated that population growth alone may have less influence on climate change than other factors, such as greenhouse gas emissions per capita. The global consumption of meat is projected to rise by as much as 76% by 2050 as the global population increases, with this projected to have further environmental impacts such as biodiversity loss and increased greenhouse gas emissions. A July 2017 study published in Environmental Research Letters argued that the most significant way individuals could mitigate their own carbon footprint is to have fewer children, followed by living without a vehicle, forgoing air travel, and adopting a plant-based diet. However, even in countries which have both large population growth and major ecological problems, it is not necessarily true that curbing the population growth will make a major contribution towards resolving all environmental problems that can be solved simply with an environmentalist policy approach.Continued population growth and overconsumption, particularly by the wealthy, have been posited as key drivers of biodiversity loss and contemporary species extinction, with some researchers and environmentalists specifically suggesting this indicates a human overpopulation scenario. The Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, released by IPBES in 2019, states that human population growth is a factor in biodiversity loss. IGI Global has uncovered the growth of the human population caused encroachment in wild habitats which have led to their destruction, "posing a potential threat to biodiversity components".Some scientists and environmentalists, including Jared Diamond, E. O. Wilson, Jane Goodall and David Attenborough, contend that population growth is devastating to biodiversity. Wilson for example, has expressed concern when Homo sapiens reached a population of six billion their biomass exceeded that of any other large land dwelling animal species that had ever existed by over 100 times. Inger Andersen, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, stated in December 2022 as the human population reached a milestone of 8 billion and as delegates were meeting for the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference, that "we need to understand that the more people there are, the more we put the Earth under heavy pressure. As far as biodiversity is concerned, we are at war with nature."Human overpopulation and continued population growth are also considered by some, including animal rights attorney Doris Lin and philosopher Steven Best, to be an animal rights issue, as more human activity means the destruction of animal habitats and more direct killing of animals.: 146 Resource depletion Some commentary has attributed depletion of non-renewable resources, such as land, food and water, to overpopulation and suggested it could lead to a diminished quality of human life. Ecologist David Pimentel was one such proponent, saying "with the imbalance growing between population numbers and vital life sustaining resources, humans must actively conserve cropland, freshwater, energy, and biological resources. There is a need to develop renewable energy resources. Humans everywhere must understand that rapid population growth damages the Earth's resources and diminishes human well-being." Although food shortages have been warned as a consequence of overpopulation, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, global food production exceeds increasing demand from global population growth. Food insecurity in some regions is attributable to the globally unequal distribution of food supplies.The notion that space is limited has been decried by skeptics, who point out that the Earth's population of roughly 6.8 billion people could comfortably be housed an area comparable in size to the state of Texas in the United States (about 269,000 square miles or 696,706.80 square kilometres). Critics and agricultural experts suggest changes to policies relating to land use or agriculture to make them more efficient would be more likely to resolve land issues and pressures on the environment than focusing on reducing population alone.Water scarcity, which threatens agricultural productivity, represents a global issue that some have linked to population growth. Colin Butler wrote in The Lancet in 1994 that overpopulation also has economic consequences for certain countries due to resource use. Political systems and social conflict It was speculated by Aldous Huxley in 1958 that democracy is threatened by overpopulation, and could give rise to totalitarian style governments. Physics professor Albert Allen Bartlett at the University of Colorado Boulder warned in 2000 that overpopulation and the development of technology are the two major causes of the diminution of democracy. However, over the last 200 years of population growth, the actual level of personal freedom has increased rather than declined. John Harte has argued population growth is a factor in numerous social issues, including unemployment, overcrowding, bad governance and decaying infrastructure. Daron Acemoglu and others suggested in a 2017 paper that since the Second World War, countries with higher population growth rates experienced the most social conflict.Some advocates have suggested societal problems such as hunger and mass unemployment are linked to overpopulation.According to anthropologist Jason Hickel, the global capitalist system creates pressures for population growth: "more people means more labour, cheaper labour, and more consumers." He and his colleagues have also demonstrated that capitalist elites throughout recent history have "used pro-natalist state policies to prevent women from practicing family planning" in order to grow the size of their workforce. Hickel has however argued that the cause of negative environmental impacts is resource extraction by wealthy countries. He concludes that "we should not ignore the relationship between population growth and ecology, but we must not treat these as operating in a social and political vacuum." Epidemics and pandemics A 2021 article in Ethics, Medicine and Public Health argued in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that epidemics and pandemics were made more likely by overpopulation, globalization, urbanization and encroachment into natural habitats.They both play a significant role impacting human populations, including widespread illness, death, and social disruption. While they can leave a temporary loss of population, it is followed by significant loss and suffering. These events are not the sole reason for overpopulation, but lack of access to family planning and reproductive contraptions, poverty and resource depletion. Proposed solutions and mitigation measures Several strategies have been proposed to mitigate overpopulation. Population planning Several scientists (including Paul Ehrlich, Gretchen Daily and Tim Flannery) proposed that humanity should work at stabilizing its absolute numbers, as a starting point towards beginning the process of reducing the total numbers. They suggested several possible approaches, including:Improved access to contraception and sex education Reducing infant mortality, so that parents do not need to have many children to ensure at least some survive to adulthood. Improving the status of women in order to facilitate a departure from traditional sexual division of labour. Family planning Creating small family "role models" Secular cultures and societies.There is good evidence from many parts of the world that when women and couples have the freedom to choose how many children to have, they tend to have smaller families. Some scientists, such as Corey Bradshaw and Barry Brook, suggest that, given the "inexorable demographic momentum of the global human population," sustainability can be achieved more rapidly with a short term focus on technological and social innovations, along with reducing consumption rates, while treating population planning as a long-term goal.However, most scientists believe that achieving genuine sustainability is a long-term project, and that addressing population and consumption levels are both essential to achieving it. In 1992, more than 1700 scientists from around the world signed onto a "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," including a majority of the living Nobel prize-winners in the sciences. "The earth is finite," they wrote. "Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth's limits." The warning noted:Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future. If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth. Two of the five areas where the signatories requested immediate action were "stabilize population" and "ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions."In a follow-up message 25 years later, William Ripple and colleagues issued the "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice." This time more than 15,000 scientists from around the world signed on. "We are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats," they wrote. "By failing to adequately limit population growth, reassess the role of an economy rooted in growth, reduce greenhouse gases, incentivize renewable energy, protect habitat, restore ecosystems, curb pollution, halt defaunation, and constrain invasive alien species, humanity is not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperilled biosphere." This second scientists’ warning urged attention to both excessive consumption and continued population growth. Like its predecessor, it did not specify a definite global human carrying capacity. But its call to action included "estimating a scientifically defensible, sustainable human population size for the long term while rallying nations and leaders to support that vital goal." Subsequent scientists' calls to action have also included calls for population planning. The 2020 "World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency" stated: "Economic and population growth are among the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion." "Therefore," the study noted: "we need bold and drastic transformations regarding economic and population policies." "The world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced," it concluded, implying that humanity is overpopulated given current and expected levels of resource use and waste generation. A follow-up scientists’ warning on climate change in 2021 reiterated the need to plan and limit human numbers to achieve sustainability, proposing as a goal "stabilizing and gradually reducing the [global] population by providing voluntary family planning and supporting education and rights for all girls and young women, which has been proven to lower fertility rates." Family planning Education and empowerment of women and giving access to family planning and contraception have a demonstrated impact on reducing birthrates. Many studies conclude that educating girls reduces the number of children they have. One option according to some activists is to focus on education about family planning and birth control methods, and to make birth-control devices like condoms, contraceptive pills and intrauterine devices easily available. Worldwide, nearly 40% of pregnancies are unintended (some 80 million unintended pregnancies each year). An estimated 350 million women in the poorest countries of the world either did not want their last child, do not want another child or want to space their pregnancies, but they lack access to information, affordable means and services to determine the size and spacing of their families. In the developing world, some 514,000 women die annually of complications from pregnancy and abortion, with 86% of these deaths occurring in the sub-Saharan Africa region and South Asia. Additionally, 8 million infants die, many because of malnutrition or preventable diseases, especially from lack of access to clean drinking water.Women's rights and their reproductive rights in particular are issues regarded to have vital importance in the debate. Anthropologist Jason Hickel asserts that a nation's population growth rapidly declines - even within a single generation - when policies relating to women's health and reproductive rights, children's health (to ensure parents they will survive to adulthood), and expanding education and economic opportunities for girls and women are implemented.A 2020 paper by William J. Ripple and other scientists argued in favor of population policies that could advance social justice (such as by abolishing child marriage, expanding family planning services and reforms that improve education for women and girls) and at the same time mitigate the impact of population growth on climate change and biodiversity loss. In a 2022 warning on population published by Science of the Total Environment, Ripple, Ehrlich and other scientists appealed to families around the world to have no more than one child and also urged policy-makers to improve education for young females and provide high-quality family-planning services. Extraterrestrial settlement Urbanization Despite the increase in population density within cities (and the emergence of megacities), UN Habitat Data Corp. states in its reports that urbanization may be the best compromise in the face of global population growth. Cities concentrate human activity within limited areas, limiting the breadth of environmental damage. UN Habitat says this is only possible if urban planning is significantly improved.Paul R. Ehrlich proposed in The Population Bomb that rhetoric supporting the increase of city density is a means of avoiding dealing with what he views as the root problem of overpopulation and has been promoted by what he views as the same interests that have allegedly profited from population increase (such as property developers, the banking system which invests in property development, industry, and municipal councils). Subsequent authors point to growth economics as driving governments seek city growth and expansion at any cost, disregarding the impact it might have on the environment. Criticism The concept of human overpopulation, and its attribution as a cause of environmental issues, are controversial.Some critics, including Nicholas Eberstadt, Fred Pearce, Dominic Lawson and Betsy Hartmann, refer to overpopulation as a myth. Predicted exponential population growth or any "population explosion" did not materialise; instead, population growth slowed. Critics suggest that enough resources are available to support projected population growth, and that human impacts on the environment are not attributable to overpopulation.According to libertarian think tank the Fraser Institute, both the idea of overpopulation and the alleged depletion of resources are myths; most resources are now more abundant than a few decades ago, thanks to technological progress. The institute also questions the sincerity of advocates of population control in poor countries.Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist, has criticised the idea of overpopulation, saying that "overpopulation is not really overpopulation. It is a question of poverty".A 2020 study in The Lancet concluded that "continued trends in female educational attainment and access to contraception will hasten declines in fertility and slow population growth", with projections suggesting world population would peak at 9.73 billion in 2064 and fall by 2100. Media commentary interpreted this as suggesting overconsumption represents a greater environmental threat as an overpopulation scenario may never occur.Some human population planning strategies advocated by proponents of overpopulation are controversial for ethical reasons. Those concerned with overpopulation, including Paul Ehrlich, have been accused of influencing human rights abuses including forced sterilisation policies in India and under China's one-child policy, as well as mandatory or coercive birth control measures taken in other countries. Women's rights Influential advocates such as Betsy Hartmann consider the "myth of overpopulation" to be destructive as it "prevents constructive thinking and action on reproductive rights," which acutely affects women and communities of women in poverty. The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) defines reproductive rights as "the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing, and timing of their children and to have the information to do so." This oversimplification of human overpopulation leads individuals to believe there are simple solutions and the creation of population policies that limit reproductive rights. In response, philosopher Tim Meijers asks the question: "To what extent is it fair to require people to refrain from procreating as part of a strategy to make the world more sustainable?" Meijers rejects the idea that the right to reproduce can be unlimited, since this would not be universalizable: "in a world in which everybody had many children, extreme scarcity would arise and stable institutions could prove unsustainable. This would lead to violation of (rather uncontroversial) rights such as the right to life and to health and subsistence." In the actual world today, excessive procreation could also undermine our descendants' right to have children, since people are likely to refrain (and perhaps should refrain) from bringing children into an insecure and dangerous world. Meijers, Sarah Conly, Diana Coole, and other ethicists conclude that people have a right to found a family, but not to unlimited numbers of children. Coercive population control policies Ehrlich advocated in The Population Bomb that "various forms of coercion", such as removing tax benefits for having additional children, be used in cases when voluntary population planning policies fail. Some nations, like China, have used strict or coercive measures such as the one-child policy to reduce birth rates. Compulsory or semi-compulsory sterilization, such as for token material compensation or easing of penalties, has also been implemented in many countries as a form of population control.Another choice-based approach is financial compensation or other benefits by the state offered to people who voluntarily undergo sterilization. Such policies have been introduced by the government of India.The Indian government of Narendra Modi introduced population policies in the 21st century, including offering incentives for sterilization by citing the risks of a "population explosion" although demographers have criticized that basis, with India thought to be undergoing demographic transition and its fertility rate falling. The policies have also received criticism from human and women's rights groups. Racism The concept of human overpopulation has been criticized by some scholars and environmentalists as being racist and having roots in colonialism and white supremacy, since control and reduction of human population is often focused on the global south, instead of on overconsumption and the global north, where it occurs. Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb begins with him describing first knowing the "feel of overpopulation" from a visit to Delhi, which some critics have accused of having racial undertones. George Monbiot has said "when affluent white people wrongly transfer the blame for their environmental impacts on to the birthrate of much poorer brown and black people, their finger-pointing reinforces [Great Replacement and white genocide conspiracy] narratives. It is inherently racist." Overpopulation is a common component of ecofascist ideology.Scholar Heather Alberro rejects the overpopulation argument, stating that the human population growth is rapidly slowing down, the underlying problem is not the number of people, but how resources are distributed and that the idea of overpopulation could fuel a racist backlash against the population of poor countries.In response, population activists argue that overpopulation is a problem in both rich and poor countries, and arguably a worse problem in rich countries, where residents’ higher per capita consumption ratchets up the impacts of their excessive numbers. Feminist scholar Donna Haraway notes that a commitment to enlarging the moral community to include nonhuman beings logically entails people’s willingness to limit their numbers and make room for them. Ecological economists like Herman Daly and Joshua Farley believe that reducing populations will make it easier to achieve steady-state economies that decrease total consumption and pollution to manageable levels. Finally, as Karin Kuhlemann observes, "that a population's size is stable in no way entails sustainability. It may be sustainable, or it may be far too large."According to the writer and journalist Krithika Varagur, myths and misinformation about overpopulation of Rohingya people in Myanmar is thought to have driven their genocide in the 2010s. Advocacy organizations The following organizations advocate for a limit to human population growth, although their focus may be on related issues such as environmental protection: Global Footprint Network, a coalition of NGOs that calculates the annual Earth Overshoot Day Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB) Negative Population Growth Population Matters Voluntary Human Extinction Movement Population Media Center Church of EuthanasiaOrganization advocate against limits to human population growth. Population Research Institute (organization) See also Notes References Bundled references Further reading Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population. Harvard University Press, 2010. ISBN 9780674034600 David Foreman, Man Swarm: How Overpopulation is Killing the Wild World. Livetrue Books, 2015. ISBN 978-0986383205 Karen Shragg, Move Upstream: A Call to Solve Overpopulation. ISBN 978-0988493834 (published November 2015). Discussion of the book by the author, March 2017 (video, 91 minutes). Alan Weisman. Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? Little, Brown and Company, (2013) ISBN 0316097756 Thomas Robertson, The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism (2012), Rutgers University Press J.R. McNeill, Peter Engelke, The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 (2016)

sustainable architecture

Sustainable architecture is architecture that seeks to minimize the negative environmental impact of buildings through improved efficiency and moderation in the use of materials, energy, development space and the ecosystem at large. Sustainable architecture uses a conscious approach to energy and ecological conservation in the design of the built environment.The idea of sustainability, or ecological design, is to ensure that use of currently available resources does not end up having detrimental effects to a future society's well-being or making it impossible to obtain resources for other applications in the long run. Background Shift from narrow to broader approach The term "sustainability" in relation to architecture has so far been mostly considered through the lens of building technology and its transformations. Going beyond the technical sphere of "green design", invention and expertise, some scholars are starting to position architecture within a much broader cultural framework of the human interrelationship with nature. Adopting this framework allows tracing a rich history of cultural debates about humanity's relationship to nature and the environment, from the point of view of different historical and geographical contexts. Changing pedagogues Critics of the reductionism of modernism often noted the abandonment of the teaching of architectural history as a causal factor. The fact that a number of the major players in the deviation from modernism were trained at Princeton University's School of Architecture, where recourse to history continued to be a part of design training in the 1940s and 1950s, was significant. The increasing rise of interest in history had a profound impact on architectural education. History courses became more typical and regularized. With the demand for professors knowledgeable in the history of architecture, several PhD programs in schools of architecture arose in order to differentiate themselves from art history PhD programs, where architectural historians had previously trained. In the US, MIT and Cornell were the first, created in the mid-1970s, followed by Columbia, Berkeley, and Princeton. Among the founders of new architectural history programs were Bruno Zevi at the Institute for the History of Architecture in Venice, Stanford Anderson and Henry Millon at MIT, Alexander Tzonis at the Architectural Association, Anthony Vidler at Princeton, Manfredo Tafuri at the University of Venice, Kenneth Frampton at Columbia University, and Werner Oechslin and Kurt Forster at ETH Zürich. Sustainable energy use Energy efficiency over the entire life cycle of a building is the most important goal of sustainable architecture. Architects use many different passive and active techniques to reduce the energy needs of buildings and increase their ability to capture or generate their own energy. To minimize cost and complexity, sustainable architecture prioritizes passive systems to take advantage of building location with incorporated architectural elements, supplementing with renewable energy sources and then fossil fuel resources only as needed. Site analysis can be employed to optimize use of local environmental resources such as daylight and ambient wind for heating and ventilation. Energy use very often depends on whether the building gets its energy on-grid, or off-grid. Off-grid buildings do not use energy provided by utility services and instead have their own independent energy production. They use on-site electricity storage while on-grid sites feed in excessive electricity back to the grid. Heating, ventilation and cooling system efficiency Numerous passive architectural strategies have been developed over time. Examples of such strategies include the arrangement of rooms or the sizing and orientation of windows in a building, and the orientation of facades and streets or the ratio between building heights and street widths for urban planning.An important and cost-effective element of an efficient heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system is a well-insulated building. A more efficient building requires less heat generating or dissipating power, but may require more ventilation capacity to expel polluted indoor air. Significant amounts of energy are flushed out of buildings in the water, air and compost streams. Off the shelf, on-site energy recycling technologies can effectively recapture energy from waste hot water and stale air and transfer that energy into incoming fresh cold water or fresh air. Recapture of energy for uses other than gardening from compost leaving buildings requires centralized anaerobic digesters. HVAC systems are powered by motors. Copper, versus other metal conductors, helps to improve the electrical energy efficiencies of motors, thereby enhancing the sustainability of electrical building components. Site and building orientation have some major effects on a building's HVAC efficiency. Passive solar building design allows buildings to harness the energy of the sun efficiently without the use of any active solar mechanisms such as photovoltaic cells or solar hot water panels. Typically passive solar building designs incorporate materials with high thermal mass that retain heat effectively and strong insulation that works to prevent heat escape. Low energy designs also requires the use of solar shading, by means of awnings, blinds or shutters, to relieve the solar heat gain in summer and to reduce the need for artificial cooling. In addition, low energy buildings typically have a very low surface area to volume ratio to minimize heat loss. This means that sprawling multi-winged building designs (often thought to look more "organic") are often avoided in favor of more centralized structures. Traditional cold climate buildings such as American colonial saltbox designs provide a good historical model for centralized heat efficiency in a small-scale building. Windows are placed to maximize the input of heat-creating light while minimizing the loss of heat through glass, a poor insulator. In the northern hemisphere this usually involves installing a large number of south-facing windows to collect direct sun and severely restricting the number of north-facing windows. Certain window types, such as double or triple glazed insulated windows with gas filled spaces and low emissivity (low-E) coatings, provide much better insulation than single-pane glass windows. Preventing excess solar gain by means of solar shading devices in the summer months is important to reduce cooling needs. Deciduous trees are often planted in front of windows to block excessive sun in summer with their leaves but allow light through in winter when their leaves fall off. Louvers or light shelves are installed to allow the sunlight in during the winter (when the sun is lower in the sky) and keep it out in the summer (when the sun is high in the sky). They are slatted like shutters and reflect light and radiation to reduce glare on the interior space. Advanced louver systems are automated to maximize daylight and monitor the interior temperature by adjusting their tilt. Coniferous or evergreen plants are often planted to the north of buildings to shield against cold north winds. In colder climates, heating systems are a primary focus for sustainable architecture because they are typically one of the largest single energy drains in buildings. In warmer climates where cooling is a primary concern, passive solar designs can also be very effective. Masonry building materials with high thermal mass are very valuable for retaining the cool temperatures of night throughout the day. In addition builders often opt for sprawling single story structures in order to maximize surface area and heat loss. Buildings are often designed to capture and channel existing winds, particularly the especially cool winds coming from nearby bodies of water. Many of these valuable strategies are employed in some way by the traditional architecture of warm regions, such as south-western mission buildings. In climates with four seasons, an integrated energy system will increase in efficiency: when the building is well insulated, when it is sited to work with the forces of nature, when heat is recaptured (to be used immediately or stored), when the heat plant relying on fossil fuels or electricity is greater than 100% efficient, and when renewable energy is used. Renewable energy generation Solar panels Active solar devices such as photovoltaic solar panels help to provide sustainable electricity for any use. Electrical output of a solar panel is dependent on orientation, efficiency, latitude, and climate—solar gain varies even at the same latitude. Typical efficiencies for commercially available PV panels range from 4% to 28%. The low efficiency of certain photovoltaic panels can significantly affect the payback period of their installation. This low efficiency does not mean that solar panels are not a viable energy alternative. In Germany for example, Solar Panels are commonly installed in residential home construction. Roofs are often angled toward the sun to allow photovoltaic panels to collect at maximum efficiency. In the northern hemisphere, a true-south facing orientation maximizes yield for solar panels. If true-south is not possible, solar panels can produce adequate energy if aligned within 30° of south. However, at higher latitudes, winter energy yield will be significantly reduced for non-south orientation. To maximize efficiency in winter, the collector can be angled above horizontal Latitude +15°. To maximize efficiency in summer, the angle should be Latitude -15°. However, for an annual maximum production, the angle of the panel above horizontal should be equal to its latitude. Wind turbines The use of undersized wind turbines in energy production in sustainable structures requires the consideration of many factors. In considering costs, small wind systems are generally more expensive than larger wind turbines relative to the amount of energy they produce. For small wind turbines, maintenance costs can be a deciding factor at sites with marginal wind-harnessing capabilities. At low-wind sites, maintenance can consume much of a small wind turbine's revenue. Wind turbines begin operating when winds reach 8 mph, achieve energy production capacity at speeds of 32-37 mph, and shut off to avoid damage at speeds exceeding 55 mph. The energy potential of a wind turbine is proportional to the square of the length of its blades and to the cube of the speed at which its blades spin. Though wind turbines are available that can supplement power for a single building, because of these factors, the efficiency of the wind turbine depends much upon the wind conditions at the building site. For these reasons, for wind turbines to be at all efficient, they must be installed at locations that are known to receive a constant amount of wind (with average wind speeds of more than 15 mph), rather than locations that receive wind sporadically. A small wind turbine can be installed on a roof. Installation issues then include the strength of the roof, vibration, and the turbulence caused by the roof ledge. Small-scale rooftop wind turbines have been known to be able to generate power from 10% to up to 25% of the electricity required of a regular domestic household dwelling. Turbines for residential scale use are usually between 7 feet (2 m) to 25 feet (8 m) in diameter and produce electricity at a rate of 900 watts to 10,000 watts at their tested wind speed.The reliability of wind turbine systems is important to the success of a wind energy project. Unanticipated breakdowns can have a significant impact on a project's profitability due to the logistical and practical difficulties of replacing critical components in a wind turbine. Uncertainty with the long-term component reliability has a direct impact on the amount of confidence associated with cost of energy (COE) estimates. Solar water heating Solar water heaters, also called solar domestic hot water systems, can be a cost-effective way to generate hot water for a home. They can be used in any climate, and the fuel they use—sunshine—is free.There are two types of solar water systems: active and passive. An active solar collector system can produce about 80 to 100 gallons of hot water per day. A passive system will have a lower capacity. Active solar water system's efficiency is 35-80% while a passive system is 30-50%, making active solar systems more powerful.There are also two types of circulation, direct circulation systems and indirect circulation systems. Direct circulation systems loop the domestic water through the panels. They should not be used in climates with temperatures below freezing. Indirect circulation loops glycol or some other fluid through the solar panels and uses a heat exchanger to heat up the domestic water. The two most common types of collector panels are flat-plate and evacuated-tube. The two work similarly except that evacuated tubes do not convectively lose heat, which greatly improves their efficiency (5%–25% more efficient). With these higher efficiencies, Evacuated-tube solar collectors can also produce higher-temperature space heating, and even higher temperatures for absorption cooling systems.Electric-resistance water heaters that are common in homes today have an electrical demand around 4500 kW·h/year. With the use of solar collectors, the energy use is cut in half. The up-front cost of installing solar collectors is high, but with the annual energy savings, payback periods are relatively short. Heat pumps Air source heat pumps (ASHP) can be thought of as reversible air conditioners. Like an air conditioner, an ASHP can take heat from a relatively cool space (e.g. a house at 70 °F) and dump it into a hot place (e.g. outside at 85 °F). However, unlike an air conditioner, the condenser and evaporator of an ASHP can switch roles and absorb heat from the cool outside air and dump it into a warm house. Air-source heat pumps are inexpensive relative to other heat pump systems. As the efficiency of air-source heat pumps decline when the outdoor temperature is very cold or very hot; therefore, they are most efficiently used in temperate climates. However, contrary to earlier expectations, they have proven to be also well suited for regions with cold outdoor temperatures, such as Scandinavia or Alaska. In Norway, Finland and Sweden, the use of heat pumps has grown strongly over the last two decades: in 2019, there were 15–25 heat pumps per 100 inhabitants in these countries, with ASHP the dominant heat pump technology. Similarly, earlier assumptions that ASHP would only work well in fully insulated buildings have proven wrong—even old, partially insulated buildings can be retrofitted with ASHPs and thereby strongly reduce their energy demand.Effects of EAHPs (exhaust air heat pumps) have also been studied within the aforementioned regions displaying promising results. An exhaust air heat pump uses electricity to extract heat from exhaust air leaving a building, redirecting it towards DHW (domestic hot water), space heating, and warming supply air. In colder countries, an EAHP may be able to recover around 2 - 3 times more energy than an air-to-air exchange system. A 2022 study surrounding projected emission decreases within Sweden’s Kymenlaakso region explored the aspect of retrofitting existing apartment buildings (of varying ages) with EAHP systems. Select buildings were chosen in the cities of Kotka and Kouvola, their projected carbon emissions decreasing by about 590 tCO2 and 944 tCO2 respectively with a 7 - 13 year payoff period. It is, however, important to note that EAHP systems may not produce favourable results if installed in a building exhibiting incompatible exhaust output rates or electricity consumption. In this case, EAHP systems may increase energy bills without providing reasonable cuts to carbon emissions (see EAHP). Ground-source (or geothermal) heat pumps provide an efficient alternative. The difference between the two heat pumps is that the ground-source has one of its heat exchangers placed underground—usually in a horizontal or vertical arrangement. Ground-source takes advantage of the relatively constant, mild temperatures underground, which means their efficiencies can be much greater than that of an air-source heat pump. The in-ground heat exchanger generally needs a considerable amount of area. Designers have placed them in an open area next to the building or underneath a parking lot. Energy Star ground-source heat pumps can be 40% to 60% more efficient than their air-source counterparts. They are also quieter and can also be applied to other functions like domestic hot water heating.In terms of initial cost, the ground-source heat pump system costs about twice as much as a standard air-source heat pump to be installed. However, the up-front costs can be more than offset by the decrease in energy costs. The reduction in energy costs is especially apparent in areas with typically hot summers and cold winters.Other types of heat pumps are water-source and air-earth. If the building is located near a body of water, the pond or lake could be used as a heat source or sink. Air-earth heat pumps circulate the building's air through underground ducts. With higher fan power requirements and inefficient heat transfer, Air-earth heat pumps are generally not practical for major construction. Passive daytime radiative cooling Passive daytime radiative cooling harvests the extreme coldness of outer space as a renewable energy source to achieve daytime cooling. Being high in solar reflectance to reduce solar heat gain and strong in longwave infrared (LWIR) thermal radiation heat transfer, daytime radiative cooling surfaces can achieve sub-ambient cooling for indoor and outdoor spaces when applied to roofs, which can significantly lower energy demand and costs devoted to cooling. These cooling surfaces can be applied as sky-facing panels, similar to other renewable energy sources like solar energy panels, making them for simple integration into architectural design.A passive daytime radiative cooling roof application can double the energy savings of a white roof, and when applied as a multilayer surface to 10% of a building's roof, it can replace 35% of air conditioning used during the hottest hours of daytime. Daytime radiative cooling applications for indoor space cooling is growing with an estimated "market size of ~$27 billion in 2025." Sustainable building materials Some examples of sustainable building materials include recycled denim or blown-in fiber glass insulation, sustainably harvested wood, Trass, Linoleum, sheep wool, hempcrete, roman concrete, panels made from paper flakes, baked earth, rammed earth, clay, vermiculite, flax linen, sisal, seagrass, expanded clay grains, coconut, wood fiber plates, calcium sandstone, locally obtained stone and rock, and bamboo, which is one of the strongest and fastest growing woody plants, and non-toxic low-VOC glues and paints. Bamboo flooring can be useful in ecological spaces since they help reduce pollution particles in the air. Vegetative cover or shield over building envelopes also helps in the same. Paper which is fabricated or manufactured out of forest wood is supposedly hundred percent recyclable, thus it regenerates and saves almost all the forest wood that it takes during its manufacturing process. There is an underutilized potential for systematically storing carbon in the built environment. Recycled materials Sustainable architecture often incorporates the use of recycled or second hand materials, such as reclaimed lumber and recycled copper. The reduction in use of new materials creates a corresponding reduction in embodied energy (energy used in the production of materials). Often sustainable architects attempt to retrofit old structures to serve new needs in order to avoid unnecessary development. Architectural salvage and reclaimed materials are used when appropriate. When older buildings are demolished, frequently any good wood is reclaimed, renewed, and sold as flooring. Any good dimension stone is similarly reclaimed. Many other parts are reused as well, such as doors, windows, mantels, and hardware, thus reducing the consumption of new goods. When new materials are employed, green designers look for materials that are rapidly replenished, such as bamboo, which can be harvested for commercial use after only six years of growth, sorghum or wheat straw, both of which are waste material that can be pressed into panels, or cork oak, in which only the outer bark is removed for use, thus preserving the tree. When possible, building materials may be gleaned from the site itself; for example, if a new structure is being constructed in a wooded area, wood from the trees which were cut to make room for the building would be re-used as part of the building itself. For insulation in building envelopes, more experimental materials such as “waste sheep’s wool” alongside other waste fibers originating from textile and agri-industrial operations are being researched for use as well, with recent studies suggesting the recycled insulation effective for architectural purposes. Lower volatile organic compounds Low-impact building materials are used wherever feasible: for example, insulation may be made from low VOC (volatile organic compound)-emitting materials such as recycled denim or cellulose insulation, rather than the building insulation materials that may contain carcinogenic or toxic materials such as formaldehyde. To discourage insect damage, these alternate insulation materials may be treated with boric acid. Organic or milk-based paints may be used. However, a common fallacy is that "green" materials are always better for the health of occupants or the environment. Many harmful substances (including formaldehyde, arsenic, and asbestos) are naturally occurring and are not without their histories of use with the best of intentions. A study of emissions from materials by the State of California has shown that there are some green materials that have substantial emissions whereas some more "traditional" materials actually were lower emitters. Thus, the subject of emissions must be carefully investigated before concluding that natural materials are always the healthiest alternatives for occupants and for the Earth.Volatile organic compounds (VOC) can be found in any indoor environment coming from a variety of different sources. VOCs have a high vapor pressure and low water solubility, and are suspected of causing sick building syndrome type symptoms. This is because many VOCs have been known to cause sensory irritation and central nervous system symptoms characteristic to sick building syndrome, indoor concentrations of VOCs are higher than in the outdoor atmosphere, and when there are many VOCs present, they can cause additive and multiplicative effects. Green products are usually considered to contain fewer VOCs and be better for human and environmental health. A case study conducted by the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Miami that compared three green products and their non-green counterparts found that even though both the green products and the non-green counterparts both emitted levels of VOCs, the amount and intensity of the VOCs emitted from the green products were much safer and comfortable for human exposure. Lab-grown organic materials Commonly used building materials such as wood require deforestation that is, without proper care, unsustainable. As of October 2022, researchers at MIT have made developments on lab-grown Zinnia elegans cells growing into specific characteristics under conditions within their control. These characteristics include the “shape, thickness, [and] stiffness,” as well as mechanical properties that can mimic wood. David N. Bengston from the USDA suggests that this alternative would be more efficient than traditional wood harvesting, with future developments potentially saving on transportation energy and conserve forests. However, Bengston notes that this breakthrough would change paradigms and raises new economic and environmental questions, such as timber-dependent communities′ jobs or how conservation would impact wildfires. Materials sustainability standards Despite the importance of materials to overall building sustainability, quantifying and evaluating the sustainability of building materials has proven difficult. There is little coherence in the measurement and assessment of materials sustainability attributes, resulting in a landscape today that is littered with hundreds of competing, inconsistent and often imprecise eco-labels, standards and certifications. This discord has led both to confusion among consumers and commercial purchasers and to the incorporation of inconsistent sustainability criteria in larger building certification programs such as LEED. Various proposals have been made regarding rationalization of the standardization landscape for sustainable building materials. Sustainable design and plan Building Building information modelling Building information modelling (BIM) is used to help enable sustainable design by allowing architects and engineers to integrate and analyze building performance.[5]. BIM services, including conceptual and topographic modelling, offer a new channel to green building with successive and immediate availability of internally coherent, and trustworthy project information. BIM enables designers to quantify the environmental impacts of systems and materials to support the decisions needed to design sustainable buildings. Consulting A sustainable building consultant may be engaged early in the design process, to forecast the sustainability implications of building materials, orientation, glazing and other physical factors, so as to identify a sustainable approach that meets the specific requirements of a project. Norms and standards have been formalized by performance-based rating systems e.g. LEED and Energy Star for homes. They define benchmarks to be met and provide metrics and testing to meet those benchmarks. It is up to the parties involved in the project to determine the best approach to meet those standards. As sustainable building consulting is often associated with cost premium, organisations such as Architects Assist aim for equity of access to sustainable and resident design. Building placement One central and often ignored aspect of sustainable architecture is building placement. Although the ideal environmental home or office structure is often envisioned as an isolated place, this kind of placement is usually detrimental to the environment. First, such structures often serve as the unknowing frontlines of suburban sprawl. Second, they usually increase the energy consumption required for transportation and lead to unnecessary auto emissions. Ideally, most building should avoid suburban sprawl in favor of the kind of light urban development articulated by the New Urbanist movement. Careful mixed use zoning can make commercial, residential, and light industrial areas more accessible for those traveling by foot, bicycle, or public transit, as proposed in the Principles of Intelligent Urbanism. The study of permaculture, in its holistic application, can also greatly help in proper building placement that minimizes energy consumption and works with the surroundings rather than against them, especially in rural and forested zones. Water Usage Sustainable buildings look for ways to conserve water. One strategic water saving design green buildings incorporate are green roofs. Green roofs have rooftop vegetation which captures storm drainage water. This function not only collects the water for further uses but also serves as a good insulator that can aid in the urban heat island effect. Another strategic water efficient design is treating wastewater so it can be reused again. Urban design Sustainable urbanism takes actions beyond sustainable architecture, and makes a broader view for sustainability. Typical solutions includes eco-industrial park (EIP), urban agriculture, etc. International program that are being supported includes Sustainable Urban Development Network, supported by UN-HABITAT, and Eco2 Cities, supported by the World Bank. Concurrently, the recent movements of New Urbanism, New Classical architecture and complementary architecture promote a sustainable approach towards construction, that appreciates and develops smart growth, architectural tradition and classical design. This in contrast to modernist and globally uniform architecture, as well as leaning against solitary housing estates and suburban sprawl. Both trends started in the 1980s. The Driehaus Architecture Prize is an award that recognizes efforts in New Urbanism and New Classical architecture, and is endowed with a prize money twice as high as that of the modernist Pritzker Prize. Waste management Waste takes the form of spent or useless materials generated from households and businesses, construction and demolition processes, and manufacturing and agricultural industries. These materials are loosely categorized as municipal solid waste, construction and demolition (C&D) debris, and industrial or agricultural by-products. Sustainable architecture focuses on the on-site use of waste management, incorporating things such as grey water systems for use on garden beds, and composting toilets to reduce sewage. These methods, when combined with on-site food waste composting and off-site recycling, can reduce a house's waste to a small amount of packaging waste. See also References == External links ==

petroleum industry in nigeria

Nigeria is the second largest oil and gas producer in Africa. Crude oil from the Niger Delta basin comes in two types: light, and comparatively heavy – the lighter has around 36 gravity while the heavier has 20–25 gravity. Both types are paraffinic and low in sulphur. Nigeria's economy and budget have been largely supported from income and revenues generated from the petroleum industry since 1960. Statistics as at February 2021 shows that the Nigerian oil sector contributes to about 9% of the entire GDP of the nation. Nigeria is a major exporter of crude oil and petroleum products to the United States of America. In 2010, Nigeria exported over one million barrels per day to the United States, representing 9% of the U.S. total crude oil and petroleum products imports and over 40% of Nigeria exports.The need for holistic reforms in the petroleum industry, ease of doing business, and encouragement of local content in the industry birthed the Petroleum Industry Bill by the Goodluck Jonathan administration on July 18, 2008. History of oil exploration The history of oil exploration in Nigeria goes back to 1903, when the Nigerian Bitumen Corporation conducted exploratory work in the country. At the onset of World War I, the firm's operations were stopped. Due to lack of technological and financial resources of small oil companies, large and strong other oil companies took over the exploration of commercial oil in the country. Thereafter, licenses were given to D'Arcy Exploration Company and Whitehall Petroleum, but neither company found oil of commercial value and they returned their licenses in 1923. A new license covering 920,000 square kilometres (357,000 square miles) was given to Shell D'arcy Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, a consortium of Shell and BP (then known as Anglo-Iranian). The company began exploratory work in 1937. The association was granted license to explore oil all over the territory of Nigeria but the acreage allotted to the company in the original license was reduced in 1951 and then, between 1955 and 1957. Drilling activities started in 1951 with the first test well drilled in Owerri area. Oil was discovered in non-commercial quantities at Akata, near Eket in 1953. Prior to the Akata find, the company had spent around £6 million on exploratory activities in the country. In the pursuit of commercially available petroleum, Shell-BP found oil in Oloibiri, Nigeria, in 1956. Other important oil wells discovered during the period were Afam and Bomu in Ogoni territory. Production of crude oil began in 1957, and in 1960, a total of 847,000 tonnes of crude oil was exported. Towards the end of the 1950s, non-British firms were granted license to explore for oil: Mobil in 1955, Tenneco in 1960, Gulf Oil, later Chevron in 1961, Agip in 1962, and Elf in 1962. Prior to the discovery of oil, Nigeria (like many other African countries) strongly relied on agricultural exports to supply its economy. But after nearly 50 years searching for oil in the country, Shell-BP discovered oil at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta. The first oil field began production in 1958. After that, the economy of Nigeria might have been expected to experience strong growth. However, competition for the profits from oil, coupled with the government keeping almost all of the profits for themselves, left little economic benefit for the people. In one interview with locals that were young at the time of oil discover, the blame was placed largely on the government and the greed of bureaucrats:I don't only blame the whites that came here, what about the government? People in the government get nearly all the money from the economy.Many citizens of Nigeria believe that they have not been able to experience the economic benefits derived from oil extraction in Nigeria. In large part due to Nigerian government officials remaining majority shareholders in the profits created by the production of Nigerian oil, leading to government capturing of nearly all oil production, and citizens not seeing socio-economic benefits.The president of Nigeria as of 2023, Bola Tinubu, has taken steps to privatize the oil and gas industry in Nigeria. Decades of government ownership and control of the industry left the people at large impoverished and unable to experience any of the economic gain related to oil and gas exploration and extraction, Tinubu hopes that privatization and free markets will allow for greater equity in the space that has been rife with corruption since the 1950s in Nigeria when petroleum products were first discovered. Production and exploration As of 2000, oil and gas exports accounted for more than 98% of export earnings and about 83% of federal government revenue, as well as generating more than 14% of its GDP. It also provides 95% of foreign exchange earnings, and about 65% of government budgetary revenues.Nigeria's proven oil reserves are estimated by the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) at between 16 and 22 billion barrels (2.5×109 and 3.5×109 m3), but other sources claim that there could be as much as 35.3 billion barrels (5.61×109 m3). Its reserves make Nigeria the tenth most petroleum-rich nation and by far, the most affluent in Africa. In mid-2001, its crude oil production was averaging around 2,200,000 barrels (350,000 m3) per day. It is expected that the industry will continue to be profitable based on an average benchmark oil price of $85-$90 per barrel.Nearly all of the country's primary reserves are concentrated in around the delta of the Niger River, but offshore rigs are also prominent in the well-endowed coastal region. Nigeria is one of the few major oil-producing nations still capable of increasing its oil output. Unlike most of the other OPEC countries. The reason for Nigeria's relative unproductivity is primarily OPEC's regulations on production, to regulate prices at the international market. More recently, production has been disrupted intermittently by the protests of the Niger Delta's inhabitants, who feel they are being exploited. Nigeria has a total of 159 oil fields and 1481 wells in operation according to the Department of Petroleum Resources. The most productive region of the nation is the coastal Niger Delta Basin in the Niger Delta or "South-south" region, which encompasses 78 of the 159 oil fields. Most of Nigeria's oil fields are small and scattered, and in 1990, these small unproductive fields accounted for 62.1% of all Nigerian production. This contrasts with the sixteen largest fields, which produced 37.9% of Nigeria's petroleum at that time.As a result of the numerous small fields, an extensive and well-developed pipeline network has been engineered to transport the crude oil. Also because of the lack of highly productive fields, money from the jointly operated (with the federal government) companies is constantly directed towards petroleum exploration and production. Nigeria's petroleum is classified mostly as "light" and "sweet", as the oil is largely free of sulfur. Nigeria is the largest producer of sweet oil in OPEC. This sweet oil is similar in composition to the petroleum extracted from the North Sea. This crude oil is known as "Bonny light". Names of other Nigerian crudes, all of which are named according to export terminal, are Qua Ibo, Escravos blend, Brass River, Forcados, and Pennington Anfan. As recently as 2010, Nigeria provided about 10% of overall U.S. oil imports and ranked as the fifth-largest source for oil imports in the U.S. However, Nigeria ceased exports to the US in July 2014, because of the impact of shale production in America; India is the largest consumer of Nigerian oil as of 2014.There are six petroleum exportation terminals in the country. Shell owns two, while Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, and Agip own one each. Shell also owns the Forcados Terminal, which is capable of storing 13 million barrels (2,100,000 m3) of crude oil in conjunction with the nearby Bonny Terminal. Mobil operates primarily out of the Qua Iboe Terminal in Akwa Ibom State, while Chevron owns the Escravos Terminal located in Delta State and has a storage capacity of 3.6 million barrels (570,000 m3). Agip operates the Brass Terminal in Brass, a town 113 kilometres (70 miles) southwest of Port Harcourt and has a storage capacity of 3,558,000 barrels (565,700 m3). Texaco operates the Pennington Terminal. Offshore As of 2005, oil companies in Africa investigated offshore production as an alternative area of production. Deepwater production mainly involved underwater drilling that exists 400 metres (1,300 ft) or more below the surface of the water to expand the possible sources for finding new oil reserves. As of 2005, 50% more oil could be extracted through deep water drilling, than before. In 2003, the amount of oil extracted from Nigeria was expected to expand from 15,000 barrels per day (2,400 m3/d) to 1.27 million barrels per day (202,000 m3/d) in 2010.Deepwater oil production is less vulnerable to disturbance by local militant attacks and seizures, due to civil conflicts, and sabotage. These advancements offer more resources and alternatives to extract the oil from the Niger Delta, with less exposure to conflict versus the operations on land. As of 2014, an open-air market for illegal crude oil operates off the Niger Delta, called the Togo Triangle.As of 2021, Angola and Nigeria were the largest oil producers in Africa. In Nigeria, the deepwater sector still has a large avenue to expand and develop. The Agbami oilfields hit full production in 2005, at 250,000 barrels (40,000 m3) a day. Operated by Chevron's Star Deep and a company called Famfa, Agbami is only one offshore concession; there are others named Akpo, Bonga and Erha. Natural gas Natural gas reserves are well over 5,300 km3 (187×10^12 cu ft), the gas reserves are three times as substantial as the crude oil reserves. The biggest natural gas initiative is the Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas Company, which is operated jointly by several companies and the states. It began exploration and production in 1999. In 2008, the government prepared a Gas Master Plan that was intended to promote natural gas production and encourage the supply of natural gas to domestic power stations so as to help alleviate the country's electricity shortages. There is also an export gas pipeline known as the West African Gas Pipeline in the works, but it has encountered numerous setbacks. The pipeline would allow for transportation of natural gas to Benin, Ghana, Togo, and Cote d'Ivoire. Much of Nigeria's natural gas is flared off. Downstream A decade from 1979 to 1989, motor spirit consumption in Nigeria increased from 2.3 million metric tons (MMT) to 4.4 MMT, an average annual increase of 7.5%. In 1989, motor spirit consumption grew by 12.8%. Nigeria's total petroleum refining capacity currently is 450,000 barrels (72,000 m3) per day, however, only 240,000 barrels (38,000 m3) per day was allotted during the 1990s. Subsequently, crude oil production for refineries was reduced further to as little as 75,000 barrels (11,900 m3) per day, during the regime of Sanni Abacha. There are four major oil refineries: the Warri Refinery and Petrochemical Plant, which can process 125,000 barrels (19,900 m3) of crude per day, the New Port Harcourt Refinery, which can produce 150,000 barrels (24,000 m3) per day (there is also an 'Old' Port Harcourt Refinery with negligible production), as well as the now defunct Kaduna Refinery. The Port Harcourt and Warri Refineries both operate at only 30% capacity. The Dangote Refinery, expected to open during the fourth quarter of 2022 will have a daily refining capacity of 650,000 barrels (103,000 m3), increasing Nigeria's refining capacity to over 1,000,000 barrels (160,000 m3) per day. History and politics Prior to its official amalgamation into the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria by the military forces of the British Empire in 1914, the territory of Nigeria was a loose collection of autonomous states, villages, and ethnic communities. Many of these established themselves as pillars of art, trade, and politics in West Africa as late as the 19th century; four of these cultural entities, the Hausa-Fulani, the Igbo (sometimes spelled Ibo), the Yoruba and the Efik grew extremely prominent in the region before the arrival of foreigners, dictated British colonial policies, and dominate national politics in Nigeria to this day. The modern Hausa and Fulani societies in northern Nigeria are the cultural successors of the Sokoto Caliphate, a theocratic state founded by Muslim reformer empire-maker Uthman dan Fodio in 1817. Geographically isolated in the north, the Caliphate was governed by Islamic laws as prescribed by dan Fodio's Kitab al-Farq and maintained greater links commercially and culturally to North Africa and the Arab states than to West Africa and the Atlantic.By contrast, the Yoruba, the Igbo and the Efik in the south had regularly experienced contact with Europeans since at least the 16th century. A minority of southerners converted to Christianity even prior to the establishment of permanent British control, but the majority followed traditional indigenous religions, worshipping myriad deities with vast domains spanning both cosmic and terrestrial spheres. Coastal Nigerians established thriving trade both regionally and abroad, fashioning the coast into a hub for products like palm oil, a good sought after by rapidly industrialising Europe, while also serving as key source for the slave trade prior to its international banning (the region came to be known as the Slave Coast as a result). The Niger Delta region, which is roughly synonymous with the Niger Delta province in location and the contemporary heart of the petroleum industry, is and was a zone of dense cultural diversity and is currently inhabited by roughly forty ethnic groups speaking an estimated 250 dialects. Some of the more relevant ethnic groups in the western part of the Niger Delta region include the Ijaw, Itsekiri, and Ogoni. The Ijaw (sometimes spelled Ijo), the fourth most populous tribe in Nigeria and by far the largest in the Delta region, lived during late medieval times in small fishing villages within the inlets of the delta; however by the 16th century, as the slave trade grew in importance, Ijaw port cities like Bonny and Brass developed into major trading states which served as major exporters of fish and other goods regionally. Other states such as those of Itsekiri domain of Warri sprang up at this time as well.The eastern Niger Delta region has the Efik people (Annang / Efik / Ibibio who are all related with a common language and ancestors who were all referred to as Efik or Calabar people in early Nigerian history). Their capital city of Calabar, located at the coastal southeast of Nigeria (eastern Niger Delta) served as the major trading and shipping center during the pre-colonial and colonial period. Calabar also served as the first capital of Nigeria and the point of entry of Western religion and Western education into southeastern Nigeria. The combined population of the Ibibio, Annang, and Efik people is the fourth largest language group in Nigeria. Colonial legacy (1800s–1960s) Even before the combination of British control over all of present-day Nigeria's borders in 1914 from the protectorates of Southern and Northern Nigeria, British forces had begun imposing drastic political and economic policies on the Nigerian people which would lead to important consequences in the future. Originally this was done primarily through the government-owned Royal Niger Company. The company was crucial in securing most of Nigeria's major ports and monopolised coastal trade; this resulted in the severing of the ties which had linked the area to the flourishing West African regional trade network, in favour of the exportation of cheap natural resources and cash crops to industrialising nations. Most of the population eventually abandoned food production for such market-dependent crops (peanuts and cotton in the north, palm oil in the east, and cocoa in the west). From the beginning, divide and rule tactics were employed by both traders and administrators, highlighting ethno-religious differences and playing groups against one another. After 1914, the north was permitted a system of indirect rule under authoritarian leaders, while in the south the British exercised control directly.Interest in Nigerian oil originated in 1914 with an ordinance making any oil and mineral under Nigerian soil legal property of the Crown. By 1938 the colonial government had granted the state-sponsored company, Shell (then known as Shell D'Arcy) a monopoly over the exploration of all minerals and petroleum throughout the entire colony. Commercially viable oil was discovered by Shell in 1956 roughly 90 kilometres (56 mi) west of the soon-to-be oil capital of Port Harcourt at Oloibiri, now in Bayelsa State; initially a 50–50 profit sharing system was implemented between the company and the government. Until the late 1950s concessions on production and exploration continued to be the exclusive domain of the company, then known as Shell-BP. However, other firms became interested and by the early 1960s Mobil, Texaco, and Gulf had purchased concessions.In October 1960, Nigeria gained full independence from Britain with the British monarch continuing to preside as Head of State, but the country quickly altered its relationship with its former colonizers by declaring Nigeria a republic of three federated states (the Eastern, Western and Northern Regions). But the flaring of ethnic tensions assured that this new republic would be short-lived, as on 15 January 1966, a small group of army officers consisting mostly of southeastern Igbos, staged a successful coup d'état against the civilian government. The federal military government which assumed power under General Aguiyi-Ironsi was unable to quiet ethnic tensions or produce a constitution acceptable to all sections of the country. In fact, its efforts to abolish the federal structure exacerbated the growing unrest and led to another coup, led by largely northern officers in July of the same year. This second coup established the regime of Major General Yakubu Gowon. Subsequently, the massacre of thousands of Igbo in the north prompted hundreds of thousands to return to the southeast, where increasingly strong Igbo secessionist sentiment emerged under the leadership of the Igbo military governor Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. With tensions stoked between the Eastern region and Gowon's federal government, on 4–5 January 1967, in compliance with Ojukwu's desire to meet for talks only on neutral soil, a summit attended by Gowon, Ojukwu and other members of the Supreme Military Council was held at Aburi in Ghana, the stated purpose of which was to resolve all outstanding conflicts and establish Nigeria as a confederation of regions. The outcome of this summit was the Aburi Accord, the differing interpretations of which would soon cause Ojukwu to declare Biafran independence and plunge Nigeria into civil war. Implications and causes of civil war (1966–1970) Igbo withdrawal arose in part from the pogroms in the North that were aimed at Eastern people, most specifically, the Igbo. However, since the southeast encompassed most of the petroleum-rich Niger Delta, the prospect emerged of the Eastern Region gaining self-sufficiency and increasing prosperity. The exclusion of easterners from power caused many in the east to fear that oil revenues would be used to benefit areas in the north and west rather than their own. The desire to accrue profits from oil revenues combined with ethnic tensions acted as a catalyst for the Igbo-spearheaded secession. Additionally, despite his denials in later years, it appears that Ojukwu's insistence on secession at the time was heavily influenced by his knowledge of the extent of the area's oil reserves. Recent evidence has suggested a tax battle waged by American oil companies contributed to the regional and ethnic tensions that would lead to the outbreak of war. It was also during this period that, again thanks to the Americans, the opacity and concomitant corruption of Nigerian oil began to crystallise. However, evidence from leaked US State Department documents have proven that Britain, through Shell-Mex & BP, still held the most influence over the Nigerian oil industry at the time the war broke out. The United States declared neutrality, with US Secretary of State Dean Rusk stating that "America is not in a position to take action as Nigeria is an area under British influence".On top of scores of deaths, the war had a largely negative impact on the oil industry. Strife caused production of crude to drop significantly, particularly in Biafra. Total crude output decreased from 420,000 barrels per day (67,000 cubic metres per day) in 1966 at the start of the war, to only 140,000 barrels per day (22,000 cubic metres per day) in 1968. Shell alone saw a drop from 367,000 barrels per day (58,300 cubic metres per day) in 1966, to 43,000 (6,800) in 1968. And in addition to concerns about production, oil companies began experiencing uncertainty as to the future of their investments depending on who prevailed in the war. This led to relations between oil companies and the federal government becoming strained, with the government at one point accusing the oil company Safrap (now TotalFinaElf, but Elf until 1974) of favouring Biafra and enlisting the aid of France for the Biafran cause. Shell, the other major holder of concessions in the southeast, was concerned but placated and limited politically by Britain's staunch support of the Nigerian government in the war effort.Despite oil's prominent role in national affairs, up to this time, the Nigerian federal government had only limited involvement in the oil industry, and the government confined its financial involvement in the oil industry to taxes and royalties on the oil companies. The companies were subsequently able to set their own price on the petroleum they extracted, and dominated petroleum to such a point that laws governing the oil sector were having a negative effect on Nigerian interests. However, even during the conflict with Biafra would force changes to the relationship between federal government and the petroleum industry. Gowon's military government instituted the 1969 Petroleum Decree which dismantled the existing revenue allocation system that had divided revenue from oil taxes equally between federal and state government, instead favouring an allocation formula in which the federal government controlled the dispensation of revenues to the states.After the loss of over 2,000,000 lives, the war concluded in 1970 and resulted in a victory for the Nigerian state, as the withdrawing regions were subsequently brought back into the Nigerian fold. Industry nationalisation (1970–1979) In May 1971 the Nigerian federal government, then under the control of General Yakubu Gowon, nationalised the oil industry by creating the Nigerian National Oil Corporation via a decree. Following the war with Biafra, the government felt it necessary to secure and gain more control over the oil industry. Nationalization of the oil sector was also precipitated by Nigeria's desire to join OPEC, which was encouraging member states to acquire 51% stakes and become increasingly involved in the oil sector. Although the Nigerian government had maintained involvement in the industry prior to 1971, this was accomplished mainly through business deals on concessions of the foreign firms in operation. The creation of the NNOC made government participation in the industry legally binding. The federal government would continue to consolidate its oil involvement throughout the next several decades. However, it was during the years of Gowon and his successors Murtala Mohammed and Olusegun Obasanjo known officially as the Heads of the Federal Military Government of Nigeria, who ruled amidst the oil boom of the 1970s that the political economy of petroleum in Nigeria truly became characterised by endemic patronage and corruption by the political elites, which plagues the nation to this day. At both state and federal government levels, power and therefore wealth has typically been monopolised by select lobby groups who maintain a strong tendency to 'look after their own' by financially rewarding their political supporters. At the state or community level this means that interest groups in power will reward and protect their own; this is typically based on ethnic/tribal or religious affiliation of the interest group. The heavy patronage based on tribal affiliation has fueled ethnic unrest and violence throughout Nigeria, but particularly in the Niger Delta states, where the stakes for control of the immense oil resources are very high. At the federal level, political elites have utilised patronage to consolidate power for the ruling government, not only by rewarding their political friends in the federal government, but also by paying off major interest groups at the state or tribal level in order to elicit their cooperation. Inevitably these financial favours are distributed unequally and inefficiently, resulting in concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small minority. Nigeria is ranked by the Corruption Perceptions Index 136st out of 180 countries total (for comparison, this is the same as Russia).Following the NNOC's genesis, the Nigerian government continued to garner control over oil revenues. In 1972 it declared that all property not currently owned by a foreign entity was legally the property of the government, which gained jurisdiction over the sale and allocation of concessions to foreign investors. The military regime oversaw the implementation of a number of other important milestones related to oil: 1974: Participation in oil industry by government increases to 55%. 1975: Decree 6 increases federal government share in oil sector to 80%, with only 20% going to the states. 1976: First exploration and development venture by NNOC undertaken and drills to uncover commercial quantities of petroleum off-shore. 1978: Perhaps most importantly, the federal government created the Land Use Act which vested control over state lands in military governors appointed by the federal military regime, and eventually led to Section 40(3) of the 1979 constitution which declared all minerals, oil, natural gas, and natural resources found within the bounds of Nigeria to be legal property of the Nigerian federal government.1979: In an effort to establish further control over the industry, the government merges and restructures the NNOC and the Ministry of Petroleum to form the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, an entity which would exert more power over the allocation and sale of concessions than the NNOC. By 1979, the NNPC had also gained 60% participation in the oil industry. Attempted democracy and debt (1979–1983) Despite the vast revenues accrued by Gowon and his heirs, the junta succumbed to the demands of the civilian population, and in 1979 military head of state Olusegun Obasanjo handed over power to elected National Party of Nigeria (NPN) candidate Shehu Shagari. This event coincided with the declaration of Nigeria's Second Republic. At this juncture, the oil producing states of the Niger Delta were accounting for 82% of all federal government revenue but the population of these areas received very little compensation and demands for adequate reimbursement for the black gold extracted from their land could be heard at this time. Overall, petroleum accounted for 96% of all government external revenue but a mere 27% of the nation's GDP. However, the advent of democracy did not improve the situation. A 1982 Revenue Act implemented by the Shagari government would eventually be modified by yet another military regime in 1984 via Decree 36 which reduced the government share of oil revenue from 80% to 55%. States got 32.5% and 10% went to local governments. The remaining 1.5% was earmarked as a special fund to new develop oil-producing areas, but during the Shagari regime the corruption in Nigerian governance reached its zenith and capital flight out of Nigeria peaked, while people in the oil-producing areas continued to receive little or none of the oil profits. Additionally, 1980 saw oil-generated revenues attain an all-time high of US$24.9 billion but Nigeria still managed an international debt of $9 billion. Shagari's NPN government was viewed by the majority of Nigerians as incorrigibly corrupt by the time the national elections of 1983 came about. Shagari and his subordinates steadily transformed Nigeria into a police state where Nigerian military and police forces were permitted to utilise force quite liberally in order to control the civilian population. Such repressive measures were employed to ensure victory in the forthcoming elections, and this outcome was achieved largely through the bankrupting of the federal government's treasury.Another disturbing trend had also been gaining steam in Nigeria since the early 1970s: a steep drop in agricultural production correlating roughly with the rise in federal revenues from petroleum extraction. Whereas previously Nigeria had been the world's lead exporter of cocoa, production of this cash crop dropped by 43%, while productivity in other important income generators like rubber (29%), groundnuts (64%), and cotton (65%) plummeted as well between 1972 and 1983. The decline in agricultural production was not limited to cash crops amid the oil boom, and national output of staple foodstuffs also fell. This situation contrasts to Nigeria in 1960 just after independence, when despite British underdevelopment, the nation was more or less self-sufficient in terms of food supply, while crops made up 97% of all revenue from exports. The drop in production was so substantial that by the early 1980s the NPN government was forced to implement a now notorious import license scheme which essentially involved Nigeria, for the first time in its history, importing basic food items. However, as Nigerian activist and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka asserts, "the import license scam that was used by the party as a reward and enticement for party loyalists and would-be supporters cost the nation billions of dollars...while food production in the country virtually ceased". Return to military rule and electoral annulment (1983–1993) For these reasons, seizure of power by General Muhammadu Buhari a short time after the NPN government was fraudulently re-elected was initially perceived as a positive development by civilians. Buhari charged out of the gate in December 1983, declaring himself Head of the Supreme Military Council of Nigeria, he condemned the civilian government's blatant corruption and instituted programs supposedly designed to eliminate the disease of corruption. However, these measures were largely transparent and the looting of federal coffers by Nigeria's rulers continued largely unabated, "as Shagari's officers – both within party and government – left the country, came in and out as they pleased, while Burahi's tribunal sentence opposition figures to spells of between a hundred and three hundred years in prison for every dubious kind of crime". The Buhari government neglected to punish even Shagari himself, a consistent trend in Nigerian's long line of dictatorial rulers, who almost universally been spared any kind of justice.In 1985, another general, this time General Ibrahim Babangida, stole power and again alleged that his predecessors were corrupt violators of human rights and promised to rectify the situation, committing to a return to democracy by 1990. Nigeria had been saddled with a crushingly large international debt at this point. This was because, despite over 101 billion US dollars having been generated by the oil industry between 1958 and 1983, nearly all of these funds had been siphoned into the private bank accounts and the state sponsored pet projects maintained by the succession of Nigerian governmental elites. Immediately prior to Babangida's rise to power, which is viewed by some as having been orchestrated by international oil and banking interests, the International Monetary Fund was exerting increasingly acute pressure on the Nigerian government to repay its massive debts, of which 44% of all federal revenue was already servicing. Therefore, it was unsurprising when Babangida implemented the IMF's Structural Adjustment Program in October 1986 in order to facilitate debt repayment. The SAP was extremely controversial while it was in effect between 1986 and 1988. While it did permit Nigerian exports to become more competitive internationally and spurred a degree of economic growth, the SAP also incurred a dramatic drop in real wages for the majority of Nigerians. This, combined with major cuts to important public services, incited public unrest so extreme that Babangida's Armed Forces Ruling Council was obliged to partially reverse the SAP initiatives and return to inflationary economic policies. Babangida's rule also oversaw the annihilation of the Nigerian economic middle class, and Nigeria's entry to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, despite Muslims accounting for less than 50% of the Nigerian populace. The 1980s military juntas conducted several attempted re-organisations of the NNPC to increase its efficiency. However, according to most sources by the early 1990s the NNPC was characterised by chronic inefficiency and waste. Red tape and poor organisation are standard, with the NNPC being divided into several sub-entities, each fulfilling a particular function. This is despite the NNPC's growing participation in the industry, including development and exploration of numerous off-shore wells. As a result, the functionality of the industry is dependent on foreign corporations, not the NNPC.The sudden jump in oil prices caused by the First Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, as most researchers confirm, was at best squandered. The Babangida junta has been widely accused of "mismanaging" the oil windfall from the Gulf War price jump, which accounted for about $12.5 billion in revenues. Another alleges that the federal government siphoned off about $12.2 billion between 1988 and 1994 into private accounts or expenditures, "clandestinely undertaken while the country was openly reeling with a crushing external debt".Under these circumstances, Babangida eventually allowed for nationwide elections on 12 June 1993. These elections were declared universally free and fair (at least in comparison to past elections) by all major international election monitors, and the eventual winner of the presidential race was the Chief M.K.O. Abiola [of the newly formed SDP]. However, the military regime cynically pronounced the election, in which fourteen million Nigerians participated, to be null and void due to "electoral irregularities". The Nigerian people took to the streets in large numbers to protest the election's annulment. As civil unrest continued, Babangida was forced to cede power to the caretaker government of Ernest Shonekan. Environment of crisis (1993–present) Shonekan's interim government would be short-lived, as on 17 November 1993, Babangida's former Chief of Army Staff and Minister of Defence Sani Abacha overthrew the caretaker regime and installed himself as Head of State. Popular opposition to the junta was widespread and public demonstrations were taking place on a regular basis. Immediately upon taking power, Abacha commenced the brutal repression of these subversive elements which would make his tenure notorious on a global basis. Throughout the early 1990s such popular unrest grew steadily, particularly in the Niger Delta region, where various ethnic groups began demanding compensation for years of ecological damage as well as control over their land's oil resources. This unrest manifested itself at the outset as peaceful activist organisations that united their members on the basis of ethnicity. One of the most prominent of these organisations to emerge in the region was the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). The group declared that the Ogoni people, a small minority in Rivers State of Nigeria, were slowly being annihilated as the arable terrain of their homeland (known as Ogoniland) was degraded by pollution from oil production by Chevron and primarily Shell. Conflict in the Niger Delta arose in the early 1990s due to tensions between the foreign oil corporations, the Nigerian federal government, and a number of the Niger Delta's ethnic groups who felt they were being exploited, particularly minority groups like the Ogoni as well as the Ijaw in the late 1990s. Ethnic and political unrest has continued throughout the 1990s and persists as of 2006 despite the conversion to a more democratic, civilian federal system under the Obasanjo government in 1999; democracy has to some degree fan the flames as politicians seeking office may now employ militia groups to coerce voters and generally disrupt the election process. Competition for oil wealth has fuelled violence between innumerable ethnic groups, causing the militarisation of nearly the entire region by ethnic militia groups as well as Nigerian military and police forces (notably the Nigerian Mobile Police). Victims of crimes are fearful of seeking justice for crimes committed against them because of growing "impunity from prosecution for individuals responsible for serious human rights abuses, [which] has created a devastating cycle of increasing conflict and violence". The regional and ethnic conflicts are so numerous that fully detailing each is impossible and impractical. On 30 January 2013, a Dutch court ruled that Shell can be held accountable for the pollution in the Niger Delta. Operating agreements As of 1999, details and nature of the relationship between the government and the operating companies were governed by three types of agreements, joint ventures, production sharing contracts and service contracts. Joint-venture companies Shell Plc. (British) Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC), usually known simply as Shell Nigeria: A joint venture operated by Shell accounts for 50% of Nigerian's total oil production (899,000 barrels (142,900 m3) per day in 1997) from more than eighty oil fields. The joint venture is composed of NNPC (55%), Shell (30%), TotalFinaElf (10%) and Agip (5%) and operates largely onshore on dry land or in the mangrove swamp in the Niger Delta. "The company has more than 100 producing oil fields, and a network of more than 6,000 kilometres of pipelines, flowing through 87 flowstations. SPDC operates 2 coastal oil export terminals". The Shell joint venture produces about 50% of Nigeria's total crude. Shell Nigeria owns concessions on four companies, they are: Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCO), Shell Nigeria Gas (SNG), Shell Nigeria Oil Products (SNOP), as well as holding a major stake in Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG). Shell formerly operated alongside BP as Shell-BP, but BP has since sold all of its Nigerian concessions. Most of Shell's operations in Nigeria are conducted through the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC).Chevron (American) Chevron Nigeria Limited (CNL): A joint venture between NNPC (60%) and Chevron (40%) has in the past been the second largest producer (approximately 400,000 barrels per day (64,000 cubic metres per day)), with fields located in the Warri region west of the Niger river and offshore in shallow water. It is reported to aim to increase production to 600,000 barrels per day (95,000 cubic metres per day).ExxonMobil (American) Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited (MPNU): A joint venture between the NNPC (60%) and ExxonMobil (40%) operates in shallow water off Akwa Ibom state in the southeastern delta and averaged production of 632,000 barrels per day (100,500 cubic metres per day) in 1997, making it the second largest producer, as against 543,000 barrels per day (86,300 cubic metres per day) in 1996. Mobil also held a 50% interest in a Production Sharing Contract for a deep water block further offshore, and was reported to plan to increase output to 900,000 barrels per day (140,000 cubic metres per day) by 2000. Oil industry sources indicated that Mobil was likely to overtake Shell as the largest producer in Nigeria within the next five years, if current trends continue, mainly due to its offshore base allowing it refuge from the strife Shell has experienced onshore. It has been headquartered in Eket and operating in Nigeria under the subsidiary of Mobil Producing Nigeria (MPN).Agip (Italian) Nigerian Agip Oil Company Limited (NAOC): A joint venture operated by Agip and owned by the NNPC (60%), Agip (20%) and ConocoPhillips (20%) produced 150,000 barrels per day (24,000 cubic metres per day) mostly from small onshore fields.Total (French) Total Petroleum Nigeria Limited (TPNL): A joint venture between NNPC (60%) and Elf (now Total) produced approximately 125,000 barrels per day (19,900 cubic metres per day) during 1997, both on and offshore. Elf and Mobil are in dispute over operational control of an offshore field with a production capacity of 90,000 barrels per day (14,000 cubic metres per day).Texaco (now merged with Chevron) NNPC Texaco-Chevron Joint Venture (formerly Texaco Overseas Petroleum Company of Nigeria Unlimited): A joint venture operated by Texaco and owned by NNPC (60%), Texaco (20%) and Chevron (20%) produced about 60,000 barrels per day (9,500 cubic metres per day) from five offshore fields in 1999. Independent and indigenous oil and gas companies Addax Petroleum Nigeria Limited Aiteo Group AMNI International Petroleum Development Company Ltd. Consolidated Oil Limited. Dubri Oil Company Ltd. Emerald Energy Resources Ltd Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum Company Ltd. Situation, 2019 As of 2007, Nigeria's oil revenue totalled $340 billion in exports since the 1970s and it was the fifth largest producer. Nigeria imports most of its motor spirit, though it is a major oil exporter, and when fuel subsidies were lifted in January 2012, fuel increased from roughly $1.70 per gallon to $3.50. As of 2019, Nigeria produced a form of oil ideal for the United States, had huge reserves, and increased its production to 2.8 million barrels (450,000 m3) of oil a day. At the same time this has been described as a resource curse hurting Nigeria and disadvantaging her people. Oil theft In July 2013, a report analysing the effect of oil theft in Nigeria revealed that Nigeria lost $10.9 billion in potential oil revenues between 2009 and 2011. In 2022, the country's oil industry's regulator mentioned that oil theft accounted for 108,000 barrels a day, which is about 7% of total oil production. Watchdogs reckoned that 5% to 20% of oil in Nigeria is reportedly stolen. The Trans Niger pipeline suffered so much theft that its oil flow was forced to be halted. The head of the NNPC, Mele Kyari claimed that oil companies have cut production worth 700,000 barrels per day to avoid oil theft. Process and Industrial Developments dispute Process and Industrial Developments Ltd (P&ID) entered into a 20-year contract with the Nigerian government for natural gas supply and processing. Nigeria provided the gas, which PI&D refined so that it could be used to power the Nigerian electrical grid. PI&D could keep valuable byproducts for its own use. In 2012, PI&D demanded arbitration in London, alleging that Nigeria had not supplied the agreed quantity of gas or to construct the infrastructure it had agreed to build. The arbitral tribunal awarded damages of more than £4.8 billion. The compensation was valued £8.15 billion with interest when the case was heard in London High Court in December 2022. Environmental impact The Niger Delta comprises 70,000 square kilometres (27,000 square miles) of wetlands formed primarily by sediment deposition. Home to more than 20 million people and 40 different ethnic groups, this floodplain makes up 7.5% of Nigeria's total land mass. It is the largest wetland and maintains the third-largest drainage area in Africa. The Delta's environment can be broken down into four ecological zones: coastal barrier islands, mangrove swamp forests, freshwater swamps, and lowland rainforests. This incredibly well-endowed ecosystem, which contains one of the highest concentrations of biodiversity on the planet, in addition to supporting an abundant flora and fauna, arable terrain that can sustain a wide variety of crops, trees, and more species of freshwater fish than any ecosystem in West Africa. The region could experience a loss of 40% of its inhabitable terrain in the next thirty years because of extensive dam construction in the region. The carelessness of the oil industry has also precipitated this situation, which can perhaps be best encapsulated by a report issued by the NNPC in 1983, long before popular unrest surfaced: We witnessed the slow poisoning of the waters of this country and the destruction of vegetation and agricultural land by oil spills which occur during petroleum operations. But since the inception of the oil industry in Nigeria, more than twenty-five years ago, there has been no concerned and effective effort on the part of the government, let alone the oil operators, to control environmental problems associated with the industry. Oil spills and water contamination Oil spills in Nigeria are a common occurrence; it has been estimated that between 9 and 13 million barrels (1,400,000 and 2,100,000 m3) have been spilled since oil drilling started in 1958. The government estimates that about 7,000 spills occurred between 1970 and 2000. The process of remediating some of the contaminated site was conducted in Kwawa community, Khana Local Government Area of Rivers State, after the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released an environmental assessment of Ogoniland in 2011, a remediation project popularly refer to as OGONI CLEAN-UP.Oil spill causes include corrosion of pipelines and tankers (accounts for 50% of all spills), sabotage (28%), and oil production operations (21%), with 1% of the spills being accounted for by inadequate or non-functional production equipment. One reason that corrosion accounts for such a high percentage of all spills is that as a result of the small size of the oilfields in the Niger Delta, there is an extensive network of pipelines between the fields. Many facilities and pipelines were constructed to older standards, are poorly maintained and have outlived their estimated life span. Sabotage is performed primarily through what is known as "bunkering", whereby the saboteur taps a pipeline, and in the process of extraction sometimes the pipeline is damaged. Oil extracted in this manner is often sold for cash compensation. Oil spills have a major impact on the ecosystem. Large tracts of mangrove forests have been destroyed. They are especially susceptible to oil spills because the oil is stored in the soil and re-released annually with each inundation. An estimated 5–10% of Nigerian mangrove ecosystems have been wiped out either by settlement or by oil. Spills also take out crops and aquacultures through contamination of groundwater and soils. Drinking water is frequently contaminated, and a sheen of oil is visible in many localised bodies of water. If the drinking water is contaminated, even if no immediate health effects are apparent, the numerous hydrocarbons and other chemicals present in oil represent a carcinogenic risk. Offshore spills, which are usually much greater in scale, contaminate coastal environments and cause a decline in local fishing production. Nigerian regulations are weak and rarely enforced allowing oil companies, in essence, to self-regulate. Natural gas flaring Nigeria flares more natural gas associated with oil extraction than any other country, with estimates suggesting that of the 99,000,000 m3 (3.5×10^9 cu ft) of associated gas (AG) produced annually, 71,000,000 m3 (2.5×10^9 cu ft), or about 70%, is wasted via flaring. Statistical data associated with gas flaring is notoriously unreliable, but AG wasted during flaring is estimated to cost Nigeria US$2.5 billion on a yearly basis. Companies operating in Nigeria harvest natural gas for commercial purposes, however, most prefer to extract it gas from deposits where it is found in isolation as non-associated gas. It is costly to separate commercially viable associated gas from oil, hence gas is flared to increase crude production. Gas flaring is discouraged by the international community as it contributes to climate change. In fact, in western Europe 99% of associated gas is used or re-injected into the ground. Gas flaring in Nigeria releases large amounts of methane, which has a very high global warming potential. The methane is accompanied by carbon dioxide, of which Nigeria is estimated to have emitted more than 34.38 million tons in 2002, accounting for about 50% of all industrial emissions in the country and 30% of the total CO2 emissions. As flaring in the west has been minimised, in Nigeria it has grown proportionally with oil production. While the international community, the Nigerian government, and the oil corporations seem to agree that gas flaring need to be curtailed, efforts to do so have been slow and largely ineffective.Gas flares release a variety of potentially poisonous chemicals such as nitrogen dioxides; sulfur dioxide; volatile organic compounds like benzene, toluene, xylene, and hydrogen sulfide; as well as carcinogens like benzapyrene and dioxins. Often gas flares are often close to local communities and lack adequate fencing or protection for villagers who may risk nearing the heat of the flare in order to carry out their daily activities. Flares which are often older and inefficient are rarely relocated away from villages and are known to coat the land and communities in the area with soot and damage adjacent vegetation. In November 2005, a judgment by "the Federal High Court of Nigeria ordered that gas flaring must stop in a Niger Delta community as it violates guaranteed constitutional rights to life and dignity. In a case brought against the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (Shell), Justice C. V. Nwokorie ruled in Benin City that the damaging and wasteful practice of flaring cannot lawfully continue." Human rights impact Repression of protest and government corruption One of the greatest threats facing the people of the Niger River Delta has actually been their own government. The Nigerian government has total control over property rights, and they have the authority to seize any property for use by the oil companies. A majority of every dollar that comes out of the ground in the delta goes to the State and Federal governments.According to the World Bank, most of Nigeria's oil wealth gets siphoned off by 1% of the population. Corruption in the government is rampant: since 1960 it is estimated that 300 to 400 billion dollars has been stolen by corrupt government officials. The corruption is found at the highest levels as well. For example, a former inspector general of the national police was accused of stealing 52 million dollars. He was sentenced to six years in prison for a lesser charge.Nigerians have on many occasions engaged in protests against oil-related corruption and environmental concerns in the past but have been met with harsh suppression by government forces. For example, in February 2005 at a protest at Chevron's Escravos oil terminal, soldiers opened fire on the protestors. One man was killed, and 30 others were injured. The soldiers claimed that the protestors were armed, which the protestors denied. Another, more extreme example happened in 1994. The Nigerian military moved into a region called Ogoniland in force. They razed 30 villages, arrested hundreds of protestors, and killed an estimated 2,000 people.One of the protestors they arrested was a man named Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian TV producer, writer and social activist. In 1990 he founded the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). Ken wrote and spoke out about the rampant corruption in the Nigerian government, and he condemned Shell and BP. He was arrested by the Nigerian government and imprisoned for 17 months. Then in a show trial he and eight others were condemned to death. He and the others were hung in 1995 and he was buried in an unmarked common grave. Poverty and chronic underdevelopment The people of the delta states have been living in extreme poverty even in the face of great material wealth found in the waters by their homes. In 2006, 70% of the people in the Niger River Delta lived on less than US$1 per day according to Amnesty International. For many people, this meant finding work in a labour market which is in many instances hostile to them. Much of the labour in the past has been imported. To a growing degree, the labour force for the oil companies is coming from Nigeria, but discrimination has been rampant, and for the most part, locals are discriminated against.This leads to a situation where the men in the community have to search for temporary employment. This has two negative effects on the community. First it takes the men out of the community as they go in search of work. The second is the nature of temporary employment sets up unsustainable spending habits, thinking it will be easy to earn more, when in many cases this does not turn out to be the case).As of 1999, the government officials siphoned off all the money generated from oil sales, so the infrastructure suffered, where most of the villages did not have electricity or even running water. They do not have good access to schools or medical clinics. For many, even clean drinking water is difficult to come by. The deterioration of the infrastructure in the delta states is so severe it is even a problem in the more urban areas. One example of was the airport at Port Harcourt. Part of a fence was not properly maintained and in 2005, an Air France flight hit a herd of cattle on the runway. The airport was closed and had not reopened by 2007. Yet in 2007, indicted corrupt leaders were also cheered by the Niger Delta people.As of 2011, the leadership of the Niger Delta region appeared responsible for most of the underdevelopment in the region. There has been large-scale of corruption amongst the elected leaders especially governors, and the leaders have helped sponsor the militant groups in kidnapping and robbing innocent people and sabotaging the efforts by the federal government for infrastructural development. References External links Premier source of information on the West Africa Energy sector International Museum of Women feature on Nigerian Women's Activism Against Exploitation John Ghazvinian's "The Curse of Oil" in the Virginia Quarterly Review Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Updates, a carefully curated page of current news in the Nigerian Oil and Gas industry. The Niger Delta Petroleum System: Niger Delta Province, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea, Africa, United States Geological Survey Nigeria's Deadly Days, Time, 14 May 2006, article on the background to the 2006 increase in militant activity Remember Saro-Wiwa Nigeria: Ten years on: injustice and violence haunt the oil Delta Amnesty International, 3 November 2005 Blood Oil: report on the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta by Sebastian Juger for Vanity Fair, Feb 2007 Nigerian Oil – "Curse of the Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in the Niger Delta" – article from National Geographic Magazine (February 2007) Map of the oil and gas infrastructure in Nigeria Map of the production license holders in Nigeria

sustainability reporting

Sustainability reporting refers to the disclosure, whether voluntary, solicited, or required, of non-financial performance information to outsiders of the organization. Generally speaking, sustainability reporting deals with information concerning environmental, social, economic and governance issues in the broadest sense. These are the criteria gathered under the acronym ESG (Environmental, social and corporate governance). The introduction of these non-financial information in published reports is seen as a step forward in corporate communication and considered as an effective way to increase corporate engagement and transparency.Sustainability reports help companies build consumer confidence and improve corporate reputations through social responsibility programs and transparent risk management. This communication aims at giving stakeholders broader access to relevant information outside the financial sphere that also influences the company's performance.In the EU, the mandatory practice of sustainability reporting for certain companies is regulated by the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD), recently revised and renamed Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). An increasing number of organizations are providing frameworks for sustainability reporting and are issuing standards or similar initiatives to guide companies in this exercise. There is a wide range of terminology used to qualify this same concept of sustainability reporting: non-financial reporting, extra-financial reporting, social reporting, CSR reporting or even socio-environmental reporting. History Corporate sustainability reporting has a history going back to environmental reporting. This practice is rooted in the multidimensional concept of CSR and in the stakeholders' vision of corporate governance in Europe, which insists on the importance of understanding the company as an entity with relationships with its environment. According to Freeman's theory, the company's shareholders are no longer the only ones to be considered, but also its employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, governments: the society in the broadest sense. With the emergence of this approach, the first response of many companies has been to expand the communication of their achievements in terms of social responsibility. Information disclosed by companies themselves are the first indicators that can be received by the public in order to verify whether the decisions taken meet the announced commitments, as well as its own interests.The obligation of accountability is therefore often assimilated to reporting and is addressed, in the first place, to the company's stakeholders. This means that both shareholders and society in general are concerned, while also taking future generations into account.Recently, there has been a growing interest in communications relating to the extra-financial aspects of organizations: CSR performance is now one of the factors considered in investment decisions. The practice of sustainability reporting has existed in a scattered way since the 1980s but has really expanded over the last twenty years. This is notably due to the global awareness of the ecological crisis and the common interest in sustainable development, but also to the numerous corporate governance scandals of large companies (Enron scandal, Parmalat Financial Fraud…) over the last two decades or the financial crisis of 2008. In addition to eroding stakeholder trust, these circumstances have increased their activism for broader transparency and ensuring better information from companies.In this context, the need for sustainability reporting has gradually emerged. It was carried out by companies initially on a voluntary basis, with the aim of mitigating some of the skepticism of users of financial reports and restoring the trust of stakeholders by expressing a willingness to behave responsibly.The publication of non-financial reports thus began in an ad hoc and rather anecdotal manner, confined to a few subjects deemed worthy of interest by the companies themselves. A copy effect, combined with latent pressure from stakeholders, subsequently contributed to the acceptance and renewal of this approach, which gradually became more structured. Today, these reports are common: 93% of the world's two hundred and fifty largest companies publish them annually. Indeed, CSR and its concrete implementation are increasingly valued by public opinion.This interest has led to the emergence of reference frameworks, guidelines, standards and regulations in this area. In addition to helping and guiding companies, this range of resources has also allowed for a certain standardization of both the information disclosed and the method of communication. The objectives of developing guidelines are to provide companies with a concrete methodology and to make the published data understandable, credible and comparable for their users. Reporting guidelines are issued either by private non-governmental organizations (whose adoption by companies is therefore voluntary), or more recently by governments on the basis of mandatory standards. Indeed, for some companies, this disclosure has been made mandatory (see next section). In line with these developments, some consulting firms have started ESG advisory services and help companies to draft their sustainability reports. There are a variety of reasons that companies choose to produce these reports, but at their core they are intended to be "vessels of transparency and accountability" Often, they are also intended to improve internal processes, engage stakeholders and persuade investors.Improved disclosure of non-financial information can have other benefits for reporting companies. In particular, the adoption of sustainability reporting has been found to have a positive impact on company performance and value. OECD suggests that companies showing sustainable performance on ESG criteria and communicating effectively about them seem to enjoy better financial performance. These companies generally benefit from a more diversified investor base, for example through their inclusion in actively managed investment portfolios or sustainability indices. In addition, companies that effectively communicate their non-financial engagements and have a high performance in this area are more likely to attract and retain talents thanks to their greater social credibility, as this stimulates employees' motivation and meets their values.As a matter of law, in the United States, the materiality principle controls whether a publicly traded corporation must disclose certain information, that is: "a fact is material if there is a substantial likelihood that the fact would have been viewed by a reasonable investor as having significantly altered the ‘total mix’ of information available."In this case, some authors have examined and applied several factors (including the percentages of managed investment assets that are screened for ESG criteria, plus the fact that over 90% of large publicly traded companies publish ESG data) and concluded that ESG data qualifies as being material. It has also been suggested that other organizations that issue securities may also be well-advised to also engage in sustainability reporting.The topic of sustainability reporting has become a recurring theme in recent years and the practice has been increasingly professionalized. However, the framework surrounding such reporting is in constant evolution and companies are increasingly challenged by the form, content and process of their sustainability reporting. While this requirement presents multiple opportunities for firms, investors, consumers and all stakeholders, it also creates a number of challenges. Indeed, for sustainability statements to be relevant and useful, the information disclosed must not only be realistic and reliable, but also verifiable and comparable. Increasingly, governments are introducing regulations to ensure that companies disclose NFR information. In Australia, companies must disclose information on their environmental performance under the Corporations Act 2001 and the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007. In China, companies must disclose social responsibility information while those listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges must include their corporate social responsibility performance in their annual reports. In South Africa, companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange must publish an integrated report for all financial years ending on or after March 1, 2010. In North America, the Securities and Exchange Commission requires Canadian and US companies to disclose non-financial information in their annual reports. Finally, the European Union Directive 95/2014/EU introduced mandatory NFR practices for large European companies. As governments and financial regulators continue to issue and update reporting requirements, companies are increasingly obligated to disclose their non-financial information. The increased focus on NFI reporting has been driven, in part, by the rise in ESG investing. ESG investing is a form of investing that focuses on companies with strong ESG practices.The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development - International Standards of Accounting and Reporting (UNCTAD-ISAR) founded the African Regional Partnership for Sustainability and SDG Reporting in 2022. The collaboration has 53 members as of March 2023, including national corporate social responsibility networks and/or ministries from 27 African nations. Legal Framework European Union In Europe, the legislative framework for sustainability reporting practices is based on Directive 2014/95/EU (Non-Financial Reporting Directive or NFRD), which provides a uniform regulatory framework for non-financial information for EU Member States. This Directive applies to large public interest undertakings with more than 500 employees on average during the financial year, both single undertaking and consolidated groups. Companies falling within the scope of the Directive must also have a balance sheet total exceeding EUR 20 million and/or a turnover exceeding EUR 40 million, where applicable, on a consolidated basis. By 2021, approximately 11,600 companies in Europe were in its scope of application. Directive 2014/95/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 October 2014 amends Directive 2013/34/EU in relation to the disclosure of non-financial and diversity information by certain large undertakings and groups. Two articles (19a and 29a) are inserted into Directive 2013/34/EU, now requiring, for the first time, certain companies to disclose information on how they operate and manage social and environmental challenges. This updated directive applies to all Member States of the European Union. They must bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions needed to comply with the Directive.A revision process of Directive 2014/95/EU was initiated in January 2020 with the aim of improving the quality and reliability of non-financial reporting and reducing the administrative burden on companies in terms of reporting. A broad public consultation was then organised from February to June 2020 to gather input and opinions from various stakeholders regarding the review of the Directive's provisions. The outcome of this consultation is the European Commission's proposal on 21 April 2021 to revise the NFRD by introducing the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Content/Scope of application Companies that fall within the scope of the EU Directive 2014/95/EU on non-financial reporting, the main EU-wide initiative in this area, must publish information on the following areas: Environmental protection Social responsibility and treatment of employees Respect for human rights The fight against corruption and bribery Diversity on company boards (in terms of age, gender, education and professional experience).For each category, the company is also required to briefly describe the group's business model, describe the policies that are applied in these areas, provide the results of these policies, establish the risks related to these areas and finally establish the non-financial KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) of these areas. The information should also be published with the objective to understand the development, performance, position and ultimately the impact of the firm's activities. Under this directive, companies have however no obligation as to how and where they publish this information. They can therefore base themselves on various international or local frameworks depending on their preferences and needs.In practice, most companies comply with the requirement to describe in detail the policies they apply, particularly in the social and environmental fields. Due diligence policies and procedures relating to human rights and corruption also appear regularly in organisations' reports, but to a lesser extent than social and environmental policies. The reasons for this divergence in the importance an organisation places on certain areas rather than others stem notably from differences in the maturity of the organisation, the evolution of the areas and their relevance to companies over time, and the place of these areas in relation to a company's supply chain. The presentation of policies, KPIs and risks remains a highly disparate practice. Initiatives Organizations can improve their sustainability performance by measuring (EthicalQuote (CEQ)), monitoring and reporting on it, helping them have a positive impact on society, the economy, and a sustainable future. When it comes to reporting, companies have a certain amount of freedom in the drafting of their statements, given the absence of any binding law on this subject.However, various initiatives (national, European or international) are developing standardized methodologies to help companies build their sustainability reports which, according to the European Directive 2014/95/UE, have to be cited by the companies using them. Some of these are mentioned in the same Directive and in the Commission's Communication COM (2017) 215/1 setting out guidelines on non-financial information.The key drivers for the quality of sustainability reports are the guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), because it is the most widely used benchmark by companies worldwide given its reliability. It provides opportunities for comparison of information related to the economic, environmental, and social impact of undertakings internationally. In addition, the SDG Compass has been created by GRI, the UN Global Compact and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) with the aim of linking the GRI standards to the Sustainable Development Goals. This document provides guidance on how to report the company’s contribution to the SDGs by leveraging the GRI standards.A series of other initiatives exist among which we can mention the most prominent ones on the sustainability and CSR reporting scene: The International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC): guide the relevant integration of financial and non-financial information in company’s reports. Account Ability's AA1000 Series: establishes the basic principles to be addressed in a non-financial report without guiding the impact measurement. United Nations (UN) Global Compact's Communication on Progress (COP): establishes 10 core principles (on human rights, labor/environmental standards and anti-corruption) on which companies measure their performance. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Guidelines (OECD): international standards set by governments for responsible business by multinationals. International Labour Organization Conventions (ILO): concerning right at work. International Organization for Standardization Standards (ISO): providing non-binding international norms standards. The NFRD and the Guidelines Communication of the Commission. The Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS): created by the European Commission, it helps companies to improve their environmental efficiency. Criticism Despite its purpose of having a positive impact on society, sustainability reporting is the subject of various criticisms. First, while companies can refer to the reporting framework that best fits their industry and organization, this freedom implies a lack of standardization that hinders the effectiveness of the sustainability reporting concept. In fact, the multiplication of reporting frameworks makes published information more difficult to interpret in the markets, taking sustainability reporting away from its main objective of transparency and comparison between firms’ performance.One solution to this issue of comparability of non-financial information is proposed by the European Commission through the creation of European standards built by EFRAG, in the context of the new CSRD. According to the EU, by putting forward a unique standard, this will reduce the costs of disclosure for companies and improve the way investors and stakeholders compare and use the information disclosed.Another point of criticism concerns the reasons why companies embark on this process. Indeed, as public opinion increasingly values these initiatives, companies tend to perceive CSR more as a competitive advantage putting aside ethical reasons. Some opportunistic companies can therefore contribute to discrediting the effort by prioritizing their own interests over transparency objectives. Other firms may go even further by manipulating their sustainability reports in order to present a more attractive corporate image, either by hiding negative information or by over-disclosing positive information regarding environmental data, which may distort reality. Such behaviour can be associated with the practice known as greenwashing.This tendency towards greenwashing may also stem from the wide range of private initiatives that can be chosen by companies to report on sustainability. Indeed, a large part of these initiatives are taken by private non-governmental organisations (GRI, IIRC, SASB, CDP...) and it is only recently that some governments or supranational institutions, such as the European Commission, are developing mandatory standards (NFRD/CSRD and the Communication on the Commission's guidelines, EMAS, ...). Companies can therefore choose the initiative that best suits their objectives, whether they are set out of conviction or for performance reasons. Finally, some doubts are raised as to the real capacity of private sector initiatives to generate radical environmental and social changes necessary for the future of society and to ensure a real legitimacy of the firm's intentions. Another alleged pitfall of this practice is that, for the companies that are legally obliged to report in Europe, there are currently no harmonized control rules at the EU level. For most of the Member States implementing this directive, the national designed control stops at the simple verification of the production of these sustainability data. As for sanctions in case of non-compliance with the legal obligation to publish information, they are not prescribed at the European level either. This constitutes a disincentive to introduce strong supervision at national level, and to respect it for companies. Epistemological considerations The difficulty of adapting traditional reporting to the complexity of non-financial information is an additional criticism that can be made of this concept. Indeed, while financial reporting is by nature quantifiable, easy to verify and reliable, non-financial information is struggling to gain legitimacy in the eyes of stakeholders. To remedy this, some companies are using existing financial reporting tools to build new ones adapted to ethical imperatives. However, these initiatives are undertaken by companies that demonstrate a certain maturity in terms of corporate social responsibility and can be overwhelming for smaller companies such as SMEs. In this respect, sustainability reporting is divided into three categories: Moreover, despite attempts by the most motivated and capable companies to make their sustainability reporting as legitimate as the financial one, the qualitative dimensions inherent to it and its predominantly narrative nature persist and make performance assessment difficult. According to Baret and Helfrich (2019), indicators such as the statement of the company's values or the company vision are simply not measurable or standardizable, while others can be quantified only if the company has a high implementation capacity (for instance the capacity to conduct surveys on a population, ... etc). From this stems that the selection and presentation of important information to be disclosed is often a matter of managerial discretion, generating the risk of manipulation bias in narrative disclosure.Quantitative measures such as KPIs therefore have a critical role in supporting the quality of narratives. However, the ability of companies to measure quantitatively their impact depends not only on the availability of objective indicators but also on the control they have over what they measure (for instance, indicators related to suppliers). In addition, many researches raise concerns about the actual reliability of non-financial KPIs, particularly those related to employee performance, community, environment and innovation. What particularly stands out is that the non-comparability of the measures or formats used compromises the consistent use of quantitative indicators. This trend can be observed as much in the different existing ways of measuring the same data, as in the diversity of indicators that one company can choose to illustrate social or environmental disclosures, for example, compared to another. Finally, while various indicators are necessary for a company to report on the evolution of its sustainable performance, recognized standards (e.g., GRI) can be a good reference for firms. Nevertheless, according to some authors, it remains important for businesses to develop their own indicators adapted to their specific characteristics in order to ensure a proper sustainable reporting. See also Balanced scorecard Carbon accounting Context-Based Sustainability Integrated Reporting Islamic Reporting Initiative Journal of Accountancy Life cycle thinking Sustainability accounting Sustainable finance Sustainability metrics and indices World Resources Institute References Notes Further reading Schaltegger, S.; Bennett, M. & Burritt, R., eds. (2006). Sustainability Accounting and Reporting. Dordrecht: Springer. External links GoMarketWise Glossary – definitions of terms concerning sustainability reporting The International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) – a global coalition of regulators, investors, companies, standard setters, the accounting profession and NGOs. The coalition is promoting communication about value creation as the next step in the evolution of corporate reporting. Sustainability Reporting Standards in India by reportyak.com Sustainability Reporting – What is CDP and how do Companies report using the CDP framework? on reportyak.com

eating our way to extinction

Eating Our Way To Extinction is a 2021 documentary film, which looks at the problem of unsustainable meat production and its effects on the environment. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a rating of 88%. Synopsis The film addresses the problem of unsustainable meat production and highlights the consequences such as deforestation, increasing air and water pollution, and the resulting destruction of resources. According to a Spectrum Culture review, it is a disturbing but necessary documentary that reminds viewers of the link between human diet and human greed and the brink of environmental collapse that we are facing today.The film combines journalism, scientific quotes and graphics, personal interviews and investigative reporting, following in the footsteps of other climate change films like Cowspiracy and Seaspiracy.The documentary conveys the following key messages: The oceans are being overfished and polluted by abandoned fishing nets. We rely on oceanic organisms for much of the oxygen we breathe and must keep them healthy. Animal agriculture is widely acknowledged as a likely point of origin for the next global pandemic. Governing entities are funded and manipulated by the animal agriculture industry which pours millions of dollars into lobbying and politics. Animal agriculture is a leading cause of deforestation. Eating a whole-food, plant-based diet is healthy for people across life stages and even athletes thrive on this diet. In order to ensure that the environment survives as we know it for generations to come, we must make changes. The most impactful personal change we can make is to adopt a plant-based diet. Production The film was directed by Ludo Brockway and Otto Brockway. It stars Kate Winslet (narrator), Richard Branson and Sylvia Earle, among others. The film was released on October 1, 2021. Translations The original language of the film is English. However, it is also available for free in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Hebrew, Korean, Mongolian, Indonesian, Arabic and Persian. Accolades Eating Our Way To Extinction is the winner of the 2022 Environmental Media Award for the best documentary film. It also won the 2022 International Green Film Award of the Cinema for Peace Awards.The documentary was recommended for teaching to inform students about climate change impacts on a global level. References External links Eating Our Way To Extinction at IMDb Official website

earth overshoot day

Earth Overshoot Day (EOD) is the calculated illustrative calendar date on which humanity's resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year. The term "overshoot" represents the level by which human population's demand overshoots the sustainable amount of biological resources regenerated on Earth. When viewed through an economic perspective, the annual EOD represents the day by which the planet's annual regenerative budget is spent, and humanity enters environmental deficit spending. EOD is calculated by dividing the world biocapacity (the amount of natural resources generated by Earth that year), by the world ecological footprint (humanity's consumption of Earth's natural resources for that year), and multiplying by 365 (366 in leap years), the number of days in a year: world biocapacity world ecological footprint × 365 = EOD {\displaystyle {\frac {\text{world biocapacity}}{\text{world ecological footprint}}}\times 365={\text{EOD}}} In 2020 the calculated overshoot day fell on August 22 (more than three weeks later than 2019) due to coronavirus induced lockdowns around the world. The president of the Global Footprint Network claims that the COVID-19 pandemic by itself is one of the manifestations of "ecological imbalance".Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by Global Footprint Network and is a campaign supported by dozens of other nonprofit organizations. Information about Global Footprint Network's calculations and national Ecological Footprints are available online. Background Andrew Simms of UK think tank New Economics Foundation originally developed the concept of Earth Overshoot Day. Global Footprint Network, a partner organization of New Economics Foundation, launches a campaign every year for EOD to raise awareness of Earth's limited resources. Global Footprint Network measures humanity's demand for and supply of natural resources and ecological services. Global Footprint Network estimates for 2022 that in less than seven months, humanity demanded more from nature than the planet's ecosystems can regenerate in the entire year. Human demand includes all demands that compete for the regenerative capacity of the planet's surface, such as renewable resources, CO2 sequestration, and urban space. According to Global Footprint Network, throughout most of history, humanity has used nature's resources to build cities and roads, to provide food and create products, and to release carbon dioxide at a rate that was well within Earth's budget. But by the early 1970s, that critical threshold had been crossed: Human consumption began outstripping what the planet could reproduce. According to their accounts, humanity's demand for resources is now equivalent to that of more than 1.7 Earths. The data shows us on track to require the resources of two planets well before mid-21st century. They state that the costs of resource depletion are becoming more evident. Climate change — a result of greenhouse gases being emitted — is the most obvious result and widespread effects. Other biophysical effects include: deforestation, species loss, soil erosion, or fisheries collapse. Such resource insecurity can lead to economic stress (such as monetary inflation) and conflict (such as civil unrest).Global Footprint Network maintains that ecological footprint accounts document the gap between human demand and regeneration. According to them, demand is now exceeding what the planet renews. They recognize that the accounting can be improved, and more details added, believing that in its current applications to countries the accounts typically underestimate human demand as not all aspects are measured (there are gaps in UN data). They also claim to overestimate biocapacity because it is ambiguous to determine how much of current yields are enabled by reduced future yield (for instance as in the case of overuse of groundwater, or erosion). Mathis Wackernagel, founder and president of the Global Footprint Network, states that soil depletion on crop land could be included in the Ecological Footprint accounts informing EOD, but that would "require data sets that do not exist within the UN data set". Thus, they claim ecological footprint accounts are metrics that merely define minimal conditions for sustainability, and that human impact on the planet is likely higher than the results that their accounts reveal. Criticism In 2017, the ecomodernist Breakthrough Institute dismissed the idea of Earth Overshoot Day by calling it "a nice publicity stunt". According to United Nations data, forests and fisheries are, as a whole, regenerating faster than they are depleted (but admitting that "the surplus might be more a reflection of poor UN fisheries data than healthy fisheries"), while cropland and pasture use is equal to what is available. Hence, EOD does a poor job at measuring water and land mismanagement (e.g., soil erosion) and only highlights the excess of carbon dioxide that humanity releases above what the ecosystem can absorb. In other words, the additional equivalent number of Earths that humanity requires is equivalent to a land area that, if filled with carbon sinks like forests, would balance carbon dioxide emissions. Researchers associated with Global Footprint Network answered these criticisms in a response in the same PLOS journal. More detailed discussions about criticism is available on Global Footprint Network website. See also Overshoot (population) Human overpopulation Tax Freedom Day References Further reading Catton, William R. Jr. (1980). "Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change". Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-00818-9. Easterling, William E. (2007). "Climate change and the adequacy of food and timber in the 21st century". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104 (50): 19679. doi:10.1073/pnas.0710388104. PMC 2148356. PMID 18077399. Khanna, Parag (2008). The Second World. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-81-7036-406-1. "WWF: human consumption is outpacing earth's capacity". EurActiv.com. October 26, 2004. Wackernagel, Mathis; Schulz, Niels B.; Deumling, Diana; Linares, Alejandro C.; Jenkins, Martin; Kapos, Valerie; Monfreda, Chad; Loh, Jonathan; Myers, Norman; Norgaard, Richard; Randers, Jorgen (2002). "Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 99 (14): 9266–9271. Bibcode:2002PNAS...99.9266W. doi:10.1073/pnas.142033699. PMC 123129. PMID 12089326. Damassa, Tom (October 26, 2006). "Human Consumption Pushing Ecosystems to the Brink". EarthTrends Environmental Information. Archived from the original on 2006-11-09. Futehally, Ilmas. "Living Beyond Our Means". Strategic Foresight Group. External links Overshoot days by country

sustainable urbanism

Sustainable urbanism is both the study of cities and the practices to build them (urbanism), that focuses on promoting their long term viability by reducing consumption, waste and harmful impacts on people and place while enhancing the overall well-being of both people and place. Well-being includes the physical, ecological, economic, social, health and equity factors, among others, that comprise cities and their populations. In the context of contemporary urbanism, the term cities refers to several scales of human settlements from towns to cities, metropolises and mega-city regions that includes their peripheries / suburbs / exurbs. Sustainability is a key component to professional practice in urban planning and urban design along with its related disciplines landscape architecture, architecture, and civil and environmental engineering. Green urbanism and ecological urbanism are other common terms that are similar to sustainable urbanism, however they can be construed as focusing more on the natural environment and ecosystems and less on economic and social aspects. Also related to sustainable urbanism are the practices of land development called Sustainable development, which is the process of physically constructing sustainable buildings, as well as the practices of urban planning called smart growth or growth management, which denote the processes of planning, designing, and building urban settlements that are more sustainable than if they were not planned according to sustainability criteria and principles. Terminology The origin of the term sustainable urbanism has been attributed to Professor Susan Owens of Cambridge University in the UK in the 1990s, according to her doctoral student and now professor of architecture Phillip Tabb. The first university graduate program named Sustainable Urbanism was founded by professors Michael Neuman and Phillip Tabb at Texas A&M University in 2002. There are now dozens of university programs with that name worldwide. As of 2018, there are hundreds of scholarly articles, books and publications whose titles contain the exact words sustainable urbanism and thousands of articles, books and publications that contain that exact term, according to Google Scholar. In 2007, two important events occurred in the USA that furthered the knowledge base and diffusion of sustainable urbanism. First was the International Conference on Sustainable Urbanism at Texas A&M University in April, which drew nearly 200 persons from five continents. Second, later in the year, was the publication of the book Sustainable Urbanism by Doug Farr. According to Farr, this approach aims to eliminate environmental impacts of urban development by supplying and providing all resources locally. The full life cycle of services and public goods such as electricity and food are evaluated from production to consumption with the intent of eliminating waste or environmental externalities. Since that time, significant research and practice worldwide has broadened the term considerably to include social, economic, welfare and public health factors, among others, to the environmental and physical factors in the Farr book; thus taking it beyond an urban design field into all of urban planning, policy and development. Approaches that focus on the social and economic aspects use the terms fair cities and just cities. The United Nations has incorporated sustainable urbanism into its global sustainable development goals as goal 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities.There are a range of organizations promoting and researching sustainable urbanism practices, including governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations, professional associations, universities and research institutes, philanthropic foundations and professional enterprises around the world. Related to sustainable urbanism is the Ecocity or Ecological Urbanism movement which is another approach that focuses on creating urban environments based on ecological principles, and the resilient cities movement which focuses on addressing depleting resources by creating distributed local resources to replace global supply chain in case of major disruption. As resilient cities thinking has evolved, it too has gone beyond climate change to incorporate resilient responses by hybrid urban-natural ecosystems such as city regions to natural disasters, war and conflict, economic shocks and crises, massive migration, and other shocks. Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature , by Doug Farr (2007) The architect and urban planner Doug Farr discusses making cities walkable, along with combining elements of ecological urbanism, sustainable urban infrastructure, and new urbanism, and goes beyond them to close the loop on resource use and bring everything into the city or town. This approach is centered on increasing the quality of life by affording greater accessibility to activities and places within a short distance and by increasing the quality of products that are offered. Comparison of similar principles New Urbanism emerged in the 1980s and was an early touchstone for sustainable urbanism, since it is based around bringing activities and land uses closer together, increasing urban and suburban densities, being more efficient in terms of infrastructure provision and transport energy use, and having more within walking distance. There were significant critiques of New Urbanism and its more international term Compact city that found it was a limited approach. Its principal conclusion was that the sustainability of a city could not be measured by form alone, and that processes were critical to measure sustainability. The criticism of New Urbanism is that it attempts to apply 19th century urban form to 21st century cities and that New Urbanism excludes economic diversity by creating expensive places to live that are highly privatized and controlled. Also, critics believe that, while the New Urbanism contains many attractive ideas, it may have difficulty dealing with a wide range of contemporary issues including scale, transportation, planning and codes, regionalism, and marketing.Sustainable urbanism bridges the gaps of New Urbanism by including the factors listed in the lead paragraph of this Wikipedia entry. Smart growth is a related approach to sustainable urbanism. As conceived by urban planners, it helps achieve greater jobs–housing balance, but it is likely to leave the sense of place unaddressed. While New Urbanism may fulfill that dimension of sense of place, it is not viewed as an approach that will lead to communities that are energy self-reliant. The ecological city approach seems to complementary to the other two approaches in terms of their respective areas of strengths and weakness.Green urbanism probably contains the most similar ideas with sustainable urbanism. They both emphasize on interplay of cities with nature, as well as shaping better communities and lifestyles. However, the principles of green urbanism are based on the triple-zero framework: zero fossil-fuel energy use, zero waste, and zero emissions. Sustainable Urbanism, on the other hand, is more focused on designing communities that are walkable and transit-served so that people will prefer to meet their daily needs on foot. Defining elements of Sustainable Urbanism Compactness Compactness, or density, plays an important yet limited role in sustainable urban development because it can support reductions in per-capita transport energy use by increasing walking, cycling, active transport and public transit use. The relatively low density of some urban and especially suburban and exurban development is too low to support efficient transit and walk-to destinations. Such low-density development is a characteristic of urban sprawl, which is the major cause of high dependence on private automobiles, inefficient infrastructure, increased obesity, loss of farmlands and natural habitats, pollution, and so on. For these reasons, sustainable urbanism tends to promote more compact development with greater intensities of use and greater variety of uses and activities in a given urban area. Research has shown that low-density development can exacerbate non-point source pollutant loadings by consuming absorbent open space and increasing impervious surface area relative to compact development. While increasing densities regionally can better protect water resources at a regional level, higher-density development can create more impervious cover, which increases water quality problems in nearby or adjacent water bodies. Increasing neighborhood population density also supports improved public transit service. Concentrating development density in and around transit stops and corridors maximizes people's willingness to walk and thus reduces car ownership and use. Sustainable urbanism seeks to integrate infrastructure design increase with density, because a concentrated mixed-use development required less per capita infrastructure usage compared to detached single-family housing. Biophilia and Biophilic Cities The Biophilia hypothesis was introduced by E. O. Wilson. It refers to the connection between humans and other living systems. Within this concept, humans are biologically predisposed to caring for nature. Biophilic cities are those that bring nature into the city by increasing parks and open spaces, green and blue corridors, and networks that link them. Increasingly, biophilia refers to habitats that support other species, sustainable food production and urban agriculture. Thus, biophilia and biophilic cities are an underlying component of sustainable urbanism. Sustainable corridors Sustainable corridors are similar to a wildlife corridor in that they connect one area to another efficiently, cheaply, and safely. They allow people to pass from their immediate proximity to another without relying on cars or other wasteful and inefficient products. It also relies on accessibility to all people in the community so that the mode of transportation is the most convenient and easiest to use for everyone. Sustainable Corridors also include biodiversity corridors to allow animals to move around communities so that they may still live in and around cities. High performance buildings High performance buildings are designed and constructed to maximize operational energy savings and minimize environmental impacts of the construction and operation of the buildings. Building construction and operation generates a great deal of ‘externalized costs’ such as material waste, energy inefficiencies and pollution. High performance buildings aim to minimize these and make the process much more efficient and less harmful. New York City Department of Design & Construction put out a set of guidelines in April 1999 on High performance buildings that have broad application to sustainable urbanism as a whole worldwide.By incorporating environmentally sound materials and systems, improving indoor air quality and using natural or high efficiency lighting, it minimizes a building impact on its natural surroundings; additionally, those who work or live in these buildings directly benefit from these differences. Some building owners have even reported increased worker productivity as a result of the improved conditions. However, because these other benefits are more difficult to quantify than direct energy savings, the real value of high performance buildings can easily be underestimated by traditional accounting methods that do not recognize ‘external’ municipal and regional costs and benefits. The cost evaluations of high performance building should account for the economic, social, and environmental benefits that accompany green buildings. Energy efficiency/clean energy resourcesReduce energy use and demand through passive solar techniques and integrated building design. This process looks at optimum orientation and maximizes the thermal efficiency of the building envelope (windows, walls, roof) while also considering the interaction of the HVAC, lighting, and control systems. Integrated design uses daylight to reduce electrical demand, and incorporates energy efficient lighting, motors, and equipment. Where feasible, renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic cells, solar hot water, and geothermal exchange are used in tandem with other low emission technologies, such as fuel cells. This results in direct energy cost savings (fuel and electricity) yield a good rate of return based on the initial investment. Other external benefits include improved air quality from reduced fuel consumption (limiting nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, methane, and other gases that contribute to air pollution). Additionally, reducing the overall aggregate electrical load significantly reduces carbon dioxide emissions. Improved indoor environmentImprove indoor air quality by eliminating unhealthy emissions – such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) – from building materials, products, and furnishings, and through outside filtering and distribution techniques that control pollutants. Maximize the use of controlled daylighting, which can then be augmented by high quality artificial lighting. Provide good acoustic control. Results in high performance facilities can help address a wide range of human resource concerns by improving the total quality of the interior environment. In addition, attention to building wellness today helps avoid future costs of corrections. Such ‘well building’ design emphasis can improve occupant comfort, health, and well-being, in turn reducing employee absenteeism and turnover. Source reduction, pollution prevention and recyclingRenewable resources, and are themselves recyclable, and that have been manufactured in a manner less damaging to the environment. Implement construction and demolition (C&D) waste prevention/management strategies and selective site sorting of materials for salvage, recycling, or disposal. These actions will prevent unnecessary depletion of natural resources and will reduce air, water, and soil pollution. They will also strengthen the market for recycled materials, and the manufacture of products with post-consumer content. Long-term, better C&D waste management can reduce waste disposal costs, ease stress on landfills, and minimize the cost of transporting waste to disposal facilities outside the city. High performance infrastructure High-performance infrastructure refers to core best management practices (BMPs) applicable to the typical section of the public right-of-way, encompassing street sidewalk, underground utilities, stormwater infrastructure, landscapes, and streetscape elements. In addition to many public health and environmental benefits, financial benefits include decreased first costs, decreased operation and maintenance costs, decreased energy costs and increased real estate values. Component optimizationAt the single-component level, standard details may be improved to optimize performance, minimize environmental impact, use materials more efficiently or extended lifecycle. Examples include using reclaimed supplementary cement materials to increase pavement strength or designing water-efficient landscapes to reduce irrigation needs and water consumption. Multifunctional optimizationImproving single components does not consider the whole system in place, so multifunctional optimization guidelines seek to minimize conflicts among parts and promote synergies. This could lead to long-term savings, improved performance and lifecycle, and increased returns on municipal investments. One example is using permeable pavement to reduce stormwater runoff and peak demand on stormwater management infrastructure while providing an adequate driving surface for vehicles. Integrated designSystems-oriented design focuses on improving the performance of the entire roadway system. It requires cross-disciplinary teamwork at the planning, scoping, design and construction phases. It promotes comprehensive performance improvements, compounds environmental benefits and potentially offers substantial cost savings. An example of integrated design would be designing a roadway with a diversely planted center median that functions as both a traffic-calming device and a stormwater bioretention area to improve pedestrian safety, minimize stormwater runoff, dampen street noise and improve air quality. Examples of sustainable urbanism Current leading examples as of 2018, which need to be described and explained here in greater detail, include the Hammarby Sjöstad district in Stockholm, Sweden, Freiburg, Germany, BedZED in Hackbridge, Sutton England, a suburb of London, and Serenbe near Atlanta, Georgia in the US. Newington, Sydney, Australia A suburb in western Sydney, Australia, Newington, was the home to the athletes of the 2000 Summer Olympics and 2000 Summer Paralympics. It was built on a brownfield site, and it was developed by Mirvac Lend Lease Village Consortium from 1997. Redevelopment of the village was completed in 1999, but further development is still occurring. After the Games, Newington stimulated the Australian market for green products, and it became a solar village housing approximately 5,000 people. Unfortunately, the development failed to build neighborhood centers with walk-to services, which perpetuates automobile dependence. Furthermore, Newington does not provide any affordable housing. Key Sustainable Urbanism Thresholds: High performance buildings: Solar panels are installed in every home in Newington. “At the time of its construction it was the largest solar village in the world… The collective energy generated by these photovoltaic panels will prevent 1,309 tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere per year, the equivalent of 262 cars being taken off the road. ” By using window awnings, wool insulation, slab construction, and efficient water fixtures, over 90 percent of the homes are designed to consume 50 percent less energy and water than conventional homes. Sustainable corridors and biophilia: At Newington, 90 percent of the plantings are native species. 21 acres of the development site is incorporated into the Millennium Parklands. 40 percent of stormwater runoff infiltrates the groundwater supply and the rest is cleansed on-site and channeled to the ponds in the Parklands, providing important habitats. In addition, The Haslams Creek was rehabilitated from a concrete channel to a natural watercourse. Dongtan, Shanghai, China Dongtan is a development in Eastern Chongming Island, which is roughly a one-hour trip from downtown Shanghai. It was once planned as “the world’s first eco-city,” attempting to become an energy self-sufficient, carbon-neutral, and mostly car-free eco-city housing 500,000 residents. The first phase of the development is supposed to complete by 2010, and entire development by 2050, but the Dongtan project has been delayed indefinitely due to financial issues, among other things.Key sustainable urbanism thresholds: Compactness: Dongtan is planned to achieve densities of 84-112 people per acre, which will support efficient mass transit, social infrastructure, and a range of businesses. Most homes will mid-rise apartment buildings clustered toward the city center. Parks, lakes and other public open space will be scattered around the densely designed neighborhoods. High performance Infrastructures: Dongtan is designed to utilize various types of renewable energy, coming as close as possible to carbon neutrality. Wind turbines with different scales and solar panels will produce most of the energy Dongtan will need. The most ambitious portion of the energy infrastructure is the combined heat and power system (CHP), converting waste from different sources into energy, including sewage, compost, organic waste such as rice husks. Upton, Northampton, England Upton is part of the southwest district of Northampton, England, lying between the existing town edge and the motorway. Originally farming land, Upton was developed by English Partnerships, the national regeneration agency for England, with high standards of building and design codes. The planning outline started in 1997, and the sites were planned to be completed by 2011.Key sustainable urbanism thresholds: High performance buildings and infrastructure: The Upton development is planned to employ sustainable urban drainage systems (SUSD), controlling the flow and quality of water entering the sewage system. Other green technologies being implemented include green roofs, microcombined heat and power (micro-CHP), rainwater harvesting systems, and PV systems. Sustainable Neighborhoods: Upton is currently developing its transit system. As soon as the first residents move in, a twice-hourly bus service will begin running in the neighborhoods. A car sharing program is also proposed. The development is achieving its social sustainability by requiring that 22 percent of scattered units be permanently affordable housing. Sustainable urbanism organizations Transition Town movement works to promote citizen based resilience to transition to a low carbon future.Eco-City Builders holds a bi-annual conference on sustainable urbanism and promotes high performance planning and urban design practices.The IGLUS Project at EPFL is a global action research network which is aimed at improving performance of cities in the areas of efficiency, resilience and sustainability by promoting more innovative governance approaches in urban infrastructure systems.The Eco Cities Project at the University of Manchester (UK) is a research organization developing and validating sustainable urbanism practices.Biophilic Cities Network.The Institute for Sustainable Cities (New York City) works with the City of New York and residents to promote sustainable urbanism practices and policies.International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) supports policy, good governance, and local governmental practices to improve sustainability and resilience. They are working on four specific sustainable urbanism initiatives: (a) Resilient Communities and Cities, (b) Just and Peaceful Communities, (c) Viable Local Economies, and (d) Eco-efficient Cities.The United Nations Habitat promotes sustainable urbanism practices around the globe to localize Agenda 21 with the UNEP. The Sustainable Cities Programme was established in 1990 as a joint UN-HABITAT/UNEP agency.The Stockholm Resilience Center promotes practices to allow cities and places to adapt to climate change and resource depletion through sustainability practices. LEED-ND The LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) is the United States' first rating system for green neighborhoods. The LEED-ND was created out of a partnership with the Congress for New Urbanism, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), and the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC). It provides a coordinated environmental strategy to achieve sustainability at the level of entire neighborhoods and communities. LEED-ND is a rating system that certifies green neighborhoods, building off USGBC's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), which is a third-party verification system that a development meets high standards of environmental responsibility. LEED-ND combines the principles of new urbanism, green building, and smart growth to create the first accepted national standard for neighborhood design that extends LEED's scope beyond the individual to a more holistic (neighborhood/community) perception of the context of the buildings. Criticism There are professionals who are concerned that the use "Sustainable urbanism" as a label risks debasing the term "sustainable", with developments being labeled as examples of "Sustainable Urbanism", which, while substantially better than much modern development, are not truly sustainable according to the Brundtland definition of sustainability, taken from the landmark 1987 United Nations Report on Environment and Development titled Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. See also Circles of Sustainability Co-benefits of climate change mitigation Environmental planning List of most-polluted cities by particulate matter concentration SmartCode Sustainability Sustainable development Sustainable city Urban resilience Urban vitalityTransport: Bicycle-friendly – Urban planning prioritising cycling Cycling mobility – Bicycling as transportationPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets Transit mall – Urban street reserved for public transit, bicycles, and pedestrians Transit-oriented development – Urban planning prioritising transit Pedestrian village – Urban planning for mixed-use areas prioritising pedestrians Walkability – How accessible a space is to walking == References ==

agriculture in china

China primarily produces rice, wheat, potatoes, tomato, sorghum, peanuts, tea, millet, barley, cotton, oilseed, corn and soybeans. History The development of farming over the course of China's history has played a key role in supporting the growth of one of the largest populations in the world. Archaeology Analysis of stone tools by Professor Liu Li and others has shown that hunter-gatherers 23,000–19,500 years ago ground wild plants with the same tools that would later be used for millet and rice.Domesticated millet varieties Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica may have originated in Northern China. Remains of domesticated millet have been found in northern China at Xinglonggou, Yuezhang, Dadiwan, Cishan, and several Peiligang sites. These sites cover a period over 7250-6050 BCE. The amount of domesticated millet eaten at these sites was proportionally quite low compared to other plants. At Xinglonggou, millet made up only 15% of all plant remains around 7200-6400 BCE; a ratio that changed to 99% by 2050-1550 BCE. Experiments have shown that millet requires very little human intervention to grow, which means that obvious changes in the archaeological record that could demonstrate millet was being cultivated do not exist.Excavations at Kuahuqiao, the earliest known Neolithic site in eastern China, have documented rice cultivation 7,700 years ago. Approximately half of the plant remains belonged to domesticated japonica species, whilst the other half were wild types of rice. It is possible that the people at Kuahuqiao also cultivated the wild type. Finds at sites of the Hemudu Culture (c. 5500-3300 BCE) in Yuyao and Banpo near Xi'an include millet and spade-like tools made of stone and bone. Evidence of settled rice agriculture has been found at the Hemudu site of Tianluoshan (5000-4500 BCE), with rice becoming the backbone of the agricultural economy by the Majiabang culture in southern China. According to the Records of the Grand Historian some female prisoners in historic times were given the punishment to be "grain pounders" (Chinese: 刑舂) as an alternative to more severe corporal punishment like tattooing or cutting off a foot. Some scholars believe the four or five year limits on these hard labor sentences began with Emperor Wen's legal reforms.There is also a long tradition involving agriculture in Chinese mythology. In his book Permanent Agriculture: Farmers of Forty Centuries (1911), Professor Franklin Hiram King described and extolled the values of the traditional farming practices of China. Farming method improvements Farming in China has always been very labor-intensive. However, throughout its history, various methods have been developed or imported that enabled greater farming production and efficiency. They also utilized the seed drill to help improve on row farming. During the Spring and Autumn period (722–481 BC), two revolutionary improvements in farming technology took place. One was the use of cast iron tools and beasts of burden to pull plows, and the other was the large-scale harnessing of rivers and development of water conservation projects. The engineer Sunshu Ao of the 6th century BC and Ximen Bao of the 5th century BC are two of the oldest hydraulic engineers from China, and their works were focused on improving irrigation systems. These developments were widely spread during the ensuing Warring States period (403–221 BC), culminating in the enormous Du Jiang Yan Irrigation System engineered by Li Bing by 256 BC for the State of Qin in ancient Sichuan. For agricultural purposes the Chinese had invented the hydraulic-powered trip hammer by the 1st century BC, during the ancient Han dynasty (202 BC-220 AD). Although it found other purposes, its main function was to pound, decorticate, and polish grain that otherwise would have been done manually. The Chinese also innovated the square-pallet chain pump by the 1st century AD, powered by a waterwheel or oxen pulling on a system of mechanical wheels. Although the chain pump found use in public works of providing water for urban and palatial pipe systems, it was used largely to lift water from a lower to higher elevation in filling irrigation canals and channels for farmland. Chinese ploughs from Han times on fulfil all these conditions of efficiency nicely, which is presumably why the standard Han plough team consisted of two animals only, and later teams usually of a single animal, rather than the four, six or eight draught animals common in Europe before the introduction of the curved mould-board and other new principles of design in the + 18th century. Though the mould-board plough first appeared in Europe in early medieval, if not in late Roman, times, pre-eighteenth century mould-boards were usually wooden and straight (Fig. 59). The enormous labour involved in pulling such a clumsy construction necessitated large plough-teams, and this meant that large areas of land had to be reserved as pasture. In China, where much less animal power was required, it was not necessary to maintain the mixed arable-pasture economy typical of Europe: fallows could be reduced and the arable area expanded, and a considerably larger population could be supported than on the same amount of land in Europe. During the Eastern Jin (317–420) and the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420–589), the Silk Road and other international trade routes further spread farming technology throughout China. Political stability and a growing labor force led to economic growth, and people opened up large areas of wasteland and built irrigation works for expanded agricultural use. As land-use became more intensive and efficient, rice was grown twice a year and cattle began to be used for plowing and fertilization. By the Tang dynasty (618–907), China had become a unified feudal agricultural society again. Improvements in farming machinery during this era included the moldboard plow and watermill. Later during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), cotton planting and weaving technology were extensively adopted and improved. While around 750, 75% of China's population lived north of the river Yangtze, by 1250, 75% of the population lived south of the river. Such large-scale internal migration was possible due to the introduction of quick-ripening strains of rice from Vietnam suitable for multi-cropping. This is also possibly the result of Northern China falling to invaders. With the hardships that come from conflict, many Chinese may have moved South to not starve. The Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties had seen the rise of collective help organizations between farmers.In 1909 US Professor of Agriculture Franklin Hiram King made an extensive tour of China (as well as Japan and briefly Korea) and he described contemporary agricultural practices. He favourably described the farming of China as 'permanent agriculture' and his book 'Farmers of Forty Centuries', published posthumously in 1911, has become an agricultural classic and has been a favoured reference source for organic farming advocates. The book has inspired many community-supported agriculture farmers in China to conduct ecological farming. People's Republic of China Following the Chinese Communist Party's victory in the Chinese Civil War, control of the farmlands was taken away from landlords and redistributed to the 300 million peasant farmers, including purges of landlords during the Land Reform Movement. In 1952, gradually consolidating its power following the civil war, the government began organizing the peasants into teams. Three years later, these teams were combined into producer cooperatives, enacting the socialist goal of collective land ownership. In the following year, 1956, the government formally took control of the land, further structuring the farmland into large government-operated collective farms. Collectivization was a factor in the most important change in Chinese agriculture in the dramatic increase in irrigated land during the early and mid-1950s.: 111  Collectivization also helped facilitate the labor-intensive practice of double-cropping in southern China, which greatly increased agricultural yields.: 116 In the 1958 "Great Leap Forward" campaign initiated by Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong, land use was placed under closer government control in an effort to improve agricultural output. In particular, the Four Pests campaign and mass eradication of sparrows had a direct negative impact on agriculture. Collectives were organized into communes, private food production was banned, and collective eating was required. Greater emphasis was also put on industrialization instead of agriculture. The farming inefficiencies created by this campaign led to the Great Chinese Famine, resulting in the deaths of somewhere between the government estimate of 14 million to scholarly estimates of 20 to 43 million. Although private plots of land were re-instated in 1962 due to this failure, communes remained the dominant rural unit of economic organization during the Cultural Revolution, with Mao championing the "Learn from Dazhai in agriculture" campaign. Tachai's semi-literate party secretary Chen Yonggui was among those outmaneuvered by Deng Xiaoping after the death of Mao: from 1982 to 1985, the Dazhai-style communes were gradually replaced by townships. Beginning in 1978, as part of the Four Modernizations campaign, the Family Production Responsibility System was created, dismantling communes and giving agricultural production responsibility back to individual households. Households are now given crop quotas that they were required to provide to their collective unit in return for tools, draft animals, seeds, and other essentials. Households, which now lease land from their collectives, are free to use their farmland however they see fit as long as they meet these quotas. This freedom has given more power to individual families to meet their individual needs. In addition to these structural changes, the Chinese government also engages in irrigation projects (such as the Three Gorges Dam), runs large state farms, and encourages mechanization and fertilizer use.By 1984, when about 99% of farm production teams had adopted the Family Production Responsibility System, the government began further economic reforms, aimed primarily at liberalizing agricultural pricing and marketing. In 1984, the government replaced mandatory procurement with voluntary contracts between farmers and the government. Later, in 1993, the government abolished the 40-year-old grain rationing system, leading to more than 90 percent of all annual agricultural produce to be sold at market-determined prices. Since 1994, the government has instituted a number of policy changes aimed at limiting grain importation and increasing economic stability. Among these policy changes was the artificial increase of grain prices above market levels. This has led to increased grain production, while placing the heavy burden of maintaining these prices on the government. In 1995, the "Governor's Grain Bag Responsibility System" was instituted, holding provincial governors responsible for balancing grain supply and demand and stabilizing grain prices in their provinces. Later, in 1997, the "Four Separations and One Perfection" program was implemented to relieve some of the monetary burdens placed on the government by its grain policy.As China continues to industrialize, vast swaths of agricultural land are being converted into industrial land. Farmers displaced by such urban expansion often become migrant labor for factories, but other farmers feel disenfranchised and cheated by the encroachment of industry and the growing disparity between urban and rural wealth and income.The most recent innovation in Chinese agriculture is a push into organic agriculture. This rapid embrace of organic farming simultaneously serves multiple purposes, including food safety, health benefits, export opportunities, and, by providing price premiums for the produce of rural communities, the adoption of organics can help stem the migration of rural workers to the cities. In the mid-1990s China became a net importer of grain, since its unsustainable practises of groundwater mining has effectively removed considerable land from productive agricultural use.As of 2023, approximately 40% of China's workforce is engaged in farming, primarily at small scale.: 174  Agricultural production accounts for less than 9% of China's GDP.: 174 Major agricultural products Crop distribution Although China's agricultural output is the largest in the world, only 10% of its total land area can be cultivated. China's arable land, which represents 10% of the total arable land in the world, supports over 20% of the world's population. Of this approximately 1.4 million square kilometers of arable land, only about 1.2% (116,580 square kilometers) permanently supports crops and 525,800 square kilometers are irrigated. The land is divided into approximately 200 million households, with an average land allocation of just 0.65 hectares (1.6 acres). China's limited space for farming has been a problem throughout its history, leading to chronic food shortage and famine. While the production efficiency of farmland has grown over time, efforts to expand to the west and the north have met with limited success, as such land is generally colder and drier than traditional farmlands to the east. Since the 1950s, farm space has also been pressured by the increasing land needs of industry and cities. Peri-urban agriculture Such increases in the sizes of cities, such as the administrative district of Beijing's increase from 4,822 km2 (1,862 sq mi) in 1956 to 16,808 km2 (6,490 sq mi) in 1958, has led to the increased adoption of peri-urban agriculture. Such "suburban agriculture" led to more than 70% of non-staple food in Beijing, mainly consisting of vegetables and milk, to be produced by the city itself in the 1960s and 1970s. Recently, with relative food security in China, periurban agriculture has led to improvements in the quality of the food available, as opposed to quantity. One of the more recent experiments in urban agriculture is the Modern Agricultural Science Demonstration Park in Xiaotangshan. Food crops About 75% of China's cultivated area is used for food crops. Rice is China's most important crop, raised on about 25% of the cultivated area. The majority of rice is grown south of the Huai River, in the Zhu Jiang delta, and in the Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan provinces. Wheat is the second most-prevalent grain crop, grown in most parts of the country but especially on the North China Plain, the Wei and Fen River valleys on the Loess plateau, and in Jiangsu, Hubei, and Sichuan provinces. Corn and millet are grown in north and northeast China, and oats are important in Inner Mongolia and Tibet. Other crops include sweet potatoes in the south, white potatoes in the north (China is the largest producer of potatoes in the world), and various other fruits and vegetables. Tropical fruits are grown on Hainan Island, apples and pears are grown in northern Liaoning and Shandong. Oil seeds are important in Chinese agriculture, supplying edible and industrial oils and forming a large share of agricultural exports. In North and Northeast China, Chinese soybeans are grown to be used in tofu and cooking oil. China is also a leading producer of peanuts, which are grown in Shandong and Hebei provinces. Other oilseed crops are sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, rapeseed, and the seeds of the tung tree. Citrus is a major cash crop in southern China, with production scattered along and south of the Yangtze River valley. Mandarins are the most popular citrus in China, with roughly double the output of oranges.Other important food crops for China include green and jasmine teas (popular among the Chinese population), black tea (as an export), sugarcane, and sugar beets. Tea plantations are located on the hillsides of the middle Yangtze Valley and in the southeast provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang. Sugarcane is grown in Guangdong and Sichuan, while sugar beets are raised in Heilongjiang province and on irrigated land in Inner Mongolia. Lotus is widely cultivated throughout southern China.Arabica coffee is grown in the southwestern province of Yunnan. Much smaller plantations also exist in Hainan and Fujian. Fiber crops China is the leading producer of cotton, which is grown throughout, but especially in the areas of the North China Plain, the Yangtze river delta, the middle Yangtze valley, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Other fiber crops include ramie, flax, jute, and hemp. Sericulture, the practice of silkworm raising, is also practiced in central and southern China. Livestock China has a large livestock population, with pigs and fowls being the most common. China's pig population and pork production mainly lie along the Yangtze River. In 2011, Sichuan province had 51 million pigs (11% of China's total supply). In rural western China, sheep, goats, and camels are raised by nomadic herders. In Tibet, yaks are raised as a source of food, fuel, and shelter. Cattle, water buffalo, horses, mules, and donkeys are also raised in China, and dairy has recently been encouraged by the government, even though approximately 92.3% of the adult population is affected by some level of lactose intolerance. As demand for gourmet foods grows, production of more exotic meats increases as well. Based on survey data from 684 Chinese turtle farms (less than half of the all 1,499 officially registered turtle farms in the year of the survey, 2002), they sold over 92,000 tons of turtles (around 128 million animals) per year; this is thought to correspond to the industrial total of over 300 million turtles per year.Increased incomes and increased demand for meat, especially pork, has resulted in demand for improved breeds of livestock, breeding stock imported particularly from the United States. Some of these breeds are adapted to factory farming. Fishing China accounts for about one-third of the total fish production of the world. Aquaculture, the breeding of fish in ponds and lakes, accounts for more than half of its output. The principal aquaculture-producing regions are close to urban markets in the middle and lower Yangtze valley and the Zhu Jiang delta. Production In its first fifty years, the People's Republic of China greatly increased agricultural production through organizational and technological improvements. As of at least 2022, China produces almost all of its own food and non-soybean feed.: 230  As of 2011, China was both the world's largest producer and consumer of agricultural products. However, the researcher Lin Erda has stated a projected fall of possibly 14% to 23% by 2050 due to water shortages and other impacts by climate change; China has increased the budget for agriculture by 20% in 2009, and continues to support energy efficiency measures, renewable technology, and other efforts with investments, such as the over 30% green component of the $586bn fiscal stimulus package announced in November 2008.In 2018: It was the 2nd largest producer of maize (257.1 million tons), second only to the USA; It was the largest producer of rice (212.1 million tons); It was the largest producer of wheat (131.4 million tons); It was the 3rd largest producer of sugarcane (108 million tons), second only to Brazil and India; It was the largest producer of potato (90.2 million tons); It was the largest producer of watermelon (62.8 million tons); It was the largest producer of tomatoes (61.5 million tons); It was the largest producer of cucumber / pickles (56.2 million tons); It was the largest producer of sweet potato (53.0 million tons); It was the largest producer of apple (39.2 million tons); It was the largest producer of eggplant (34.1 million tons); It was the largest producer of cabbage (33.1 million tons); It was the largest producer of onion (24.7 million tons); It was the largest producer of spinach (23.8 million tons); It was the largest producer of garlic (22.2 million tons); It was the largest producer of green bean (19.9 million tons); It was the largest producer of tangerine (19.0 million tons); It was the largest producer of carrots (17.9 million tons); It was the 3rd largest producer of cotton (17.7 million tons), second only to India and the USA; It was the largest producer of peanut (17.3 million tons); It was the largest producer of pear (16.0 million tons); It was the 4th largest producer of soy (14.1 million tons), losing to the US, Brazil and Argentina; It was the largest producer of grape (13.3 million tons); It was the 2nd largest producer of rapeseed (13.2 million tons), second only to Canada; It was the largest producer of pea (12.9 million tons); It was the largest producer of melon (12.7 million tons); It was the 8th largest producer of sugar beet (12 million tons), which serves to produce sugar and ethanol; It was the 2nd largest producer of banana (11.2 million tons), second only to India; It was the largest producer of cauliflower and broccoli (10.6 million tons); It was the 2nd largest producer of orange (9.1 million tons), second only to Brazil; It was the largest producer of pumpkin (8.1 million tons); It was the largest producer of asparagus (7.9 million tons); It was the largest producer of plum (6.7 million tons); It was the largest producer of mushroom and truffle (6.6 million tons); It was the largest producer of grapefruit (4.9 million tons); It was the 15th largest producer of cassava (4.9 million tons); It was the 2nd largest producer of mango (including mangosteen and guava) (4.8 million tons), second only to India; It was the largest producer of persimmon (3.0 million tons); It was the largest producer of strawberry (2.9 million tons); It was the largest producer of tea (2.6 million tons); It produced 2.5 million tons of sunflower seed; It was the 3rd largest producer of lemon (2.4 million tons), second only to India and Mexico; It was the largest producer of tobacco (2.2 million tons); It was the 8th largest producer of sorghum (2.1 million tons); It was the largest producer of kiwi (2.0 million tons); It was the largest producer of chestnut (1.9 million tons); It produced 1.9 million tons of taro; It produced 1.8 million tons of fava beans; It was the 3rd largest producer of millet (1.5 million tons), second only to India and Niger; It was the 8th largest producer of pineapple (1.5 million tons); It produced 1.4 million tons of barley; It was the largest producer of buckwheat (1.1 million tons); It was the 6th largest producer of oats (1 million tons); It was the 4th largest producer of rye (1 million tons), second only to Germany, Poland and Russia; It produced 1 million tons of tallow tree;In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products. Challenges Throughout China's history, its relative lack of arable land has been a challenge. China has about 22% of the world population, but must feed it with only 9% of the world's arable land. China's water resources are likewise limited, as it has only 6% of the world's water supply. Inefficiencies in the agricultural market Despite rapid growth in output, the Chinese agricultural sector still faces several challenges. Farmers in several provinces, such as Shandong, Zhejiang, Anhui, Liaoning, and Xinjiang often have a hard time selling their agricultural products to customers due to a lack of information about current conditions.Between the producing farmer in the countryside and the end-consumer in the cities there is a chain of intermediaries. Because a lack of information flows through them, farmers find it difficult to foresee the demand for different types of fruits and vegetables. In order to maximize their profits they, therefore, opt to produce those fruits and vegetables that created the highest revenues for farmers in the region in the previous year. If, however, most farmers do so, this causes the supply of fresh products to fluctuate substantially year on year. Relatively scarce products in one year are produced in excess the following year because of expected higher profit margins. The resulting excess supply, however, forces farmers to reduce their prices and sell at a loss. The scarce, revenue creating products of one year become the over-abundant, loss-making products in the following, and vice versa.Efficiency is further impaired in the transportation of agricultural products from the farms to the actual markets. According to figures from the Commerce Department, up to 25% of fruits and vegetables rot before being sold, compared to around 5% in a typical developed country. As intermediaries cannot sell these rotten fruits they pay farmers less than they would if able to sell all or most of the fruits and vegetables. This reduces farmer's revenues although the problem is caused by post-production inefficiencies, which they are not themselves aware of during price negotiations with intermediaries.These information and transportation problems highlight inefficiencies in the market mechanisms between farmers and end-consumers, impeding farmers from taking advantage of the fast development of the rest of the Chinese economy. The resulting small profit margin does not allow them to invest in the necessary agricultural inputs (machinery, seeds, fertilizers, etc.) to raise their productivity and improve their standards of living, from which the whole of the Chinese economy would benefit. This in turn increases the exodus of people from the countryside to the cities, which already face urbanization issues.In a speech in September 2020, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping directed China's scientists to research seed farming. He noted that the country relies on imported seed and said that its scientists must help remedy this situation. Climate change International trade China is the world's largest importer of soybeans and other food crops, and is expected to become the top importer of farm products within the next decade. In a speech in September 2020, CCP leader Xi Jinping lamented the country's reliance on imported seed.While most years China's agricultural production is sufficient to feed the country, in down years, China has to import grain. Due to the shortage of available farm land and an abundance of labor, it might make more sense to import land-extensive crops (such as wheat and rice) and to save China's scarce cropland for high-value export products, such as fruits, nuts, or vegetables. In order to maintain grain independence and ensure food security, however, the Chinese government has enforced policies that encourage grain production at the expense of more-profitable crops. Despite heavy restrictions on crop production, China's agricultural exports have greatly increased in recent years. Governmental influence One important motivator of increased international trade was China's inclusion in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on December 11, 2001, leading to reduced or eliminated tariffs on much of China's agricultural exports. Due to the resulting opening of international markets to Chinese agriculture, by 2004 the value of China's agricultural exports exceeded $17.3 billion (US). Since China's inclusion in the WTO, its agricultural trade has not been liberalized to the same extent as its manufactured goods trade. Markets within China are still relatively closed-off to foreign companies. Due to its large and growing population, it is speculated that if its agricultural markets were opened, China would become a consistent net importer of food, possibly destabilizing the world food market. The barriers enforced by the Chinese government on grains are not transparent because China's state trading in grains is conducted through its Cereal, Oil, and Foodstuffs Importing and Exporting Corporation (COFCO). Food safety In the early 2000s, excessive pesticide residues, low food hygiene, unsafe additives, contamination with heavy metals and other contaminants and misuse of veterinary drugs had led to trade restrictions with some nations such as Japan, the United States, and the European Union. These problems have also led to public outcry, such as in the melamine-tainted dog food scare and the carcinogenic-tainted seafood import restriction, leading to measures such as the "China-free" label. In the milk scandal in China in 2008, many children became ill due to consumption of melamine-contaminated milk products, and a number of domestic dairy brands were found to contain melamine in their products, leading many countries to ban the import of Chinese dairy products.In 2011, About one tenth of China's farmland is contaminated with heavy metals, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China. Organic food products China has developed a Green Food program where produce is certified for low pesticide input. This has been articulated into Green food Grade A and Grade AA. This Green Food AA standard has been aligned with IFOAM international standards for organic farming and has formed the basis of the rapid expansion of organic agriculture in China.China's organic food production has experienced a rapid expansion in the 2010s, largely attributed to the booming domestic market due to the heightened food safety problem. In many cases, organic food production is organized by organic food companies leasing land from small scale farmers. Farmers' cooperatives and contract farming are also found to be common organizational structures of organic farming in China. The Chinese government has provided various policy and financial supports for the development of the organic sector. In recent years, non-certified organic production in diverse forms such as permaculture and natural farming is also emerging in China, often initiated by entrepreneurs or civil society organizations. See also History of China History of agriculture Population history of China History of canals in China Lettuce production in China China Green Food Development Center Peak water#China Wang Zhen (official) Franklin Hiram King Land use in the People's Republic of China Aquaculture in China Women in agriculture in China References Citations Sources BooksBray, Francesca (1984), Science and Civilization in China 6 Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part 3, Civil Engineering and Nautics. Taipei: Caves Books Ltd. Scott, Steffanie et al. (2018). Organic Food and Farming in China: Top-down and Bottom-up Ecological Initiatives. New York: Routledge. Further reading Chai, Joseph C. H. An economic history of modern China (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011). Perkins, Dwight H. Agricultural development in China, 1368-1968 (1969). pmline The Dragon and the Elephant: Agricultural and Rural Reforms in China and India Edited by Ashok Gulati and Shenggen Fan (2007), Johns Hopkins University Press Hsu, Cho-yun. Han Agriculture (Washington U. Press, 1980) Official Statistics from FAO Farmers, Mao, and Discontent in China: From the Great Leap Forward to the Present by Dongping Han, Monthly Review, November 2009 The First National Agricultural Census in China (1997) National Bureau of Statistics of China Gale, Fred. (2013). Growth and Evolution in China's Agricultural Support Policies. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. Scott, Steffanie; Si, Zhenzhong; Schumilas, Theresa and Chen, Aijuan. (2018). Organic Food and Farming in China: Top-down and Bottom-up Ecological Initiatives. New York. Routledge. Communiqués on Major Data of the Second National Agricultural Census of China (2006), No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 National Bureau of Statistics of China. Copies on Internet Archive.

system of rice intensification

The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) is a farming methodology that aims to increase the yield of rice while using fewer resources and reducing environmental impacts. The method was developed by a French Jesuit Father Henri de Laulanié in Madagascar and built upon decades of agricultural experimentation. SRI focuses on changing the management of plants, soil, water, and nutrients to create a more productive and sustainable system of rice cultivation. The methodology has been adopted by millions of smallholder farmers around the world, particularly in Asia and Africa. Despite its success, the adoption of SRI has been limited primarily due to a lack of awareness and available training. SRI has been proposed as a prime example of how agroecological approaches to farming can address what The Economist newspaper describes as the impending global crisis in rice. History The practices that culminated in SRI began in the 1960s based on Fr. de Laulanie's observations. Principles included applying a minimum quantity of water and the individual transplanting of very young seedlings in a square pattern. Father Laulanie began experimenting with a new approach that involved planting single seedlings and with wider spacing, using less water, and providing more nutrients to the plants through organic matter. These methods showed significant improvements in rice yields, and Father Laulanie's approach eventually became known as SRI.Over the 1990s, a political scientist named Norman Uphoff from Cornell University in the United States learned about SRI and began promoting its adoption in other parts of the world. Uphoff and his colleagues worked with farmers in countries such as China, India, and Indonesia to refine and adapt the SRI approach to local conditions.Uphoff and his colleagues found that SRI methods could significantly increase rice yields, reduce water use by up to 50%, and decrease seed requirements by up to 90%. SRI gained further recognition in the early 2000s when it was featured in the World Bank's World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, which highlighted the potential of SRI to increase rice yields and reduce poverty in rural areas.Since then, SRI has been adopted by millions of farmers in more than 50 countries around the world with particularly high levels of adoption in Asia and Africa. In India, for example, SRI has been widely adopted by smallholder farmers and has helped to improve rice productivity and increase farmers' incomes. Features The components of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) have been developed and refined through years of research and experimentation by farmers and scientists in different parts of the world. As it is a methodology SRI has general principles for what it is, but they are fluid. Instead, these principles can be tailored to the situation-specific circumstances individuals find themselves. The four primarily agreed-upon principles of SRI are: Planting younger seedlings: This is because young seedlings have more potential for growth and resilience than older ones. It has been found that planting 8-12 day-old seedlings leads to better establishment, higher yields, and reduced pest and disease incidence. Careful planting of single seedlings in wider spaces: This is done to avoid transplant shock, which can be a major stress factor for rice plants. Studies have shown that careful handling of seedlings during transplanting can significantly improve yield and reduce seedling mortality. Furthermore wider spacing reduces competition amongst the plants letting each plant access sufficient nutrients, water, and sunlight. Studies have shown that grid planting can lead to higher yields and improved resource-use efficiency. Organic fertilizers: The use of organic matter as a soil amendment is a key feature of SRI, as it helps to improve soil health and fertility over the long term. Studies have shown that SRI can achieve high yields with minimal or no use of synthetic chemical fertilizers, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and further improving soil quality. Reduced water consumption: This is because rice plants do not require continuously flooded conditions to grow, and that water savings can be achieved without compromising yields. Studies have shown that SRI can reduce water use by 25-50% compared to conventional rice farming, while maintaining or increasing yields.All of these features are adjustable depending on the circumstances of farmers, but together they have a significant cumulative effect on rice production and environmental sustainability. Impacts SRI has demonstrated that it has a significant impact on the productivity of rice, its cost to farmers and the environmental footprint of rice farming. Due to environmental, economic and other factors, the exact impacts of SRI can vary from country to country. For farmers most importantly SRI farming has consistently produced crop yields, often to an extremely significant degree. A study in India reported that SRI practices resulted in a yield increase of 41% compared to conventional practices. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) found similar effects on production. For example, in Cambodia they found that farms that introduced SRI practices were producing double the amount of rice per paddy.Furthermore, SRI practices reduced the amount of inputs farmers needed to use in order to achieve beneficial results. Groups like the FAO have found that the cost to farmers decreases due to fewer seeds, pesticides, fertilisers and water being used, a fact attested to in other studies.The environmental benefits of SRI are similarly significant. Firstly SRI requires 25-50% less water than conventional rice farming methods, due to alternate wetting and drying (AWP) of the fields rather than flooding. This can lead to significant water savings in areas facing water scarcity or where water-intensive rice farming is a strain on resources.As a result of not flooding the fields SRI then reduces the amount of green house gasses emitted by rice farming. Conventional rice farming with flooded fields is an ideal environment for anaerobic soil organisms to flourish in the soil, these feed on detritus like rice straw residue and produce methane, while overuse of nitrous-based fertilizers lead to nitrous oxide being emitted from the soil. Its thanks to these practises that rice farming produces 1.5% of the world's green house gas emissions according to the World Resources Institute.However, SRI's non-flooding practices, along with organic soil management, can reduce methane emissions by up to 50% compared to conventional methods, which significantly offsets the environmental impact of rice farming.In addition, SRI practices help to improve and restore soil health. This is because active soil aeration, organic fertilization, and mulching add additional soil organic matter, reduce soil erosion, and improve nutrient cycling, which help to better the soil structure and its fertility, reinforcing SRI's previous benefits of higher crop yields and lower fertilizer requirements.Furthermore, SRI practices protect the growth of a wider variety of rice strains and encourage the growth of a wider range of plants and insects in and around rice fields. This can provide habitat for beneficial insects, pollinators, and birds, which can help to improve ecosystem health and biodiversity, while hardening rice production against environmental changes that monoculture agriculture can be vulnerable to. Spread The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has spread rapidly in recent years, with millions of farmers adopting the approach in more than 50 countries around the world. The spread of SRI has been driven by a range of factors, including its potential to increase yields, reduce input costs, and improve sustainability, which has motivated farmer uptake. One of the key drivers of the spread of SRI has been the work of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international development agencies, who have played a significant role in promoting and disseminating the approach. NGOs such as the Association Tefy Saina in Madagascar and the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD) have been instrumental in developing and promoting SRI, while agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have supported its adoption in a range of countries. Another important factor in the spread of SRI has been the success of early adopters, who have demonstrated the benefits of the approach to other farmers in their communities. In many cases, farmers who have adopted SRI have been able to achieve significant increases in yields and reductions in input costs, which has led to widespread interest in the approach.The spread of SRI has also been facilitated by the development of networks and partnerships between farmers, researchers, NGOs, and other stakeholders. These networks have played a key role in disseminating information about SRI and supporting its implementation, as well as in facilitating the exchange of knowledge and best practices. For example, SRI's early spread in India can be partially attributed to the smart communication strategies by its proponents in which several newspapers in India disproportionately provided coverage on SRI and effective coalition building among several national and international organisations.Despite its rapid spread, SRI still faces significant challenges in terms of adoption and scalability, particularly in areas with limited access to resources, training, and support. However, ongoing research and innovation are helping to address some of these challenges and improve the effectiveness and sustainability of the approach and it is being used by an increasing number of people. Project Drawdown estimates that SRI is currently practiced on 6.7 million hectares which could to 40.21–52.00 million hectares by 2050. Countries This is an incomplete list of countries that have implemented SRI and how they have done so. Madagascar: SRI for the longest period in Madagascar, as it was where the technique originated. The effort was started by the Association Tefy Saina (ATS) which was in 1990 by Fr Henri de Laulanié and his associates, to continue his mission of helping rural Madagascar. They were aided in this effort by the government of Madagascar, as the Ministry of Agriculture collaborated with various interested parties such as Cornell University to research and promote SRI and then integrate it into national agricultural strategies. According to preliminary studies SRI was able to produce a staggering increase in rice production. For example, a study in 2002 found that during wet season, the Madagascar government’s previous recommended growing system SRA (système de riziculture améliorée), averaged a production of 2.45T/Ha, while example SRI plots averaged 4.38t/Ha. Implementing SRI in Madagascar has been government policy since then with continual expansions ongoing with highly positive results in rice growing regions. India: As one of the world’s largest rice producing nations SRI has been widely adopted in India. Much like in Madagascar, local NGOs like the Tata trust, worked with news papers, and academics to encourage SRI’s initial expansion into the nation. Now SRI has been implemented in many of India’s states and is considered one of the governments best agricultural practises, with a section dedicated to it on Vikaspedia, the Indian Government’s online information guide. Due to the scale of India how it has been implmented has varied across different states. Odisha, India: SRI has been successfully implemented in Odisha to improve rice production and alleviate poverty. Small-scale farmers in the Mayurbhanj district embraced SRI, witnessing a yield increase of 54% while reducing water usage by 34%. Bihar, India: In Bihar, SRI adoption has been instrumental in achieving higher rice yields and reducing production costs. A study conducted in the Bhagalpur district reported a yield increase of 47% with SRI, accompanied by a 35% reduction in seed requirements. Andhra Pradesh, India: SRI practices have been successfully implemented in Andhra Pradesh, contributing to sustainable agriculture and improved livelihoods. Farmers in the Nellore district embraced SRI, resulting in a 29% increase in rice yields along with water savings of up to 40%. Mali: In Mali, SRI techniques have been adopted to enhance rice productivity and promote sustainable agriculture. The Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice) collaborated with local partners to introduce SRI practices in the Office du Niger irrigation scheme. Through the "More Rice for Africa" initiative, SRI was implemented, resulting in significant yield increases. Farmers in the region achieved average yields of 8 tons per hectare, compared to the conventional average of 4 tons per hectare. Senegal: SRI has been introduced in Senegal to address challenges related to low rice productivity and water scarcity. The National Center of Agronomic Research (CNRA) and other stakeholders have collaborated to promote SRI practices. Farmers in the Senegal River Valley have adopted SRI, leading to increased rice yields, improved water management, and enhanced farmer livelihoods. Criticisms While the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has been lauded for its potential to improve rice yields while reducing input costs and environmental impacts, there have been criticisms of the approach as well. Firstly that it is overly labour intensive. SRI often involves more frequent weeding, transplanting of younger seedlings, and other manual labor tasks, which can be challenging for farmers with limited resources and labor availability, at least when implementation begins. However, an Anglo-Indian study of SRI in Andhra Pradesh, India found that overall there was a substantial reduction in labor requirement alongside significant benefits for farmers and the environment once farmers had time to optimise their implementation of SRI.Then there is the potential problem that it is too knowledge-intensive as SRI requires a higher level of technical knowledge and skill than traditional methods of rice cultivation, which can be a barrier for some farmers. For example, SRI involves precise plant spacing, water management, and nutrient application, which may require training and support for successful implementation. This has created further criticism that it may not be able to operate on a large enough scale to compared to other methods of conventional rice production. The risk of yield variability is cited as a critique as SRI methods can be more susceptible to yield variability than traditional methods of rice cultivation. This is because SRI involves more precise plant spacing and nutrient management, which can be affected by weather conditions and other factors that are difficult to control.And most commonly critics cited that there was limited evidence of SRI's impact with some citing that it was no better than any other method of rice production. However, these early criticisms have mostly faded, as continual study has shown that SRI consistently increases rice production. Furthermore several of the studies that asserted SRI did not increase rice production either used secondary data or examined small data sets of SRI where it was deliberately implemented incorrectly to generate those results.While many of criticisms of SRI are valid to some degree, there is also evidence to suggest that many of these challenges can be addressed with appropriate training, support, and adaptation of the approach to local conditions, which numerous international and national agencies are engaged in. Gallery SRI farming in Chhattisgarh, India: See also References External links SRI at Cornell University SRI information from the International Rice Research Institute Rice Knowledge Bank: best management practices for rice production SRI - much more than more rice Farming Matters magazine, 29.1, March 2013 Krishi Usha low-cost weeder developed by Krishi Gram Vikas Kendra and Usha Martin Limited, Jharkhand News article on SRI from the BBC SRI: Achieving More with Less - A new way of rice cultivation from the World Bank Institute

renewable natural gas

Renewable natural gas (RNG), also known as biomethane, is a biogas which has been upgraded to a quality similar to fossil natural gas and has a methane concentration of 90% or greater. By removing CO2 and other impurities from biogas, and increasing the concentration of methane to a level similar to fossil natural gas, it becomes possible to distribute RNG via existing gas pipeline infrastructure. RNG can be used in existing appliances, including vehicles with natural gas burning engines (natural gas vehicles). The most common way of collecting biogas with which to produce biomethane is through the process of anaerobic digestion. Multiple ways of methanizing carbon dioxide/monoxide and hydrogen also exist, including biomethanation, the Sabatier process and a new electrochemical process pioneered in the United States currently undergoing trials. Growth Outlook Renewable natural gas can be produced and distributed via the existing gas grid, making it an attractive means of supplying existing premises with renewable heat and renewable gas energy. Renewable natural gas can also be converted into liquefied natural gas (LNG) or compressed natural gas (CNG) for direct use as fuel in transport sector. In the United States, projections of the ultimate supply potential for RNG vary. An analysis conducted in 2011 by the Gas Technology Institute determined that renewable gas from waste biomass including agricultural waste has the potential to add up to 2.5 quadrillion Btu annually, being enough to meet the natural gas needs of 50% of American homes. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute estimated that renewable natural gas could replace up to 10% of all natural gas used in the United States, and a study by the National Association of Clean Water Agencies and the Water Environment Federation found that the quantity of biosolids removed from wastewater could be turned into enough biogas to potentially meet up to 12% of America's national electricity demand.More recently, a study commissioned by the American Gas Foundation and executed by ICF in 2019 projected that between 1.6-3.78 trillion cubic feet of RNG could be produced annually for pipeline injection in the U.S. by 2030.The UK's National Grid believes that at least 15% of all gas consumed could be made from matter such as sewage, food waste such as food thrown away by supermarkets and restaurants and organic waste created by businesses such as breweries.In combination with power-to-gas, whereby the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide fraction of biogas are converted to methane using electrolyzed hydrogen, the renewable gas potential of raw biogas is approximately doubled. Production A biomass to RNG efficiency of 70% can be achieved during the production process. Costs are minimized by maximizing production scale and by locating an anaerobic digestion plant next to transport links (e.g. a port or river) for the chosen source of biomass. The existing gas storage infrastructure would allow the plant to continue to manufacture gas at the full utilization rate even during periods of weak demand, helping minimize manufacturing capital costs per unit of gas produced.Renewable gas can be produced through three main processes: Anaerobic digestion of organic material. This can be done in dedicated anaerobic digesters or as a byproduct gas collected from landfills and wastewater treatment. Production through the Sabatier reaction. With the Sabatier reaction, the gas from primary production has to be upgraded with a secondary step in order to produce gas that is suitable for injection into the gas grid. Thermal gasification of organic (normally dry) material Commercial development Landfill Gas In North America, most RNG development has historically occurred in the municipal solid waste (MSW) sector. The first commercial RNG facility was launched at the Fresh Kills landfill near New York City in 1982. As of 2023, more than 300 RNG facilities are currently operational in North America, with more than 70% of supplies drawn from the MSW and landfill sectors, according to the U.S. trade group RNG Coalition. BioSNG from wood Göteborg Energi opened the first demonstration plant for large scale production of bio-synthetic natural gas (SNG) through gasification of forest residues in Gothenburg, Sweden within the GoBiGas project. The plant had the capacity to produce 20 megawatts-worth of bioSNG from about 30 MW-worth of biomass, aiming at a conversion efficiency of 65%. From December 2014 the bioSNG plant was fully operational and supplied gas to the Swedish natural gas grid, reaching the quality demands with a methane content of over 95%. The plant was permanently closed due to economic problems in April 2018. Göteborg Energi had invested 175 million euro in the plant and intensive attempts for a year to sell the plant to new investors had failed.It can be noted that the plant was a technical success, and performed as intended. However, it was not economically viable, given the prices of natural gas at the time. It is expected the plant is to re-emerge around 2030 when economic conditions may be more favorable, with the possibility of a higher carbon price.SNG is of particular interest in countries with extensive natural gas distribution networks. Core advantages of SNG include compatibility with existing natural gas infrastructure, higher efficiency that Fisher-Tropsch fuels production and smaller-production scale than other second generation biofuel production systems. The Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands has conducted extensive research on large-scale SNG production from woody biomass, based on the importation of feedstocks from abroad.Renewable natural gas plants based on wood can be categorized into two main categories, one being allothermal, which has the energy provided by a source outside of the gasifier. One example is the double-chambered fluidized bed gasifiers consisting of a separate combustion and gasification chambers. Autothermal systems generate the heat within the gasifier, but require the use of pure oxygen to avoid nitrogen dilution.In the UK, NNFCC found that any UK bioSNG plant built by 2020 would be highly likely to use "clean woody feedstocks" and that there are several regions with good availability of that source. RNG development by region In the UK, using anaerobic digestion is growing as a means of producing renewable biogas, with nearly 90 biomethane injection sites built across the country. Ecotricity announced plans to supply green gas to UK consumers via the national grid. Centrica also announced that it would begin injecting gas, manufactured from sewage, into the gas grid.In Canada, FortisBC, a gas provider in British Columbia, injects renewably created natural gas into its existing gas distribution system.A company called Divert, which also reduces food waste through donation, says it will use a $1 billion investment from Canadian pipeline operator Enbridge to scale its existing network of food waste anaerobic digesters to cover all major markets of North America. Environmental concerns Biogas creates similar environmental pollutants as ordinary natural gas fuel, such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, hydrogen sulfide and particulates. Any unburned gas that escapes contains methane, a long lived greenhouse gas. The key difference from fossil natural gas is that it is often considered partly or fully carbon neutral, since the carbon dioxide contained in the biomass is naturally renewed in each generation of plants, rather than being released from fossil stores and increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. A major concern is that the potential biogas yield would only represent a small percentage of existing supplies of fossil gas (also called natural gas). This fact has led existing natural gas suppliers to push back against measures to increase the use of electricity as an energy supply - decreasing demand for gas. This reality prompted Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) to covertly support the creation of a nonprofit: Californians for Balanced Energy Solutions (C4Bes) which then went on to lobby for the gas sector and against the momentum in favor of electrification. The Sierra Club exposed the hand of SoCalGas in the formation of C4Bes (astroturfing) and so C4Bes curtailed its lobbying activities, although it continued to promote demand for gas. See also Anaerobic digestion Biofuel Biogas Carbon-neutral fuel Issues relating to biofuels Landfill gas utilization Power-to-gas Renewable energy Sustainable energy References External links "Renewable carbon neutral methane to be produced in south-west Queensland" ARENA accessed 6 December 2020 National Grid U.S. – Vision for a Sustainable Gas Network [1] American Gas Foundation Study: The Potential for Renewable Gas [2] SGC Rapport 187 Substitute natural gas from biomass gasification SGC Rapport on gasification and methanation http://www.eee-info.net/cms/netautor/napro4/wrapper/media.php? Production of Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG) from Biomass- From Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands ECN SNG Website [3] SNG Platform in Güssing National Grid/UK Sustainable Gas Group Production of Biogas from organic waste Bioenergy

waste

Waste (or wastes) are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use. A by-product, by contrast is a joint product of relatively minor economic value. A waste product may become a by-product, joint product or resource through an invention that raises a waste product's value above zero. Examples include municipal solid waste (household trash/refuse), hazardous waste, wastewater (such as sewage, which contains bodily wastes (feces and urine) and surface runoff), radioactive waste, and others. Definitions What constitutes waste depends on the eye of the beholder; one person's waste can be a resource for another person. Though waste is a physical object, its generation is a physical and psychological process. The definitions used by various agencies are as below. United Nations Environment Program According to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal of 1989, Art. 2(1), "'Wastes' are substance or objects, which are disposed of or are intended to be disposed of or are required to be disposed of by the provisions of national law". United Nations Statistics Division The UNSD Glossary of Environment Statistics describes waste as "materials that are not prime products (that is, products produced for the market) for which the generator has no further use in terms of his/her own purposes of production, transformation or consumption, and of which he/she wants to dispose. Wastes may be generated during the extraction of raw materials, the processing of raw materials into intermediate and final products, the consumption of final products, and other human activities. Residuals recycled or reused at the place of generation are excluded." European Union Under the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC, Art. 3(1), the European Union defines waste as "an object the holder discards, intends to discard or is required to discard." For a more structural description of the Waste Directive, see the European Commission's summary. Types of waste Municipal waste The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development also known as OECD defines municipal solid waste (MSW) as "waste collected and treated by or for municipalities". Typically this type of waste includes household waste, commercial waste, and demolition or construction waste. In 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency concluded that 292.4 tons of municipal waste was generated which equated to about 4.9 pounds per day per person. Out of the 292.4 tons, approximately 69 million tons were recycled, and 25 million tons were composted. Household waste and commercial waste Household waste more commonly known as trash or garbage are items that are typically thrown away daily from ordinary households. Items often included in this category include product packaging, yard waste, clothing, food scraps, appliance, paints, and batteries. Most of the items that are collected by municipalities end up in landfills across the world. In the United States, it is estimated that 11.3 million tons of textile waste is generated. On an individual level, it is estimated that the average American throws away 81.5 pounds of clothes each year. As online shopping becomes more prevalent, items such as cardboard, bubble wrap, shipping envelopes are ending up in landfills across the United States. The EPA has estimated that approximately 10.1 million tons of plastic containers and packaging ended up landfills in 2018. The EPA noted that only 30.5% of plastic containers and packaging was recycled or combusted as an energy source. Additionally, approximately 940,000 pounds of cardboard ends up in the landfill each year.Commercial waste is very similar to household waste. To be considered as commercial waste, it must come from a business or commercial occupancy. This can be restaurants, retail occupants, manufacturing occupants or similar businesses. Typically, commercial waste contains similar items such as food scraps, cardboard, paper, and shipping materials. Generally speaking, commercial waste creates more waste than household waste on a per location basis. Construction and demolition waste The EPA defines this type of waste as "Construction and Demolition (C&D) debris is a type of waste that is not included in municipal solid waste (MSW)." Items typically found in C&D include but are not limited to steel, wood products, drywall and plaster, brick and clay tile, asphalt shingles, concrete, and asphalt. Generally speaking, construction and demolition waste can be categorized as any components needed to build infrastructures. In 2018, the EPA estimated that the US generated approximately 600 million tons of C&D waste. The waste generated by construction and demolition is often intended to be reused or is sent to the landfill. Examples of reused waste is milled asphalt can be used again for the asphalt mixture or fill dirt can be used to level grade. Hazardous waste The EPA defines hazardous waste as "a waste with properties that make it dangerous or capable of having a harmful effect on human health or the environment." Hazardous Waste falls under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Under the RCRA, the EPA has the authority to control hazardous waste during its entire lifecycle. This means from the point of creation to the point where it has been properly disposed of. The life cycle of hazardous waste includes generation, transportation, treatment, and storage and disposal. All of which are included in the RCRA. Some forms of hazardous waste include radioactive waste, explosive waste, and electronic waste. Radioactive waste Radioactive waste, often referred to as nuclear waste, is produced by various industries such as nuclear power plants, nuclear reactors, hospitals, research centers, and mining facilities. Any activity that involves radioactive material can generate radioactive waste. Furthermore, such waste emits radioactive particles, which if not handled correctly, can be both an environmental hazard as well as a human health hazard. When dealing with radioactive waste, it is extremely important to understand the necessary protocols and follow the correct precautions. Failure to handle and recycle these materials can have catastrophic consequences and potentially damage the site's ecosystems for years to come.Radioactive waste is monitored and regulated by multiple governmental agencies such as Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Transportation (DOT), and Department of the Interior (DOI). Each agency plays an important role in creating, handling, and properly disposing of radioactive waste. A brief description of each agency's role can be found below. NRC: "Licenses and regulates the receipt and possession of high-level waste at privately owned facilities and at certain DOE facilities."DOE: "Plans and carries out programs for sand handling of DOE-generated radioactive wastes, develops waste disposal technologies, and will design, construct and operate disposal facilities for DOE-generated and commercial high-level wastes."EPA: "Develops environmental standards and federal radiation protection guidance for offsite radiation due to the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level and transuranic radioactive wastes."DOT: "Regulates both the packaging and carriage of all hazardous materials including radioactive waste."DOI: "Through the U.S. Geological Survey, conducts laboratory and field geologic investigations in support of DOE's waste disposal programs and collaborates with DOE on earth science technical activities."The US currently defines five types of radioactive waste, as shown below. High-level Waste: This type of radioactive waste is generated from nuclear reactors or reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.Transuranic Waste: This type of radioactive waste is man-made and has an atomic number of 92 or higher.Uranium or thorium mill tailings: This type of radioactive waste is a result after the mining or milling or uranium or thorium ore.Low-level waste: This type of radioactive waste is radioactively contaminated waste. It is typically generated from industrial processes or research. Examples of these items include paper, protective clothing, bags, and cardboard.Technologically enhanced naturally-occurring radioactive material (TENORM): This type of radioactive waste is created through human activity such as mining, oil and gas drilling, and water treatment where naturally-occurring radiological material (NORM) becomes concentrated. Energetic hazardous waste The EPA defines energetic hazardous waste as "wastes that have the potential to detonate and bulk military propellants which cannot safely be disposed of through other modes of treatments." The items which typically fall under this category include munitions, fireworks, flares, hobby rockets, and automobile propellants. Munitions Munitions were added to hazardous waste in 1997 when the EPA finalized RCRA. A special rule was added to address munitions in waste. This new rule is commonly referred to as the Military Munitions Rule. The EPA defines military munitions as "all types of both conventional and chemical ammunition products and their components, produced by or for the military for national defense and security (including munitions produced by other parties under contract to or acting as an agent for DOD—in the case of Government Owned/Contractor Operated [GOCO] operations)." The entire rule can be found here. While a large percentage of munitions waste is generated by the government or governmental contractors, residents also throw away expired or faulty ammunition inside their household waste. Fireworks, flares, and hobby rockets Every year, the US generates this type of waste from both the commercial and consumer aspects. This waste is often generated from fireworks, signal flares and hobby rockets which have been damaged, failed to operate or for other reasons. Due to their chemical properties, these types of devices are extremely dangerous. Automobile airbag propellants While automobile airbag propellants are not as common as munitions and fireworks, they share similar properties which makes them extremely hazardous. Airbag propellants characteristics of reactivity and ignitability are the characteristics which qualify for hazardous waste. When disposed undeployed, leaves these two hazardous characteristics intact. To properly dispose of these items, they must be safely deployed which removes these hazardous characteristics.The EPA includes the waste of automobile airbag propellants under the RCRA. In 2018, the EPA issued a final rule on handling of automobile airbag propellants. The "interim final rule"provides an exemption of entities which install and remove airbags. This includes automobile dealerships, salvage yards, automobile repair facilities and collision centers. The handler and transporter are exempt from RCRA, but the airbag waste collection facility is not exempt. Once the airbags have met the collection center, it will then be classified as RCRA hazardous waste and must be disposed or recycled at a RCRA disposal facility. Electronic waste Electronic waste, often referred to as "E-Waste" or "E-Scrap," are often thrown away or sent to a recycler. E-Waste continues to end up in landfills across the world. The EPA estimates that in 2009, 2.37 million tons of televisions, computers, cell phones, printers, scanners, and fax machines were discarded by US consumers. Only 25% of these devices were recycled; the remainder ended up in landfills across the US. E-Waste contains many elements that can be recycled or re-used. Typically speaking, electronics are encased in a plastic or light metal enclosure. Items such as computer boards, wiring, capacitors, and small motor items are common types of E-waste. Of these items, the internal components include iron, gold, palladium, platinum, and copper, all of which are mined from the earth. It requires energy to operate the equipment to mine these metals, which emits greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Donating e-waste to recycling centers or refurbishing this equipment can reduce the greenhouse gases emitted through the mining process as well as decrease the use of natural resources to ensure future generations will have sufficient access to these resources. As this issue continued to grow, President Obama established the Interagency Task Force on Electronics Stewardship in November 2010. The overall goal for this task was to develop a national strategy for handling and proper disposal of electronic waste. The task force would work with the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), EPA, and the US General Services Administration (GSA). The task force released its final product, the National Strategy for Electronics Stewardship report. The report focuses on four goals of the federal government's plan to enhance the management of electronics:1. Incentivizing greener design of electronics 2. Leading by example 3. Increasing domestic recycling 4. Reducing harmful exports of e-waste and building capacity in developing countries.E-Waste is not only a problem in the US, but also a global issue. Tackling this issue requires collaboration from multiple agencies across the world. Some agencies involved in this include U.S. EPA, Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration (Taiwan EPA), International E-Waste Management Network (IEMN), and environmental offices from Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and North America. Mixed waste Mixed waste is a term that has different definitions based its context. Most commonly, Mixed Waste refers to hazardous waste which contains radioactive material. In this context, the management of mixed waste is regulated by the EPA and RCRA and Atomic Energy Act. The Hazardous materials content is regulated by RCRA while the radiological component is regulated by the Department of Energy (DOE) and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Mixed waste can also be defined as a type of waste which includes recyclable materials and organic materials. Some examples of mixed waste in this context include a combination of broken glassware, floor sweepings, non-repairable household goods, non-recyclable plastic and metal, and clothing and furnishings. Additionally, ashes and soot, residential renovation waste materials are also included under this definition. Medical Waste This type of waste is typically generated from hospitals, physicians' offices, dental practices, blood banks, veterinary offices, and research facilities. This waste has often been contaminated with bodily fluids from humans or animals. Examples of this type of contamination can include blood, vomit, urine, and other bodily fluids. Concerns started to generate when medical waste was appearing on east coast beaches in the 1980's. This forced congress to pass the Medical Waste Tracking Act. This act was only in effect for approximately 3 years after the EPA concluded the "disease-causing medical waste was greatest at the point of generation and naturally tapers off after that point."Prior to the Hospital Medical Infectious Waste Incinerator (HMIWI) standard, approximately 90% of the infectious waste was incinerated before 1997. Due to the potential of negatively affect air quality, alternative treatment and disposal technologies for medical waste was developed. These new alternatives include: Thermal Treatment, such as microwave technologies Steam sterilization, such as autoclaving Electropyrolysis Chemical mechanical systems Reporting There are many issues that surround reporting waste. It is most commonly measured by size or weight, and there is a stark difference between the two. For example, organic waste is much heavier when it is wet, and plastic or glass bottles can have different weights but be the same size. On a global scale it is difficult to report waste because countries have different definitions of waste and what falls into waste categories, as well as different ways of reporting. Based on incomplete reports from its parties, the Basel Convention estimated 338 million tonnes of waste was generated in 2001. For the same year, OECD estimated 4 billion tonnes from its member countries. Despite these inconsistencies, waste reporting is still useful on a small and large scale to determine key causes and locations, and to find ways of preventing, minimizing, recovering, treating, and disposing of waste. Costs Environmental costs Inappropriately managed waste can attract rodents and insects, which can harbor gastrointestinal parasites, yellow fever, worms, various diseases, and other conditions for humans, and exposure to hazardous wastes, particularly when they are burned, can cause various other diseases including cancers.Toxic waste materials can contaminate surface water, groundwater, soil, and air, which causes more problems for humans, other species, and ecosystems. A form of waste disposal involving combustion creates a significant amount of greenhouse gases. When the burned waste contains metals, it can create toxic gases. On the other hand, when the waste contains plastics, the gases produce contain CO2. As global warming and CO2 emissions increase, soil begins to become a larger carbon sink and will become increasingly valuable for plant life. Social costs Waste management is a significant environmental justice issue. Many of the environmental burdens cited above are more often borne by marginalized groups, such as racial minorities, women, and residents of developing nations. NIMBY (not in my back yard) is the opposition of residents to a proposal for a new development because it is close to them. However, the need for expansion and siting of waste treatment and disposal facilities is increasing worldwide. There is now a growing market in the transboundary movement of waste, and although most waste that flows between countries goes between developed nations, a significant amount of waste is moved from developed to developing nations. Economic costs The economic costs of managing waste are high, and are often paid for by municipal governments; money can often be saved with more efficiently designed collection routes, modifying vehicles, and with public education. Environmental policies such as pay as you throw can reduce the cost of management and reduce waste quantities. Waste recovery (that is, recycling, reuse) can curb economic costs because it avoids extracting raw materials and often cuts transportation costs. "Economic assessment of municipal waste management systems – case studies using a combination of life-cycle assessment (LCA) and life-cycle costing (LCC)". The location of waste treatment and disposal facilities often reduces property values due to noise, dust, pollution, unsightliness, and negative stigma. The informal waste sector consists mostly of waste pickers who scavenge for metals, glass, plastic, textiles, and other materials and then trade them for a profit. This sector can significantly alter or reduce waste in a particular system, but other negative economic effects come with the disease, poverty, exploitation, and abuse of its workers. Affecting communities People in developing countries suffer from contaminated water and landfills caused by unlawful government policies that allow first-world countries and companies to transport their trash to their homes and oftentimes near bodies of water. Those same governments do not use any waste trade profits to create ways to manage landfills or clean water sources. Photographer Kevin McElvaney documents the world’s biggest e-waste dump called Agbogbloshie in Accra, Ghana, which used to be a wetland. The young men and children that work in Agbogbloshie smash devices to get to the metals, obtain burns, eye damage, lung and back problems, chronic nausea, debilitating headaches, and respiratory problems and most workers die from cancer in their 20s (McElvaney). In McElvaney’s photos, kids in fields burning refrigerators and computers with blackened hands and trashed clothes and animals, such as cows with open wounds, in the dumpsite. There are piles of waste used as makeshift bridges over lakes, with metals and chemicals just seeping into the water and groundwater that could be linked to homes' water systems. The same unfortunate situation and dumps/landfills can be seen in similar countries that are considered the third world, such as other West African countries and China. Many are advocating for waste management, a stop to the waste trade, the creation of wastewater treatment facilities, and providing a clean and accessible water source. The health of all these people in landfills and water are human necessities/rights that are being taken away. Management Wastewater facilities Wastewater treatment facilities remove pollutants and contaminants physically and chemically to clean water to be returned to society. The South Gippsland Water Organization breaks down the three steps of waste-water treatment. The primary treatment is to sift through the water to remove large solids to leave oils and small particles in the water. Secondary treatment to dissolve/remove oils, particles, and micro-organisms from the water to be prepared for tertiary treatment to chemically disinfect the water with chlorine or with UV light. “For most industrial applications, a 150,000 GPD capacity WWTS would cost an estimated $500,000 to $1.5 million inclusive of all necessary design, engineering, equipment, installation, and startup”. With such a simple solution that has been proven to clean water to be reused and is relatively inexpensive, there is no excuse why there should not be a waste-water treatment facility in every country, every state, and every town. Benefits “Right now, according to a NASA-led study, many of the world’s freshwater sources are being drained faster than they are being replenished. The water table is dropping all over the world. There’s not an infinite supply of water”. There is a need to preserve every resource, every finite water source that we do have left to maintain our lives and lifestyles. Able countries helping under-developed countries with their creation of wastewater treatments benefits society. Another cost of not adding wastewater treatments in countries is that people have no choice but to clean with, cook with, or drink the contaminated water which has caused millions of cases of disease and deaths. “Between 400,000 and 1 million people die each year in developing countries because of diseases caused by mismanaged waste, estimates poverty charity Tearfund”. Society has the means to decrease or even eliminate this way of death and save millions of lives by providing the simple human necessity of clean water. Utilization Resource recovery Energy recovery Energy recovery from waste is using non-recyclable waste materials and extracting from it heat, electricity, or energy through a variety of processes, including combustion, gasification, pyrolyzation, and anaerobic digestion. This process is referred to as waste-to-energy. There are several ways to recover energy from waste. Anaerobic digestion is a naturally occurring process of decomposition where organic matter is reduced to a simpler chemical component in the absence of oxygen. Incineration or direct controlled burning of municipal solid waste reduces waste and makes energy. Secondary recovered fuel is the energy recovery from waste that cannot be reused or recycled from mechanical and biological treatment activities. Pyrolysis involves heating of waste, with the absence of oxygen, to high temperatures to break down any carbon content into a mixture of gaseous and liquid fuels and solid residue. Gasification is the conversion of carbon rich material through high temperature with partial oxidation into a gas stream. Plasma arc heating is the very high heating of municipal solid waste to temperatures ranging from 3,000 to 10,000°C, where energy is released by an electrical discharge in an inert atmosphere.Using waste as fuel can offer important environmental benefits. It can provide a safe and cost-effective option for wastes that would normally have to be dealt with through disposal. It can help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by diverting energy use from fossil fuels, while also generating energy and using waste as fuel can reduce the methane emissions generated in landfills by averting waste from landfills.There is some debate in the classification of certain biomass feedstock as wastes. Crude Tall Oil (CTO), a co-product of the pulp and papermaking process, is defined as a waste or residue in some European countries when in fact it is produced “on purpose” and has significant value add potential in industrial applications. Several companies use CTO to produce fuel, while the pine chemicals industry maximizes it as a feedstock “producing low-carbon, bio-based chemicals” through cascading use. Education and awareness Education and awareness in the area of waste and waste management is increasingly important from a global perspective of resource management. The Talloires Declaration is a declaration for sustainability concerned about the unprecedented scale and speed of environmental pollution and degradation, and the depletion of natural resources. Local, regional, and global air pollution; accumulation and distribution of toxic wastes; destruction and depletion of forests, soil, and water; depletion of the ozone layer and emission of "green house" gases threaten the survival of humans and thousands of other living species, the integrity of the earth and its biodiversity, the security of nations, and the heritage of future generations. Several universities have implemented the Talloires Declaration by establishing environmental management and waste management programs, e.g. the waste management university project. University and vocational education are promoted by various organizations, e.g. WAMITAB and Chartered Institution of Wastes Management. Gallery See also Biological hazard Chemical hazards Environmental dumping Fly-tipping Garbage truck Global waste trade Human waste List of waste management acronyms Litter Midden Recycling Scrap Waste Atlas Waste by country Waste collection Waste converter Waste management References External links Media related to Waste at Wikimedia Commons Waste at Curlie Cambio verde: waste-food exchange project in Curitiba, Brazil Archived 2014-03-08 at the Wayback Machine Resource Productivity and Waste at the OECD

engo

An ENGO (environmental non-governmental organization) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) in the field of environmentalism. These organizations operate both locally and internationally which makes them play an important role in dealing with different kinds of environmental issues that are happening in the contemporary world. One of the most distinguishable things between environmental NGOs and environmental movements is that environmental NGOs have constitutions that state the rules of how power gets distributed among the people who are part of them. From the emergence of environmental NGOs in the 1970s and 1980s, back when people only started to acknowledge the seriousness of environmental issues, many developments have been made towards helping the planet and its inhabitants. Some notable examples of these contributors are WWF, Greenpeace, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, Friends of the Earth, Himalayan Wildlife Foundation, the Environmental Investigation Agency and the David Suzuki Foundation. Classification and goals To evaluate the classification of environmental NGOs, it is important to consider these five factors: geopolitical origins (location), political ideology (left / right / neither support), size (quantity), level of political focus (local / regional / international / global), funding sources (income).Main goals of environmental NGOs include but are not limited to: creating relationships with the government and other organizations, offering training and assistance in agricultural conservation to maximize the use of local resources, establishing environmental solutions, and managing projects implemented to address issues affecting a particular area.To fully understand the social, economic, and environmental effects that the organization can have on a region, it is also important to note that the organization can act outside the formal processes what state governments and other government institutions must comply with. Funding Environmental NGOs are organizations that are not run by federal or state governments, therefore they receive funds from private donors, corporations, and other institutions. With political backup, environmental NGOs also receive considerable amounts of assets and resources through government sponsors such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) who supersede environmental policies. The funds issued by various parties inevitably influence the way their efforts will be put out, the different kinds of environmental policy-making, and the activities pursued to challenge and put pressure on the states to cooperate in environmental protection. It is clear that private and non-private funding influences and affects the way environmental NGOs view and report environmental conditions. Approaches The concept of local is also crucial to the kinds of efforts and objectives which environmental NGOs will carry out. This aim is going to aid how environmental NGOs will "facilitate, fund, promote, and provide planning and organizational assistance to so-called grassroots organizations". Their efforts come in many forms such as: launching campaigns against nuclear weapons testing, protesting whale hunting, and "international campaigns against the degradation of environmental goods caused by practices like "clearing of timber, and criticize states for their ineffective policies or transnational corporations for environmentally damaging production". Challenges By the 1980s, most of Zimbabwe's best land had been taken control of by European settlers which have been divided into categories of "(1) large-scale commercial farmland. (2) resettlement areas, (3) communal lands, (4) national parks and safari areas, (5) forest lands, and (6) urban land" which (with the exception of communal land) is owned and operated by the state. Environmental problems there are defined as "a change in the physical environment brought about by human interferences which are perceived by people to be unacceptable with respect to a particular set of commonly shared norms". See also List of environmental organizations Conservation refugee == References ==

pro-nuclear movement

There are large variations in people's understanding of the issues surrounding nuclear power, including the technology itself, climate change, and energy security. Proponents of nuclear energy contend that nuclear power is a sustainable energy source that reduces carbon emissions and increases energy security by decreasing dependence on imported energy sources. Opponents believe that nuclear power poses many threats to people and the environment. While nuclear power has historically been opposed by many environmentalist organisations, some support it, as do some scientists. Context Nuclear energy is often considered to be a controversial area of public policy. The debate about nuclear power peaked during the 1970s and 1980s, when it "reached an intensity unprecedented in the history of technology controversies", in some countries.Proponents of nuclear energy point to the fact that nuclear power produces very little conventional air pollution, greenhouse gases, and smog, in contrast to fossil fuel sources of energy. Proponents also argue that perceived risks of storing waste are exaggerated, and point to an operational safety record in the Western world which is excellent in comparison to the other major kinds of power plants. Historically, there have been numerous proponents of nuclear energy, including Georges Charpak, Glenn T. Seaborg, Edward Teller, Alvin M. Weinberg, Eugene Wigner, Ted Taylor, and Jeff Eerkens. There are also scientists who write favorably about nuclear energy in terms of the broader energy landscape, including Robert B. Laughlin, Michael McElroy, and Vaclav Smil. In particular, Laughlin writes in "Powering the Future" (2011) that expanded use of nuclear power will be nearly inevitable, either because of a political choice to leave fossil fuels in the ground, or because fossil fuels become depleted. Lobbying and public relations activities Globally, there are dozens of companies with an interest in the nuclear industry, including Areva, BHP, Cameco, China National Nuclear Corporation, EDF, Iberdrola, Nuclear Power Corporation of India, Ontario Power Generation, Rosatom, Tokyo Electric Power Company, and Vattenfall. Many of these companies lobby politicians and others about nuclear power expansion, undertake public relation activities, petition government authorities, as well as influence public policy through referendum campaigns and involvement in elections.The nuclear industry has "tried a variety of strategies to persuade the public to accept nuclear power", including the publication of numerous "fact sheets" that discuss issues of public concern. Nuclear proponents have worked to boost public support by offering newer, safer, reactor designs. These designs include those that incorporate passive safety and Small Modular Reactors. Since 2000 the nuclear industry has undertaken an international media and lobbying campaign to promote nuclear power as a solution to the greenhouse effect and climate change. Though reactor operation is free of carbon dioxide emissions, other stages of the nuclear fuel chain – from uranium mining, to reactor decommissioning and radioactive waste management – use fossil fuels and hence emit carbon dioxide. The Nuclear Energy Institute has formed various sub-groups to promote nuclear power. These include the Washington-based Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which was formed in 2006 and led by Patrick Moore. Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the USEPA has also been involved. Clean Energy America is another group also sponsored by the NEI.In Britain, James Lovelock well known for his Gaia Hypothesis began to support nuclear power in 2004. He is patron of the Supporters of Nuclear Energy. SONE also recognise that there are serious technical challenges associated with an electric grid reliant on intermittent and low density sources of energy. The main nuclear lobby group in Britain is FORATOM.As of 2014, the U.S. nuclear industry has begun a new lobbying effort, hiring three former senators — Evan Bayh, a Democrat; Judd Gregg, a Republican; and Spencer Abraham, a Republican — as well as William M. Daley, a former staffer to President Obama. The initiative is called Nuclear Matters, and it has begun a newspaper advertising campaign. Organizations supporting nuclear power In March 2017, a bipartisan group of eight senators, including five Republicans and three Democrats introduced S. 512, the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA). The legislation would help to modernize the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), support the advancement of the nation's nuclear industry and develop the regulatory framework to enable the licensing of advanced nuclear reactors, while improving the efficiency of uranium regulation. Letters of support for this legislation were provided by thirty-six organizations, including for profit enterprises, non-profit organizations and educational institutions. The most prominent entities from that group and other well-known organizations actively supporting the continued or expanded use of nuclear power as a solution for providing clean, reliable energy include: The Alvin Weinberg Foundation American Nuclear Society (ANS) Battelle Memorial Institute Breakthrough Institute Canadian Nuclear Society Canadian Nuclear Association Center for Strategic and International Studies ClearPath Foundation Earth Institute Ecomodernists Environmentalists for Nuclear Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy Australia European Atomic Forum Generation Atomic International Nuclear Societies Council representing thirty-six national nuclear societies from around the world. Long Now Foundation The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI is the main lobby group for companies doing nuclear work in the U.S.) Nuclear Institute (Formerly the British Nuclear Energy Society (BNES) and the Institution of Nuclear Engineers (INucE), representing nuclear professionals in the U.K.) Third Way Thorium Energy Alliance is an association studying and advocating for advanced reactor designs. The World Nuclear Association, the global trade body for nuclear energy The Vatican,The United States generates about 19% of its electricity from nuclear power plants. Nearly 60% of all clean energy generated in the U.S. comes from nuclear power. Studies have shown that closing a nuclear power plant results in greatly increased carbon emissions as only burning coal or natural gas can make up for the massive amount of energy lost from a nuclear power plant. Even though there have long been protests against nuclear power, the effect of long-term scrutiny has elevated safety within the industry, making nuclear power the safest form of energy in operation today, despite the fact that many continue to fear it. Nuclear power plants create thousands of jobs, many in health and safety jobs, and seldom experience protests from area residents, as they bring large amounts of economic activity, attract educated employees and leave the air clear safe, unlike oil, coal or gas plants, which bring disease and environmental damage to their workers and neighbors. Nuclear engineers have traditionally worked, directly or indirectly, in the nuclear power industry, in academia or for national laboratories. More recently, young nuclear engineers have started to innovate and launch new companies, becoming entrepreneurs in order to bring their enthusiasm for using the power of the atom to address the climate crisis. As of June 2015, Third Way released a report identifying 48 nuclear start-ups or projects organized to work on nuclear innovations in what is being called "advanced nuclear" designs. Current research in the industry is directed at producing economical, proliferation-resistant reactor designs with passive safety features. Although government labs research the same areas as industry, they also study a myriad of other issues such as nuclear fuels and nuclear fuel cycles, advanced reactor designs, and nuclear weapon design and maintenance. A principal pipeline for trained personnel for US reactor facilities is the Navy Nuclear Power Program. The job outlook for nuclear engineering from the year 2012 to the year 2022 is predicted to grow 9% due to many elder nuclear engineers retiring, safety systems needing to be updated in power plants, and the advancements made in nuclear medicine. Individuals supporting nuclear power A pragmatic need for secure energy supply is a leading reason for many to support nuclear energy. Many people, including former opponents of nuclear energy, now say that nuclear energy is necessary for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. They recognize that the threat to humanity from climate change is far worse than any risk associated with nuclear energy. Many nuclear energy supporters, but not all, acknowledge that renewable energy is also important to the effort to eliminate emissions. Early environmentalists who publicly voiced support for nuclear power include James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia hypothesis, Patrick Moore, an early member of Greenpeace and former president of Greenpeace Canada, George Monbiot and Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog. Lovelock goes further to refute claims about the danger of nuclear energy and its waste products. In a January 2008 interview, Moore said that "It wasn't until after I'd left Greenpeace and the climate change issue started coming to the forefront that I started rethinking energy policy in general and realized that I had been incorrect in my analysis of nuclear as being some kind of evil plot." There are increasing numbers of scientists and laymen who are environmentalists with views that depart from the mainstream environmental stance that rejects a role for nuclear power in the climate fight (once labelled "Nuclear Greens," some now consider themselves Ecomodernists). Other academics and professionals, alarmed by the impact of disproportionate media coverage of nuclear accidents have formed a group called Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information (SARI). This was formed after a tsunami in Japan in 2011 caused an accidental release at Fukushima Daiichi, local people were unnecessarily relocated and psychologically stressed by false fears. This evacuation is estimated to have produced increased mortality rates equivalent to 2,313 deaths. This effective suffering is known as the ‘nocebo’ effect, and describes a situation where a negative outcome occurs due to a belief that an intervention will cause harm. Others who have spoken publicly on the benefits of nuclear power include: Scientists Hans Blix, Director General Emeritus of the IAEA Ian Fells Ben Britton, deputy director of the Centre for Nuclear Engineering, Imperial College London Ken Caldeira, Stanford University Georges Charpak, Polish-born French physicist Stephen Chu, former U.S. Secretary of Energy, former Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Martin Freer, Head of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Director of the Birmingham Energy Institute (BEI) Richard Garwin, American physicist James Hansen Director of Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions Program and the Earth Institute, Columbia University David Keith James Lovelock David J. C. MacKay (also an author and former DECC chief scientific advisor; died 2016) Michael McElroy Richard Muller, Professor of Physics, UC Berkeley, co-founder, Berkeley Earth Ernest Moniz, former U.S. Secretary of Energy Peter H. Raven, President Emeritus, Missouri Botanical Garden. Winner of the National Medal of Science, 2001 Carlo Rubbia, Nobel Laureate in Physics Tom Wigley, Climate scientist at the University of Adelaide Non-scientists Open letter signatoriesClimate and energy scientists in 2013: there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power Conservation biologists in 2014: to replace the burning of fossil fuels, if we are to have any chance of mitigating severe climate change […we] need to accept a substantial role for advanced nuclear power systems with complete fuel recycling The following is a list of people that signed the open letter: Future prospects The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, located in France, is the world's largest and most advanced experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor project. A collaboration between the European Union (EU), India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States, the project aims to make a transition from experimental studies of plasma physics to electricity-producing fusion power plants. However, the World Nuclear Association says that nuclear fusion "presents so far insurmountable scientific and engineering challenges". Construction of the ITER facility began in 2007, but the project has run into many delays and budget overruns. The facility is now not expected to begin operations until the year 2027 – 11 years after initially anticipated.Another nuclear power program is the Energy Impact Center's OPEN100 project. OPEN100 was launched in 2020 and has published open-source blueprints for a nuclear power plant with a 100-megawatt pressurized water reactor. The project aims to minimize the costs and duration of construction to increase nuclear power supply and potentially reverse the effects of climate change. See also Atoms for Peace Bright green environmentalism (aka Ecomodernism) Ecomodernist movement; environmentalist ideology supportive of nuclear power Energy development Energy security Environmental impact of nuclear power Generation IV reactor (future design concepts) High-voltage direct current List of anti-nuclear advocates in the United States Next Generation Nuclear Plant Nuclear power debate Nuclear power proposed as renewable energy Nuclear renaissance Small modular reactor Super grid United States energy independence Terra Praxis Vulnerability of nuclear plants to attack World Association of Nuclear Operators World Nuclear Association References Further reading Roger-Maurice Bonnet and Lodewijk Woltjer, Surviving 1,000 Centuries Can We Do It? (2008), Springer-Praxis Books Robert Bryce (writer), Power Hungry: The Myth of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future (2011) President Jimmy Carter, Nuclear Power Policy Statement on Decision Reached Following a Review, April 7, 1977 Center for Strategic and International Studies, Restoring U.S. Leadership in Nuclear Energy: A National Security Imperative, (2013) Gwyneth Cravens, (2007). Power to Save the World: The Truth about Nuclear Energy ISBN 978-0-307-26656-9 Diaz-Maurin, François (2014). "Going beyond the Nuclear Controversy". Environmental Science & Technology. 48 (1): 25–26. Bibcode:2014EnST...48...25D. doi:10.1021/es405282z. PMID 24364822. Ferguson, Charles D.; Marburger, Lindsey E.; Farmer, J. Doyne; Makhijani, Arjun (2010). "A US nuclear future?". Nature. 467 (7314): 391–3. Bibcode:2010Natur.467..391F. doi:10.1038/467391a. PMID 20864972. S2CID 4427192. Jeff Eerkens, The Nuclear Imperative: A Critical Look at the Approaching Energy Crisis (More Physics for Presidents), (2010, 2012) Michael H. Fox, Why We Need Nuclear Power: The Environmental Case (2014) Richard Garwin and Georges Charpak, Megawatts and Megatons: The Future of Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons, (2002) Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity After World War II, (2009) Andrew C. Kadak, A future for nuclear energy: pebble bed reactors, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure (2005) Robert B. Laughlin, Powering the Future: How We Will (Eventually) Solve the Energy Crisis and Fuel the Civilization of Tomorrow (2011) Kaz Makabe, Buying Time: Environmental Collapse and the Future of Energy, (2017) Michael McElroy (scientist), Energy and Climate: Vision for the Future (2016) Richard A. Muller, Physics for Future Presidents, (2008) Reese Palley, The Answer: Why Only Mini Nuclear Power Plants Can Save Our World, (2011) Rauli Partanen and Janne M. Korhonen, Climate Gamble: Is Anti-Nuclear Activism Endangering Our Future? (2015) Joseph M. Shuster, Beyond Fossil Fools: The Roadmap to Energy Independence by 2040 (2008) Charles E. Till and Yoon Il Chang, Plentiful Energy: The Story of the Integral Fast Reactor, (2011) Ialenti, Vincent (2016-11-14). "Alter-Ecologies: Envisioning Papal & Ecomodernist Nuclear Energy Policy Futures". Laudato Si': Reflections on the Legal, Political and Moral Authority of Catholic Social Thought in an Era of Climate Crisis (Eds Frank Pasquale & Michael Perry). Forthcoming. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. SSRN 2869323. Schneider, Mycle, Steve Thomas, Antony Froggatt, Doug Koplow (2016). The World Nuclear Industry Status Report: World Nuclear Industry Status as of 1 January 2016. Ted Taylor (physicist) and Charles C. Humpstone, The Restoration of the Earth (1973) J. Samuel Walker (2004). Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective Alan E. Waltar, "America the Powerless: Facing Our Nuclear Energy Dilemma" (1995) Cogito Books Alvin M. Weinberg, The Second Nuclear Era: A New Start for Nuclear Power, (1985) Jiang Zemin, Research on Energy Issues in China (2008), Elsevier External links Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues — Annotated Bibliography on Nuclear Power Briefing Papers from the Australian EnergyScience Coalition British Energy — Understanding Nuclear Energy / Nuclear Power Archived 2007-08-13 at the Wayback Machine

agriculture in australia

Although Australia is mostly arid, the nation is a major agricultural producer and exporter, with over 325,300 employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing as of February 2015. Agriculture and its closely related sectors earn $155 billion-a-year for a 12% share of GDP. Farmers and grazers own 135,997 farms, covering 61% of Australia's landmass. Across the country there is a mix of irrigation and dry-land farming. The success of Australia to become a major agricultural power despite the odds is facilitated by its policies of long-term visions and promotion of agricultural reforms that greatly increased the country's agricultural industry. There are three main zones: the high rainfall zone of Tasmania and a narrow coastal zone (used principally for dairying and beef production); wheat, sheep zone (cropping (principally winter crops), and the grazing of sheep (for wool, lamb and mutton) plus beef cattle) and the pastoral zone (characterised by low rainfall, less fertile soils, and large scale pastoral activities involving the grazing of beef cattle and sheep for wool and mutton). An indicator of the viability of agriculture in the state of South Australia is whether the land is within Goyder's Line. History Agriculture in Australia has a lively history. Aboriginal Australians have been various described as hunter-gatherer-cultivators and proto-farmers, as there is evidence that farming activities were undertaken prior to the arrival of Europeans, including tilling, planting and irrigating. However, these practices were non-industrialised and complementary to hunting, gathering and fishing. Whether the people could be termed agriculturalists is controversial. In 1788, the first European settlers brought agricultural technology from their homelands which radically changed the dominant practices. After some initial failures, wool dominated in the 19th century and, in the first half of the 20th century, dairying increased in its popularity driven by technological changes like canning and refrigeration.Meat exports were very significant in the development of Australian agriculture. By 1925 there were 54 export freezing works, capable of killing 6000 cattle and 90,000 sheep and lambs daily. Initially meat for British markets had to be frozen, but later beef could be exported chilled. 2000-2019 At the turn of the millennium, Australia produced a large variety of primary products for export and domestic consumption. Australia's production in the first five years were as follows:Australia's main crops were contrasting in preferred climate: sugar cane (typical of tropical countries), wheat and barley (typical of cold countries). In 2018, Australia was the world's largest producer of lupin bean (714 thousand tons), the world's second largest producer of chickpeas (1 million tons), the world's fourth largest producer of barley (9.2 million tons) and oats (1.2 million tons), the 5th largest producer of rapeseed (3.9 million tons), the 9th largest producer of sugarcane (33.5 million tons) and wheat (20.9 million tons) and the 13th largest world producer of grape (1.66 million tons). In the same year, the country also produced 1.2 million tons of sorghum, 1.1 million tons of potato, in addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products, such as rice (635 thousand tons), maize (387 thousand tons), tomato (386 thousand tons), orange (378 thousand tons), fava beans (377 thousand tons), banana (373 thousand tons), pea (317 thousand tons), carrot (284 thousand tons), onion (278 thousand tons), apple (268 thousand tons), lentils (255 thousand tons), melon (224 thousand tons), watermelon (181 thousand tons), tangerine (138 thousand tons) etc. 2019 Late in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic began, and Australian agriculture was heavily impacted by the resulting supply chain issues. The scarcity of freight space, and disruption to Chinese New Year purchases was particularly painful, with China being Australia's largest export market, and a particularly large buyer of live seafood. China Tariffs In May, the Australian government proposed an independent investigation of the origin of COVID-19. Shortly afterwards, China placed large restrictions on their imports of a number of Australian agricultural products, as well as coal. Agriculture is one Australia's most trade-exposed economic sectors. Labour shortages The agricultural workforce was heavily reliant on international workers, and by the end of 2020, the pandemic resulted in a severe shortage of farm workers across the country. Much produce could not be picked, with losses estimated at $22 million, thanks to a backpacker workforce diminished from 200,000 to 52,000. The shortage lingered through 2021, with skilled labour also in short supply, leading to calls to double Australia's skilled migrant uptake. Products Crops Cereals, oilseeds and grain legumes are produced on a large scale in Australia for human consumption and livestock feed. Wheat is the cereal with the greatest production in terms of area and value to the Australian economy. Sugarcane, grown in tropical Australia, is also an important crop; however, the unsubsidised industry (while lower-cost than heavily subsidised European and American sugar producers) is struggling to compete with the huge and much more efficient Brazilian sugarcane industry. Horticulture In 2005 McDonald's Australia Ltd announced it would no longer source all its potatoes for fries from Tasmanian producers and announced a new deal with New Zealand suppliers. Subsequently, Vegetable and Potato Growers Australia (Ltd.) launched a political campaign advocating protectionism. Viticulture Although the Australian wine industry enjoyed a large period of growth during the 1990s, over planting and oversupply led to a large drop in the value of wine, forcing out of business some winemakers, especially those on contracts to large wine-producing companies. At the time, the future for some Australian wine producers seemed uncertain, but by 2015 a national study showed that the industry had recovered and the combined output of grape growing and winemaking were major contributors to the Australian economy's gross output while the associated industry of wine tourism had also expanded. A follow-up report from 2019 demonstrated further consolidation, by which stage wine had become Australia's fifth-largest agricultural export industry with domestic and international sales contributing AU$45.5 billion to gross output.Wine producers were impacted by the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season, with Adelaide Hills losing 30% of its vineyards. Grapes around the country were affected by smoke, with the aroma affecting the wine produced. Beef industry The beef industry is the largest agricultural enterprise in Australia, and it is the second largest beef exporter, behind Brazil, in the world. All states and territories of Australia support cattle breeding in a wide range of climates. Cattle production is a major industry that covers an area in excess of 200 million hectares. The Australian beef industry is dependent on export markets, with over 60% of Australian beef production exported, primarily to the United States, Korea and Japan. In southern Australia (NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and south-western Western Australia) beef cattle are often reared on smaller properties as part of a mixed farming or grazing operation, but some properties do specialise in producing cattle. The southern calves are typically reared on pasture and sold as weaners, yearlings or as steers at about two years old or older. Artificial insemination and embryo transfer are more commonly used in stud cattle breeding in Australia, but may be used in other herds.In the Top End, sub-tropical areas and in arid inland regions cattle are bred on native pastures on expansive cattle stations. Anna Creek Station in South Australia, Australia is the world's largest working cattle station. The North Australian Pastoral Company Pty Limited (NAPCO) is now one of Australia's largest beef cattle producers, with a herd of over 180,000 cattle and fourteen cattle stations in Queensland and the Northern Territory. The Australian Agricultural Company (AA Co) manages a cattle herd of more than 585,000 head. Heytesbury Beef Pty Ltd owns and manages over 200,000 head of cattle across eight stations spanning the East Kimberley, Victoria River and Barkly Tablelands regions in Northern Australia.Prior to European settlement there were no cattle in Australia. The present herd consists principally of British and European breeds (Bos taurus), in the southern regions with Aberdeen Angus and Herefords being the most common. In northern Australia Bos indicus breeds predominate along with their crosses. They were introduced to combine the resistance to cattle ticks and greater tolerance of hot weather.In 1981, the industry was shaken by the Australian meat substitution scandal, which revealed that horse and kangaroo meat had been both exported overseas and sold domestically as beef. Dairy Domestic milk markets were heavily regulated until the 1980s, particularly for milk used for domestic fresh milk sales. This protected smaller producers in the northern states who produced exclusively for their local markets. The Kerin Plan (named after politician John Kerin) began the process of deregulation in 1986. The final price supports were removed in 2000 with the assistance of Pat Rowley, head of the Australian Dairy Farmers Federation and the Australian Dairy Industry Council. Deregulation ultimately saw 13,000 Australian dairy farmers produce 10 billion litres of milk in comparison to the 5 billion litres of milk produced by 23,000 farmers prior to deregulation, a 30% reduction in farmers with a 55% rise in milk production. As the Australian dairy industry grows feedlot systems are becoming more popular. Fisheries The fisheries in Australia is a very large scale industry. Australia produces many species of fish including farmed, sustainable and intensive and wild caught such as tuna and other schooling fish. Seaweeds The shorelines, especially the Great Barrier Reef, are providing motivation to help the continent by using seaweed (algae) to absorb nutrients. Because of the giant number of natural Australian seaweeds, not only could seaweed cultivation be used to help absorb nutrients around the GBR and other Australian shores, cultivation could also help feed a large part of the world. Even the Chinese, who could be considered far more advanced in seaweed cultivation, are interested in the future of Australian seaweeds. Lastly, the GBR itself, because of the delicate corals, has lent itself to utilising seaweed/algae purposely as a nutrient reduction tool in the form of algae. Olives Olives have been grown in Australia since the early 1800s. Olive trees were planted by the warden of the self-funded penal settlement on St Helena Island, Queensland in Moreton Bay. By the mid-90s there were 2,000 hectares (4,900 acres) and from 2000 to 2003 passed 20,000 hectares (49,000 acres). By 2014 (Ravetti and Edwards, 2014) there were 2000 plantations, covering over 35,000 hectares (86,000 acres), and producing 93,500 tonnes (92,000 long tons; 103,100 short tons) of olives. 3,000 tonnes (3,000 long tons; 3,300 short tons) used as table olives and around 5–7,000 tonnes (4.9–6,889.4 long tons; 5.5–7,716.2 short tons) exported to the United States, China, the European Union, New Zealand and Japan. Between 2009 and 2014 Australia imported an average of 31,000 tonnes (31,000 long tons; 34,000 short tons) predominantly from Spain, Italy and Greece. China olive oil consumption is increasing and Chinese investors have begun to buy Australian olive farms. Olive cultivars include Arbequina, Arecuzzo, Barnea, Barouni, Coratina, Correggiola, Del Morocco, Frantoio, Hojiblanca, Jumbo Kalamata, Kalamata, Koroneiki, Leccino, Manzanillo, Pendulino, Picholine, Picual, Sevillano, UC13A6, and Verdale. Manzanillo, Azapa, Nab Tamri and South Australian Verdale for the production of table olives. Wool Australia is the world's largest producer of wool. The Australian wool industry was worth $3.6 billion in 2022. The total number of sheep is estimated to be 75 million. In the late 1980s the sheep flock was 180 million. Only 5% of Australia's wool clip is processed onshore. The Merino produces a fine wool and was first introduced to Australia in 1797 with the breed being well-suited to the Australian environment. By the 1870s Australia had become the world's greatest wool-growing nation. Issues facing Australian agriculture Political values Historian F.K. Crowley finds that: Australian farmers and their spokesman have always considered that life on the land is inherently more virtuous, more healthy, more important and more productive, than living in the towns and cities. The farmers complained that something was wrong with an electoral system which produced parliamentarians who spent money beautifying vampire-cities instead of developing the interior.The Country Party, from the 1920s to the 1970s, promulgated its version of agrarianism, which it called "countrymindedness". The goal was to enhance the status of the graziers (operators of big sheep ranches) and small farmers and justified subsidies for them. Water management Water management is a major issue in Australia. The nation is struggling with over-allocation issues and increasing variability. Effectively governing such issues has proven to be problematic. Public institutions responsible for water management include the Murray–Darling Basin Authority, which manages water resources in the Murray–Darling basin, Australia's largest river catchment. Because of Australia's large deserts and irregular rainfall, irrigation is necessary for agriculture in some parts of the country. The total gross value of irrigated agricultural production in 2004-05 was A$9,076 million compared to A$9,618 million in 2000–01. The gross value of irrigated agricultural production represents around a quarter (23%) of the gross value of agricultural commodities produced in Australia in 2004–05, on less than 1% of agricultural land.Of the 12,191 GL of water consumed by agriculture in 2004–05, dairy farming accounted for 18% (2,276 GL), pasture 16% (1,928 GL), cotton 15% (1,822 GL) and sugar 10% (1,269 GL). Environmental issues In 2006 the CSIRO, the federal government agency for scientific research in Australia, forecast that climate change will cause decreased precipitation over much of Australia and that this will exacerbate existing challenges to water availability and quality for agriculture.Climate change has damaged farming productivity, reducing broadacre farm profits by an average of 22% since 2000. In 2023, the Department of Agriculture published a National Statement on Climate Change and Agriculture, exploring resilience in the agriculture sector.Agriculture contributes 13% of Australia's total greenhouse emissions, however, much of this is methane of biological origin, rather than from fossil fuels.Although native, kangaroos have been known to destroy fences and eat cattle feed, sometimes in problematic numbers. Organic farming As of 2021, $2.3 billion worth of commodities were produced in Australia by the organic agriculture sector, representing approximately 3% of agricultural output. Australia leads the world with 35 million hectares certified organic, which is 8.8% of Australia's agricultural land and Australia now accounts for more than half (51%) of the world's certified organic agriculture hectares. Genetic modification GM grains are widely grown in all states and territories in Australia with the exception of Tasmania, which is the last state to maintain a moratorium against GM. GM crops are regulated under a national scheme by the Gene Technology Regulator, through the Gene Technology Act 2000. As of 2022, there are four GM crops approved to be grown in Australia: cotton, safflower, carnations and canola. In particular, 99.5% of cotton growers in Australia use GM cotton. Foreign land ownership Australia has seen a major increase in foreign ownership of agriculture in the 2010s. According to a report in 2020, it found that the amount of Australian agricultural land in foreign ownership of total land increased slightly, from 13.4 to 13.8 percent.A 2016, Lowy Institute poll found that 87% of respondents were against the Federal Government allowing foreign companies to buy Australian agricultural land a 6% points higher than a similar survey four years ago.A 2022 ABC's Vote Compass Poll found that 88% of Australians want tighter controls on foreign ownership of farm land which is an increase from compass poll results in 2013 and 2016. Animal welfare and live exports Animal welfare has caused public concern, with exports of live animals particularly scrutinised. The practice of exporting live animals has received strong public opposition (a petition carrying 200,000 signatures of people opposed to live export was tabled in parliament) and opposition from the RSPCA because of cruelty.In 2022, the Labor party committed to ending live exports of sheep, if elected. In 2023, they commenced the process, however, it would not be likely to be complete within the government's first term.In 2006, animal rights organisations including PETA promoted a boycott of Merino wool, as a protest against the practice of mulesing, a procedure used to prevent the animals from becoming fly blown with maggots. In 2004, due to the worldwide attention, AWI proposed to phase out the practice by the end of year 2010; this promise was retracted in 2009.In 2022, new regulations for chicken welfare were introduced. Farm safety Farming is the most dangerous occupation in Australia. 55 farmers died while working in 2022. Accidents involving tractors accounted for 20 per cent and quad bikes for 14 per cent of deaths. Information Technology Drone technology, Self driver tractors, Online Marketplaces are recent and growing trends. There is little standardisation and no accreditation authorities, though the CSIRO and other independent organisations have evaluated individual developments the lack of coordinated approach and lead agency restricts developments and risks Australa's competitiveness. Public governance Before the Federation of Australia in 1901, individual state governments bore responsibility for agriculture. As part of the federation, the Department of Commerce and Agriculture was created to help develop the agricultural industry. The newly-created Department of Trade and Customs had additional responsibilities for sugar agreements, as well as cotton. These responsibilities were merged into a single agricultural department in 1956. Since the merger, the department responsible for agriculture has been re-named and re-structured many times: 1956-1974 - Department of Primary Industry 1974-1975 - Department of Agriculture 1975-1987 - Department of Primary Industry 1987-1998 - Department of Primary Industries and Energy 1998-2013 - Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry 2013-2015 - Department of Agriculture 2015-2019 - Department of Agriculture and Water Resources 2019-2020 - Department of Agriculture 2020-2022 - Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment 2022- Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry See also Effects of global warming on agriculture in Australia History of wheat industry regulation in Australia Wheatbelt References External links Farm Facts 2011 Agricultural Statistics - Australian Bureau of Statistics page. Peterborough SA History - Goyder The History Trust of South Australia has a map of Goyder's Line. Agricultural industry strength in Australia

food packaging

Food packaging is a packaging system specifically designed for food and represents one of the most important aspects among the processes involved in the food industry, as it provides protection from chemical, biological and physical alterations. The main goal of food packaging is to provide a practical means of protecting and delivering food goods at a reasonable cost while meeting the needs and expectations of both consumers and industries. Additionally, current trends like sustainability, environmental impact reduction, and shelf-life extension have gradually become among the most important aspects in designing a packaging system. History Packaging of food products has seen a vast transformation in technology usage and application from the stone age to the industrial revolution: 7000 BC: The adoption of pottery and glass which saw industrialization around 1500 BC. 1700s: The first manufacturing production of tinplate was introduced in England (1699) and in France (1720). Afterwards, the Dutch navy start to use such packaging to prolong the preservation of food products.1804: Nicolas Appert, in response to inquiries into extending the shelf life of food for the French Army, employed glass bottles along with thermal food treatment. Glass has been replaced by metal cans in this application. However, there is still an ongoing debate about who first introduced the use of tinplates as food packaging.1870: The use of paper board was launched and corrugated materials patented.1880s: First cereal packaged in a folding box by Quaker Oats.1890s: The crown cap for glass bottles was patented by William Painter. 1960s: Development of the two-piece drawn and wall-ironed metal cans in the US, along with the ring-pull opener and the Tetra Brik Aseptic carton package.1970s: The barcode system was introduced in the retail and manufacturing industry. PET plastic blow-mold bottle technology, which is widely used in the beverage industry, was introduced.1990s: The application of digital printing on food packages became widely adopted. Plastic packaging saw its inaugural use during World War II, even though materials employed in its manufacturing (such as cellulose nitrate, styrene and vinyl chloride) were discovered in the 1800s. Functions Packaging and package's labeling have several objectives: Physical protection - The food enclosed in the package may require protection from shock, vibration, compression, temperature, bacteria, etc. Barrier protection - A barrier from oxygen, water vapor, dust, etc., is often required. Permeation is a critical factor in design. Keeping the contents clean, fresh, and safe for the intended shelf life is a primary function. Modified atmospheres or controlled atmospheres are also maintained in some food packages. Some packages contain desiccants, oxygen absorbers, or ethylene absorbers to help extend shelf life. Containment or agglomeration - Small items are typically grouped together in one package to allow efficient handling. Liquids, powders, and granular materials need containment. Information transmission - Packages and labels communicate how to use, transport, recycle, or dispose of the package or product. Some types of information are required by governments. Marketing - The packaging and labels can be used by marketers to encourage potential buyers to purchase the product. Aesthetically pleasing and eye-appealing food presentations can encourage people to consider the contents. Package design has been an important and constantly evolving phenomenon for several decades. Marketing communications and graphic design are applied to the surface of the package and (in many cases) also to the point of sale display. The colour of the package plays a significant role in evoking emotions that persuade the consumer to make the purchase. Security - Packaging can play an important role in reducing the security risks of shipment. Packages can be made with improved tamper resistance to deter tampering, and can also have tamper-evident features to help indicate tampering. Packages can be engineered to help reduce the risks of package pilferage; some package constructions are more resistant to pilferage and some have pilfer-indicating seals. Packages may include authentication seals to help indicate that the package and contents are not counterfeit. Packages also can include anti-theft devices, such as dye packs, RFID tags, or electronic article surveillance tags, that can be activated or detected by devices at exit points and require specialized tools to deactivate. Using packaging in this way is a means of retail loss prevention. Convenience - Packages can have features which add convenience in distribution, handling, stacking, display, sale, opening, reclosing, use, and reuse. Portion control - Single-serving packaging has a precise amount of contents to control usage. Bulk commodities (such as salt) can be divided into packages that are a more suitable size for individual households. It also aids the control of inventory: selling sealed one-liter bottles of milk, rather than having people bring their own bottles to fill themselves. Types Packaging design may vary largely depending on the function that are fashioned into different types of packages and containers, and depending on the food products and their function, such as: Since almost all food products is packed in some fashion, food packaging is both fundamental and pervasive. Additionally, by enabling the creation and standardization of brands, it provides the opportunity to realized significant advertising, extensive distribution, and mass merchandising. Therefore, a distinction between the various type (or level) of packaging needs to be made. Primary packaging Primary packaging is directly in contact with the food products, creating the ideal headspace for them while providing protection from external alteration. Additionally, primary packaging, also known as retail packaging or consumer units, is responsible for the marketing aspects of food packaging. Typically, the packaging materials used in the primary level include cardboard cartons, plastic trays, glass bottle and multi-layerd structure (Tetra Pak). Secondary packaging Secondary packaging contains a number of primary packages into one box being made usually out of corrugated cardboard. Thus, the secondary level is a physical distribution carrier for the primary packages, making more easy to handle during the transportation. Occasionally it can be used as an aid in retail outlets or super market for the display of basic goods. Tertiary packaging The outermost package, known as tertiary packaging, makes it easier to handle, store, and distribute both primary and secondary packages in bulk safely, providing further protection of the product while creating an easy way to transport large quantities of materials. The most familiar type of tertiary packaging comprises a wrapped pallet of corrugated case. Gallery Packaging machines A choice of packaging machinery requires consideration of technical capabilities, labor requirements, worker safety, maintainability, serviceability, reliability, ability to integrate into the packaging line, capital cost, floorspace, flexibility (change-over, materials, etc.), energy usage, quality of outgoing packages, qualifications (for food, pharmaceuticals, etc.), throughput, efficiency, productivity, and ergonomics, at a minimum.Packaging machines may be of the following general types: Reduction of food packaging Reduced packaging and sustainable packaging are becoming more frequent. The motivations can be government regulations, consumer pressure, retailer pressure, and cost control. Reduced packaging often saves packaging costs. In the UK, a Local Government Association survey produced by the British Market Research Bureau compared a range of outlets to buy 29 common food items, and found that small local retailers and market traders "produced less packaging and more that could be recycled than the larger supermarkets." In the last decades, the growing demand from the consumers and governments for more sustainable and eco-friendly packaging design has driven the food industry to re-design and propose alternative packaging solutions. However, in designing a brand new packaging system, several variables need to be taken in consideration. An ideal packaging design should only use the right amount of the appropriate materials to provide the desired performance for a specific product. As shown in the optimum packaging design chart, the variety of situations in which product losses occur increases as the material weight or volume is decreased.Such trend will eventually reach a situation in which the loss outweighs the cost savings from using less packing material. Beyond that point, any packing reduction increases the overall quantity of waste in the system, rendering it a false benefit. The goal of the optimal packaging design is to identify a weight below which the package can no longer be sold since it does not satisfy the specifications, while considering the environmental impact connected to the materials selection. End-of-use Plastic: Landfilling, burning, and recycling are all alternatives for plastic packaging at the end of their shelf-life. However, improper disposal and handling lead to higher percentage of plastic waste, which can pollute the environment in a wide spectrum of scenarios. The packaging sector accounts for 40.5% of all plastic produced in Europe, which represents the largest sector in food industry. However, the recycling of such wastege is at a critical low level of roughly 35%. Moreover, it has been estimated that over 20% of the plastic packaging does not reach any recycling process. Bioplastic: also known as biodegradable polymer or biopolymer, are usually made from renewable feedstock resources like corn and sugar cane, as well as from microorganism of different kind. Typical end-of-life options include the composting or the environmental degradation of bioplastics, which result in resource loss and CO2 production. Complete degradation is also only achievable under rigorous conditions that are infrequently offered by the company. Additionally, some bioplastics are processed similarly to their traditional, fossil-based counterparts, which, if improperly sorted, might cause harmful interferences in other materials' recycling processes. Paper and cardboard: are composed of cellulosic fibers bonded together to form a flexible structure. These packaging materials have a long tradition as the ideal solutions for storing dry foods (such as flour, rice, and pasta) as well as being used as secondary or tertiary packaging. Paper and cardboard are often collected separately for recycling; however, some difficulties are faced in the case of the presence of a coating (e.g., plastic or aluminum) or contamination due to food residues. Alternative end-of-life options include incineration and landfill. In theory, paper and board packaging is compostable, but persistent chemicals (like PFAS) may be dispersed in the environment through this practice, thus limiting the potential benefits. Metal-based packaging can endure high temperatures and can provides outstanding gas, light, and aromas barriers, leading to a very competitive solutions in a broad range of application. Direct food preservation in the packaging was made possible with the development of the canning method. Coatings, whether organic or inorganic, may lessen the interactions between metal and food. However, it was discovered that many of the chemicals in these coatings migrated into food. The end-of-life alternatives for metal food packaging differ depending on its usage: for example cans and lids can be broken down and recycled multiple times. Glass: is an inorganic packaging that has been used for storing food and beverages. Nowadays, soda-lime glass is the commonly used variation manufactured from raw materials such as soda ash, limestone, and metal. Due to the structural characteristics of glass, the risk of migration into the food is very limited. Glass is incredibly chemically stable and durable when handled carefully (due to its fragile nature). Therefore, this packaging material is an ideal candidate for repeated use, due to these characteristics. Glass can also be recycled multiple times without losing any quality properties. Multi-layer packaging: in the food and beverage business, packaging composed of numerous layers of various materials is commonly referred to as multi-layer or multi-material packaging. In many countries, multi-material food packaging is frequently burned or disposed of landfills. Nevertheless, some areas are actively developing separate collections and efficient sorting processes for fiber-based multi-material packaging, such as beverage cartons. On the other hand, multi-layer packaging composed of aluminum and plastic barrier, cannot currently be recycled in an efficient way, and must undergo chemical treatment to be disposed of correctly. In light of these considerations, it is clear how, despite being the state-of-the-art in food packaging application, multi-layer packaging poses a great challenge when considering its end-of-life. An exception is the case of multi-layer packaging consisting of several layers of the same material (or being part of the same category): such solutions in many cases allow for outstanding performance and, at the same time, allow for an easier recycling. Recycling of food packaging Food packaging is created through the use of a wide variety of plastics and metals, papers, and glass materials. Recycling these products differs from the act of literally reusing them because the recycling process has its own algorithm which includes collecting, sourcing, processing, manufacturing and marketing these products. According to the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States, the recycling rate has been steadily on the rise, with data reporting that in 2005 40% of the food packaging and containers that were created were recycled.The product's quality and safety are the package's most important responsibility. However, there have been growing demands for packaging to be designed, manufactured, consumed, and recycled in a more sustainable fashion due to the increasing pollution connected with packaging and food wastes. It has been estimated that only 10.33% of all municipal solid waste (MSW), which makes up to 30.3% of the total waste, is recycled into new products globally. However, depending on the level of packaging and the materials that are being used during their manufacturing, the end-of-life of a package may differ completely. Despite the fact that a recycling process is usually the desired path, lots of complications may lead to less sustainable destines. Trends in food packaging Numerous reports made by industry associations agree that use of smart indicators will increase. There are a number of different indicators with different benefits for food producers, consumers and retailers. Temperature recorders are used to monitor products shipped in a cold chain and to help validate the cold chain. Digital temperature data loggers measure and record the temperature history of food shipments. They sometimes have temperatures displayed on the indicator or have other outputs (lights, etc.): the data from a shipment can be downloaded (cable, RFID, etc.) to a computer for further analysis. These help identify if there has been temperature abuse of products and can help determine the remaining shelf life. They can also help determine the time of temperature extremes during shipment, so that corrective measures can be taken. Time temperature indicators integrate the time and temperature experienced by the indicator and adjacent foods. Some use chemical reactions that result in a color change, while others use the migration of a dye through a filter media. To the degree that these physical changes in the indicator match the degradation rate of the food, the indicator can help indicate probable food degradation. Radio frequency identification is applied to food packages for supply chain control. It has shown a significant benefit in allowing food producers and retailers to have full real time visibility of their supply chain. Plastic packaging being used is usually non-biodegradable due to possible interactions with the food. Also, biodegradable polymers often require special composting conditions to properly degrade. Normal sealed landfill conditions do not promote biodegradation. Biodegradable plastics include biodegradable films and coatings synthesized from organic materials and microbial polymers. Some package materials are edible. For example, pharmaceuticals are sometimes in capsules made of gelatin, starch, potato or other materials. Newer bioplastics, films and products are being developed. There is an increasing development and production of food packaging materials containing substances and realizing systems intended to extend shelf life: carbon dioxide (CO2) emitters; antioxidants (e.g. butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), tocopherols, hinokitiol); antimicrobial enzymes (e.g. lysozyme), polymers (e.g. ε-polylysine, chitosan) and nanoparticles (e.g. silver, copper, gold, platinum, titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, magnesium oxide, organically modified nanoclays); bacteriocins (e.g. nisin, natamycin); and essential oils. In the last decades, the use of modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) and other variation of this technology has shown growing interest and application in the food packaging industry. The use of a specific gas mixture inside the packaging headspace has proven to be ideal to slow down the metabolic process of food product, thus prolonging the shelf-life of meat, fish, fruits and vegetables. The design of multi-layer packaging system has been recognized as the state-of-the-art in food packaging application for its versatility, processability and efficacy. Each layer can be made of different materials and provides a key functionality for the whole structure, such as improved mechanical properties, chemical stability, barrier properties and anti-microbial properties. However, the use of such complex structure significantly reduces its recyclability (except for a few cases). Recently, the application of protective coating on commercially available packaging materials (such as PET, PP, PLA cardboard or biopolymer) represents a potential solution to deal with the increasing environmental impact due to both food and packaging waste. Barcodes have been used for decades in packaging many products. 2D barcodes used in autocoding are increasingly applied to food packaging to ensure that products are correctly packaged and date coded. The ability of a package to fully empty or dispense a viscous food is somewhat dependent on the surface energy of the inner walls of the container. The use of superhydrophobic surfaces is useful but can be further improved by using new lubricant-impregnated surfaces. Food packaging barriers A critical requirement in food packaging is represented by the barrier properties against the permeation of gases, water vapor, and aroma compounds of the packaging system. In fact, the chemical interactions between the products and the environment are the principal reasons for improper shelf-life and spoilage phenomena. Therefore, the evaluation of the gas exchange by means of the permeation of gas molecules is a crucial aspect in designing a product. The permeation of a gas molecule through a packaging system is a physical process made up of three independent phenomena: the adsorption of the molecule to the packaging's outer surface; the diffusion of the molecule through the packaging’s section; and the desorption in the internal headspace. Under the assumption of steady state condition, the physical processes involved in the permeation can be modeled by simple equations. Particularly, the diffusion of a permeant's molecule is dependent to the concentration difference between the two sides of the packaging system, which acts as a driving force, thus creating a diffusive flux following the first Fick's law of diffusion.Furthermore, other assumptions are needed, such as the absence of chemical interaction between the penetrant and the packaging material and the fact that the diffusion flow must follow only one direction. The adsorption/desorption processes of a permeant's molecule normally exhibit a linear dependency with the partial pressure gradient across the barrier layer while keeping the assumption of steady-state transport condition and exhibiting a concentration lower than the penetrant's maximum solubility, thereby adhering to Henry's law of solubility.The type of permeant, the barrier layer's thickness, the specific permeabilities of the packaging films against gases or vapors, the packaging's permeable area, the temperature, and the pressure or concentration gradient between the barrier's interior and external sides can all have an impact on a system's permeability.The gas exchange occurring between the packaging system and the external environment has a significant impact on the quality and safety of food products. Uncontrolled physico-chemical and biological processes such as oxidation of vitamins, excessive microbial growth, and spoilage of the packed food may lead to improper conditions inside the packaging headspace, hence reducing their shelf-life. Therefore, the packaging system should be designed to create the ideal conditions for the selected product, avoiding excessive gas exchange.Among the permeants that could affect the organoleptic properties of food, oxygen and water vapor represent the most important ones. These permeants affect several bio-chemical processes in food products, such as ripening, degradation, hydration/dehydration, microbial growth, vitamins oxidation; they also have an impact on the organoleptic properties, hence causing off-flavours, excessive weight loss, textural changing and generally shortening the shelf life.To quantify the barrier properties of a packaging system, both oxygen and water vapor permeation are commonly assessed by measuring the oxygen transmission rate (OTR) and water vapor transmission rate (WVTR), respectively. Oxygen barrier The oxygen transmission rate of a gas through the packaging is defined as the amount of oxygen permeating per unit of permeable area and unit of time in a packaging system considering standardized test conditions (23 °C and 1 atm partial pressure difference). It is an effective tool to estimate the barrier properties of a certain material. The determination of the OTR is usually carried out by means of a steady-state and isostatic method, reported by the ASTM D 3985 or ASTM F 1307, containing respectively standardized protocol for the measurements of the OTR of several kind of packaging.The typical instrumentation consists in a permeation cell composed by two distinct chambers separated by the tested material; one of the chambers is then filled with a carrier gas (e.g., nitrogen), while the other one with oxygen, hence creating the necessary driving force to let the oxygen permeate across the barrier’s material. Water vapor barrier Concurrently to the oxygen barrier property, the permeability of water vapor through a food packaging system should be minimized to effectively prevent physical and chemical changes connected to an excessive moisture content.The moisture barrier properties of a material can be assessed by measuring the water vapor transmission rate (WVTR), which can be defined as the amount of water vapor per unit of area and unit of time passing through the packaging film. The WVTR measurements, like the OTR, adhere to the standards for standardized tests as outlined in the ASTM E96 (standard methods for water vapor transmission of materials). An impermeable test dish (such as a stainless steel cup) and a test chamber where temperature and relative humidity (RH) can be adjusted in accordance with the standard specification, make up the basic instrumentation used in such tests. Other vapors Although both oxygen and water vapor represent the most studied permeants in food packaging application, other gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen (N2) have also great relevance in the preservation of food products. In fact, N2 and CO2 have been employed in modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) technology to establish the correct conditions inside the package's headspace to lessen food spoiling. Food safety and public health It is critical to maintain food safety during processing, packaging, storage, logistics (including cold chain), sale, and use. Conformance to applicable regulations is mandatory. Some are country specific such as the US Food and Drug Administration and the US Department of Agriculture; others are regional such as the European Food Safety Authority. Certification programs such as the Global Food Safety Initiative are sometimes used. Food packaging considerations may include: use of hazard analysis and critical control points, verification and validation protocols, Good manufacturing practices, use of an effective quality management system, track and trace systems, and requirements for label content. Special food contact materials are used when the package is in direct contact with the food product. Depending on the packaging operation and the food, packaging machinery often needs specified daily wash-down and cleaning procedures.Health risks of materials and chemicals that are used in food packaging need to be carefully controlled. Carcinogens, toxic chemicals, mutagens etc. need to be eliminated from food contact and potential migration into foods. Besides, the consumers need to be aware of certain chemical products that are packaged exactly like food products to attract them. Most of them have pictures of fruits and the containers also resemble food packages. However, they can get consumed by kids or careless adults and lead to poisoning. Manufacturing Packaging lines can have a variety of equipment types: integration of automated systems can be a challenge. All aspects of food production, including packaging, are tightly controlled and have regulatory requirements. Uniformity, cleanliness and other requirements are needed to maintain Good Manufacturing Practices. Product safety management is vital. A complete Quality Management System must be in place. Hazard analysis and critical control points is one methodology which has been proven useful.Sperber, William H.; Stier., Richard F. (December 2009). "Happy 50th Birthday to HACCP: Retrospective and Prospective". FoodSafety magazine. pp. 42–46. Retrieved 11 January 2015. Verification and validation involves collecting documentary evidence of all aspects of compliance. Quality assurance extends beyond the packaging operations through distribution and cold chain management. See also Notes and references Bibliography External links "Food Packaging -- Roles, Materials, and Environmental Issues - IFT.org". www.ift.org. Retrieved 3 December 2018. Poly(hydroxyalkanoates) for Food Packaging: Application and Attempts towards Implementation

carbon accounting

Carbon accounting (or greenhouse gas accounting) is a framework of methods to measure and track how much greenhouse gas (GHG) an organization emits. It can also be used to track projects or actions to reduce emissions in sectors such as forestry or renewable energy. Corporations, cities and other groups use these techniques to help limit climate change. Organizations will often set an emissions baseline, create targets for reducing emissions, and track progress towards them. The accounting methods enable them to do this in a more consistent and transparent manner. The main reasons for GHG accounting are to address social responsibility concerns or meet legal requirements. Public rankings of companies, financial due diligence and potential cost savings are other reasons. GHG accounting methods can help investors better understand the climate risks of companies they invest in. Accurate accounting methods also aid corporate and community net-zero goals. Many governments around the world require various forms of reporting. There is some evidence that programs that require GHG accounting help to lower emissions. Markets for buying and selling carbon credits depend on accurate measurement of emissions and emission reductions. These techniques can help to understand the impacts of specific products and services. They do this by quantifying their GHG emissions throughout their lifecycle. This encourages purchasing decisions that are environmentally friendly. These techniques can be used at different scales, from those of companies and cities, to the greenhouse gas inventories of entire nations. They typically involve a combination of measurements, calculations, estimates, and reporting. A variety of standards and guidelines can apply, including Greenhouse Gas Protocol and ISO 14064. These often organize emissions into three categories. The Scope 1 category covers direct emissions from an organization's facilities. Scope 2 covers emissions from electricity purchased by the organization. Scope 3 covers other indirect emissions, including those from general suppliers.There are a number of challenges in creating accurate accounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Scope 3 emissions, in particular, can be difficult to estimate. In project accounting, additionality and double counting issues can affect the credibility of renewable energy and forest preservation efforts. These limitations can, in turn, impact perceptions of progress on climate change. Methods are being developed to provide accuracy checks on accounting reports from companies and projects. Organizations like Climate Trace are now able to check reports against actual emissions via the use of satellite imagery and AI techniques. Origins Initial efforts to create greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting methods were largely at the national level. In 1995, the United Nations climate program required developed countries to report annually on their emissions from six types of industry. Two years later, the Kyoto protocol defined the greenhouse gases that are the focus of today's accounting methods. These are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, nitrogen trifluoride, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons. These actions raised awareness about the importance of accurate GHG emission estimates.In 1998 the World Resources Institute (WRI) and World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) began work to develop a protocol to support this goal. They published the first version of Greenhouse Gas Protocol in September 2001. It establishes a "comprehensive, global, standardized framework for measuring and managing emissions from private and public sector operations, value chains, products, cities, and policies". The corporate protocol divides an organization's emissions into three categories. Scope 1 covers direct emissions from an organization's facilities. Scope 2 covers emissions from generating electricity purchased by the organization. Scope 3 covers other indirect emissions.Other initiatives since then have helped promote corporate and community participation in GHG accounting. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) began in the UK in 2002, and is now a multinational group, with thousands of companies disclosing their GHG emissions. The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) formed in 2015 as a collaboration between CDP, WRI, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). Its goal is to establish science-based environmental target setting as a standard corporate practice.Since the 2015 Paris Agreement there has been an increased focus on standards for financial risk from GHG emissions. The Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) formed as a follow-up to the Paris Agreement. It established a framework of recommendations on the types of information that companies should disclose to investors, lenders, and insurance underwriters. More recently, governments such as the EU and US have developed regulations that cover corporate financial disclosure requirements and the use of accounting protocols to meet them.Participation in greenhouse gas accounting and reporting has grown significantly over time. In 2020, 81% of S&P 500 companies reported Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Globally, over 22,000 companies disclosed data to CDP in 2022. Drivers Internal company drivers A variety of business incentives drive corporate carbon accounting. These include rankings alongside other companies, managing climate change related risks, investment due diligence, shareholder and stakeholder outreach, staff engagement, and energy cost savings. Accounting for greenhouse gas emissions is often seen as a standard practice for business. Governmental requirements Legal requirements provide another type of driver. These are usually created through specific laws on reporting, or within broader environmental programs. Emissions trading markets also depend on accounting and reporting protocols. In 2015 more than 40 countries had some type of reporting requirement in place.The EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is part of the European Green Deal. It is intended to make EU countries carbon neutral by 2050. This directive will require many large companies and companies with securities listed on EU-regulated markets to disclose a broad array of ESG information, including GHG emissions. The UK's Environmental Reporting Guidelines update and clarify requirements in earlier laws that required companies to report information on GHG emissions. In the US the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) requires facility (as opposed to corporate) based reporting of GHG emissions from large industrial facilities. The program covers a total of 41 industrial categories.Recent regulations are also coming from agencies that traditionally have had a financial focus. The US Security Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a rule in 2022 to require all public companies, regardless of size, to report Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Larger companies would be required to disclose Scope 3 emissions only if they are material to the company, or if the company has set an emissions target that includes Scope 3. Japan's Financial Services Agency's (FSA) also issued rules in 2022 that require financial disclosure of climate related information. These may cover around 4,000 companies, including those listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.Government procurement requirements have also begun to incorporate GHG reporting requirements. In 2022 both the US and the UK governments issued executive type orders that require this practice.Emission trading schemes in various countries also play a role in promoting GHG accounting, as do international carbon offset programs. The European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) is a cap-and-trade system where a limit is placed on the right to emit specified pollutants over an area, and companies can trade emission rights within that area. EU ETS is the second largest trading system in the world after the Chinese national carbon trading scheme, covering over 40% of European GHG emissions. Greenhouse Gas Protocol is cited in its guidance documents. California's cap-and-trade program operates along similar principles. International offset programs also contain requirements for quantifying emission reductions from specific project. The CDM has a detailed set of monitoring, reporting, and verification procedures, as does the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program. As of 2022, similar procedures to document project reductions under Article 6 of the Paris agreement are yet to be worked out . Non-governmental organization programs Many NGOs have developed programs that both promote GHG accounting and reporting, and help define its features. The Carbon Disclosure project allows a range of protocols for reporting to it. Most companies report GHG emissions to CDP using Greenhouse Gas Protocol or a protocol based on it. The Science Based Targets initiative cites Greenhouse Gas Protocol guidance as part of its criteria and recommendations. Similarly, the TCFD cites Greenhouse Gas Protocol in its recommended metrics and targets. Frameworks and standards Many of today's carbon accounting standards have incorporated principles from the 2006 guidelines for greenhouse gas inventories that were created by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Those most consistently applied include transparency, accuracy, consistency, and completeness. The IPCC principle of comparability, for example amongst organizations, is less widely applied, though techniques to support this goal are mentioned throughout Greenhouse Gas Protocol's corporate standard.These standards typically cover the greenhouse gases first regulated under the Kyoto Protocol. They operate in two distinct manners. Attributional accounting allocates emissions to specific organizations or products, and measures and tracks them over time. Consequential accounting methods measure the difference from a specific change, like a GHG reduction project. Corporate/local government standards Corporations and facilities use a variety of methods to track and report GHG emissions. These include those from Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the Global Reporting Initiative, the Climate Disclosure Standards Board, the Climate Registry, as well as several industry specific organizations. CDP lists an even broader set of acceptable methods for reporting in its guidance. Standards for cities and communities include the Global Protocol for Community Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories and the ICLEI U.S. Community Protocol. This covers cities and communities in the US. Greenhouse Gas Protocol GHG Protocol is a group of standards that are the most common in GHG accounting. These standards reflect a number of accounting principles, including relevance, completeness, consistency, transparency, and accuracy. The standards divide emissions into three scopes. Scope 1 covers all direct GHG emissions within a corporate boundary (owned or controlled by a company). It includes fuel combustion, company vehicles and fugitive emissions. Scope 2 covers indirect GHG emissions from consumption of purchased electricity, heat, cooling or steam. As of 2010, at least one third of global GHG emissions are Scope 2.Scope 3 emission sources include emissions from suppliers and product users (also known as the “value chain”). Transportation of goods, and other indirect emissions are also part of this scope. Scope 3 emissions often represent the largest source of corporate greenhouse gas emissions, for example the use of oil sold by Aramco. These were estimated to represent 75% of all emissions reported to the Carbon Disclosure Project, though that percentage varies widely amongst business sectors. In 2022 about 30% of US companies reported Scope 3 emissions. However, the International Sustainability Standards Board is developing a recommendation that Scope 3 emissions be included as part of all GHG reporting. There are 15 Scope 3 categories. Examples include goods or services an organization purchases, employee commuting, and the use of sold products. Not every category is relevant to all organizations.WRI is currently developing a Land Sector and Removals Standard for its corporate reporting guidelines. This will include emissions and removals from land management and land use change; biogenic products; and carbon dioxide removal technologies. ISO 14064 The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published ISO 14064 standards for greenhouse gas accounting and verification in 2006. ISO, WRI and WBCSD worked together to ensure consistency amongst the ISO and Greenhouse Gas Protocol standards. ISO 14064 is based on Greenhouse Gas Protocol.Part 1 (ISO 14064-1:2006) specifies principles and requirements for estimating and reporting GHG emissions and removals. Part 3 (ISO 14064-3:2006) provides guidance for conducting and managing the verification of GHG reporting. PAS 2060 PAS 2060 is a standard that describes how organizations can demonstrate carbon neutrality. It was developed by the British Standards Institute and published in 2010. Under PAS 2060 GHG estimates should include 100% of Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, plus all Scope 3 emissions that contribute more than 1% of the total footprint. Organizations must also develop a Carbon Management Plan which contains a public commitment to carbon neutrality along with a reduction strategy. This strategy should include a time scale for achieving neutrality, specific targets for reductions, how those reductions will be achieved and how residual emissions will be offset. EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) requires facility and supplier based reporting for many categories of emissions sources. The program includes guidelines for how emissions are to be estimated and reported. Facilities are required to report (1) combustion emissions resulting from burning fossil fuels or biomass (such as wood or landfill gas); and (2) other emissions from industrial processes, such as chemical reactions from iron and steelmaking, cement, or petrochemicals. Categories of suppliers that must report include coal and natural gas, petroleum products, as well as suppliers of CO2 and other industrial GHGs. Monitoring methodologies are more specific than GHG Protocol or ISO 14064, and require the use of continuous monitoring systems, mass balance calculations, or default emission factors. EPA uses the facility-level and supplier data to help prepare the annual Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, which is submitted to the United Nations. Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures Created in 2015, the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) provides information to investors about what companies are doing to mitigate the risks of climate change. TCFD's disclosure standard for companies covers four thematic areas. These are governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets. There are also several principles TCFD emphasizes in its guidance. Disclosures should be representative of relevant information; specific and complete; as well as clear, balanced, and understandable. In addition, estimates also need to be consistent over time; comparable amongst companies within a sector industry or portfolio; reliable, verifiable, and objective; and timely. The metrics and targets portion of the standard requires measurement and disclosure methods based on GHG Protocol. The TCFD's standard specifies that companies should disclose all Scope 1 and 2 emissions regardless of their material impacts on the company. Scope 3 emission reporting is dependent on whether they are "material", but TCFD recommends they be included. Protocols for cities/communities The Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories (GPC) is the result of a collaborative effort between the GHG Protocol at World Resources Institute (WRI), C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), and Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI). It requires a community to first identify the inventory boundary, such as an administrative boundary for a city or county. The protocol focuses on six main activity sectors. These are stationary energy; transportation; waste; industrial processes and product use; agriculture, forestry and other land use. Emissions occurring outside the geographic boundary that are a result of a jurisdiction's activities are also included. To distinguish between emissions that occur within a city boundary and outside, the protocol uses the Scope 1, 2 and 3 definitions in GHG Protocol. Communities report emissions by gas, scope, sector and subsector using two options. One is a framework that reflects a more traditional Scope 1, 2, and 3 assessment. Another is more focused on activities taking place within that community, and excludes categories such as waste generated outside of it.The U.S. Community Protocol developed by ICLEI–Local Governments for Sustainability USA also emphasizes the use of geographic boundaries rather than corporate boundaries. It recommends an approach focused on specific emission sources and activities rather than the more commonly used Scope 1, 2 and 3 framework to calculate emissions. The guidance suggests communities consider the stories they wish to convey about community emissions, and what reporting methods will help tell those stories. The guidance covers five basic emissions generating activities. These are use of electricity by the community; use of fuel in residential and commercial stationary combustion equipment; on‐road passenger and freight motor vehicle travel; use of energy in drinking water and wastewater treatment and distribution; and generation of solid waste by the community. Reporting guidance covers a variety of approaches, and organizations can include one or more of them. These include GHG activities and sources over which a local government has significant influence; GHG activities of community interest; household consumption inventories; and an inventory that incorporates the GHG emissions (and removals) from land use. GHG reports from cities have been found to vary widely, and often show lower emissions than those from independent analyses.Consumption-based methods, such as PAS 2070, provide another perspective on community greenhouse gas emissions. These clarify the difference between GHG emissions from sources within a community boundary, and GHG emissions from goods and services that are used by residents, but produced outside the community. These consumption-based estimates can often be much greater than those from sources solely within a community. Product accounting standards Product accounting methods are part of a broader set of Life Cycle Assessment approaches that include Product Carbon Footprints. These focus on the single issue of climate change. They can be used for either a product or a service. Related standards include ISO 14067, PAS 2050, and GHG Protocol Product Standard.GHG Protocol for Products builds on the framework of requirements in the ISO 14040 and PAS 2050 standards. It is similar to GHG Protocol Scope 3, but focused on life cycle/value chain impacts for a specific product. The same five accounting principles apply as with the Corporate Standard. Steps include setting business goals, defining analysis boundaries, calculating results, analyzing uncertainties, and reporting. Boundaries for final products are required to include the complete cradle-to-grave life cycle.The ISO 14067 standard builds largely on other existing ISO standards for LCA. Steps include goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment, interpretation, and reporting. For ISO 14067, the life cycle stages that need to be studied in the LCA are defined by a variety of system boundaries. Cradle-to-grave includes the emissions and removals generated during the full life of cycle of the product. Cradle-to-gate includes the emissions and removals up to where the product leaves the organization. Gate-to-gate includes the emissions and removals that arise in the supply chain.Product footprint analysis can provide insight into GHG contributions throughout the value chain. On average, 45% of total value chain emissions arise upstream in the supply chain, 23% during the company's direct operations, and 32% downstream. Project accounting standards Project accounting standards and protocols are typically used to ensure the "environmental integrity" of projects designed to reduce GHG emissions and generate carbon offsets. They support both compliance type programs as well as voluntary markets. Accounting rules cover areas such as monitoring, reporting, and verification, and are designed to ensure that the emission reduction estimates for a project are accurate. Greenhouse Gas Protocol and ISO have specific protocols to accomplish this. Certification organizations also have program requirements can cover project eligibility, certification, and other aspects. Verified Carbon Standard, the Gold Standard, Climate Action Reserve and the American Carbon Registry are among the leading certification organizations doing this work. Project developers, brokers, auditors, and buyers are the other main types of participants.Several principles help ensure the environmental integrity of carbon offset projects that rely on this family of standards. One key principle is additionality. This depends on whether the project would occur anyway without the funds raised by selling carbon offset credits. For instance, a project would not be considered additional if it is already financially viable due to energy or other cost savings. Similarly, if it would normally be done to meet an environmental law or regulation, it would not be additional. Various kinds of analyses can help evaluate this aspect of a project, though the results are often subjective.Projects are also judged based on the permanence of reductions over various time horizons. This is important in areas such as forestry projects. They should also be designed to avoid double-counting, where reductions are claimed by more than one organization. Avoiding overestimation of emission reductions is another consideration. Some protocols and standards look to ensure that projects produce social and environmental co-benefits, in addition to emission reductions from the project itself. ISO 14064 Part 2 This standard provides guidance for quantification, monitoring and reporting of GHG reduction activities or removal enhancements. It includes requirements for planning a GHG project, as well as identifying and selecting GHG sources and sinks. It also covers various aspects of GHG project performance. GHG Protocol standards for projects and policies The accounting principles in the GHG Protocol for Project Accounting include relevance, completeness, consistency, transparency, accuracy and conservativeness. Like the ISO standard, the protocol's focus is on core accounting principles and impact quantification, rather than the programmatic and transactional aspects of carbon credits. The protocol gives general guidance on applying additionality and uncertainty principles, but does not specifically require them. WRI and WBCSD have also developed additional guidance documents for projects in the land use, forestry, and electric grid sectors. GHG Protocol Policy and Action Standard has similar accounting principles, but these are applied to general programs and policies designed to reduce GHGs. Verified Carbon Standard (VERRA) VERRA was developed in 2005, and is a widely used voluntary carbon standard. It uses accounting principles based on ISO 14064 Part 2, which are the same as the GHG protocol principles described above. Allowable projects under VERRA include energy, transport, waste, and forestry. There are also specific methodologies for REDD+ projects. Verra has additional criteria to avoid double counting, as well as requirements for additionality. Negative impacts on sustainable development in the local community are prohibited. Project monitoring is based on CDM standards. Gold Standard The Gold Standard was developed in 2003 by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in consultation with an independent Standards Advisory Board. Projects are open to any non-government, community-based organization. Allowable project categories include renewable energy supply, energy efficiency, afforestation/reforestation, and agriculture (the latter can be difficult - for example soil carbon measurements are depth sensitive). The program's focus includes the promotion of Sustainable Developments Goals. Projects must meet at least three of those goals, in addition to reducing GHG emissions. Projects must also make a net-positive contribution to the economic, environmental and social welfare of the local population. Program monitoring requirements help determine this. The standard certifies additionality based on an evaluation of financial viability or the institutional barriers that a project faces. In some cases additionality is assumed based on the type of project. There are also screens for double counting. Other applications In addition to the uses described above, GHG accounting is used in other settings, both regulatory and voluntary. Renewable energy credits Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) or Guarantees of Origin (GO) document the fact that one megawatt-hour of electricity is generated and supplied to the electrical grid through the use of renewable energy resources. RECs are now being utilized around the world and are becoming more prevalent. The United Kingdom (U.K.) has used renewable obligation certificates since 2002 in order to ensure compliance with the U.K. Renewables Obligation. In the European Union, Guarantees of Origin are used to describe this practice. Australia has used RECs since 2001. More recently, India set up a REC market.In the context of GHG accounting, RECs are often used to adjust estimated Scope 2 emissions. In a typical case, a company would calculate its Scope 2 emissions using its electricity consumption and grid emissions factor. Companies that purchase RECs can use them to lower average emissions factors in their accounting. This allows them to report lower emissions while their real electricity consumption stays the same; as the use of a REC does not necessarily mean additional renewable power has been brought to the grid. National emissions inventories Data from facility level accounting can improve the overall quality and accuracy of national inventories by providing quality control checks on inventory estimates and through improved emissions factors. This depends in part on what percentage of the sector's emissions the available data covers. In some cases, aggregated facility level data can also be used to update or modify inventory results for certain sectors. Net Zero goals and GHG disclosure The Net Zero concept emerged from the Paris Agreement, and has become a feature of both national laws and numerous corporate goals. Race to Zero was developed in 2019 to encourage private companies and sub-national governments to commit to net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. SBTI created a Net Zero program in 2021 to assist organizations in making this transition. That standard includes restrictions on the use of carbon removals to reach net zero goals. Accurate and comprehensive GHG accounting is considered a key element of for Net Zero transition plans, including the use of protocols such as GHG Corporate Standard.The CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) is an international NGO that helps companies and cities disclose their environmental impact. It aims to make corporate accounting and reporting a business norm, and drive GHG disclosure, insight, and action. In 2021, over 14,000 organizations disclosed their environmental information through CDP. CDP's 2022 questionnaire on transition plans includes specific requirements for describing Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. Effectiveness With the growth of GHG reporting, more information is now available to provide rankings of GHG emissions from companies and cities. News media have used these rankings to bring attention to those companies. In some instances, such as media coverage of the 2017 "Carbon Majors" report by CDP, this particular use of disclosure was shown to be misleading.Understanding the overall impacts of GHG reporting in reducing an organization's emissions can be difficult. A number of studies have looked at changes in GHG emissions that occur after GHG reporting begins. There is evidence from related programs that self reporting lowers emissions. EPA's Toxic Release inventory is one such example. It has been shown to have had a significant effect in reducing emissions of chemicals once facilities are required to disclose that information.Recent studies focusing on changes in GHG emissions that result from GHG reporting have shown mixed results. Voluntary carbon reporting itself has often been shown to be ineffective in reducing GHG emissions. However, when looking at the additional impact of programs that require GHG emission reporting, studies have shown more of an effect. A recent study of UK reporting requirements showed that they do result in reduced corporate GHG emissions. Analyses of EPA's Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program found that when firms are required to disclose their facility level emissions, it can also lead to a reduction in GHG intensity of their operations, though the evidence for reductions in absolute emissions is less clear. One suggestion for the effects of specific GHG reporting requirements is that they inhibit the ability of companies to portray their emissions in a flattering way, and so are forced to actually make changes that lower GHG emissions.There are some confounding factors involved in this research. These include whether or not the studies are done in places where there is emissions trading, such as the EU ETS. Another variable is whether or not the requirements focus on larger companies that emit more GHGs. In addition, firms that are required to report on facility emissions appear to focus on controlling emissions for their affected facilities, but to then transfer emissions to nonreporting facilities that they also control. Limitations GHG accounting faces a number of challenges and critical assessments. One category involves how best to determine organizational boundaries and identify inputs and outputs most relevant to emissions. Problems also arise with characterizing uncertainty in emission estimates, and identifying what information materially affects a company's operations, and therefore needs reporting. The use of alternate standards can affect comparability across organizations, as can lack of third party verification.Accurate reporting of Scope 3 emissions is a particular challenge. These emissions can be several times greater than Scope 1 and 2 emissions. In some cases these are reported inconsistently, depending on whom they are reported to. Lack of high-quality data can also affect the accuracy of Scope 3 estimates for particular categories of upstream and downstream sources that influence Scope 3 estimates. Companies may neglect to include key Scope 3 categories when reporting to organizations such as CDP. As of 2020, only 18% of the constituents of MSCI's global security index reported Scope 3 emissions. There is also evidence that many of the high rate emitters either under-report or do not report at all. Even Scope 3 data from companies that are then analyzed and summarized by third party auditing firms tend to be highly inconsistent. There are also concerns over double counting of Scope 3 emissions as companies work with their value chain partners. Despite the uncertainty of these numbers, Scope 3 estimates are seen by many companies as important for decision making purposes. They are also considered an important tool for investors to better understand climate related risks in their portfolio.Many companies may also inaccurately estimate the climate benefits of their products. This can happen by failing to account for a product's full life cycle, using inappropriate comparisons, conflating market size with product use, and cherry picking results to skew a portfolio towards those products that have less impacts.Double counting of GHG emissions or benefits can discredit the information value. Problems created by skewed data collection methods can affect companies, GHG reduction projects, investors, those involved in carbon credits/offsets, and regulatory agencies. It can also distort perceptions of progress in reducing emissions. In corporate accounting, double-counting can reach about 30-40% of emissions in institutional portfolios. However, some accounting methods can still provide organizations with information on how to reduce real emissions.In trading schemes and regulatory/inventory schemes, double counting presents other problems. For Renewable Energy Certificates, double counting can falsely exaggerate claims about using renewable resources. Double counting of emission reductions can also produce disincentives to use international carbon trading schemes, such as the CDM. Trading participants may be reluctant to purchase credits if the credits are already used by other entities. Double counting of emission reductions could increase the global costs of reducing GHG emissions. It can also make mitigation pledges less comparable. This, in turn, can affect the credibility of the international climate control efforts, and make it more difficult to reach agreements on how to affect the drivers of climate change. Estimating the extent of double counting is difficult. Estimates depend in part on actions taken at various levels to prevent double counting.In addition to double counting, carbon offsets face a variety of other challenges that affect the quality of the offset. These include additionality, overestimation, and permanence of offsets. News stories in 2021 and 2022 have criticized nature based carbon offsets, the REDD+ program, and certification organizations. The REDD+ program in particular has been criticized as having a poor history of accounting for its results. However, positive aspects of these programs have also been highlighted. Current trends Standards alignment and interoperability As mentioned in the "Frameworks and standards" section, organizations can use a variety of accounting methods and approaches to estimate and report on GHG emissions. Some standards, such as GHG protocol, have been in existence for more than two decades. Yet efforts continue to better align these standards and create more interoperability among them. For example, the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) has also been established to develop a global baseline of sustainability standards that it hopes will help harmonize sustainability disclosure requirements. In 2022, the ISSB established a working group to enhance compatibility among various corporate disclosure requirements, including the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and SEC's 2022 disclosure rule.Although these are all based on the broader elements of the TCFD framework and GHG protocol, they differ in a variety of ways. For example, when the SEC proposal uses the term "material", it is only describing the extent to which reporting on emissions could directly impact a company financially. The CSRD proposal uses a "double materiality" criterion, which takes into consideration impacts on both a company and the public at large. It remains to be seen how these types of issues will be reconciled.Another trend is an increased convergence between voluntary standards and regulatory requirements. These began with the incorporation of voluntary offsets standards into the California Emission Trading System. More recently, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) has incorporated guidance from voluntary carbon market standards. It has approved seven such standards as eligible for use by airlines under its program. Support for net-zero goals There is also an increased focus on aligning GHG accounting standards with net-zero goals and claims. SBTi launched a net-zero corporate standard in 2021. Companies that pledge to this standard need to have both short term targets as well as targets for 2050. ISO also has a new standard under development, ISO 14068, that supports net-zero goals. It is expected to build on the original net neutrality standard, PAS 2060. Managing Scope 3 emissions For the average company, Scope 3 emissions estimates are significantly higher than the level of direct emissions. NGOs such as SBTI are working to address this. If a company's Scope 3 emissions are more than 40% of their total, that company needs a Scope 3 target to meet SBTi standards. However, only about a third of suppliers reporting to CDP as part of their Global Supply Chain program describe specific climate targets.In some cases, companies are working with their suppliers to set goals for measuring and reducing emission. Other efforts include developing supplier codes of conduct for specific business sectors. Companies may also target specific offset projects within their own Scope 3 supply chains. Government agencies have developed guidance on how to engage with suppliers, including basic questionnaires about Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. Voluntary carbon markets The voluntary market is expected to grow tremendously over the next few decades. To date, the Scope 1-3 emissions of the 54 Global Fortune 500 companies that committed to net zero by 2050 or earlier is about 2.5 gigatons of CO2 equivalent. By comparison, the volume of credits traded on the voluntary carbon market was about 300 megatons as of 2021. Global demand for carbon credits could increase up to 15 times by 2030 and 100 times by 2050. Carbon removal projects such as forestry and carbon capture and storage are expected to have a larger share of this market in the future, compared to renewable energy projects. Alternative validation approaches Techniques are being developed to use other emission data sets to validate GHG accounting methods. Project Vulcan collects data from a large number of publicly available data sources for the United States such as pollution reporting, energy statistics, power plant stack monitoring, and traffic counts. Using these data, US cities have been found to often underestimate their emissions. Methods that link emissions data with atmospheric measurements can help improve city inventories.Climate Trace is an independent organization that improves monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) by publishing point sources of carbon dioxide and methane in near-real-time. Climate Trace has found underreporting of emissions from the oil and gas sector. See also Carbon emissions trading Carbon footprint Clean Development Mechanism Cooperative Mechanisms under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement European Union Emissions Trading System Flexible Mechanisms Greenhouse gas inventory Greenhouse gas monitoring Regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act References Other books, reports and journals cited External links Business Leadership Criteria on Carbon Pricing UK Mandatory Carbon Reporting Defra The GHG Protocol The Carbon Trust Carbon Reporting Verisai EPA Regulations Greenhouse emissions report Energy and environment

water resources

Water resources are natural resources of water that are potentially useful for humans, for example as a source of drinking water supply or irrigation water. 97% of the water on Earth is salt water and only three percent is fresh water; slightly over two-thirds of this is frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps. The remaining unfrozen freshwater is found mainly as groundwater, with only a small fraction present above ground or in the air. Natural sources of fresh water include surface water, under river flow, groundwater and frozen water. Artificial sources of fresh water can include treated wastewater (wastewater reuse) and desalinated seawater. Human uses of water resources include agricultural, industrial, household, recreational and environmental activities. Water resources are under threat from water scarcity, water pollution, water conflict and climate change. Fresh water is a renewable resource, yet the world's supply of groundwater is steadily decreasing, with depletion occurring most prominently in Asia, South America and North America, although it is still unclear how much natural renewal balances this usage, and whether ecosystems are threatened. Natural sources of fresh water Natural sources of fresh water include surface water, under river flow, groundwater and frozen water. Surface water Surface water is water in a river, lake or fresh water wetland. Surface water is naturally replenished by precipitation and naturally lost through discharge to the oceans, evaporation, evapotranspiration and groundwater recharge. The only natural input to any surface water system is precipitation within its watershed. The total quantity of water in that system at any given time is also dependent on many other factors. These factors include storage capacity in lakes, wetlands and artificial reservoirs, the permeability of the soil beneath these storage bodies, the runoff characteristics of the land in the watershed, the timing of the precipitation and local evaporation rates. All of these factors also affect the proportions of water loss. Humans often increase storage capacity by constructing reservoirs and decrease it by draining wetlands. Humans often increase runoff quantities and velocities by paving areas and channelizing the stream flow. Natural surface water can be augmented by importing surface water from another watershed through a canal or pipeline. Brazil is estimated to have the largest supply of fresh water in the world, followed by Russia and Canada. Water from glaciers Glacier runoff is considered to be surface water. The Himalayas, which are often called "The Roof of the World", contain some of the most extensive and rough high altitude areas on Earth as well as the greatest area of glaciers and permafrost outside of the poles. Ten of Asia's largest rivers flow from there, and more than a billion people's livelihoods depend on them. To complicate matters, temperatures there are rising more rapidly than the global average. In Nepal, the temperature has risen by 0.6 degrees Celsius over the last decade, whereas globally, the Earth has warmed approximately 0.7 degrees Celsius over the last hundred years. Groundwater Under river flow Throughout the course of a river, the total volume of water transported downstream will often be a combination of the visible free water flow together with a substantial contribution flowing through rocks and sediments that underlie the river and its floodplain called the hyporheic zone. For many rivers in large valleys, this unseen component of flow may greatly exceed the visible flow. The hyporheic zone often forms a dynamic interface between surface water and groundwater from aquifers, exchanging flow between rivers and aquifers that may be fully charged or depleted. This is especially significant in karst areas where pot-holes and underground rivers are common. Artificial sources of usable water Artificial sources of fresh water can include treated wastewater (reclaimed water), atmospheric water generators, and desalinated seawater. However, the economic and environmental side effects of these technologies must also be taken into consideration. Wastewater reuse Desalinated water Research into other options Air-capture over oceans Researchers proposed "significantly increasing freshwater through the capture of humid air over oceans" to address present and, especially, future water scarcity/insecurity. Atmospheric water generators on land A potentials-assessment study proposed hypothetical portable solar-powered atmospheric water harvesting devices which are under development, along with design criteria, finding they could help a billion people to access safe drinking water, albeit such off-the-grid generation may sometimes "undermine efforts to develop permanent piped infrastructure" among other problems. Water uses The total quantity of water available at any given time is an important consideration. Some human water users have an intermittent need for water. For example, many farms require large quantities of water in the spring, and no water at all in the winter. To supply such a farm with water, a surface water system may require a large storage capacity to collect water throughout the year and release it in a short period of time. Other users have a continuous need for water, such as a power plant that requires water for cooling. To supply such a power plant with water, a surface water system only needs enough storage capacity to fill in when average stream flow is below the power plant's need. Nevertheless, over the long term the average rate of precipitation within a watershed is the upper bound for average consumption of natural surface water from that watershed. Agriculture and other irrigation Industries It is estimated that 22% of worldwide water is used in industry. Major industrial users include hydroelectric dams, thermoelectric power plants, which use water for cooling, ore and oil refineries, which use water in chemical processes, and manufacturing plants, which use water as a solvent. Water withdrawal can be very high for certain industries, but consumption is generally much lower than that of agriculture. Water is used in renewable power generation. Hydroelectric power derives energy from the force of water flowing downhill, driving a turbine connected to a generator. This hydroelectricity is a low-cost, non-polluting, renewable energy source. Significantly, hydroelectric power can also be used for load following unlike most renewable energy sources which are intermittent. Ultimately, the energy in a hydroelectric power plant is supplied by the sun. Heat from the sun evaporates water, which condenses as rain in higher altitudes and flows downhill. Pumped-storage hydroelectric plants also exist, which use grid electricity to pump water uphill when demand is low, and use the stored water to produce electricity when demand is high. Thermoelectric power plants using cooling towers have high consumption, nearly equal to their withdrawal, as most of the withdrawn water is evaporated as part of the cooling process. The withdrawal, however, is lower than in once-through cooling systems. Water is also used in many large scale industrial processes, such as thermoelectric power production, oil refining, fertilizer production and other chemical plant use, and natural gas extraction from shale rock. Discharge of untreated water from industrial uses is pollution. Pollution includes discharged solutes and increased water temperature (thermal pollution). Drinking water and domestic use (households) It is estimated that 8% of worldwide water use is for domestic purposes. These include drinking water, bathing, cooking, toilet flushing, cleaning, laundry and gardening. Basic domestic water requirements have been estimated by Peter Gleick at around 50 liters per person per day, excluding water for gardens. Drinking water is water that is of sufficiently high quality so that it can be consumed or used without risk of immediate or long term harm. Such water is commonly called potable water. In most developed countries, the water supplied to domestic, commerce and industry is all of drinking water standard even though only a very small proportion is actually consumed or used in food preparation. 844 million people still lacked even a basic drinking water service in 2017.: 3  Of those, 159 million people worldwide drink water directly from surface water sources, such as lakes and streams.: 3  One in eight people in the world do not have access to safe water. Environment Explicit environment water use is also a very small but growing percentage of total water use. Environmental water may include water stored in impoundments and released for environmental purposes (held environmental water), but more often is water retained in waterways through regulatory limits of abstraction. Environmental water usage includes watering of natural or artificial wetlands, artificial lakes intended to create wildlife habitat, fish ladders, and water releases from reservoirs timed to help fish spawn, or to restore more natural flow regimes.Environmental usage is non-consumptive but may reduce the availability of water for other users at specific times and places. For example, water release from a reservoir to help fish spawn may not be available to farms upstream, and water retained in a river to maintain waterway health would not be available to water abstractors downstream. Recreation Recreational water use is mostly tied to lakes, dams, rivers or oceans. If a water reservoir is kept fuller than it would otherwise be for recreation, then the water retained could be categorized as recreational usage. Examples are anglers, water skiers, nature enthusiasts and swimmers. Recreational usage is usually non-consumptive. However, recreational usage may reduce the availability of water for other users at specific times and places. For example, water retained in a reservoir to allow boating in the late summer is not available to farmers during the spring planting season. Water released for whitewater rafting may not be available for hydroelectric generation during the time of peak electrical demand. Challenges and threats Threats for the availability of water resources include: Water scarcity, water pollution, water conflict and climate change. Water scarcity Water pollution Water conflict Climate change Water resource management Water resource management is the activity of planning, developing, distributing and managing the optimum use of water resources. It is an aspect of water cycle management. The field of water resources management will have to continue to adapt to the current and future issues facing the allocation of water. With the growing uncertainties of global climate change and the long-term impacts of past management actions, this decision-making will be even more difficult. It is likely that ongoing climate change will lead to situations that have not been encountered. As a result, alternative management strategies, including participatory approaches and adaptive capacity are increasingly being used to strengthen water decision-making. Ideally, water resource management planning has regard to all the competing demands for water and seeks to allocate water on an equitable basis to satisfy all uses and demands. As with other resource management, this is rarely possible in practice so decision-makers must prioritise issues of sustainability, equity and factor optimisation (in that order!) to achieve acceptable outcomes. One of the biggest concerns for water-based resources in the future is the sustainability of the current and future water resource allocation. Sustainable Development Goal 6 has a target related to water resources management: "Target 6.5: By 2030, implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate." Sustainable water management At present, only about 0.08 percent of all the world's fresh water is accessible. And there is ever-increasing demand for drinking, manufacturing, leisure and agriculture. Due to the small percentage of water available, optimizing the fresh water we have left from natural resources has been a growing challenge around the world. Much effort in water resource management is directed at optimizing the use of water and in minimizing the environmental impact of water use on the natural environment. The observation of water as an integral part of the ecosystem is based on integrated water resources management, based on the 1992 Dublin Principles (see below). Sustainable water management requires a holistic approach based on the principles of Integrated Water Resource Management, originally articulated in 1992 at the Dublin (January) and Rio (July) conferences. The four Dublin Principles, promulgated in the Dublin Statement are: Fresh water is a finite and vulnerable resource, essential to sustain life, development and the environment; Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners and policy-makers at all levels; Women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water; Water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as an economic good.Implementation of these principles has guided reform of national water management law around the world since 1992. Further challenges to sustainable and equitable water resources management include the fact that many water bodies are shared across boundaries which may be international (see water conflict) or intra-national (see Murray-Darling basin). Integrated water resources management Integrated water resources management (IWRM) has been defined by the Global Water Partnership (GWP) as "a process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources, in order to maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems".Some scholars say that IWRM is complementary to water security because water security is a goal or destination, whilst IWRM is the process necessary to achieve that goal.IWRM is a paradigm that emerged at international conferences in the late 1900s and early 2000s, although participatory water management institutions have existed for centuries. Discussions on a holistic way of managing water resources began already in the 1950s leading up to the 1977 United Nations Water Conference. The development of IWRM was particularly recommended in the final statement of the ministers at the International Conference on Water and the Environment in 1992, known as the Dublin Statement. This concept aims to promote changes in practices which are considered fundamental to improved water resource management. IWRM was a topic of the second World Water Forum, which was attended by a more varied group of stakeholders than the preceding conferences and contributed to the creation of the GWP.In the International Water Association definition, IWRM rests upon three principles that together act as the overall framework: Social equity: ensuring equal access for all users (particularly marginalized and poorer user groups) to an adequate quantity and quality of water necessary to sustain human well-being. Economic efficiency: bringing the greatest benefit to the greatest number of users possible with the available financial and water resources. Ecological sustainability: requiring that aquatic ecosystems are acknowledged as users and that adequate allocation is made to sustain their natural functioning.In 2002, the development of IWRM was discussed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg, which aimed to encourage the implementation of IWRM at a global level. The third World Water Forum recommended IWRM and discussed information sharing, stakeholder participation, and gender and class dynamics.Operationally, IWRM approaches involve applying knowledge from various disciplines as well as the insights from diverse stakeholders to devise and implement efficient, equitable and sustainable solutions to water and development problems. As such, IWRM is a comprehensive, participatory planning and implementation tool for managing and developing water resources in a way that balances social and economic needs, and that ensures the protection of ecosystems for future generations. In addition, in light of contributing the achievement of Sustainable Development goals (SDGs), IWRM has been evolving into more sustainable approach as it considers the Nexus approach, which is a cross-sectoral water resource management. The Nexus approach is based on the recognition that "water, energy and food are closely linked through global and local water, carbon and energy cycles or chains." An IWRM approach aims at avoiding a fragmented approach of water resources management by considering the following aspects: Enabling environment, roles of Institutions, management Instruments. Some of the cross-cutting conditions that are also important to consider when implementing IWRM are: Political will and commitment, capacity development, adequate investment, financial stability and sustainable cost recovery, monitoring and evaluation. There is not one correct administrative model. The art of IWRM lies in selecting, adjusting and applying the right mix of these tools for a given situation. IWRM practices depend on context; at the operational level, the challenge is to translate the agreed principles into concrete action. Managing water in urban settings By country Water resource management and governance is handled differently by different countries. For example, in the United States, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and its partners monitor water resources, conduct research and inform the public about groundwater quality. Water resources in specific countries are described below: See also International trade and water List of sovereign states by freshwater withdrawal List of countries by total renewable water resources Socio-hydrology Virtual water Water resources law Water rights Water storage References External links Renewable water resources in the world by country Portal to international hydrology and water resources Cap-Net, Network for Capacity Building in Sustainable Water Management CKnet-INA, Indonesian Integrated Water Resource Management Secretariat Sustainable Sanitation and Water Management Toolbox

climate change in south africa

Climate change in South Africa is leading to increased temperatures and rainfall variability. Evidence shows that extreme weather events are becoming more prominent due to climate change. This is a critical concern for South Africans as climate change will affect the overall status and wellbeing of the country, for example with regards to water resources. Just like many other parts of the world, climate research showed that the real challenge in South Africa was more related to environmental issues rather than developmental ones. The most severe effect will be targeting the water supply, which has huge effects on the agriculture sector. Speedy environmental changes are resulting in clear effects on the community and environmental level in different ways and aspects, starting with air quality, to temperature and weather patterns, reaching out to food security and disease burden.The various effects of climate change on rural communities are expected to include: drought, depletion of water resources and biodiversity, soil erosion, decreased subsistence economies and cessation of cultural activities.South Africa contributes considerable CO2 emissions, being the 14th largest emitter of CO2. Above the global average, South Africa had 9.5 tons of CO2 emissions per capita in 2015. This is in large part due to its energy system relying heavily on coal and oil. As part of its international commitments, South Africa has pledged to peak emissions between 2020 and 2025. Greenhouse gas emissions South Africa is the world's 14th largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Energy sector Renewable energy Transportation The transport sector in South Africa contributes 10.8% of total Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions in the country. Apart from the direct emissions, indirect emissions through the production and transportation of fuels also provide substantial emissions. Road transport, in particular, contributes approximately three quarters to total transport emissions. Impacts on the natural environment Temperature and weather changes There has been different confirmations over climate change effects in South Africa with a rapid decrease in rain fall and noticed high temperature levels. Climate change is expected to raise temperatures in South Africa by 2-3 degrees Celsius by mid-century, and 3-4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century in an intermediate scenario. Impacts will also include changing rain patterns and increased evaporation, increasing the likelihood of extreme droughts. Africa is currently and prospectively suffering from significant heat waves based on the nature of the continent amid the current environmental crisis. Impacts on people Economic impacts Agriculture The main challenge that faces any nation because of climate change is its direct effect on food security. In this sense, Africa is listed as the most vulnerable continent to climate changes. In Ethiopia for example, food production faces a lot of challenges because of climate change. It is noted that there is an increase in the annual production losses to climate changes from year to year.Agriculture is expected to be negatively impacted by droughts, reduced rainfall, pests, and other changes in the environment due to climate change. Higher temperatures in South Africa and less rainfall will result in limited water resources and changing soil moisture, leading to decreased cropland productivity.Some predictions show surface water supply could decrease by 60% by the year 2070 in parts of the Western Cape. To reverse the damage caused by land mismanagement, the government has supported a scheme which promotes sustainable development and the use of natural resources.Maize production, which contributes to a 36% majority of the gross value of South Africa's field crops, has also experienced negative effects due to climate change. The estimated value of the loss, which takes into consideration scenarios with and without the carbon dioxide fertilization effect, ranges between tens and hundreds of millions of rands. Tourism South Africa has an important tourism aspect to look at and give considerable attention to when considering climate change impact. This is a sensitive sector to mention but its importance lies in its vulnerability to climate change that is growing lately. Challenges exceed the fact that there is a need to pave the way for more tourists to come. South Africa's main concern extends to develop poverty mitigation plans resulted from climate change in South Africa. Tourism urged policy makers in Africa to improve job opportunities, economical growth and support different industries. There are different critical challenges facing Tourism sector in South Africa and that was mainly a result of Climate Change effects. In this regard, it is important to notice that the national government in South Africa started to implement new tourism and climate based policies to over come the challenges. It is significant to mention that the general climate in South Africa suffers from varied conditions and changes/ These variations target summer and winter rainfall regions, subtropical areas, and both humid and arid regions. Health impacts There is evidence that climate change will have negative impacts on public health in South Africa, especially due to the high proportion of vulnerable people. There is already a high burden of disease in South Africa linked to environmental stressors and climate change will exacerbate many of these social and environmental issues. Climate change is projected to threaten public health through increased heat stress, rises in vector-borne diseases and infectious diseases, worsening extreme weather events, a decline in food security, and increased mental health stress. A 2019 survey of literature on adaptation and public health, found that "the volume and quality of research is disappointing, and disproportionate to the threat posed by climate change in South Africa.". Mitigation The South African government has committed to a peak of CO2 emissions between 2020 and 2025. South Africa has agreed to working with other signatories of the Paris Agreement to keep temperature increases below 2 °C. However, independent observers have called the current actions by the government insufficient. In part, this failure to act is related to the government ownership of Eskom, which is responsible for much of the coal operation in the country. Similarly, the economy is one of the most energy-intensive in the world although it has not been setting mitigation targets for industry. Catalysing finance and investment to transition to a low-carbon economy and society is a major challenge for South Africa.Like all countries which are party to the Paris Agreement South Africa will report its greenhouse gas inventory to the UNFCCC at least biennially from 2024 at the latest.The European Investment Bank Global and the Development Bank of Southern Africa have agreed to a €200 million loan to support a new targeted financing initiative aimed at unlocking €400 million for private sector renewable energy investment in South Africa. Adaptation The South African government drafted its National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy (NCCAS) in 2019. This strategy presents a vision for adapting to climate change and increasing resilience in the country. This strategy also and outlines priority areas for achieving this vision, which includes water resources, agriculture and commercial forestry, health, biodiversity and ecosystems, human settlements, and disaster risk reduction. This strategy was also developed to act on the country's commitment to its obligations in the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). South Africa is in the progress of finalizing its national climate change adaptation strategy. "The National Adaptation strategy acts as a common reference point for climate change adaptation efforts in South Africa, and it provides a platform upon which national climate change adaptation objectives for the country can be articulated so as to provide overarching guidance to all sectors of the economy" Society and culture Activism Amid the 2011 UN Climate Change Conference (COP17) held in Durban, demonstrations and protests were organized to raise concerns on climate change issues. A march gathering 12,000 people urged the delegates at COP17 to take urgent climate action. Protesters also made an intrusion into the conference venue at the time when the negotiations were at the deadlock. Public awareness Popular awareness of these potential impacts increased with the 2018–20 Southern Africa drought and subsequent Cape Town water crisis. See also Climate change in Africa Plug-in electric vehicles in South Africa Environmental movement in South Africa == References ==

psychological impact of climate change

The psychological impacts of climate change concerns effects climate change can have on individuals' mental and emotional well-being. They may also relate to more generalised effects on groups and their behaviours, such as the urge to migrate from affected areas of the globe to areas perceived as less affected. These impacts can manifest in various ways and affect people of all ages and backgrounds. Some of the key psychological impacts of climate change include: emotional states such as eco-anxiety, ecological grief, eco-anger or solastalgia. While troublesome, such emotions may not appear immediately harmful and can lead to a rational response to the degradation of the natural world motivating adaptive action. However, there can be other effects on health, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), for instance, as a result of witnessing or seeing reports of massive wildfires, which may be more dangerous. Efforts to understand the psychological impacts of climate change have antecedents in work from the 20th century and even earlier, making evidence-based links to the changing physical and social environment resulting from accelerated human activity dating from the so called, industrial revolution. Empirical investigation of psychological impacts specifically related to climate change began in the late 20th century, and have intensified in the first decade of the 21st. From the early 2010s, psychologists were increasingly calling on each other to contribute to the understanding of psychological impacts from climate change. Academic, medical professionals, and various actors are actively seeking to understand these impacts, provide relief, make accurate predictions, and assist in efforts to mitigate and adapt to global warming including attempts to pause activity leading to further warming.There are several channels through which climate change can impact a person's mental health, including direct impacts, indirect effects, and awareness of the issue. It has been observed that certain populations, such as communities of color, children, and adolescents, are particularly vulnerable to these mental health impacts. There are many exceptions, but generally it is people in developing countries who are more exposed to the direct impact and economic disruption caused by climate changes.The psychological effects of climate change may be investigated within the field of climate psychology, or picked up in the course of treatment of mental health disorders. Non-clinical approaches, campaigning options, internet based support forums, and self-help books may be adopted by those not overwhelmed by climate anxiety. Some psychological impacts may not receive any form of treatment at all, and could be productive: for example, when concern about climate change is channeled into information gathering and seeking to influence related policy with others. The psychological effects of climate may receive attention from governments and others involved in creating public policy, by means of campaigning and lobbying by groups and NGOs. History Efforts to understand the psychological impacts of climate change have antecedents in work from the 20th century and even earlier, to understand reactions to the changing physical and social environment that arose from changes such as the industrial revolution. Empirical investigation of psychological impacts specifically related to climate change began in the late 20th century, and became more frequent in the first decade of the 21st. From the early 2010s, psychologists were increasingly calling on each other to contribute to the understanding of psychological impacts from climate change. While psychologists had almost zero involvement in the first five IPCC reports, at least five will be contributing to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, which should be fully published by 2022. As of 2020, the discipline of climate psychology had grown to include many subfields. Climate psychologists are working with the United nations, with national and local governments, with corporations, NGOs and individuals. Pathways Three causal pathways by which climate change causes psychological effects have been suggested: direct, indirect or via psychosocial awareness. In some cases, people may be affected via more than one pathway at once.There are three broad channels by which climate change affects people's mental state: directly, indirectly or unconsciously. The direct channel includes stress-related conditions being caused by exposure to extreme weather events, such as cyclones and wildfires, causing conditions such as PTS and anxiety disorder. However, psychological impacts can also occur through less intense forms of climate change such as through temperatures rising leading to increased aggression. The indirect pathway occurs via disruption to economic and social activities, such as when an area of farmland becomes infertile due to desertification or a decrease in tourism due to damage to the landscape, or interruptions to transport. This can lead to increased stress, depression and other psychological conditions such as anxiety. And the third channel can be through unconscious awareness of the climate change threat, even by individuals who are not otherwise affected by it. This can be, for instance, feeling intimidated by the threats of food and water insecurity, posed by climate change which can lead to conflict. In general, populations living at sea-level and in the Southern Hemisphere tend to be more exposed to economic disruption caused by climate change. Whereas recently identified climate-related psychological conditions like "eco-anxiety", resulting from emergent awareness of the threat, can affect people across the planet. Direct impact Exposure to extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods or high temperatures associated with drought and wildfires, can cause a range of emotional disorders. Most commonly this is short term stress, from which people can often make a rapid recovery. But sometimes chronic conditions set in, especially among those who have been exposed to multiple events, such as post traumatic stress, somatoform disorder or long term anxiety. A swift response by authorities to restore a sense of order and security can substantially reduce the risk of any long term psychological impact for most people. However individuals already suffering from mental ill health and who do not receive required attention when services are disrupted by weather conditions, may face further decline.The single best studied connection between weather and human behaviour is that between temperature and aggression, which has been investigated in laboratory settings, by historical study, and extensive fieldwork. Various reviews conclude that high temperatures cause people to become bad tempered, leading to increased physical violence, including domestic violence, especially in areas of mixed ethnic groups. There has been academic dispute regarding the degree to which the excess violence is caused by climate change, as opposed to natural temperature variability. The psychological effects of unusually low temperatures, which climate change can also cause in some parts of the world, is much less well documented. Though available evidence suggests that unlike unusually high temperatures, they are less likely to lead to increased aggression. Indirect pathway In all parts of the world, climate change significantly impacts people's financial stability, for example by reducing agricultural output, or by making an area unattractive for tourism. This can cause significant stress, which in turn can lead to depression and other negative psychological conditions. Consequences can be especially severe if financial stress is coupled with significant disruption to social life, such as relocation to camps. For example, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the suicide rate for the general population rose by about 300%, but for those who were displaced and had to move into trailer parks, it rose by over 1400%. Effective inter-governmental interventions especially in some of the less prosperous countries in the global south, can alleviate an immediate crisis.Effects on mental health can occur via impacts on physical health since they are bonded, so any climate change related effects on physical health can potentially directly affect mental health. Environmental disruption, such as the loss of bio-diversity, or even the loss of environmental features like sea-ice, cultural landscapes, or historic heritage can also cause negative psychological responses, such as ecological grief or solastalgia. Unconscious awareness Information about the risks posed by climate change, even to those not yet directly affected by it, can cause long lasting psychological conditions, such as anxiety or other forms of distress. This can especially affect children, and has been compared to nuclear anxiety which occurred during the Cold War. Conditions such as eco-anxiety are very rarely severe enough to require clinical treatment. While unpleasant and thus classified as negative, such conditions have been described as valid rational responses to the reality of climate change. Mental health Specific conditions As climate change becomes increasingly evident and threatening to both the biosphere and human livelihoods, the feelings aroused in response are a focus for exploration. Emotions such as feelings of loss and anxiety, grief and guilt, appear as common responses to perceived threats posed by climate change. Such various emotions have been collectively referred to in the literature as climate distress. Climate change is associated with increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events, and the impacts of discrete events such as natural disasters on mental health has been demonstrated through decades of research showing increased levels of PTSD, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and even domestic violence following the experience of storms.Emotional reactions are being studied in relation to climate change. Feelings of loss can originate in anticipation of impending catastrophe, as well as after actual destruction. The corresponding 'anticipatory mourning' has been explored. The feelings of grief and distress in response to ecological destruction have elsewhere been termed 'solastalgia' and the response to pollution of the local environment has been termed 'environmental melancholia'.However feelings in response to climate change and its broader ramifications can be unconscious or not fully recognized. This can result in feelings of despair and unease, particularly in young people. It can surface in those attending therapy. This makes it difficult to give name to what one is feeling, so it is generally termed as eco-anxiety- particularly when this negative effect takes on more intense forms such as sleeping disorders and ruminative thinking. Rather than see eco-anxiety as a pathology requiring treatment Bednarek has suggested that it be construed as an adaptive, healthy response. It is often difficult to conceptualize emotions in response to the unseen or intangible aspects of climate change. Theoretical approaches have suggested this is due to climate change being part of a greater construct than human cognition can fully comprehend, known as a 'hyperobject'. One of the techniques used by climate psychologists to engage with such 'unthought knowns' and their unconscious, unexplored, emotional implications is 'social dreaming'.Awareness of climate change and its destructive impact, happening in both the present and future, is often very overwhelming. Literature investigating how individuals and society respond to crisis and disaster found that when there was space to process and reflect on emotional experiences, these increased emotions were adaptive. Furthermore, this then led to growth and resilience. Doppelt suggested 'transformational resilience' as a property of social systems, in which adversities are catalysts for new meaning and direction in life, leading to changes that increase both individual and community wellbeing above previous levels. Anthropological perspective on climate psychology Climate change has devastating effects on Indigenous peoples' psychological wellbeing as it impacts them directly and indirectly. As their lifestyles are often closely linked to the land, climate change directly impacts their physical health and financial stability in quantifiable ways. There is also a concerning correlation between severe mental health issues among Indigenous peoples worldwide and environmental changes. The connection and value Indigenous cultures ascribe to land means that damage to or separation from it, directly impacts mental health. For many, their country is interwoven with psychological aspects such as their identity, community and rituals. This interconnectedness informs a holistic perspective of health which requires balance and spiritual connection to the environment, both of which climate change threatens and Western climate actors do not fully understand.Inadequate government responses which neglect Indigenous knowledge further worsen negative psychological effects linked to climate change. This produces the risk of cultural homogenization due to global adaptation efforts to climate change and the disruption of cultural traditions due to forced relocation. Countries with lower socio-economic status and minority groups in high socio-economic areas are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. This has created environmental refugees due to worsening environmental conditions and catastrophic climate events.Changes in cultural practice and social behavior occurred along with the intensifying climate crisis. Indigenous culture is one example of this shift as the human body embodies the surrounding physical environment. Understanding how these cultural shifts in the climate crisis influence mental health is essential in creating and providing appropriate support. Anthropologists provide an essential tool for understanding the implications of the climate crisis on human health. The 'environmental body' expands on Scheper-Hughes and Lock theory of the 'three bodies' – the phenomenological body, the body politic, and the symbolically lived body social. It is now necessary to understand mental health, not just as a product of biomedical imbalance, but as a result of the climate crisis. The hegemonic ideology that prioritizes economic expansion drastically affects mental wellbeing and must be brought to light and challenged. The effects will only intensify over time as unpredictable environmental disasters worsen. Due to the extensive impacts of climate change on Indigenous mental health, it is crucial for Indigenous perspectives to be carefully considered and increasingly incorporated in the field of climate psychology. Other Other climate specific psychological impacts are less well studied than eco-anxiety. They include eco-depression, eco-anger, and states of denial or numbness, which can be brought on by too much exposure to alarmist presentation of the climate threat. A study that used confirmatory factor analysis to separate out the effects of eco-anxiety, eco-depression and eco-anger, found that eco-anger is the best for the person's wellbeing, and also good for motivating participation in both collective and individual action to mitigate climate change. A separate 2021 report found that eco-anger was significantly more common among young people. A 2021 review of literature found that emotional responses to crisis can be adaptive when the individual has the capacity and support to process and reflect on this emotion. In these cases, individuals are able to grow from their experiences and support others. In the context of climate change, this capacity for deep reflection is necessary to navigate the emotional challenges that both individuals and societies face. Impacts on specific groups People express differing intensities of concern and grief about climate change depending on their worldview, with those holding egoistic (defined as people who mostly care about oneself and their health and wellbeing), social-altruistic (defined as people who express concern for others in their community like future generations, friends, family and general public) and biospheric (defined as people who are concerned about environmental aspects like plants and animals) views differing markedly. People who belong to the biospheric group expressed the most concern about ecological stress/grief i.e., a form of grief related to worries about the state of the world's environment, and engage in ecological coping, – ecological coping includes connection to community, expression of sorrow and grief, shifting focus to controllable aspects of climate change and being close to nature – people who belonged to the social-altruistic group engaged in ecological coping but did not express ecological stress. Indigenous communities Indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by climate change. "The impacts of climate change that we are feeling today, from extreme heat to flooding to severe storms, are expected to get worse, and people least able to prepare and cope are disproportionately exposed," said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. This has short- and long-term effects on physical and mental health. It is important to recognize how environmentalism and racism are intertwined—how the repercussions of slavery and colonialism and continuous police brutality still play a key role in climate change in communities of color. The response to eco-anxiety is focused on the dominant groups in society and neglects the marginalized communities. According to Mental Health America, 17% of Black people and 23% of Native Americans live with a mental illness.Research has shown that communities of color are less likely to have access to mental health services, less likely to seek out treatment, and more likely to receive low or poor quality of care. This is due to an overwhelming amount of racial, structural, and cultural barriers these communities face. Eco-anxiety is affecting the majority of young adults because they have grown up with climate change and see the impacts it has on them locally. There are very few resources for communities of color to help them cope with eco-anxiety. Researchers recommend talking with a local therapist, reconnecting with nature, and focusing on positive news of climate change. Many minority and low-income communities do not have the same access to green spaces or playgrounds compared to suburban communities. Studies have shown the positive impact that physical activity can have on mental health, but once again they do not have access to this resource. People of Color Climate change disproportionately impacts people of color, exacerbating existing social and economic disparities. Environmental racism, where communities of color are more likely to be exposed to environmental hazards, intensifies as climate change intensifies. These communities often reside in areas with poor air quality, proximity to industrial facilities, or vulnerable coastal regions, making them more susceptible to the adverse effects of extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods, and heatwaves.Moreover, climate change can also disrupt livelihoods, as many people of color heavily rely on agriculture, fisheries, or forestry for income, and these sectors are often vulnerable to changing weather patterns. The loss of these livelihoods can lead to increased financial stress and insecurity. Additionally access to resources and opportunities for adaption and mitigation measures can be limited for marginalized communities, hindering their ability to cope with the impacts of climate change effectively. Lack of representation in decision-making processes and limited access to education on climate change exacerbate these challenges. The psychological toll on people of color is significant, as they experience not only the direct impacts of climate change but also the stress and anxiety arising from systemic inequalities. Coping with environmental hazards while facing socioeconomic disadvantages can lead to mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, and trauma. Recognizing and addressing these disparities is crucial in the fight against climate change. Solutions must be inclusive, Children Children and young adults are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts. Many of the climate change impacts which affect children's physical health also lead to psychological and mental health consequences. Children who live in geographic locations that are most susceptible to the impacts of climate change, and/or with weaker infrastructure and fewer supports and services suffer the worst impacts.Even though children and young adults are the most vulnerable group regarding impacts of climate change, they have received far less research focus as compared to adults. The World Health Organization states that more than 88% of the existing burden of disease attributable to climate change occurs in children younger than 5 years. The impacts of climate change on children include them being at a high risk of mental health consequences like PTSD, depression, anxiety, phobias, sleep disorders, attachment disorders, and substance abuse. These conditions can lead to problems with emotion regulation, cognition, learning, behavior, language development, and academic performance.A 2018 study argued that it was crucial to gather information about how children are psychologically affected by climate change because of three major reasons: Children will bear a larger burden of the negative consequences of climate change over their lifetimes, and hence, society needs to know how to reduce these impacts and protect them; They are the next leaders of society and how they are responding psychologically now has importance for their current and future decision-making; They will need the capacity to adapt to a climate-changed world, including a rapid transition to a low-carbon economy psychologically and physically and they will require particular knowledge, attitudes, and attributes to facilitate this adaptation. Adaptive impacts While most studies on the psychological impact of climate change finds negative effects, other or adaptive impacts are also possible. Direct experience of the negative effects of climate change may lead to positive personal change. For some individuals, experiencing environmental events such as flooding have resulted in greater psychological salience and concern for climate change, which in turn predicts intentions, behaviors, and support for policy in response to climate change . A potential example of positive impact via the indirect channel would be financial benefits for the minority of farmers who could enjoy increased crop yields. While the overall effects of climate change on agriculture are predicted to be strongly negative, some crops in certain areas are predicted to benefit.At a personal level, emotions like worry and anxiety are a normal, if uncomfortable, part of life. They can be seen as part of a defense system that identifies threats and deals with them. From this perspective, anxiety can be useful in motivating people to seek information and take action on a problem. Anxiety and worry are more likely to be associated with engagement when people feel that they can do things. Feelings of agency can be strengthened by including people in participatory decision-making. Problem-focused and meaning-focused coping skills can also be promoted. Problem-focused coping involves information gathering and trying to find out what you personally can do. Meaning-focused coping involves behaviors such as identifying positive information, focusing on constructive sources of hope, and trusting that other people are also doing their part. A sense of agency, coping skills, and social support are all important in building general resilience. Education may benefit from a focus around emotional awareness and the development of sustainable emotion-regulation strategies. For some individuals, the increased engagement caused by the shared struggle against climate change reduces social isolation and loneliness. At a community level, learning about the science of climate change, and taking collective action in response to the threat, can increase altruism and social cohesion, strengthen social bonds, and improve resilience. Such positive social impact is generally associated only with communities that had somewhat high social cohesion in the first place, prompting community leaders to act to improve social resiliency before climate-related disruption becomes too severe. Mitigation efforts Psychologists have increasingly been assisting the worldwide community in facing the "diabolically" difficult challenge of organizing effective climate change mitigation efforts. Much work has been done on how to best communicate climate related information so that it has positive psychological impact, leading to people engaging in the problem, rather than evoking psychological defenses like denial, distance or a numbing sense of doom. As well as advising on the method of communication, psychologists have investigated the difference it make when the right sort of person is doing the communication – for example, when addressing American conservatives, climate related messages have been shown to be received more positively if delivered by former military officers. Various people who are not primarily psychologists have also been advising on psychological matters related to climate change. For example, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, who led the efforts to organize the unprecedentedly successful 2015 Paris Agreement, have since campaigned to spread the view that a "stubborn optimism" mindset should ideally be part of an individual's psychological response to the climate change challenge. See also Barriers to pro-environmental behaviour Eco-anxiety Effects of climate change on human health Effects of climate change on mental health Politics of climate change Psychological impact of discrimination on health Psychology of climate change denial Notes References External links How to transform apocalypse fatigue into action on global warming , TED Talk by Per Espen Stoknes on overcoming defensive psychological impacts Climate Psychologists Climate Psychiatry Alliance

energy subsidy

Energy subsidies are measures that keep prices for customers below market levels, or for suppliers above market levels, or reduce costs for customers and suppliers. Energy subsidies may be direct cash transfers to suppliers, customers, or related bodies, as well as indirect support mechanisms, such as tax exemptions and rebates, price controls, trade restrictions, and limits on market access. The International Renewable Energy Agency tracked some $634 billion in energy-sector subsidies in 2020, and found that around 70% were fossil fuel subsidies. About 20% went to renewable power generation, 6% to biofuels and just over 3% to nuclear. Overview of all sources of energy If governments choose to subsidize one particular source of energy more than another, that choice can impact the environment. That distinguishing factor informs the below discussion on all energy subsidies of all sources of energy in general. Main arguments for energy subsidies are: Security of supply – subsidies are used to ensure adequate domestic supply by supporting indigenous fuel production in order to reduce import dependency, or supporting overseas activities of national energy companies, or to secure the electricity grid. Environmental and health improvement – subsidies are used to improve health by reducing air pollution, and to fulfill international climate pledges. For example the IEA says the purchase price of heat pumps should be subsidized. Economic benefits – subsidies in the form of reduced prices are used to stimulate particular economic sectors or segments of the population, e.g. alleviating poverty and increasing access to energy in developing countries. With regards to fossil fuel prices in particular, Ian Parry, the lead author of a 2021 IMF report said, “Some countries are reluctant to raise energy prices because they think it will harm the poor. But holding down fossil fuel prices is a highly inefficient way to help the poor, because most of the benefits accrue to wealthier households. It would be better to target resources towards helping poor and vulnerable people directly.” Employment and social benefits – subsidies are used to maintain employment, especially in periods of economic transition. In 2021, with regards to fossil fuel prices in particular, Ipek Gençsü, at the Overseas Development Institute, said: “[Subsidy reform] requires support for vulnerable consumers who will be impacted by rising costs, as well for workers in industries which simply have to shut down. It also requires information campaigns, showing how the savings will be redistributed to society in the form of healthcare, education and other social services. Many people oppose subsidy reform because they see it solely as governments taking something away, and not giving back.”Main arguments against energy subsidies are: Some energy subsidies, such as the fossil fuel subsidies (oil, coal, and gas subsidies), counter the goal of sustainable development, as they may lead to higher consumption and waste, exacerbating the harmful effects of energy use on the environment, create a heavy burden on government finances and weaken the potential for economies to grow, undermine private and public investment in the energy sector. Also, most benefits from fossil fuel subsidies in developing countries go to the richest 20% of households. Impede the expansion of distribution networks and the development of more environmentally benign energy technologies, and do not always help the people that need them most. The study conducted by the World Bank finds that subsidies to the large commercial businesses that dominate the energy sector are not justified. However, under some circumstances it is reasonable to use subsidies to promote access to energy for the poorest households in developing countries. Energy subsidies should encourage access to the modern energy sources, not to cover operating costs of companies. The study conducted by the World Resources Institute finds that energy subsidies often go to capital intensive projects at the expense of smaller or distributed alternatives.Types of energy subsidies are below. ("Fossil-fuel subsidies generally take two forms. Production subsidies...[and]...consumption subsidies."): Direct financial transfers – grants to suppliers; grants to customers; low-interest or preferential loans to suppliers. Preferential tax treatments – rebates or exemption on royalties, duties, supplier levies and tariffs; tax credit; accelerated depreciation allowances on energy supply equipment. Trade restrictions – quota, technical restrictions and trade embargoes. Energy-related services provided by government at less than full cost – direct investment in energy infrastructure; public research and development. Regulation of the energy sector – demand guarantees and mandated deployment rates; price controls; market-access restrictions; preferential planning consent and controls over access to resources. Failure to impose external costs – environmental externality costs; energy security risks and price volatility costs. Depletion Allowance – allows a deduction from gross income of up to ~27% for the depletion of exhaustible resources (oil, gas, minerals).Overall, energy subsidies require coordination and integrated implementation, especially in light of globalization and increased interconnectedness of energy policies, thus their regulation at the World Trade Organization is often seen as necessary. Support for new technology Early support of solar power by the United States and Germany greatly helped renewable energy commercialization to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, but may not have helped local manufacturing. Support for nuclear fusion continues, although it is not expected to be commercially viable in time to contribute to countries net zero targets. Energy storage research is also supported. Fossil fuel subsidies See also Fossil fuel subsidies Corporate welfare Building-integrated photovoltaics Government subsidies Feed-in tariff Gasoline subsidies Renewable Energy Certificates Renewable energy commercialization Renewable energy payments Stranded assets Financial incentives for photovoltaics References Bibliography Difiglio, Prof. Carmine; Güray, Bora Şekip; Merdan, Ersin (November 2020). Turkey Energy Outlook. iicec.sabanciuniv.edu (Report). Sabanci University Istanbul International Center for Energy and Climate (IICEC). ISBN 978-605-70031-9-5. External links Fossil Fuel Subsidy Tracker- a collaboration between the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) Global Subsidies Initiative - a project of the International Institute for Sustainable Development OECD-IEA analysis of fossil fuels and other support - OECD European countries spend billions a year on fossil fuel subsidies, survey shows (2017)

commission for environmental cooperation

The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC; Spanish: Comisión para la Cooperación Ambiental; French: Commission de coopération environnementale) was established by Canada, Mexico, and the United States to implement the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), the environmental side accord to the North American Free Trade Agreement. The CEC's mission is to facilitate cooperation and public participation to foster conservation, protection and enhancement of the North American environment for the benefit of present and future generations, in the context of increasing economic, trade and social connections among Canada, Mexico and the United States. Origins and structure The Commission for Environmental Cooperation was created in 1994 by Canada, Mexico and the United States, under the NAAEC. The NAAEC was implemented in parallel to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and complements NAFTA's environmental provisions. It signified a commitment that liberalization of trade and economic growth in North America would be accompanied by collaboration and continuous improvement in the environmental protection provided by each of the three signatory countries. In part, the NAAEC was driven by the desire of the United States to mitigate public concern about the impact of trade liberalization on environmental protection in the three countries, particularly Mexico. The CEC is the first international environmental organization created in parallel with a trade agreement and is the sole organization with a mandate to monitor and report upon the impact of trade on the environment of North America. The CEC is composed of the Council, the Secretariat and the Joint Public Advisory Committee. CEC Council The Council is the CEC's governing body and is composed of the highest-level federal environmental authorities from Canada, Mexico, and the United States: the Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Mexican Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), and the Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency. The Council meets at least once a year, including with the public, to set the CEC's overall direction, including its budget and activities. It assigns responsibilities, if needed, to committees, working groups or expert groups, as may be required to fulfill its mandate. Secretariat The CEC Secretariat is headquartered in Montreal. The Secretariat implements several projects under the operational plan authorized by the Council and processes submissions on enforcement matters. Joint Public Advisory Committee The Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC) is composed of fifteen citizens (five from each country). JPAC advises the Council on any matter within the scope of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation and serves as a source of information for the CEC Secretariat. As a group of volunteer citizens, JPAC is a microcosm of the public: independent individuals who contribute diverse but rich institutional experience and cultural perspectives. In addition, in 2015 the CEC established a Roster of Experts on Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) whose mandate it is to identify opportunities to apply TEK to the CEC's operations and policy recommendations. This is an innovative mechanism and the first traditional ecological knowledge panel to be named to a trilateral organization such as the CEC. In July 2017, the group was re-christened the "TEK Expert Group" and now reports directly to the CEC Council. Cooperative Work Program The CEC's cooperative agenda is defined through the Strategic Plan. The current CEC Strategic Plan 2015–2020 identifies three areas of priority action for the CEC: Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation, Green Growth, and Sustainable Communities and Ecosystems. Two-year Operational Plans present how the goals and objectives of the Strategic Plan will be implemented through project activities and key initiatives, and specify the budget for the Commission. Operational Plans are updated biennially. North American Partnership for Environmental Community Action In 2010, the CEC established a grant program, the North American Partnership for Environmental Community Action (NAPECA) to support communities in their efforts to address environmental problems locally. NAPECA is intended to support a flexible and diverse set of project types that will improve access to resources provided by the Parties through the CEC for smaller, more hands-on organizations and that build partnerships at the community level with a focus on sustainable communities and urban initiatives. Tools and Resources Publications The CEC's online publications library provides the public with easy access to its large body of published work on environmental policy and research in North America. Pollutant Release and Transfer Register The North American PRTR Project involves the compilation and dissemination of information on the sources, amounts and handling of toxic substances released or transferred by over 35,000 industrial facilities in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, based on data reported to the pollutant release and transfer register (PRTR) of each country. The main products of this project are Taking Stock Online: a website featuring information and a searchable database of integrated, North American PRTR data and the annual Taking Stock report. The Taking Stock Online tool allows the user to explore information on pollution from industrial facilities across North America. Summary charts and customized queries can be created and the analysis results downloaded in a variety of formats, including kml files for viewing through Google Earth. North American Environmental Atlas Created through the cooperation of three national agency partners, the North American Environmental Atlas combines harmonized data from Canada, Mexico and the United States to allow for a continental and regional perspective on environmental issues that cross boundaries. The Atlas continues to grow in breadth and depth as more thematic maps are created through the work of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) and its partners. Scientists and map makers from Natural Resources Canada, the United States Geological Survey, Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, and other agencies in each country produced the information contained in the Atlas. The collection of viewable maps, data, and downloadable map files is available online without cost. Submissions on Enforcement Matters Articles 14 and 15 of the NAAEC provide a mechanism whereby any nongovernmental organization or person residing or established in North America can file a submission asserting that a Party to the Agreement is failing to effectively enforce its environmental law. The process is informed by the Guidelines for Submissions on Enforcement Matters under Articles 14 and 15 of the NAAEC. The process may lead to the development and publication of a detailed report, called a factual record, researched and written by independent experts. Past submissions have resulted in improved environmental protection, law and policy changes, and increased budgets for enforcement. Here is a list of factual records published since 1996: Independent Secretariat reports Under NAAEC Article 13, the CEC Secretariat may develop independent reports on any matter within the scope of the annual program and present them to the three Parties and the general public. These reports may address issues that are not covered by biennial operational plans and have the potential to inform future work of the CEC. Since 1994, the CEC Secretariat has published the following reports: See also International Joint Commission References External links Official website Submissions on Enforcement Matters Joint Public Advisory Committee

environmentalism of the poor

Environmentalism of the poor is a set of social movements that arise from environmental conflicts when impoverished people struggle against powerful state or private interests that threaten their livelihood, health, sovereignty, and culture. Part of the global environmental justice movement, it differs from mainstream environmentalism by emphasizing social justice issues instead of emphasizing conservation and eco-efficiency. It is becoming an increasingly important force for global sustainability.As described by Joan Martinez Alier, the environmentalism of the poor is a set of struggles and practices in which the so-called ‘’poor’’ people engage whenever they are threatened by ecological distribution conflicts. Ecological distribution conflicts, also defined by Martínez-Alier, are social conflicts that appear when the ecological impacts of an economic activity are unevenly and unjustly distributed amongst society; usually, the ecological impacts are disregarded and not taken care of by businesses, and affect much more those who have less resources to fight them. Therefore, in this sense, the environmentalism of the poor consists of the struggles of those poor people against the economic activities that unjustly affect them. Examples include the Chipko movement and the indigenous people's struggles against Brazilian agribusiness.Environmentalism of the poor includes a myriad of environmental movements in the global South that are strikingly under-represented in the discourse of mainstream environmentalism. However, impoverished people embroiled in local conflicts are becoming more aware of the global environmental justice movement, and trans-national environmental justice networks enable these environmental defenders to potentially leverage international support for their struggles. Background In 1988, Peruvian historian Alberto Flores Galindo suggested the term 'environmentalism of the poor' to describe eco-socialist peasant resistance movements, being inspired by the narodniki movement. In 1997 Joan Martinez-Alier and Ramachandra Guha contrasted these movements with the 'full-belly environmentalism' of the global North and drew parallels between rural and third-world 'environmentalism of the poor' and the more urban environmental justice movement arising in the United States. Varieties of environmentalism In his 2002 book, Environmentalism of the Poor, Martinez-Alier describes three different currents within environmentalism: the 'cult of the wilderness'; the later 'gospel of eco-efficiency' and the growing environmental justice movement or 'environmentalism of the poor'. Cult of wilderness The Cult of the wilderness, also called "wilderness thinking" by Ramachandra Guha, is associated with the conservation movement and people like John Muir, and Henry David Thoreau. This movement arose in the 19th century with organizations such as the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society; Aldo Leopold, with his 1949 book A Sand County Almanac, was also one of the main figuresThe cult of wilderness is not inherently against economic activity, but it states (in Leopold's words) that "a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise". The conservation movement does try to limit the effects off economic activity on the natural environment. The main course of action proposed by conservationists is to separate economic activity and the environment, to limit the effects of the former on the latter. The main tool to do so are natural reserves and protected areas, in which human activity is regulated. By performing this separation, the conservationists intend to perform a ‘rearguard action’ to preserve nature (using Leopold's quotation in Martínez-Alier, 2003). This ‘rearguard action’ consists in conservation practices such as ecosystem management, habitat restoration, or recuperation of endangered species, all of them examples of conservation biology. The main reasons given for this type of environmentalism are very diverse. Some authors take a utilitarian approach: Nature is seen as essential to economic and social development, and the creation of reserves and protected areas aims to preserve it in order for it to keep providing ecosystem services and natural capital for society. Thus, biodiversity loss is the main concern, since biodiversity is crucial for providing natural capital and ecosystem services (both crucial to economic development). Other reasons usually given are the inherent aesthetic value of nature, the religious value of nature, the inherently humane tendency to be attracted by nature (biophilia), and the right of nature and its species to exist by their own right.Milestones of this type of conservationism are the Convention on Biological Diversity in Rio de Janeiro (1992), the Endangered Species Act of 1973, or the creation of the Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks in the USA. Currently, it is institutionally represented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the World Wide Fund (WWF) and The Nature Conservancy. On the activist side, it is represented by deep ecology and the conservationist movement. The "gospel of eco-efficiency" The "gospel of eco-efficiency", or ‘scientific industrialism’, originated with the 19th century writings of Malthus and William Stanley Jevons, and grew during the 20th century when the effects of pollution and resource exhaustion were more apparent. As Martinez Alier puts it, the ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ is ‘’worried about the effects of economic growth not only on pristine areas but also on the industrial, agricultural and urban economy’’. It was called ‘the gospel of eco-efficiency’’ by Martínez Alier as a homage to Samuel P. Hays, who in his book Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (1959) described the ‘Progressive Conservation Movement during the Progressive Era as a ‘gospel of efficiency’, in the sense that the U.S. Government put emphasis in efficient resource management.The gospel of eco-efficiency asks questions such as, ‘’How is pollution going to affect economic development?’’; ‘’How can we minimize pollution?’’; ‘’How can we remediate its consequences?’’; ‘’How can we minimize the consumption of resources?’’; and ‘’How can we turn waste into a resource?’’.Usually, the answers given go in the line of sustainable development, which the Brundtland report defines as ''development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs''. The ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ usually defends economic growth, but not at any cost. Instead, it searches for a growth that needs less and less resources and generates less and less pollution and waste, therefore minimizing its impacts and improving its sustainability: the so-called dematerialization of the economy. The defenders of the gospel usually argue that through improving the efficiency of technology it is possible to achieve high levels of economic development with very low levels of waste production and resource-consumption that are manageable for the ecosystems, thus becoming sustainable. However, many criticisms have been raised against the theory of dematerialization: mainly, that the entropy law makes it impossible to infinitely improve the efficiency of a technology; and that the decoupling of local rich economies is only possible because they outsource the production of material-intensive goods to the developing countries.The main tools proposed by the ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ concern (1) economic, eco-taxes and markets in emission permits, and (2) technological support for materials and energy-saving changes. The ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ is concerned with the efficiency of the production process, that is, the efficiency of the technologies involved in it. It focuses on finding solutions that improve the efficiency of resource use and of waste/pollution generation, mainly through investment in research and development. It is also concerned with the efficiency of the economic market, and sees environmental problems as inefficiencies of it, not as structural problems of it. Therefore, it focuses on finding solutions to these inefficiencies, mainly through internalizing them in market accounts. The gospel is championed by environmental economics, a discipline that stands that the market has negative externalities that are not accounted as economic costs, and that if those are accounted as such, the market will readjust in order to reduce those costs, thus reducing the externalities. Some tools that environmental economics propose for accounting those costs are eco-taxes and emission permits.According to Joan Martinez Alier, some the most prominent proponents of the ‘gospel of ecoefficiency are Gifford Pinchot in the USA and the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy in Europe. Pinchot was the head of the United States Forest Service during the Progressive Era, and advocated the conservation of the nation's reserves by planned use and renewal. The Wuppertal Institute pioneered industrial ecology in Europe during the 90s, and designed several high-efficiency products such as the Passive house and also developed indicators such as the material input per unit of service (MIPS). Environmentalism of the poor Both the ‘cult of wilderness’ and the ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ are a bit technocratic (although it is not always the case). The ‘cult of wilderness’ has been associated with middle to upper-class people, with scientists, and with statisticians. The ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ has been associated with state policies, with private businesses, and with scientists and engineers. And they have been historically associated with the Global North, and with white, cis-hetero males. Environmentalism has therefore been historically seen as elitist, and poverty has been associated with environmentally damaging practices and disinterest in environmental concerns. For instance, the Brundtland Report concluded that poverty is one of the most important drivers of environmental degradation; political scientist Ronald Inglehart also argued that affluent societies are more likely to protect nature. Similarly, Kuznets curves associate environmental improvements with higher per-capita income, implying that the cure for environmental degradation is more growth. However, numerous case studies pointed that poor people protect the environment against powerful interests in order to defend their livelihoods and cultures. Therefore, according to Martínez Alier, ‘poor people’ engage in this third current of environmentalism: the ‘environmentalism of the poor’ (or livelihood ecology, liberation ecology, the environmental justice movement, popular environmentalism, etc.). The environmentalism of the poor emphasises social justice and protection of land for the use of marginalised people. Martinez-Alier draws upon political ecology and ecological economics to create a theoretical basis for a global environmental justice movement that arises from local environmental conflicts. This current of environmentalism arises from the uneven distribution of environmental harms amongst different sectors of society (what Martínez Alier and Martin O'Connor call ecological distribution conflicts), caused by economic activity and economic growth. This current of environmentalism, therefore, stands that the Global North exports environmental damage to the Global South, or that poor people are more likely to suffer environmental damage than rich people, or even that racialized people have a greater chance of suffering it than white people.Therefore, it is composed by a myriad of different movements, all of which have one thing in common: the fact that due to this uneven distribution of environmental harms, their livelihoods are threatened (understanding livelihood in a broad sense; not only the material basis of human life, but also the cultural, communitarian and individual basis). Martínez Alier argues that, as the scale of the economy increases, ‘poor people’ are ‘’deprived of access to environmental resources and services, and they endure a disproportionate amount of pollution’’. Those ‘poor people’, whose livelihoods are threatened, struggle against the environmental harms that threaten them and against those responsible of the environmental harms.In doing so, they protect their livelihoods, and this often means that they protect traditional ways of life that have coevolved in equilibrium with the environment, and that therefore are sustainable. This theory stands that traditional livelihoods have been historically shaped by the environmental conditions, and have learned to adapt to them, using sustainably the resources and the sinks available. Therefore, protecting them means protecting sustainable ways of life. For instance, traditional peasants have been actively protecting their sustainable, local way of life from the intensive, transnational model of agribusiness.Martínez Alier argues that poor people simply protecting their livelihoods are often on the side of resource conservation and a clean environment, although they may not claim to be environmentalists and may use other language to describe their agendas (such as sacredness, sovereignty, etc.). Instead, he argues that people will resist environmental destruction that threatens their livelihood, culture, and prospects for survival, even if they aren't interested in protecting nature for its own sake. People will not easily give away their livelihoods in exchange for economic investment and development that offers them money, because values such as sovereignty and sacredness are cannot be compared by monetary terms. For example, some cultures would deem money as valueless compared to the value of a sacred place, or compared to their freedom and sovereignty. Therefore, "poor people" often reject even the most economically-profitable projects if they harm things that they value and that are part of their livelihood. Environmentalism of the poor is thus partly a struggle to control the valuation language applied to the costs and benefits of resource extraction, gentrification, and other processes that threaten poor people's use of their land. Examples of environmentalism of the poor include the struggles against environmental racism in the United States, urban air pollution, and struggles against mines and struggles for access to water, struggles forests, etc. Ecofeminism Female leadership is common to environmentalism of the poor and creates intersections with eco-feminism. Women more often have social roles that bring them into direct contact with nature such as collecting water, growing crops, tending animals, gathering, etc. For example, in urban settings, women are most likely to take action against dumping of waste or other pollution, even if gendered hierarchies prevent their participation. Ecological distribution conflicts not only affect unevenly poor people in general, but also affect women more because of their closer relationship with Nature and pollution. Therefore, woman tend to participate more in environmental struggles. According to Johanna Oksala, ''for women living under harsh material conditions, environmental activism is simply a form of self-defense'', because they want to protect their livelihood. This tendency of women activists to take the leading role in the environmentalism of the poor is manifested in examples such as the Chipko movement in India, the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, and the opposition to the Agua Zarca Hydroelectrical Project in Honduras and is embodied in persons such as Berta Cáceres, Lesbia Urquía, Jeannette Kawas, and Margarita Murillo, all of whom fought environmental degradation in Honduras and so were assassinated. Global movement Political ecology scholars and environmental justice organizations are pointing toward a global environmental justice movement, led by environmental defenders from the global poor. Local movements need international support to challenge major trans-national corporations, and environmentalism of the poor would need global influence to affect global issues such as the Holocene extinction crisis and climate change.Increasingly, local conflicts are finding international support and wider influence. For example, the struggle against the Tipaimukh Dam in India originated with poor people whose water source was being threatened, and that conflict became a dynamic and international resistance movement. International networks such as Oilwatch have also arisen from direct action taken by Indigenous peoples fighting against oil exploration in places like the Niger Delta, Colombia, and Peru. Conflicts and alliances with other forms of environmentalism Although there are some clear differences, the ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’, the ‘cult of wilderness’ and the ‘environmentalism’ of the poor overlap and intertwine in certain topics, and can form alliances. In the words of Martínez Alier, ‘’they have a lot in common, and all three are opposed by anti-environmentalists or despised or neglected by them’’, and in the Global South they are even attacked and killed. The ‘environmentalism of the poor’ and the ‘cult of wilderness’ The ‘cult of wilderness’ historically took a pragmatic approach and engaged in protecting natural, 'pristine' areas of wilderness from human activity by banning or at least regulating human activity in the area, creating nature reserves or national parks. The basic assumption was that human activity as a whole was prejudicial to the environment. Therefore, some currents within this movement tended to see human population as the core cause of environmental destruction.Thus, the ‘cult of wilderness’ has historically been elitist and racist. For example, poor people or indigenous people are deemed ignorant and incapable of respecting the environment; therefore, they are sometimes banned from accessing it. In multiple cases, they are even expelled from the lands they inhabited, to create natural reserves (see, for example, the case of the Kruger National Park, the case of Batwa people being expelled from the Kahuzi-Biéga National Park by WWF-trained guards, or the case of indigenous Indians being expelled from their communal forests by governmental policy). However, poor and indigenous people are not ignorant, and in fact are much more conscious of the necessity of biodiversity and the environment as a positive asset worthy of conservation. Over time, they have learnt its value because their livelihoods depend on it. For example, poor farmers are often interested in preserving the environment and the soil because they know it is crucial for their material livelihood. And indigenous people often want to preserve the value of the environment because they have spiritual connections with it, which is also crucial for their livelihood.Here lies the possibility of an alliance. Recent studies have shown that Indigenous people are effective conservators of the majority of biodiversity in the planet: therefore, protecting them is also a way to manage biodiversity. For example, Indigenous people in Brazil have demonstrated to play a key role in avoiding deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. In Canada, Indigenous-led fire stewardship ‘’enhances ecosystem diversity, assists with the management of complex resources, and reduces wildfire risk by lessening fuel loads’’. Often indigenous people are better managers of the biodiversity than private companies or than the State itself.Thus, an alliance between conservationists and poor environmentalists could lead to an effective protection and management of ‘’wilderness’’. Conservationists have begun to understand that ‘poor people’ will defend wilderness if they consider it as part of their livelihood. Conservationists are beginning to understand that nature should be protected by protecting its protectors. The ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ and the ‘environmentalism of the poor’ While the environmentalism of the poor focuses on protecting livelihoods, the gospel of eco-efficiency focuses on optimizing the use of resources. The ideological basis for the gospel comes from an economistic view of nature and resources. Traditionally, the gospel has not been used to protect people's livelihoods, but rather to protect economic production and prolonging it by making it more sustainable; they sought to optimize resources use not to preserve them, but to be able to keep exploiting them for a longer period. Furthermore, sometimes the ‘gospel of ecoefficiency’ has been the main cause of ecological distribution conflicts. For example: The south of Catalonia has been affected by a large concentration of solar and eolic energy macroprojects that, according to the Platform Against the Concentration of Wind Turbines, has endangered the natural environment and has negative consequences for people's health. They demand an energetic transition that puts its benefits in the hands of the people instead of in the hands of corporate businesses. In Montcada i Reixac (Catalonia) a large cement factory managed by Lafarge-Holcim shifted from burning coal to burning waste. This change was justified by its promoters as a form of preserving fossil fuels, reduction emissions associated to coal, and as a form of reducing the amount of waste thrown away. However, this caused the factory to become more polluting than before, since the burning of waste produces toxic particles that affects the entire Montcada i Reixac. This negative impact on people's livelihood added itself to the list of negative impacts that the factory already had prior to shifting to burning waste (noise pollution, emission of particles of cement, etc.). The Montcada i Reixac Anti-Incineration Platform "Montcada Aire Net” has since opposed this, organizing people to protect their livelihoods. In Europe, the Common Agricultural Policy implemented by the European Union had the objective of making agricultural production more efficient via optimizing its processes to maximize its production. It included a shift from extensive to intensive agriculture, benefiting mainly large landowners. As large monocultures managed with high-tech substituted smaller crops managed with low-tech, the environmental impacts associated also augmented. Widespread soil erosion and contamination, along with peasants dispossession caused by the expansion of monocultures, endangered the livelihoods of those small peasants. The widespread adoption of genetically modified crops (GMOs) which are publicised as the solution to food insecurity and environmental impacts by big corporations such as Bayer-Monsanto, has impacted the livelihood of smaller peasants due to genetic contamination of seeds. Crops planted with GMOs pollinate plants planted in nearby crops that do not use GMOs, allowing for the owners of the GMOs patent to claim the ownership of the genetic code of the contaminated plants, thus negatively affecting the livelihood of the peasant who had planted them. Negative effects of GMO crops are strongly opposed by environmentalism of the poor movements such as La Via CampesinaThis shows that a lot of times the ‘gospel’ is aligned with economic interests, thus endangering people's livelihoods. However, this is not always the case: if it is not driven by the logic of maximizing benefits, an improvement in a certain production process can indeed reduce the impact of that economic activity, thus opening up space for livelihoods to develop more freely. For example, in locations that have implemented an efficient waste management program, environmental pollution has been effectively reduced. This is an example of how the ‘gospel’ can, through acting on the production side, open up space for non-productive activities. In addition, on a lot of occasions the ‘gospel’ can have a positive impact by acting on livelihoods side: on a lot of occasions to protect livelihoods it is necessary to optimize the use of resources that sustain that livelihood. For example: For example, several rural communities around the world, that did not have access to the general electricity network before, have installed solar panels in their own houses to improve their accessibility to electricity. Some other communities have implemented new techniques of forestry to make forestry more efficient, not to augment production, but to reduce the amount of resources that they use to sustain their livelihoods. Another example would be the improvements made in health. Even though it is more complicated than that because there are a lot of economic interests in the healthcare industry, a lot of the advances in health science are made to improve people's livelihoods rather than just making production more efficient. For example, health improvements in cancer treatment will have a direct positive impact in people's livelihoods. In Ahmedabad (India), an improvement of waste management policies opened up opportunities for informal waste pickers, which were formalized into public servants, thus improving their livelihoods while still having competitive rates of recycling.All those positive examples have one thing in common: in them technology is not used with a logic of maximizing economic production. It is rather used as a ‘’tool for conviviality’’, which Ivan Illich described as ‘’those which give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity to enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her vision’’. Illich also wrote that ‘’industrial tools deny this possibility to those who use them and they allow their designers to determine the meaning and expectations of others. Most tools today cannot be used in a convivial fashion". In the examples given, the technology is used as a tool to improve people's livelihoods or making them more sustainable, rather than just as a tool for production. The 'gospel of eco-efficiency' and the 'cult of wilderness' The ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ is strongly focused on the optimization of the use of resources. This can be seen either as an effort to minimize the impact of economic activities in the environment and society, or as an effort to optimize the costs of production with the aim of increasing the benefit margin and increase the investment in new capital. In the first case, improving the efficiency can have a positive outcome for nature, whereas in the second case this improvement has either neutral or bad outcomes. There are examples of both cases: For example, due to technological improvement, electrodomestics no longer needed clorfluorocarbon gases (CFC) to work, thus reducing the emission of this gas that destroys de ozone layer, thus helping to reduce the ozone hole. On the contrary, there is evidence that due to the Jevons paradox, the majority of improvements in the cost-efficiency of an economic activity does not result in reducing the costs themselves, but in being able to produce more with the same costs.The ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ worries a lot about resources provided by natural capital and ecosystem services. In some instances, assuring those resources may involve the creation of natural areas, or even the restoration of degraded spaces. For example, forest management was born with the utilitarian objective of managing sustainably some forests to provide wood and other resources. Some Natural Parks were created with the objective of regulating human activity in natural environments to avoid depletion to ensure the availability of resources. In this case, the ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ involves protecting natural areas. Another case in which the 'gospel' involves protecting nature is when the creation of some natural spaces serves as the ‘’moral scapegoat’’ for increasing the economic activity in non-natural spaces. For instance, carbon offsetting, or ecosystem restoration by businesses have been deemed as a form of greenwashing by some of those authors.In general, the degree of antagonism between the 'gospel of eco-efficiency' and the 'cult of wilderness' varies with the degree of conservationism and the environmental impact of an eco-efficient activity. For instance, deep ecologists usually stand against any form of economic activity, even if it is very efficient, because they praise the untouchedness of nature and argue that any form of economic activity should be banned, even if it is eco-efficient. However, some deep ecologists are practical and argue for the creation of separated and untouched natural reserves that can coexist with forms of economic activity, thus legitimizing the ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ as long as it protects pristine natural areas. Less radical forms of conservationism argue that economic activity can coexist with natural spaces as long as this economic activity is eco-efficient. It is precisely in this context that the ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ and the ‘cult of wilderness’ find the strongest alliance. For example, some authors argue that forest fires can be avoided by introducing extensive farming. Other authors argue that an eco-efficient industry based on nature-based solutions can coexist with conservationism. In general, less radical forms of conservationism see economic activity as something neutral as long as it does not threaten natural spaces. As Martínez Alier argues, they assert that ‘'technical change will make the production of commodities compatible with ecological sustainability’’, thus emphasizing ‘’the preservation of that part of Nature which is still outside the economy’’. In sum, they argue for sustainable development with preservation of natural spaces. Examples of 'environmentalism of the poor' Some examples of environmental struggles are: The Chipko movement The opposition to the Agua Zarca Dam for which the activist Berta Cáceres was assassinated. The Green Belt Movement led by Wangari Maathai. The struggles against solar and wind energy macroprojects in Southern Catalonia The ''empates [1]'' organized by the National Council of Rubber Tappers, which, led by Chico Mendes, fought against the destruction of ''seringes'' (sustainably managed rubber forests). Mendes was later assassinated to halt grassroots organizing. The legal battle of activist Saúl Luciano Lliuya against RWE for its polluting activities. The neighborhood struggles in Montcada i Reixac (Catalonia) against a Lafarge-Holcim cement factory that burns waste as a source of energy, and which causes toxic pollution and noise pollution. The Great Sioux War of 1876, in which the Sioux fought for the preservation of their sacred mountains, the Black Hills The struggle against the Fenix Nickel Project in Guatemala The Cochabamba Water War in Bolivia The struggle to protect a water body in Llinars del Vallès (Catalonia) from being built on by private developers. The struggle involved a resistance camp in the place, and ended up in the local government protecting the water. The struggle against the privatization of water in Sainte-Soline (France) involved 30.000 people clashing with the police. == References ==

green computing

Green computing, green IT (Information Technology), or ICT sustainability, is the study and practice of environmentally sustainable computing or IT. The goals of green computing are similar to green chemistry: reduce the use of hazardous materials, maximize energy efficiency during the product's lifetime, increase the recyclability or biodegradability of defunct products and factory waste. Green computing is important for all classes of systems, ranging from handheld systems to large-scale data centers. Many corporate IT departments have green computing initiatives to reduce the environmental effect of their IT operations. Yet it is also clear that the environmental footprint of the sector is significant, estimated at 5-9% of the world's total electricity use and more than 2% of all emissions. Data centres and telecommunications will need to become more energy efficient, reuse waste energy, and use more renewable energy sources to stay competitive. Some believe they can and should become climate neutral by 2030. Origins In 1992, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched Energy Star, a voluntary labeling program that is designed to promote and recognize the energy efficiency in monitors, climate control equipment, and other technologies. This resulted in the widespread adoption of sleep mode among consumer electronics. Concurrently, the Swedish organization TCO Development launched the TCO Certified program to promote low magnetic and electrical emissions from CRT-based computer displays; this program was later expanded to include criteria on energy consumption, ergonomics, and the use of hazardous materials in construction. Regulations and industry initiatives The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published a survey of over 90 government and industry initiatives on "Green ICTs", i.e. information and communication technologies, the environment and climate change. The report concludes that initiatives tend to concentrate on the greening ICTs themselves rather than on their actual implementation to reduce global warming and environmental degradation. In general, only 20% of initiatives have measurable targets, with government programs tending to include targets more frequently than business associations. Government Many governmental agencies have continued to implement standards and regulations that encourage green computing. The Energy Star program was revised in October 2006 to include stricter efficiency requirements for computer equipment, along with a tiered ranking system for approved products.By 2008, 26 US states established statewide recycling programs for obsolete computers and consumer electronics equipment. The statutes either impose an "advance recovery fee" for each unit sold at retail or require the manufacturers to reclaim the equipment at disposal. In 2010, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was signed into legislation by President Obama. The bill allocated over $90 billion to be invested in green initiatives (renewable energy, smart grids, energy efficiency, etc.) In January 2010, the U.S. Energy Department granted $47 million of the ARRA money towards projects to improve the energy efficiency of data centers. The projects provided research to optimize data center hardware and software, improve power supply chain, and data center cooling technologies. Green Digital Governance Green digital governance refers to the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to support environmentally sustainable policies and practices. It describes a strategy with which an organisation strives to align its information and communications technology with sustainability goals. This can include using digital tools and platforms to monitor and regulate environmental impact, as well as promoting the development and use of clean and renewable energy sources in the technology sector. The goal of green digital governance is to reduce the carbon footprint of the digital economy and to support the transition to a more sustainable and resilient society. Both the green and the digital transitions are on the agenda for most European countries, as well as the EU as a whole. Documents and goals such as the European Green Deal and the Sustainable Development Goals, fit for 55, Digital Europe and others have begun the transitions. These two transitions often contradict each other, as digital technologies have substantial environmental footprints that go against the targets of the green transition.The European Union sees digitalisation and the adoption of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) solutions as an important tool for creating greener solutions, while also acknowledging that in order to achieve the desired positive environmental impact, the tools themselves must be environmentally sustainable. The green transition may accelerate innovation and adoption of digital solutions offering the ICT sector new opportunities for becoming more competitive. The synergy created as a result of the green transition and digitalisation brings social, economic and environmental benefits, which is a goal of environmentally friendly digital governments and the creation of green ICT solutions in general.The digital component is expected to also be used to reach the ambitions of the European Green Deal and Sustainable Development Goals. As powerful enablers for the sustainability transition, digital solutions can advance the circular economy, support the decarbonisation of all sectors and reduce the environmental and social footprint of products placed on the EU market. For example, key sectors such as precision agriculture, transport and energy can benefit from digital solutions in pursuing the sustainability objectives of the European Green Deal.E-government services can provide solutions to the environmental problem. The possibility for a citizen to fully request and get a service online would render, in addition to cost savings for the public authorities and increased citizen satisfaction, reductions of carbon emissions and paper consumption. Industry iMasons Climate Accord Founded in 2022, the (ICA) is a historic cooperative of companies committed to reducing carbon in digital infrastructure materials, products, and power. Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI) is an effort to reduce the electric power consumption of PCs in active and inactive states. The CSCI provides a catalog of green products from its member organizations, and information for reducing PC power consumption. It was started on June 12, 2007. The name stems from the World Wildlife Fund's Climate Savers program, which began in 1999. The WWF is a member of the Computing Initiative. The Green Electronics Council offers the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) to assist in the purchase of "greener" computing systems. The Council evaluates computing equipment on 51 criteria – 23 required and 28 optional - that measure a product's efficiency and sustainability attributes. Products are rated Gold, Silver, or Bronze, depending on how many optional criteria they meet. On January 24, 2007, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13423, which requires all United States Federal agencies to use EPEAT when purchasing computer systems. The Green Grid is a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. It was founded in February 2007 by several key companies in the industry – AMD, APC, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Rackable Systems, SprayCool (purchased in 2010 by Parker), Sun Microsystems and VMware. The Green Grid has since grown to hundreds of members, including end-users and government organizations focused on improving data center infrastructure efficiency (DCIE). The Green500 list rates supercomputers by energy efficiency (megaflops/watt), encouraging a focus on efficiency rather than absolute performance. Green Comm Challenge is an organization that promotes the development of energy conservation technology and practices in the field of ICT. The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) Energy specification augments existing TPC benchmarks by allowing optional publications of energy metrics alongside performance results. SPECpower is the first industry standard benchmark that measures power consumption in relation to performance for server-class computers. Other benchmarks which measure energy efficiency include SPECweb, SPECvirt, and VMmark. Approaches Modern IT systems rely on a complicated mix of people, networks, and hardware; as such, a green computing initiative ideally covers these areas. A solution may also need to address end user satisfaction, management restructuring, regulatory compliance, and return on investment (ROI). There are also fiscal motivations for companies to take control of their own power consumption; "of the power management tools available, one of the most powerful may still be simple, plain, common sense." Product longevity Gartner maintains that the PC manufacturing process accounts for 70% of the natural resources used in the life cycle of a PC. More recently, Fujitsu released a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of a desktop that show that manufacturing and end of life accounts for the majority of this desktop's ecological footprint. Therefore, the biggest contribution to green computing usually is to prolong the equipment's lifetime. Another report from Gartner recommends to "Look for product longevity, including upgradability and modularity." For instance, manufacturing a new PC makes a far bigger ecological footprint than manufacturing a new RAM module to upgrade an existing one. Data center design Data center facilities are heavy consumers of energy, accounting for between 1.1% and 1.5% of the world's total energy use in 2010. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that data center facilities consume up to 100 to 200 times more energy than standard office buildings.Energy efficient data center design should address all of the energy use aspects included in a data center: from the IT equipment to the HVAC (Heating, ventilation and air conditioning) equipment to the actual location, configuration and construction of the building. The U.S. Department of Energy specifies five primary areas on which to focus energy efficient data center design best practices: Information technology (IT) systems Environmental conditions Air management Cooling systems Electrical systemsAdditional energy efficient design opportunities specified by the U.S. Department of Energy include on-site electrical generation and recycling of waste heat.Energy efficient data center design should help to better use a data center's space, and increase performance and efficiency. In 2018, three new US Patents make use of facilities design to simultaneously cool and produce electrical power by use of internal and external waste heat. The three patents use silo design for stimulating use of internal waste heat, while recirculating the air cooling the silo's computing racks. US Patent 9,510,486, uses the recirculating air for power generation, while sister patent, US Patent 9,907,213, forces the recirculation of the same air, and sister patent, US Patent 10,020,436, uses thermal differences in temperature resulting in negative power usage effectiveness. Negative power usage effectiveness, makes use of differences between temperatures at times running the computing facilities, that they would run only from external sources other than the power use for computing. Software and deployment optimization Algorithmic efficiency The efficiency of algorithms affects the amount of computer resources required for any given computing function and there are many efficiency trade-offs in writing programs. Algorithm changes, such as switching from a slow (e.g. linear) search algorithm to a fast (e.g. hashed or indexed) search algorithm can reduce resource usage for a given task from substantial to close to zero. In 2009, a study by a physicist at Harvard estimated that the average Google search released 7 grams of carbon dioxide (CO₂). However, Google disputed this figure, arguing that a typical search produced only 0.2 grams of CO₂. Resource allocation Algorithms can also be used to route data to data centers where electricity is less expensive. Researchers from MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and Akamai have tested an energy allocation algorithm that routes traffic to the location with the lowest energy costs. The researchers project up to 40 percent savings on energy costs if their proposed algorithm were to be deployed. However, this approach does not actually reduce the amount of energy being used; it reduces only the cost to the company using it. Nonetheless, a similar strategy could be used to direct traffic to rely on energy that is produced in a more environmentally friendly or efficient way. A similar approach has also been used to cut energy usage by routing traffic away from data centers experiencing warm weather; this allows computers to be shut down to avoid using air conditioning.Larger server centers are sometimes located where energy and land are inexpensive and readily available. Local availability of renewable energy, climate that allows outside air to be used for cooling, or locating them where the heat they produce may be used for other purposes could be factors in green siting decisions. Approaches to actually reduce the energy consumption of network devices by proper network/device management techniques have been surveyed Bianzino, et al. The authors grouped the approaches into 4 main strategies, namely (i) Adaptive Link Rate (ALR), (ii) Interface Proxying, (iii) Energy Aware Infrastructure, and (iv) Maximum Energy Aware Applications. Virtualizing Computer virtualization refers to the abstraction of computer resources, such as the process of running two or more logical computer systems on one set of physical hardware. The concept originated with the IBM mainframe operating systems of the 1960s, and was commercialized for x86-compatible computers, and other computer systems, in the 1990s. With virtualization, a system administrator can combine several physical systems into virtual machines on one powerful system, thereby conserving resources by removing need for some of the original hardware and reducing power and cooling consumption. Virtualization can assist in distributing work so that servers are either busy or put in a low-power sleep state. Several commercial companies and open-source projects now offer software packages to enable a transition to virtual computing. Intel Corporation and AMD have also built proprietary virtualization enhancements to the x86 instruction set into each of their CPU product lines, in order to facilitate virtual computing. New virtual technologies, such as operating-system-level virtualization can also be used to reduce energy consumption. These technologies make a more efficient use of resources, thus reducing energy consumption by design. Also, the consolidation of virtualized technologies is more efficient than the one done in virtual machines, so more services can be deployed in the same physical machine, reducing the amount of hardware needed. Terminal servers Terminal servers have also been used in green computing. When using the system, users at a terminal connect to a central server; all of the actual computing is done on the server, but the end user experiences the system operating as if it were on the terminal. These can be combined with thin clients, which use up to 1/8 the amount of energy of a normal workstation, resulting in a decrease of energy costs and consumption. There has been an increase in using terminal services with thin clients to create virtual labs. Examples of terminal server software include Terminal Services for Windows and the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) for the Linux operating system. Software-based remote desktop clients such as Windows Remote Desktop and RealVNC can provide similar thin-client functions when run on low power hardware that connects to a server. Data Compression Data compression, which involves using fewer bits to encode information, may also be used in green computing depending on the structure of the data. Since it is highly data specific, data compression strategies may result in using more energy or resources than necessary in some cases. However, choosing a well-suited compression algorithm for the dataset can yield greater power efficiency and reduce network and storage requirements. There is a tradeoff between compression ratio and energy consumption. Deciding whether or not this is worthwhile depends on the dataset's compressibility. Compression improves energy efficiency for data with a compression ratio much less than roughly 0.3, and hurts for data with higher compression ratios. Power management The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI), an open industry standard, allows an operating system to directly control the power-saving aspects of its underlying hardware. This allows a system to automatically turn off components such as monitors and hard drives after set periods of inactivity. In addition, a system may hibernate, when most components (including the CPU and the system RAM) are turned off. ACPI is a successor to an earlier Intel-Microsoft standard called Advanced Power Management, which allows a computer's BIOS to control power management functions.Some programs allow the user to manually adjust the voltages supplied to the CPU, which reduces both the amount of heat produced and electricity consumed. This process is called undervolting. Some CPUs can automatically undervolt the processor, depending on the workload; this technology is called "SpeedStep" on Intel processors, "PowerNow!"/"Cool'n'Quiet" on AMD chips, LongHaul on VIA CPUs, and LongRun with Transmeta processors. Data center power Data centers, which have been criticized for their extraordinarily high energy demand, are a primary focus for proponents of green computing. According to a Greenpeace study, data centers represent 21% of the electricity consumed by the IT sector, which is about 382 billion kWh a year.Data centers can potentially improve their energy and space efficiency through techniques such as storage consolidation and virtualization. Many organizations are aiming to eliminate underused servers, resulting in lower energy usage. The U.S. federal government set a minimum 10% reduction target for data center energy usage by 2011. With the aid of a self-styled ultra-efficient evaporative cooling technology. Google Inc. claims to have reduced its energy consumption to 50% of the industry average. Operating system support Microsoft Windows has included limited PC power management features since Windows 95. These initially provided for stand-by (suspend-to-RAM) and a monitor low power state. Further iterations of Windows added hibernate (suspend-to-disk) and support for the ACPI standard. Windows 2000 was the first NT-based operating system to include power management. This required major changes to the underlying operating system architecture and a new hardware driver model. Windows 2000 also introduced Group Policy, a technology that allowed administrators to centrally configure most Windows features. However, power management was not one of those features. This is probably because the power management settings design relied upon a connected set of per-user and per-machine binary registry values, effectively leaving it up to each user to configure their own power management settings. This approach, which is not compatible with Windows Group Policy, was repeated in Windows XP. The reasons for this design decision by Microsoft are not known, and it has resulted in heavy criticism. Microsoft significantly improved this in Windows Vista by redesigning the power management system to allow basic configuration by Group Policy. The support offered is limited to a single per-computer policy. Windows 7 retains these limitations but includes refinements for timer coalescing, processor power management, and display panel brightness. The most significant change in Windows 7 is in the user experience. The prominence of the default High Performance power plan has been reduced with the aim of encouraging users to save power. Third-party PC power management software for adds features beyond those built-in to the Windows operating system. Most products offer Active Directory integration and per-user/per-machine settings with the more advanced offering multiple power plans, scheduled power plans, anti-insomnia features and enterprise power usage reporting. Linux systems started to provide laptop-optimized power-management in 2005, with power-management options being mainstream since 2009. Power supply Desktop computer power supplies are in general 70–75% efficient, dissipating the remaining energy as heat. A certification program called 80 Plus certifies PSUs that are at least 80% efficient; typically these models are drop-in replacements for older, less efficient PSUs of the same form factor. As of July 20, 2007, all new Energy Star 4.0-certified desktop PSUs must be at least 80% efficient. Storage Smaller form factor (e.g., 2.5 inch) hard disk drives often consume less power per gigabyte than physically larger drives. Unlike hard disk drives, solid-state drives store data in flash memory or DRAM. With no moving parts, power consumption may be reduced somewhat for low-capacity flash-based devices.As hard drive prices have fallen, storage farms have tended to increase in capacity to make more data available online. This includes archival and backup data that would formerly have been saved on tape or other offline storage. The increase in online storage has increased power consumption. Reducing the power consumed by large storage arrays, while still providing the benefits of online storage, is a subject of ongoing research. Video card A fast GPU may be the largest power consumer in a computer.Energy-efficient display options include: No video card – use a shared terminal, shared thin client, or desktop sharing software if display is required. Use motherboard video output – typically low 3D performance and low power. Select a GPU based on low idle power, average wattage, or performance per watt. Display Unlike other display technologies, electronic paper does not use any power while displaying an image. CRT monitors typically use more power than LCD monitors. They also contain significant amounts of lead. LCD monitors typically use a cold-cathode fluorescent bulb to provide light for the display. Most newer displays use an array of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in place of the fluorescent bulb, which further reduces the amount of electricity used by the display. Fluorescent back-lights also contain mercury, whereas LED back-lights do not. A light-on-dark color scheme, also called dark mode, is a color scheme that requires less energy to display on new display technologies, such as OLED. This positively impacts battery life and energy consumption. While an OLED will consume around 40% of the power of an LCD displaying an image that is primarily black, it can use more than three times as much power to display an image with a white background, such as a document or web site. This can lead to reduced battery life and increased energy use, unless a light-on-dark color scheme is used. A 2018 article in Popular Science suggests that "Dark mode is easier on the eyes and battery" and displaying white on full brightness uses roughly six times as much power as pure black on a Google Pixel, which has an OLED display. Apple's iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 both feature a light-on dark mode, which would allow third-party developers to implement their own dark themes. Google's Android 10 features a system-level dark mode. Materials recycling Recycling computing equipment can keep harmful materials such as lead, mercury, and hexavalent chromium out of landfills, and can replace equipment that otherwise would need to be manufactured, saving further energy and emissions. Computer systems that have outlived their original function can be re-purposed, or donated to various charities and non-profit organizations. However, many charities have recently imposed minimum system requirements for donated equipment. Additionally, parts from outdated systems may be salvaged and recycled through certain retail outlets and municipal or private recycling centers. Computing supplies, such as printer cartridges, paper, and batteries may be recycled as well.A drawback to many of these schemes is that computers gathered through recycling drives are often shipped to developing countries where environmental standards are less strict than in North America and Europe. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition has estimated that 80% of the post-consumer e-waste collected for recycling is shipped abroad to countries such as China and India.In 2011, the collection rate of e-waste remained low, even in the most ecology-responsible countries like France. In the U.S., e-waste collection was at a 14% annual rate between electronic equipment sold and e-waste collected for 2006 to 2009.The recycling of old computers raises a privacy issue. The old storage devices still hold private information, such as emails, passwords, and credit card numbers, which can be recovered simply by using software available freely on the Internet. Deletion of a file does not actually remove the file from the hard drive. Before recycling a computer, users should remove the hard drive, or hard drives if there is more than one, and physically destroy it or store it somewhere safe. There are some authorized hardware recycling companies to whom the computer may be given for recycling, and they typically sign a non-disclosure agreement. Cloud computing Cloud computing addresses two major ICT challenges related to Green computing – energy usage and resource consumption. Virtualization, dynamic provisioning environment, multi-tenancy and green data center approaches are enabling cloud computing to lower carbon emissions and energy usage. Large enterprises and small businesses can reduce their direct energy consumption and carbon emissions by up to 30% and 90% respectively by moving certain on-premises applications into the cloud. One common example includes online shopping that helps people purchase products and services over the Internet without requiring them to drive, thus consuming fuel, to reach out to the physical shop, which, in turn, reduces greenhouse gas emission related to travel. Edge Computing New technologies such as edge and fog computing are a solution to reducing energy consumption. These technologies allow redistributing computation near its use, thus reducing energy costs in the network. Furthermore, having smaller data centers, the energy used in operations such as refrigerating and maintenance is reduced. Remote work Remote work using teleconference and telepresence technologies is often implemented in green computing initiatives. The advantages include increased worker satisfaction, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions related to travel, and increased profit margins as a result of lower overhead costs for office space, heat, lighting, etc. The average annual energy consumption for U.S. office buildings is over 23 kilowatt hours per square foot, with heat, air conditioning and lighting accounting for 70% of all energy consumed. Other related initiatives, such as Hoteling, reduce the square footage per employee as workers reserve space only when needed. Many types of jobs, such as sales, consulting, and field service, integrate well with this technique. Voice over IP (VoIP) reduces the telephony wiring infrastructure by sharing the existing Ethernet copper. VoIP and phone extension mobility also made hot desking more practical. Wi-Fi consume 4 to 10 times less energy than 4G. Telecommunication network devices energy indices ICT energy consumption, in the US and worldwide, has been estimated respectively at 9.4% and 5.3% of the total electricity produced. The energy consumption of ICTs is today significant even when compared with other industries. Some studies have tried to identify the key energy indices that allow a relevant comparison between different devices (network elements). This analysis was focused on how to optimise device and network consumption for carrier telecommunication by itself. The target was to allow an immediate perception of the relationship between the network technology and the environmental effect. These studies are at the start and further research will be necessary. Supercomputers The Green500 list was first announced on November 15, 2007, at SC|07. As a complement to the TOP500, the listing of the Green500 began a new era where supercomputers can be compared by performance-per-watt. As of 2019, two Japanese supercomputers topped the Green500 energy efficiency ranking with performance exceeding 16 GFLOPS/watt, and two IBM AC922 systems followed with performance exceeding 15 GFLOPS/watt. Education and certification Green computing programs Degree and postgraduate programs provide training in a range of information technology concentrations along with sustainable strategies to educate students on how to build and maintain systems while reducing its harm to the environment. The Australian National University (ANU) offers "ICT Sustainability" as part of its information technology and engineering masters programs. Athabasca University offers a similar course "Green ICT Strategies", adapted from the ANU course notes by Tom Worthington. In the UK, Leeds Beckett University offers an MSc Sustainable Computing program in both full- and part-time access modes. Green computing certifications Some certifications demonstrate that an individual has specific green computing knowledge, including: Green Computing Initiative – GCI offers the Certified Green Computing User Specialist (CGCUS), Certified Green Computing Architect (CGCA) and Certified Green Computing Professional (CGCP) certifications. Information Systems Examination Board (ISEB) Foundation Certificate in Green IT is appropriate for showing an overall understanding and awareness of green computing and where its implementation can be beneficial. Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) Singapore Certified Green IT Professional is an industry endorsed professional level certification offered with SiTF authorized training partners. Certification requires completion of a four-day instructor-led core course, plus a one-day elective from an authorized vendor. Australian Computer Society (ACS) The ACS offers a certificate for "Green Technology Strategies" as part of the Computer Professional Education Program (CPEP). Award of a certificate requires completion of a 12-week e-learning course designed by Tom Worthington, with written assignments. Ratings Since 2010, Greenpeace has maintained a list of ratings of prominent technology companies in several countries based on how clean the energy used by that company is, ranging from A (the best) to F (the worst). ICT and energy demand Digitalization has brought additional energy consumption; energy-increasing effects have been greater than the energy-reducing effects. Four energy consumption increasing effects are: Direct effect – Strong increases of (technical) energy efficiency in ICT are countered by the growth of the sector. Efficiency and rebound effects – Rebound effects are high for ICT and increased productivity often leads to new behaviors that are more energy intensive. Economic growth – Positive effect of digitalization on economic growth. Sectoral change – Growth of ICT services tends not to replace, but come on top of existing services. See also Computational sustainability Energy Star References Further reading Green IT Factsheet by the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Systems

environment of saudi arabia

The desert-covered Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the geographically largest country in the Middle East. Moreover, it accounts for 65% of the overall population of the GCC countries and 42% of its GDP. Saudi Arabia does not have a strong history in environmentalism. Thus, as the number of population increases and the industrial activity grows, environmental issues pose a real challenge to the country.Lack of environmental policy can be linked to an enormous reliance on oil. Due to intense fossil fuel usage, Saudi Arabia has generated a number of environmental issues. Urbanization and high standards of living contribute to ground, water, and air pollution. Agriculture and overconsumption of natural resources cause deforestation and desertification. Likewise, Saudi Arabia's oil industry subsidizes energy use and magnifies carbon dioxide emissions. These environmental issues cause a variety of health problems including asthma and cancer. Some environmental action is taking place such as the construction of a renewable energy industry. Policies and programs are also being developed to ensure environmental sustainability. Background Saudi Arabia contains the largest known oil reserve. This generates an abundance of wealth for the country and places it as the number one oil exporter in the world. Oil extraction is a priority over environmental policy. While oil is not environmentally sustainable, Saudi Arabia has made some contributions to fighting climate change. The kingdom implemented its first environmental law in 1992, the Presidency of Meteorology and Environmental Protection Act. This measure was enacted to encourage environmental awareness and sustainable law creation. Moreover, Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations are working together to create a series of international environmental contracts. Saudi Arabia alone has signed eighteen pacts and ratified thirty-nine environmental agreements. Saudi Arabia's environmental performance index (EPI) is 55.3. The EPI is an internationally standardized scale, with 1 as the lowest environmental performance and 100 as the highest. The scale measures both environmental health and ecosystem viability. Out of Middle Eastern countries, Saudi Arabia ranks 9th on the EPI. Environmental challenges Pollution Oil pollution As the largest oil exporter in OPEC, Saudi Arabia contributes to the immense environmental impacts associated with oil drilling. This includes hydraulic fracturing, oil spills, and air pollution. Saudi Arabia contributed to the world's most severe spill, the 1991 Gulf War Oil Spill. The environmental impacts from oil spills are long lasting and often irreversible. The Gulf War spill directly affected the Saudi Arabian shoreline. While initial research found minuscule long-term impacts, recent studies show oil persistence in ocean habitats. Oil persistence affects ecosystem relationships and the livelihood of all marine animals. The Gulf Coast spill increased the toxicity of Saudi Arabia's coastline. During the initial aftermath, only visible oil was removed from the Gulf. The rest of the spill has remained in the ocean for the past 25 years and contributes to high-risk amounts of hydrocarbons in the environment. Saudi Arabia's salt marshes have had a hard time recovering from past spills. Thick oil coverage permanently changed the biodiversity and chemical compositions of many ocean related habitats. This environmental damage will take decades to reverse. An abundance of oil resources promotes wasteful energy practices throughout Saudi Arabia. The government encourages energy use through subsidies. Currently, these subsidies are higher than any other regime at a total of 43 billion US dollars a year. Inexpensive energy supports excessive energy use, contributing to high rates of domestic oil consumption. The hot, arid climate of the Middle East causes widespread use of air conditioning for climate control. Power consumption and carbon dioxide emissions increase each year. Urban pollution Urbanization causes ground, water, and air pollution. Increasingly urban areas call for more desalinated water and a growing water sector. Desalinization plants use greenhouse gasses and are highly inefficient. The process of oil extraction also contributes to air pollution by emitting high rates of carbon dioxide. Excess greenhouse gas emissions deplete the ozone and raise global temperatures. Marine life and ocean ecosystems are threatened by urbanization as well. Coastline construction from residential and tourism projects increase the amount of untreated sewage released into the ocean and excess trash in cities. Construction and human activities lead to coastal reef damage and high ocean acidity. Urban and agricultural runoff frequently contaminate waters by releasing untreated waste. Ground pollution results from both oil drilling and urbanization. The city of Jeddah and other urban areas face problems of heavy traffic that leads to roadside contamination and high carbon emissions. Saudi Arabia's high standard of living encourages fossil fuel based transportation. Saudi Arabia has yet to develop a concrete public transport sector. Therefore, private transportation is a major contributor to air pollution. Moreover, car usage and city life contribute to dangerous degrees of heavy metals in urban soils. These metals are harmful for both humans and plants, as soil contamination inhibits plant growth and are poisonous when ingested. Deforestation and desertification Urbanization, expansion of agriculture, and energy consumption contribute to deforestation. Wood is the primary natural resource used in local communities. Studies show that wood is often used inefficiently by people living in rural, traditional housing. Saudi Arabia's growing population increases food insecurity. In turn, forests are cleared at higher rates to make more area for agriculture. Deforestation occurs both legally and illegally. Research on woodland conservation shows that there are few initiatives taking place to slow deforestation. Increasing global temperatures are projected to accelerate desertification within Saudi Arabia. Desertification will have a variety of impacts on the country's population. Desertification limits residential expansion and prevents small scale farmers from gaining access to lands. The growing industrial agriculture sector contributes to desertification. Mass monoculture disrupts soil processes and depletes the fertile soils on nutrients. The expansion of industrial agriculture misuses the scarce water resources available to Saudi Arabian farmers. This practice depletes naturally fertile land of water, leading to desertification as well. Environmental action Renewable energy As of 2009, there are no programs encouraging reduced fossil fuel use. Although the government provides subsidies for oil consumption, record breaking oil use has pushed policy towards renewable energy. Peak load, where high energy use creates power outages, is a common fear among the citizens of Saudi Arabia. This anxiety creates further urgency for alternate energy plans to support the population. Mass oil consumption is not sustainable. This realization recently created a new market for renewable energies and further research for cleaner initiatives. Scholars are developing plans to help Saudi Arabia make a transition towards renewable energy. Thus, Saudi Arabia is ranked the 6th worldwide in solar energy potential. As opposed to overall energy reduction, the government organization Saudi Aramco wishes to create a solar energy sector. Saudi Arabia has a goal to create 41 GW of renewable energy plants, which would place the country as a leading solar energy exporter. Currently, the country is at 17 MW of solar energy and has a ways to go before reaching the goal. Hydroelectric and water based powers are also being discussed as alternatives to carbon emitting energies. Recently, and particularly in 2019, Saudi Arabia signed a number of agreements to implement mega wind projects as part of its plan to incorporate 5 gigawatt of wind power into its grid.Concerns of inefficiency and expense are holding Saudi Arabia back from converting to renewable energy. Long-term costs for environmentally friendly practices are low. However, developers often ignore environmental restrictions during oil expansion. It is possible for Saudi Arabia to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and encourage renewable energy use. Preoccupation on energy security strengthen the movement towards renewable energies. The current wealth from oil abundance and pressure from international organizations could encourage the energy sector to move towards sustainable policy. Natural resources are finite. The transition from voluntary sustainability to mandatory environmental regulation can push Saudi Arabia towards environmentally friendly practices. In the framework of Saudi Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia is opt to increase its renewable energy supply by 30%. This is planned to be achieved by partnering Shanghai Electric.The First Saudi Environment Week The Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture organized in 2019 the first Saudi Environment Week. The motto of the event was “protecting our environment for our society's well-being”. The event was organized in 13 Saudi provinces where around 230,715 wild trees were planted. Environmental policy and programs The General Authority of Meteorology and Environmental Protection, or PME, is the Saudi Arabian environmental protection agency that handles all environmental policy. Due to a lack of natural Gulf Coast restoration, the Kingdom is implementing a plan to restore the coast from oil pollution. A scientific evaluation of the coastline's toxicity is underway in hopes to rebuild the coastal environment. The government recently created the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), an institute dedicated towards efficient, environmentally friendly energy use. The organization is working towards a city model that only uses nuclear and renewable energies.The National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development (NCWCD) is a government sector created for endangered animal preservation. The Saudi government works towards creating designated areas for wildlife protection and natural resource conservation. The parks limit hunting and human development to preserve unique plant and animal species. The goal of the NCWCD is to revive destroyed areas and maintain biodiversity while increasing public environmental education research. Specifically, the NCWCD strives to protect the lava field in Harrat Al-Harrah and the sand sea and cuesta in Uruq Bani Mu'arid. In hope to increase environmental awareness to schoolchildren the government has partnered with the United States to create the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program. The goal of the program is to increase international environmental awareness through education and technology. The courses implement environmental issues and solutions into every subject. GLOBE trains teachers and supplies them with instruction materials in both Saudi Arabia and the United States. Students are exposed to the complexity of international environmental issues and the environmental problems stemming from globalization.In order to boost organic agriculture, the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture allocated an amount of $431,000 to help many farmers go organic.In the 2019th G20 meeting in Japan, Saudi Arabia addressed the issue of climate change by introducing the Saudi efforts to produce and increase the production of renewable energy. Future Prospects In 2019, Saudi Arabia started to take serious steps to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels as a source of electricity. Thus, Saudi Arabia planned to build the largest wind farm in the middle east. The farm is under construction in Dumat Al-Jandal, Al Jawf region, Saudi Arabia. An amount of $500 million is allocated to construct the wind farm with a capacity of 400 megawatts (MW). This power is expected to supply 70,000 homes in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, carbon emission is expected to be reduced by 880,000 tons every year. See also Saudi Environmental Society General Authority of Meteorology and Environmental Protection Suggested readings Energy and the Environment: Concerns and Opportunities by Nahed Taher Encyclopedia of Global Warming and Climate Change by Bill Kte’pi Renewable Energy Scenarios For Major Oil Producing Nations: The Case of Saudi Arabia by Yasser Al-saleh Protected Areas in Saudi Arabia: Sustainable Use of Natural Resources by Abdullah Alwelaje == References ==

environmental tax

An environmental tax, ecotax (short for ecological taxation), or green tax is a tax levied on activities which are considered to be harmful to the environment and is intended to promote environmentally friendly activities via economic incentives. A notable example is carbon tax. Such a policy can complement or avert the need for regulatory (command and control) approaches. Often, an ecotax policy proposal may attempt to maintain overall tax revenue by proportionately reducing other taxes (e.g. taxes on human labor and renewable resources); such proposals are known as a green tax shift towards ecological taxation. Ecotaxes address the failure of free markets to consider environmental impacts.Ecotaxes are examples of Pigouvian taxes, which are taxes that attempt to make the private parties involved feel the social burden of their actions. An example might be philosopher Thomas Pogge's proposed Global Resources Dividend. Taxes affected Examples of taxes which could be lowered or eliminated by a green tax shift are: Payroll, income, and, to a lesser extent, sales taxes. Corporate taxes (taxes on investment and entrepreneurship). Property taxes on buildings and other infrastructure.Examples of ecotaxes which could be implemented or increased are: Carbon taxes on the use of fossil fuels by greenhouse gases produced. Old hydrocarbon taxes don't penalize greenhouse gas (GHG) production. Duties on imported goods containing significant non-ecological energy input (to a level necessary to treat fairly local manufacturers) Severance taxes on the extraction of mineral, energy, and forestry products. License fees for camping, hiking, fishing and hunting and associated equipment. Specific taxes on technologies and products which are associated with substantial negative externalities. Waste disposal taxes and refundable fees. Steering taxes on effluents, pollution and other hazardous wastes. Site value taxes on the unimproved value of land. Economic frameworks and strategies employing tax shifting The object of a green tax shift is often to implement a "full cost accounting" or "true cost accounting", using fiscal policy to internalize market distorting externalities, which leads to sustainable wealth creation. The broader measures required for this are also sometimes called ecological fiscal reform, especially in Canada, where the government has generally employed this terminology. In some countries the name is eco-social market economy. Tax shifting usually includes balancing taxation levels to be revenue-neutral for government and to maintain overall progressiveness. It also usually includes measures to protect the most vulnerable, such as raising the minimum income to file income tax at all, or an increase to pension and social assistance levels to offset increased costs of fuel consumption. Basic economic theory recognizes the existence of externalities and their potential negative effects. To the extent that green taxes correct for externalities such as pollution, they correspond with mainstream economic theory. In practice, however, setting the correct taxation level or the tax collection system needed to do so is difficult, and may lead to further distortions or unintended consequences. Taxes on consumption may take the "feebate" approach advocated by Amory Lovins, in which additional fees on less sustainable products—such as sport utility vehicles—are pooled to fund subsidies on more sustainable alternatives, such as hybrid electric vehicles. However, they may simply act as incentives to change habits and make capital investments in newer more efficient vehicles or appliances or to upgrade buildings. Small changes in corporate tax rates for instance can radically change return on investment of capital projects, especially if the averted costs of future fossil fuel use are taken into account. The same logic applies to major consumer purchases. A "green mortgage" such as a Location Efficient Mortgage, for example, recognizes that persons who do not drive cars and live generally energy-efficient lifestyles pay far less per month than others and accordingly have more to pay a heftier mortgage bill with. This justifies lending them much more money to upgrade a house to use even less energy overall. The result is a bank taking more per month from a consumer's income as utilities and car insurance companies take less, and housing stock upgraded to use the minimum energy feasible with current technology. Aside from energy, the refits will generally be those required to be maximally accommodating to remote work, permaculture gardens (for example green roofs), and a lifestyle that is generally localized in the community not based on commuting. It raises real estate valuations for not only the neighborhood but the entire surrounding region. Consumers living sustainable lifestyles in upgraded housing will generally be unwilling to drive around aimlessly shopping, for instance, to save a few dollars on their purchases. Instead, they'll stay nearer to home and create jobs in grocery delivery and small organic grocers, spending substantially less money on gasoline and car operation costs even if they pay more for food. Progressive or regressive? Some green tax shift proposals have been criticized as being fiscally regressive (a tax with an average tax rate that decreases as the taxpayer's income increases). Taxing negative externalities usually entails exerting a burden on consumption, and since the poor consume more and save or invest less as a share of their income, so that any shift towards consumption taxes can be regressive. In 2004, research by the Policy Studies Institute and Joseph Rowntree Foundation indicated that flat rate taxes on domestic rubbish, energy, water and transport use would have a relatively higher impact on poorer households.However, conventional regulatory approaches can affect prices in much the same way, while lacking the revenue-recycling potential of ecotaxes. Moreover, correctly assessing distributive impact of any tax shift requires an analysis of the specific instrument design features. For example, tax revenue could be redistributed on a per capita basis as part of a basic income scheme; in this case, the poorest would gain what the average citizen pays as ecotaxes, minus their own small contribution (no car, small apartment, ...). This design would be highly progressive. Alternatively, an ecotax can have a "lifeline" design, in which modest consumption levels are priced relatively low (even zero, in the case of water), and higher consumption levels are priced at a higher rate. Furthermore, an ecotax policy package can include revenue recycling to reduce or eliminate any regressivity; an increase in an ecotax could be more than offset by a decrease in a (regressive) payroll or consumption tax. Some proponents claim a second benefit of increased employment or lower health care costs as the market and society adjust to the new fiscal policy (these claims, as with the claim "tax cuts create jobs," are often difficult to prove or disprove even after the fact). Furthermore, pollution and other forms of environmental harm are often felt more acutely by the poor, who cannot "buy their way out" of being receptors of air pollution, water pollution, etc. Such losses, although externalities, have real economic welfare impacts. Thus by reducing environmental harm, such instruments have a progressive effect. Ecotax policies enacted An ecotax has been enacted in Germany by means of three laws in 1998, 1999 and 2002. The first introduced a tax on electricity and petroleum, at variable rates based on environmental considerations; renewable sources of electricity were not taxed. The second adjusted the taxes to favor efficient conventional power plants. The third increased the tax on petroleum. At the same time, income taxes were reduced proportionally so that the total tax burden remained constant. The regional government of Balearic Islands (then held by an ecosocialist coalition) established an ecotax in 1999. The Balearic Island suffer a high human pressure from tourism, that at the same time provides the main source of income. The tax (€1.00 per person per day) would be paid by visitors staying at tourist resorts. This was criticized by the conservative opposition as contrary to business interests, and they abolished the tax in 2003 after seizing back the government. A variety of ecotaxes (often called "severance taxes") have been enacted by various states in the United States. The Supreme Court of the United States held in Commonwealth Edison Co. v. Montana, 453 U.S. 609 (1981), that in the absence of federal law to the contrary, states may set ecotaxes as high as they wish without violating the Commerce Clause or the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution. Registration taxes The Netherlands, Portugal, Canada, Spain and Finland have introduced differentiations into their car registration taxes to encourage car buyers to opt for the cleanest car models. In the Netherlands, the new registration taxes, payable when a car is sold to its first buyer, can earn the owner of a hybrid a discount up to €6000. Spain reduced taxes for cars that produced less CO2 (some of which will be exempted), while the more consuming, like SUVs and 4WDs saw their taxes increased. Austria has had a registration tax based on fuel consumption for several years. Worldwide implementation United Kingdom In 1993, the conservative government introduced the Fuel Price Escalator, featuring a small but steady increase of fuel taxes, as proposed by Weizsäcker and Jesinghaus in 1992. The FPE was stopped in 2000, following nationwide protests; while fuel was relatively cheap in 1993, fuel prices were then among the highest in Europe. Under the 1997–2007 Labour government, despite Gordon Brown’s promise to the contrary, green taxes as a percentage of overall taxes had actually fallen from 9.4% to 7.7%, according to calculations by Friends of the Earth.In a 2006 proposal, the U.K.'s then-Environment Secretary David Miliband had the government in discussions on the use of various green taxes to reduce climate-changing pollution. Of the proposed taxes, which were meant to be revenue-neutral, Miliband stated: "They're not fundamentally there to raise revenue."Miliband provided additional comments on their need, saying: "Changing people's behaviour is only achieved by "market forces and price signals", and "As our understanding of climate change increases, it is clear more needs to be done." Ukraine Starting in 1999, the Ukrainian government has been collecting an ecological tax, officially known as Environmental Pollution Fee (Ukrainian: Збір за забруднення навколишнього природного середовища), which is collected from all polluting entities, whether it's one-time or ongoing pollution and regardless of whether the polluting act was legal or illegal at the time. India The Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, asked Madras School of Economics, Chennai, to undertake a study of taxes on polluting inputs and outputs in 2001. Raja Chelliah, Paul Appasamy, U.Sankar and Rita Pandey (Academic Foundation, 2007, New Delhi) recommended eco taxes on coal, automobiles, chlorine, phosphate detergents, chemical pesticides, chemical fertilizers, lead acid batteries and plastics. See Ecotaxes on polluting inputs and outputs, Academic Foundation, New Delhi,2007. The Finance Minister introduced a coal cess at the rate of Rs 50 per ton in 2010. France The French government shared its intentions to establish a new fee on plane tickets with the purpose to fund environment-friendly alternatives, such as eco-friendly transport infrastructure, including rail. The proposed tax would range between 1.50 euros ($1.7) and 18 euros ($20) and apply to most flights departing in France. The French government expects the new tax to raise over 180 million euros ($200 million) from 2020. The Carbon tax The carbon tax was implemented in 2014 after two unsuccessful attempts. It is not a specific tax but a component of domestic consumption taxes on fossil fuels, proportional to their carbon content. It is based on the "polluter pays" principle, ‘’ according to which all persons must contribute to the repair of the damage they cause to the environment ‘’. It puts a price on each ton of CO2 emitted to encourage consumers to move away from certain products or behaviors with high greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, to reduce the use of fossil fuels. It is a Pigouvian tax that encourages quantifying the costs of negative externalities of goods and services. The carbon tax is in fact a "carbon component" integrated into the more global calculation of the domestic consumption tax on energy products (TICPE), natural gas (TICGN) and coal (TICC). It is indexed to the carbon price, which serves as a climate reference for investment choices by public and private economic actors and is expressed in euros per ton of CO2. The carbon tax takes the form of a fee rather than a tax or an environmental tax in the strict sense of the word. It is a non-mandatory levy paid only by the use of a polluting service or good Tax payers The tax is paid by households (on gasoline or gas for example), companies and administrations. However, there are many exceptions: the most polluting large industries are subject to European regulations; air and sea transport are exempted by virtue of international agreements and European directives; national river transport, cabs, road transport of goods, public transport as well as agricultural uses are also exempted from this tax. Results Nearly 4 million tons of CO2 were avoided by France in 2018 thanks to its carbon tax, according to an OECD study, which represents a 5% reduction in emissions from the manufacturing sector between 2014 and 2018. Reception by the public The rapid increase in this tax (from 7 euros per ton in 2014 to 14 in 2015 and 44.6 euros in 2018) caused gasoline prices to explode, which, coupled with the increase in the price of petroleum products and natural gas, contributed to the birth of the yellow vest movement. Other debates take place on the transparency of the tax, indeed, although the receipts are estimated at 8 billion euros per year, the citizens do not really know what is done with it, which makes it even more difficult to accept. See also References External links Green Taxes, encyclopedia.com Environmental taxation, Encyclopedia of the Environment carbon tax, britannica.com Sightline Institute's research and resources on green taxes A Distributional Analysis of Green Tax Reforms - Gilbert E. Metcalf STERN REVIEW: The Economics of Climate Change - An executive summary of a report by economist Nicholas Stern (27pg pdf file) Climate change fight 'can't wait', 2006, bbc.co.uk -- on economist Sir Nicholas Stern's report Environmental Accounting: Environmentally related transfers - environmental taxes, umweltgesamtrechnung.at Sweden - Ecological Tax Reform, ecotippingpoints.org

comprehensive assessment of water management in agriculture

The report A Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture was published in 2007 by International Water Management Institute and Earthscan in an attempt to answer the question: how can water in agriculture be developed and managed to help end poverty and hunger, ensure environmentally sustainable practices, and find the right balance between food and environmental security? History Compiled after consultation with more than 700 individuals, numerous organisations and networks, it was the first critical evaluation of: the benefits, costs and impacts of the past 50 years of water development water management challenges facing communities today successful methods of managing water in farming around the world.The assessment confirmed that agriculture consumes more water resources than any other sector. A key finding was that a third of the world's population lives in water-scarce areas. More than 1.2 billion live in areas of physical water scarcity, lacking water resources. Parts of Australia and the United States suffer in this way. A further 1.6 billion people live in areas of economic water scarcity, where there is insufficient human capacity or financial resources for people to effectively make use of the water that is available. Here, sub-Saharan Africa is a good example; there is water in the rivers but no dams or pumps to enable people to use it. Trends affecting demands for water The report's authors forecast that the need for water would double within 50 years, due to global population rise, more people choosing to eat a diet of meat and vegetables rather than primarily consuming cereals, and climate change. Generally, about one litre of liquid water gets converted to water vapour to produce one calorie of food. We each consume between 2,000 and 5,000 liters of water every day, depending on our diet and how the food is produced. This is far more than the two to five litres we drink every day. A heavy meat diet requires much more than a vegetarian diet, because water is used to grow food for the animals as well as being used directly to support the livestock. Economic growth fuels changes in diets; for example, per capita meat demand in China has quadrupled over the last 30 years, and milk and egg products are becoming increasingly popular in India. Growing cities, expanding industry and biofuels are increasingly competing for water with expanding agriculture. How feeding the future world will be possible The conclusion made by the report's authors was that only by changing the way we use water within agriculture would we be able to meet the acute water, environment and poverty challenges facing us over the next 50 years. They suggested that with wise policies and investments in irrigation, upgrading rainfed agriculture, and trade it would be possible to limit future growth in water withdrawals to 13% and the expansion of cultivated land to 9%. However, the effects of climate change and the increased use of biofuels would complicate matters, making actions necessary to address these. The Assessment found the greatest potential lay in rainfed areas of the world housing the highest number of poor people. Upgrading these rainfed lands through better water management held the greatest potential to increase productivity and decrease poverty. The technology would not necessarily need to be complex; simple measures such as catching water in huge tubular plastic bags and storing roof and road run-off could double or even triple food production in sub-Saharan Africa and south-east Asia, effectively increasing productivity from each raindrop by that amount. Shaping future water policy The report recommended eight policy actions: Change the way we think about water and agriculture. Rain should be viewed as the ultimate source of water to be managed, and agriculture as part of an agro-ecosystem that provides food but also delivers other environmental services, such as maintaining soil fertility. Fight poverty by improving access to agricultural water and its use. This would be achieved by promoting livelihood gains by smallholder farmers, for example by securing water access through rights and developing multiple-use water supply systems. Manage agriculture to enhance ecosystem services. This would involve using good agricultural practices to enhance other ecosystem services. Increase the productivity of water. The outcome would be higher yields and value from smaller volumes of water, thus reducing demand and environmental impacts. Upgrade rainfed agriculture by improving soil moisture and using supplemental irrigation. This holds the greatest potential for lifting people out of poverty and increasing water productivity, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Adapt yesterday's irrigation for tomorrow's needs. Modernisation would require a mix of technological and management upgrades. Reform the reform process, targeting state institutions. Water management investments should embrace irrigated and rainfed agriculture, plus fisheries and livestock practices. Deal with trade-offs and make difficult choices. Informed multi-stakeholder negotiations would be essential. References External links International Water Management Institute

agriculture in the united states

Agriculture is a major industry in the United States, which is a net exporter of food. As of the 2017 census of agriculture, there were 2.04 million farms, covering an area of 900 million acres (1,400,000 sq mi), an average of 441 acres (178 hectares) per farm.Agriculture in the United States is highly mechanized, with an average of only one farmer or farm laborer required per square kilometer of farmland for agricultural production. Although agricultural activity occurs in every U.S. state, it is particularly concentrated in the Central Valley of California and in the Great Plains, a vast expanse of flat arable land in the center of the nation, in the region west of the Great Lakes and east of the Rocky Mountains. The eastern wetter half is a major corn and soybean-producing region known as the Corn Belt, and the western drier half is known as the Wheat Belt because of its high rate of wheat production. The Central Valley of California produces fruits, vegetables, and nuts. The American South has historically been a large producer of cotton, tobacco, and rice, but it has declined in agricultural production over the past century. Florida leads the nation in citrus production and is the number two producer of oranges in the world behind only Brazil. The U.S. has led developments in seed improvement, such as hybridization, and in expanding uses for crops from the work of George Washington Carver to bioplastics and biofuels. The mechanization of farming and intensive farming have been major themes in U.S. history, including John Deere's steel plow, Cyrus McCormick's mechanical reaper, Eli Whitney's cotton gin, and the widespread success of the Fordson tractor and the combine harvester. Modern agriculture in the U.S. ranges from hobby farms and small-scale producers to large commercial farms that cover thousands of acres of cropland or rangeland. History Corn, turkeys, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, and sunflower seeds constitute some of the major holdovers from the agricultural endowment of the Americas. Colonists had more access to land in the colonial United States than they did in Europe. The organization of labor was complex including free persons, slaves and indentured servants depending on the regions where either slaves or poor landless laborers were available to work on family farms.European agricultural practices greatly affected the New England landscape. Colonists brought livestock over from Europe which caused many changes to the land. Grazing animals required a lot of land and food and the act of grazing itself destroyed native grasses, which were being replaced by European species. New species of weeds were introduced and began to thrive as they were capable of withstanding the grazing of animals, whereas native species could not.The practices associated with keeping livestock also contributed to the deterioration of the forests and fields. Colonists would cut down the trees and then allow their cattle and livestock to graze freely in the forest and never plant more trees. The animals trampled and tore up the ground so much as to cause long-term destruction and damage.Soil exhaustion was a huge problem in New England agriculture. Farming with oxen did allow the colonist to farm more land but it increased erosion and decreased soil fertility. This was due to deeper plow cuts in the soil that allowed the soil more contact with oxygen causing nutrient depletion. In grazing fields in New England, the soil was being compacted by the large number of cattle and this did not give the soil enough oxygen to sustain life.In the United States, farms spread from the colonies westward along with the settlers. In cooler regions, wheat was often the crop of choice when lands were newly settled, leading to a "wheat frontier" that moved westward over the course of years. Also very common in the antebellum Midwest was farming corn while raising hogs, complementing each other especially since it was difficult to get grain to market before the canals and railroads. After the "wheat frontier" had passed through an area, more diversified farms including dairy cattle generally took its place. Warmer regions saw plantings of cotton and herds of beef cattle. In the early colonial South, raising tobacco and cotton was common, especially through the use of slave labor until the Civil War. With an established source for labor, and the development of the cotton gin in 1793, the South was able to maintain an economy based on the production of cotton. By the late 1850s, the South produced one-hundred percent of the 374 million pounds of cotton used in the United States. The rapid growth in cotton production was possible because of the availability of slaves. In the northeast, slaves were used in agriculture until the early 19th century. In the Midwest, slavery was prohibited by the Freedom Ordinance of 1787. The introduction and broad adoption of scientific agriculture since the mid-19th century contributed to economic growth in the United States. This development was facilitated by the Morrill Act and the Hatch Act of 1887 which established in each state a land-grant university (with a mission to teach and study agriculture) and a federally funded system of agricultural experiment stations and cooperative extension networks which place extension agents in each state. Soybeans were not widely cultivated in the United States until the early 1930s, and by 1942 it became the world's largest soybean producer, due in part to World War II and the "need for domestic sources of fats, oils, and meal". Between 1930 and 1942, the United States' share of world soybean production grew from 3% to 47%, and by 1969 it had risen to 76%. By 1973 soybeans were the United States' "number one cash crop, and leading export commodity, ahead of both wheat and corn". Although soybeans developed as the top cash crop, corn also remains as an important commodity. As the basis for "industrial food," corn is found in most modern day items at the grocery store. Aside from items like candy and soda, which contain high fructose corn-syrup, corn is also found in non-edible items like the shining wax on store advertisements.Significant areas of farmland were abandoned during the Great Depression and incorporated into nascent national forests. Later, "Sodbuster" and "Swampbuster" restrictions written into federal farm programs starting in the 1970s reversed a decades-long trend of habitat destruction that began in 1942 when farmers were encouraged to plant all possible land in support of the war effort. In the United States, federal programs administered through local Soil and Water Conservation Districts provide technical assistance and partial funding to farmers who wish to implement management practices to conserve soil and limit erosion and floods.Farmers in the early United States were open to planting new crops, raising new animals and adopting new innovations as increased agricultural productivity in turn increased the demand for shipping services, containers, credit, storage, and the like.Although four million farms disappeared in the United States between 1948 and 2015, total output from the farms that remained more than doubled. The number of farms with more than 2,000 acres (810 ha) almost doubled between 1987 and 2012, while the number of farms with 200 acres (81 ha) to 999 acres (404 ha) fell over the same period by 44%.Farm productivity increased in the United States from the mid-20th century until the late-20th century when productivity began to stall. United States agriculture production in 2018 In 2018: It was by far the largest world producer of maize (392 million tons). The country has been the world leader in maize production for decades and only recently China, with 257.3 million tonnes produced this year, has been approaching North American production; It was the largest world producer of soy (123.6 million tons), a position that they held for many years, but recently, they have been competing with Brazil for world leadership. Brazil surpassed US soybean production in 2020.; It was the 4th largest world producer of wheat (51.2 million tons), behind China, India and Russia; It was the 3rd largest world producer of sugar beet (30 million tons), behind Russia and France (the beet is used to manufacture sugar and ethanol) ; It was the 10th largest world producer of sugar cane (31.3 million tons) – Cane is also used to manufacture sugar and ethanol; It was the 5th largest world producer of potato (20.6 million tons), behind China, India, Russia and Ukraine; It was the 3rd largest world producer of tomatoes (12.6 million tons), behind China and India; It was the 3rd largest world producer of cotton (11.4 million tons), behind China and India; It was the 12th largest world producer of rice (10.1 million tons); It was the largest world producer of sorghum (9.2 million tons); It was the 3rd largest world producer of grape (6.8 million tons), behind China and Italy; It was the 4th largest world producer of orange (4.8 million tons), behind Brazil, China and India; It was the 2nd largest world producer of apple (4.6 million tons), second only to China; It was the 3rd largest world producer of onion (3.2 million tons), behind China and India; It was the 3rd largest world producer of peanut (2.4 million tons), behind China and India; It was the largest world producer of almonds (1.8 million tons); It was the 2nd largest world producer of strawberry (1.3 million tons), second only to China; It was the 10th largest world producer of oats (814 thousand tons); It was the 8th largest world producer of lemon (812 thousand tons); It was the 3rd largest world producer of pear (730 thousand tons), behind China and Italy; It was the 3rd largest world producer of green pea (722 thousand tons), behind China and India; It was the 6th largest world producer of peaches (700 thousand tons); It was the 2nd largest world producer of walnut (613 thousand tons), second only to China; It was the 2nd largest world producer of pistachio (447 thousand tons), second only to Iran; It was the 3rd largest world producer of lentils (381 thousand tons), behind Canada and India; It was the 2nd largest world producer of spinach (384 thousand tons), second only to China; It was the 4th largest world producer of plum (368 thousand tons), behind China, Romania and Serbia; It was the 4th largest world producer of tobacco (241 thousand tons), behind China, Brazil and India; It was the 2nd largest world producer of lettuce and chicory(3.6 million tons) behind China; It was the 3rd largest world producer of cauliflower and broccoli (1.2 million tons) behind China and India; It was the 3rd largest world producer of carrots (1.5 million tons) behind China and Uzbekistan; It produced 3.3 million tons of barley; It produced 1.7 million tons of beans; It produced 1.7 million tons of watermelon; It produced 1.6 million tons of rapeseed; It produced 960 thousand tons of sunflower seed; It produced 804 thousand tons of tangerine;In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products, such as melon (872 thousand tons), pumpkin (683 thousand tons), grapefruit (558 thousand tons), cranberry (404 thousand tons), cherry (312 thousand tons), blueberry (255 thousand tons), rye (214 thousand tons), olive (138 thousand tons), etc. Major agricultural products Tonnes of United States agriculture production, as reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the U.N. in 2003 and 2013 (ranked roughly in order of value): Other crops appearing in the top 20 at some point in the last 40 years were: tobacco, barley, and oats, and, rarely: peanuts, almonds, and sunflower seeds. Alfalfa and hay would both be in the top ten in 2003 if they were tracked by FAO. Crops Value of production Note alfalfa and hay are not tracked by the FAO and the production of tobacco in the United States has fallen 60% between 1997 and 2003. Yield Heavily mechanized, U.S. agriculture has a high yield relative to other countries. As of 2004: Corn for grain, average of 160.4 bushels harvested per acre (10.07 t/ha) Soybean for beans, average of 42.5 bushels harvested per acre (2.86 t/ha) Wheat, average of 43.2 bushels harvested per acre (2.91 t/ha, was 44.2 bu/ac or 2.97 t/ha in 2003) Livestock The major livestock industries in the United States: Dairy cattle Beef cattle Pig Poultry Seafood SheepGoats, horses, turkeys and bees are also raised, though in lesser quantities. Inventory data is not as readily available as for the major industries. For the three major goat-producing states—Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas—there were 1.2 million goats at the end of 2002. There were 5.3 million horses in the United States at the end of 1998. There were 2.5 million colonies of bees at the end of 2005. Farm type or majority enterprise type Farm type is based on which commodities are the majority crops grown on a farm. Nine common types include: Cash grains includes corn, soybeans and other grains (wheat, oats, barley, sorghum), dry edible beans, peas, and rice. Tobacco Cotton Other field crops includes peanuts, potatoes, sunflowers, sweet potatoes, sugarcane, broomcorn, popcorn, sugar beets, mint, hops, seed crops, hay, silage, forage, etc. Tobacco and cotton can be included here if not in their own separate category. High-value crops includes fruits, vegetables, melons, tree nuts, greenhouse, nursery crops, and horticultural specialties. Cattle Hogs Dairy Poultry and eggsOne characteristic of the agricultural industry that sets it apart from others is the number of individuals who are self-employed. Frequently, farmers and ranchers are both the principal operator, the individual responsible for successful management and day-to-day decisions, and the primary laborer for his or her operation. For agricultural workers that sustain an injury, the resultant loss of work has implications on physical health and financial stability.The United States has over 14,000 certified organic farms, covering more than 5 million acres, though this is less than 1% of total US farmland. The output of these farms has grown substantially since 2011, and exceeded $7.5 billion USD in 2016. Governance Agriculture in the United States is primarily governed by periodically renewed U.S. farm bills. Governance is both a federal and a local responsibility with the United States Department of Agriculture being the federal department responsible. Government aid includes research into crop types and regional suitability as well as many kinds of subsidies, some price supports and loan programs. U.S. farmers are not subject to production quotas and some laws are different for farms compared to other workplaces. Labor laws prohibiting children in other workplaces provide some exemptions for children working on farms with complete exemptions for children working on their family's farm. Children can also gain permits from vocational training schools or 4-H clubs which allow them to do jobs they would otherwise not be permitted to do. A large part of the U.S. farm workforce is made up of migrant and seasonal workers, many of them recent immigrants from Latin America. Additional laws apply to these workers and their housing which is often provided by the farmer. Farm labor Occupational safety and health Agriculture ranks among the most hazardous industries due to the use of chemicals and risk of injury. Farmers are at high risk for fatal and nonfatal injuries (general traumatic injury and musculoskeletal injury), work-related lung diseases, noise-induced hearing loss, skin diseases, chemical-related illnesses, and certain cancers associated with chemical use and prolonged sun exposure. In an average year, 516 workers die doing farm work in the U.S. (1992–2005). Every day, about 243 agricultural workers suffer lost-work-time injuries, and about 5% of these result in permanent impairment. Tractor overturns are the leading cause of agriculture-related fatal injuries, and account for over 90 deaths every year. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommends the use of roll over protection structures on tractors to reduce the risk of overturn-related fatal injuries.Farming is one of the few industries in which families (who often share the work and live on the premises) are also at risk for injuries, illness, and death. Agriculture is the most dangerous industry for young workers, accounting for 42% of all work-related fatalities of young workers in the U.S. between 1992 and 2000. In 2011, 108 youth, less than 20 years of age, died from farm-related injuries. Unlike other industries, half the young victims in agriculture were under age 15. For young agricultural workers aged 15–17, the risk of fatal injury is four times the risk for young workers in other workplaces Agricultural work exposes young workers to safety hazards such as machinery, confined spaces, work at elevations, and work around livestock. The most common causes of fatal farm-related youth injuries involve machinery, motor vehicles, or drowning. Together these three causes comprise more than half of all fatal injuries to youth on U.S. farms. Women in agriculture (including the related industries of forestry and fishing) numbered 556,000 in 2011.Agriculture in the U.S. makes up approximately 75% of the country's pesticide use. Agricultural workers are at high risk for being exposed to dangerous levels of pesticides, whether or not they are directly working with the chemicals. For example, with issues like pesticide drift, farmworkers are not the only ones exposed to these chemicals; nearby residents come into contact with the pesticides as well. The frequent exposure to these pesticides can have detrimental effects on humans, resulting in adverse health reactions associated with pesticide poisoning. Migrant workers, especially women, are at higher risk for health issues associated with pesticide exposure due to lack of training or appropriate safety precautions. United States agricultural workers experience 10,000 cases or more of physician-diagnosed pesticide poisoning annually. Research centers Some U.S. research centers are focused on the topic of health and safety in agricultural practices. These centers not only conduct research on the subject of occupational disease and injury prevention, but also promote agricultural health and safety through educational outreach programs. Most of these groups are funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the US Department of Agriculture, or other state agencies. Centers include: Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA High Plains Intermountain Center for Agricultural Health and Safety, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety, Marshfield, WI Northeast Center for Agricultural and Occupational Health, New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health, Cooperstown, NY Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA Southeast Center for Agricultural Health and Injury Prevention, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY Southwest Center for Agricultural Health, Injury Prevention and Education, University of Texas, Tyler, TX Upper Midwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center, a collaboration between the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine, St. Paul, MN, Minnesota Department of Health, St. Paul, MN and the National Farm Medicine Center, Marshfield, WI with Migrant Clinicians Network, Salisbury, MD Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety, University of California, Davis, CA Farmer suicide Environmental issues Climate change Demographics The number of women working in agriculture has risen and the 2002 census of agriculture recorded a 40% increase in the number of female farm workers. Inequality and respect are common issues for these workers, as many have reported that they are not being respected, listened to, or taken seriously due to traditional views of women as housewives and caretakers.Women may also face resistance when attempting to advance to higher positions. Other issues reported by female farm workers include receiving less pay than their male counterparts and a refusal or reluctance by their employers to offer their female workers the same additional benefits given to male workers such as housing.As of 2012, there were 44,629 African-American farmers in the United States. The vast majority of African-American farmers were in southern states. Industry Historically, farmland has been owned by small property owners, but as of 2017 institutional investors, including foreign corporations, had been purchasing farmland. In 2013 the largest producer of pork, Smithfield Foods, was bought by a company from China.As of 2017, only about 4% of farms have sales over $1m, but these farms yield two-thirds of total output. Some of these are large farms have grown organically from private family-owned businesses. Land ownership laws As of 2019, six states—Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Oklahoma—have laws banning foreign ownership of farmland. Missouri, Ohio, and Oklahoma are looking to introduce bills banning foreign ownership as of 2019.The state with the most foreign ownership as of 2019 is Maine, which has 3.1 million acres that are foreign-controlled, followed closely by Texas at 3 million acres. Alabama, at 1.6 million acres, Washington, at 1.5 million acres, and Michigan, at 1.3 million acres, round out the top five, according to the Midwest Center's analysis. See also References Citations Cited sources Mbow, Cheikh; Rosenzweig; Barioni, Luis .G.; Benton, Tim .G. (2019). "Food security". In Shukla, P.R.; Skea, J.; Buendia, E. Calvo; Masson-Delmotte, V. (eds.). Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems. IPCC. Further reading Schapsmeier, Edward L; and Frederick H. Schapsmeier. Encyclopedia of American agricultural history (1975) onlineWinterbottom, Jo; Huffstutter, P. J. (Feb. 2015). Rent walkouts point to strains in U.S. farm economy, Reuters External links United States Department of Agriculture National Ag Safety Database North American Guidelines for Children's Agricultural Tasks Archived 2013-01-17 at the Wayback Machine

recycling

Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. This concept often includes the recovery of energy from waste materials. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the properties it had in its original state. It is an alternative to "conventional" waste disposal that can save material and help lower greenhouse gas emissions. It can also prevent the waste of potentially useful materials and reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reducing energy use, air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling). Recycling is a key component of modern waste reduction and is the third component of the "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle" waste hierarchy. It promotes environmental sustainability by removing raw material input and redirecting waste output in the economic system. There are some ISO standards related to recycling, such as ISO 15270:2008 for plastics waste and ISO 14001:2015 for environmental management control of recycling practice. Recyclable materials include many kinds of glass, paper, cardboard, metal, plastic, tires, textiles, batteries, and electronics. The composting and other reuse of biodegradable waste—such as food and garden waste—is also a form of recycling. Materials for recycling are either delivered to a household recycling center or picked up from curbside bins, then sorted, cleaned, and reprocessed into new materials for manufacturing new products. In ideal implementations, recycling a material produces a fresh supply of the same material—for example, used office paper would be converted into new office paper, and used polystyrene foam into new polystyrene. Some types of materials, such as metal cans, can be remanufactured repeatedly without losing their purity. With other materials, this is often difficult or too expensive (compared with producing the same product from raw materials or other sources), so "recycling" of many products and materials involves their reuse in producing different materials (for example, paperboard). Another form of recycling is the salvage of constituent materials from complex products, due to either their intrinsic value (such as lead from car batteries and gold from printed circuit boards), or their hazardous nature (e.g. removal and reuse of mercury from thermometers and thermostats). History Origins Reusing materials has been a common practice for most of human history with recorded advocates as far back as Plato in the fourth century BC. During periods when resources were scarce, archaeological studies of ancient waste dumps show less household waste (such as ash, broken tools, and pottery), implying that more waste was recycled in place of new material. However, archaeological artefacts made from recyclable material, such as glass or metal, may neither be the original object nor resemble it, with the consequence that a successful ancient recycling economy can become invisible when recycling is synonymous with re-melting rather than reuse. In pre-industrial times, there is evidence of scrap bronze and other metals being collected in Europe and melted down for continuous reuse. Paper recycling was first recorded in 1031 when Japanese shops sold repulped paper. In Britain dust and ash from wood and coal fires was collected by "dustmen" and downcycled as a base material for brick making. These forms of recycling were driven by the economic advantage of obtaining recycled materials instead of virgin material, and the need for waste removal in ever-more-densely populated areas. In 1813, Benjamin Law developed the process of turning rags into "shoddy" and "mungo" wool in Batley, Yorkshire, which combined recycled fibers with virgin wool. The West Yorkshire shoddy industry in towns such as Batley and Dewsbury lasted from the early 19th century to at least 1914. Industrialization spurred demand for affordable materials. In addition to rags, ferrous scrap metals were coveted as they were cheaper to acquire than virgin ore. Railroads purchased and sold scrap metal in the 19th century, and the growing steel and automobile industries purchased scrap in the early 20th century. Many secondary goods were collected, processed and sold by peddlers who scoured dumps and city streets for discarded machinery, pots, pans, and other sources of metal. By World War I, thousands of such peddlers roamed the streets of American cities, taking advantage of market forces to recycle post-consumer materials into industrial production.Manufacturers of beverage bottles, including Schweppes, began offering refundable recycling deposits in Great Britain and Ireland around 1800. An official recycling system with refundable deposits for bottles was established in Sweden in 1884, and for aluminum beverage cans in 1982; it led to recycling rates of 84–99%, depending on type. (Glass bottles can be refilled around 20 times.) Wartime New chemical industries created in the late 19th century both invented new materials (e.g. Bakelite in 1907) and promised to transform valueless into valuable materials. Proverbially, you could not make a silk purse of a sow's ear—until the US firm Arthur D. Little published in 1921 "On the Making of Silk Purses from Sows' Ears", its research proving that when "chemistry puts on overalls and gets down to business [...] new values appear. New and better paths are opened to reach the goals desired."Recycling—or "salvage", as it was then usually known—was a major issue for governments during World War II, where financial constraints and significant material shortages made it necessary to reuse goods and recycle materials. These resource shortages caused by the world wars, and other such world-changing events, greatly encouraged recycling. It became necessary for most homes to recycle their waste, allowing people to make the most of what was available. Recycling household materials also meant more resources were left available for war efforts. Massive government campaigns, such as the National Salvage Campaign in Britain and the Salvage for Victory campaign in the United States, occurred in every fighting nation, urging citizens to donate metal, paper, rags, and rubber as a patriotic duty. Post-World War II A considerable investment in recycling occurred in the 1970s due to rising energy costs. Recycling aluminium uses only 5% of the energy of virgin production. Glass, paper and other metals have less dramatic but significant energy savings when recycled.Although consumer electronics have been popular since the 1920s, recycling them was almost unheard of until early 1991. The first electronic waste recycling scheme was implemented in Switzerland, beginning with collection of old refrigerators, then expanding to cover all devices. When these programs were created, many countries couldn't deal with the sheer quantity of e-waste, or its hazardous nature, and began to export the problem to developing countries without enforced environmental legislation. (For example, recycling computer monitors in the United States costs 10 times more than in China.) Demand for electronic waste in Asia began to grow when scrapyards found they could extract valuable substances such as copper, silver, iron, silicon, nickel, and gold during the recycling process. The 2000s saw a boom in both the sales of electronic devices and their growth as a waste stream: In 2002, e-waste grew faster than any other type of waste in the EU. This spurred investment in modern automated facilities to cope with the influx, especially after strict laws were implemented in 2003.As of 2014, the European Union had about 50% of world share of waste and recycling industries, with over 60,000 companies employing 500,000 people and a turnover of €24 billion. EU countries are mandated to reach recycling rates of at least 50%; leading countries are already at around 65%. The overall EU average was 39% in 2013 and is rising steadily, to 45% in 2015.In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly set 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Goal 12, Responsible Consumption and Production, specifies 11 targets "to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns". The fifth target, Target 12.5, is defined as substantially reducing waste generation by 2030, indicated by the National Recycling Rate. In 2018, changes in the recycling industry have sparked a global "crisis". On 31 December 2017, China announced its "National Sword" policy, setting new standards for imports of recyclable material and banning materials deemed too "dirty" or "hazardous". The new policy caused drastic disruptions in the global recycling market, and reduced the prices of scrap plastic and low-grade paper. Exports of recyclable materials from G7 countries to China dropped dramatically, with many shifting to countries in southeast Asia. This generated significant concern about the recycling industry's practices and environmental sustainability. The abrupt shift caused countries to accept more materials than they could process, and raised fundamental questions about shipping waste from developed countries to countries with few environmental regulations—a practice that predated the crisis. Health and environmental impact Health impact Environmental impact Economist Steven Landsburg, author of a paper entitled "Why I Am Not an Environmentalist", claimed that paper recycling actually reduces tree populations. He argues that because paper companies have incentives to replenish their forests, large demands for paper lead to large forests while reduced demand for paper leads to fewer "farmed" forests. When foresting companies cut down trees, more are planted in their place; however, such farmed forests are inferior to natural forests in several ways. Farmed forests are not able to fix the soil as quickly as natural forests. This can cause widespread soil erosion and often requiring large amounts of fertilizer to maintain the soil, while containing little tree and wild-life biodiversity compared to virgin forests. Also, the new trees planted are not as big as the trees that were cut down, and the argument that there would be "more trees" is not compelling to forestry advocates when they are counting saplings. In particular, wood from tropical rainforests is rarely harvested for paper because of their heterogeneity. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change secretariat, the overwhelming direct cause of deforestation is subsistence farming (48% of deforestation) and commercial agriculture (32%), which is linked to food, not paper production.Other non-conventional methods of material recycling, like Waste-to-Energy (WTE) systems, have garnered increased attention in the recent past due to the polarizing nature of their emissions. While viewed as a sustainable method of capturing energy from material waste feedstocks by many, others have cited numerous explanations for why the technology has not been scaled globally. Legislation Supply For a recycling program to work, a large, stable supply of recyclable material is crucial. Three legislative options have been used to create such supplies: mandatory recycling collection, container deposit legislation, and refuse bans. Mandatory collection laws set recycling targets for cities, usually in the form that a certain percentage of a material must be diverted from the city's waste stream by a target date. The city is responsible for working to meet this target.Container deposit legislation mandates refunds for the return of certain containers—typically glass, plastic and metal. When a product in such a container is purchased, a small surcharge is added that the consumer can reclaim when the container is returned to a collection point. These programs have succeeded in creating an average 80% recycling rate. Despite such good results, the shift in collection costs from local government to industry and consumers has created strong opposition in some areas—for example, where manufacturers bear the responsibility for recycling their products. In the European Union, the WEEE Directive requires producers of consumer electronics to reimburse the recyclers' costs.An alternative way to increase the supply of recyclates is to ban the disposal of certain materials as waste, often including used oil, old batteries, tires, and garden waste. This can create a viable economy for the proper disposal of the products. Care must be taken that enough recycling services exist to meet the supply, or such bans can create increased illegal dumping. Government-mandated demand Four forms of legislation have also been used to increase and maintain the demand for recycled materials: minimum recycled content mandates, utilization rates, procurement policies, and recycled product labeling.Both minimum recycled content mandates and utilization rates increase demand by forcing manufacturers to include recycling in their operations. Content mandates specify that a certain percentage of a new product must consist of recycled material. Utilization rates are a more flexible option: Industries can meet their recycling targets at any point of their operations, or even contract out recycling in exchange for tradable credits. Opponents to these methods cite their large increase in reporting requirements, and claim that they rob the industry of flexibility.Governments have used their own purchasing power to increase recycling demand through "procurement policies". These policies are either "set-asides", which reserve a certain amount of spending for recycled products; or "price preference" programs that provide larger budgets when recycled items are purchased. Additional regulations can target specific cases: in the United States, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency mandates the purchase of oil, paper, tires and building insulation from recycled or re-refined sources whenever possible.The final government regulation toward increased demand is recycled product labeling. When producers are required to label their packaging with the amount of recycled material it contains (including the packaging), consumers can make more educated choices. Consumers with sufficient buying power can choose more environmentally conscious options, prompting producers to increase the recycled material in their products and increase demand. Standardized recycling labeling can also have a positive effect on the supply of recyclates when it specifies how and where the product can be recycled. Recyclates "Recyclate" is a raw material sent to and processed in a waste recycling plant or materials-recovery facility so it can be used in the production of new materials and products. For example, plastic bottles can be made into plastic pellets and synthetic fabrics. Quality of recyclate The quality of recyclates is one of the principal challenges for the success of a long-term vision of a green economy and achieving zero waste. It generally refers to how much of it is composed of target material, versus non-target material and other non-recyclable material. Steel and other metals have intrinsically higher recyclate quality; it is estimated that two-thirds of all new steel comes from recycled steel. Only target material is likely to be recycled, so higher amounts of non-target and non-recyclable materials can reduce the quantity of recycled products. A high proportion of non-target and non-recyclable material can make it more difficult to achieve "high-quality" recycling; and if recyclate is of poor quality, it is more likely to end up being down-cycled or, in more extreme cases, sent to other recovery options or landfilled. For example, to facilitate the remanufacturing of clear glass products, there are tight restrictions for colored glass entering the re-melt process. Another example is the downcycling of plastic, where products such as plastic food packaging are often downcycled into lower quality products, and do not get recycled into the same plastic food packaging. The quality of recyclate not only supports high-quality recycling, but it can also deliver significant environmental benefits by reducing, reusing, and keeping products out of landfills. High-quality recycling can support economic growth by maximizing the value of waste material. Higher income levels from the sale of quality recyclates can return value significant to local governments, households and businesses. Pursuing high-quality recycling can also promote consumer and business confidence in the waste and resource management sector, and may encourage investment in it. There are many actions along the recycling supply chain, each of which can affect recyclate quality. Waste producers who place non-target and non-recyclable wastes in recycling collections can affect the quality of final recyclate streams, and require extra efforts to discard those materials at later stages in the recycling process. Different collection systems can induce different levels of contamination. When multiple materials are collected together, extra effort is required to sort them into separate streams and can significantly reduce the quality of the final products. Transportation and the compaction of materials can also make this more difficult. Despite improvements in technology and quality of recyclate, sorting facilities are still not 100% effective in separating materials. When materials are stored outside, where they can become wet, can also cause problems for re-processors. Further sorting steps may be required to satisfactorily reduce the amount of non-target and non-recyclable material. Recyclate Quality Action Plan (Scotland) Scotland's Recyclate Quality Action Plan proposes a number of actions the Scottish Government wants to take to increase the quality of materials collected for recycling and sorted at recovery facilities before it is exported or sold on the reprocessing market. Its objectives are to: Increase recyclate quality, and create greater transparency about it. Help those contracting with recycling facilities identify what is required of them. Ensure compliance with the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012. Stimulate a household market for quality recyclate. Address and reduce issues around waste shipment regulations.The plan focuses on three key areas, with 14 actions to increase the quality of materials collected, sorted and presented to the processing market in Scotland. These areas are: Collection systems and input contamination Sorting facilities—material sampling and transparency Material quality benchmarking and standards Recycling consumer waste Collection A number of systems have been implemented to collect recyclates from the general waste stream, occupying different places on the spectrum of trade-off between public convenience and government ease and expense. The three main categories of collection are drop-off centers, buy-back centers and curbside collection. About two-thirds of the cost of recycling is incurred in the collection phase. Curbside collection Curbside collection encompasses many subtly different systems, which differ mostly on where in the process the recyclates are sorted and cleaned. The main categories are mixed waste collection, commingled recyclables, and source separation. A waste collection vehicle generally picks up the waste. In mixed waste collection, recyclates are collected mixed with the rest of the waste, and the desired materials are sorted out and cleaned at a central sorting facility. This results in a large amount of recyclable waste (especially paper) being too soiled to reprocess, but has advantages as well: The city need not pay for the separate collection of recyclates, no public education is needed, and any changes to the recyclability of certain materials are implemented where sorting occurs.In a commingled or single-stream system, recyclables are mixed but kept separate from non-recyclable waste. This greatly reduces the need for post-collection cleaning, but requires public education on what materials are recyclable. Source separation Source separation is the other extreme, where each material is cleaned and sorted prior to collection. It requires the least post-collection sorting and produces the purest recyclates. However, it incurs additional operating costs for collecting each material, and requires extensive public education to avoid recyclate contamination. In Oregon, USA, Oregon DEQ surveyed multi-family property managers; about half of them reported problems, including contamination of recyclables due to trespassers such as transients gaining access to collection areas.Source separation used to be the preferred method due to the high cost of sorting commingled (mixed waste) collection. However, advances in sorting technology have substantially lowered this overhead, and many areas that had developed source separation programs have switched to what is called co-mingled collection. Buy-back centers At buy-back centers, separated, cleaned recyclates are purchased, providing a clear incentive for use and creating a stable supply. The post-processed material can then be sold. If profitable, this conserves the emission of greenhouse gases; if unprofitable, it increases their emission. Buy-back centres generally need government subsidies to be viable. According to a 1993 report by the U.S. National Waste & Recycling Association, it costs an average $50 to process a ton of material that can be resold for $30.In the US, the value per ton of mixed recyclables was $180 in 2011, $80 in 2015, and $100 in 2017.In 2017, glass was essentially valueless because of the low cost of sand, its major component. Similarly, low oil costs thwarted plastic recycling.In 2017, Napa, California, was reimbursed about 20% of its recycling costs. Drop-off centers Drop-off centers require the waste producer to carry recyclates to a central location—either an installed or mobile collection station or the reprocessing plant itself. They are the easiest type of collection to establish but suffer from low and unpredictable throughput. Distributed recycling For some waste materials such as plastic, recent technical devices called recyclebots enable a form of distributed recycling called DRAM (distributed recycling additive manufacturing). Preliminary life-cycle analysis (LCA) indicates that such distributed recycling of HDPE to make filament for 3D printers in rural regions consumes less energy than using virgin resin, or using conventional recycling processes with their associated transportation.Another form of distributed recycling mixes waste plastic with sand to make bricks in Africa. Several studies have looked at the properties of recycled waste plastic and sand bricks. The composite pavers can be sold at 100% profit while employing workers at 1.5× the minimum wage in the West African region, where distributed recycling has the potential to produce 19 million pavement tiles from 28,000 tons of plastic water sachets annually in Ghana, Nigeria, and Liberia. This has also been done with COVID19 masks. Sorting Once commingled recyclates are collected and delivered to a materials recovery facility, the materials must be sorted. This is done in a series of stages, many of which involve automated processes, enabling a truckload of material to be fully sorted in less than an hour. Some plants can now sort materials automatically; this is known as single-stream recycling. Automatic sorting may be aided by robotics and machine learning. In plants, a variety of materials is sorted including paper, different types of plastics, glass, metals, food scraps, and most types of batteries. A 30% increase in recycling rates has been seen in areas with these plants. In the US, there are over 300 materials recovery facilities.Initially, commingled recyclates are removed from the collection vehicle and placed on a conveyor belt spread out in a single layer. Large pieces of corrugated fiberboard and plastic bags are removed by hand at this stage, as they can cause later machinery to jam. Next, automated machinery such as disk screens and air classifiers separate the recyclates by weight, splitting lighter paper and plastic from heavier glass and metal. Cardboard is removed from mixed paper, and the most common types of plastic—PET (#1) and HDPE (#2)—are collected, so these materials can be diverted into the proper collection channels. This is usually done by hand; but in some sorting centers, spectroscopic scanners are used to differentiate between types of paper and plastic based on their absorbed wavelengths. Plastics tend to be incompatible with each other due to differences in chemical composition; their polymer molecules repel each other, similar to oil and water.Strong magnets are used to separate out ferrous metals such as iron, steel and tin cans. Non-ferrous metals are ejected by magnetic eddy currents: A rotating magnetic field induces an electric current around aluminum cans, creating an eddy current inside the cans that is repulsed by a large magnetic field, ejecting the cans from the stream. Finally, glass is sorted according to its color: brown, amber, green, or clear. It may be sorted either by hand, or by a machine that uses colored filters to detect colors. Glass fragments smaller than 10 millimetres (0.39 in) cannot be sorted automatically, and are mixed together as "glass fines".In 2003, San Francisco's Department of the Environment set a citywide goal of zero waste by 2020. San Francisco's refuse hauler, Recology, operates an effective recyclables sorting facility that has helped the city reach a record-breaking landfill diversion rate of 80% as of 2021. Other American cities, including Los Angeles, have achieved similar rates. Recycling industrial waste Although many government programs concentrate on recycling at home, 64% of waste in the United Kingdom is generated by industry. The focus of many recycling programs in industry is their cost-effectiveness. The ubiquitous nature of cardboard packaging makes cardboard a commonly waste product recycled by companies that deal heavily in packaged goods, such as retail stores, warehouses, and goods distributors. Other industries deal in niche and specialized products, depending on the waste materials they handle. Glass, lumber, wood pulp and paper manufacturers all deal directly in commonly recycled materials; however, independent tire dealers may collect and recycle rubber tires for a profit. The waste produced from burning coal in a Coal-fired power station is often called fuel ash or fly ash in the United States. It is a very useful material and used in concrete construction. It exhibits Pozzolanic activity.Levels of metals recycling are generally low. In 2010, the International Resource Panel, hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), published reports on metal stocks and their recycling rates. It reported that the increase in the use of metals during the 20th and into the 21st century has led to a substantial shift in metal stocks from below-ground to use in above-ground applications within society. For example, in the US, in-use copper grew from 73 to 238 kg per capita between 1932–1999. The report's authors observed that, as metals are inherently recyclable, metal stocks in society can serve as huge above-ground mines (the term "urban mining" has thus been coined). However, they found that the recycling rates of many metals are low. They warned that the recycling rates of some rare metals used in applications such as mobile phones, battery packs for hybrid cars and fuel cells, are so low that unless future end-of-life recycling rates are dramatically increased, these critical metals will become unavailable for use in modern technology. The military recycles some metals. The U.S. Navy's Ship Disposal Program uses ship breaking to reclaim the steel of old vessels. Ships may also be sunk to create artificial reefs. Uranium is a dense metal that has qualities superior to lead and titanium for many military and industrial uses. Uranium left over from processing it into nuclear weapons and fuel for nuclear reactors is called depleted uranium, and is used by all branches of the U.S. military for the development of such things as armor-piercing shells and shielding. The construction industry may recycle concrete and old road surface pavement, selling these materials for profit. Some rapidly growing industries, particularly the renewable energy and solar photovoltaic technology industries, are proactively creating recycling policies even before their waste streams have considerable volume, anticipating future demand. Recycling of plastics is more difficult, as most programs are not able to reach the necessary level of quality. Recycling of PVC often results in downcycling of the material, which means only products of lower quality standard can be made with the recycled material. E-waste is a growing problem, accounting for 20–50 million metric tons of global waste per year according to the EPA. It is also the fastest growing waste stream in the EU. Many recyclers do not recycle e-waste responsibly. After the cargo barge Khian Sea dumped 14,000 metric tons of toxic ash in Haiti, the Basel Convention was formed to stem the flow of hazardous substances into poorer countries. They created the e-Stewards certification to ensure that recyclers are held to the highest standards for environmental responsibility and to help consumers identify responsible recyclers. It operates alongside other prominent legislation, such as the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive of the EU and the United States National Computer Recycling Act, to prevent poisonous chemicals from entering waterways and the atmosphere. In the recycling process, television sets, monitors, cell phones, and computers are typically tested for reuse and repaired. If broken, they may be disassembled for parts still having high value if labor is cheap enough. Other e-waste is shredded to pieces roughly 10 centimetres (3.9 in) in size and manually checked to separate toxic batteries and capacitors, which contain poisonous metals. The remaining pieces are further shredded to 10 millimetres (0.39 in) particles and passed under a magnet to remove ferrous metals. An eddy current ejects non-ferrous metals, which are sorted by density either by a centrifuge or vibrating plates. Precious metals can be dissolved in acid, sorted, and smelted into ingots. The remaining glass and plastic fractions are separated by density and sold to re-processors. Television sets and monitors must be manually disassembled to remove lead from CRTs and the mercury backlight from LCDs.Vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines can also be recycled. They often contain rare-earth elements (REE) and/or other critical raw materials. For electric car production, large amounts of REE's are typically required.Whereas many critical raw elements and REE's can be recovered, environmental engineer Phillipe Bihouix Archived 6 September 2021 at the Wayback Machine reports that recycling of indium, gallium, germanium, selenium, and tantalum is still very difficult and their recycling rates are very low. Plastic recycling Plastic recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastic and reprocessing the material into useful products, sometimes completely different in form from their original state. For instance, this could mean melting down soft drink bottles and then casting them as plastic chairs and tables. For some types of plastic, the same piece of plastic can only be recycled about 2–3 times before its quality decreases to the point where it can no longer be used. Physical recycling Some plastics are remelted to form new plastic objects; for example, PET water bottles can be converted into polyester destined for clothing. A disadvantage of this type of recycling is that the molecular weight of the polymer can change further and the levels of unwanted substances in the plastic can increase with each remelt.A commercial-built recycling facility was sent to the International Space Station in late 2019. The facility takes in plastic waste and unneeded plastic parts and physically converts them into spools of feedstock for the space station additive manufacturing facility used for in-space 3D printing. Chemical recycling For some polymers, it is possible to convert them back into monomers, for example, PET can be treated with an alcohol and a catalyst to form a dialkyl terephthalate. The terephthalate diester can be used with ethylene glycol to form a new polyester polymer, thus making it possible to use the pure polymer again. In 2019, Eastman Chemical Company announced initiatives of methanolysis and syngas designed to handle a greater variety of used material. Waste plastic pyrolysis to fuel oil Another process involves the conversion of assorted polymers into petroleum by a much less precise thermal depolymerization process. Such a process would be able to accept almost any polymer or mix of polymers, including thermoset materials such as vulcanized rubber tires and the biopolymers in feathers and other agricultural waste. Like natural petroleum, the chemicals produced can be used as fuels or as feedstock. A RESEM Technology plant of this type in Carthage, Missouri, US, uses turkey waste as input material. Gasification is a similar process but is not technically recycling since polymers are not likely to become the result. Plastic Pyrolysis can convert petroleum based waste streams such as plastics into quality fuels, carbons. Given below is the list of suitable plastic raw materials for pyrolysis: Mixed plastic (HDPE, LDPE, PE, PP, Nylon, Teflon, PS, ABS, FRP, PET etc.) Mixed waste plastic from waste paper mill Multi-layered plastic Recycling loops The (ideal) recycling process can be differentiated into three loops, one for manufacture (production-waste recycling) and two for disposal of the product (product and material recycling).The product's manufacturing phase, which consists of material processing and fabrication, forms the production-waste recycling loop. Industrial waste materials are fed back into, and reused in, the same production process. The product's disposal process requires two recycling loops: product recycling and material recycling. The product or product parts are reused in the product recycling phase. This happens in one of two ways: the product is used retaining the product functionality ("reuse") or the product continues to be used but with altered functionality ("further use"). The product design is unmodified, or only slightly modified, in both scenarios. Product disassembly requires material recycling where product materials are recovered and recycled. Ideally, the materials are processed so they can flow back into the production process. Recycling codes In order to meet recyclers' needs while providing manufacturers a consistent, uniform system, a coding system was developed. The recycling code for plastics was introduced in 1988 by the plastics industry through the Society of the Plastics Industry. Because municipal recycling programs traditionally have targeted packaging—primarily bottles and containers—the resin coding system offered a means of identifying the resin content of bottles and containers commonly found in the residential waste stream.Plastic products are printed with numbers 1–7 depending on the type of resin. Type 1 (polyethylene terephthalate) is commonly found in soft drink and water bottles. Type 2 (high-density polyethylene) is found in most hard plastics such as milk jugs, laundry detergent bottles, and some dishware. Type 3 (polyvinyl chloride) includes items such as shampoo bottles, shower curtains, hula hoops, credit cards, wire jacketing, medical equipment, siding, and piping. Type 4 (low-density polyethylene) is found in shopping bags, squeezable bottles, tote bags, clothing, furniture, and carpet. Type 5 is polypropylene and makes up syrup bottles, straws, Tupperware, and some automotive parts. Type 6 is polystyrene and makes up meat trays, egg cartons, clamshell containers, and compact disc cases. Type 7 includes all other plastics such as bulletproof materials, 3- and 5-gallon water bottles, cell phone and tablet frames, safety goggles and sunglasses. Having a recycling code or the chasing arrows logo on a material is not an automatic indicator that a material is recyclable but rather an explanation of what the material is. Types 1 and 2 are the most commonly recycled. Cost–benefit analysis In addition to environmental impact, there is debate over whether recycling is economically efficient. According to a Natural Resources Defense Council study, waste collection and landfill disposal creates less than one job per 1,000 tons of waste material managed; in contrast, the collection, processing, and manufacturing of recycled materials creates 6–13 or more jobs per 1,000 tons. According to the U.S. Recycling Economic Informational Study, there are over 50,000 recycling establishments that have created over a million jobs in the US. The National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) reported in May 2015 that recycling and waste made a $6.7 billion economic impact in Ohio, U.S., and employed 14,000 people. Economists would classify this extra labor used as a cost rather than a benefit since these workers could have been employed elsewhere; the cost effectiveness of creating these additional jobs remains unclear.Sometimes cities have found recycling saves resources compared to other methods of disposal of waste. Two years after New York City declared that implementing recycling programs would be "a drain on the city", New York City leaders realized that an efficient recycling system could save the city over $20 million. Municipalities often see fiscal benefits from implementing recycling programs, largely due to the reduced landfill costs. A study conducted by the Technical University of Denmark according to the Economist found that in 83 percent of cases, recycling is the most efficient method to dispose of household waste. However, a 2004 assessment by the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute concluded that incineration was the most effective method for disposing of drink containers, even aluminium ones.Fiscal efficiency is separate from economic efficiency. Economic analysis of recycling does not include what economists call externalities: unpriced costs and benefits that accrue to individuals outside of private transactions. Examples include less air pollution and greenhouse gases from incineration and less waste leaching from landfills. Without mechanisms such as taxes or subsidies, businesses and consumers following their private benefit would ignore externalities despite the costs imposed on society. If landfills and incinerator pollution is inadequately regulated, these methods of waste disposal appear cheaper than they really are, because part of their cost is the pollution imposed on people nearby. Thus, advocates have pushed for legislation to increase demand for recycled materials. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has concluded in favor of recycling, saying that recycling efforts reduced the country's carbon emissions by a net 49 million metric tonnes in 2005. In the United Kingdom, the Waste and Resources Action Programme stated that Great Britain's recycling efforts reduce CO2 emissions by 10–15 million tonnes a year. The question for economic efficiency is whether this reduction is worth the extra cost of recycling and thus makes the artificial demand creates by legislation worthwhile. Certain requirements must be met for recycling to be economically feasible and environmentally effective. These include an adequate source of recyclates, a system to extract those recyclates from the waste stream, a nearby factory capable of reprocessing the recyclates, and a potential demand for the recycled products. These last two requirements are often overlooked—without both an industrial market for production using the collected materials and a consumer market for the manufactured goods, recycling is incomplete and in fact only "collection".Free-market economist Julian Simon remarked "There are three ways society can organize waste disposal: (a) commanding, (b) guiding by tax and subsidy, and (c) leaving it to the individual and the market". These principles appear to divide economic thinkers today.Frank Ackerman favours a high level of government intervention to provide recycling services. He believes that recycling's benefit cannot be effectively quantified by traditional laissez-faire economics. Allen Hershkowitz supports intervention, saying that it is a public service equal to education and policing. He argues that manufacturers should shoulder more of the burden of waste disposal.Paul Calcott and Margaret Walls advocate the second option. A deposit refund scheme and a small refuse charge would encourage recycling but not at the expense of illegal dumping. Thomas C. Kinnaman concludes that a landfill tax would force consumers, companies and councils to recycle more.Most free-market thinkers detest subsidy and intervention, arguing that they waste resources. The general argument is that if cities charge the full cost of garbage collection, private companies can profitably recycle any materials for which the benefit of recycling exceeds the cost (e.g. aluminum) and do not recycle other materials for which the benefit is less than the cost (e.g. glass). Cities, on the other hand, often recycle even when they not only do not receive enough for the paper or plastic to pay for its collection, but must actually pay private recycling companies to take it off of their hands. Terry Anderson and Donald Leal think that all recycling programmes should be privately operated, and therefore would only operate if the money saved by recycling exceeds its costs. Daniel K. Benjamin argues that it wastes people's resources and lowers the wealth of a population. He notes that recycling can cost a city more than twice as much as landfills, that in the United States landfills are so heavily regulated that their pollution effects are negligible, and that the recycling process also generates pollution and uses energy, which may or may not be less than from virgin production. Trade in recyclates Certain countries trade in unprocessed recyclates. Some have complained that the ultimate fate of recyclates sold to another country is unknown and they may end up in landfills instead of being reprocessed. According to one report, in America, 50–80 percent of computers destined for recycling are actually not recycled. There are reports of illegal-waste imports to China being dismantled and recycled solely for monetary gain, without consideration for workers' health or environmental damage. Although the Chinese government has banned these practices, it has not been able to eradicate them. In 2008, the prices of recyclable waste plummeted before rebounding in 2009. Cardboard averaged about £53/tonne from 2004 to 2008, dropped to £19/tonne, and then went up to £59/tonne in May 2009. PET plastic averaged about £156/tonne, dropped to £75/tonne and then moved up to £195/tonne in May 2009.Certain regions have difficulty using or exporting as much of a material as they recycle. This problem is most prevalent with glass: both Britain and the U.S. import large quantities of wine bottled in green glass. Though much of this glass is sent to be recycled, outside the American Midwest there is not enough wine production to use all of the reprocessed material. The extra must be downcycled into building materials or re-inserted into the regular waste stream.Similarly, the northwestern United States has difficulty finding markets for recycled newspaper, given the large number of pulp mills in the region as well as the proximity to Asian markets. In other areas of the U.S., however, demand for used newsprint has seen wide fluctuation.In some U.S. states, a program called RecycleBank pays people to recycle, receiving money from local municipalities for the reduction in landfill space that must be purchased. It uses a single stream process in which all material is automatically sorted. Criticisms and responses Critics dispute the net economic and environmental benefits of recycling over its costs, and suggest that proponents of recycling often make matters worse and suffer from confirmation bias. Specifically, critics argue that the costs and energy used in collection and transportation detract from (and outweigh) the costs and energy saved in the production process; also that the jobs produced by the recycling industry can be a poor trade for the jobs lost in logging, mining, and other industries associated with production; and that materials such as paper pulp can only be recycled a few times before material degradation prevents further recycling.Journalist John Tierney notes that it is generally more expensive for municipalities to recycle waste from households than to send it to a landfill and that "recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America."Much of the difficulty inherent in recycling comes from the fact that most products are not designed with recycling in mind. The concept of sustainable design aims to solve this problem, and was laid out in the 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart. They suggest that every product (and all packaging it requires) should have a complete "closed-loop" cycle mapped out for each component—a way in which every component either returns to the natural ecosystem through biodegradation or is recycled indefinitely. Complete recycling is impossible from a practical standpoint. In summary, substitution and recycling strategies only delay the depletion of non-renewable stocks and therefore may buy time in the transition to true or strong sustainability, which ultimately is only guaranteed in an economy based on renewable resources.: 21  While recycling diverts waste from entering directly into landfill sites, current recycling misses the dispersive components. Critics believe that complete recycling is impracticable as highly dispersed wastes become so diluted that the energy needed for their recovery becomes increasingly excessive. As with environmental economics, care must be taken to ensure a complete view of the costs and benefits involved. For example, paperboard packaging for food products is more easily recycled than most plastic, but is heavier to ship and may result in more waste from spoilage. Energy and material flows The amount of energy saved through recycling depends upon the material being recycled and the type of energy accounting that is used. Correct accounting for this saved energy can be accomplished with life-cycle analysis using real energy values, and in addition, exergy, which is a measure of how much useful energy can be used. In general, it takes far less energy to produce a unit mass of recycled materials than it does to make the same mass of virgin materials.Some scholars use emergy (spelled with an m) analysis, for example, budgets for the amount of energy of one kind (exergy) that is required to make or transform things into another kind of product or service. Emergy calculations take into account economics that can alter pure physics-based results. Using emergy life-cycle analysis researchers have concluded that materials with large refining costs have the greatest potential for high recycle benefits. Moreover, the highest emergy efficiency accrues from systems geared toward material recycling, where materials are engineered to recycle back into their original form and purpose, followed by adaptive reuse systems where the materials are recycled into a different kind of product, and then by-product reuse systems where parts of the products are used to make an entirely different product.The Energy Information Administration (EIA) states on its website that "a paper mill uses 40 percent less energy to make paper from recycled paper than it does to make paper from fresh lumber." Some critics argue that it takes more energy to produce recycled products than it does to dispose of them in traditional landfill methods, since the curbside collection of recyclables often requires a second waste truck. However, recycling proponents point out that a second timber or logging truck is eliminated when paper is collected for recycling, so the net energy consumption is the same. An emergy life-cycle analysis on recycling revealed that fly ash, aluminum, recycled concrete aggregate, recycled plastic, and steel yield higher efficiency ratios, whereas the recycling of lumber generates the lowest recycle benefit ratio. Hence, the specific nature of the recycling process, the methods used to analyse the process, and the products involved affect the energy savings budgets.It is difficult to determine the amount of energy consumed or produced in waste disposal processes in broader ecological terms, where causal relations dissipate into complex networks of material and energy flow. [C]ities do not follow all the strategies of ecosystem development. Biogeochemical paths become fairly straight relative to wild ecosystems, with reduced recycling, resulting in large flows of waste and low total energy efficiencies. By contrast, in wild ecosystems, one population's wastes are another population's resources, and succession results in efficient exploitation of available resources. However, even modernized cities may still be in the earliest stages of a succession that may take centuries or millennia to complete.: 720  How much energy is used in recycling also depends on the type of material being recycled and the process used to do so. Aluminium is generally agreed to use far less energy when recycled rather than being produced from scratch. The EPA states that "recycling aluminum cans, for example, saves 95 percent of the energy required to make the same amount of aluminum from its virgin source, bauxite." In 2009, more than half of all aluminium cans produced came from recycled aluminium. Similarly, it has been estimated that new steel produced with recycled cans reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 75%. Every year, millions of tons of materials are being exploited from the earth's crust, and processed into consumer and capital goods. After decades to centuries, most of these materials are "lost". With the exception of some pieces of art or religious relics, they are no longer engaged in the consumption process. Where are they? Recycling is only an intermediate solution for such materials, although it does prolong the residence time in the anthroposphere. For thermodynamic reasons, however, recycling cannot prevent the final need for an ultimate sink.: 1  Economist Steven Landsburg has suggested that the sole benefit of reducing landfill space is trumped by the energy needed and resulting pollution from the recycling process. Others, however, have calculated through life-cycle assessment that producing recycled paper uses less energy and water than harvesting, pulping, processing, and transporting virgin trees. When less recycled paper is used, additional energy is needed to create and maintain farmed forests until these forests are as self-sustainable as virgin forests. Other studies have shown that recycling in itself is inefficient to perform the "decoupling" of economic development from the depletion of non-renewable raw materials that is necessary for sustainable development. The international transportation or recycle material flows through "... different trade networks of the three countries result in different flows, decay rates, and potential recycling returns".: 1  As global consumption of a natural resources grows, their depletion is inevitable. The best recycling can do is to delay; complete closure of material loops to achieve 100 percent recycling of nonrenewables is impossible as micro-trace materials dissipate into the environment causing severe damage to the planet's ecosystems. Historically, this was identified as the metabolic rift by Karl Marx, who identified the unequal exchange rate between energy and nutrients flowing from rural areas to feed urban cities that create effluent wastes degrading the planet's ecological capital, such as loss in soil nutrient production. Energy conservation also leads to what is known as Jevon's paradox, where improvements in energy efficiency lowers the cost of production and leads to a rebound effect where rates of consumption and economic growth increases. Costs The amount of money actually saved through recycling depends on the efficiency of the recycling program used to do it. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance argues that the cost of recycling depends on various factors, such as landfill fees and the amount of disposal that the community recycles. It states that communities begin to save money when they treat recycling as a replacement for their traditional waste system rather than an add-on to it and by "redesigning their collection schedules and/or trucks".In some cases, the cost of recyclable materials also exceeds the cost of raw materials. Virgin plastic resin costs 40 percent less than recycled resin. Additionally, a United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study that tracked the price of clear glass from 15 July to 2 August 1991, found that the average cost per ton ranged from $40 to $60 while a USGS report shows that the cost per ton of raw silica sand from years 1993 to 1997 fell between $17.33 and $18.10.Comparing the market cost of recyclable material with the cost of new raw materials ignores economic externalities—the costs that are currently not counted by the market. Creating a new piece of plastic, for instance, may cause more pollution and be less sustainable than recycling a similar piece of plastic, but these factors are not counted in market cost. A life cycle assessment can be used to determine the levels of externalities and decide whether the recycling may be worthwhile despite unfavorable market costs. Alternatively, legal means (such as a carbon tax) can be used to bring externalities into the market, so that the market cost of the material becomes close to the true cost. Working conditions The recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment can create a significant amount of pollution. This problem is specifically occurrent in India and China. Informal recycling in an underground economy of these countries has generated an environmental and health disaster. High levels of lead (Pb), polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs), polychlorinated dioxins and furans, as well as polybrominated dioxins and furans (PCDD/Fs and PBDD/Fs), concentrated in the air, bottom ash, dust, soil, water, and sediments in areas surrounding recycling sites. These materials can make work sites harmful to the workers themselves and the surrounding environment. Possible income loss and social costs In some countries, recycling is performed by the entrepreneurial poor such as the karung guni, zabbaleen, the rag-and-bone man, waste picker, and junk man. With the creation of large recycling organizations that may be profitable, either by law or economies of scale, the poor are more likely to be driven out of the recycling and the remanufacturing job market. To compensate for this loss of income, a society may need to create additional forms of societal programs to help support the poor. Like the parable of the broken window, there is a net loss to the poor and possibly the whole of a society to make recycling artificially profitable, e.g. through the law. However, in Brazil and Argentina, waste pickers/informal recyclers work alongside the authorities, in fully or semi-funded cooperatives, allowing informal recycling to be legitimized as a paid public sector job.Because the social support of a country is likely to be less than the loss of income to the poor undertaking recycling, there is a greater chance for the poor to come in conflict with the large recycling organizations. This means fewer people can decide if certain waste is more economically reusable in its current form rather than being reprocessed. Contrasted to the recycling poor, the efficiency of their recycling may actually be higher for some materials because individuals have greater control over what is considered "waste".One labor-intensive underused waste is electronic and computer waste. Because this waste may still be functional and wanted mostly by those on lower incomes, who may sell or use it at a greater efficiency than large recyclers. Some recycling advocates believe that laissez-faire individual-based recycling does not cover all of society's recycling needs. Thus, it does not negate the need for an organized recycling program. Local government can consider the activities of the recycling poor as contributing to the ruining of property. Public participation rates Changes that have been demonstrated to increase recycling rates include: Single-stream recycling Pay as you throw fees for trashIn a study done by social psychologist Shawn Burn, it was found that personal contact with individuals within a neighborhood is the most effective way to increase recycling within a community. In her study, she had 10 block leaders talk to their neighbors and persuade them to recycle. A comparison group was sent fliers promoting recycling. It was found that the neighbors that were personally contacted by their block leaders recycled much more than the group without personal contact. As a result of this study, Shawn Burn believes that personal contact within a small group of people is an important factor in encouraging recycling. Another study done by Stuart Oskamp examines the effect of neighbors and friends on recycling. It was found in his studies that people who had friends and neighbors that recycled were much more likely to also recycle than those who didn't have friends and neighbors that recycled. Many schools have created recycling awareness clubs in order to give young students an insight on recycling. These schools believe that the clubs actually encourage students to not only recycle at school but at home as well. Recycling of metals varies extremely by type. Titanium and lead have an extremely high recycling rates of over 90%. Copper and cobalt have high rates of recycling around 75%. Only about half of aluminum is recycled. Most of the remaining metals have recycling rates of below 35%, while 34 types of metals have recycling rates of under 1%."Between 1960 and 2000, the world production of plastic resins increased 25 times its original amount, while recovery of the material remained below 5 percent.": 131  Many studies have addressed recycling behaviour and strategies to encourage community involvement in recycling programs. It has been argued that recycling behavior is not natural because it requires a focus and appreciation for long-term planning, whereas humans have evolved to be sensitive to short-term survival goals; and that to overcome this innate predisposition, the best solution would be to use social pressure to compel participation in recycling programs. However, recent studies have concluded that social pressure does not work in this context. One reason for this is that social pressure functions well in small group sizes of 50 to 150 individuals (common to nomadic hunter–gatherer peoples) but not in communities numbering in the millions, as we see today. Another reason is that individual recycling does not take place in the public view. Following the increasing popularity of recycling collection being sent to the same landfills as trash, some people kept on putting recyclables on the recyclables bin. Recycling in art Art objects are more and more often made from recycled material. Embracing a Circular Economy through Advanced Sorting Technologies By extending the lifespan of goods, parts, and materials, a circular economy seeks to minimize waste and maximize resource utilization. Advanced sorting techniques like optical and robotic sorting may separate and recover valuable materials from waste streams, lowering the requirement for virgin resources and accelerating the shift to a circular economy. Community engagement, such as education and awareness campaigns, may support the acceptance of recycling and reuse programs and encourage the usage of sustainable practices. One can lessen our influence on the environment, save natural resources, and generate economic possibilities by adopting a circular economy using cutting-edge sorting technology and community engagement. According to Melati et al., to successfully transition to a circular economy, legislative and regulatory frameworks must encourage sustainable practices while addressing possible obstacles and difficulties in putting these ideas into action. See also References Further reading Ackerman, F. (1997). Why Do We Recycle?: Markets, Values, and Public Policy. Island Press. ISBN 1-55963-504-5, ISBN 978-1-55963-504-2 Ayres, R.U. (1994). "Industrial Metabolism: Theory and Policy", In: Allenby, B.R., and D.J. Richards, The Greening of Industrial Ecosystems. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, pp. 23–37. Braungart, M., McDonough, W. (2002). Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. North Point Press, ISBN 0-86547-587-3. Huesemann, M.H., Huesemann, J.A. (2011).Technofix: Why Technology Won't Save Us or the Environment, "Challenge #3: Complete Recycling of Non-Renewable Materials and Wastes", New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada, ISBN 0-86571-704-4, pp. 135–137. Lienig, Jens; Bruemmer, Hans (2017). "Recycling Requirements and Design for Environmental Compliance". Fundamentals of Electronic Systems Design. pp. 193–218. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-55840-0_7. ISBN 978-3-319-55839-4. Minter, Adam (2015). Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade. Bloomsbury Press. ISBN 978-1608197934. Porter, R.C. (2002). The Economics of Waste. Resources for the Future. ISBN 1-891853-42-2, ISBN 978-1-891853-42-5 Sheffield, H. Sweden’s recycling is so revolutionary, the country has run out of rubbish (December 2016), The Independent (UK) Tierney, J. (3 October 2015). "The Reign of Recycling". The New York Times. External links === Related journals ===

history of agriculture in the indian subcontinent

Indian agriculture began by 9000 BCE on north-west India with the early cultivation of plants, and domestication of crops and animals. Indian subcontinent agriculture was the largest producer of wheat and grain. They settled life soon followed with implements and techniques being developed for agriculture. Double monsoons led to two harvests being reaped in one year. Indian products soon reached the world via existing trading networks and foreign crops were introduced to India. Plants and animals—considered essential to their survival by the Indians—came to be worshiped and venerated.The Middle Ages saw irrigation channels reach a new level of sophistication in India and Indian crops affecting the economies of other regions of the world. Land and water management systems were developed with an aim of providing uniform growth. Despite some stagnation during the later modern era the independent Republic of India was able to develop a comprehensive agricultural programme. Early history Neolithic In the period of the Neolithic revolution, roughly 8000-4000 BCE, Agro pastoralism in India included threshing, planting crops in rows—either of two or of six—and storing grain in granaries. Barley and wheat cultivation—along with the rearing of cattle, sheep and goat—was visible in Mehrgarh by 8000-6000 BCE.According to Gangal et al. (2014), there is strong archeological and geographical evidence that neolithic farming spread from the Near East into north-west India. Yet, Jean-Francois Jarrige argues for an independent origin of Mehrgarh. Jarrige notes the similarities between Neolithic sites from eastern Mesopotamia and the western Indus valley, which are evidence of a "cultural continuum" between those sites. Nevertheless, Jarrige concludes that Mehrgarh has an earlier local background," and is not a "'backwater' of the Neolithic culture of the Near East." Singh et al. (2016) investigated the distribution of J2a-M410 and J2b-M102 in South Asia, which "suggested a complex scenario that cannot be explained by a single wave of agricultural expansion from Near East to South Asia," but also note that "regardless of the complexity of dispersal, NW region appears to be the corridor for entry of these haplogroups into India."By the 5th millennium BCE agricultural communities became widespread in Kashmir. Zaheer Baber (1996) writes that 'the first evidence of cultivation of cotton had already developed'. Cotton was cultivated by the 5th millennium BCE-4th millennium BCE. The Indus cotton industry was well developed and some methods used in cotton spinning and fabrication continued to be practiced till the modern Industrialisation of India.A variety of tropical fruits such as mango and melon are native to the Indian subcontinent. The Indians also domesticated hemp, which they used for a number of applications including making narcotics, fiber, and oil. The farmers of the Indus Valley, which thrived in modern-day Pakistan and North India, grew peas, sesame, and dates. Sugarcane was originally from tropical South Asia and Southeast Asia. Different species likely originated in different locations with S. barberi originating in India and S. edule and S. officinarum coming from New Guinea.Wild rice cultivation appeared in the Belan and Ganges valley regions of northern India as early as 4530 BCE and 5440 BCE respectively. Rice was cultivated in the Indus Valley civilisation. Agricultural activity during the second millennium BC included rice cultivation in the Kashmir and Harrappan regions. Mixed farming was the basis of the Indus valley economy. Denis J. Murphy (2007) details the spread of cultivated rice from India into South-east Asia: Several wild cereals, including rice, grew in the Vindhyan Hills, and rice cultivation, at sites such as Chopani-Mando and Mahagara, may have been underway as early as 7000 BP. The relative isolation of this area and the early development of rice farming imply that it was developed indigenously...Chopin-Mando and Mahagara are located on the upper reaches of the Ganges drainage system and it is likely that migrants from this area spread rice farming down the Ganges valley into the fertile plains of Bengal, and beyond into south-east Asia. Indus Valley Civilization Irrigation was developed in the Indus Valley civilisation by around 4500 BCE. The size and prosperity of the Indus civilisation grew as a result of this innovation, which eventually led to more planned settlements making use of drainage and sewers. Sophisticated irrigation and water storage systems were developed by the Indus Valley Civilisation, including artificial reservoirs at Girnar dated to 3000 BCE, and an early canal irrigation system from circa 2600 BCE. Archaeological evidence of an animal-drawn plough dates back to 2500 BC in the Indus Valley Civilisation.Outside the Indus Valley area of influence there are 2 regions with distinct agricultures dating back to around 2800-1500 BCE. These are the Deccan Plateau and an area within the modern states of Orissa and Bihar. Within the Deccan the ashmound tradition developed c.2800 BCE. This is characterised by large mounds of burned cattle dung and other materials. The people of the ashmound tradition grew millets and pulses, some of which were domesticated in this part of India, for example, Brachiaria ramosa, Setaria verticillata, Vigna radiata and Macrotyloma uniflorum. They also herded cattle, sheep and goat and were largely engaged in pastoralism (Fuller 2006, 'Dung mounds and Domesticators'). In the east of India Neolithic people grew rice and pulses, as well as keeping cattle, sheep and goat. By 1500 BCE a distinct agriculture focused on summer crops, including Vigna and Panicum milliaceum was developed. Iron Age India (1500 BCE – 200 CE) Gupta (2004) finds it likely that summer monsoons may have been longer and may have contained moisture in excess than required for normal food production. One effect of this excessive moisture would have been to aid the winter monsoon rainfall required for winter crops. In India, both wheat and barley are held to be Rabi (winter) crops and—like other parts of the world—would have largely depended on winter monsoons before the irrigation became widespread. The growth of the Kharif crops would have probably suffered as a result of excessive moisture. Jute was first cultivated in India, where it was used to make ropes and cordage. Some animals—thought by the Indians as being vital to their survival—came to be worshiped. Trees were also domesticated, worshiped, and venerated—Pipal and Banyan in particular. Others came to be known for their medicinal uses and found mention in the holistic medical system Ayurveda. The History of Agriculture by Britannica Educational Publishing holds that: In the later Vedic texts (c. 3000 -2500 BP) there are repeated references to agricultural technology and practices, including iron implements; the cultivation of...cereals, vegetables, and fruits; the use of meat and milk...and animal husbandry. Farmers plowed the soil...broadcast seeds, and used a certain sequence of cropping and fallowing. Cow dung provided fertilizer, and irrigation was practiced... The Mauryan Empire (322–185 BCE) categorised soils and made meteorological observations for agricultural use. Other Mauryan facilitation included construction and maintenance of dams, and provision of horse-drawn chariots—quicker than traditional bullock carts. The Greek diplomat Megasthenes (c. 300 BC)—in his book Indika— provides a secular eyewitness account of Indian agriculture: India has many huge mountains which abound in fruit-trees of every kind, and many vast plains of great fertility. . . . The greater part of the soil, moreover, is under irrigation, and consequently bears two crops in the course of the year. . . . In addition to cereals, there grows throughout India much millet . . . and much pulse of different sorts, and rice also, and what is called bosporum [Indian millet]. . . . Since there is a double rainfall [i.e., the two monsoons] in the course of each year . . . the inhabitants of India almost always gather in two harvests annually. Early Common Era – High Middle Ages (200–1200 CE) The Tamil people cultivated a wide range of crops such as rice, sugarcane, millets, DR.pepper, various grains, coconuts, beans, cotton, plantain, tamarind and sandalwood. Jackfruit, coconut, palm, areca and plantain trees were also known. Systematic ploughing, manuring, weeding, irrigation and crop protection was practiced for sustained agriculture. Water storage systems were designed during this period. Kallanai (1st-2nd century CE), a dam built on river Kaveri during this period, is considered to be one of the oldest water-regulation structures in the world still in use.Spice trade involving spices native to India—including cinnamon and black pepper—gained momentum as India started shipping spices to the Mediterranean. Roman trade with India followed as detailed by the archaeological record and the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Chinese sericulture attracted Indian sailors during the early centuries of the common era. Crystallised sugar was discovered by the time of the Guptas (320-550 CE), and the earliest reference of candied sugar come from India. The process was soon transmitted to China with traveling Buddhist monks. Chinese documents confirm at least two missions to India, initiated in 647 CE, for obtaining technology for sugar-refining. Each mission returned with results on refining sugar. Indian spice exports find mention in the works of Ibn Khurdadhbeh (850), al-Ghafiqi (1150), Ishak bin Imaran (907) and Al Kalkashandi (fourteenth century).Noboru Karashima's research of the agrarian society in South India during the Chola Empire (875-1279) reveals that during the Chola rule land was transferred and collective holding of land by a group of people slowly gave way to individual plots of land, each with their own irrigation system. The growth of individual disposition of farming property may have led to a decrease in areas of dry cultivation. The Cholas also had bureaucrats which oversaw the distribution of water—-particularly the distribution of water by tank-and-channel networks to the drier areas. Late Middle Ages (1200–1526 CE) The construction of water works and aspects of water technology in Medieval India is described in Arabic and Persian works. The diffusion of Indian and Persian irrigation technologies gave rise to an irrigation systems which brought about economic growth and growth of material culture. Agricultural 'zones' were broadly divided into those producing rice, wheat or millets. Rice production continued to dominate Gujarat and wheat dominated north and central India.Sugar mills appeared in India shortly during this era. Evidence for the use of a draw bar for sugar-milling appears at Delhi in 1540, but may date back earlier, and was mainly used in the northern Indian subcontinent. Geared sugar rolling mills later appeared in Mughal India, using the principle of rollers as well as worm gearing, by the 17th century. Mughal Era (1526–1757 CE) Indian agricultural production increased under the Mughal Empire, during which India's population growth accelerated. A variety of crops were grown, including food crops such as wheat, rice, and barley, and non-food cash crops such as cotton, indigo and opium. By the mid-17th century, Indian cultivators begun to extensively grow two new crops from the Americas, maize and tobacco.Land management was particularly strong during the regime of Akbar the Great (reigned 1556–1605), under whom scholar-bureaucrat Todarmal formulated and implemented elaborated methods for agricultural management on a rational basis. Indian crops—such as cotton, sugar, and citric fruits—spread visibly throughout North Africa, Islamic Spain, and the Middle East. Though they may have been in cultivation prior to the solidification of Islam in India, their production was further improved as a result of this recent wave, which led to far-reaching economic outcomes for the regions involved.The Mughal administration emphasized agrarian reform, which began under the Sur emperor Sher Shah Suri, the work of which Akbar adopted and furthered with more reforms. The civil administration was organized in a hierarchical manner on the basis of merit, with promotions based on performance. The Mughal government funded the building of irrigation systems across the empire, which produced much higher crop yields and increased the net revenue base, leading to increased agricultural production.A major Mughal reform introduced by Akbar was a new land revenue system called zabt. He replaced the tribute system, previously common in India and used by Tokugawa Japan at the time, with a monetary tax system based on a uniform currency. The revenue system was based in favour of higher value cash crops such as cotton, indigo, sugar cane, tree-crops, and opium, providing state incentives to grow cash crops, in addition to rising market demand. Under the zabt system, the Mughals also conducted extensive cadastral surveying to assess the area of land under plow cultivation, with the Mughal state encouraging greater land cultivation by offering tax-free periods to those who brought new land under cultivation.Indian agriculture was advanced compared to Europe at the time, such as the common use of the seed drill among Indian peasants before its adoption in European agriculture. While the average peasant across the world was only skilled in growing very few crops, the average Indian peasant was skilled in growing a wide variety of food and non-food crops, increasing their productivity. Indian peasants were also quick to adapt to profitable new crops, such as maize and tobacco from the New World being rapidly adopted and widely cultivated across Mughal India between 1600 and 1650. Bengali peasants rapidly learned techniques of mulberry cultivation and sericulture, establishing Bengal Subah as a major silk-producing region of the world.The History of Agriculture by Britannica Educational Publishing details the many crops introduced to India during this period of extensive global discourse: Cultivation of tobacco, introduced by the Portuguese spread rapidly. The Malabār Coast was the home of spices, especially black pepper, that had stimulated the first European adventures in the East. Coffee had been imported from Abyssinia and became a popular beverage in aristocratic circles by the end of the century. Tea, which was to become the commoner's drink and a major export, was yet undiscovered, though it was growing wild in the hills of Assam. Vegetables were cultivated mainly in the vicinity of towns. New species of fruit, such as the pineapple, papaya, and cashew nut, also were introduced by the Portuguese. The quality of mango and citrus fruits was greatly improved. According to evidence cited by the economic historians Immanuel Wallerstein, Irfan Habib, Percival Spear, and Ashok Desai, per-capita agricultural output and standards of consumption in 17th-century Mughal India was on-par with or higher than in 17th-century Europe and early 20th-century British India. The increased agricultural productivity led to lower food prices; compared to Britain, the price of grain was about one-half in South India and one-third in Bengal, in terms of silver, in the 18th century. Colonial British Era (1757–1947 CE) Few Indian commercial crops—such as Cotton, indigo, opium, wheat, and rice—made it to the global market under the British Raj in India. The second half of the 19th century saw some increase in land under cultivation and agricultural production expanded at an average rate of about 1% per year by the later 19th century. Due to extensive irrigation by canal networks Punjab, Narmada valley, and Andhra Pradesh became centres of agrarian reforms. Roy (2006) comments on the Influence of the world wars on the Indian agricultural system: Agricultural performance in the interwar period (1918–1939) was dismal. From 1891 to 1946, the annual growth rate of all crop output was 0.4 %, and food-grain output was practically stagnant. There were significant regional and intercrop differences, however, nonfood crops doing better than food crops. Among food crops, by far the most important source of stagnation was rice. Bengal had below-average growth rates in both food and nonfood crop output, whereas Punjab and Madras were the least stagnant regions. In the interwar period, population growth accelerated while food output decelerated, leading to declining availability of food per head. The crisis was most acute in Bengal, where food output declined at an annual rate of about 0.7 % from 1921 to 1946, when population grew at an annual rate of about 1 %. The British regime in India did supply the irrigation works but rarely on the scale required. Community effort and private investment soared as market for irrigation developed. Agricultural prices of some commodities rose to about three times between 1870 and 1920.A rich source of the state of Indian agriculture in the early British era is a report prepared by a British engineer, Thomas Barnard, and his Indian guide, Raja Chengalvaraya Mudaliar, around 1774. This report contains data of agricultural production in about 800 villages in the area around Chennai in the years 1762 to 1766. This report is available in Tamil in the form of palm leaf manuscripts at Thanjavur Tamil University, and in English in the Tamil Nadu State Archives. A series of articles in The Hindu newspaper in the early 1990s authored by researchers at The Centre for Policy Studies led by Shri Dharampal highlight the impressive production statistics of Indian farmers of that era. Republic of India (1947 CE onwards) Special programmes were undertaken to improve food and cash crops supply. The Grow More Food Campaign (1940s) and the Integrated Production Programme (1950s) focused on food and cash crops supply respectively. Five-year plans of India—oriented towards agricultural development—soon followed. Land reclamation, land development, mechanisation, electrification, use of chemicals—fertilisers in particular, and development of agriculture oriented 'package approach' of taking a set of actions instead of promoting single aspect soon followed under government supervision. The many 'production revolutions' initiated from 1960s onwards included Green Revolution in India, Yellow Revolution (oilseed: 1986–1990), Operation Flood (dairy: 1970–1996), and Blue Revolution (fishing: 1973–2002) etc. Following the economic reforms of 1991, significant growth was registered in the agricultural sector, which was by now benefiting from the earlier reforms and the newer innovations of Agro-processing and Biotechnology.Due to the growth and prosperity that followed India's economic reforms a strong middle class emerged as the main consumer of fruits, dairy, fish, meat and vegetables—a marked shift from the earlier staple based consumption. Since 1991, changing consumption patterns led to a 'revolution' in 'high crop value' agriculture while the need for cereals is experienced a decline. The per capita consumption of cereals declined from 192 to 152 kilograms from 1977 to 1999 while the consumption of fruits increased by 553%, vegetables by 167%, dairy products by 105%, and non-vegetarian products by 85% in India's rural areas alone. Urban areas experienced a similar increase.Agricultural exports continued to grow at well over 10.1% annually through the 1990s. Contract farming—which requires the farmers to produce crops for a company under contract—and high value agricultural product increased. Contract farming led to a decrease in transaction costs while the contract farmers made more profit compared to the non-contract workforce. However, small landholding continued to create problems for India's farmers as the limited land resulted in limited produce and limited profits. The 1991 reforms also contributed to a rise in suicides by indebted farmers in India following crop failures (e.g. Bt cotton). Various studies identify the important factors as the withdrawal of government support, insufficient or risky credit systems, the difficulty of farming semi-arid regions, poor agricultural income, absence of alternative income opportunities, a downturn in the urban economy which forced non-farmers into farming, and the absence of suitable counseling services.Since independence, India has become one of the largest producers of wheat, edible oil, potato, spices, rubber, tea, fishing, fruits, and vegetables in the world. The Ministry of Agriculture oversees activities relating to agriculture in India. Various institutions for agriculture related research in India were organised under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (est. 1929). Other organisations such as the National Dairy Development Board (est. 1965), and National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (est. 1982) aided the formation of cooperatives and improved financing. The contribution of agriculture in employing India's male workforce decreased from 75.9% in 1961 to 60% in 1999–2000. Dev (2006) holds that 'there were about 45 million agricultural labor households in the country in 1999–2000.' These households recorded the highest incidence of poverty in India from 1993 to 2000. The green revolution introduced high yielding varieties of crops which also increased the usage of fertilisers and pesticides. About 90% of the pesticide usage in India is accounted for by DDT and Lindane (BHC/HCH). There has been a shift to organic agriculture particularly for exported commodities.During 2003–04, agriculture accounted for 22% of India's GDP and employed 58% of the country's workforce. India is the world's largest producer of milk, fruits, cashew nuts, coconuts, ginger, turmeric, banana, sapota, pulses, and black pepper. India is the second largest producer of groundnut, wheat, vegetables, sugar and fish in the world. India is also the second largest producer of tobacco and rice, the fourth largest producer of coarse grains, the fifth largest producer of eggs, and the seventh largest producer of meat. See also Early Indians Agriculture in India Fishing in India Livestock in India Forestry in India Notes References == Sources ==

monoculture

In agriculture, monoculture is the practice of growing one crop species in a field at a time. Monoculture is widely used in intensive farming and in organic farming: both a 1,000-hectare cornfield and a 10-ha field of organic kale are monocultures. Monoculture of crops has allowed farmers to increase efficiency in planting, managing, and harvesting, mainly by facilitating the use of machinery in these operations, but monocultures can also increase the risk of diseases or pest outbreaks. This practice is particularly common in industrialized nations worldwide. Diversity can be added both in time, as with a crop rotation or sequence, or in space, with a polyculture or intercropping (see table below). Continuous monoculture, or monocropping, where farmers raise the same species year after year, can lead to the quicker buildup and spread of pests and diseases in a susceptible crop. The term "oligoculture" has been used to describe a crop rotation of just a few crops, as practiced in several regions of the world.The concept of monoculture can also extend to (for example) discussions of variety in urban landscapes. Agriculture In an agricultural context, the term describes the practice of planting one species in a field. Examples of monoculture include lawns, fields of wheat or corn, or an apple orchard. Note that the distinction between monoculture and polyculture is not the same as between monocropping and intercropping. The first two describe diversity in space, as does intercropping. Monocropping and crop rotation describe diversity over time. Benefits In crop monocultures, each plant in a field has the same standardized planting, maintenance, and harvesting requirements resulting in greater yields and lower costs. When a crop is matched to its well-managed environment, a monoculture can produce higher yields than a polyculture. Modern practices such as monoculture planting and the use of synthesized fertilizers have reduced the amount of additional land needed to produce food, called land sparing. Risks Monocultures of perennials, such as African palm oil, sugarcane, tea and pines, can lead to soil and environmental problems such as soil acidification, degradation, and soil-borne diseases, which ultimately have a negative impact on agricultural productivity and sustainability. Diverse rotations of crop monocultures can minimize the risk of disease and pest outbreaks. However, the shorter the rotation (fewer crops included) the higher the risk. There are examples of short, two-year rotations selecting for pests that are adapted to such rotations. Ultimately the negative impact of monocultures comes down to two things; loss of biodiversity and the use of pesticides. Healthy ecosystems and habitats are home to hundreds of plant, insect, and animal species. When big stretches of land are used for only one species, the entire balance is disturbed. Important environmental services that are normally provided by the many different species are now left undone. Lower levels of biodiversity on agricultural land also mean that certain insects are left with no natural predators, resulting in their population growing out of control. To control pests on their crops, farmers use heavy pesticides. These can further reduce levels of biodiversity but are also a danger to bodies of water due to chemical run-off. Forestry In forestry, monoculture refers to the planting of one species of tree. Monoculture plantings provide greater yields and more efficient harvesting than natural stands of trees. Single-species stands of trees are often the natural way trees grow, but the stands show a diversity in tree sizes, with dead trees mixed with mature and young trees. In forestry, monoculture stands that are planted and harvested as a unit provide limited resources for wildlife that depend on dead trees and openings since all the trees are the same size; they are most often harvested by clearcutting, which drastically alters the habitat. The mechanical harvesting of trees can compact soils, which can adversely affect understory growth. single-species planting also causes trees to be more vulnerable when they are infected with a pathogen, attacked by insects, or affected by adverse environmental conditions. Residential monoculture Lawn monoculture in the United States was historically influenced by English gardens and manor-house landscapes, but its inception into the American landscape is fairly recent. Aesthetics drove the evolution of the residential green areas, with turfgrass becoming a popular addition to many American homes. Turfgrass is a nonnative species and requires high levels of maintenance. However, the drive for its widespread use primarily came from social pressures. At the local level, governments and organizations have begun to take monocultural practices into their own hands (think Homeowner Associations). Various issues related to maintenance of private property have occurred, such as maintaining aesthetics and real estate value. Disagreements in residential maintenance of weeds, lawns, etc, have resulted in civil cases or even direct aggression against neighbors.Like agriculture, the high levels of maintenance required for turfgrass created a growing demand for chemical management, i.e. pesticides, herbicides, insecticides. A 1999 study showed that in a sample of urban streams, at least one type of pesticide was found in 99% of the streams. One major risk associated with pesticides on lawns include exposure of chemicals into the home through the air, clothing, and furniture which can be more detrimental to children than to the average adult. Genetic monocultures While often referring to the production of the same crop species in a field (space), monoculture can also refer to the planting of a single cultivar across a larger regional area, such that there are numerous plants in the area with an identical genetic makeup to each other. When all plants in a region are genetically similar, a disease to which they have no resistance can destroy entire populations of crops. As of 2009 the wheat leaf rust fungus caused much concern internationally, having already severely affected wheat crops in Uganda and Kenya, and having started to spread in Asia as well. Given the very genetically similar strains of much of the world's wheat crops following the Green Revolution, the impacts of such diseases threaten agricultural production worldwide. Historic examples of genetic monocultures Great Famine of Ireland In Ireland, exclusive use of one variety of potato, the "lumper", led to the Great Famine of 1845–1849. Lumpers provided inexpensive food to feed the Irish masses. Potatoes were propagated vegetatively with little to no genetic variation. When Phytophthora infestans arrived in Ireland from the Americas in 1845, the lumper had no resistance to the disease, leading to the nearly complete failure of the potato crop across Ireland. Bananas Until the 1950s, the Gros Michel cultivar of banana represented almost all bananas consumed in the United States because of their taste, small seeds, and efficiency to produce. Their small seeds, while more appealing than the large ones in other Asian cultivars, were not suitable for planting. This meant that all new banana plants had to be grown from the cut suckers of another plant. As a result of this asexual form of planting, all bananas grown had identical genetic makeups which gave them no traits for resistance to Fusarium wilt, a fungal disease that spread quickly throughout the Caribbean where they were being grown. By the beginning of the 1960s, growers had to switch to growing the Cavendish banana, a cultivar grown in a similar way. This cultivar is under similar disease stress since all the bananas are clones of each other and could easily succumb as the Gros Michel did. Cattle The term is also used where a single breed of farm animal is raised in large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Many of today's livestock production systems rely on just a small number of highly specialized breeds. Focusing heavily on a single trait (output) may come at the expense of other desirable traits – such as fertility, resistance to disease, vigor, and mothering instincts. In the early 1990s, a few Holstein calves were observed to grow poorly and died in the first 6 months of life. They were all found to be homozygous for a mutation in the gene that caused bovine leukocyte adhesion deficiency. This mutation was found at a high frequency in Holstein populations worldwide. (15% among bulls in the US, 10% in Germany, and 16% in Japan.) Researchers studying the pedigrees of affected and carrier animals tracked the source of the mutation to a single bull that was widely used in livestock production. In 1990 there were approximately 4 million Holstein cattle in the US, making the affected population around 600,000 animals. Benefits of genetic diversity While having little to no variety in the genetics of an agricultural system can have drawbacks, increasing genetic diversity by introducing organisms with varying genes can divert them and make the system more sustainable. For example, by having crops with varying genetic traits for disease and pest resistance, there is a much lower chance of having those pests or diseases spread throughout the area. This is because if one crop becomes infected with a particular strain of disease or species of pest, there is a chance that the other plants around it will have genes that protect them from that strain or species. This can help increase crop productivity while simultaneously lowering pesticide usage and risk of exposure. Monofunctionality Monofunctionality is an analogous concept; however, it is entirely possible for a monofunctional land bloc to have its function produced by multiple species and so does not suffer from all the same downsides. When industrialisation first came to agriculture and silviculture, monofunctionality was advocated as the ideal due to the significant initial advantages in economic efficiency. However, in the years since opinion has shifted away. In the years since it has become clear that monofunctionality suffers from some of the same downsides as monoculture, specifically forgoing synergies and failing to fulfill the whole range of human needs. See also Biodiversity Cash crop Crop diversity Crop rotation Fallow Genetically modified organism Great French Wine Blight Gros Michel bananas Heirloom plant Intercropping Intensive crop farming Kil'ayim (prohibition) Neglected and underutilized crop Permaculture Polyculture Seed bank Three Sisters References External links Monoculture and disease Modern Agriculture: Ecological impacts and the possibilities for truly sustainable farming

traditional ecological knowledge

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) describes indigenous and other traditional knowledge of local resources. As a field of study in Northern American anthropology, TEK refers to "a cumulative body of knowledge, belief, and practice, evolving by accumulation of TEK and handed down through generations through traditional songs, stories and beliefs. It is concerned with the relationship of living beings (including human) with their traditional groups and with their environment." Indigenous knowledge is not a universal concept among various societies, but is referred to a system of knowledge traditions or practices that are heavily dependent on "place". Such knowledge is used in natural resource management as a substitute for baseline environmental data in cases where there is little recorded scientific data, or may complement Western scientific methods of ecological management. The application of TEK in the field of ecological management and science is still controversial, as methods of acquiring and collecting knowledge—although often including forms of empirical research and experimentation—differ from those used to create and validate scientific ecological knowledge from a Western perspective. Non-tribal government agencies, such as the U.S. EPA, have established integration programs with some tribal governments in order to incorporate TEK in environmental plans and climate change tracking. There is a debate whether Indigenous populations retain an intellectual property right over traditional knowledge and whether use of this knowledge requires prior permission and license. This is especially complicated because TEK is most frequently preserved as oral tradition and as such may lack objectively confirmed documentation. As such, the same methods that could resolve the issue of documentation to meet Western requirements may compromise the very nature of traditional knowledge. Traditional knowledge is used to maintain resources necessary for survival. While TEK itself, and the communities tied to the oral tradition, may become threatened in the context of rapid climate change or environmental degradation, TEK is proving critical for understanding the impacts of those changes within the ecosystem. TEK can also refer to traditional environmental knowledge which emphasizes the different components and interactions of the environment. Development of the field The earliest systematic studies of TEK were conducted in anthropology. Ecological knowledge was studied through the lens of ethnoecology, "an approach that focuses on the conceptions of ecological relationships held by a people or a culture," in understanding how systems of knowledge were developed by a given culture. Harold Colyer Conklin, an American anthropologist who pioneered the study of ethnoscience, took the lead in documenting indigenous ways of understanding the natural world. Conklin and others documented how traditional peoples, such as Philippine horticulturists, displayed remarkable and exceptionally detailed knowledge about the natural history of places where they resided. Direct involvement in gathering, fashioning products from, and using local plants and animals created a scheme in which the biological world and the cultural world were tightly intertwined. In emphasizing the study of adaptive processes, which argues that social organization itself is an ecological adaptational response by a group to its local environment, human-nature relations and the practical techniques on which these relationships and culture depended, the field of TEK could analyze a broad range of questions related to cultural ecology and ecological anthropology.By the mid-1980s a growing body of literature on traditional ecological knowledge documented both the environmental knowledge held by diverse indigenous peoples and their ecological relations. The rise of traditional ecological knowledge at this time led to international recognition of its potential applications in resource management practices and sustainable development. The 1987 report by the World Commission on Environment and Development reflects the consensus at the time. The report points out that the successes of the 20th century (decreases in infant mortality, increases in life expectancy, increases in literacy, and global food production) have given rise to trends that have caused environmental decay "in an ever more polluted world among ever decreasing resources." Hope, however, existed for traditional lifestyles. The report declared that tribal and indigenous peoples had lifestyles that could provide modern societies with lessons in the management of resources in complex forest, mountain, and dryland ecosystems. Differences from science Fulvio Mazzocchi of the Italian National Research Council's Institute of Atmospheric Pollution contrasts traditional knowledge from scientific knowledge as follows: Traditional knowledge has developed a concept of the environment that emphasizes the symbiotic character of humans and nature. It offers an approach to local development that is based on co‐evolution with the environment, and on respecting the carrying capacity of ecosystems. This knowledge--based on long‐term empirical observations adapted to local conditions--ensures a sound use and control of the environment, and enables indigenous people to adapt to environmental changes. Moreover, it supplies much of the world's population with the principal means to fulfil their basic needs, and forms the basis for decisions and strategies in many practical aspects, including interpretation of meteorological phenomena, medical treatment, water management, production of clothing, navigation, agriculture and husbandry, hunting and fishing, and biological classification systems.... Beyond its obvious benefit for the people who rely on this knowledge, it might provide humanity as a whole with new biological and ecological insights; it has potential value for the management of natural resources and might be useful in conservation education as well as in development planning and environmental assessment...Western science is positivist and materialist in contrast to traditional knowledge, which is spiritual and does not make distinctions between empirical and sacred. Western science is objective and quantitative as opposed to traditional knowledge, which is mainly subjective and qualitative. Western science is based on an academic and literate transmission, while traditional knowledge is often passed on orally from one generation to the next by the elders. Aspects of traditional ecological knowledge The aspects of traditional ecological knowledge provide different typologies in how it is utilized and understood. These are good indicators in how it is used from different perspectives and how they are interconnected, providing more emphasis on "cooperative management to better identify areas of difference and convergence when attempting to bring two ways of thinking and knowing together." Factual observations Houde identifies six faces of traditional ecological knowledge. The first aspect of traditional ecological knowledge incorporates the factual, specific observations generated by recognition, naming, and classification of discrete components of the environment. This aspect is about understanding the interrelationship with species and their surrounding environment. It is also a set of both empirical observations and information emphasizing the aspects of animals and their behavior, and habitat, and the physical characteristics of species, and animal abundance. This is most useful for risk assessment and management which provides nations with opportunity to influence resource management. However, if a nation does not act, then the state may act on its own interests. This type of "empirical knowledge consists of a set of generalized observations conducted over a long period of time and reinforced by accounts of other TEK holders." Management systems The second face refers to the ethical and sustainable use of resources in regards to management systems. This is achieved through strategic planning to ensure resource conservation. More specifically this face involves dealing with pest management, resource conversion, multiple cropping patterns, and methods for estimating the state of resources. It also focuses on resource management and how it adapts to local environments. Past and current uses The third face refers to the time dimension of TEK, focusing on past and current uses of the environment transmitted through oral history, such as land use, settlement, occupancy, and harvest levels. Specifically medicinal plants and historical sites are great concerns. Oral history is used to transmit cultural heritage generation to generation, and contributes to a sense of family and community. Ethics and values The fourth face refers to value statements and connections between the belief system and the organization of facts. In regards to TEK it refers to environmental ethics that keeps exploitative abilities in check. This face also refers to the expression of values concerning the relationship with the habitats of species and their surrounding environment - the human-relationship environment. Culture and identity The fifth face refers to the role of language and images of the past giving life to culture. The relationship between Aboriginals (original inhabitants) and their environment is vital to sustaining the cultural components that define them. This face reflects the stories, values, and social relations that reside in places as contributing to the survival, reproduction, and evolution of aboriginal cultures, and identities. It also stresses "the restorative benefits of cultural landscapes as places for renewal" Cosmology The sixth face is a culturally based cosmology that is the foundation of the other aspects. Cosmology is the notion of how the world works for many cultures. This can vary greatly from one culture to the next. In the U.S for example, there are over 577 federally recognized tribes with their own culture, languages and belief system. Many of these tribes understand themselves as interconnected with the land. The term 'cosmology' relates to the assumptions and beliefs about how things work, and explains the way in which things are connected, and gives principles that regulate human-animal relations and the role of humans in the world. From an anthropological perspective, cosmology attempts to understand the human-animal relationship and how these directly influence social relationships, obligations toward community members, and management practices. In A Yupiaq Worldview: A Pathway to Ecology and Spirit by Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley, an Indigenous anthropologist, says "The balance of nature, or ecological perspective, was of utmost importance to the Yupiaq. History and archeological findings of different race in the world seem to indicate a common philosophical or ecological thread among all people, and this apparent linking leads to the concept of interconnectedness of all things of the universe. The Yupiaq people were, and still are, proponents of this worldview, in spite of the weakening of the ecological perspective by modern intrusions." Kawagley elaborates more on TEK in the Yupiaq worldview by saying that, "The Yupiaq person's methodologies include observation, experience, social interaction, and listening to the conversations and interrogations of the natural and spiritual worlds with the mind. The person is always a participant-observer." Ecosystem management Ecosystem management is a multifaceted and holistic approach to natural resource management. It incorporates both science and traditional ecological knowledge to collect data from long term measures that science cannot. This is achieved by scientists and researchers collaborating with Indigenous peoples through a consensus decision-making process while meeting the socioeconomic, political and cultural needs of current and future generations. Indigenous knowledge has developed a way to deal with the complexity while western science has the techniques and tools. This is a good relationship to have which creates a better outcome for both sides and the environment. The dangers of working together is that nations do not benefit fairly or at all. Many times Indigenous knowledge has been used outside of the nation without consent (cultural appropriation), acknowledgment, or compensation. Indigenous knowledge can sustain the environment, yet it can be sacred knowledge. Ecological restoration Ecological restoration is the practice of restoring a degraded ecosystem through human intervention. There are many links between ecological restoration and ecosystem management practices involving TEK, however TEK ecosystem management is much more in-depth through the historical relationship with the place. Due to the aforementioned unequal power between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, it is vital that partnerships are equitable to restore social injustices and this has proven to be successful when Indigenous Peoples lead ecological restoration projects. Effects of environmental degradation on traditional knowledge In some areas, environmental degradation has led to a decline in traditional ecological knowledge. For example, at the Aamjiwnaang community of Anishnaabe First Nations people in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, residents suffer from a "noticeable decrease in male birth ratio ..., which residents attribute to their proximity to petrochemical plants": Climate change Traditional ecological knowledge provides information about climate change across generations and geography of the actual residents in the area. Traditional ecological knowledge emphasizes and makes the information about the health and interactions of the environment the center of the information it carries. Climate change affects traditional ecological knowledge in the forms of the indigenous people's identity and the way they live their lives. Traditional knowledge is passed down from generation to generation and continues today. Indigenous people depend on these traditions for their livelihood. For many harvesting seasons, indigenous people have shifted their activity months earlier due to impacts from climate change. The rising temperature poses as threats for ecosystems because it harms the livelihoods of certain tree and plant species. The combination of the rise in temperatures and change in precipitation levels affects plant growth locations. The warming also affects insects and animals. The change in temperatures can affect many aspects from the times that insects emerge throughout the year to the changes in the habitats of animals throughout seasonal changes.As the temperature gets hotter, wild fires become more likely. One Indigenous nation in Australia was recently given back land and are reinstating their traditional practice of controlled burning. This has resulted in increased biodiversity and decreased severity of wildfires.Not only are different aspects of the environment affected, but together, the health of the ecosystem is affected by climate change and so the environmental resources available to the indigenous people can change in the amount available and the quality of the resources.As sea ice levels decrease, Alaska Native peoples experience changes in their daily lives; fishing, transportation, social and economic aspects of their lives become more unsafe. The defrosting of soil has caused damages to buildings and roadways. Water contamination becomes exacerbated as clean water resources dwindle.Climate changes undermine the daily lives of the Native peoples on many levels. Climate change and indigenous people have a varying relationship depending on the geographic region which require different adaption and mitigation actions. For example, to immediately deal with these conditions, the indigenous people adjust when they harvest and what they harvest and also adjust their resource use. Climate change can change the accuracy of the information of traditional ecological knowledge. The indigenous people have relied deeply on indicators in nature to plan activities and even for short- term weather predictions. As a result of even more increasing unfavorable conditions, the indigenous people relocate to find other ways to survive. As a result, there is a loss of cultural ties to the lands they once resided on and there is also a loss to the traditional ecological knowledge they had with the land there. Climate change adaptations not properly structured or implemented can harm the indigenous people's rights.The EPA has mentioned that it would take traditional ecological knowledge into consideration in planning adaptations to climate change. The National Resource Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture has used methods of the indigenous people to combat climate change conditions. Case study: Savoonga and Shaktoolik, Alaska In one study, villagers of Savoonga and Shaktoolik, Alaska reported that over the last twenty years of their lives, the weather has become more difficult to predict, the colder season has shortened, there is more difficulty in predicting the amount of plants available for harvests, there are differences in animal migrations, there are more sightings of new species than before, and the activities of hunting and gathering have become not as predictable nor occur as often due to more limited availability to do so. The residents saw a noticeable change in their climate which also affected their livelihoods. The plants and animals are not as consistent with their availability which affects the residents' hunting and gathering because there is not as much to hunt or gather. The appearance of new species of plants and animals is also a physical and nutritional safety concern because they are not traditionally part of the land. Tribal examples Karuk and Yurok Burning According to environmental sociologist Kirsten Vinyeta and tribal climate change researcher Kathy Lynn, "the Karuk Tribe of California occupies aboriginal land along the middle course of the Klamath and Salmon Rivers in Northern California. The Tribe's aboriginal territory includes an estimated 1.38 million acres within the Klamath River Basin. Traditional burning practices have been critical to the Karuk since time immemorial. For the Tribe, fire serves as a critical land management tool as well as a spiritual practice." According to environmental studies professor Tony Marks-Block, ecological researcher Frank K. Lake and tropical forester Lisa M. Curran, "before widespread fire exclusion policies, American Indians used to broadcast understory fires or cultural burns to enhance resources integral for their livelihood and cultural practices. To restore ecocultural resources depleted from decades of fire exclusion and to reduce wildfire risks, the Karuk and the Yurok Tribes of Northwest California are leading regional collaborative efforts to expand broadcast fires and fuel reduction treatments on public, private, and Tribal lands in their ancestral territories."Tony Marks-Block, Frank K. Lake and Lisa M. Curran also state that "in Karuk territory, the federal government did not establish a reservation, leaving merely 3.83 square kilometers of Karuk trust lands in their ancestral territory, with the remainder largely under the jurisdiction of the Klamath and Six Rivers National Forests and scattered private homesteads. As a result, Karuk Tribal members and management agencies must navigate the USDA Forest Service claims on their ancestral territory and have limited options to expand their land base through the acquisition of private land holdings. In Yurok territory, multiple overlapping jurisdictions occur including Redwood National Park and Six Rivers National Forest outside of the reservation established by the federal government. The reservation is under private timber company ownership. Consequently, the Yurok Tribe must either coordinate or interact with multiple actors within their ancestral territory, but they presently have greater options for acquiring private properties than the Karuk Tribe." According to professor of sociology Kari Norgaard and Karuk tribe member William Tripp, "this process can then be replicated and expanded to other communities throughout the western Klamath Mountains and beyond. Hoopa and Yurok tanoak stands that experienced repeated fire were more resilient to the disease over time. Some research indicates dramatic differences in disease incidence immediately following wildfire (72 times less likely to be found in burned versus unburned plots in the same area), although it has been shown to steadily recover in the absence of repeated fire, because the disease can survive in hosts not killed by the fire." Anishinabe Ecological Conservation According to authors Bobbie Kalman and Niki Walker, "indigenous, or Native, people have lived in the Great Lakes region for thousands of years. People of the Anishinabe (Anishinaabe) nation lived in territories in the western Great Lakes region. According to oral tradition, the Anishinabe people once lived by a huge body of salt water, which may have been the Atlantic Ocean or Hudson's Bay. The people received a prophecy, or prediction, that if they traveled inland, they would find a place where food grew on water. Some went west, following a vision of a megis, or cowrie shell, that guided them to the western Great Lakes. The people split into groups and settled in different spots that together made up the Anishinabe nation. The Anishinabe had an especially close relationship with two other nations in the western Great Lakes region being the Odawa (Ottawa) and Potawatomi. People of these three nations often married one another, traded goods, and worked together to settle disputes. They also gathered at councils, where they made decisions together."According to indigenous philosopher and climate/environmental justice scholar Kyle Powys Whyte, "Anishinabe people throughout the Great Lakes region are at the forefront of native species conservation and ecological restoration. Nmé is the largest and oldest living fish in the Great Lakes basin, sometimes exceeding 100 years in age. Nmé served the Asnishinabe people as a substantial source of food, an indicator species for monitoring the environment, and a lachlan identity, playing a role in ceremonies and stories. Kenny Pheasant, an elder says, "Decline of the sturgeon has corresponded with decline in sturgeon clan families. Only a few sturgeon clan families are known around here" (Little River Band). The Natural Resources Department of the Ottawa Indians started a cultural context group, composed of a diverse range of tribal members and biologists, which developed goals and objectives for restoration. The goal was to "restore the harmony and connectivity between Nmé and the Anishinabe people and bring them both back to the river. Ultimately, the department created the first streamside rearing facility for protecting young sturgeon before they are released each fall in order to preserve their genetic parentage. Wild rice, or manoomin, grows in shallow, clear, and slow-moving waterways and can be harvested in early autumn. After harvesting, manoomin is processed through activities such as drying, parching, hulling, winnowing, and cleaning. After the Anishinabe migrated from the East and reached the Great Lakes region where they could grow crops on the water, neighboring groups of US and Canadian citizens and companies engaged in activities such as mining, damming, commercial farming and recreational boating. These activities directly affect manoomin and its habitat. Today the Anishinabe people are leaders in the conservation of wild rice. The Nibi (water) and Manoomin Symposium, which takes place every two years, brings tribal rice harvesters in the Great Lakes, indigenous scholars, paddy rice growers, representatives from mining companies and state agencies, and university researchers interested in the genetic modification of rice together. Elders share their stories about manoomin and youth share their perspective on how manoomin fits into their futures. Indigenous persons working as scientists in their tribes share the experiences working with elders to understand the deep historical implications of the work they do to study and conserve manoomin. Other indigenous people are often invited to share their experiences restoring and conserving other native species, such as taro and maize." Lummi Nation of Washington State Conservation of Southern Resident Killer Whales According to ecological scholars Paul Guernsey, Kyle Keeler and Lummi member Jeremiah Julius, "the Lummi Nation of Washington State is a native American tribe of the Salish Sea. In 2018, the Lummi Nation dedicated itself to a Totem Pole Journey across the United States calling for the return of their relative "Lolita" (a Southern Resident Killer Whale) to her home waters. In the Salish language, killer whales are referred to as qwe 'lhol mechen, meaning 'our relations under the waves', but the Lummi are not simply 'related to' the whales in a generic fashion, the whales are a relation in the sense that they are kin. When NOAA first designated the Southern Resident killer whale an endangered distinct population segment (DPS) in 2005, they juridically eliminated "Lolita" as a family member. The decision reads, "The Southern Resident killer whale DPS does not include killer whales from J, K or L pod placed in captivity prior to listing, nor does it include their captive born progeny" (NOAA, 2005). The Lummi are asking for NOAA to collaborate in feeding the whales until the chinook runs of the Puget Sound can sustain them. The Lummi have embarked on ceremonial feedings of their relatives, but they are told by NOAA that larger-scale efforts would require federal permission and partnership. Although one of the organization's conservation goals is to ensure 'sufficient quantity, quality and accessibility of prey species', NOAA understands this policy strictly as a habitat issue. They have been clear that now is not the time for complacency due to 'insufficient data' or uncertainty. The Lummi continue their annual Totem Pole Journey to protect their older siblings, the blackfish, and to keep coal, oil and other threats out of the Salish Sea. These healing practices are fashioned to address what Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart and Lemyra M. DeBruyn have called "historical unresolved grief"." TEK and government bodies United Nations fora The 1992 Rio Declaration signed at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development expresses a positive view of traditional ecological knowledge.: 132 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was one of the first federal agencies to develop formal policies detailing how it would collaborate with tribal governments and acknowledge tribal interests in enacting its programs "to protect human health and the environment." In recognizing tribal peoples connection to the environment the EPA has sought to develop environmental programs that integrate traditional ecological knowledge into the "agency's environmental science, policy, and decision-making processes."Although TEK is not currently recognized as an important component of mainstream environmental decision making, scientists are working on developing core science competency programs that align with TEK and promote self-sufficiency and determination. The lack of recognition for traditional ecological knowledge in determining solutions to environmental issues is representational of the ethnocentric tendency to value science over traditional models. Therefore, agencies integrating science and TEK must acknowledge the values of unique pedagogical methods in order to fully utilize the benefits of both science and TEK. For example, US agencies must learn about TEK through the lens of indigenous groups by working side by side with Indigenous Elders, gather hands-on data from the specific place in question, and incorporating indigenous values into their scientific evaluation.In November 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 13175, which required federal departments and agencies to consult with Indian Tribal governments in the development of policies that would have Tribal implications. Tribal Implications are defined by the EPA as having "substantial direct effects on one or more Indian tribes, on the relationship between the federal government and Indian tribes, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities between the federal government and Indian tribes." As a Federal agency of the U.S. government, the EPA was required to establish a set of standards for the consultation process. As its initial response, the agency developed a set of standards that would allow for meaningful communication and coordination between the agency and tribal officials prior to the agency taking actions or implementing decisions that may affect tribes. The standards also designated EPA consultation contacts to promote consistency and coordination of the consultation process, and established management oversight and reporting to ensure accountability and transparency. One form of consultation has been EPA Tribal Councils. In 2000, the EPA's Office of Research and Development formed the EPA Tribal Science Council. The council, made up of representatives from tribes across the nation, is meant to provide a structure for tribal involvement in EPA's science efforts, and serve as a vehicle through which EPA may gain an understanding of the scientific issues that are of highest priority to tribes at a national level. The council also offers tribes an opportunity to influence EPA's scientific agenda by raising these priority issues to an EPA-wide group.Of importance for tribal members at the initial gathering of the EPA Tribal Science Council was the inherent differences in tribal traditional lifeways (TTL) and western science. These lifeways include "spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental connections to the environment; connections which are based on intrinsic, immeasurable values"; and an understanding that the earth's resources will provide everything necessary for human survival.The EPA's Tribal Science Council, however, was meant to act as a meeting place where both groups could "share information that may contribute to environmental protection for all peoples with neither culture relinquishing its identity." In an effort to protect TTL the Council identified subsistence as a critical area for investigation. The EPA-Tribal Science Council defined subsistence as: the "relationships between people and their surrounding environment, a way of living. Subsistence involves an intrinsic spiritual connection to the earth, and includes an understanding that the earth's resources will provide everything necessary for human survival. People who subsist from the earth's basic resources remain connected to those resources, living within the circle of life. Subsistence is about living in a way that will ensure the integrity of the earth's resources for the beneficial use of generations to come." Because TTL or TEK is specific to a location and includes the relationships between plants and animals, and the relationship of living beings to the environment, acknowledgment of subsitence as a priority allows for the knowledge and practices of TTL to be protected. For example, as part of their deliberation regarding subsistence, the Council agreed to identify resource contamination as "the most critical tribal science issue at this time." Because tribal people with subsistence lifestyles rely the environment for traditional techniques of farming, hunting. fishing, forestry, and medicines, and ceremonies, contaminants disproportionately impact tribal peoples and jeopardizes their TTL. As the EPA Council stated, "Tribal subsistence consumption rates are typically many times higher than those of the general population, making the direct impact of resource contamination a much more immediate concern." As native peoples struggle with tainted resources, the council has made progress in investigating its impacts. Despite such efforts, there are still barriers to progress within the EPA-Tribal Science Council. For example, one obstacle has been the nature of TTL. Tribal Traditional Lifeways are passed down orally, from person to person, generation to generation, whereas western science relies on the written word, communicated through academic and literate transmission. Endeavors to bring together western scientists and tribal people have also been hindered by Native American's perceptions that scientific analysis are put in a metaphorical "black box" that shuts out tribal input. Regardless, the EPA has recognized the ability of indigenous knowledge to advance scientific understanding and provide new information and perspectives that may benefit the environment and human health. The integration of TTL into the EPA's risk assessment paradigm is one example of how the EPA-Tribal Science Council has been able to enact change in EPA culture. The risk assessment paradigm is an "organizing framework for the scientific analysis of the potential for harmful impacts to human health and the environment as a result of exposure to contaminants or other environmental stressors." Risk assessment has been used by the EPA to establish "clean-up levels at hazardous waste sites, water quality and air quality criteria, fish advisories, and bans or restricted uses for pesticides and other toxic chemicals." Tribal people are concerned, however, that current risk assessment methodologies do not afford complete value to tribal culture, values, and/or life ways. The Tribal Science Council seeks to incorporate TTL into exposure assumptions existent in the EPA risk assessment model. A long-term goal for the EPA's Tribal Science Council, however, is a complete shift in decision-making assessments from risk to preserving a healthy people and environment. As stated above, tribal people do not accept a separation of the human and ecological condition when they characterize risk. Through EPA initiated seminar, workshops, and projects, tribes have been able to engage in dialogue about the integration of Tribal Traditional Lifeways into EPA risk assessment and decision-making. This has occurred in a number of ways: inclusion of unique tribal cultural activities such as native basketry, the importance of salmon and other fishes, native plant medicine, consumption of large amounts of fish and game, and sweat lodges as exposures for estimating potential risk to people or to communities. Although these types of tribal specific activities may be included in EPA's risk assessment, there is no assurance that they will be included nor is there consistency in how they may be applied at different sites across the country.In July 2014, the EPA announced its "Policy on Environmental Justice for Working with Federally Recognized Tribes and Indigenous Peoples," setting forth its principles for programs related to federally recognized tribes and indigenous peoples in order to "support the fair and effective implementation of federal environmental laws, and provide protection from disproportionate impacts and significant risks to human health and the environment." Among the 17 principles were #3 ("The EPA works to understand definitions of human health and the environment from the perspective of federally recognized tribes, indigenous peoples throughout the United States, and others living in Indian country"); #6 ("The EPA encourages, as appropriate and to the extent practicable and permitted by law, the integration of traditional ecological knowledge into the agency's environmental science, policy, and decision-making processes, to understand and address environmental justice concerns and facilitate program implementation"); and #7 ("The EPA considers confidentiality concerns regarding information on sacred sites, cultural resources, and other traditional knowledge, as permitted by law."). While this policy identifies guidelines and procedures for the EPA in regards to environmental justice principles as they relate to tribes and indigenous peoples, the agency noted that they are in no way applicable as rules or regulations. They cannot be applied to particular situations nor change or substitute any law, regulation, or any other legally-binding requirement and is not legally enforceable. See also Agroecology Braiding Sweetgrass Clam garden Non-timber forest product Traditional knowledge African insect TEK Indigenous science References Notes Further reading Hernández-Morcillo, Mónica; et al. (2014). "Traditional ecological knowledge in Europe: Status quo and insights for the environmental policy agenda". Environment. 56 (1): 3–17. doi:10.1080/00139157.2014.861673. S2CID 153834585. Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Edition) ISBN 9781571313355. External links Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Interdisciplinary Stewardship of Mother Earth, National Park Service Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, at State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry Indigenous Peoples' Restoration Network (IPRN) Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site Table of the Six Faces of TEK

environmental issues in bangladesh

Bangladesh, with an area of 147,570 km2, features a flood plain landscape and several river systems throughout the country. This landscape provides the major natural resources of water, land, fisheries, forests, and wildlife. The country currently faces several environmental issues which threaten these resources, including groundwater metal contamination, increased groundwater salinity, cyclones and flooding, and sedimentation and changing patterns of stream flow due to watershed mismanagement. Some of these, such as the changing patterns of stream flow and presence of lead in groundwater, can be directly correlated with human activity and industrial processes, while others, such as cyclones and flooding are naturally occurring issues. Many of these issues are further exacerbated by climate change, which causes increased occurrence of storms and cyclones and rising sea levels. According to the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, Bangladesh is the 43rd most vulnerable country to the effects of climate change, and the 37th least prepared country to address these effects. There has been some government actions taken to address these issues. Air pollution Groundwater contamination Groundwater in Bangladesh, which is used as drinking water, is found to be contaminated with many heavy metals, including arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium, copper, mercury, nickel, and uranium. Of these, arsenic has been determined to be the most significant health issue, with about 49% of the water being likely contaminated with concentrations above the WHO guidelines, affecting 35 to 77 million people within the country. Arsenic contamination of shallow groundwater is a natural occurring problem that has been further made worse by the use of tube wells, which extract groundwater. Since the 1970s, the government started instituting the use of shallow tube wells to avoid the consumption of surface water, which is often contaminated with various bacteria. These tube wells, however, reached the arsenic-contaminated groundwater. This issue is more prevalent in inland areas and for rural areas, where 97% of the population uses tube wells. Health effects of consumption of arsenic-contaminated water include skin pigmentation changes and lesions, which could be a precursor to skin cancer. It can also cause lung and bladder consumption, as well as developmental effects, neurotoxicity, diabetes, pulmonary disease and cardiovascular disease.Lead contamination has been found to be high in areas around Dhaka. It has been postulated that this is due to the many industries in the area, including battery recycling facilities. The Department of Environment found more than 1200 industrial sites that caused significant pollution. Reasons for the additional metal contamination include mining and agricultural activity. The presence of lead in the water affects the environment, as well as human health. The presence of lead in soil also led to a concentration of lead in the leaves of plants grown in the area.In coastal areas, the heavy metal contamination has also had an effect in marine life and the local ecology. This, in turn, affects the economic output of the region that relies partly on aquaculture. For instance, high levels of metals may affect the reproductive capabilities of the native ecology or contaminate the fish. If the fish have too high levels of metals, a fisher may not be able to sell it for consumption. If a consumer eats fish with high levels of metal contamination, he is at risk for health issues, such as cancer, kidney failure, or various metal poisoning. There is also a possibility that fish will move further away from these areas, to avoid the toxic areas, which would also affect the livelihood of the fishermen in the area.There has been some effort by the government to provide deeper tube wells that are clearly marked as arsenic free, as well as by various NGOs to provide filters to remove the heavy metal contaminants. Groundwater salinity In the coastal regions of Bangladesh, which make up 32% of the land in the country, there are problems of salinity due to high tides and reduced flow in rivers during the dry season. There is already a natural seasonal fluctuation of rising levels of salt water. During the dry season, a salt water front rises 240 km. This affects the salinity of the groundwater in the countryside. This effect is predicted to be more severe in the future because of climate change, because of rising sea levels. As a result, sea water will leak further into freshwater zones, which will have a broad reaching effect on the flora and fauna of the region that depends on the presence of fresh water. For example, if the sea level rises 88 cm, the water 40 km inland will be contaminated with a 5 ppt saline front. This would specifically affect the only freshwater region of the Tetulia River, the Meghna Estuary. The salinity level in the Meghna Estuary, the largest estuarine system in Bangladesh, may become too high to sustain agriculture and pisciculture. It could also lead to the extinction of some of the endangered species of the Estuary. In addition to affecting the natural flora and fauna of regions of coastal Bangladesh, increased salinity could also affect the soil salinity, and therefore the agriculture output of the regions. This trend has already been seen in coastal regions like Satkhira, where the net area of cultivated land decreased by 7% from 1996 to 2008. Rice production was particular affected, decreasing from 0.3 million tons to 0.1 million tons from 2008 to 2010. If the sea levels rise as predicted in a "moderate" climate scenario, Bangladesh is predicted to produce 0.2 million fewer crops. This number is predicted to be doubled for a "severe" climate scenario. This issue affects both the economic stability of regions that rely mostly on rice growth for income and the lifestyle and eating habits of a region that relies on a rice-based diet. Additionally, poorer families tend to be disproportionately affected by the issue of groundwater salinity. Cyclones and flooding The coastal region of Bangladesh is especially prone to cyclones. Between 1793 and 1996, there has been one cyclone about every 4.5 years. This has a detrimental effect on the local environment, as well as on families and their property. For instance, a cyclone that hit in 1970 caused 300,000 deaths and US$86.4 million of property damage. Cyclones can detrimentally affect the food production of the area. In 1991, a cyclone caused the destruction of 60% of the cattle stock in the affected area, 80% of the poultry stock in the affected area, and exposed 72,000 ha of rice paddies to salt water.Cyclones can cause storm surges, which further affect those who live in coastal areas. Furthermore, it adds to the flooding that the area is already prone to. 20 to 22% of the land is flooded between June and October. Studies by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have shown that climate change and the resulting rising sea levels would further exacerbate this. For example, a 45 cm increase in sea level would result in 75% of the mangrove forest area being flooded. Furthermore, increased sedimentation in the watersheds may lead to more flooding.Flooding has been cited as one of the "main obstacle[s] to the economic improvement of the nation". It affects the agricultural economy and the food security of the nation, since almost 74% of the land is cultivated. If significant portions of this land becomes flooded, it cannot be used for to produce agricultural products. Flooding tends to disproportionately affect the poorer more, with the poor being 2.5 times more likely to be "severely distress[ed]" during flooding than the wealthy. Watershed management The effect of increased human and animal population, as well as land use in the Himalayan Mountains have caused soil erosion, which could have resulted in the extra deposition of sediments in the Bangladesh watersheds. This may have effects on the soil composition near the watershed and the propensity of the area to flood. While Eckholm and Myers have proposed a now popular theory that there is a direct causal relationship between deforestation in Nepal and higher flooding in the Bangladesh watersheds, there is not enough evidence to determine whether or not this is true. Improper watershed management does lead to sedimentation in reservoirs and changing patterns of stream flow. Sedimentation in reservoirs effects the turbidity of the reservoir, and erosion patterns along the river. It also presents a cost to the government who has to dredge the rivers of its sediments. In Bangladesh, the government has to remove 0.8 million cubic meters of maintenance dredging and 2 million cubic meters of capital dredging per year. Since scientists do not unanimously agree the degree to which watershed management affects patterns of stream flow and flooding, it is difficult determine the extent of this effect. Government response to environmental issues In a study on the popular response to climate change, Bahauddin et al. found that many citizens had heard of climate change, but often thought it simply meant the symptoms of climate change (i.e. flooding, storms, drought). The likelihood that a respondent noticed the effects of climate change seemed dependent on whether or not the person's livelihood was sensitive to the climate. Many of the respondents believed that a governmental "safety net program" could be a possible solution to climate change.In response to the environmental issues that the country faces, the Bangladeshi government formed the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) in 1989, which addresses these issues and considers the role of climate change in the country's development. MoEF oversees the Department of Environment and Forest Department, which enforce environmental law and protect the natural biodiversity in the country respectively. In Bahauddin's study, they round many citizens were not aware of any plans, governmental or non-governmental, to address the effect of climate change. There has also been efforts by local government to address climate change related issues. For instance, some local governments have invested in shelters to reduce cyclone-related mortalities. People's perception on impact of salinity on trees and agricultural crops in the coastal area of Bangladesh shows salinity negatively affects the growth of plant species greatly. Forests Bangladesh had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 5.45/10, ranking it 101st globally out of 172 countries. == References ==

capri model

The CAPRI (Common Agricultural Policy Regionalised Impact) model is a tool for ex-ante impact assessment of agricultural and international trade policies with a focus on the European Union. As an economic partial comparative static equilibrium model for agriculture, its core consists of two interlinked modules: the supply module, covering about 280 regional aggregate programming models covering the EU27, Norway and Western Balkans at the NUTS 2 level and the market module, a global spatial multi-commodity model for about 50 agricultural commodities, which together allow calculation of a wide range of economic and environmental indicators. A spatial downscaling component allows impact assessment at the 1x1 km grid level for EU27. CAPRI is written in GAMS and steered by a Graphical User Interface realized in Java. CAPRI was developed and improved in a suite of EU funded research projects (CAPRI, CAP-STRAT, CAPRI-Dynaspat). Past applications include analysis of different reform steps of the Common Agricultural Policy such as Agenda 2000, Decoupling (2003) or sugar market reform (2005-2006) and environmental impact analysis such as a trading scheme for Green House Gases from agriculture. Network CAPRI is maintained by a network of different European research institutions and managed by teams from Institute for Food and Resource Economics at the University of Bonn, Agrifood Economics Centre at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute in Braunschweig, Germany, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, NIBIO Oslo, Norway and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. Its main client is the EU Commission (Directorate-Generals for Agriculture and Rural Development and for the Environment). External links CAPRI Model Home Page Britz and Witzke (edts), 2008: CAPRI documentation Version 2008 (237 pages, 4 MB, pdf) == References ==

tobacco

Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus Nicotiana of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the chief commercial crop is N. tabacum. The more potent variant N. rustica is also used in some countries. Dried tobacco leaves are mainly used for smoking in cigarettes and cigars, as well as pipes and shishas. They can also be consumed as snuff, chewing tobacco, dipping tobacco, and snus. Tobacco contains the highly addictive stimulant alkaloid nicotine as well as harmala alkaloids. Tobacco use is a cause or risk factor for many deadly diseases, especially those affecting the heart, liver, and lungs, as well as many cancers. In 2008, the World Health Organization named tobacco use as the world's single greatest preventable cause of death. Etymology The English word tobacco originates from the Spanish word "tabaco". The precise origin of this word is disputed, but it is generally thought to have derived, at least in part, from Taíno, the Arawakan language of the Caribbean. In Taíno, it was said to mean either a roll of tobacco leaves (according to Bartolomé de las Casas, 1552), or to tabago, a kind of L-shaped pipe used for sniffing tobacco smoke (according to Oviedo, with the leaves themselves being referred to as cohiba).However, perhaps coincidentally, similar words in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian were used from 1410 for certain medicinal herbs. These probably derived from the Arabic طُبّاق ṭubbāq (also طُباق ṭubāq), a word reportedly dating to the ninth century, referring to various herbs. History Traditional use Tobacco has long been used in the Americas, with some cultivation sites in Mexico dating back to 1400–1000 BC. Many Native American tribes traditionally grow and use tobacco. Historically, people from the Northeast Woodlands cultures have carried tobacco in pouches as a readily accepted trade item. It was smoked both socially and ceremonially, such as to seal a peace treaty or trade agreement. In some Native cultures, tobacco is seen as a gift from the Creator, with the ceremonial tobacco smoke carrying one's thoughts and prayers to the Creator.While western views on tobacco affirm its damaging effects on human health, ancestral views on the plant dissent. Shamanic views, as well as indigenous perspectives on the plant, insist on the sacrality of tobacco and its ritualistic usage as a spiritual and physical medicine. Some Native Americans consider tobacco to be a medicine and advocate for its respectful usage, rather than a commercial one. Indigenous communities have smoked tobacco leaves for thousands of years in order to heal diseases. Popularization Following the arrival of the Europeans to the Americas, tobacco became increasingly popular as a trade item. Hernández de Boncalo, Spanish chronicler of the Indies, was the first European to bring tobacco seeds to the Old World in 1559 following orders of King Philip II of Spain. These seeds were planted in the outskirts of Toledo, more specifically in an area known as "Los Cigarrales" named after the continuous plagues of cicadas (cigarras in Spanish). Before the development of the lighter Virginia and white burley strains of tobacco, the smoke was too harsh to be inhaled. Small quantities were smoked at a time, using a pipe like the midwakh or kiseru, or newly invented waterpipes such as the bong or the hookah (see thuốc lào for a modern continuance of this practice). Tobacco became so popular that the English colony of Jamestown used it as currency and began exporting it as a cash crop; tobacco is often credited as being the export that saved Virginia from ruin.The alleged benefits of tobacco also contributed to its success. The astronomer Thomas Harriot, who accompanied Sir Richard Grenville on his 1585 expedition to Roanoke Island, thought that the plant "openeth all the pores and passages of the body" so that the bodies of the natives "are notably preserved in health, and know not many grievous diseases, wherewithal we in England are often times afflicted."Production of tobacco for smoking, chewing, and snuffing became a major industry in Europe and its colonies by 1700.Tobacco has been a major cash crop in Cuba and in other parts of the Caribbean since the 18th century. Cuban cigars are world-famous.In the late 19th century, cigarettes became popular. James Bonsack invented a machine to automate cigarette production. This increase in production allowed tremendous growth in the tobacco industry until the health revelations of the late 20th century. Contemporary Following the scientific revelations of the mid-20th century, tobacco was condemned as a health hazard, and eventually became recognized as a cause of cancer, as well as other respiratory and circulatory diseases. In the United States, this led to the adoption of the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, which settled the many lawsuits by the U.S. states in exchange for a combination of yearly payments to the states and voluntary restrictions on advertising and marketing of tobacco products.In the 1970s, Brown & Williamson cross-bred a strain of tobacco to produce Y1, a strain containing an unusually high nicotine content, nearly doubling from 3.2 to 3.5%, to 6.5%. In the 1990s, this prompted the Food and Drug Administration to allege that tobacco companies were intentionally manipulating the nicotine content of cigarettes.The desire of many addicted smokers to quit has led to the development of tobacco cessation products.In 2003, in response to growth of tobacco use in developing countries, the World Health Organization successfully rallied 168 countries to sign the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The convention is designed to push for effective legislation and enforcement in all countries to reduce the harmful effects of tobacco. Between 2019 and 2021, concerns about increased COVID-19 health risks due to tobacco consumption facilitated smoking reduction and cessation. Biology Nicotiana Many species of tobacco are in the genus of herbs Nicotiana. It is part of the nightshade family (Solanaceae) indigenous to North and South America, Australia, south west Africa, and the South Pacific.Most nightshades contain varying amounts of nicotine, a powerful neurotoxin to insects. However, tobaccos tend to contain a much higher concentration of nicotine than the others. Unlike many other Solanaceae species, they do not contain tropane alkaloids, which are often poisonous to humans and other animals. Despite containing enough nicotine and other compounds such as germacrene and anabasine and other piperidine alkaloids (varying between species) to deter most herbivores, a number of such animals have evolved the ability to feed on Nicotiana species without being harmed. Nonetheless, tobacco is unpalatable to many species due to its other attributes. For example, although the cabbage looper is a generalist pest, tobacco's gummosis and trichomes can harm early larvae survival. As a result, some tobacco plants (chiefly N. glauca) have become established as invasive weeds in some places. Types The types of tobacco include: Aromatic fire-cured is cured by smoke from open fires. In the United States, it is grown in northern middle Tennessee, central Kentucky, and Virginia. Fire-cured tobacco grown in Kentucky and Tennessee is used in some chewing tobaccos, moist snuff, some cigarettes, and as a condiment in pipe tobacco blends. Another fire-cured tobacco is Latakia, which is produced from oriental varieties of N. tabacum. The leaves are cured and smoked over smoldering fires of local hardwoods and aromatic shrubs in Cyprus and Syria. Brightleaf tobacco is commonly known as "Virginia tobacco", often regardless of the state where it is planted. Prior to the American Civil War, most tobacco grown in the US was fire-cured dark-leaf. Sometime after the War of 1812, demand for a milder, lighter, more aromatic tobacco arose. Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland all innovated with milder varieties of the tobacco plant. Farmers discovered that brightleaf tobacco needs thin, starved soil, and those who could not grow other crops found that they could grow tobacco. Confederate soldiers traded it with each other and Union soldiers, and developed quite a taste for it. At the end of the war, the soldiers went home and a national market had developed for the local crop. Broadleaf, a dark tobacco varietal family popular for producing enormous, resilient, and thick wrapper leaves. Burley tobacco is an air-cured tobacco used primarily for cigarette production. In the U.S., burley tobacco plants are started from pelletized seeds placed in polystyrene trays floated on a bed of fertilized water in March or April. Cavendish is more a process of curing and a method of cutting tobacco than a type. The processing and the cut are used to bring out the natural sweet taste in the tobacco. Cavendish can be produced from any tobacco type, but is usually one of, or a blend of Kentucky, Virginia, and burley, and is most commonly used for pipe tobacco and cigars. Criollo tobacco is primarily used in the making of cigars. It was, by most accounts, one of the original Cuban tobaccos that emerged around the time of Columbus. Dokha is a tobacco originally grown in Iran, mixed with leaves, bark, and herbs for smoking in a midwakh. Perique was developed in 1824 through the technique of pressure-fermentation of local tobacco by a farmer, Pierre Chenet. Considered the truffle of pipe tobaccos, it is used as a component in many blended pipe tobaccos, but is too strong to be smoked pure. At one time, the freshly moist Perique was also chewed, but none is now sold for this purpose. It is typically blended with pure Virginia to lend spice, strength, and coolness to the blend. Shade tobacco is cultivated in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Early Connecticut colonists acquired from the Native Americans the habit of smoking tobacco in pipes, and began cultivating the plant commercially, though the Puritans referred to it as the "evil weed". The Connecticut shade industry has weathered some major catastrophes, including a devastating hailstorm in 1929, and an epidemic of brown spot fungus in 2000, but is now in danger of disappearing altogether, given the increase in the value of land. Turkish tobacco is a sun-cured, highly aromatic, small-leafed variety (Nicotiana tabacum) grown in Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, and North Macedonia. Originally grown in regions historically part of the Ottoman Empire, it is also known as "oriental". Many of the early brands of cigarettes were made mostly or entirely of Turkish tobacco; today, its main use is in blends of pipe and especially cigarette tobacco (a typical American cigarette is a blend of bright Virginia, burley, and Turkish). White burley air-cured leaf was found to be more mild than other types of tobacco. In 1865, George Webb of Brown County, Ohio planted red burley seeds he had purchased, and found a few of the seedlings had a whitish, sickly look, which became white burley. Wild tobacco is native to the southwestern United States, Mexico, and parts of South America. Its botanical name is Nicotiana rustica. Parasites Tobacco, alongside its related products, can be infested by parasites such as the Lasioderma serricorne (tobacco beetle) and the Ephestia elutella (tobacco moth), which are the most widespread and damaging parasites to the tobacco industry. Infestation can range from the tobacco cultivated in the fields to the leaves used for manufacturing cigars, cigarillos, cigarettes, etc. Both the larvae of Lasioderma serricorne and caterpillars of Ephestia elutella are considered pests. Production Cultivation Tobacco is cultivated similarly to other agricultural products. Seeds were at first quickly scattered onto the soil. However, young plants came under increasing attack from flea beetles (Epitrix cucumeris or E. pubescens), which caused destruction of half the tobacco crops in United States in 1876. By 1890, successful experiments were conducted that placed the plant in a frame covered by thin cotton fabric. Today, tobacco seeds are sown in cold frames or hotbeds, as their germination is activated by light. In the United States, tobacco is often fertilized with the mineral apatite, which partially starves the plant of nitrogen, to produce a more desired flavor. After the plants are about 8 inches (20 cm) tall, they are transplanted into the fields. Farmers used to have to wait for rainy weather to plant. A hole is created in the tilled earth with a tobacco peg, either a curved wooden tool or deer antler. After making two holes to the right and left, the planter would move forward two feet, select plants from his/her bag, and repeat. Various mechanical tobacco planters like Bemis, New Idea Setter, and New Holland Transplanter were invented in the late 19th and 20th centuries to automate the process: making the hole, watering it, guiding the plant in — all in one motion.Tobacco is cultivated annually, and can be harvested in several ways. In the oldest method, still used today, the entire plant is harvested at once by cutting off the stalk at the ground with a tobacco knife; it is then speared onto sticks, four to six plants a stick, and hung in a curing barn. In the 19th century, bright tobacco began to be harvested by pulling individual leaves off the stalk as they ripened. The leaves ripen from the ground upwards, so a field of tobacco harvested in this manner entails the serial harvest of a number of "primings", beginning with the volado leaves near the ground, working to the seco leaves in the middle of the plant, and finishing with the potent ligero leaves at the top. Before harvesting, the crop must be topped when the pink flowers develop. Topping always refers to the removal of the tobacco flower before the leaves are systematically harvested. As the industrial revolution took hold, the harvesting wagons which were used to transport leaves were equipped with man-powered stringers, an apparatus that used twine to attach leaves to a pole. In modern times, large fields are harvested mechanically, although topping the flower and in some cases the plucking of immature leaves is still done by hand. In the U.S., North Carolina and Kentucky are the leaders in tobacco production, followed by Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina and Pennsylvania. Curing Curing and subsequent aging allow for the slow oxidation and degradation of carotenoids in tobacco leaf. This produces certain compounds in the tobacco leaves and gives a sweet hay, tea, rose oil, or fruity aromatic flavor that contributes to the "smoothness" of the smoke. Starch is converted to sugar, which glycates protein, which is oxidized into advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs), a caramelization process that also adds flavor. Inhalation of these AGEs in tobacco smoke contributes to atherosclerosis and cancer. Levels of AGEs are dependent on the curing method used. Tobacco can be cured through several methods, including: Air-cured tobacco is hung in well-ventilated barns and allowed to dry over a period of four to eight weeks. Air-cured tobacco is low in sugar, which gives the tobacco smoke a light, mild flavor, and high in nicotine. Cigar and burley tobaccos are 'dark' air-cured. Fire-cured tobacco is hung in large barns where fires of hardwoods are kept on continuous or intermittent low smoulder, and takes between three days and ten weeks, depending on the process and the tobacco. Fire curing produces a tobacco low in sugar and high in nicotine. Pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco, and snuff are fire-cured. Flue-cured tobacco was originally strung onto tobacco sticks, which were hung from tier poles in curing barns (Aus: kilns, also traditionally called 'oasts'). These barns have flues run from externally fed fire boxes, heat-curing the tobacco without exposing it to smoke, slowly raising the temperature over the course of the curing. The process generally takes about a week. This method produces cigarette tobacco that is high in sugar and has medium to high levels of nicotine. Most cigarettes incorporate flue-cured tobacco, which produces a milder, more inhalable smoke. It is estimated that 1 tree is cut to flue-cure every 300 cigarettes, resulting in serious environmental consequences. Sun-cured tobacco dries uncovered in the sun. This method is used in Turkey, Greece, and other Mediterranean countries to produce oriental tobacco. Sun-cured tobacco is low in sugar and nicotine and is used in cigarettes.Some tobaccos go through a second stage of curing, known as fermenting or sweating. Cavendish undergoes fermentation pressed in a casing solution containing sugar and/or flavoring. Global production Trends Production of tobacco leaf increased by 40% between 1971, when 4.2 million tons of leaf were produced, and 1997, when 5.9 million tons of leaf were produced. According to the Food and Agriculture organization of the UN, tobacco leaf production was expected to hit 7.1 million tons by 2010. This number is a bit lower than the record-high production of 1992, when 7.5 million tons of leaf were produced. The production growth was almost entirely due to increased productivity by developing nations, where production increased by 128%. During that same time, production in developed countries actually decreased. China's increase in tobacco production was the single biggest factor in the increase in world production. China's share of the world market increased from 17% in 1971 to 47% in 1997. This growth can be partially explained by the existence of a low import tariff on foreign tobacco entering China. While this tariff has been reduced from 66% in 1999 to 10% in 2004, it still has led to local, Chinese cigarettes being preferred over foreign cigarettes because of their lower cost. Major producers Every year, about 5.9 million tons of tobacco are produced throughout the world. The top producers of tobacco are China (36.3%), India (12.9%), Brazil (11.9%) and Zimbabwe (3.5%). China Around the peak of global tobacco production, 20 million rural Chinese households were producing tobacco on 2.1 million hectares of land. While it is the major crop for millions of Chinese farmers, growing tobacco is not as profitable as cotton or sugarcane, because the Chinese government sets the market price. While this price is guaranteed, it is lower than the natural market price, because of the lack of market risk. To further control tobacco in their borders, China founded a State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) in 1982. The STMA controls tobacco production, marketing, imports, and exports, and contributes 12% to the nation's national income. As noted above, despite the income generated for the state by profits from state-owned tobacco companies and the taxes paid by companies and retailers, China's government has acted to reduce tobacco use. India India's Tobacco Board is headquartered in Guntur in the state of Andhra Pradesh. India has 96,865 registered tobacco farmers and many more who are not registered. In 2010, 3,120 tobacco product manufacturing facilities were operating in all of India. Around 0.25% of India's cultivated land is used for tobacco production.Since 1947, the Indian government has supported growth in the tobacco industry. India has seven tobacco research centers, located in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar, Mysore, and West Bengal which houses the core research institute. Brazil In Brazil, around 135,000 family farmers cite tobacco production as their main economic activity. Tobacco has never exceeded 0.7% of the country's total cultivated area. In the southern regions of Brazil, Virginia, and Amarelinho, flue-cured tobacco, as well as burley and Galpão Comum air-cured tobacco, are produced. These types of tobacco are used for cigarettes. In the northeast, darker, air- and sun-cured tobacco is grown. These types of tobacco are used for cigars, twists, and dark cigarettes. Brazil's government has made attempts to reduce the production of tobacco but has not had a successful systematic antitobacco farming initiative. Brazil's government, however, provides small loans for family farms, including those that grow tobacco, through the Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar. Problems in production Child labor The International Labour Office reported that the most child-laborers work in agriculture, which is one of the most hazardous types of work. The tobacco industry houses some of these working children. Use of children is widespread on farms in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. While some of these children work with their families on small, family-owned farms, others work on large plantations. In late 2009, reports were released by the London-based human-rights group Plan International, claiming that child labor was common on Malawi (producer of 1.8% of the world's tobacco) tobacco farms. The organization interviewed 44 teens, who worked full-time on farms during the 2007–08 growing season. The child-laborers complained of low pay and long hours, as well as physical and sexual abuse by their supervisors. They also reported experiencing green tobacco sickness, a form of nicotine poisoning. When wet leaves are handled, nicotine from the leaves gets absorbed in the skin and causes nausea, vomiting, and dizziness. Children were exposed to levels of nicotine equivalent to smoking 50 cigarettes, just through direct contact with tobacco leaves. Nicotine exposure in children can permanently alter brain structure and function. Economy Major tobacco companies have encouraged global tobacco production. Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, and Japan Tobacco each own or lease tobacco-manufacturing facilities in at least 50 countries and buy crude tobacco leaf from at least 12 more countries. This encouragement, along with government subsidies, has led to a glut in the tobacco market. This surplus has resulted in lower prices, which are devastating to small-scale tobacco farmers. According to the World Bank, between 1985 and 2000, the inflation-adjusted price of tobacco dropped 37%. Tobacco is the most widely smuggled legal product. Environment Tobacco production requires the use of large amounts of pesticides. Tobacco companies recommend up to 16 separate applications of pesticides just in the period between planting the seeds in greenhouses and transplanting the young plants to the field. Pesticide use has been worsened by the desire to produce larger crops in less time because of the decreasing market value of tobacco. Pesticides often harm tobacco farmers because they are unaware of the health effects and the proper safety protocol for working with pesticides. These pesticides, as well as fertilizers, end up in the soil, waterways, and the food chain. Coupled with child labor, pesticides pose an even greater threat. Early exposure to pesticides may increase a child's lifelong cancer risk, as well as harm their nervous and immune systems.As with all crops, tobacco crops extract nutrients (such as phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium) from soil, decreasing its fertility.Furthermore, the wood used to cure tobacco in some places leads to deforestation. While some big tobacco producers such as China and the United States have access to petroleum, coal, and natural gas, which can be used as alternatives to wood, most developing countries still rely on wood in the curing process. Brazil alone uses the wood of 60 million trees per year for curing, packaging, and rolling cigarettes.In 2017 WHO released a study on the environmental effects of tobacco. Research Several tobacco plants have been used as model organisms in genetics. Tobacco BY-2 cells, derived from N. tabacum cultivar 'Bright Yellow-2', are among the most important research tools in plant cytology. Tobacco has played a pioneering role in callus culture research and the elucidation of the mechanism by which kinetin works, laying the groundwork for modern agricultural biotechnology. The first genetically modified plant was produced in 1982, using Agrobacterium tumefaciens to create an antibiotic-resistant tobacco plant. This research laid the groundwork for all genetically modified crops. Genetic modification Because of its importance as a research tool, transgenic tobacco was the first genetically modified (GM) crop to be tested in field trials, in the United States and France in 1986; China became the first country in the world to approve commercial planting of a GM crop in 1993, which was tobacco. Field trials Many varieties of transgenic tobacco have been intensively tested in field trials. Agronomic traits such as resistance to pathogens (viruses, particularly to the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV); fungi; bacteria and nematodes); weed management via herbicide tolerance; resistance against insect pests; resistance to drought and cold; and production of useful products such as pharmaceuticals; and use of GM plants for bioremediation, have all been tested in over 400 field trials using tobacco. Production Currently, only the US is producing GM tobacco. The Chinese virus-resistant tobacco was withdrawn from the market in China in 1997.: 3  From 2002 to 2010, cigarettes made with GM tobacco with reduced nicotine content were available in the US under the market name Quest. Consumption Tobacco is consumed in many forms and through a number of different methods. Some examples are: Beedi (also known as bidis or biris) are thin, often flavoured cigarettes from India made of tobacco wrapped in a tendu leaf, and secured with coloured thread at one end. Chewing tobacco is the oldest way of consuming tobacco leaves. It is consumed orally, in two forms: through sweetened strands ("chew" or "chaw"), or in a shredded form ("dip"). When consuming the long, sweetened strands, the tobacco is lightly chewed and compacted into a ball. When consuming the shredded tobacco, small amounts are placed at the bottom lip, between the gum and the teeth, where it is gently compacted, thus it can often be called dipping tobacco. Both methods stimulate the salivary glands, which led to the development of the spittoon. Cigarettes are a product consumed through inhalation of smoke and manufactured from cured and finely cut tobacco leaves and reconstituted tobacco, often combined with other additives, then rolled into a paper cylinder. Cigars are tightly rolled bundles of dried and fermented tobacco, which are ignited so their smoke may be drawn into the smokers' mouths. Creamy snuff is tobacco paste, consisting of tobacco, clove oil, glycerin, spearmint, menthol, and camphor, and sold in a toothpaste tube. It is marketed mainly to women in India, and is known by the brand names Ipco (made by Asha Industries), Denobac, Tona, and Ganesh. It is locally known as mishri in some parts of Maharashtra. Dipping tobaccos are a form of smokeless tobacco. Dip is occasionally referred to as "chew", and because of this, it is commonly confused with chewing tobacco, which encompasses a wider range of products. A small clump of dip is 'pinched' out of the tin and placed between the lower or upper lip and gums. Some brands, as with snus, are portioned in small, porous pouches for less mess. Dokha is a middle eastern tobacco with high nicotine levels grown in parts of Oman and Hatta, which is smoked through a thin pipe called a medwakh. It is a form of tobacco which is dried up and ground and contains little to no additives excluding spices, fruits, or flowers to enhance smell and flavor. Gutka is a preparation of crushed betel nut, tobacco, and sweet or savory flavorings. It is manufactured in India and exported to a few other countries. A mild stimulant, it is sold across India in small, individual-sized packets. Heat-not-burn products heat rather than burn tobacco to generate an aerosol that contains nicotine. Hookah is a single- or multistemmed (often glass-based) water pipe for smoking. Hookahs were first used in India and Persia; the hookah has gained immense popularity, especially in the Middle East. A hookah operates by water filtration and indirect heat. It can be used for smoking herbal fruits or moassel, a mixture of tobacco, flavouring, and honey or glycerin. Kreteks are cigarettes made with a complex blend of tobacco, cloves, and a flavoring "sauce". They were first introduced in the 1880s in Kudus, Java, to deliver the medicinal eugenol of cloves to the lungs. Roll-your-own, often called 'rollies' or 'roll-ups', are relatively popular in some European countries. These are prepared from loose tobacco, cigarette papers, and filters all bought separately. They are usually cheaper to make. Snuff is a ground smokeless tobacco product, inhaled or "snuffed" through the nose. If referring specifically to the orally consumed moist snuff, see dipping tobacco. Snus is a steam-pasteurized moist powdered tobacco product that is not fermented, and induces minimal salivation. It is consumed by placing it (loose or in little pouches) against the upper gums for an extended period of time. It is somewhat similar to dipping tobacco but does not require spitting and is significantly lower in TSNAs. Tobacco edibles, often in the form of an infusion or a spice, have gained popularity in recent years. Tobacco pipes typically consist of a small chamber (the bowl) for the combustion of the tobacco to be smoked and a thin stem (shank) that ends in a mouthpiece (the bit). Shredded pieces of tobacco are placed in the chamber and ignited. Tobacco smoke enemas were employed by the indigenous peoples of North America to stimulate respiration, injecting the smoke with a rectal tube. Later, in the 18th century, Europeans emulated the Americans. Tobacco resuscitation kits consisting of a pair of bellows and a tube were provided by the Royal Humane Society of London and placed at various points along the Thames. Tobacco water is a traditional organic insecticide used in domestic gardening. Tobacco dust can be used similarly. It is produced by boiling strong tobacco in water, or by steeping the tobacco in water for a longer period. When cooled, the mixture can be applied as a spray, or 'painted' on to the leaves of garden plants, where it kills insects. Tobacco is, however, banned from use as pesticide in certified organic production by the USDA's National Organic Program. Topical tobacco paste is sometimes used as a treatment for wasp, hornet, fire ant, scorpion, and bee stings. An amount equivalent to the contents of a cigarette is mashed in a cup with about a half a teaspoon of water to make a paste that is then applied to the affected area. Impact Social Smoking in public was, for a long time, reserved for men, and when done by women was sometimes associated with promiscuity; in Japan, during the Edo period, prostitutes and their clients often approached one another under the guise of offering a smoke. The same was true in 19th-century Europe.Following the American Civil War, the use of tobacco, primarily in cigars, became associated with masculinity and power. Today, tobacco use is often stigmatized; this has spawned quitting associations and antismoking campaigns. Bhutan is the only country in the world where tobacco sales are illegal. Due to its propensity for causing detumescence and erectile dysfunction, some studies have described tobacco as an anaphrodisiacal substance. Religion Christianity In Christian denominations of the conservative holiness movement, such as the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection and Evangelical Wesleyan Church, the use of tobacco and other drugs is prohibited;: 37  ¶42 of the 2014 Book of Discipline of the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection states: In the judgment of The Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection (Original Allegheny Conference), the use of tobacco is a great evil, unbecoming a Christian, a waste of the Lord's money, and a defilement of the body, which should be the temple of the Holy Ghost. We do, therefore, most earnestly require our members to refrain from its cultivation, manufacture, and sale, and to abstain from its use in all forms, for Jesus' sake. We will not receive as members into our churches nor will we ordain or license to preach or to exhort, persons who use, cultivate, manufacture, or sell tobacco. Using tobacco by a member of a church or of the Conference after being received from this date (June 28, 1927) is a violation of the law of the church, and the offending party should be dealt with according to the judiciary rules.: 44  Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (popularly known as Mormons) adhere to the Word of Wisdom, a religious health code that is interpreted as prohibiting the consumption of tobacco as well as alcohol, coffee, and tea. Islam Most Islamic scholars have condemned tobacco due to its harmful effects on health. The earliest fatwa (religious opinion) against tobacco use dates from 1602, and today, most major Islamic sects prohibit Muslims from using it. While tobacco is not mentioned in the Quran, the Quran does instruct Muslims to live healthy lives. Sikhism Sikhism, a monotheistic religion from India, considers tobacco consumption as a taboo and very bad for health and spirituality. Initiated Sikhs are never to consume tobacco in any form. Demographic Research on tobacco use is limited mainly to smoking, which has been studied more extensively than any other form of consumption. An estimated 1.1 billion people, and up to one-third of the adult population, use tobacco in some form. Smoking is more prevalent among men (however, the gender gap declines with age), the poor, and in transitional or developing countries. A study published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found that in 2019 approximately one in four youths (23.0%) in the U.S. had used a tobacco product during the past 30 days. This represented approximately three in 10 high school students (31.2%) and approximately one in eight middle school students (12.5%).Rates of smoking continue to rise in developing countries, but have leveled off or declined in developed countries. Smoking rates in the United States have dropped by half from 1965 to 2006, falling from 42% to 20.8% in adults. In the developing world, tobacco consumption is rising by 3.4% per year. Health effects Chemicals Tobacco smoking harms health because of the toxic chemicals in tobacco smoke, including carbon monoxide, cyanide, and carcinogens, which have been proven to cause heart and lung diseases and cancer. Thousands of different substances in cigarette smoke, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (such as benzopyrene), formaldehyde, cadmium, nickel, arsenic, tobacco-specific nitrosamines, and phenols contribute to the harmful effects of smoking.According to the World Health Organization, tobacco is the single greatest cause of preventable death globally. WHO estimates that tobacco caused 5.4 million deaths in 2004 and 100 million deaths over the course of the 20th century. Similarly, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describe tobacco use as "the single most important preventable risk to human health in developed countries and an important cause of premature death worldwide." Due to these health consequences, it is estimated that a 10 hectare (approximately 24.7 acre) field of tobacco used for cigarettes causes 30 deaths per year – 10 from lung cancer and 20 from cigarette-induced diseases like cardiac arrest, gangrene, bladder cancer, mouth cancer, etc.The harms caused by inhaling tobacco smoke include diseases of the heart and lungs, with smoking being a major risk factor for heart attacks, strokes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (emphysema), and cancer (particularly cancers of the lungs, larynx, mouth, and pancreas). Cancer is caused by inhaling carcinogenic substances in tobacco smoke. Inhaling secondhand tobacco smoke (which has been exhaled by a smoker) can cause lung cancer in nonsmoking adults. In the United States, about 3,000 adults die each year due to lung cancer from secondhand smoke exposure. Heart disease caused by secondhand smoke kills around 46,000 nonsmokers every year.In children, exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke is associated with a higher incidence and severity of respiratory illnesses, middle ear disease, and asthma attacks. Each year in the United States, secondhand smoke exposure causes 24,500 infants to be born with low birthweight, 71,900 preterm births, 202,300 episodes of asthma, and 790,000 health care visits for ear infections.The addictive alkaloid nicotine is a stimulant, and popularly known as the most characteristic constituent of tobacco. In drug effect preference questionnaires, a rough indicator of addictive potential, nicotine scores almost as highly as opioids. Users typically develop tolerance and dependence. Nicotine is known to produce conditioned place preference, a sign of psychological enforcement value. In one medical study, tobacco's overall harm to user and self was determined at three percent below cocaine, and 13 percent above amphetamines, ranking sixth most harmful of the 20 drugs assessed. Radioactivity Polonium-210 is a radioactive trace contaminant of tobacco, providing additional explanation for the link between smoking and bronchial cancer. The radioactive particles build up over time in the lungs and a UCLA study has estimated that the radiation from 25 years of smoking would cause over 120 deaths per thousand smokers. Economic Tobacco has a significant economic impact. The global tobacco market in 2010 was estimated at US$760 billion, excluding China. The global revenues from tobacco taxes in 2013–2014 was approximately $269 billion. In China, cigarette manufacturing is one of the few profitable state-owned industries. For example, in 1998 the 1 429 state-owned enterprises in Yunnan province had revenue of Renminbi (RMB) 69.1 billion (US$8.3 billion) while 8 cigarette manufacturing plants alone accounted for about 53 percent (or RMB 36.2 billion) of total provincial industry sales. The Chinese government also collects tax on tobacco products. Tax revenues from cigarettes increased from 740 to 842 billion Chinese yuan between 2014 and 2016. This generated an additional 101 billion Chinese yuan in tax revenues for the government.In India, tobacco generates approximately 20 billion Indian rupees (US$0.45 billion) of income per annum as a result of employment, income and government revenue.Statistica estimates that in the U.S. alone, the tobacco industry has a market of US$121 billion, despite the fact the CDC reports that US smoking rates are declining steadily. In terms of health expenditures, cigarette smoking contributed to more than $225 billion (or 11.7%) of annual healthcare spending in the U.S. in 2014. Smoking-attributable healthcare spending increased more than 30% for Medicaid between 2010 and 2014.In the US, the decline in the number of smokers, the end of the Tobacco Transition Payment Program in 2014, and competition from growers in other countries, made tobacco farming economics more challenging.Of the 1.22 billion smokers worldwide, 1 billion of them live in developing or transitional economies, and much of the disease burden and premature mortality attributable to tobacco use disproportionately affect the poor. While smoking prevalence has declined in many developed countries, it remains high in others, and is increasing among women and in developing countries. Between one-fifth and two-thirds of men in most populations smoke. Women's smoking rates vary more widely but rarely equal male rates.Tobacco users must also spend a significant amount of money on cigarettes to maintain regular use, as tobacco products are often heavily taxed by governments. For example, a pack a day smoker in the state of New York would have to spend around $4,690.25 a year on cigarettes alone.In Indonesia, the lowest income group spends 15% of its total expenditures on tobacco. In Egypt, more than 10% of low-income household expenditure is on tobacco. The poorest 20% of households in Mexico spend 11% of their income on tobacco. Advertising The tobacco industry advertises its products through a variety of media, including sponsorship, particularly of sporting events. Because of the health risks of these products, this is now one of the most highly regulated forms of marketing. Some or all forms of tobacco advertising are banned in many countries. Legality See also Biorefining of tobacco List of tobacco-related topics Research about cure of asthma and Bronchodilatation Smoking cessation References Further reading "Cancer Facts & Figures 2015". American Cancer Society. Retrieved February 23, 2015. G. Emmanuel Guindon; David Boisclair (2003). "Past, current and future trends in tobacco use" (PDF). Washington DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank. Retrieved January 2, 2008. Gilman, Sander L.; Zhou, Xun (2004). Smoke : A Global History of Smoking. London: Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1861892003. OCLC 56967899. Mathers, Colin; Boerma, Ties; Fat, Doris Ma (2008). The Global Burden of Disease : 2004 Update (PDF). World Health Organization. hdl:10665/43942. ISBN 978-9241563710. OCLC 264018380. Archived from the original on February 7, 2022. Retrieved October 6, 2022. Montesano, R.; Hall, J. (2001). "Environmental causes of human cancers". European Journal of Cancer. 37: 67–87. doi:10.1016/S0959-8049(01)00266-0. PMID 11602374. Office of the Surgeon General (2001). "Surgeon General's Report — Women and Smoking". Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved October 6, 2022. Paul Lichtenstein; Niels V. Holm; Pia K. Verkasalo; Anastasia Iliadou; Jaakko Kaprio; Markku Koskenvuo; Eero Pukkala; Axel Skytthe; Kari Hemminki (2000). "Environmental and Heritable Factors in the Causation of Cancer — Analyses of Cohorts of Twins from Sweden, Denmark, and Finland". New England Journal of Medicine. 343 (2): 78–85. doi:10.1056/NEJM200007133430201. PMID 10891514. Richard Peto; Alan D Lopez; Jillian Boreham; Michael Thun (2006). "Mortality from Smoking in Developed Countries 1950–2000: indirect estimates from national vital statistics" (PDF). New York: Oxford University Press. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 24, 2005. Retrieved January 3, 2009. Samet, Jonathan M.; Yoon, Soon-Young, eds. (2001). "Women and the Tobacco Epidemic: Challenges for the 21st Century" (PDF). World Health Organization, The Institute for Global Tobacco Control, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 28, 2003. Retrieved January 2, 2009. WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2008 : The MPOWER Package (PDF). World Health Organization. 2008. pp. 6, 8, 20. ISBN 978-9240683112. OCLC 476167599. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 21, 2022. Retrieved October 6, 2022. Aristée Poché, L. (2002). Perique Tobacco Mystery and History: A Monograph. Benedict, Carol (2011). Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550–2010. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520948563. Brandt, Allan (2009). The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0786721900. Breen, T. H. (1985). Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691005966.. Source on tobacco culture in 18th-century Virginia pp. 46–55 Burns, Eric (2006). The Smoke of the Gods: A Social History of Tobacco. Temple University Press. ISBN 978-1592134823. Cosner, Charlotte (February 10, 2015). The Golden Leaf: How Tobacco Shaped Cuba and the Atlantic World. Vanderbilt University Press. ISBN 978-0826520340. Fuller, R. Reese (Spring 2003). "Perique, the Native Crop". Louisiana Life. Gately, Iain (December 2007). Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization. Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. ISBN 978-0802198488. Goodman, Jordan (2005). Tobacco in History: The Cultures of Dependence. Routledge. ISBN 978-1134818402. Graves, John (1980). From a Limestone Ledge: Some Essays and Other Ruminations about Country Life in Texas. Knopf. ISBN 0394512383. Grehan, James (2006). "Smoking and "Early Modern" Sociability: The Great Tobacco Debate in the Ottoman Middle East (Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries)". The American Historical Review. 111 (5): 1352–1377. doi:10.1086/ahr.111.5.1352. JSTOR 10.1086/ahr.111.5.1352. PMID 17907367. Hahn, Barbara M. (2011). Making Tobacco Bright: Creating an American Commodity, 1617–1937. JHU Press. ISBN 978-1421402864.; examines how marketing, technology, and demand figured in the rise of Bright Flue-Cured Tobacco, a variety first grown in the inland Piedmont region of the Virginia-North Carolina border. Hawks, S. N.; Collins, W. K. (1983). Principles of Flue-Cured Tobacco Production. Killebrew, Joseph Buckner; Myrick, Herbert (1897). Tobacco Leaf, Its Culture and Cure, Marketing and Manufacture: A Practical Handbook on the Most Approved Methods in Growing, Harvesting, Curing, Packing and Selling Tobacco, Also of Tobacco Manufacture. Orange Judd Company. Source for flea beetle typology (p. 243) Kluger, Richard (1999). Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris. Random House Value. ISBN 978-0517451106., Pulitzer Prize Murphey, Rhoads (2007). Studies on Ottoman Society and Culture, 16th–18th Centuries. ISBN 978-0754659310. Neuburger, Mary C. (2012). Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0801465505. Price, Jacob M. (1954). "The Rise of Glasgow in the Chesapeake Tobacco Trade, 1707–1775". The William and Mary Quarterly. 11 (2): 179–199. doi:10.2307/1922038. JSTOR 1922038. Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe (1851). Historical and statistical information respecting the history, condition and prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States: Collected and prepared under the direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs per act of Congress of March 3rd, 1847. Historical American Indian Press. Shechter, Relli (2006). Smoking, Culture and Economy in the Middle East. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 1845111370. Tilley, Nannie M. (2012). The Bright Tobacco Industry, 1860–1929. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807879535.Werner, Carl Avery. Tobaccoland: A book about tobacco; its history, legends, literature, cultivation, social and hygienic influences, commercial development, industrial processes and governmental regulation. (1922) online External links WHO fact sheet on tobacco

rainforest alliance

The Rainforest Alliance is an international non-governmental organization (NGO) with staff in more than 20 countries and operations in more than 70 countries. It was founded in 1987 by Daniel Katz, an American environmental activist, who serves as the chair of the board of directors. The NGO states that its mission is “to create a more sustainable world by using social and market forces to protect nature and improve the lives of farmers and forest communities.” Its work includes the provision of an environmental certification for sustainability in agriculture. In parallel to its certification program, the Rainforest Alliance develops and implements long-term conservation and community development programs in a number of critically important tropical landscapes where commodity production threatens ecosystem health and the well-being of rural communities.The Rainforest Alliance is a product-oriented multistakeholder governance group combining the interests of companies, farmers, foresters, communities, and consumers to produce sustainable and harmonious goods. Merger with UTZ In June 2017, the Rainforest Alliance and UTZ announced their intention to merge, and in January 2018, the merger was legally completed.The Rainforest Alliance’s work continues in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.The new Rainforest Alliance released a new certification standard in 2020, building upon the previous Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Agriculture Standard and the UTZ Certification Standard. The two previous certification programs will continue to operate in parallel, and farms will continue as either Rainforest Alliance or UTZ certified until they transition to the new 2020 standard. Audits against the new standard were set to begin in July 2021. Rainforest Alliance programs Sustainable forestry certification As of October 1, 2018, the Rainforest Alliance transitioned its sustainable forestry certification business, including all related services, personnel and clients, to Preferred by Nature (formerly NEPCon), a global non-profit organization in Copenhagen, Denmark. Preferred by Nature has been a member of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) since 1996. Sustainable agriculture certification The Rainforest Alliance's sustainable agriculture program includes training programs for farmers and the certification of small, medium and large farms that produce more than 100 different crops, including coffee, tea, cocoa, and bananas. (The Rainforest Alliance is phasing out cattle certification because it is not in the scope of the 2020 Certification Program.) In recent years, the Rainforest Alliance has greatly expanded its work with smallholders, which includes more than 2 million farmers certified by the organization. To obtain certification, farms must meet the Sustainable Agriculture Standard, which is designed to conserve ecosystems, protect biodiversity and waterways, conserve forests, reduce agrochemical use, improve livelihoods, and safeguard the rights and well-being of workers and local communities. The Rainforest Alliance encourages businesses and consumers to support sustainable agriculture by sourcing or choosing products grown on certified farms. More than 5 million hectares of farmland are being managed sustainably under Rainforest Alliance certification, as of 2019. Crop standards and criteria The Rainforest Alliance 2017 Sustainable Agriculture Standard was based on a gradual improvement system where more requirements had to be met each year. For a farm to get certified initially, it was required to achieve 100 percent of the critical criteria and 50 percent of the continuous improvement criteria within each group of criteria. The Farm Requirements of the new 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard include core requirements and improvement requirements. Core requirements outline key sustainable agriculture practices that must be met to achieve certification and are measured according to a pass/fail model. They include an ecosystem conservation program; protection of wild animals and waterways; the use of protective gear for workers; guidelines about agrochemical use; the prohibition of transgenic crops and implementation of an "assess-and-address" system to monitor and mitigate risks of child labor, forced labor, discrimination and workplace violence and harassment. Improvement requirements are designed to further promote and measure progress toward sustainable practices. They are categorized as either mandatory or self-selected. Some improvement requirements are pass/fail, while others are measured with Smart Meters.Smart Meters give farmers a way to set goals for their farms based on what is most beneficial and feasible within their specific context. Rather than having predefined targets set by the Rainforest Alliance, farmers will set their own targets for improvements and define the necessary actions needed to achieve them. For example, while all farms must appoint a person or committee to address gender equality and carry out a basic risk assessment, they can each set their own annual targets to tackle more specific gender gaps related to their context. Rainforest Alliance Certified Seal The Rainforest Alliance Certified seal appears only on products that meet the crop standards and criteria detailed above. In February 2008, Ethical Corporation called Rainforest Alliance certification a "rigorous, independently verified scheme". As of 2019, more than 5,000 companies buy or sell products from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms, and the Rainforest Alliance Certified seal can be seen in more than 100 countries. As of June 2015, 13.6 percent of the world’s cocoa and 15.1 percent of tea comes from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms. As of 2017, 5.7 percent of the world's coffee comes from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms. Sustainable tourism The Rainforest Alliance was a pioneer in third-party sustainable tourism recognition, working with hotels, inbound and outbound tour operators, and other tourism businesses to help them improve their environmental, social, and economic practices. As of October 1, 2018, Preferred by Nature assumed management of the Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Tourism Standards for Hotel and Lodging Services and Inbound Tour Operators. Currently, tourism businesses may use the Rainforest Alliance’s green frog seal when they achieve certification according to Preferred by Nature’s Sustainable Tourism Standard, recognized by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council. Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Program Rainforest Alliance certification has been extended in recent years to products such as pineapples, hazelnuts, coconut oil, orange juice, and vegetables, among others. The presence of the seal in these products has become an added value in the commercial arena. Especially for retail groups, the seal represents a differential that distinguishes and certifies that the crop in question has been produced in a sustainable way, meeting specific requirements. Voluntary certification programs such as this one aim to reward producers who make the effort to implement better agricultural practices so as to obtain the certification. However, in practice, the producers are not always rewarded for their efforts.In order to obtain Rainforest Alliance certification, compliance with certain environmental, social, and economic criteria is required. Thus, farms that want to qualify for certification regularly undergo compliance auditing. The compliance requirements are included in the organization's certification program, which was updated with new sustainability requirements in June 2020. The new program, named the Sustainable Agriculture Standard, includes new features with respect to the previous one and demands more in environmental, social, and economic terms. In addition, the Sustainable Agriculture Standard is composed of two main elements: farm requirements and supply chain requirements.The Sustainable Agriculture Standard features innovation in the following areas: climate-smart agriculture, deforestation, conserving biodiversity, assessments, shared responsibility, human rights, living wage, continuous improvement, living income, risk-based assurance and gender equality. Rainforest Alliance is a code compliant member of ISEAL, and the Sustainable Agriculture Standard is independently evaluated against ISEAL's standard setting Code of Good Practice. Landscape management The Rainforest Alliance partners with local communities to co-design and implement sustainable conservation and community development programs in tropical areas where commodity production threatens rural communities and the ecosystem. The Rainforest Alliance's integrated landscape management programs allow producers, companies, communities, local governments, and non-governmental organizations to discuss common interests and collective actions. Criticism and response Minimum price issues Rainforest Alliance sustainable agriculture certification, like the certification schemes UTZ Certified and organic, does not offer producers minimum or guaranteed price, therefore leaving them vulnerable to market price variations. For example, in the 1980s, a pound of standard-grade coffee sold for around US $1.20; in 2003, however, a pound sold for about $0.50, which was not enough to cover the costs of production in much of the world. The price of coffee has since rebounded somewhat, with prices for arabica reaching $1.18/pound by the end of 2007.Although many Rainforest Alliance Certified farms do in fact achieve price premiums for high-quality produce, Rainforest Alliance focuses on improving the entire spectrum of farming practices. Third-party studies have shown the organization’s approach to be effective in raising both income and net revenue for farmers.Michigan State University professor of sociology Daniel Jaffee has criticized Rainforest Alliance certification, claiming that its standards are "arguably far lower than fair trade's" [sic] and saying "they establish minimum housing and sanitary conditions but do not stipulate a minimum price for coffee. Critically, they require plantation owners only to pay laborers the national minimum wage, a notoriously inadequate standard."The Economist favors the Rainforest Alliance's method and notes that "guaranteeing a minimum price [as Fairtrade does] means there is no incentive to improve quality". They also note that coffee drinkers say "the quality of Fairtrade brews varies widely. The Rainforest Alliance does things differently. It does not guarantee a minimum price or offer a premium but provides training advice. That consumers are often willing to pay more for a product with the [Rainforest Alliance] logo on it is an added bonus, not the result of a formal subsidy scheme; such products must still fend for themselves in the marketplace."The Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Program promotes a shared responsibility approach that includes two new requirements for buyers of Rainforest Alliance Certified commodities: the Sustainability Differential and Sustainability Investments. The Sustainability Differential is an "additional cash payment made to certified producers over and above the market price of the commodity". This payment is completely free of restrictions or requirements on how it is used. The Sustainability Investments are "cash or in-kind investments from buyers of Rainforest Alliance Certified products to certified producers for the specific purpose of helping them meet the Sustainable Agriculture Standard".To address the structural inequalities in the cocoa sector, persistently low incomes, and the challenges farmers face in negotiating prices, the Rainforest Alliance will introduce a minimum Sustainability Differential at $70 per metric ton for its cocoa program, as of July 2022. Use of seal In the mid 2000s the organization certification was criticized for allowing the use of its seal on products containing only a minimum of 30 percent certified content. However, the current standard requires 90 percent certified content, or 100 percent equivalent certified volume via a certified mass balance supply chain. The exception to that rule is herbs, where the minimum threshold was 40 percent up until the end of 2021 and 50 percent thereafter, and palm oil, where the minimum threshold is 30 percent. In any case, products containing herbs and palm oil that meet the minimum threshold but do not meet the 90 percent threshold are required to indicate the amount of certified content on the label. Lawsuit failed against Rainforest Alliance An article in The Guardian reported that the U.S. nonprofit Water and Sanitation Health (WASH) filed a civil lawsuit against Rainforest Alliance in 2014, alleging that the Rainforest Alliance was responsible for unfair marketing because it certified Chiquita banana suppliers as sustainable when they were "contaminating drinking water with fertilizers and fungicides and have air-dropped pesticides perilously close to schools and homes" in Guatemala, raising the issue that the Rainforest Alliance was alleged to be facilitating the "greenwashing" of companies making environmental claims. In the same article, the Rainforest Alliance called WASH's allegations untrue, said it stood by its auditing practices and also objected to the lawsuit's charges that the alliance sells its endorsement. The nonprofit Truth in Advertising also reported that WASH was suing Rainforest Alliance for allegedly misrepresenting how earth-friendly its certified products actually are. Costa Rican pineapples A report in 2020 by The Guardian alleged that some Costa Rica pineapple growers certified by the scheme were exploiting their labour force, using illegal agrochemicals, and concealing hundreds of undocumented workers from auditors. The Rainforest Alliance said all its certified plantations were required to comply with strict audits and inspections; but the report quoted the president of Fecon, a Costa Rican environmental group, as saying that audits were insufficiently rigorous to reveal violations. Latin American banana growers The development and publication of the 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard caused concern among several Latin American banana producer and exporter associations. The associations, which partner with the Rainforest Alliance and share its ambitions and sustainable objectives, challenged the new standards and the Rainforest Alliance's decision-making process in an open letter to the organization on July 17, 2020. In the letter, banana associations from Ecuador, Costa Rica, Colombia and Guatemala requested that the Rainforest Alliance explain the process of socialization to the new standard and expressed their concerns, considering that only 2 percent of their demands had been taken into account.On July 23, 2020, the Rainforest Alliance responded by holding a meeting with several of the banana associations to exchange perspectives on the new standard. As Juan José Pons, coordinator of Ecuador's banana cluster, stated: the standard "does not take into account the immense effort and related costs that we have made in the recent years, both in social and environmental matters. Our investment is not reflected in the final price, it has had no return, quite the contrary, European supermarkets always impose lower and lower prices." During the meeting, the banana associations questioned why the new standard does not address the region's economic challenges, which have been exacerbated in part by the COVID-19 pandemic and black sigatoka disease. In an El Universo article, José Antonio Hidalgo, executive director of the Association of Banana Exporters of Ecuador, stated that the banana associations needed "to reach an agreement with [the Rainforest Alliance] or we will have to look for alternatives".For these producers and exporters, obtaining Rainforest Alliance certification is essential to keep the doors to the European Union market open, where more than 65 percent of their banana exports are directed. In response to the banana associations' ongoing concerns, the Rainforest Alliance organized a series of roundtables through December 2020 to discuss the new standard with representatives from the banana sector. However, as of November 2020, banana associations continued to disagree with the new standard's shared responsibility plan, which would place the new standard's increased production cost solely on banana producers. In this context, the banana associations continued conversations with the Rainforest Alliance and European Union retailers to resolve the issue. On November 27, 2020, the banana associations called a tripartite roundtable with the Rainforest Alliance and European Union retailers to discuss the new standard and the future development of guidelines for shared responsibility. The Rainforest Alliance was not present at the meeting and banana producers subsequently requested a meeting with the organization's board of directors.The Rainforest Alliance responded by organizing another roundtable on December 18, 2020, to further discuss the new standard with banana sector representatives. Although the Rainforest Alliance affirmed it took into account the comments of all stakeholders involved in the consultation process, especially those of banana growers, banana association representatives again expressed their dissatisfaction with the outcome. In particular, they considered that the way in which the meeting had been organized and managed did not allow for a constructive dialogue to take place. Furthermore, according to the banana associations, the explanations provided by the Rainforest Alliance did not clarify the strategy by which the new standard would be applied, which still failed to fill several gaps around the implementation of the concept of shared responsibility. The Rainforest Alliance's new shared responsibility approach and 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard were set to be fully implemented by mid-2021. See also Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance Fair trade Sustainable coffee Multistakeholder governance model References External links Rainforest Alliance - official website What Does “Rainforest Alliance Certified” Mean? - Mother Earth News magazine

climate change in iran

Iran is among the most vulnerable to climate change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Iran contributes to about 1.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and is ranked 8th in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) world wide and is ranked first in the MENA region due to its reliance on oil and natural gas. Climate change in Iran has led to reduced precipitation as well as increased temperatures, with Iran holding the hottest temperature recorded in Asia.The country is facing water shortages with around 35% of Iranians experiencing water scarcity. These issues are exacerbated by rapid urbanization which has led to worse air quality and heat islands. Libya and Yemen are the only other countries which have not ratified the Paris Agreement. Emissions Iran is a significant contributor of GHGs due to its use and production of oil and natural gas. These resources not only serve the domestic energy needs but also serve as a significant portion of the country's exports. As Iran has not ratified the Paris Agreement it does not publish GHG emission figures and has not pledged any reduction, but 2022 emissions are estimated at 950 million tonnes CO2eq, which is almost 1.8% of global emissions. So per person Iran emits more than the global average. Additionally, gas flaring activities in Iran contribute to its emissions profile, with the equivalent of around 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxide being emitted annually from gas flaring alone, accounting for 5.5%-6% of the country's total GHG emissions. The emission figures also show how low the country's energy policy and the level of investment in renewable energy infrastructure is. Although Iran has considerable renewable energy potential, the transition towards clean energy systems has been a slow process. Fossil fuel subsidies are second only to Russia, and the world’s largest by share of GDP. Impacts on the environment There are several potential impacts of climate change in Iran. For one, it is expected that the average temperature will increase significantly, estimated at a 2.6 degree Celsius change by 2050. This could climb up to a 5 degree Celsius increase by the end of the century. (Are they regional differences in terms of impacts? ADD) Increased average temperature is directly related to increases in heat deaths and heart-disease related deaths. In addition, heat wave frequency is predicted to increase by roughly 30%, which would also cause an estimated 30% decrease in precipitation. Water resources Changes in precipitation are likely to cause water shortages Iran, which poses threats to the supply of clean drinking water as well as irrigation water used for agriculture. Paired with rising temperatures, decreased availability of irrigation water would lead to significantly lower agricultural production, causing food shortages. While annual precipitation is likely to decrease, the intensity and concentration of rainy days are expected to increase in the south, which can lead to flooding. Iran already has extremely high exposure to floods, landslides, and other natural disasters, ranking sixth in the world in natural-hazard vulnerability. Sea level rise The southeast coast of Iran is of great economic and environmental importance. However, under current climate models, it is predicted that rising sea levels will cause more extreme still water levels in the future. In addition, sea level rise is expected to impact around 300 million homes by 2050, displacing millions of people in the process. There are multiple factors that increase the coastal areas' vulnerability to sea level rise in Iran. A particularly important area is the Makran coast, which is more vulnerable to natural hazards because of its high rates of tectonic uplifts. In addition to putting it at greater risk of sea level rise, this can trigger extreme events such as earthquakes and tsunamis. Ecosystem impacts Desertification is one of the main concerns for Iran as temperatures continue to rise. Government officials have recognized that over 100 million hectares of land in the country could turn to desert in the near future due to impacts of climate change. This could lead to a mass migration for an already rapidly urbanizing Iranian population. In Tehran alone, the population is increasing at roughly 2% a year currently. These affects are already starting to be seen, as it was estimated that roughly 41,000 people migrated in Iran due to natural hazards. Desertification also comes with multiple serious health and economic risks related to dust storms and defertilization of land.Water availability is another major climate change concern for Iran in the near future. Much of the available groundwater has already been used in the country due to increased water demand in the recent past. Much of this has been caused by increased well digging. The number of water wells in the country increased by 21 times from the 1980s to the 2010s. In addition, water efficiency in the public sector seems to be another issue, with water waste amounting to almost 30%. Because of this, the impacts of decreased precipitation in Iran provide even harsher ramifications than in other countries in the region, which already struggles with water allocation and efficiency. Impact on agriculture The impacts of climate change on agriculture in Iran are already clear to see. Since 2002, the percentage of total GDP that comes from the agricultural sector has declined by over 9%. Currently, wheat is the main crop grown in Iran, as it makes up around 67% of all crop production. While current yields tend to be relatively stable, simulations done on the Mazandaran, Khuzestan, and Eastern Azerbaijan regions show how increasing temperatures and decreased precipitation could reduce output. These three provinces account for roughly 20% of Iran's wheat production, but all have starkly different geological and climatic features. The simulations showed that the warmer Mazandaran and Khuzestan regions were particularly susceptible to climate change, with decreasing yields of 7-45% and 7-54% respectively. The colder Eastern Azerbaijan province was the only one to potentially increase yields due to impending climate change (0-16%). Another concern regarding agriculture in Iran is the efficiency of water usage. The impacts of decreased water availability could be crucial for this sector, which currently accounts for roughly 90% of water usage. This has already proved to be a problem historically, when droughts in the late 90s caused major agricultural losses amounting to over $10 Billion. With studies predicting a potential 35% decrease in annual precipitation, the supply of water available for agriculture could shrink significantly. This is especially problematic because of the lack of water productivity in the agricultural sector, which currently is around 33%. Impact on the economy Iran's economy has faced stagnating growth since the 1970s. Much of this is due to sanctions placed on the country in 1995. While trade restrictions have impacted Iran's ability to import and export natural resources that could help mitigate the effects of climate change, the current government is using the Paris Climate Agreement as a leveraging tool to remove sanctions. Beyond trade, the economy faces major economic threats due to increased temperatures, with an estimated 1-23% GDP loss in the event of 3-4 degree celsius warming. In addition, it is estimated that there would be a significant decline on workforce productivity and an increase in workforce deaths. Mitigation Iran’s mitigation efforts have been slow to come. CO2 levels continue to rise annually at an increasing rate for both consumption and production. Total per capita greenhouse gas emissions have also increased and show no sign of stopping. One potential way forward for Iran with mitigation efforts is the use of biofuel. The nation has already started building multiple plants, which are expected to be ready for use in the near future. While this is a more sustainable source than oil, there are still some downsides. For example, processing is very water expensive. With decreased precipitation likely in the region, it will be difficult to meet demands. At COP26, Iranian delegate Ali Salajegheh said the country would only ratify the Paris Agreement if sanctions against Iran were lifted. Iran national center of climate and Drought management was established in the Meteorological Organization of the country in year 2009 and following these objectives: Collecting Drought data and information Monitoring forecast, forewarning and issuing Drought warning Proper and effective reports to public users and executive Organization Adaptation Qanats, a traditional form of water management in Iran, that are being used to adapt both rural and urban areas to better cope with the affects of climate change.The qanats, designed to channel water from higher elevations to the drier plains, facilitate agriculture and other vital activities. There has been a restoration of qanat systems in recent years to help as an adaptation measure for the effects of climate change. Studies suggest that "The full restoration of the ganat system, a network of narrow water canals in urban and rural areas running across fields and on every street and alley, would also help to enable natural water flow while protecting against climate-induced flooding, which is frequent in Iran. In fact, traditional architecture in cities like Yazd has withstood flooding far better than modern buildings, benefitting from design features like inverted inner courtyard-facing structures, windowless street-facing walls, and natural air filtration built on dome-shaped roofs. " The inherent design of qanats, provides a sustainable solution to water scarcity, a challenge exacerbated by climate change by mitigating evaporation as well as promote soil conservation.Iran climate legislation and policies are slowly evolving with a growing recognition of the impacts of climate change. Iran's approach to climate change adaptation and mitigation are governed through its impacts on its citizens, economy and its international commitments. Iran's Five Year development plan (2017-2022) highlighted environmental sustainability focusing on reducing green house gas emissions and funding clean energy projects.Iran's plans to combat climate change aligns with its global obligations it accepted in the Paris Agreement, with an aim to reduce emissions by unifying climate policies across different sectors, including energy, industry, agriculture, and waste management.The impacts from climate change on Iranian health necessitates policies and frameworks for mitigation and adaptation to lessen the impact on health. A study looked at the Paris Agreement and Iran's Heath care system. The Impacts of climate change on public health in Iran necessitates evidence-based policy frameworks for mitigation and adaptation. A study aligned Iran's health system with the Paris Agreement's guidelines, finding that the Agreements prescription for focusing on reducing climate change's adverse impacts on public health. Iran is taking proactive steps to adapt its health system against climate-induced challenges. After a severe weather even in 2019 Iran's ministry of health and medical education hosted a workshop to initiate a National Climate Change Adaptation Plan within the health sector which was supported by WHO. The workshop sought to find vulnerabilities in the current health sector to impacts like climate related disasters as well as vector borne diseases. Society and culture Environmental issues like climate change and water mismanagement have lead to multiple protests and civil uprisings in Iran, showing a growing public environmental consciousness among Iranians. Rising temperatures coupled with severe drought and water mismanagement have severely damaged the economy, fueling widespread unrest and a demand for better water management. Environmental activists and organizations, such as the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, have played pivotal roles in raising awareness about Iran's environmental challenges. They face substantial risks, including arrests and accusations of espionage by governmental authorities. These activists and organizations face a significant threats including arrests as well as alleged interference from government authorities reflecting a broader political struggle. See also Environmental issues in Iran Energy in Iran Water scarcity in Iran Climate change in the Middle East and North Africa References External links Iran Summary at World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal Carbon Brief Profile: Iran

technogaianism

Technogaianism (a portmanteau word combining "techno-" for technology and "gaian" for Gaia philosophy) is a bright green environmentalist stance of active support for the research, development and use of emerging and future technologies to help restore Earth's environment. Technogaianists argue that developing safe, clean, alternative technology should be an important goal of environmentalists. Philosophy This point of view is different from the default position of radical environmentalists and a common opinion that all technology necessarily degrades the environment, and that environmental restoration can therefore occur only with reduced reliance on technology. Technogaianists argue that technology gets cleaner and more efficient with time. They would also point to such things as hydrogen fuel cells to demonstrate that developments do not have to come at the environment's expense. More directly, they argue that such things as nanotechnology and biotechnology can directly reverse environmental degradation. Molecular nanotechnology, for example, could convert garbage in landfills into useful materials and products, while biotechnology could lead to novel microbes that devour hazardous waste.While many environmentalists still contend that most technology is detrimental to the environment, technogaianists point out that it has been in humanity's best interests to exploit the environment mercilessly until fairly recently. This sort of behavior follows accurately to current understandings of evolutionary systems, in that when new factors (such as foreign species or mutant subspecies) are introduced into an ecosystem, they tend to maximize their own resource consumption until either, a) they reach an equilibrium beyond which they cannot continue unmitigated growth, or b) they become extinct. In these models, it is completely impossible for such a factor to totally destroy its host environment, though they may precipitate major ecological transformation before their ultimate eradication. Technogaianists believe humanity has currently reached just such a threshold, and that the only way for human civilization to continue advancing is to accept the tenets of technogaianism and limit future exploitive exhaustion of natural resources and minimize further unsustainable development or face the widespread, ongoing mass extinction of species. The destructive effects of modern civilization can be mitigated by technological solutions, such as using nuclear power. Furthermore, technogaianists argue that only science and technology can help humanity be aware of, and possibly develop counter-measures for, risks to civilization, humans and planet Earth such as a possible impact event.Sociologist James Hughes mentions Walter Truett Anderson, author of To Govern Evolution: Further Adventures of the Political Animal, as an example of a technogaian political philosopher; argues that technogaianism applied to environmental management is found in the reconciliation ecology writings such as Michael Rosenzweig's Win-Win Ecology: How The Earth's Species Can Survive In The Midst of Human Enterprise; and considers Bruce Sterling's Viridian design movement to be an exemplary technogaian initiative.The theories of English writer Fraser Clark may be broadly categorized as technogaian. Clark advocated "balancing the hippie right brain with the techno left brain". The idea of combining technology and ecology was extrapolated at length by a South African eco-anarchist project in the 1990s. The Kagenna Magazine project aimed to combine technology, art, and ecology in an emerging movement that could restore the balance between humans and nature. George Dvorsky suggests the sentiment of technogaianism is to heal the Earth, use sustainable technology, and create ecologically diverse environments. Dvorsky argues that defensive counter measures could be designed to counter the harmful effects of asteroid impacts, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. Dvorksky also suggest that genetic engineering could be used to reduce the environmental impact humans have on the earth. Methods Environmental monitoring Technology facilities the sampling, testing, and monitoring of various environments and ecosystems. NASA uses space-based observations to conduct research on solar activity, sea level rise, the temperature of the atmosphere and the oceans, the state of the ozone layer, air pollution, and changes in sea ice and land ice. Geoengineering Climate engineering is a technogaian method that uses two categories of technologies- carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management. Carbon dioxide removal addresses a cause of climate change by removing one of the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Solar radiation management attempts to offset the effects of greenhouse gases by causing the Earth to absorb less solar radiation. Earthquake engineering is a technogaian method concerned with protecting society and the natural and man-made environment from earthquakes by limiting the seismic risk to acceptable levels. Another example of a technogaian practice is an artificial closed ecological system used to test if and how people could live and work in a closed biosphere, while carrying out scientific experiments. It is in some cases used to explore the possible use of closed biospheres in space colonization, and also allows the study and manipulation of a biosphere without harming Earth's. The most advanced technogaian proposal is the "terraforming" of a planet, moon, or other body by deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, or ecology to be similar to those of Earth in order to make it habitable by humans. Genetic engineering S. Matthew Liao, professor of philosophy and bioethics at New York University, claims that the human impact on the environment could be reduced by genetically engineering humans to have, a smaller stature, an intolerance to eating meat, and an increased ability to see in the dark, thereby using less lighting. Liao argues that human engineering is less risky than geoengineering.Genetically modified foods have reduced the amount of herbicide and insecticide needed for cultivation. The development of glyphosate-resistant (Roundup Ready) plants has changed the herbicide use profile away from more environmentally persistent herbicides with higher toxicity, such as atrazine, metribuzin and alachlor, and reduced the volume and danger of herbicide runoff.An environmental benefit of Bt-cotton and maize is reduced use of chemical insecticides. A PG Economics study concluded that global pesticide use was reduced by 286,000 tons in 2006, decreasing the environmental impact of herbicides and pesticides by 15%. A survey of small Indian farms between 2002 and 2008 concluded that Bt cotton adoption had led to higher yields and lower pesticide use. Another study concluded insecticide use on cotton and corn during the years 1996 to 2005 fell by 35,600,000 kilograms (78,500,000 lb) of active ingredient, which is roughly equal to the annual amount applied in the EU. A Bt cotton study in six northern Chinese provinces from 1990 to 2010 concluded that it halved the use of pesticides and doubled the level of ladybirds, lacewings and spiders and extended environmental benefits to neighbouring crops of maize, peanuts and soybeans. Examples of implementation Related environmental ethical schools and movements See also References External links Green Progress Viridian Design Movement WorldChanging

ecomodernism

Ecomodernism is an environmental philosophy which argues that technological development can protect nature and improve human wellbeing through eco-economic decoupling, i.e., by separating economic growth from environmental impacts. Description Ecomodernism embraces substituting natural ecological services with energy, technology, and synthetic solutions as long as they help reduce impact on environment. Among other things, ecomodernists embrace agricultural intensification (intensive farming), precision agriculture, vertical farming and regenerative agriculture, genetically modified foods and cellular agriculture (cultured meat), fish from aquaculture farms, desalination, waste recycling and circular economy, sustainable forestry and ecological restoration which includes a wide scope of projects including erosion control, reforestation, removal of non-native species and weeds, revegetation of degraded lands, daylighting streams, the reintroduction of native species (preferably native species that have local adaptation), and habitat and range improvement for targeted species, water conservation, resource efficiency, urbanization, urban density and verticalization, adoption of electric vehicles and hydrogen vehicles, use of drone light shows, projection mapping and 3D holograms to provide a sustainable technological alternatives to fireworks, automation, carbon capture and storage, energy storage, alternative materials such as bioplastics and bio-based materials and high-tech materials, clean energy transition i.e. replacing low power-density energy sources (e.g. firewood in low-income countries, which leads to deforestation) with high power-density sources as long as their net impact on environment is lower (nuclear power plants, and advanced renewables), 3D printing, digitalization, miniaturization, servitization of products and dematerialization. Key among the goals of an ecomodern environmental ethic is the use of technology to intensify human activity and make more room for wild nature.Debates that form the foundation of ecomodernism were born from disappointment in traditional organizations who denied energy sources such as nuclear power, thus leading to an increase of reliance of fossil gas and increase of emissions instead of reduction (e.g. Energiewende). Coming from evidence-based, scientific and pragmatic positions, ecomodernism engages in the debate on how to best protect natural environments, how to accelerate decarbonization to mitigate climate change, and how to accelerate the economic and social development of the world's poor. In these debates, ecomodernism distinguishes itself from other schools of thought, including ecological economics, degrowth, population reduction, laissez-faire economics, the "soft energy" path, and central planning. Ecomodernism draws on American pragmatism, political ecology, evolutionary economics, and modernism. Diversity of ideas and dissent are claimed values in order to avoid the intolerance born of extremism and dogmatism.Ecomodernist organisations have been established in many countries, including Germany, Finland, and Sweden. While the word 'ecomodernism' has only been used to describe modernist environmentalism since 2013, the term has a longer history in academic design writing and Ecomodernist ideas were developed within a number of earlier texts, including Martin Lewis's Green Delusions, Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline and Emma Marris's Rambunctious Garden. In their 2015 manifesto, 18 self-professed ecomodernists—including scholars from the Breakthrough Institute, Harvard University, Jadavpur University, and the Long Now Foundation—sought to clarify the movement's vision: "we affirm one long-standing environmental ideal, that humanity must shrink its impacts on the environment to make more room for nature, while we reject another, that human societies must harmonize with nature to avoid economic and ecological collapse." An Ecomodernist Manifesto In April 2015, a group of 18 self-described ecomodernists collectively published An Ecomodernist Manifesto. Reception and criticism Some environmental journalists have praised An Ecomodernist Manifesto. At The New York Times, Eduardo Porter wrote approvingly of ecomodernism's alternative approach to sustainable development. In an article titled "Manifesto Calls for an End to 'People Are Bad' Environmentalism", Slate's Eric Holthaus wrote "It's inclusive, it's exciting, and it gives environmentalists something to fight for for a change." The science journal Nature editorialized the manifesto. Ecomodernism has been criticized for inadequately recognizing what Holly Jean Buck, Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability, says is the exploitative, violent and unequal dimensions of technological modernisation. Sociologist Eileen Crist, Associate Professor Emerita, observed that ecomodernism is founded on a western philosophy of humanism with no regard to "nonhuman freedoms". Of the Manifesto Crist says the mass extinction of life forms that the human enterprise has set into motion receives no mention in the Manifesto. (And extinction of species is mentioned once.) This is a startling omission for an eco manifesto: mass extinctions are geologically rare and catastrophic events; following such past cataclysms, it took millions of years for biological diversity to rebound—a timescale irrelevant for all future human generations. And yet the omission of mass extinction makes sense from the Manifesto's point of view. Human Geographer Rosemary-Claire Collard and co-authors assert that ecomodernism is incompatible with neoliberal capitalism, despite the philosophy's claims to the contrary. By contrast, in his book "Ecomodernism: Technology, Politics and the Climate Crisis" Jonathan Symons argues that ecomodernism belongs in the social democratic tradition, promoting a third way between laissez-faire and anti-capitalism, and calling for transformative state investments in technological transformation and human development. Likewise, in "A sympathetic diagnosis of the Ecomodernist Manifesto", Paul Robbins and Sarah A. Moore describe the similarities and points of departure between ecomodernism and political ecology.Another major strand of criticism towards ecomodernism comes from proponents of degrowth or the steady-state economy. Eighteen ecological economists published a long rejoinder titled "A Degrowth Response to an Ecomodernist Manifesto", writing "the ecomodernists provide neither a very inspiring blueprint for future development strategies nor much in the way of solutions to our environmental and energy woes."At the Breakthrough Institute's annual Dialogue in June 2015, several environmental scholars offered a critique of ecomodernism. Bruno Latour argued that the modernity celebrated in An Ecomodernist Manifesto is a myth. Jenny Price argued that the manifesto offered a simplistic view of "humanity" and "nature", which she said are "made invisible" by talking about them in such broad terms. See also Bright green environmentalism Earthship Ecological civilization Ecological modernization Environmental technology Reflexive modernization Solarpunk Technogaianism Utopian architecture References External links Media related to Ecomodernism at Wikimedia Commons

environmental issues in egypt

Egypt's environmental problems include, but are not limited to, water scarcity, air pollution, damage to historic monuments, animal welfare issues and deficiencies in its waste management system. Water resources The Nile river has allowed for the summation of natural resources, affects Egyptians through the course of agricultural lands and irrigation systems. In addition to this, Egypt has an expanding population and limited resources. Although, countries like that of Western Europe, Japan and North America have higher demands on world resources. As a result, Egyptians have less land to farm, however, produce more crops per person than Thailand or the Philippines. The management of the Nile is important for economic growth in Egypt.As a result, the effect has been that of an economic issue between various agents, both human and nonhuman agents. With the opening of natural resources and technological advancements through development projects in Egypt, it has historically created a range of feedback from Egyptians. Among these agricultural projects, the construction of villages were created to provide for the irrigation strategies following from that of Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt as a means of strengthening Egypt's economy at the height of its capitalist endeavors during the British occupation.As the movement of economic growth through a market that had difficulty measuring import and export of capital through, not only foreign trade but within Egypt's borders. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces have affected Egyptians during Egypt's revolutionary years. Starting from the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 environmental issues have increased by an array of actors taking a variety of direct actions in the public sphere.There has been an intense social protest in Egypt and increased demand for access to resources such as agricultural land. Presently Egypt's uncertainty with Ethiopia's project is correlated with an economic interest in that agricultural land will be affected when rising natural resource shortages are at a high. Egypt depends on fruit cultivated land that is found across the Nile and has sustained Egypt's agriculture for more than 5,000 years. Egypt's fresh water is mainly derived from underground water. Underground water results in 95% of Egyptian's desert land. Egypt is also dependent on rainwater but it is a scarce and limiting source for agricultural development. In addition, Egypt refuses agricultural drainage water in correlation with Nile water for irrigation.The importance of dams for Egyptians is exponential. The High Dam placed a halt on annual flooding of the Nile and allowed for extended sugarcane cultivation albeit the growing of wheat was displaced. The Nile floods provided brick making and house building labor. Mud became less available from the High Dam. The Nile allowed for 124 million tons of sediment to be carried to the sea each year and after the creation of the dam 98% of that sediment fell under the dam.Environmentally, the Aswan Dam has contributed to numerous issues for Egyptians. The expansion of desert areas since the Aswan High Dam's construction in 1970 has increased in soil salinity which allowed for waterborne diseases to emerge. In 1994, 28% of Egypt's soils were damaged by significant levels of salinity. The importance of water resources for Egyptians has contributed to the creation of agencies, such as the Egyptian Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs, that promote and protect Egypt's natural resources. The Nile Delta is currently under threat both from the rising sea levels (caused by climate change) and subsidence. The subsidence also brings with it salinization which in turn jeopardizes the fertility of the soil. Without adequate measures, 15 percent of the arable land could be lost due to salinization. Pollution Air Pollution The air pollution in Cairo is a matter of serious concern. The air pollution in downtown Cairo is more than 10 to 100 times of acceptable world standards. Cairo has a poor factor because of lack of rain and its layout of tall buildings and narrow streets, which create a bowl effect (bad ventilation and consequent trapping of pollutants). The main air pollution problem in Egypt is particulate matter. The most notable sources of the dust and small particles are transportation, industry, and open-air waste-burning. Another significant source of dust is wind blown from arid areas around Egypt (e.g. Western Desert). The air in Egypt is very thick, grey and there is a haze over Cairo. Furthermore, other forms of air pollution in a carbon monoxide (CO) in streets, due to the excess amount of cars' exhaust and factories pollutants. The sky is grey rather than blue, which is very similar to the grey skies in Mexico City, London, and Beijing pollutants, of course, create a lot of respiratory diseases as the United States Environmental Protection Agency has published risk data which state that above the safe limit, the risk of developing serious respiratory diseases and cancer as well as cardiovascular disease from inhaling particulates in the air (dust and soot, hydrocarbons, and heavy metal compounds) is: 2 people for every 1000. Noise pollution From blaring car horns to wedding parties, rising noise pollution in the 24-hour metropolis of Cairo has reached alarming levels, leading to health problems. Living in the city centre, where noise levels reach an average of 90 decibels (dB) and never drop below 70 dB, is like spending all day inside a factory, a 2007 study by the Egyptian National Research Centre (NRC) said "What's striking about Cairo is that noise levels on different streets at different times of day are well over limits set by the environmental protection agency (EPA)". Noise pollution can contribute to many health problems. Monuments Pollution damage Air and water pollution in Cairo have a destructive effect on the many monuments in the city. The Sultan Al-Ghuri Complex, for example, is one of many buildings in the center of the city which is covered in a gray and black crust from the air pollution. Al-Ghuri is representative of issues of decay of historic buildings in Cairo, both because it is an important medieval site including a funerary complex and mosque, and because the encrustation that appears on it has been studied in detail. Other sites examined in detail in the Greater Cairo area include the pyramids at Giza, Bab Zuweila, Al-Azhar Mosque, and the Cairo Citadel.The black crust appears on the top parts of outside walls of monuments and other places of cultural and historical importance as a result of combustion of carbonaceous gases in an environment of rising humidity. In addition, white crusts and efflorescences appear on the lower sections of these walls. White crusts are formed by halite, or rock salt, depositions because of an increase in soil salinity. The rising, salt-loaded water table in the Nile Delta, where Cairo is located, deposits salts in foundation stones of monuments that rise up buildings through capillary action and are left behind as the water evaporates. The water table is rising throughout Egypt for a variety of reasons. These include sewage leakage and infiltration, factory or agricultural runoff, and inadequate groundwater pumping.Buildings made of limestone like Al-Ghuri are susceptible to erosion by pollution because the crust that forms disrupts the integrity of the stone and falls off, removing the outer surface of the building with it. Many sites from the early Islamic era are falling into disrepair because of salt deposition from air and groundwater pollution as well as other destructive phenomena, and a major rescue effort is currently unfeasible because of the political and economic climate of Egypt. Salty and wet environments also lead to microbial growth. Without regular cleaning, historic buildings made of limestone, because of their high porosity, will continue to decay as a result of biological colonization. Encroachment of water Sea levels are another environmental problem faced by those charged with protecting Egypt's archaeological sites. The city of Rosetta, nearby which the Rosetta Stone was found, for example, is on the Mediterranean coast and will be underwater in a matter of decades unless climate change is addressed on a global scale. Abu Mena, an Early Christian site designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, is one place in imminent danger of destruction. Efforts to reclaim land for agricultural use in the past few decades have waterlogged the usually dry and brittle clay that supports the buildings at Abu Mena.According to UNESCO, "The destruction of numerous cisterns, disseminated around the city, has entailed the collapse of several overlying structures. Huge underground cavities have opened in the north-western region of the town. The risk of collapse is so high that the authorities were forced to fill with sand the bases of some of the most endangered buildings, including the crypt of Abu Mena with the tomb of the Saint, and close them to the public." Egypt has faced similar issues in the past, with the damming of the Nile at Aswan. The creation of Lake Nasser to control the flow of the Nile through Lower Egypt and create hydroelectricity meant the flooding of sites like Abu Simbel. Abu Simbel is a monument to Ramses II built of sandstone, and comprises two temples to gods of the Ancient Egyptian pantheon. Emergency archaeological digs and projects were conducted to retrieve as much as possible from these sites that have been so well preserved by the arid climate. Abu Simbel itself was cut into pieces and moved to a cliff face above the new water level of the Nile above the dam. It now stands 60 meters above where it originally stood, on a cliff overlooking Lake Nasser.Another well-known monument moved during the rescue mission was the temple complex at Philae, a Greco-Roman site that was originally a temple to the Ancient Egyptian goddess Isis, now located on the island of Agilkia. Some monuments were given to foreign museums for their aid in preserving sites flooded by Lake Nasser. Four such monuments were the Temple of Debod, now in the Parque del Oeste in Madrid, Spain, the Temple of Ellesyia which is now in Italy, the Temple of Taffeh now housed in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, the Netherlands, and the Temple of Dendur which is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. One of the largest environmental pressures on Abu Simbel is tourism and its associated issues. Landscaping conducted in order to make the site seem more presentable in its new clifftop home has damaged the delicate sandstone rock face. Landscapers brought in sand, which blew in the wind and almost eroded a face of Nefertari on the temple, one of the wives of Ramses II. In an attempt to solve this problem, grass was planted around the base of the temples. Watering the grass also damaged the site by raising the humidity levels in the sandstone. People are often careless at archaeological sites, brushing up against ancient wall paintings and climbing onto parts of monuments to capture photographs.Tourists have caused damage to other sites in Egypt, such as the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Much like the limestone monuments inside the city of Cairo proper, the limestone pyramids at Giza are susceptible to changes in humidity and salinity. The breath of tourists inside the chambers creates salt encrustations that crack the interior walls of the pyramids. The pyramids are constantly undergoing repairs to clean salt from the walls in an attempt to prevent further damage. Ventilation systems have been installed inside the Great Pyramid and in other structures on the Giza Plateau in order to lessen the impact of tourists' breath.Another problem that tourism brings is graffiti. Graffiti has been left in the chambers of the pyramids since they were being built over 4,000 years ago when workers building the pyramids left their mark on the walls. However, more recent graffiti at the Giza necropolis has damaged sites. Monuments often must be closed and renovated to remove marks made by modern visitors. In 2013, a Chinese tourist carved his name into a wall of the Luxor Temple, in the south of Egypt, causing widespread outrage and igniting an international discussion about tourists and graffiti in general. Development Tourism as well as urban sprawl have contributed to the degradation of sites, especially in the Greater Cairo area. The Ring Road, provided for in the Master Plan for Greater Cairo passed in 1984, has been the biggest developmental threat to the monuments on the Giza Plateau in the last quarter century. The road was intended to relieve traffic pressure on the city of Cairo. It was discovered to be cutting through several protected areas on the plateau, which is the site of the pyramids, the Sphinx, and other lesser-known monuments.In protest of the planned southern route of the Ring Road, which would encompass the necropolis, UNESCO removed the pyramids from the World Heritage list to pressure the Egyptian government into changing the plans for the road. The shame and loss of funding resulting from this sanction forced the government to rethink the route of the highway, and the pyramids have since regained their standing as a World Heritage Site.The city of Cairo has been encroaching on the Giza plateau for decades. The population has exploded so much that there are now apartments only a few hundred yards away from the pyramids. Suburban development, golf courses, and fast food chains now come much closer to the Sphinx and the pyramids than is legal according to UNESCO spokesman Said Zulficar. "You can't chop up this site just as if it's salami," said Said, "It will lose its uniqueness... It's in total violation of the world heritage convention [Egypt] signed, and it's in violation of Egyptian law." Urbanization Egypt is the most populated country in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) with over 104 million inhabitants. Since the majority of Egypt's geography consists of expansive desert, 43.1% of citizens live in urban areas along the Nile or Mediterranean Sea, such as Cairo, Alexandria, or Aswan. Cairo is not only the largest city in the Arab World, with a population 12.3 million, but is also one of the densest. The governate of Cairo was reported to have an urban population density of 45,000 per square kilometer (117,000 per sq mi) in 2012 (CAPMAS). This is 1.5 times the density of Manhattan. A report from United Arab Emirates University states, "This pattern of urban growth has two contradictory facets. On the one hand, mega-cities act as engines of economic and social growth, but on the other hand, most of this is also being accompanied by the urbanization of both poverty and environmental degradation." Much of government policy has focused on population density as the main contributor to a multitude of social, economic, and environmental challenges such as noise and air pollution, heavy traffic, limited housing capacity, and poor public health.Cairo's government officials have been making efforts to decentralize living and working arrangements since 1970 as a way to improve quality of life. Rather than focusing on improving infrastructure within the city, many of the proposed solutions involve moving residents into recently constructed metropolitan areas in the desert. This tactic has introduced many of its own issues such as interference with agricultural practices and increasingly limited water access. Former President Mubarak emphasized the necessity of desert expansion in a speech to parliament in 2006, stating, "Leaving the narrow (Nile) valley and fanning out, in a planned and organized manner, throughout the country, has become an unavoidable necessity. In view of these facts, the conquest of the desert is no longer a slogan or dream but a necessity dictated by the spiraling population growth. What is required is not a token exodus into the desert but a complete reconsideration of the distribution of population throughout the country."City planners have proposed the construction of megacities, built from the ground up, to diffuse populations out of Cairo. New Cairo and 6th of October City are brand new subdivisions built to hold millions by 2020 and hold major headquarters currently housed in Cairo. These planned cities are still under construction but are already home to large industrial areas and several universities. Most recently, the Egyptian government has proposed the construction of an entirely new capital city. However, reports show that these tactics have had limited success and a different approach is necessary in order to alleviate the impact of many urban problems. Traffic The greater metropolitan area of Cairo is notorious for its extreme levels of traffic congestion. The World Bank reports at least 1,000 deaths annually as a result of traffic related accidents, half of which are pedestrians. While an additional 4,000 Cairenes are injured from car accidents. Other urban areas, such as New York City, report less than 300 fatalities yearly from motor vehicle accidents. The traffic has grown to be damaging not only to public safety, but also economic growth. With an average traffic speed less than 10 kilometers per hour and an average commute time at 37 minutes, the congestion has grown to limit the city's productivity and efficiency. This has had significant economic effects, costing the country $8 billion annually, equivalent to almost 4% of Egypt's gross domestic product (GDP), resulting from lost work hours, wasted fuel, and the environmental impacts of those additional emissions.The high number of cars on the road is the result of many factors such as government subsidies on fuel, limited public transportation options, and enhanced credit opportunities from banks. In 2012, The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) reported 2.07 million licensed vehicles in Cairo. Attempts to reduce traffic congestion have increased in the last several years. Many government workers and urban planning experts believe in developing more efficient public transportation systems as a means to mitigate the effects of private cars. The Cairo Metro currently only runs three lines for the city's 7 million people. Christian Bauriedel, a professor at the American University in Cairo claims that the addition of 10 to 15 new metro lines and 200 new bus lanes has the potential to reduce traffic by 40%. A fourth line is scheduled to be built by 2019, however work has yet to begin. Another proposed solution has been the creation of pedestrian tunnels underneath the city to ensure citizen's safety while crossing roads. A New Capital City On March 13, 2015, Housing Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced Egypt's plans for a $45 billion project constructing a new capital city just east of Cairo. The new city, which is currently unnamed, is estimated to take only five to seven years to complete and house up to seven million people. Madbouly reported the goal of the project to be a major reduction in the congestion and population of Cairo, which is expected to double over the next 40 years. The city's brand new website describes the development as "a momentous endeavour to build national spirit, foster consensus, provide for long-term sustainable growth and address various issues faced by Egypt through a new city, which will create more places to live, work and visit".The plans have received skepticism for being fairly ambitious, boasting new administrative and government buildings, an international airport, a technology and innovation park, solar energy farms, eighteen hospitals, and thousands of schools and universities. The situation was complicated further when President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi cancelled the project a month after its unveiling due to a lack of government funds. However, Madbouly stated that the project will continue with funding from the private sector. Green Spaces As a Valentine's Day of Cairo's ever-growing urbanization, the components that enhance the city's livability have diminished. Incredible levels of traffic combined with severe air and sound pollution place a major hindrance on Cairenes' quality of living. The lack of urban green space is yet another one of these factors. Cairo currently only has about 1.65 square meters of green space per capita. This is low considering the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests a minimum of nine square meters per person, with the optimal amount being between ten and fifteen square meters. The presence of these spaces has been reported to reduce air pollution while incentivizing physical exercise, fresh food production and improved mental health.Cairo's minimal green space is surprising when considering the city's history of parks and landscaping. The capital was founded around a bustan, a modern-day park, and has since been filled with many different kinds of open spaces, such as basatin and mayadin. However, these open spaces with parks and gardens offered ideal locations for development and have since been considered attractive targets for profitable real estate.Today, Cairo's low quantity of parks has only been worsened by rapid increases in development and a lack of urban planning. Where green spaces do exist, they are poorly distributed and inadequately maintained. While some residents are hopeful that the establishment and development of satellite cities will improve conditions in Cairo, others are not as optimistic and foresee further neglect of green spaces in the future. Legislative power over land and water Egyptian Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs The Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency is the highest authority in Egypt for promoting and protecting the environment. It is also secondary to bigger ministries in Egypt like that of Petroleum, Industry or Finance. In 1997, Egypt's first full-time Minister of State for Environmental Affairs was assigned to deal with environmental policies for sustainable development. The Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs (MSEA) and its executive arm, the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) considers the management of natural resources to all of Egypt's national policies and projects. The main objective is to preserve natural resources, biological diversity and national heritage in relation to sustainable development. Environmental Protection Agency scientists signed an agreement with counterparts in Egypt to protect human consumption from microbiological contamination in drinking water.Rural inequality is an issue in Egypt's agricultural development. Central government policies and wealth have been a core political issue concerning the relationship between rural population and state. International development, similar to the Grand Renaissance dam, is debated over proper management of resources. Timothy Mitchell, a political scientist of the Arab world, suggests that a solution may be to "decentralize the state and allow for some of the powers in Egypt's market to be reconfigured". In this way, Egypt can counteract agricultural differences based on management of the Nile which is a shared agricultural source for most of the 9 countries dependent on its natural resources. The Grand Renaissance Dam issue Egyptian nationalists have denounced Ethiopia's new project, The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The Great Renaissance Dam will be Africa's largest hydroelectric facility. The construction of the dam will affect Sudan and Egypt's political relations with Ethiopia. In 1959 Egypt and Sudan made an agreement that allowed Egypt to have 70% of the Nile's water flow while Sudan had 30 percent. In 2013 protestors gathered in front of Ethiopian embassy in Cairo, as then Morsi administration allowed for the project to proceed. Egyptian administrations have attempted military solutions to halt the project, but the Egyptian government at the time did not pursue.The Italian Salini (Salini Impregilo) Company is building the Renaissance Dam after signing a contract with the Ethiopian government in December 2010 worth $4.65 billion to be completed in six years. Egypt's Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation visited Italy to explain the country's water security. Egypt is continuing international influence to protect their share of the Nile waters, as well as contacting international donors, the World Bank and the African Development Bank to not give technical support for the construction of the dam in order to halt any damage to Egypt. Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn declared that Ethiopia would not back down from building the Renaissance dam. There was no clear agreement made by water ministers of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. Egypt planned to send foreign experts to follow on how to implement experts' reports on behalf of building the dam first. Egypt's influence to propose a halt on the Dam is at difficult transition. On April 13, 2014, Ethiopia's National Panel of Experts faced controversy with the International Rivers Network. The IRN, an anti-dam organization founded in 1985, criticized the Renaissance Dam's construction. The U.S. based environmental organization was accused of "being paid by Egypt in order to lobby against the Renaissance Dam". The main issue results in the debate about whether Egypt will be harmed, in terms of its water resources and population and the IRN is seeking to prevent international aid to Ethiopia's project. The creation of Grand Renaissance Dam would not affect Egypt's share of Nile as it is not constructed for irrigation but rather hydroelectricity. Water may be lost from evaporation but Egypt and Sudan will benefit from the dam due to the trapped sediments that would otherwise flow downstream prolonging lives of major reservoirs in both countries. Egypt has attempted to gain support in order to halt construction of the dam. As of April 25, 2014 Ethiopia has completed 32% of the Grand Renaissance Dam. Overview of Sudan and Egypt water relations The 1929 Agreement between Egypt and Sudan allowed Egypt to have more control over the entire flow of the river. However, when Sudan gained independence in 1956 there was demand for revision of the treatment. An agreement in 1959 allowed for 55.5 billion cubic meters of water to go to Egypt and 18.5 billion cubic meets to Sudan. Sudan has fertile land where expanded irrigation could be profitable. Sudan had tried to increase water supplies by draining the Sudd wetlands of the south. Sudan had faced a failed project, Jonglei Canal in 1984. Tension with Saudi Arabia Egypt has sought Saudi aid on halting the construction of the Renaissance Dam. Currently, Saudi Arabia invests in economic development projects based in Ethiopia. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have offered financial aid packages, approximately $10.7 billion, to the Egyptian government after the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood. The significance of Egypt and Saudi Arabi's relationship could either be beneficial for Egypt's goals in stopping the construction of the dam or prove otherwise. Egypt's hydropolitics Egypt is part of the Nile Basin alongside Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The allocation of power over the use of the Nile has been a source of conflict for years. The Nile is a symbol of Egypt's nationalism which has led to strong opposition from neighboring countries. The Nile River provides irrigation, hydroelectricity and industrialization for Egypt. Egypt claims to support and stress the importance of water and agricultural projects in order to preserve its environment and allow for the Nile to develop an abundance of resources. Egypt has once threatened to go to war over water conflict against Ethiopia and Tanzania in the past.Regarding Egypt's current water conflicts, one current and controversial water issue is Egypt's current stance against the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The Dam proposed by Ethiopia is an engineered gravity dam on the Blue Nile that will be one of the biggest water projects near the region. The issue then for Egypt, among other countries in the Nile Basin, is whether this project will decrease water flow in the Nile. The Nile Basin Initiative, Egypt's civil society, and foreign relations are a few of the main contributors to the historical and social framework Egypt's hydro-politics and environmental concerns. Egypt's hydro political framework Nile Basin Initiative An initiative that mediates the Nile Basin for all countries that share the river in order to share socioeconomic benefits of the Nile and the promotion of regional peace and security. Environment's Civil Society Egyptians are active on land rights and land reforms. The 1997 repeal of Nasser-era land reforms policies and the Land Center for Human Rights were some of the changes of Egypt's environmental political activism. In Sinai, Egypt the lack of land reforms to stabilize the security crisis in Sinai by Mohamed Morsi, Hosni Mubarak and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Environmental foreign relations in Egypt Egypt has had a significant role to play in mediating conflicts of Arab States and East African states. Egypt was a mediator in resolving disputes between Arab states. Sudan and Egypt relations are weak; presently is a territorial dispute with Sudan over the Halaib Triangle. However, both countries are in agreement with the issue of water access and water rights on behalf of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Egypt's water resource projects in the Upper Nile When looking at Egypt's participation in water projects that promote economic and agricultural growth in the region and beyond, it is necessary to see the impact that Egypt has had in its own country and its participation with foreign relations. These are some projects in which Egypt has tried to utilize the Nile and nearby rivers. The Charter of Integration between Egypt and Sudan: The Jonglei Canal project in Bahr al-Jabal and Bahr az-Zaraf Area was constructed to prevent waste of water, approximately 15 billion cubic meters, due to evaporation in swamp areas. The Mashar Swamps project was created to collect lost water from Mashar swamps and Sobat River. The Northern Bahr al-Ghazal project was constructed to combat the loss of intensive evaporation. The project was constructed by digging a canal in order to collect and channel water from the northern part of Bahr al-Ghazal with the White Nile. The Southern Bahr al-Ghazal project was constructed so that the river waters from Bahr al-Ghazal would flow east towards Bahr al-Jabal. Additional Egyptian projects Along with the projects made between Sudan and Egypt; Egypt has considered storage projects in equatorial lakes: Lake Victoria, Lake Kyoga, Lake Albert. Egypt is in participation with Ethiopia and Uganda in some projects and establishing power generation stations. Egypt financed several contributions made to water conservation: the assessment of available water resources, climate change, drought, Basin's water quality, and water planning. Egypt has constructed over the course of its history several other projects, namely: Mahmoudiyah canal, Suez Canal, Aswan Dam, Toshka (otherwise known as the New Valley Project). The Aswan Dam was constructed as Egypt's main source of yielding electric power.The New Valley Project was designed as a second Nile Valley located in the south of Egypt's Western Desert. The East Owainat Project is another development project in the southern valley of Egypt which is irrigated by a nearby groundwater reservoir. The purpose of the East Owainat Project is to export organic crops for the trade of which these are: medicinal herbs, fruits, and various grains. The As-Salam Canal project is another development project that has a great impact on surrounding cultivated area with that of the Nile water and agricultural drainage water. The project Al-Ein Es-Sokhna New Port is located near the Suez Gulf and is a 4 km canal that connects the passage route of the Suez Canal to the Al-Ein Es-Sokhna New Port that has 4 basins that accommodate ships. These projects have contributed to water engineering, conservation, and distribution in Egypt and surrounding areas. See also Animal welfare in Egypt Climate change in the Middle East and North Africa Economy of Egypt and the environment Hydrogen economy Leapfrogging from natural gas to hydrogen Methane pyrolysis Waste Management in Egypt References External links [1] Pollution Egypt Water Pollution in Egypt Reached Complex Stage. Egypt News. [2] Living with Pollution in Egypt A document about pollution in Egypt published in the American University in Cairo by Nicholas S. Hopkins and Sohair R. Mehanna. On SpringerLink The Nile Basin Initiative Egyptian Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs Salini Impregilo International River Foundation On Toshka New Valley's mega-failure

agricultural diversification

In the agricultural context, diversification can be regarded as the re-allocation of some of a farm's productive resources, such as land, capital, farm equipment and labour to other products and, particularly in richer countries, to non-farming activities such as restaurants and shops. Factors leading to decisions to diversify are many, but include: reducing risk, responding to changing consumer demands or changing government policy, responding to external shocks and, more recently, as a consequence of climate change. Definitions of diversification Agricultural diversification can involve movement of resources from low-value commodities to high-value ones. It focuses mainly on horticultural, dairy, poultry and fisheries sectors. While most definitions of diversification in developing countries do work on the assumption that diversification primarily involves a substitution of one crop or other agricultural product for another, or an increase in the number of enterprises, or activities, carried out by a particular farm, the definition used in developed countries sometimes relates more to the development of activities on the farm that do not involve agricultural production. For example, one section of the British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) defines diversification as “the entrepreneurial use of farm resources for a non-agricultural purpose for commercial gain”. Using this definition DEFRA found that 56% of UK farms had diversified in 2003. The great majority of diversification activities simply involved the renting out of farm buildings for non-farming use, but 9% of farms had become involved with processing or retailing, 3% with provision of tourist accommodation or catering, and 7% with sport or recreational activities. Others adopt a broader definition, which may include development of new marketing opportunities.In developing countries such as India, which has been one of the leaders in promoting diversification, the concept is applied both to individual farmers and to different regions, with government programmes being aimed at promoting widespread diversification. The concept in India is seen as referring to the “shift from the regional dominance of one crop to regional production of a number of crops ...... (which takes into account)..... the economic returns from different value-added crops... with complementary marketing opportunities”. Drivers of diversification Diversification can be a response to both opportunities and threats. Opportunities Changing consumer demand. As consumers in developing countries have become richer, food consumption patterns have changed noticeably. People have moved away from a diet based on staples to one with a greater content of animal products (meat, eggs, and dairy) and fruits and vegetables. In turn, more dynamic farmers are able to diversify to meet these needs. There is a possibility that this trend will be reversed in future given increasing consumer concern about the environmental impact of meat production. Changing demographics. Rapid urbanization in developing countries affects consumption patterns. Moreover, a smaller number of farmers, in percentage terms at least, has to supply a larger number of consumers. While this may not imply diversification it does require adaptation to new farming techniques to meet higher demand. Export potential. Developing country farmers have had considerable success by diversifying into crops that can meet export market demand. While concern about food miles, as well as the cost of complying with supermarket certification requirements such as for GlobalGAP may jeopardize this success in the long run, there remains much potential to diversify to meet export markets. Adding value. The pattern witnessed in the West, and now becoming widespread in developing countries, is for consumers to devote less and less time to food preparation. They increasingly require ready-prepared meals and labour-saving packaging, such as pre-cut salads. This provides the opportunity for farmers to diversify into value addition, particularly in countries where supermarkets play a major role in retailing. Changing marketing opportunities. The changing of government policies that control the way in which farmers can link to markets can open up new diversification possibilities. For example, in India, policy changes to remove the monopoly of state “regulated markets” to handle all transactions made it possible for farmers to establish direct contracts with buyers for new products. Improving nutrition. Diversifying from the monoculture of traditional staples can have important nutritional benefits for farmers in developing countries. Threats Urbanization. This is both an opportunity and a threat, in that the expansion of cities places pressure on land resources and puts up the value of the land. If farmers are to remain on the land they need to generate greater income from that land than they could by growing basic staples. This fact, and the proximity of markets, explains why farmers close to urban areas tend to diversify into high-value crops. Risk. Farmers face risk from bad weather and from fluctuating prices. Diversification is a logical response to both. For example, some crops are more drought-resistant than others, but may offer poorer economic returns. A diversified portfolio of products should ensure that farmers do not suffer complete ruin when the weather is bad. Similarly, diversification can manage price risk, on the assumption that not all products will suffer low prices at the same time. In fact, farmers often do the opposite of diversification by planting products that have a high price in one year, only to see the price collapse in the next, as explained by the cobweb theory. External threats. Farmers who are dependent on exports run the risk that conditions will change in their markets, not because of a change in consumer demand but because of policy changes. A classic example is the Caribbean banana industry, which collapsed as a result of the removal of quota protection on EU markets, necessitating diversification by the region's farmers. Domestic policy threats. Agricultural production is sometimes undertaken as a consequence of government subsidies, rather than because it is inherently profitable. The reduction or removal of those subsidies, whether direct or indirect, can have a major effect on farmers and provide a significant incentive for diversification or, in some cases, for returning to production of crops grown prior to the introduction of subsidies. Climate change. The type of crop that can be grown is affected by changes in temperatures and the length of the growing season. Climate change could also modify the availability of water for production. Farmers in several countries, including Canada, India, Kenya, Mozambique, and Sri Lanka have already initiated diversification as a response to climate change. Government policy in Kenya to promote crop diversification has included the removal of subsidies for some crops, encouraging land-use zoning and introducing differential land tax systems. Opportunities for diversification In making decisions about diversification farmers need to consider whether income generated by new farm enterprises will be greater than the existing activities, with similar or less risk. While growing new crops or raising animals may be technically possible, these may not be suitable for many farmers in terms of their land, labour and capital resources. Moreover, markets for the products may be lacking. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been one of the development organizations promoting diversification by small farmers and has produced booklets identifying beekeeping, mushroom farming, milk production, fish ponds and sheep and goats, among others, as diversification possibilities. Measures of diversification Agricultural diversification is measured in a number of ways throughout the world. For example, one such measure is the index of maximum proportion, which is "defined as the ratio (proportion) of the farm's primary activity to its total activities". See also Agricultural value chain References External links Agricultural Research Service - contributes to maintaining agricultural diversity through research FAO Diversification Booklets

frontiers in ecology and the environment

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment is a peer-reviewed scientific journal issued ten times per year, and consists of peer-reviewed, synthetic review articles on all aspects of ecology, the environment, and related disciplines, as well as short, high-impact research communications of broad interdisciplinary appeal. Additional features include editorials, commentaries, a letters section, Life Lines, job ads, and special columns. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Ecological Society of America (ESA). According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2021 impact factor of 13.780, ranking it eleventh out of 279 journals in the category "Environmental Sciences" and fourth out of 174 journals in the category "Ecology". Aims and scope Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment is a benefit of membership of the ESA. International in scope and interdisciplinary in approach, Frontiers focuses on current ecological issues and environmental challenges. Frontiers is aimed at professional ecologists and scientists working in related disciplines. With content that is timely, interesting, and accessible, even to those reading outside their own area of expertise, it has a broad, interdisciplinary appeal and is relevant to all users of ecological science, including policy makers, resource managers, and educators. Frontiers covers all aspects of ecology, the environment, and related subjects, focusing on global issues, broadly impacting research, cross-disciplinary or multi-country endeavors, new techniques and technologies, new approaches to old problems, and practical applications of ecological science. The journal is sent to all ESA members as part of their membership, and is also available by subscription to institutional libraries. Abstracting and indexing Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment is covered by Current Contents Agriculture, Biology, and Environmental Sciences, Science Citation Index, ISI Alerting Services, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, Biobase, Geobase, Scopus, CAB Abstracts, and EBSCO Environmental Issues and Policy Index. References External links Official website

vertical farming

Vertical farming is the practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers. It often incorporates controlled-environment agriculture, which aims to optimize plant growth, and soilless farming techniques such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics. Some common choices of structures to house vertical farming systems include buildings, shipping containers, tunnels, and abandoned mine shafts. As of 2020, there is the equivalent of about 30 ha (74 acres) of operational vertical farmland in the world.The modern concept of vertical farming was proposed in 1999 by Dickson Despommier, professor of Public and Environmental Health at Columbia University. Despommier and his students came up with a design of a skyscraper farm that could feed 50,000 people. Although the design has not yet been built, it successfully popularized the idea of vertical farming.The main advantage of utilizing vertical farming technologies is the increased crop yield that comes with a smaller unit area of land requirement. Another sought-after advantage is the increased ability to cultivate a larger variety of crops at once because crops do not share the same plots of land while growing. Additionally, crops are resistant to weather disruptions because of their placement indoors, meaning fewer crops are lost to extreme or unexpected weather occurrences. Because of its limited land usage, vertical farming is less disruptive to the native plants and animals, leading to further conservation of the local flora and fauna.These advances have led vertical farming companies to raise unprecedented amounts of funding in North America as well as in other parts of the world such as the Middle East. Today, venture capitalists, governments, financial institutions, and private investors are among the principal investors in the sector. Additionally, vertical farming research in academic institutions faces limited funding opportunities. Vertical farming technologies face economic challenges with large start-up costs compared to traditional farms. In Victoria, Australia, a "hypothetical 10 level vertical farm" would cost over 850 times more per square meter of arable land than a traditional farm in rural Victoria. Vertical farms also face large energy demands due to the use of supplementary light like LEDs. Moreover, if non-renewable energy is used to meet these energy demands, vertical farms could produce more pollution than traditional farms or greenhouses. Techniques Hydroponics Hydroponics refers to the technique of growing plants without soil. In hydroponic systems, the roots of plants are submerged in liquid solutions containing macronutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, calcium, and magnesium, as well as trace elements, including iron, chlorine, manganese, boron, zinc, copper, and molybdenum. Additionally, inert (chemically inactive) mediums such as gravel, sand, or expanded clay aggregate are used as soil substitutes to provide support for the roots.The advantages of hydroponics include the ability to increase yield per area and reduce water usage. A study has shown that, compared to conventional farming, hydroponic farming could increase the yield per area of lettuce by around 11 times while requiring 13 times less water. Due to these advantages, hydroponics is the predominant growing system used in vertical farming. Aquaponics The term aquaponics is coined by combining two words: aquaculture, which refers to fish farming, and hydroponics—the technique of growing plants without soil. Aquaponics takes hydroponics one step further by integrating the production of terrestrial plants with the production of aquatic organisms in a closed-loop system that mimics nature itself. Nutrient-rich wastewater from the fish tanks is filtered by a solid removal unit and then led to a bio-filter, where toxic ammonia is converted to nutritious nitrate. While absorbing nutrients, the plants then purify the wastewater, which is recycled back to the fish tanks. Moreover, the plants consume carbon dioxide produced by the fish, and water in the fish tanks obtains heat and helps the greenhouse maintain temperature at night to save energy. As most commercial vertical farming systems focus on producing a few fast-growing vegetable crops, aquaponics, which also includes an aquacultural component, is currently not as widely used as conventional hydroponics. Aeroponics The invention of aeroponics was motivated by the initiative of NASA (the National Aeronautical and Space Administration) to find an efficient way to grow plants in space in the 1990s. Unlike conventional hydroponics and aquaponics, aeroponics does not require any liquid or solid medium to grow plants. Instead, a liquid solution with nutrients is misted in air chambers where the plants are suspended. By far, aeroponics is the most sustainable soil-less growing technique, as it uses up to 90% less water than the most efficient conventional hydroponic systems and requires no replacement of growing medium. Moreover, the absence of growing medium allows aeroponic systems to adopt a vertical design, which further saves energy as gravity automatically drains away excess liquid, whereas conventional horizontal hydroponic systems often require water pumps for controlling excess solution. Currently, aeroponic systems have not been widely applied to vertical farming, but are starting to attract significant attention. Controlled-environment agriculture Controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) is the modification of the natural environment to increase crop yield or extend the growing season. CEA systems are typically hosted in enclosed structures such as greenhouses or buildings, where control can be imposed on environmental factors including air, temperature, light, water, humidity, carbon dioxide, and plant nutrition. In vertical farming systems, CEA is often used in conjunction with soilless farming techniques such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics. Types Building-based farms Abandoned buildings are often reused for vertical farming, such as a farm at Chicago called "The Plant", which was transformed from an old meatpacking plant. However, new builds are sometimes also constructed to house vertical farming systems. Shipping-container vertical farms Recycled shipping containers are an increasingly popular option for housing vertical farming systems. The shipping containers serve as standardized, modular chambers for growing a variety of plants, and are often equipped with LED lighting, vertically stacked hydroponics, smart climate controls, and monitoring sensors. Moreover, by stacking the shipping containers, farms can save space even further and achieve higher yield per unit area. Deep farms A "deep farm" is a vertical farm built from refurbished underground tunnels or abandoned mine shafts. As temperature and humidity underground are generally temperate and constant, deep farms require less energy for heating. Deep farms can also use nearby groundwater to reduce the cost of water supply. Despite low costs, a deep farm can produce seven to nine times more food than a conventional farm above ground on the same area of land, according to Saffa Riffat, chair in Sustainable Energy at the University of Nottingham. Coupled with automated harvesting systems, these underground farms can be fully self-sufficient. Floating farms Floating platforms and barges have been proposed as sites for vertical farming in urban areas where land is scarce. The ongoing Science Barge project first demonstrated urban hydroponic agriculture in New York City in 2007, including several vertical farming systems. A much larger vision of sloped, floating skyscrapers has been proposed for Singapore. In this case, the unusual, angular design is intended to exploit the open space over the water to capture more sunlight. History Initial propositions Dickson Despommier, professor of Public and Environmental Health at Columbia University, founded the root of the concept of vertical farming. In 1999, he challenged his class of graduate students to calculate how much food they could grow on the rooftops of New York. The students concluded that they could only feed about 1000 people. Unsatisfied with the results, Despommier suggested growing plants indoors instead, on multiple layers vertically. Despommier and his students then proposed a design of a 30-story vertical farm equipped with artificial lighting, advanced hydroponics, and aeroponics that could produce enough food for 50,000 people. They further outlined that approximately 100 kinds of fruits and vegetables would grow on the upper floors while lower floors would house chickens and fish subsisting on the plant waste. Although Despommier's skyscraper farm has not yet been built, it popularized the idea of vertical farming and inspired many later designs. 2017 the design magazine eVolo awarded a farm/school tower design. Implementations Developers and local governments in multiple cities have expressed interest in establishing a vertical farm: Incheon (South Korea), Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), Dongtan (China), New York City, Portland, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Surrey, Toronto, Paris, Bangalore (India), Dubai, Shanghai, and Beijing. Around US$1.8 billion were invested into startups operating in the sector between 2014 and November 2020.In 2009, the world's first pilot production system was installed at Paignton Zoo Environmental Park in the United Kingdom. The project showcased vertical farming and provided a solid base to research sustainable urban food production. The produce is used to feed the zoo's animals while the project enables evaluation of the systems and provides an educational resource to advocate for change in unsustainable land-use practices that impact upon global biodiversity and ecosystem services.In 2010 the Green Zionist Alliance proposed a resolution at the 36th World Zionist Congress calling on Keren Kayemet L'Yisrael (Jewish National Fund in Israel) to develop vertical farms in Israel. Moreover, a company named "Podponics" built a vertical farm in Atlanta consisting of over 100 stacked "growpods" in 2010 but reportedly went bankrupt in May 2016.In 2012 the world's first commercial vertical farm was opened in Singapore, developed by Sky Greens Farms, and is three stories high. They currently have over 100 nine-meter-tall towers.In 2012, a company named The Plant debuted its newly developed vertical farming system housed in an abandoned meatpacking building in Chicago, Illinois. The utilization of abandoned buildings to house vertical farms and other sustainable farming methods are a fact of the rapid urbanization of modern communities.In 2013 the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) was founded in Munich (Germany). By May 2015, the AVF had expanded with regional chapters all over Europe, Asia, US, Canada, and the United Kingdom. This organization unites growers and inventors to improve food security and sustainable development. The AVF focuses on advancing vertical farming technologies, designs, and businesses by hosting international info-days, workshops, and summits.In 2015 the London company, Growing Underground, began the production of leafy green produce underground in abandoned underground World War II tunnels.In 2016, a startup called Local Roots launched the "TerraFarm", a vertical farming systems hosted in a 40-foot shipping container, which includes computer vision integrated with an artificial neural network to monitor the plants; and is remotely monitored from California. It is claimed that the TerraFarm system "has achieved cost parity with traditional, outdoor farming" with each unit producing the equivalent of "three to five acres of farmland", using 97% less water through water recapture and harvesting the evaporated water through the air conditioning. The first vertical farm in a US grocery store opened in Dallas, Texas in 2016, now closed.In 2017, a Japanese company, Mirai, began marketing its multi-level vertical farming system. The company states that it can produce 10,000 heads of lettuce a day—100 times the amount that could be produced with traditional agricultural methods because their special purpose LED lights can decrease growing times by a factor of 2.5. Additionally, this can all be achieved with 40% less energy usage, 80% less food waste, and 99% less water usage than in traditional farming methods. Further requests have been made to implement this technology in several other Asian countries. As of 2021, Bowery Farming is the largest indoor vertical farming company in the United States. Energy costs In 2022, multiple firms reduced their operations (Appharvest, Infarm), or exited the market (Glowfarms), due to rapid increases in energy prices. Firms shifted their focus to regions with severe water constraints and/or lower energy costs. Florida-based Kalera received a delisting notice from NASDAQ. IronOX laid off staff and Fifth Season exited the market. Increased energy costs were frequently cited as a source of problems. Advantages Efficiency Traditional farming's arable land requirements are too large and invasive to remain sustainable for future generations. With the rapid population growth rates, it is expected that arable land per person will drop about 66% in 2050 in comparison to 1970. Vertical farming allows for, in some cases, over ten times the crop yield per acre than traditional methods. Unlike traditional farming in non-tropical areas, indoor farming can produce crops year-round. All-season farming multiplies the productivity of the farmed surface by a factor of four to six, depending on the crop. With crops such as strawberries, the factor may be as high as 30.Vertical farming also allows for the production of a larger variety of harvestable crops because of its usage of isolated crop sectors. As opposed to a traditional farm where one type of crop is harvested per season, vertical farms allow for a multitude of different crops to be grown and harvested at once due to their individual land plots.According to the USDA, vertical farm produce only travels a short distance to reach stores compared to traditional farming method produce. The United States Department of Agriculture predicts the worldwide population to exceed 9 billion by 2050, most of which will be living in urban or city areas. Vertical farming is the USDA's predicted answer to the potential food shortage as the population increases. This method of farming mitigates climate change by lowering emissions and reducing needed water. This type of urban farming that would allow for nearly immediate farm-to-store transport would reduce distribution costs and shorten produce travel time. In a workshop on vertical farming put on by the USDA and the Department of Energy experts in vertical farming discussed plant breeding, pest management, and engineering. Control of pests (like insects, birds, and rodents) is easily managed in vertical farms because the area is so well-controlled. Without the need for chemical pesticides the ability to grow organic crops is easier than in traditional farming. Resistance to weather Crops grown in traditional outdoor farming depend on supportive weather and suffer from undesirable temperatures, rain, monsoon, hailstorm, tornado, flooding, wildfires, and drought. "Three recent floods (in 1993, 2007 and 2008) cost the United States billions of dollars in lost crops, with even more devastating losses in topsoil. Changes in rain patterns and temperature could diminish India's agricultural output by 30 percent by the end of the century."The issue of adverse weather conditions is especially relevant for arctic and sub-arctic areas like Alaska and northern Canada where traditional farming is largely impossible. Food insecurity has been a long-standing problem in remote northern communities where fresh produce has to be shipped large distances resulting in high costs and poor nutrition. Container-based farms can provide fresh produce year-round at a lower cost than shipping in supplies from more southerly locations with a number of farms operating in locations such as Churchill, Manitoba, and Unalaska, Alaska. As with disruption to crop growing, local container-based farms are also less susceptible to disruption than the long supply chains necessary to deliver traditionally grown produce to remote communities. Food prices in Churchill spiked substantially after floods in May and June 2017 forced the closure of the rail line that forms the only permanent overland connection between Churchill and the rest of Canada. Environmental conservation Up to 20 units of outdoor farmland per unit of vertical farming could return to its natural state, due to vertical farming's increased productivity. Vertical farming would reduce the amount of farmland, thus saving many natural resources.Deforestation and desertification caused by agricultural encroachment on natural biomes could be avoided. Producing food indoors reduces or eliminates conventional plowing, planting, and harvesting by farm machinery, protecting soil, and reducing emissions.Traditional farming is often invasive to the native flora and fauna because it requires such a large area of arable land. One study showed that wood mouse populations dropped from 25 per hectare to 5 per hectare after harvest, estimating 10 animals killed per hectare each year with conventional farming. In comparison, vertical farming would cause nominal harm to wildlife because of its limited space usage. Problems Economics Vertical farms must overcome the financial challenge of large startup costs. The initial building costs could exceed $100 million for a 60 hectare vertical farm. Urban occupancy costs can be high, resulting in much higher startup costs – and a longer break even time – than for a traditional farm in rural areas. Opponents question the potential profitability of vertical farming. In order for vertical farms to be successful financially, high-value crops must be grown since traditional farms provide low-value crops like wheat at cheaper costs than vertical farms. Louis Albright, a professor in biological and environmental engineering at Cornell stated that a loaf of bread that was made from wheat grown in a vertical farm would cost US$27. However, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average loaf of bread cost US$1.296 in September 2019, clearly showing how crops grown in vertical farms will be noncompetitive compared to crops grown in traditional outdoor farms. In order for vertical farms to be profitable, the costs of operating these farms must decrease or the price of traditional farming must increase. The developers of the TerraFarm system produced from second-hand, 40-foot shipping containers claimed that their system "has achieved cost parity with traditional, outdoor farming". A theoretical 10-story vertical wheat farm could produce up to 1,940 tons of wheat per hectare compared to a global average of 3.2 tons of wheat per hectare (600 times yield). Current methods require enormous energy consumption for lighting, temperature, humidity control, carbon dioxide input and fertilizer and consequently the authors concluded it was "unlikely to be economically competitive with current market prices".According to a report in The Financial Times as of 2020, most vertical farming companies have been unprofitable, except for a number of Japanese companies. Energy use During the growing season, the sun shines on a vertical surface at an extreme angle such that much less light is available to crops than when they are planted on flat land. Therefore, supplemental light would be required. Bruce Bugbee claimed that the power demands of vertical farming would be uncompetitive with traditional farms using only natural light. Environmental writer George Monbiot calculated that the cost of providing enough supplementary light to grow the grain for a single loaf would be about $15. An article in the Economist argued that "even though crops growing in a glass skyscraper will get some natural sunlight during the day, it won't be enough" and "the cost of powering artificial lights will make indoor farming prohibitively expensive". Moreover, research in 2007 on the Science Barge urban farming project led Ted Caplow to conclude that "generating enough electricity using solar panels requires an area about 20 times larger than the area being illuminated", which will be hard to accomplish with larger vertical farms. A hydroponic farm growing lettuce in Arizona would require 15,000 kilojoules (4.2 kWh) of energy per kilogram of lettuce produced. To put this amount of energy into perspective, a traditional outdoor lettuce farm in Arizona only requires 1100 kJ of energy per kilogram of lettuce grown.As the book by Dr. Dickson Despommier The Vertical Farm proposes a controlled environment, heating, and cooling costs will resemble those of any other multiple story building. Plumbing and elevator systems are necessary to distribute nutrients and water. In the northern continental United States, fossil fuel heating costs can be over $200,000 per hectare. Research conducted in 2015 compared the growth of lettuce in Arizona using conventional agricultural methods and a hydroponic farm. They determined that heating and cooling made up more than 80% of the energy consumption in the hydroponic farm, with the heating and cooling needing 7400 kJ per kilogram of lettuce produced. According to the same study, the total energy consumption of the hydroponic farm is 90,000 kJ per kilogram of lettuce. If the energy consumption is not addressed, vertical farms may be an unsustainable alternative to traditional agriculture.The energy requirements of vertical farming lead to significant land use to provide the energy. For every acre of crops grown via vertical farming, 5.4 acres of solar panels would be required to supply the energy via solar power. Thus in practice, vertical farming may require more land than traditional farming, not less. Solutions There are a number of interrelated challenges with some potential solutions: Carbon emission: A vertical farm requires a CO2 source, most likely from combustion if colocated with electric utility plants; absorbing CO2 that would otherwise be jettisoned is possible. Greenhouses commonly supplement carbon dioxide levels to 3–4 times the atmospheric rate. This increase in CO2 increases photosynthesis at varying rates, averaging 50%, contributing not only to higher yields but also to faster plant maturation, shrinking of pores, and greater resilience to water stress (both too much and little). Vertical farms need not exist in isolation, hardier mature plants could be transferred to traditional greenhouses, freeing up space and increasing cost flexibility. Crop damage: Some greenhouses burn fossil fuels purely to produce CO2, such as from furnaces, which contain pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and ethylene. These pollutants can significantly damage plants, so gas filtration is a component of high production systems. Light pollution: Greenhouse growers commonly exploit photoperiodism in plants to control whether the plants are in a vegetative or reproductive stage. As part of this control, the lights stay on past sunset and before sunrise or periodically throughout the night. Single story greenhouses have attracted criticism over light pollution, though a typical urban vertical farm may also produce light pollution. Power needs: If power needs are met by fossil fuels, the environmental effect may be a net loss; even building low-carbon capacity to power the farms may not make as much sense as simply leaving traditional farms in place while burning less coal. Louis Albright argued that in a "closed-system urban farming based on electrically generated photosynthetic light", a pound of lettuce would result in 8 pounds of carbon dioxide being produced at a power plant, and 4,000 pounds of lettuce produced would be equivalent to the annual emissions of a family car. He also argues that the carbon footprint of tomatoes grown in a similar system would be twice as big as the carbon footprint of lettuce. However, lettuce produced in a greenhouse that allows for sunlight to reach the crops saw a 300 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions per head of lettuce. As vertical farm systems become more efficient in harnessing sunlight, they will produce less pollution. Ventilation: "Necessary" ventilation may allow CO2 to leak into the atmosphere, though recycling systems could be devised. This is not limited to humidity tolerant and humidity intolerant crop polyculture cycling (as opposed to monoculture). Water pollution: Hydroponic greenhouses regularly change the water, producing water containing fertilizers and pesticides that must be disposed of. Spreading the effluent over neighboring farmland or wetlands would be difficult for an urban vertical farm, while water treatment remedies (natural or otherwise) could be part of a solution. See also Arcology – Type of design principles for human habitats Development-supported agriculture Folkewall Foodscaping – Ornamental landscaping with edible plants Green wall – Wall or vertical structure covered by living vegetation and growth substrate Pot farming Terrace (agriculture), Terrace (gardening), and Terrace (building) Urban agriculture Urban horticulture References Web Resouces Talking to...Dickson Despommier – Ex nihilo interview with Dr. Dickson Despommier on Vertical Farming.

united nations environment programme

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is responsible for coordinating responses to environmental issues within the United Nations system. It was established by Maurice Strong, its first director, after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in June 1972. Its mandate is to provide leadership, deliver science and develop solutions on a wide range of issues, including climate change, the management of marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and green economic development. The organization also develops international environmental agreements; publishes and promotes environmental science and helps national governments achieve environmental targets. As a member of the United Nations Development Group, UNEP aims to help the world meet the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. UNEP hosts the secretariats of several multilateral environmental agreements and research bodies, including The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), The Minamata Convention on Mercury, The Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, The Convention on Migratory Species and The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), among others.In 1988, the World Meteorological Organization and UNEP established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). UNEP is also one of several Implementing Agencies for the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol. UNEP sometimes uses the alternative name UN Environment. The headquarters of the agency is in Nairobi, Kenya. History In the 1970s, the need for environmental governance at a global level was not universally accepted, particularly by developing nations. Some argued that environmental concerns were not a priority for nations in poverty. The leadership of Canadian diplomat Maurice Strong convinced many of the developing nations' governments that they needed to prioritize this issue. In the words of Nigerian professor Adebayo Adedeji: "Mr. Strong, through the sincerity of his advocacy, soon made it clear that all of us, irrespective of the stage of our development, have a large stake in the matter."After developing organisations such as the International Labour Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization, the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (the Stockholm Conference) was convened. In this conference various topics were discussed such as pollution, marine life, protection of resources, environmental change, and disasters relating to natural and biological change. This conference resulted in a Declaration on the Human Environment (Stockholm Declaration) and the establishment of an environmental management body, which was later named the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). UNEP was established by General Assembly Resolution 2997. Headquarters were established in Nairobi, Kenya, with a staff of 300, including 100 professionals in a variety of fields, and with a five-year fund of more than US$100 million. At the time, US$40 million were pledged by the United States and the remainder by 50 other nations. The 'Voluntary Indicative Scale of Contribution' established in 2002 has the role to increase the supporters of the UNEP. The finances related to all programs of UNEP is voluntarily contributed by Member states of the United Nations. The Environmental Fund, which all nations of UNEP invest in, is the core source of UNEP's programs. Between 1974 and 1986 UNEP produced more than 200 technical guidelines or manuals on environment including forest and water management, pest control, pollution monitoring, the relationship between chemical use and health, and management of industry.The location of the headquarters proved to be a major controversy, with developed countries preferring Geneva, where several other UN offices are based, while developing countries preferred Nairobi, as that would be the first international organization headquartered in the Global South. At first, Mexico City, New Delhi, and Cairo were also competing to be the headquarters, but they pulled out to support Nairobi. Many of the developing countries were "not particularly supportive of creating a new formal institution for environmental governance", but supported its creation as an act of "Southern solidarity".In 2000, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, based in Cambridge and sponsored by IUCN, became part of UNEP. Governance Executive director In December 1972, the UN General Assembly unanimously elected Maurice Strong to be the first head of UN Environment. He was also secretary-general of both the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment and the Earth Summit (1992). The position was then held for 17 years (1975–1992) by Mostafa Kamal Tolba, who was instrumental in bringing environmental considerations to the forefront of global thinking and action. Under his leadership, UN Environment's most widely acclaimed success—the historic 1987 agreement to protect the ozone layer—the Montreal Protocol was negotiated. He was succeeded by Elizabeth Dowdeswell (1992–1998), Klaus Töpfer (1998–2006), Achim Steiner (2006–2016), and Erik Solheim (2016–2018). UNEP's acting executive director, Joyce Msuya, took office in November 2018 following the resignation of Erik Solheim. Prior to that appointment, she was UNEP's deputy executive director. Inger Andersen was appointed executive director of UNEP by UN secretary-general António Guterres in February 2019. List of executive directors Environment Assembly The United Nations Environment Assembly is UNEP's governing body. Created in 2012 to replace the Governing Council, it currently has 193 members and meets every two years. Structure UNEP's structure includes eight divisions: Science Division: aims to provide scientifically credible environmental assessments and information for sustainable development. It reports on the state of the global environment, assesses policies, and aims to provide an early warning of emerging environmental threats. It is responsible for the monitoring and reporting of the environment regarding the 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals. Policy and Programme Division: makes the policy and programme of the UNEP. This division ensures other divisions are coordinated. Ecosystems Division: supports countries in conserving, restoring and managing their ecosystems. It addresses the environmental causes and consequences of disasters and conflicts. It helps countries reduce pollution from land-based activities, increase resilience to climate change, and think about the environment in their development planning. Economy Division: assists large businesses in their efforts to be more environmentally conscious. It has three main branches: Chemicals and Health, Energy and Climate, and Resources and Markets. Governance Affairs Office: engages member states and other relevant groups to use UNEP's work. The office serves UNEP's governing body, the United Nations Environment Assembly, and its subsidiary organ, the Committee of Permanent Representatives, and manages their meetings. It helps strengthen the visibility, authority and impact of the Assembly as an authoritative voice on the environment. Law Division: helps to develop environmental law. Works with countries to combat environmental crime and meet international environmental commitments. The law division aims to improve cooperation between lawmakers around the world who are making environmental laws. Communication Division: develops and disseminates UNEP's messages. It delivers them to governments and individuals through digital and traditional media channels. Corporate Services Division: handles UNEP's corporate interests such as management and exposure to financial risk. Activities UNEP's main activities are related to: Climate ChangeUNEP is a partner of the Territorial Approach to Climate Change, which engages governmental entities in climate resilience efforts. Disasters and ConflictsUNEP has endeavored to lighten the influence of emergencies or natural disasters on human health and to prepare for future disasters. It contributes to the reduction of the origin of disasters by controlling the balance of ecosystems and actively support Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which aims to reduce the risk of disasters (DRR). As well as preventing natural disasters, the UNEP supports countries such as to make laws or policies which protect the countries from getting serious damage by disasters. Since 1999 it has helped 40 countries to recover from the effect of disasters. Ecosystem Management Environmental Governance Environment under ReviewUNEP provides information and data on the global environment to stakeholders including governments, non-governmental organizations and the public for them to engage in realizing the Sustainable Development Goals. The information which UNEP shares is based on the latest science and is collected in a proper way. This makes policy makers find reliable information effectively. Through this The Environment Outlook and the Sustainable Development Goals stakeholders can have access to information easily. In addition, the UN environment Live Platform and Online Access to Research in Environment (OARE) provide transparent information collected by UNEP. Chemicals and Waste Resource Efficiency Awards programs Several awards programs have been established to recognize outstanding work in the environmental field. The Global 500 Roll of Honour was initiated in 1987 and ended in 2003. Its 2005 successor, Champions of the Earth, and a similar award, Young Champions of the Earth, are given annually to entrepreneurs, scientists, policy leaders, upcoming talent, individuals and organizations who make significant positive impacts on resources and the environment in their areas. Notable achievements UNEP has registered several successes, such as the 1987 Montreal Protocol for limiting emissions of gases blamed for thinning the planet's protective ozone layer, and the 2017 Minamata Convention, a treaty to limit toxic mercury.UNEP has sponsored the development of solar loan programmes, with attractive return rates, to buffer the initial deployment costs and entice consumers to consider and purchase solar PV systems. The most famous example is the solar loan programme sponsored by UNEP that helped 100,000 people finance solar power systems in India. Success in India's solar programme has led to similar projects in other parts of the developing world, including Tunisia, Morocco, Indonesia and Mexico. In 2001, UNEP alerted about the destruction of the Marshlands when it released satellite images showing that 90 percent of the marsh had been lost. The UNEP "support for environmental management of the Iraqi Marshland" began in 2004, to manage the marshland area in an environmentally sound manner.UNEP has a programme for young people known as Tunza. Within this programme are other projects like the AEO for Youth.International Environmental Education Programme (1975–1995) For two decades, UNESCO and UNEP led the International Environmental Education Programme (1975-1995), which set out a vision for, and gave practical guidance on how to mobilize education for environmental awareness. In 1976 UNESCO launched an environmental education newsletter Connect as the official organ of the UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Education Programme (IEEP). Until 2007 it served as a clearinghouse to exchange information on environmental education in general and to promote the aims and activities of the IEEP in particular, as well as being a network for institutions and individuals interested and active in environment education.Climate change UNEP in 1989, 34 years ago, predicted "entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by sea level rise if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000".UNEP in 2005, 18 years ago, predicted "50 million people could become environmental refugees by 2010, fleeing the effects of climate change". Glaciers are shrinking at record rates and many could disappear within decades, the UNEP said in 2008. The scientists measuring the health of almost 30 glaciers around the world found that ice loss reached record levels in 2006. On average, the glaciers shrank by 4.9 feet in 2006. Norway's Breidalblikkbrea glacier shrank 10.2 feet in 2006. Glaciers lost an average of about a foot of ice a year between 1980 and 1999, but since the turn of the millennium the average loss has increased to about 20 inches. Electric vehicles At the fifth Magdeburg Environmental Forum held in 2008, in Magdeburg, Germany, UNEP and car manufacturer Daimler AG called for the establishment of infrastructure for electric vehicles. At this international conference 250 politicians and representatives of non-government organizations discussed future road transportation under the motto of "Sustainable Mobility–the Post-2012 CO2 Agenda".Circular economy UNEP is the co-chair and a founding partner (along with groups such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation) for the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy, which is a public-private partnership of over 50 global organizations and governments seeking to support the transition to a global circular economy. The Regional Seas Programme Established in 1974, this is the world's only legal programme for the purpose of protecting the oceans and seas at the regional level. More than 143 countries participate in 18 regional programmes established by the Regional Seas Conventions and Action Plans, with 14 of them underpinned by legally binding international conventions, such as the Helsinki Convention, the Oslo Dumping Convention, the Barcelona Convention or the Bucharest Convention. The RSCAPs include the Caribbean region, East Asian seas, East African region, Mediterranean Basin, Pacific Northwest region, West African region, Caspian Sea, Black Sea region, Northeast Pacific region, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, ROPME Sea Area, South Asian seas, Southeast Pacific region, Pacific region, Arctic region, Antarctic region, Baltic Sea, and Northeast Atlantic region. Each programme consists of countries which share the same sea and manages this sea at the regional level. The programmes are controlled by secretariats or Regional Coordinating Units and Regional Activity Centers. UNEP protects seas by promoting international conventions through education and training. The Mediterranean Action Plan of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP/MAP) was established in 1975 as the first regional action plan under the Regional Seas Programme. Faith for Earth Initiative Launched in 2017, the initiative's goal is to encourage and collaborate with faith-based organizations to protect the environment and invest in green resources. In 2020, UNEP published a book with the Parliament of the World's Religions Climate Action Program entitled, "Faith for Earth: A Call for Action." The book serves as an educational resource for students, teachers, and leaders across the world and highlights the role that faith-based organizations can play in addressing critical environmental issues. International years UN assigns specific years to topics to raise awareness and engagement. The following years pertain to environmental topics: 2007 – International Year of the Dolphin: International Patron of the Year of the Dolphin was H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco, with Special Ambassador to the cause being Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys musical group. 2010 – International Year of Biodiversity 2011 – International Year of Forests 2012 – International Year for Sustainable Energy for All 2013 – International Year of Water Cooperation 2014 – International Year of Family Farming 2015 – International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies 2016 – International Year of Pulses 2017 – International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development 2020 – International Year of Plant Health 2021 – International Year of Fruits and VegetablesSee international observance and list of environmental dates. Reform Following the 2007 publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, the Paris Call for Action, presented by French president Jacques Chirac and supported by 46 countries, called for the UNEP to be replaced by a new and more powerful "United Nations Environment Organization", to be modeled on the World Health Organization. The 46 countries included the European Union nations, but notably did not include the United States, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, the top four emitters of greenhouse gases.In December 2012, following the Rio+20 Summit, a decision by the General Assembly of the United Nations to "strengthen and upgrade" the UNEP and establish universal membership of its governing body was confirmed. Funding The European Investment Bank and the United Nations Environment Programme created the Renewable Energy Performance Platform (REPP) in 2015 to assist a United Nations project dubbed Sustainable Energy for All. Renewable Energy Performance Platform was established with $67 million from the United Kingdom's International Climate Finance initiative, administered by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, in 2015, and $128 million in 2018. REPP was established with a five-year goal of improving energy access for at least two million people in Sub-Saharan Africa. It has so far invested around $45 million to renewable energy projects in 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Solar power and hydropower are among the energy methods used in the projects. Funding complications In September 2018, a series of allegations were made against the Executive Director of the UNEP, Eric Solheim, at that time, including excessive number of days spent outside the headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. As a result, Eric Solheim resigned. Several donor countries withdrew their donation in the aftermath of the allegation, including the Dutch government who announced it would withhold $8 million in funding to UNEP until nepotism issues were resolved. Sweden and Denmark stopped funding as well. A spokesman for the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs said the freezing of funds was probably unprecedented. See also Sources This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA (license statement/permission). Text taken from Issues and trends in Education for Sustainable Development​, 26, 27, UNESCO. References Further reading Borowy, Iris. "Before UNEP: who was in charge of the global environment? The struggle for institutional responsibility 1968–72." Journal of Global History 14.1 (2019): 87–106. United Nations Environment Programme. "Natural Allies: UNEP and Civil Society." Nairobi: United Nations Foundation, 2004. Paul Berthoud, A Professional Life Narrative, 2008, worked with UNEP and offers testimony from the inside of the early years of the organization. Dodds, F., Strauss, M., with Strong, M., 2012, Only One Earth: The Long Road via Rio to Sustainable Development. London Earthscan External links Official website UNEP Finance Initiative Frankfurt School – UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance United Nations Environment Programme – World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) UNEP-Tongji Institute of Environment for Sustainable Development UNEP/GRID-Europe UNEP GEO Data Portal Sindrom Kodok Pada Manusia (Indonesia Language) Netherlands Commission for Environmental Assessment UNEP Regional Seas Programme Resources on United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

agriculture in south korea

Agriculture in South Korea is a sector of the economy of South Korea. Korean agriculture is the basic industry of the Korean economy, consisting of farming, animal husbandry, forestry and fishing. At the time of its founding, Korea was a typical agricultural country, with more than 80% of the population engaged in agricultural production. After land reform under the Lee Seung-man administration, economic revitalization under the Park Chung-hee military government and the wave of world trade liberalization that began in the 1980s, Korean agriculture has undergone dramatic changes. Through the Green Revolution, Korea became self-sufficient in rice, the staple food, in 1978, and in 1996, Korea became the first Asian country after Japan to mechanize its agriculture with fine-grained cultivation. The development of Korean agriculture has also led to the development of agriculture-related industries such as fertilizer, agricultural machinery and seed.The natural resources required for agriculture in South Korea are not abundant. Two thirds of the country are mountain and hill. Arable land only accounts for 22 percent of the country's land. It is one of the countries with the least arable land per capita in the world. Korea has a very low self-sufficiency rate for agricultural products, except for rice and potatoes, which are largely self-sufficient, while 85% of other foodstuffs need to be imported. In addition, Korea imports more than 60% of its beef, fish and shellfish, 20% of its fruit, poultry and milk from abroad, and only sugar and eggs are self-sufficient. Since the 1980s, with the restructuring of Korean agriculture, the area of food crops has tended to decrease, while the area of high value-added crops, vegetables and fruits has increased in proportion to the plantation industry. The most important crop in South Korea is rice, accounting for about 90 percent of the country's total grain production and over 40 percent of farm income. Other grain products heavily rely on imports from other countries. Farms range in size from small, family-owned farms to large corporations, but most are small-scale and rely heavily on government support and services in order to survive.In the 1960s, Korea's economy began to grow at a rapid pace, creating the "Han River Miracle". In 2005, the share of agriculture in Korea's GDP fell to 2.9 percent from 50 percent at the start of the country's history. With urbanization and industrialization, Korea's agricultural population has been lost and is ageing, with the proportion of people employed in agriculture falling from 50% to 8.5% between 1970 and 2000, and to 7% in 2008. History Early history During the Paleolithic period (in Korea beginning approximately 10,000 years ago), hunting and gathering took place on the Korean Peninsula. Primitive grain grinding stones and various types of picks excavated from the Neolithic remains at Watpo-ri, Rojin Pioneer City, North Hamgyong Province, indicate that primitive agricultural cultivation had also begun there. Due to low productivity, hunting and gathering were still the main means of survival. Settled subsistence farming and complex societies with mixed crop farming and bulk fish capture are deduced from over 500 Neolithic Korean sites. The Chulmun/ Jeulmun sites are an example. Early crops included millet and rice. However, the precise date of domesticated rice cultivation in Korea has been disputed for early periods. It is accepted for 3,000 BC onwards (late Neolithic) as infrequent, but very frequent for the Bronze Age onwards (in Korea 1300 - 300 BC). It has also been suggested that the Bronze Age culture of Songguk-ri provides evidence of a change in subsistence strategy to the establishment of rice paddy culture and away from a hunter-gatherer emphasis. During the Bronze Age, the production of bronze agricultural tools indicates the importance of agriculture as against hunting and gathering. Based on remains of rice at Songguk-ri, it is considered that at this time, rice was a community food, not the luxury/ currency that it became in historical times. At the beginning of the Iron Age, irrigated plow farming methods began to appear, and productivity was further improved. Iron sickles are thought to indicate that longer-grain plumper rice varieties ripened together and were harvested together. 8th to 14th centuries In the Silla period (57 BC- 935) there were government programmes for securing the promulgation of better seeds, of irrigation and for reduction of pests. The early study of agronomy and the means of improving agricultural practice are seen in public farming during the reign of Seongdeok of Silla (AD 722). Heungdeok of Silla in the early ninth century secured the introduction of ginseng seeds from Tang China and growth of them experimentally in Chiri/ Jirisan. At this time, teas and silk were also propagated. In the Goryeo period (918-1392), various farm tools were invented (spades, plows, shovels) and water wheels were introduced from South China. In 1365 cotton was brought for cultivation from the area of Vietnam. The Joseon dynasty According to the oldest agricultural book in South Korea, "Nongsa jikseol", in the 15th century, the most extensive agricultural cultivations in South Korea were yellow rice, millet, soybeans and rice, followed by crops such as wheat and ginseng. In the mid- sixteenth century, the transplanting method gradually became a common method of paddy field cultivation. In the 18th century, the transplanting method was not only extended to Tianshui paddy fields (rice fields that can only be irrigated by rain), but also used in paddy and dry land agriculture. The original direct seeding method of planting rice was also improved. Fertilisation techniques date from the 16th century, and from the 18th century irrigation and double-cropping of mixed crops ensured high produce yields.Writings in agronomy flourished in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Pak Chiwon/ Bak Jiwon was one of several contemporary writers attempting to improve production methods in Korea. During the Joseon Dynasty, agriculture developed to a more advanced level again, but forest degradation was a major result of the firewood burning heating systems of homes. In the 18th century rationalist scholar Seo Yu Gu , author of the 113-volume Encyclopedia Koreana on Rural Living, complained about the huge cost and environmental impact of the heating systems (Ondol). By the 19th century Ondol had caused whole mountains to be completely bare and prone to landslides in rain whereby crops were destroyed. According to the Geography Records of Sejong, the agricultural early field in the early Joseon Dynasty had an absolute advantage: the estimated ratio of water early field in Gyeonggi Province and other areas was 28% to 72%. The 20th century The Japanese colonial period 1910-1945 From 1907 Japanese nationals were legally able to own Korean farmland. The Oriental Development Company (a Japanese concern) was set up in 1908 with the aim of controlling Korean lands, initially under its 10-year plan. By 1916 that company owned approximately 104,000 hectares of Korean farmland. The Land Survey Bureau of the Governor-General embarked upon a recording of ownerships and boundaries, a process said to have led to educated yangban exploiting the system for their own benefit and to some 331,748 farmers finding they were landless and needing to work the land of another. In the period 1910 - 1925 over 278,000 farmers emigrated to Manchuria, and a further 126,000 left for unskilled labouring jobs in Japan. Japanese fiscal policy designed to modernise and increase production saw production rise, but not so as to keep pace with exports of food to Japan. Efforts were made to bridge the Korean food gap with coarse grain imported from Manchuria but extreme poverty and regular starvation of the Korean peasant class (73.6% of the Korean population) resulted.The Japanese founded around 1920 the first Korean agriculture college, at Suwon. The college ran Stations for the students, each with a specific focus. Thus, for example, there were the Silk Worm Station, the Forest Station, the Agricultural Experimentation Station, and the Animal-care Station. Around one quarter of the students were Korean. After the Second World War In the 1945-1960 period, annual increases of farm production took place. The agricultural industry in this period experienced land redistribution, rural poverty and late investment as well as the disruption of war. The Farmland Reform Law of 1949 abolishing tenancies in South Korea was designed to effect changes in land tenure. Under the new law, the government purchased land from landlords then allocated a maximum of 3 hectares of land to each farmer. In the 4 years prior to it, 44% of tenanted land was sold. The remaining 56% was redistributed under the reform. This affected approximately 470,000 hectares of agricultural land. Owner-operators were 14% of total in 1945, rising to 70% by 1965.Government policy in the years immediately following the Korean War 1950-1953 did not permit of much investment in agriculture, despite its importance to many people, because of the urgent need to reinvest in defence and reconstruction. Less than 10% of spending went for agriculture, and was largely limited to restoration works for irrigation and purchase of fertiliser from the United States. Grain imports from the US met food gaps.In 1957 of 9.5 million cultivated hectares 21% was forest land, 17% was uplands, 8.6% was rice paddies and 7.7 was for "miscellaneous" uses. Land was nowhere used exclusively for livestock pasture. The per-farmer-cultivated area was 1.1 acres. The 1953-7 period saw a 5 year plan for agriculture, to be followed by a further 5 year plan commencing in 1958. Improvements to land, and their financing, were intended by the Agriculture Guidance Law of 1957. The Academy of Agriculture (1957) was followed by creation of a specialised agricultural lending bank in 1958 (after the 1957 Agricultural Bank Law). In its first year of operation (1958) it loaned out 78,856 million hwan using the rice crops as security. The Federation of Farmers' Cooperatives was initiated in 1958. In 1957 the large areas classified as forests included 49% wasteland as a result of erosion, and the remaining forests were thinly covered by trees, half of which were seedlings only. The cause of the degradation was traditional Korean under-floor heating which burned trees, leaves and timber. In the late 1950s this consumed 16 million tons of firewood annually. 1960 onwards A shift in policy towards expanding food production in the early 1960s led to scale investment in agriculture to 20% of government spending overall. This different policy was reflected in the 5 year plans for self-sustaining economic expansion 1962-1966 and 1967-1971.National Agricultural Cooperative Federation (NACF) is South Korea's agricultural cooperative, which is a nationwide organization in charge of agriculture banking, supply of agriculture input factors and sales of agriculture products. The NACF was founded in 1961 with the goal of "improving the economic, social, cultural and status of agriculture people and enhancing the competitiveness of agriculture to improve the quality of life of farmers and contribute to the balanced development of the national economy. 1962 saw the creation of the Office of Rural Development, but grain prices were kept low so as to prevent inflation and keep labour costs low in an economy where over half of industrial wages were spent on food. Food imports made up the 95% drop in self-sufficiencyFollowing on the reform of the land equalization system after World War II, South Korea’s policy reclaimed the land occupied by Japanese officials and citizens and allocated it to South Korean farmers. It promulgated the Land Reform Law to purchase more than 3 hectares of land from farmers at low prices, and sold it to tenants at a lower price. After this round of land reform, South Korea basically achieved the goal of a land equalization system. The next step was to support intensive distribution of land. In the 15 years following 1961, South Korea completed the transition from an agricultural country to an industrial country. The government begun gradually to loosen restrictions on land sales and to encourage active working farmers to return their land. Farmers engaged in agriculture also expanded their scale of business. 1970 onwards Policy in the 1970s for agricultural expansion included the Saemaul (New Community) Movement to promote rural industrial infrastructure development. Higher grain prices were permitted and food imports were limited so as to cover only gaps in domestic output. This policy also included higher purchase prices by government for grain producers, but lower sale prices for industrial labour-force consumption. The deficit was financed by the Bank of Korea on overdraft, which led in the late 1970s to policy modification. In the 1970s, the global oil crisis and the outbreak of food shortages forced South Korea to promulgate the Agricultural Land Protection and Utilization Act in 1972, which strictly restricted the conversion of agricultural land to other uses. In 1975, South Korea enacted the Agricultural Land Expansion and Development Promotion Law. The implementation of the Agricultural and Fishery Village Development Special Measures Law in the late 1980s changed the ownership of land away from the original ownership of independent family farms so as to allow companies legally to engage in land ownership. The smallholder structure of Korean agriculture hindered economies of scale and limited participation in marketing and modernisation schemes. 1980 onwards The Farm Household Income Source Development Act in 1981 was designed to further enhance non-farming income in rural areas by relocating industries there, despite concerns that it might provoke land price inflation. 1990 onwards In 1994, South Korea enacted a new Farm Land Basic Law, which further relaxed restrictions on land sales and leases, allowing the establishment of agricultural corporations with a maximum of 100 hectares of land. The new Agricultural Land Law integrated previous agricultural land law and regulations. Although the Agricultural Land Law followed the principle of farmers owning their land, restrictions on land ownership and use rights were significantly relaxed. The government offered farmers over the age of 65 years a subsidy of US$2,580 per hectare if they were to sell or lease their land for more than 5 years to active farmers. The 21st century General Following on the general liberalisation of land ownership and use in the late 20th century, in 2002, all restrictions on land ownership were finally abolished. In a 2023 study of the impact of climate change and technology on South Korean rice production, it was concluded that farmer awareness of fertiliser and pesticide improved use was needed. It recommended that future food security issues would easiest be safeguarded against by allotting arable land to more efficient farmers. In a detailed market analysis in 2023 it was concluded that due to recent policy changes farm households were increasing and that incomes were increasing. A study in 2020 indicate that a 12% average increase in productivity is associated with government direct payments and is an effective policy tool. Trends following urbanisation With the rapid growth of South Korea's economy and urbanization, areas of farmland have been decreasing and rural populations have moved from the countryside to cities. In addition to the decrease in farmland, there has been a decrease in rice demand due to the declining rates of rice consumption. These trends continued in 2022 and 2023. In 1980, the average consumption of rice per capita was 137.7 kg. In 2018, only 61 kg of rice was eaten per capita. This decrease is partially due to the rise of wheat consumption. In 2016, the average South Korean consumed 33.2 kg of wheat flour. Urban agriculture In November of 2011, the government passed the Act on Development and Support of Urban Agriculture. It was based upon the National Land Planning and Utilization Act which strives to create more farmland. The goal of the Act was to "develop a nature-friendly urban environment and contribute to the harmonious development of cities and rural communities by raising urban residents' understanding in agriculture". The Act authorises the creation of comprehensive 5 year plans by the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs for the advancement of safe urban agriculture and the revitalisation of that sector. There must be annual public reports on progress by the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and any relevant Mayor/Do Governor. Plans are scrutinised by an Urban Agriculture Council, and if need be modified. The Minister may provide suitable training and basic supplies. The Minister may also start up and keep up to date an integrated urban agricultural information system. Types of location suitable for such a project are specified. Land may be selected for public urban farms.Seoul, South Korea's capital and largest, densest city, developed four categories of urban agriculture. These were: "housing" which included private homes and apartments, both indoors and outdoors; "in-city" meaning the rooftops of public buildings; "farm-park" using abandoned land; and "education" including schools and colleges. To promote the idea of urban agriculture, the municipal government of Seoul offered agricultural training classes and supplies (such as seeds, tools, and containers) to interested residents. By 2015, the municipal government had assisted in the development of "vegetable gardens on the rooftops of 267 buildings" and had provided "43,785 box-typed vegetable pots for 15,866 places".The presence of urban farming has a significant positive effect on housing prices in the area within 500 metres of it. The satisfaction of participants in the urban farming scheme in Seoul shows (2017) marked differences depending on the length of involvement, the supply by the local authority and the participation of women. Smart farming Due to challenges with an aging population of farmers, a shrinking number of farm laborers, the weakening of the Korea domestic farm market, and uncommon weather patterns, the government of South Korea has been promoting the idea of smart farms to farmers. By offering financial and training support, the government hoped to "bolster the competitiveness of domestic agriculture". Smart farms use information and communication technologies (ICT) to send real time information to farmers' mobile devices. Though the government has promoted smart farms, only a small percentage of farms have begun using the technology. Most farmers remain unable to afford this technology or may not have the skills required for a "digital environment". In 2019, the agriculture ministry announced that 248 billion won would be budgeted for promoting smart farm technology. The expenditure is planned with specific achievement targets so as to make holistic change in the direction of rural regeneration and to counterbalance the ageing of the Korean farmer base where over half were as at 2021 over the age of 65). Agriculture Plan 2023-2027 A major focus of the 2023-2027 Agriculture Plan is the need to increase the percentage of "young" farmers (meaning aged under 40) up to 10% of total farmers by the close of the plan period. Encouragement takes the form of direct monthly payments for persons relocating from urban areas, and generous farm loan terms (loans spread over 25 years not 15). The need is for high tech, AI-assisted and digital farming. Education and consultancy services are to be provided by way of support. A development fund of 100 billion won is available to cover support for housing and other needs. In 2024 4,000 young farmers will be provided for 3 years with a monthly 1.1 million won (&*% Euros approximately, 2023 values). Resources Farmland With the development of urbanization and industrialization, South Korea's self-sufficiency rate in food is decreasing due to the continuous decline of arable land. In 2011, the area of rice fields in South Korea was approximately 854,000 hectares, accounting for 50.3% of the cultivated land area. By 2019 (at 1.58 million hectares) there had been a 29 % decrease in the area of farmed land due to industrial and housing uses replacing farming. In 2022, South Korea’s agricultural land area was 1.698 million hectares, accounting for 17% of South Korea’s land area, of which two-thirds of the arable land was paddy fields, mainly for the cultivation of rice. Agricultural population Ageing of rural population With the rapid development of South Korea’s industrialization and urbanization, the percentage contribution of agriculture in South Korea’s GDP and the percentage of agriculturalists within the total population have both seen rapid decline. From 1970 to 2005, the share of agriculture in South Korea’s GDP fell from 25.5% to 2.9%, an average annual decline of 6%. The percentage of agriculturalists in the total population of South Korea fell in the same period from 49.5% to 7.6%, an average annual decline of 5.2%. The decline in the agricultural population is slower than the decline in the percentage contribution of agriculture in GDP. Accordingly, there has evolved a surplus of agricultural population. Statistics show that overpopulation in agriculture is also due to the fact that people over the age of 40 cannot find jobs in new industries and so turn to agriculture. The average age of the agricultural population has increased, which may be regarded as reducing competitiveness of the structure of the labor force. Decreasing affluence of rural population As the agricultural population ages, the family size and income situation of South Korean farming households has deteriorated. In the 1960s, the average number of family members contributing towards farming households was six. By 2005, this number decreased to 2.7. The number of farming households with less than two members is growing rapidly. From 1995 to 2005, the proportion of farm operators under the age of 50 fell from 27.9% to 17.0%, while the proportion of farm operators above the age of 70 increased from 12.7% to 24.3%. Meanwhile, the income gap between farmers and urban residents began to widen. In the mid-1990s, the income of farm households was 90 percent of the income of urban households. By 2009, this figure had dropped to 66.0%. The 2023 published statistic for average farm household income is 46,153 won. Agricultural cooperatives Ninety-eight percent of agricultural households in South Korea are members of agricultural cooperatives. The greatest achievement of South Korean agricultural cooperatives, which is recognised internationally, is that they have solved the problem of pernicious unfairly high interest rates on loans. This problem is a widespread one in underdeveloped economies worldwide. Agricultural cooperatives in South Korea were originally only responsible for economic activities such as the marketing of agricultural products, while financial operations were handled by agricultural banks. In order to solve the problem of financing cooperatives, the Agricultural Cooperative Association Act was enacted on 29 July 1961 to integrate agricultural cooperatives and agricultural banks into a national agricultural cooperative organisation. In 1981, the city-run co-operative became a branch of the Central Association of Agricultural Co-operatives and lost its independent legal personality, thus creating a two-tier system comprising grassroots co-operatives and also the Central Association of Agricultural Co-operatives. On 5 February and 9 September 1999, the new Basic Act on Agriculture and Rural Development and the Act on Agricultural Cooperatives were enacted. The former Central Association of Agricultural Cooperatives, the Central Association of Pastoral Cooperatives and the Central Association of Ginseng Cooperatives were merged into the National Central Association of Agricultural Cooperatives, which has one legal personality. The grassroots cooperatives were divided into regional agricultural cooperatives, regional pastoral cooperatives, specialized agricultural cooperatives and specialized agricultural cooperative federations, so that comprehensive and specialized cooperatives could coexist and complement each other.South Korean agricultural cooperatives are generally considered to be more focused on the more profitable banking business at the expense of agricultural marketing, and their marketing role has become particularly important to farmers since the 1990s as agricultural trade liberalization has deepened. In response, agricultural cooperatives have made plans to strengthen their marketing business. Types of production Crops The grain industry The main crop grown for food in South Korea is rice. Eighty percent of South Korea's agricultural population is involved in rice production, and 54 percent of the arable land is rice fields. In 1978, South Korea became self-sufficient in rice through the promotion of new high-yielding rice varieties. Mechanization of rice field operations was achieved in 1996. In addition to rice, the main food crops in South Korea are barley, soybeans, corn and wheat. These crops are mainly used for processing in South Korea, and only a small proportion is used for human consumption. With the exception of rice, which is self-sufficient, South Korea's self-sufficiency in food production is very low and requires significant imports. Wheat and maize have a self-sufficiency rate of less than 1% and are almost entirely dependent on imports. For grains other than rice the self-sufficiency rate fell below 20% in 2020. Overall grain self-sufficiency including rice is now targeted by the South Korean government's 2023 policies to be raised to 55% by 2027. Rice Reduced rice production, consumption and labour supply Rice is the most widely grown crop in South Korea. In 2009, it was grown on 924,000 hectares of land, accounting for 53.2% of the country's agricultural land, and for 82% of the country's agricultural population. Since the 21st century, with the increasing westernization of South Korean dietary habits, the per capita consumption of rice in South Korea has been decreasing year by year. In 2009, the total production of rice in South Korea decreased from 5.606 million tons in 1990 to 4.916 million tons. The area of rice fields decreased from 1.244 million hectares in 1990 to 924,000 hectares in 2009. Korean rice cultivation by irrigated fields is more biodiverse than that by terracing and the need to integrate good management has been recognised as a possible solution to reduced rural manpower. Rice imports into South Korea Between 1990 and 1994, South Korea bought an average of 22-30% of its domestic rice production at 1.2 times the market price each year, resulting in an oversupply of rice. With the Uruguay Round negotiations in 1993 and the establishment of the World Trade Organisation in 1995, South Korea began to reduce its rice subsidies in line with its international commitments. Accordingly, in 2004, South Korea's rice subsidies fell from 21.8 trillion won in 1995 to 14.9 trillion won. There remains an oversupply of rice in South Korea. According to relevant international agreements, South Korea has to import a certain amount of rice from China, the United States and other countries every year. US imported rice is auctioned on a weekly basis. Auctions resumed in June 2023 after a 9 month hiatus in September 2022. Barley Barley used to be an important substitute for rice in Korea in times of food shortage. With the increase in rice production and wheat imports, barley has lost its status as a major food crop in South Korea. In 2006, the area planted with barley in South Korea had fallen to 5.7 hectares from 730,000 hectares in 1970. Eighty percent of South Korea's barley demand is for processing and is mainly imported, with human consumption demand accounting for only 15 percent of total demand. Historically, the South Korean government adopted the same high price policy for barley as for rice. The barley market has been liberalized since the Uruguay Round negotiations in 1993. From 1990 to 2011, South Korea's self-sufficiency rate for barley fell from 96.1 percent to 22.5 percent. Soybean South Korea has an annual demand for soybeans of 1.3-1.6 million tonnes and is largely dependent on imports. Soybeans are mainly used for fodder processing in South Korea, with consumption of edible soybeans accounting for only 3.97% of total production. Historically, South Korea had implemented government above-market price purchases to boost soybean production. To alleviate the problem of rice supply exceeding demand, the Korean government also encouraged farmers to grow soybeans in their rice fields and set the purchase price of soybeans in rice fields at the level of income from rice cultivation. With the implementation of South Korea's import liberalization policy, government procurement has been significantly reduced. South Korea's soybean self-sufficiency rate, which had been as high as 99.4% in 1966, began to decline steadily in 1969, falling to just 6.4% in 2011. Maize Maize is also one of the commodities purchased and stockpiled by the South Korean government. Maize consumption in Korea is almost entirely for processing, with food consumption accounting for only 0.9 percent of total consumption. Production of maize in South Korea is very low, and in 2011 the country was only 0.8% self-sufficient in maize. Wheat Wheat was the first crop to be affected by market liberalization in South Korea. In 1966, the country's wheat self-sufficiency rate was 43.4%. It then declined rapidly year on year such that from 1972 onwards, South Korea's wheat self-sufficiency rate fell below 10%. In 1984, the government stopped the government wheat purchase programme. Since then, South Korea's wheat self-sufficiency rate has been less than 1% and consumption is almost entirely dependent on imports. South Korea's main wheat suppliers are the USA, Australia and Canada. Horticulture and special crops Since joining the World Trade Organisation, the acreage of vegetables and fruits in South Korea has been declining, although the total production of vegetables and fruits has been increasing due to technological progress and the increase in the acreage of greenhouse vegetables. In 2009, the acreage of vegetables and fruits in South Korea was 280,000 hectares and 157,000 hectares respectively, and the production was 1.3 million tons and 2.88 million tons respectively. Due to the liberalization of agricultural products, the share of the output value of the vegetable and fruit industries in the total agricultural output value has been on the decline. The share of vegetables at 46.7 percent in 1995 fell to 18.3 percent in 2009. The share of fruits at 11.7 percent in 1995 fell to 8.5 percent in 2009. In the Korean vegetable market as surveyed in 2023, for certain key crops (cabbage, garlic and radish) price variations are considered to result from levels of domestic output. By contrast, the variations for dried red pepper and onions correlate to changes in levels of imports and exports. There is not a uniform pattern of price response. The area under flower cultivation in South Korea shows positive values relative to areas involved in production. In 2009, South Korea's flower production accounted for only 0.4% of the total agricultural area, but 2.6% of the total agricultural production value.Panax ginseng cultivation in South Korea has been on the rise since 1997. In 2009, 19,702 hectares of panax ginseng were planted with a production of 27,460 tonnes, 2.7 times more than in 1996. Animal products General From 1990 to 2009, per capita meat consumption in South Korea grew at an annual rate of 3.3%. In the same period, meat production grew by 2.6% annually. The gap between supply and demand has led to an increase in meat imports.The value of meat production in South Korea rose from 3.9516 trillion won in 1990 to 16.484 trillion won in 2009. Its share of agricultural production in the same period rose from 25.3 percent to 39.9 percent. Since 2005, the value of animal husbandry in South Korea has begun to exceed that of rice. In 2009, the shares of livestock products in total agricultural production in South Korea were: 33.2% for pork, 24.8% for beef, 12.3% for chicken, 10.5% for milk and 8.2% for eggs. Beef Before the Asian financial crisis, the South Korean beef cattle population had been increasing, reaching approximately 2.8 million head of cattle in 1996. As a result of the financial crisis and the full liberalization of South Korean beef imports under the Uruguay Round negotiations, the number of beef cattle decreased to approximately 1.4 million head of cattle in 2001. After that, the number of beef cattle began to rise gradually as demand also rose. To meet the challenges of World Trade Organisation accession, the South Korean government sought to expand the size and number of specialist cattle farms. The number of specialist cattle farms with 50 or more head of beef cattle increased from 956 in 1990 to 11,148 in 2009. In the same period, the number of beef cattle increased from 88,505 to 696,139. There was at the same time a parallel development whereby the number of small farms with 10 or fewer head of cattle declined significantly. The average number of beef cattle kept on farms increased from 2.6 in 1990 to 10.6 in 2009.With the rise in national income, annual per capita beef consumption in South Korea increased from 4.1 kg in 1990 to 8.1 kg in 2003. The beef self-sufficiency rate, which was above 50 percent until 2000, fell to 42.8 percent in 2001. It fell further to 36.2 percent in 2003. Due to the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the United States in December 2003, beef consumption in South Korea began to decline. In 2005, per capita annual beef consumption dropped to 6.6 kg. In 2009, per capita annual beef consumption slowly recovered to 8.1 kg. South Korea's beef self-sufficiency rate returned to 50% in 2009. BSE had a significant impact on the import mix of South Korean beef. Prior to the outbreak of BSE, South Korea imported more than 60% of its beef from the US. In 2009, beef imports from Australia accounted for 59.0 percent of South Korea's total beef imports, while the share of US beef imports dropped to 25.3 percent. Milk Looking at the dairy industry as a whole, the number of dairy farms and cows in South Korea is on a downward trend. However, milk production has continued to grow due to an increase in milk produced per cow. From 1990 to 2009, the number of specialised dairy herds with more than 50 cows increased from 659 to 44,068. In the same period, the number of cows increased from 57,455 to 366,114. The percentage of specialised dairy farms in the total number of farms increased from 2.0% in 1990 to 65.1% in 2009. In the same period, the percentage number of cows they kept compared to total cow numbers increased from 11.4% to 82.3%. South Korea's milk consumption showed a year-on-year increase until 2002, from 42.8 kg per capita in 1990 to 64.2 kg per year in 2002. In 2003, dairy products began to increase, especially for cheese, powdered milk, frozen milk and butter. South Korea's milk self-sufficiency rate fell from 90.1 percent in 1995 to 69.5 percent in 2009. Self-sufficiency in milk continued a steady downwards trend from 2014 such that by 2021 the self-sufficiency rate was 45.7%. Pork There has been a general move towards specialised pig farms. The contribution of pork production value to South Korea's overall animal husbandry has remained at around 30%. After 2000, the number of small pig farms gradually decreased due to the spread of chronic pig diseases. Between 1990 and 2009, the percentage of specialised pig farms of total pig farms increased from 0.3% to 39.57%. In the same period, the percentage of pigs raised on such farms out of the total number of pigs increased from 23.3% to 86.5%. As a result, the average number of pigs kept on farms in South Korea in those periods increased from approximately 34 to approximately 1,204.The annual per capita consumption of pork has been increasing year on year, from 11.8 kg in 1990 to 19.1 kg in 2009. By 2022 the annual per capita pork consumption had increased to 28.5 kg. Between 1990 and 2009, South Korea's pork self-sufficiency rate fell from 99.5% to 78.9% in 2009. By July 1997, South Korea began to fully liberalize pork imports. At the same time, South Korea exported pork to countries such as Japan, the Philippines, Russia and Mongolia. Chicken and eggs The chicken industry is the industry with the most mergers and acquisitions of all of South Korea's livestock industries, with the concentration of the chicken industry increasing between 1989 and 2006 from 15% to 80% . The value of the industry at the end of the period was 2.0229 trillion won. It accounted for 12.3% of South Korea's livestock industry, and the self-sufficiency rate of South Korea in broilers was 87.0%.Between 1990 and 2009, the percentage of specialised farms with more than 10,000 hens out of all farms producing chickens increased from 26.7% to 80.0 percent. The overall percentage of hens kept by these specialised farms as compared to all farms producing chickens increased during the same period from 73.7% to 96.6%. In that time, the average number of hens kept by farms increased from 10,491 to 37,325. In 2009, South Korea's egg production was 579,276 tonnes, with a self-sufficiency rate of 99.7%. Agricultural protection policy Policy goals include the following: To increase the purchase price of agricultural products by promoting the "balanced price" system (cost + non-agricultural product price changes over the same period). To improve the circulation conditions of agricultural products and agricultural machinery. A large number of agricultural product trading markets have been established, and agricultural machinery subsidies have been issued to farmers. To promote the construction of an "agricultural industrial area" plan. In the rural areas of counties and towns with less than 200,000 people, the government will select sites and carry out infrastructure construction to attract "private" capital to set up factories and enterprises, thereby reducing the proportion of local agriculture. To adjust the rural industrial structure and agricultural structure. The government has invested heavily in adjusting the industrial structure, focusing on the development of secondary and tertiary industries, guiding scientific farming, supporting deep processing of agricultural products, and improving agricultural product circulation facilities. To improve infrastructure. The South Korean government has adopted measures such as supporting the development of agricultural associations, increasing agricultural loans, and restricting the import of foreign agricultural products to protect and support the development of the country's agriculture. Production figures Volumes of agricultural output for South Korea in 2018 were as follows. Measured by millions of tons, the principal products were: rice (15th largest producer in the world), 5.1; vegetables, 3.3; cabbage (4th largest producer in the world after China, India and Russia) 2.5; onions (13th largest producer in the world) 1.5. Measured by thousands of tons, other agricultural products in 2018 were: tangerines, 646; potatoes, 553; watermelons, 534; apples, 475; persimmon (3rd largest producer in the world, behind only China and Spain), 346; tomatoes, 344; cucumber, 333; garlic, 331; pumpkins, 321; sweet potatoes, 314; peppers, 230; strawberries (7th largest producer in the world), 213; peaches, 205; pears, 203; grapes, 177; melons, 167. In addition there was that year a lesser production of other agricultural items. South Korean agricultural diplomacy South Korean soft power diplomacy From at least 2016, adaptations of Western "middle power" concepts have been criticised as not working well for Korea as opposed to a suggested "soft power" diplomacy whereby South Korea exercise its resources to present constructive and creative foreign policy options. Prior to that time, the perception of South Korea as a major cultural influence was so unsatisfactory that the National Image Committee in charge of top-down promotion of South Korean culture was disbanded in 2008. With the success of the Korean Wave (Hallyu), government cultural support switched away from primarily top-down activity to work more with private organisations from 2003 with the Korea Foundation for Cultural Industries Exchange (KOFICE). Cultural diplomacy has come to mean cultural display and exchange as part of a wider approach to influence. The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative includes South Korea, whose influence in and support for Africa in particular is furthered by Korea's K-Ricebelt Project. The G7 meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, in May 2023, saw South Korea promise to expand its support for nations in food crisis, which it did. Including the K-Ricebelt Initiative, the 2024 South Korean budget for Overseas Development Aid is $5.3 billion. This is will place South Korea in the top ten most generous donors in the world. K-Ricebelt Project President Yoon Suk Yeol's 2023 K-Ricebelt initiative was expressly created because when South Korea needed outside help, others helped. Now South Korea has the resources and goodwill to help others in need. The K-Ricebelt Project is for South Korea to help African nations to cut their dependence (currently 40% of total requirement) on expensive imported rice and instead grow more and better for themselves. The South Korean government as at July 2023 had a spending target for this project of 100 billion won (77 million US dollars, 2023 values) over 4 years with the aim of delivering 10,000 tonnes of rice seeds annually. These will be specially developed high-productivity seeds (double or triple productive) adapted to the particular African climate conditions, and to be grown at new Korean-built facilities in the relevant countries. The first eight countries to join the scheme were: Cameroon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Senegal and Uganda. As part of the project, the South Korean government will supply machinery, and share knowhow and technology. The aim is to assist small farmers. On 16 October 2023 Sierra Leone became the ninth African country to join the initiative by concluding a Memorandum of Understanding with South Korea. On 23 October 2023 a partnership with the Ivory Coast was announced as part of the K-ricebelt project. AGRI-Ukraine assistance In September 2023 South Korea committed to provision of 5 million US dollars' worth of fertiliser to assist agriculture in the Ukraine. The delivery is planned in cooperation with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Green Digital Economy platform (GDEP) GDEP is a digital platform agreed to be created whereby farmers in Indonesia can participate in access to agricultural and carbon-trading information. The platform is the joint initiative of South Korea and Indonesian governments. It aimed from September 2023 onwards to run a pilot scheme for 10 million Indonesian farmers to access the platform and benefit from AI. Skills training is part of the project, which is expected to generate 1 billion US dollars investment in the platform. The ultimate users will be 62 million small farmers in Indonesia. See also Geography of South Korea Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (South Korea) Aquaculture in South Korea Korea Forest Service Fishing industry in South Korea New Community Movement References Further reading 통계로 본 세계 속의 한국농업. 한국농촌경제연구원: 박한울, 박지원. March 2016.

green building

Green building (also known as green construction or sustainable building) refers to both a structure and the application of processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's life-cycle: from planning to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition. This requires close cooperation of the contractor, the architects, the engineers, and the client at all project stages. The Green Building practice expands and complements the classical building design concerns of economy, utility, durability, and comfort. Green building also refers to saving resources to the maximum extent, including energy saving, land saving, water saving, material saving, etc., during the whole life cycle of the building, protecting the environment and reducing pollution, providing people with healthy, comfortable and efficient use of space, and being in harmony with nature Buildings that live in harmony. Green building technology focuses on low consumption, high efficiency, economy, environmental protection, integration and optimization.’Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a set of rating systems for the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of green buildings which was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. Other certificate systems that confirm the sustainability of buildings are the British BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) for buildings and large-scale developments or the DGNB System (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen e.V.) which benchmarks the sustainability performance of buildings, indoor environments and districts. Currently, the World Green Building Council is conducting research on the effects of green buildings on the health and productivity of their users and is working with the World Bank to promote Green Buildings in Emerging Markets through EDGE (Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies) Market Transformation Program and certification. There are also other tools such as Green Star in Australia, Global Sustainability Assessment System (GSAS) used in the Middle East and the Green Building Index (GBI) predominantly used in Malaysia. Building information modeling (BIM) is a process involving the generation and management of digital representations of physical and functional characteristics of places. Building information models (BIMs) are files (often but not always in proprietary formats and containing proprietary data) which can be extracted, exchanged, or networked to support decision-making regarding a building or other built asset. Current BIM software is used by individuals, businesses, and government agencies who plan, design, construct, operate and maintain diverse physical infrastructures, such as water, refuse, electricity, gas, communication utilities, roads, railways, bridges, ports, and tunnels. Although new technologies are constantly being developed to complement current practices in creating greener structures, the common objective of green buildings is to reduce the overall impact of the built environment on human health and the natural environment by: Efficiently using energy, water, and other resources Protecting occupant health and improving employee productivity (see healthy building) Reducing waste, pollution, and environmental degradationNatural building is a similar concept, usually on a smaller scale and focusing on the use of locally available natural materials. Other related topics include sustainable design and green architecture. Sustainability may be defined as meeting the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Although some green building programs don't address the issue of retrofitting existing homes, others do, especially through public schemes for energy efficient refurbishment. Green construction principles can easily be applied to retrofit work as well as new construction. A 2009 report by the U.S. General Services Administration found 12 sustainably-designed buildings that cost less to operate and have excellent energy performance. In addition, occupants were overall more satisfied with the building than those in typical commercial buildings. These are eco-friendly buildings. Reducing environmental impact Buildings represent a large part of energy, electricity, water and materials consumption. As of 2020, they account for 37% of global energy use and energy-related CO2 emissions, which the United Nations estimate contributed to 33% of overall worldwide emissions. Including the manufacturing of building materials, the global CO2 emissions were 39%. If new technologies in construction are not adopted during this time of rapid growth, emissions could double by 2050, according to the United Nations Environment Program. Glass buildings, especially all-glass skyscrapers, contribute significantly to climate change due to their energy inefficiency. While these structures are visually appealing and allow abundant natural light, they also trap heat, necessitating increased use of air conditioning systems, which contribute to higher carbon emissions. Experts advocate for design modifications and potential restrictions on all-glass edifices to mitigate their detrimental environmental impact.Buildings account for a large amount of land. According to the National Resources Inventory, approximately 107 million acres (430,000 km2) of land in the United States are developed. The International Energy Agency released a publication that estimated that existing buildings are responsible for more than 40% of the world's total primary energy consumption and for 24% of global carbon dioxide emissions. According to Global status report from the year 2016, buildings consume more than 30% of all produced energy. The report states that "Under a below 2°C trajectory, effective action to improve building energy efficiency could limit building final energy demand to just above current levels, meaning that the average energy intensity of the global building stock would decrease by more than 80% by 2050".Green building practices aim to reduce the environmental impact of building as the building sector has the greatest potential to deliver significant cuts in emissions at little or no cost. General guidelines can be summarized as follows: Every building should be as small as possible. Avoid contributing to sprawl, even if the most energy-efficient, environmentally sound methods are used in design and construction. Bioclimatic design principles are able to reduce energy expenditure and by extension, carbon emissions. Bioclimatic design is a method of building design that takes local climate into account to create comfortable conditions within the structure. This could be as simple as constructing a different shape for the building envelope or facing the building towards the south to maximize solar exposure for energy or lighting purposes. Given the limitations of city planned construction, bioclimatic principles may be employed on a lesser scale, however it is still an effective passive method to reduce environmental impact. Goals of green building The concept of sustainable development can be traced to the energy (especially fossil oil) crisis and environmental pollution concerns of the 1960s and 1970s. The Rachel Carson book, "Silent Spring", published in 1962, is considered to be one of the first initial efforts to describe sustainable development as related to green building. The green building movement in the U.S. originated from the need and desire for more energy efficient and environmentally friendly construction practices. There are a number of motives for building green, including environmental, economic, and social benefits. However, modern sustainability initiatives call for an integrated and synergistic design to both new construction and in the retrofitting of existing structures. Also known as sustainable design, this approach integrates the building life-cycle with each green practice employed with a design-purpose to create a synergy among the practices used. Green building brings together a vast array of practices, techniques, and skills to reduce and ultimately eliminate the impacts of buildings on the environment and human health. It often emphasizes taking advantage of renewable resources, e.g., using sunlight through passive solar, active solar, and photovoltaic equipment, and using plants and trees through green roofs, rain gardens, and reduction of rainwater run-off. Many other techniques are used, such as using low-impact building materials or using packed gravel or permeable concrete instead of conventional concrete or asphalt to enhance replenishment of groundwater. While the practices or technologies employed in green building are constantly evolving and may differ from region to region, fundamental principles persist from which the method is derived: siting and structure design efficiency, energy efficiency, water efficiency, materials efficiency, indoor environmental quality enhancement, operations and maintenance optimization and waste and toxics reduction. The essence of green building is an optimization of one or more of these principles. Also, with the proper synergistic design, individual green building technologies may work together to produce a greater cumulative effect. On the aesthetic side of green architecture or sustainable design is the philosophy of designing a building that is in harmony with the natural features and resources surrounding the site. There are several key steps in designing sustainable buildings: specify 'green' building materials from local sources, reduce loads, optimize systems, and generate on-site renewable energy. Life cycle assessment A life cycle assessment (LCA) can help avoid a narrow outlook on environmental, social and economic concerns by assessing a full range of impacts associated with all cradle-to-grave stages of a process: from extraction of raw materials through materials processing, manufacture, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, and disposal or recycling. Impacts taken into account include (among others) embodied energy, global warming potential, resource use, air pollution, water pollution, and waste. In terms of green building, the last few years have seen a shift away from a prescriptive approach, which assumes that certain prescribed practices are better for the environment, toward the scientific evaluation of actual performance through LCA. Although LCA is widely recognized as the best way to evaluate the environmental impacts of buildings (ISO 14040 provides a recognized LCA methodology), it is not yet a consistent requirement of green building rating systems and codes, despite the fact that embodied energy and other life cycle impacts are critical to the design of environmentally responsible buildings. In North America, LCA is rewarded to some extent in the Green Globes rating system, and is part of the new American National Standard based on Green Globes, ANSI/GBI 01-2010: Green Building Protocol for Commercial Buildings. LCA is also included as a pilot credit in the LEED system, though a decision has not been made as to whether it will be incorporated fully into the next major revision. The state of California also included LCA as a voluntary measure in its 2010 draft Green Building Standards Code. Although LCA is often perceived as overly complex and time-consuming for regular use by design professionals, research organizations such as BRE in the UK and the Athena Sustainable Materials Institute in North America are working to make it more accessible.In the UK, the BRE Green Guide to Specifications offers ratings for 1,500 building materials based on LCA. Siting and structure design efficiency The foundation of any construction project is rooted in the concept and design stages. The concept stage, in fact, is one of the major steps in a project life cycle, as it has the largest impact on cost and performance. In designing environmentally optimal buildings, the objective is to minimize the total environmental impact associated with all life-cycle stages of the building project. However, building as a process is not as streamlined as an industrial process, and varies from one building to the other, never repeating itself identically. In addition, buildings are much more complex products, composed of a multitude of materials and components each constituting various design variables to be decided at the design stage. A variation of every design variable may affect the environment during all the building's relevant life-cycle stages. Energy efficiency Green buildings often include measures to reduce energy consumption – both the embodied energy required to extract, process, transport and install building materials and operating energy to provide services such as heating and power for equipment. As high-performance buildings use less operating energy, embodied energy has assumed much greater importance – and may make up as much as 30% of the overall life cycle energy consumption. Studies such as the U.S. LCI Database Project show buildings built primarily with wood will have a lower embodied energy than those built primarily with brick, concrete, or steel.To reduce operating energy use, designers use details that reduce air leakage through the building envelope (the barrier between conditioned and unconditioned space). They also specify high-performance windows and extra insulation in walls, ceilings, and floors. Another strategy, passive solar building design, is often implemented in low-energy homes. Designers orient windows and walls and place awnings, porches, and trees to shade windows and roofs during the summer while maximizing solar gain in the winter. In addition, effective window placement (daylighting) can provide more natural light and lessen the need for electric lighting during the day. Solar water heating further reduces energy costs. Onsite generation of renewable energy through solar power, wind power, hydro power, or biomass can significantly reduce the environmental impact of the building. Power generation is generally the most expensive feature to add to a building. Energy efficiency for green buildings can be evaluated from either numerical or non-numerical methods. These include use of simulation modelling, analytical or statistical tools. Water efficiency Reducing water consumption and protecting water quality are key objectives in sustainable building. One critical issue of water consumption is that in many areas, the demands on the supplying aquifer exceed its ability to replenish itself. To the maximum extent feasible, facilities should increase their dependence on water that is collected, used, purified, and reused on-site. The protection and conservation of water throughout the life of a building may be accomplished by designing for dual plumbing that recycles water in toilet flushing or by using water for washing of the cars. Waste-water may be minimized by utilizing water conserving fixtures such as ultra-low flush toilets and low-flow shower heads. Bidets help eliminate the use of toilet paper, reducing sewer traffic and increasing possibilities of re-using water on-site. Point of use water treatment and heating improves both water quality and energy efficiency while reducing the amount of water in circulation. The use of non-sewage and greywater for on-site use such as site-irrigation will minimize demands on the local aquifer.Large commercial buildings with water and energy efficiency can qualify for an LEED Certification. Philadelphia's Comcast Center is the tallest building in Philadelphia. It's also one of the tallest buildings in the USA that is LEED Certified. Their environmental engineering consists of a hybrid central chilled water system which cools floor-by-floor with steam instead of water. Burn's Mechanical set-up the entire renovation of the 58 story, 1.4 million square foot sky scraper. Materials efficiency Building materials typically considered 'green' include lumber( that has been certified to a third-party standard), rapidly renewable plant materials (like bamboo and straw), dimension stone, recycled stone, hempcrete, recycled metal (see: copper sustainability and recyclability), and other non-toxic, reusable, renewable, and/or recyclable products. Materials with lower embodied energy can be used in substitution to common building materials with high degrees of energy consumption and carbon/harmful emissions. For concrete a high performance self-healing version is available, however options with lower yields of pollutive waste entertain ideas of upcycling and congregate supplementing; replacing traditional concrete mixes with slag, production waste, and aggregates. Insulation also sees multiple angles for substitution. Commonly used fiberglass has competition from other eco-friendly, low energy embodying insulators with similar or higher R-values (per inch of thickness) at a competitive price. Sheep wool, cellulose, and ThermaCork perform more efficiently, however, use may be limited by transportation or installation costs. Furthermore, embodied energy comparisons can help deduce the selection of building material and its efficiency. Wood production emits less CO2 than concrete and steel if produced in a sustainable way just as steel can be produced more sustainably through improvements in technology (e.g. EAF) and energy recycling/carbon capture(an underutilized potential for systematically storing carbon in the built environment).The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) also suggests using recycled industrial goods, such as coal combustion products, foundry sand, and demolition debris in construction projects. Energy efficient building materials and appliances are promoted in the United States through energy rebate programs. A 2022 report from the Boston Consulting Group found that, investments in developing greener forms of cement, iron, and steel lead to bigger greenhouse gas reductions compared with investments in electricity and aviation. In addition, the process of making cement without producing CO2 is unavoidable. However, using pozzolans clinkers can reduce CO2 emission while in the process of making cement. Indoor environmental quality enhancement The Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) category in LEED standards, one of the five environmental categories, was created to provide comfort, well-being, and productivity of occupants. The LEED IEQ category addresses design and construction guidelines especially: indoor air quality (IAQ), thermal quality, and lighting quality.Indoor Air Quality seeks to reduce volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and other air impurities such as microbial contaminants. Buildings rely on a properly designed ventilation system (passively/naturally or mechanically powered) to provide adequate ventilation of cleaner air from outdoors or recirculated, filtered air as well as isolated operations (kitchens, dry cleaners, etc.) from other occupancies. During the design and construction process choosing construction materials and interior finish products with zero or low VOC emissions will improve IAQ. Most building materials and cleaning/maintenance products emit gases, some of them toxic, such as many VOCs including formaldehyde. These gases can have a detrimental impact on occupants' health, comfort, and productivity. Avoiding these products will increase a building's IEQ. LEED, HQE and Green Star contain specifications on use of low-emitting interior. Draft LEED 2012 is about to expand the scope of the involved products. BREEAM limits formaldehyde emissions, no other VOCs. MAS Certified Green is a registered trademark to delineate low VOC-emitting products in the marketplace. The MAS Certified Green Program ensures that any potentially hazardous chemicals released from manufactured products have been thoroughly tested and meet rigorous standards established by independent toxicologists to address recognized long-term health concerns. These IAQ standards have been adopted by and incorporated into the following programs: The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) in their LEED rating system The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) in their section 01350 standards The Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) in their Best Practices Manual The Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA) in their level® sustainability standard.Also important to indoor air quality is the control of moisture accumulation (dampness) leading to mold growth and the presence of bacteria and viruses as well as dust mites and other organisms and microbiological concerns. Water intrusion through a building's envelope or water condensing on cold surfaces on the building's interior can enhance and sustain microbial growth. A well-insulated and tightly sealed envelope will reduce moisture problems but adequate ventilation is also necessary to eliminate moisture from sources indoors including human metabolic processes, cooking, bathing, cleaning, and other activities.Personal temperature and airflow control over the HVAC system coupled with a properly designed building envelope will also aid in increasing a building's thermal quality. Creating a high performance luminous environment through the careful integration of daylight and electrical light sources will improve on the lighting quality and energy performance of a structure.Solid wood products, particularly flooring, are often specified in environments where occupants are known to have allergies to dust or other particulates. Wood itself is considered to be hypo-allergenic and its smooth surfaces prevent the buildup of particles common in soft finishes like carpet. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America recommends hardwood, vinyl, linoleum tile or slate flooring instead of carpet. The use of wood products can also improve air quality by absorbing or releasing moisture in the air to moderate humidity.Interactions among all the indoor components and the occupants together form the processes that determine the indoor air quality. Extensive investigation of such processes is the subject of indoor air scientific research and is well documented in the journal Indoor Air. Operations and maintenance optimization No matter how sustainable a building may have been in its design and construction, it can only remain so if it is operated responsibly and maintained properly. Ensuring operations and maintenance(O&M) personnel are part of the project's planning and development process will help retain the green criteria designed at the onset of the project. Every aspect of green building is integrated into the O&M phase of a building's life. The addition of new green technologies also falls on the O&M staff. Although the goal of waste reduction may be applied during the design, construction and demolition phases of a building's life-cycle, it is in the O&M phase that green practices such as recycling and air quality enhancement take place. O&M staff should aim to establish best practices in energy efficiency, resource conservation, ecologically sensitive products and other sustainable practices. Education of building operators and occupants is key to effective implementation of sustainable strategies in O&M services. Waste reduction Green architecture also seeks to reduce waste of energy, water and materials used during construction. For example, in California nearly 60% of the state's waste comes from commercial buildings During the construction phase, one goal should be to reduce the amount of material going to landfills. Well-designed buildings also help reduce the amount of waste generated by the occupants as well, by providing on-site solutions such as compost bins to reduce matter going to landfills. To reduce the amount of wood that goes to landfill, Neutral Alliance (a coalition of government, NGOs and the forest industry) created the website dontwastewood.com. The site includes a variety of resources for regulators, municipalities, developers, contractors, owner/operators and individuals/homeowners looking for information on wood recycling. When buildings reach the end of their useful life, they are typically demolished and hauled to landfills. Deconstruction is a method of harvesting what is commonly considered "waste" and reclaiming it into useful building material. Extending the useful life of a structure also reduces waste – building materials such as wood that are light and easy to work with make renovations easier.To reduce the impact on wells or water treatment plants, several options exist. "Greywater", wastewater from sources such as dishwashing or washing machines, can be used for subsurface irrigation, or if treated, for non-potable purposes, e.g., to flush toilets and wash cars. Rainwater collectors are used for similar purposes. Centralized wastewater treatment systems can be costly and use a lot of energy. An alternative to this process is converting waste and wastewater into fertilizer, which avoids these costs and shows other benefits. By collecting human waste at the source and running it to a semi-centralized biogas plant with other biological waste, liquid fertilizer can be produced. This concept was demonstrated by a settlement in Lübeck Germany in the late 1990s. Practices like these provide soil with organic nutrients and create carbon sinks that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, offsetting greenhouse gas emission. Producing artificial fertilizer is also more costly in energy than this process. Reduce impact onto electricity network Electricity networks are built based on peak demand (another name is peak load). Peak demand is measured in the units of watts (W). It shows how fast electrical energy is consumed. Residential electricity is often charged on electrical energy (kilowatt hour, kWh). Green buildings or sustainable buildings are often capable of saving electrical energy but not necessarily reducing peak demand. When sustainable building features are designed, constructed and operated efficiently, peak demand can be reduced so that there is less desire for electricity network expansion and there is less impact onto carbon emission and climate change. These sustainable features can be good orientation, sufficient indoor thermal mass, good insulation, photovoltaic panels, thermal or electrical energy storage systems, smart building (home) energy management systems. Cost and payoff The most criticized issue about constructing environmentally friendly buildings is the price. Photovoltaics, new appliances, and modern technologies tend to cost more money. Most green buildings cost a premium of <2%, but yield 10 times as much over the entire life of the building. In regards to the financial benefits of green building, "Over 20 years, the financial payback typically exceeds the additional cost of greening by a factor of 4-6 times. And broader benefits, such as reductions in greenhouse gases (GHGs) and other pollutants have large positive impacts on surrounding communities and on the planet." The stigma is between the knowledge of up-front cost vs. life-cycle cost. The savings in money come from more efficient use of utilities which result in decreased energy bills. It is projected that different sectors could save $130 billion on energy bills. Also, higher worker or student productivity can be factored into savings and cost deductions.Numerous studies have shown the measurable benefit of green building initiatives on worker productivity. In general it has been found that, "there is a direct correlation between increased productivity and employees who love being in their work space." Specifically, worker productivity can be significantly impacted by certain aspects of green building design such as improved lighting, reduction of pollutants, advanced ventilation systems and the use of non-toxic building materials. In "The Business Case for Green Building", the U.S. Green Building Council gives another specific example of how commercial energy retrofits increase worker health and thus productivity, "People in the U.S. spend about 90% of their time indoors. EPA studies indicate indoor levels of pollutants may be up to ten times higher than outdoor levels. LEED-certified buildings are designed to have healthier, cleaner indoor environmental quality, which means health benefits for occupants."Studies have shown over a 20-year life period, some green buildings have yielded $53 to $71 per square foot back on investment. Confirming the rentability of green building investments, further studies of the commercial real estate market have found that LEED and Energy Star certified buildings achieve significantly higher rents, sale prices and occupancy rates as well as lower capitalization rates potentially reflecting lower investment risk. Regulation and operation As a result of the increased interest in green building concepts and practices, a number of organizations have developed standards, codes and rating systems for use by government regulators, building professionals and consumers. In some cases, codes are written so local governments can adopt them as bylaws to reduce the local environmental impact of buildings. Green building rating systems such as BREEAM (United Kingdom), LEED (United States and Canada), DGNB (Germany), CASBEE (Japan), and VERDEGBCe (Spain), GRIHA (India) help consumers determine a structure's level of environmental performance. They award credits for optional building features that support green design in categories such as location and maintenance of building site, conservation of water, energy, and building materials, and occupant comfort and health. The number of credits generally determines the level of achievement.Green building codes and standards, such as the International Code Council's draft International Green Construction Code, are sets of rules created by standards development organizations that establish minimum requirements for elements of green building such as materials or heating and cooling. Some of the major building environmental assessment tools currently in use include: United States: International Green Construction Code (IGCC) Green neighborhoods and villages At the beginning of the 21st century, efforts were made to implement the principles of green building, not only for individual buildings, but also for neighborhoods and villages. The intent is to create zero energy neighborhoods and villages, which means they're going to create all the energy on their own. They will also reuse waste, implements sustainable transportation, and produce their own food. Green villages have been identified as a way to decentralize sustainable climate practices, which may prove key in areas with high rural or scattered village populations, such as India, where 74% of the population lives in over 600,000 different villages. International frameworks and assessment tools IPCC Fourth Assessment Report Climate Change 2007, the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is the fourth in a series of such reports. The IPCC was established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects and options for adaptation and mitigation.UNEP and Climate change United Nations Environment Program UNEP works to facilitate the transition to low-carbon societies, support climate proofing efforts, improve understanding of climate change science, and raise public awareness about this global challenge. GHG Indicator The Greenhouse Gas Indicator: UNEP Guidelines for Calculating Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Businesses and Non-Commercial Organizations Agenda 21 Agenda 21 is a programme run by the United Nations (UN) related to sustainable development. It is a comprehensive blueprint of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the UN, governments, and major groups in every area in which humans impact on the environment. The number 21 refers to the 21st century. FIDIC's PSM The International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) Project Sustainability Management Guidelines were created in order to assist project engineers and other stakeholders in setting sustainable development goals for their projects that are recognized and accepted by as being in the interests of society as a whole. The process is also intended to allow the alignment of project goals with local conditions and priorities and to assist those involved in managing projects to measure and verify their progress. The Project Sustainability Management Guidelines are structured with Themes and Sub-Themes under the three main sustainability headings of Social, Environmental and Economic. For each individual Sub-Theme a core project indicator is defined along with guidance as to the relevance of that issue in the context of an individual project. The Sustainability Reporting Framework provides guidance for organizations to use as the basis for disclosure about their sustainability performance, and also provides stakeholders a universally applicable, comparable framework in which to understand disclosed information. The Reporting Framework contains the core product of the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, as well as Protocols and Sector Supplements. The Guidelines are used as the basis for all reporting. They are the foundation upon which all other reporting guidance is based, and outline core content for reporting that is broadly relevant to all organizations regardless of size, sector, or location. The Guidelines contain principles and guidance as well as standard disclosures – including indicators – to outline a disclosure framework that organizations can voluntarily, flexibly, and incrementally, adopt. Protocols underpin each indicator in the Guidelines and include definitions for key terms in the indicator, compilation methodologies, intended scope of the indicator, and other technical references. Sector Supplements respond to the limits of a one-size-fits-all approach. Sector Supplements complement the use of the core Guidelines by capturing the unique set of sustainability issues faced by different sectors such as mining, automotive, banking, public agencies and others. IPD Environment Code The IPD Environment Code was launched in February 2008. The Code is intended as a good practice global standard for measuring the environmental performance of corporate buildings. Its aim is to accurately measure and manage the environmental impacts of corporate buildings and enable property executives to generate high quality, comparable performance information about their buildings anywhere in the world. The Code covers a wide range of building types (from offices to airports) and aims to inform and support the following; Creating an environmental strategy Inputting to real estate strategy Communicating a commitment to environmental improvement Creating performance targets Environmental improvement plans Performance assessment and measurement Life cycle assessments Acquisition and disposal of buildings Supplier management Information systems and data population Compliance with regulations Team and personal objectivesIPD estimate that it will take approximately three years to gather significant data to develop a robust set of baseline data that could be used across a typical corporate estate. ISO 21931 ISO/TS 21931:2006, Sustainability in building construction—Framework for methods of assessment for environmental performance of construction works—Part 1: Buildings, is intended to provide a general framework for improving the quality and comparability of methods for assessing the environmental performance of buildings. It identifies and describes issues to be taken into account when using methods for the assessment of environmental performance for new or existing building properties in the design, construction, operation, refurbishment and deconstruction stages. It is not an assessment system in itself but is intended be used in conjunction with, and following the principles set out in, the ISO 14000 series of standards. Development history In the 1960s, American architect Paul Soleri proposed a new concept of ecological architecture. In 1969, American architect Ian McHarg wrote the book "Design Integrates Nature", which marked the official birth of ecological architecture. In the 1970s, the energy crisis caused various building energy-saving technologies such as solar energy, geothermal energy, and wind energy to emerge, and energy-saving buildings became the forerunner of building development. In 1980, the World Conservation Organization put forward the slogan "sustainable development" for the first time. At the same time, the energy-saving building system was gradually improved, and it was widely used in developed countries such as Germany, Britain, France and Canada. In 1987, the United Nations Environment Program published the "Our Common Future" report, which established the idea of sustainable development. In 1990, the world's first green building standard was released in the UK. In 1992, because the "United Nations Conference on Environment and Development" promoted the idea of sustainable development, green buildings gradually became the direction of development. In 1993, the United States created the Green Building Association. In 1996, Hong Kong introduced green building standards. In 1999, Taiwan introduced green building standards. In 2000, Canada introduced green building standards. In 2005, Singapore initiated the "BCA Green Building Mark" In 2015, according to the Berkeley National Laboratory, China implemented the "Green Building Evaluation Standards" In 2021, the first, both low-cost and sustainable 3D printed house made out of a clay-mixture was completed Green building by country Green building in Australia Green building in Bangladesh Green building in Germany Green building in Israel Green building in South Africa Green building in the United Kingdom Green building in India Green building in the United States The Model home 2020 project: Denmark, Austria, Germany, France, UK See also References External links Sustainable Architecture at the Open Directory Project Prochorskaite A, Couch C, Malys N, Maliene V (2016) Housing Stakeholder Preferences for the "Soft" Features of Sustainable and Healthy Housing Design in the UK. Your home : Australia's guide to environmentally sustainable homes (6th ed.). Canberra, ACT: Australia. Dept. of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. 2021. ISBN 978-1-922125-78-1. The Sustainable house handbook : how to plan and build an affordable, energy-efficient and waterwise home for the future / Josh Byrne. - ISBN 9781743795828 . - Richmond, Vic. : Hardie Grant Books, 2020. Sustainable house / Michael Mobbs. - 2nd ed. - Sydney, NSW : UNSW Press, 2010. - ISBN 978-1-920705-52-7 Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) Renew : leading in sustainability Housing Industry Association. GreenSmart Awards. National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NaBERS)

environmental issues in southern africa

There are a range of environmental issues in Southern Africa, such as climate change, land, water, deforestation, land degradation, and pollution. The Southern Africa region itself, except for South Africa, produces less carbon emissions but is a recipient of climate change impacts characterized by changes in precipitation, extreme weather events and hot temperatures. Through an attempt of keeping up with the developing world and trying to meet the high demands of the growing population, Southern Africa has exhausted its many resources resulting in severe environmental damage. Southern Africa's log, and produce are the cores of their economy, and this region has become dependent on these resources. The continuous depleting and improper treatment of their natural resources have led Southern Africa to the state where they are. Background Southern Africa consists of countries such as: Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Lesotho is surrounded by South Africa (it is in the middle of South Africa). Some environmental issues that affect Southern Africa are: water pollution, air pollution, land degradation, solid waste pollution, and deforestation. The environmental damage affects not only the population's health, but also the species that live in the area, while also contributing to the worldwide issue of climate change. Water issues One of Southern Africa's biggest issues is the lack of clean water. According to The United Nations Convention on Climate Change on South Africa in 2000, the water around Africa is unevenly distributed, meaning that 60% of the water is situated in only 20% of the land. Less than 10% of Southern Africa's surface water is accessible and due to the fact that a majority of their groundwater lay under large rock formations, groundwater becomes difficult to access as well. Climate change and its attendant effects on temperature and precipitation may have an additional impact. Many Africans are moving to rural areas, adding to the already high demands for clean water and while demands are growing drastically, freshwater supplies remain limited. Adding to the high demands, Durban’s dam has decreased by 20% since 2010, and up to 30% of the water has either been stolen or given away illegally through international trading. “A review of water availability in 1996 estimated that the total average annual surface runoff was 150 million cubic metres, the maximum potential annual system yield was 33 290 million cubic metres, and total water annual requirements were 20 045 million cubic metres. Water requirements could increase by about 50% by 2030 (Department of Water and Forestry, 2000).”Although South Africa has of the best, cleanest water out of all the countries in Southern Africa, many don't have access to basic sanitation. A majority of Southern Africa's accessible water is unclean, making the water vulnerable for water transmitted diseases to exist. Water-borne diseases such as Hepatitis A and Hepatitis E increase, while some of the water become so unclean that diseases such as: Typhoid fever, Leptospirosis, Schistosomiasis, and Bilharzia are transmitted through water contact. Environmental pollution Water pollution Urbanization As the population of people moving to urbanized areas increase, the demands for food supply also grow. As a mean to keep up with these high demands, the use of fertilization and sewage contamination also incline. Chemicals found in fertilizers and sewage wastes can cause diseases , which is harmful to other species in the environment. Diseases increase which may cause illnesses such as: diarrhea, hayfever, skin rashes, vomiting, fevers, gastroenteritis, muscle and joint pains, and eye irritations. Oil spills South Africa is situated at the very tip of Southern Africa. This location causes South Africa to become very vulnerable to oil spills. High levels of oil is transported from the Middle East to Europe and America along the coast, making Southern African's water and ecosystem at risk to being severely damaged. It thus is prone to oil spill. Coal mining and how it affects the environment Coal mining is one of Southern Africa's main energy source, but it holds a huge negative impact on the land's water, air and soil quality. Acid mine drainage is the result of the excess coal mining that occurs. Sulphuric Acid is released from coal mining, and although the generalizing process is slow, the time it takes for the acid to neutralize is equally as slow. When clean, excess water is released from the rock masses that are broken through mining, it's mixed with the sulphuric acid causing the water to become toxic. This toxic, contaminated water kills plants and animals, while also dissolving aluminum and heavy minerals found in clean water (increasing toxicity level). Although rocks which contain calcium carbonate are able to neutralize the acidic water, Southern Africa does not have the rocks which contain these minerals. Air pollution Southern Africa experiences poor ambient and indoor air quality.In this developing region, low-grade fuels are used to meet high demands for food, and energy.During the winter, pollutants are trapped in the air due to the high pressure, and are unable to move or dissipate. In the summer, due to the low pressure, pollutants are dissipated through unstable circulation. Many women are also cooking indoors with fossil fuels, which is the main cause for the health problems in women and children. 75.2% of Southern Africa's energy come from Highveld Areas, where 5 of its 10 Eskom Power Stations are the largest in the world. Highveld areas are above sea level, making the oxygen level 20% less than the oxygen level in the coast. This results in an incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, and a severe nocturnal temperature inversion to occur; which results in smoke being trapped in the air 860 tons of SO2 is produced from 3 of their main power stations (Matla, Duvha and Arnot), “which exceeds the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) [exposure to particulate matter] standards of 180 mg.m-3 by 6 to 7 times during winter months (Annegarn et al. 1996 a,b)”. This high concentration of air pollution surround the area making it very dangerous to one's health. Littering With the increase of population, and an increase in people who are moving to urbanized areas, the number of solid waste produced is increasing. South Africa's Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism estimates that over half of the population of South Africa lack "adequate" solid waste treatment, instead, waste is often dumped, buried or burned. Soil degradation With the decrease in water and the high demands for agriculture, Southern Africa's land is becoming less fertile. Climate change is also causing an increase in water evaporation from the soil, making it very difficult for produce in Southern Africa. Africa itself is located in an area where climate is unpredictable, making them vulnerable to climate change and while Southern Africa is semi-arid, it puts them at risk for desertification. Desertification causes an increase in soil erosion, making it difficult for plants to grow. This will lead to unsustainable food, and endanger Southern Africa's wildlife. Through time, soil erosion will result in harvesting alien plants. Alien plants threaten indigenous plants and reduce grazing areas, which contributes to soil erosion.Southern Africa's land is already over cropped and over-grazed as a result of Africa's undistributed lands. With the combination of alien plants and the exhaustion of their lands, Southern Africa's degraded land is beyond repair. Many countries use the method of irrigation as a way to prevent desertification and droughts. Unfortunately, only 4% of Sub-Saharan Africa is equipped for irrigation. With the decrease in rainfall, and the lack of irrigation, Southern Africa's land and soil will soon become arid. See also Geography of South Africa Wildlife smuggling in southern Africa References External links Graph for the total primary energy supply in Africa in 2010 Graphs indicating South Africa's share of CO2 emissions

sustainable yield

The sustainable yield is a form of sustainability that refers to the maximum harvest that does not deplete or over-harvest where the renewable resource can not grow back. In the simplest terms, sustainable yield is the largest amount of resource that humans can take or use without causing damage or allowing for a decline to happen in the specific population. In more formal terms, the sustainable yield of natural capital is the ecological yield that can be extracted without reducing the base of capital itself, i.e. the surplus required to maintain ecosystem services at the same or increasing level over time. The term only refers to resources that are renewable in nature as extracting non-renewable resources will always diminish the natural capital. The sustainable yield of a given resource will generally vary over time with the ecosystem's needs to maintain itself, e.g. a forest that has recently suffered a blight or flooding or fire will require more of its own ecological yield to sustain and re-establish a mature forest. While doing so, the sustainable yield may be much less. The term sustainable yield is most commonly used in forestry, fisheries, and groundwater applications. A sustainable yield is calculated by the carrying capacity divided by 2. At half of the carrying capacity, the population can be harvested and quickly recover, allowing for more resources. Although this calculation seems easy, it is not because it is difficult to calculate the carrying capacity of a population in nature since it is almost always based on estimations. Importance Understanding sustainable yield is essential to nature since it indicates how much a population can produce and what humans can glean from without causing fundamental problems in the specie's population. If the population is harvested above its maximum sustainable yield, it can eventually risk extinction. Forestry Sustainable yield is an important component of sustainable forest management. In the forestry context it is the largest amount of harvest activity that can occur without degrading the productivity of the stock. The idea of sustainable yield of forests had shifted focus from only output, to include maintaining production capacity and maintaining the natural renewal capacity of forest vegetation. One of the first federal written laws to warrant that future generations will have a sufficient wood supply and regulate the wood harvest rate was the O & C Act. The O & C Act is a positive environmental impact since it helps maintain a viable, sustainable yield, and it ensures that trees will continue to be a significant part of the natural landscape everywhere and continue to supply wildlife habitats, carbon storage, and recreational activities. Fishery This concept is important in fishery management, in which sustainable yield is defined as the number of fish that can be extracted without reducing the base of fish stock, and the maximum sustainable yield is defined as the amount of fish that can be extracted under given environmental conditions. In fisheries, the basic natural capital or virgin population, must decrease with extraction. At the same time productivity increases. Hence, sustainable yield would be within the range in which the natural capital together with its production are able to provide satisfactory yield. It may be very difficult to quantify sustainable yield, because every dynamic ecological conditions and other factors not related to harvesting induce changes and fluctuations in both, the natural capital and its productivity. Groundwater Application In the case of groundwater there is a safe yield of water extraction per unit time, beyond which the aquifer risks the state of overdrafting or even depletion. Depletion of an aquifer, or a decline in groundwater levels has the potential to cause land subsidence which can cause sinkholes. In order to calculate this safe yield of water extraction in the area, a lot of considerations need to be taken into account. The first is the water budget, figuring out and understanding where water is used by humans, getting recharged, and being lost due to possible maintenance issues and natural phenomena. Another consideration is changing technology. Technology allows for possible gains in supply, for example, desalination technology, turning saltwater into drinking water. The other considerations include temporal, spatial, and monetary aspects, which all cause changes in the water system that change the amount of usable water. See also Sustainable yield in fisheries Maximum sustainable yield Hans Carl von Carlowitz, who pioneered the mathematics behind sustained yield with his 1713 treatise References == Notes ==

low-impact development (uk)

Low-impact development (LID) has been defined as "development which through its low negative environmental impact either enhances or does not significantly diminish environmental quality".The interplay between would-be developers and the UK planning authorities since the 1980s has led to a diversity of unique, locally adapted developments, often making use of natural, local and reclaimed materials in delivering highly affordable, low or zero carbon housing. These LIDs often strive to be self-sufficient in terms of waste management, energy, water and other needs.There are numerous examples of LIDs throughout the UK, and local and national authorities have come to recognise the need for the concept to be incorporated into planning strategies. Definition Low-impact development (LID), in the UK sense of the term, was described by Simon Fairlie, a former editor of The Ecologist magazine, in 1996 as: "development that through its low impact either enhances or does not significantly diminish environmental quality." Fairlie later wrote: "Neither the term nor the concept was new. People have been living low impact lifestyles in low impact buildings for centuries; indeed until very recently the majority of people in the world lived that way." In 2009 Fairlie revised his definition of a LID as: "development which, by virtue of its low or benign environmental impact, may be allowed in locations where conventional development is not permitted." He explained: "I prefer this revised definition because wrapped up in it is the main argument; that low impact buildings need not be bound by the restrictions necessary to protect the countryside from 'conventional' high impact development – a.k.a. suburban sprawl. There are two other principle arguments in favour of LID: (i) that some form of exception policy is necessary because conventional housing in a countryside protected from sprawl becomes too expensive for the people who work there; and (ii) soon we will all have to live more sustainable low impact lifestyles, so pioneers should be encouraged." Others have expanded on the definition. A study by the University of West England acknowledged that: "LID is usually integrally connected with land management and as much as describing physical development, LID also describes a form of livelihood." However, it also states that as LID is a "multi featured and intrinsically integrated form of development," a simple definition cannot capture the meaning of LID and goes on to develop "a detailed themed definition with detailed criteria."Dr Larch Maxey in 2013 held the main features of LID to be: locally adapted, diverse and unique based on renewable resources of an appropriate scale visually unobtrusive enhances biodiversity increases public access to open space generates little traffic linked to sustainable livelihoods co-ordinated by a management plan Examples England English LID examples include the Hockerton Housing Project (Nottinghamshire), Michael Buck's cob house in Oxfordshire, Landmatters (Devon) and Tinker's Bubble (Somerset).Transition Homes, currently under development in Transition Town Totnes, Devon, is an attempt to scale-up and mainstream LID by providing around 25 low cost, low carbon homes designed along permaculture principles. Residents will be allocated from the local housing needs register. Similarly, LILAC built in 2013 a 'Low Impact Living Affordable Community' of 20 homes and a common house in Bramley, Leeds, which was visited by Kevin McCloud and Mark Prisk, Minister of State for Housing and Local Government.BedZED (London) is another example of a larger scale LID, which was built in 2000–2002 and has 82 homes, however it is not as affordable as many of the above examples as it was partly designed to attract urban professionals. Scotland Findhorn Ecovillage has won a number of international awards. Steve James's Straw House, Dumfries was built for £4,000. Wales The House of the Future, Cardiff, completed in 2000, was originally a showcase of the latest green building technologies, and later transformed into an education centre. That Roundhouse (Brithdir Mawr, Newport, Pembrokeshire) was granted planning permission in 2008 with a review in 3 years. In West Wales, Lammas Ecovillage (near Crymych, Pembrokeshire) is a community of independent, off-grid households begun in 2009. Nearby Pwll Broga roundhouse is a development that was built without planning permission in 2012, refused retrospective planning permission in 2014, but granted permission in July 2015, having met the requirements of the Welsh government's One Planet Development (OPD) policy. From 2010 to 2019, 24 applications had been approved in Wales, with the majority in Pembrokeshire, but there has been criticism that the developments were not being properly monitored for compliance with OPD: in essence that "developers can show they can make a basic income off the land and provide all their own energy and water". According to the BBC, in 2019 there were 41 registered OPD dwellings in Wales, with a climate scientist claiming there was scope, in terms of available land, for up to 10,000 such developments.In 2017, the term "eco-hamlet" was used to describe Pentre Solar, a development of six houses at Glanrhyd, near Llantood, Pembrokeshire; using locally sourced timber, solar power and shared electric transport, the project was designed for local people on the council housing waiting list, and was supported by the Welsh Government. This was the first such project in Wales, and possibly in the UK, and was created by Western Solar, the company that established the first solar park in Wales, at Rhosygilwen, Rhoshill. Benefits Substantial research has concluded that LID represents some of the most innovative and sustainable development in the UK.LIDs have innovated and demonstrated sustainable solutions including low/zero carbon housing design, rainwater harvesting, renewable energy generation, waste minimisation and innovative forms of land management, including No/low-till farming, permaculture and agroforestry. LID has also shown a capacity to enhance local biodiversity and public access to local space, and to produce traffic movements far below the national average. This has been attributed to lift-sharing, to residents' greater use of public transport, walking and cycling and to the integration of local land based employment with other household activities. As the Welsh Assembly Government has noted, such "...Development therefore is not just describing a physical development. It is describing a way of living differently where there is a symbiotic relationship between people and land, making a reduction in environmental impacts possible". Constraints Over the years, there have been various struggles with planning authorities over LID in the UK. Tony Wrench spent over a decade fighting the planning authorities until he was granted planning permission for That Roundhouse. As Lisa Lewinsohn points out in her MSc thesis on LID, Tony Wrench and his partner Jane Faith have been "enforced against, fined, refused planning permission several times" while Lammas has "probably spent about £50,000 on the application process." Similarly, since 1986 Tir Penrhos Isaf has tried several times to get planning permission and only succeeded in December 2006, twenty years after their first planning application was submitted. The residents of Tir Penrhos Isaf consider: "that current planning and building legislation represent some of the greatest obstacles to developing sustainable systems in Britain. The legislation favours those who already have land and property, actively encourages the squandering of resources and environmental degradation and actively discourages movements towards low impact, sustainable development." Government policy The extensive research interest in LID, backed up by the practical examples of the existing LIDs, has led to a growing number of planning policies in the UK designed to allow for LIDs. and the Welsh Assembly Government's One Planet Development policy (OPD) which is supported by the independent One Planet Council. The first development to receive permanent planning permission under the One Planet scheme was Nant-y-Cwm, near Caerphilly. The criteria for OPD in Wales include the requirement that 65% of all subsistence, or 30% of food and 35% of livelihood, come from the land. See also Degrowth Diggers and Dreamers Ecovillage Radical Routes References Further reading Bird, Chris. Local Sustainable Homes – How to make them happen in your community. Green Books, 2010 [1] ISBN 9781900322768 Cotterell, Jane & Dadeby, Adam. The Passivhaus Handbook: A practical guide to constructing and retrofitting buildings for ultra-low-energy performance. Green Books, 2012. [2] ISBN 9780857840196 Evans, Ianto; Smith, Michael; Smiley, Linda. The Hand Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage. Green Books, 2010 [3] ISBN 9781890132347 Jones, Barbara. Building with Straw Bales: A Practical Guide for the UK and Ireland. Green Books, 2009. [4] ISBN 9781900322515 Wimbush, Paul. Experience, Implications and Potential of Low Impact Development in Wales. University of Wales, Newport [5] Wrench, Tony. Building a Low Impact Roundhouse. Permanent Publications, 2007. [6] ISBN 9781856230421 External links Low-impact developments The Landmatters co-operative, Devon LILAC – Low-Impact Living Affordable Community, Yorkshire Tir Penrhos Isaf, Permaculture holding, Gwyedd, Wales Simon Dale's houses, Wales Steward Community Woodland, Devon Cae Mabon, Eco Retreat Centre, Snowdonia Keveral Farm, Cornwall Down to Earth, Gower LAND Centres, Permaculture Association – a list of publicly accessible land-based Permaculture projects in the UK A map of LAND Centres in the UK – maintained by Permaculture Magazine Supporting organisations and resources The Ecological Land Co-operative – supporting and enabling low-impact development in the UK LILI – The Low Impact Living Initiative – a non-profit network of those involved with LID One Wales : One Planet : The Sustainable Development Scheme of the Welsh Assembly Government Does Welsh National Planning Policy effectively address Low Impact Development in the open countryside? – Paper by Louise Kulbicki The Role of Scientific Knowledge and Other knowledge Types in Grassroots Sustainability Initiatives: An Exploratory Case Study of a Low Impact Development Eco-village in Wales – MSc thesis by Karolina Rietzler The Land Magazine Permaculture Magazine Living in the Future – 50-minute documentary film telling the story of the "UK's first planned ecoVillage, Lammas." Living in the Future website – A video series about Ecovillages – community and low impact living

environmental issues in thailand

Thailand's dramatic economic growth has caused numerous environmental issues. The country faces problems with air, declining wildlife populations, deforestation, soil erosion, water scarcity, and waste issues. According to a 2004 indicator, the cost of air and water pollution for the country scales up to approximately 1.6–2.6% of GDP per year. As such, Thailand's economic growth has come at great cost in damage to its people and environment. Thailand's Twelfth National Economic and Social Development Plan (2017-2021) warns that, "At present the country's natural resources and environmental quality are deteriorating, and have become a weakness in maintaining the basis of production, services and sustainable living. A large volume of the natural resources stock has been utilized for development, resulting in their continuous degradation. The forests have been depleted, the soil has become infertile, and biodiversity has been threatened. While exhibiting a future risk of water shortages, the existing supply of water has not been able to meet the demands of the various sectors. Conflicts over the use of natural resources stem from the unfair allocation of access and exploitation. Moreover, environmental problems have risen along with economic growth and urbanization. All of these problems have affected the quality of life and have added greater economic costs.": 14–15, 132 Climate change Deforestation Forest cover in Thailand has been greatly reduced as people convert forested land to agriculture, or misappropriate public lands for private use, with related estimates varying. The Sueb Nakhasathien Foundation reports that 53% of Thailand was covered by forest in 1961, but that forested areas had shrunk to 31.6% in 2015. An estimate by the World Wildlife Fund concluded that between 1973 and 2009, Thailand's forests declined by 43%. During the period 2001–2012, Thailand lost one million hectares of forest, while restoring 499,000 hectares. Between 1990 and 2005, Thailand lost 9.1% of its forest cover, or around 1,445,000 hectares. As of 2016, Thailand has an average annual deforestation rate of 0.72%. Wetlands have been converted to rice paddies and urban sprawl. With government measures in place to prohibit logging, deforestation rates have dropped, but the impacts of deforestation are still being felt.Thai government numbers show an increase in the extent of Thai forests. Figures from the Center for Agricultural Information of Thailand's Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives show an increase in the extent of Thailand's forested area over the period 2006-2015 (from 99 million rai to 103 million rai), with decreases in every other type of land use. In 2019, the Forest Department said that forest cover has steadily increased due to its anti-encroachment measures under the regime's reclaim forest land policy. According to the department, the country's forest areas in 2018 covered 102.4 million rai, a 330,000-rai increase from the previous year. The increase, equivalent to an area the size of Phuket, increases forest coverage to 31.58% of the country's total land.In early-2017, the government reaffirmed its 1975 commitment to increase its forest cover to 40% within 20 years. The aim was to have "conserved forests" blanket 25% of the nation and 15% blanketed by "commercial forests". To achieve this goal in 2018, Thailand would need to convert 27 million rai into forests. Thailand has three square meters of green area per capita. Singapore has 66 m2 per capita and Malaysia, 44 m2.In November 1988, heavy rains washed away the soil of newly deforested slopes, causing massive floods. Villages and agricultural land were swamped, and almost 400 people and thousands of domestic animals were killed. The Thai government banned logging on 14 January 1989, revoking all logging concessions. Consequences included the price of timber tripling in Bangkok, in turn increasing illegal logging.In June 2015, as a severe drought gripped northeastern Thailand, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha urged farmers to forgo a second rice crop in order to save water. He attributed the drought to massive deforestation. At least 26 million rai (4.2m ha) of forested land, especially forests in the mountainous north, had been denuded, according to the prime minister, who said that forests were needed for the generation of rainfall.In July 2015, a Bangkok Post editorial summed up Thailand's forestry issues: "Forests have rapidly declined under state policies over the past four decades. Factors include logging, mining, anti-insurgency strategies, promotion of cash crops on the highlands, construction of big dams and promotion of the tourism industry. Corruption is also deep-rooted in forestry bureaucracy." Valuable hardwood tree species, such as Siamese Rosewood, are being extracted illegally for sale, mostly to the Chinese furniture market. These trees are so valuable that poachers are armed and are prepared fight forest rangers. Both rangers and poachers have been killed in gunfights. The rates of logging now threaten the Siamese Rosewood with extinction within 10 years, according to Al Jazeera in 2014. Mangroves and beach erosion Deforestation creates a host of environmental problems: soil erosion, sedimentation of rivers, and loss of natural habitat. Wetlands and mangroves in coastal areas have been seriously degraded by expansion of commercial fishing, shrimp aquaculture, industry, and tourism, causing much of Thailand's biodiversity losses. Mangrove wetlands are among the leading habitats in carbon sequestration, and degradation of these habitats poses risks to global carbon accumulation. They are hypothesized to dampen the intensity of tsunami force, which would protect both human and biodiversity interests. It is estimated that Thailand in 1961 had 3,500 km2 of mangrove forests. By 2004 that number was less than 2,000 km2 according to the Thai government.According to Thailand's deputy transport minister, some of Thailand's attractive beaches may be lost within ten years. "If we don't do anything, there will be no attractive beaches left", he said. The marine department, part of the transport ministry, manages Thailand's 3,000 km of shoreline in 23 coastal provinces. Some 670 km of shoreline exhibits severe erosion, with land being lost to the sea at a rate of more than five metres per year. To combat erosion, sections of Pattaya Beach in Chonburi Province are being topped up with more than 300,000 m3 of sand at a cost of 429 million baht. A two kilometer stretch of Chalatat Beach in Songkhla is being restored at a cost of 300 million baht.Thailand had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.00/10, ranking it 88th globally out of 172 countries.While conservationists have advocated for creation of marine protected areas in mangrove forests, coastal communities in Thailand are concerned these protections may interfere with their economic growth. Mangroves provide these communities with profit opportunities, mainly through agriculture and tourism practices including the operation of rubber plantations, aquaculture, and fishing. The Thailand central government has enacted stricter, community-based mangrove restoration laws which shift emphasis from regulating mangrove removal to promoting mangrove conservation. This initiative provides flexibility for local government to approach mangrove conservation efforts as they see fit, which has proved successful for communities in the Phuket, Phang Nga, and Trang provinces. Communities without the financial means to enact these recent policy changes rely on private entities to fund restoration efforts. Another solution to satisfy environmental and economic concerns may be payment for ecosystem services (PES), a method of conservation that incentivizes sustainable environmental practices. PES helps support communities transitioning to sustainable practices, however a lack of funding challenges wide scale support for PES and its implementation. Air pollution The World Bank estimates that deaths in Thailand attributable to air pollution have risen from 31,000 in 1990 to roughly 49,000 in 2013. Industrial growth has created high levels of air pollution in Thailand. Vehicles and factories contribute to air pollution, particularly in Bangkok, which experienced high levels of air pollution in the winter of 2019. Recent research (2019) points to agricultural burning as the root cause of PM 2.5 pollution in Thailand. PM 2.5 is a measurement of particulates in the atmosphere smaller than 2.5 microns. The Bangkok metropolitan region, which consists of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) and the four surrounding provinces (Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani, Nakhon Pathom, and Samut Prakan), holds about 20% of the national population and over half of the country's factories. Due to a lack of treatment facilities, increasing volumes of hazardous substances generated by industrial activities have caused serious dumping issues. Unless treatment facilities are built and institutions starts to regulate strictly, environmental contamination caused by hazardous waste threatens to become Thailand's worst environmental problem in the future.Thailand's Pollution Control Department (PCD) and other agencies have developed standards in order to reduce air pollution. The standards focus on shifting to lower-emissions vehicle engines and improving public transportation. In 1999, 80% of the motorcycles on the road in Bangkok had environmentally unfriendly two-stroke engines. Diesel trucks and buses also contribute many pollutants. In most areas of the country, air pollutants for vehicles are now within acceptable levels according to national standards.Factories and power plants have been required to reduce emissions. In 2002, Bangkok and the rest of the central region contributed between 60 and 70% of the country's industrial emissions. Most power plants rely on burning fossil fuels. Other sources of air pollution include garbage burning, open cooking, and agricultural burning practices, including deliberate forest fires.Agricultural burning in Southeast Asia often creates haze. In 2003 Thailand ratified the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution to reduce the haze from forest fires, but issues throughout the region are still common. Wildfires are started by local farmers during the dry season in northern Thailand for a variety of purposes, with February and March as the two months when conditions are at their worst. In research conducted between 2005 and 2009 in Chiang Mai, average PM10 rates during these months were found to be well above the country's safety level of 120 μg/m3 (microgrammes per cubic metre), peaking at 383 μg/m3 on 14 March 2007. They are the main cause of the intense air pollution in the Thai highlands and contribute to the floods in the country by completely denuding forest undergrowth. The dry forest soil leads to lower water intake for trees to extract when the rains arrive.In February 2016, Director-General Chatchai Promlert of the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department, said that the haze affecting northern Thailand has reached levels that can be considered harmful to health. He said that the Pollution Control Department had reported that the levels of particulates measuring less than 10 micrometres—known as PM10—had crossed the prescribed safe threshold of 120 in four out of nine provinces where monitoring was conducted. The level of PM10 in the nine regions—Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, Lampang, Lamphun, Mae Hong Son, Nan, Phrae, Phayao and Tak—was measured at between 68 and 160. The haze level was considered unhealthy in Chiang Mai, Lampang, Lamphun, and Phrae Provinces.During the burning season 2016 (February–April), air pollution has shown no improvement despite the government's purported efforts to ameliorate the burning. The Mae Sai District of Chiang Rai Province recorded a record 410 μg/m3 of harmful air particles in the early morning of 25 March 2016.From January–July 2016 the five Thai cities with the highest annual average concentrations of PM2.5 were Chiang Mai, Lampang (Mae Moh), Khon Kaen, Bangkok and Ratchaburi. Seven out of the eleven cities measured (63.6%) did not reach the National Ambient Air Quality Standard annual limit of 25 μg/m3 for PM2.5 and all 11 cities measured did not reach the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline annual limit of 25 μg/m3. Thailand's national air quality standards are weak when compared to WHO recommendations. In the first six months of 2017, Greenpeace Thailand monitored PM2.5 in 14 provinces, as they have done since 2015, and found that every station recorded levels higher than the WHO recommendation of less than 10 milligrams per cubic meter of air. PM2.5 refers to airborne particulates smaller than 2.5 microns, particles so small that they can be inhaled into the blood system and cause cancer and heart disease. Chiang Mai, Tak, Khon Kaen, Bangkok, and Saraburi were among the worst cities with the highest PM2.5 levels in 2017.In February 2018 and 2019, Bangkok suffered under a haze of smog and ultra-fine dust. The Pollution Control Department issued warnings that particulate levels had soared to 94 micrograms per cubic metre of air in some areas, almost double the safe limit of 50 mcg. Residents were urged to wear N95 or KN95 protective dust masks. Bangkok City Hall reassured residents that conditions will "permanently improve" in 11 years (2029) with the launch of many new and improved modes of public transport. Bangkok City Hall failed to mention that it is constructing 1,047 km of new roads due to be completed by 2029 or that in the decade 2008 to 2018 the number of cars registered in Bangkok rose from 5.9 million to 10.2 million. In January 2019, Bangkok authorities employed cloud seeding to ease air pollution in parts of the city. That month, high-pressure cannons were blasted around Bangkok's City Hall and other areas to combat the smog, leading to debate as to whether the method was effective at washing away the particularly harmful smaller particles. In January 2020, a National Institute for Development Administration survey showed that "81% of the 1,256 local residents questioned agreed that the [Thai] government" was ineffective at solving Bangkok's air pollution, with 2.7% of respondents approving the government's efforts. Field and forest burning Fires in Thailand fall into three main categories: forest fires, agricultural burning, and roadside burning.Forest fires are set deliberately, as they are thought to increase forest product yields, especially the earth star mushroom (Astraeus hygrometricus (Pers.) Morgan; เห็ดถอบ hed thob or เห็ดเผาะ hed phor in Thai), which has seasonal availability and a high market price. In order to collect these fungi, local farmers use fire either to clear the forest floor to make it easier to find the mushroom or because fire is thought to stimulate the growth of this mushroom. The burning of agricultural fields and forested areas in Southeast Asia is a yearly event, mainly during the "burning season", January through March. It is particularly widespread in the northern and northeastern provinces of Thailand. Northern Thailand has the highest rates of lung cancer in the country. The incidence of other chest diseases and cardiac conditions is also high.According to the Bangkok Post, corporations in the agricultural sector, not farmers, are the biggest contributors to smoke pollution. The main source of the fires is forested area being cleared to make room for new crops. The new crops to be planted after the smoke clears are not rice and vegetables to feed locals. A single crop is responsible: maize. The haze problem began in 2007 and has been traced at the local level and at the macro-market level to the growth of the animal feed business. "The true source of the haze ... sits in the boardrooms of corporations eager to expand production and profits. A chart of Thailand's growth in world corn markets can be overlaid on a chart of the number of fires. It is no longer acceptable to scapegoat hill tribes and slash-and-burn agriculture for the severe health and economic damage caused by this annual pollution." These data have been ignored by the government. The end is not in sight, as the number of fires has increased every year for a decade, and data show more pollution in late-February 2016 than in late-February 2015.Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group, Thailand's largest agro-industrial and food conglomerate, and the leading purchaser of northern maize, in March 2016 announced an "agricultural social enterprise" to steer Nan Province's Pua District villagers away from maize farming. CP Group has incurred criticism for the way it purchases maize harvests for animal feed from farmers in Nan and other provinces. Suphachai Chearavanont, vice-chairman of CP Group, said that corn planters will be encouraged to grow cash crops such as coffee, which requires less farmland and makes a higher profit than maize. Not only will this address deforestation, he said, but it will also help reduce the spring haze in the north which is caused by slash-and-burn practices to prepare land for the next maize season. Chearavanont said crops like coffee take about 3½ years to show a yield, but stated that CP Group would stand by farmers and provide assistance in the meantime.The Thai government has encouraged farmers to abandon rice farming and cultivate sugarcane instead. As a consequence, fields planted in sugarcane have soared from 6.8 million rai in harvest year 2008–2009 to 11.5 million rai in 2017–2018. Sugarcane fields are a major locus of open fires. Despite anti-burning regulations, 66% of the sugarcane that entering processing mills in 2019 had been burned prior to harvesting."Cheap and fast" is a shorthand explanation for the intentional use of fire to clear overgrown roadsides and open areas. Cattle herders also burn areas to stimulate the growth of Imperata grass which is able to quickly produce new leaves during the hot-dry season. New leaves produced on burnt areas have a higher nutrient value, which is perfect for cattle grazing. Roadside fires are set to clear vegetation from encroaching on roadways. Fires produce large amounts of smoke which stagnates low lying areas, causing eye irritation and respiratory ailments. Large areas of degraded forest are destroyed by fire each year. Fisheries Overfishing In 1950, the newly constituted Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimated that, globally, Thailand was catching about 20 million metric tons of fish (cod, mackerel, tuna) and invertebrates (lobster, squid, clams). That catch peaked at 90 million tons per year in the late-1980s, and it has been declining ever since. Thailand is no exception to this decline, despite having had 57,141 fishing vessels and more than 300,000 people employed by the fishing industry. According to the Thai Department of Fisheries, Thailand had 11,000 registered trawlers and "about" 2,000 illegal trawlers (2016). In 2018 Thailand completed its first-ever census of fishing boats permitted to catch fish in Thai waters: 10,743.The sheer number of Thai fishing vessels is a key contributor to overfishing. Even the president of the Thai Tuna Industry Association (TTIA), Chanintr Chalisarapong, acknowledges this. "You don't need to be a scientist to know that we're overfishing,..." said Chalisarapong. "We have to stop building new boats. Catch has to come from local fishermen using pole and line methods....We need to have less [sic] boats and less gear." Thailand has made progress in this area: As of February 2018 Thailand's fishing fleet numbers 38,956, down from 50,023 in 2015, a 22% reduction.Thailand is a peninsular country of 514,000 km2 with over 3,565 km of coastline, 2,700 km on the Gulf of Thailand and 865 km on the Andaman Sea. Its exclusive economic zone extends over 306,000 km2. Historically, fish from Thailand's off-shore waters have been a significant provider of protein to the population. In 2001, the average yearly fish consumption was 32.4 kg per capita and provided on average 10–14 grams of protein per capita per day. It provides 40.5% of animal protein sources and 17.6% of total protein. Consumption of fish is almost certainly higher than reported as many fish are caught by smallholders and consumed without passing through the marketplace. But numbers are dwindling: small-scale fishers were able to catch up to eight times as much fish in the 1980s than possible in the 2000s.Thailand's marine fish resources are over-exploited. Thailand's marine capture averaged 2,048,753 tonnes from 2003 to 2012; in 2014 the catch was 1,559,746 tonnes, a decrease of 23.9%.: 11  The catch per unit of effort (CPUE) has decreased markedly.: 1  Average catches in Thai waters have fallen by 86% since the industry's large expansion in the 1960s. In 2014, Thailand was 12th in the world (of 215 nations) (1=worst, 215=best) in terms of fish species at risk (96 species).The over-exploitation of fish stocks in Thailand has led to the creation of a huge aquaculture industry, human trafficking to man fishing vessels voyaging ever further out to sea, and the depletion of "trash fish" as well as marketable juvenile fish to feed the increasing demand for fish meal for farmed shrimp. The wisdom of using captured fish to feed domesticated fish is dubious, according to a researcher. "Using fishmeal in aquaculture,...is not ecologically sustainable because we are still relying on wild-caught fish as an input for farmed fish, so producing more farmed fish as a solution to food security does not lessen the pressure on wild-caught fish."A twelve-month analysis of the catch composition, landing patterns, and biological aspects of sharks caught by Thai commercial fishing boats in the Andaman Sea off Thailand showed a significant difference from the results of a similar study done in 2004. Sixty-four species were observed in the 2004 study, but only 17 in the most recent. Largely absent were slow-growing, late–maturing, low-fecundity species. Their absence suggests that the populations of these groups of apex predators may be close to collapse.Thai surimi production has fallen from around 100,000 tonnes in 2012 to just over 52,000 tonnes in 2017. Fish prices for the species from which tropical surimi is typically made—itoyori, eso, flying fish, sea bream, and ribbonfish—are rising in spite of stable low wages. Surimi expert Jae Park of Oregon State University says of Thai surimi fish: "They're overharvested, they're really overharvested".One response of the government has been a program to buy back 1,300 sub-standard trawlers to reduce overfishing. Thailand has 10,500 registered commercial trawlers. The 1,300 boats to be purchased by the government failed licensing standards after the government imposed more stringent, environmentally friendly laws. The cabinet in December 2017 approved the buyback to pacify boat owners. Buyback costs are equivalent to 40,000 baht per gross ton, equating to 400,000 baht to 2.4 million baht per boat. As of August 2018 the government has not disbursed buyback funds. The National Fisheries Association of Thailand says its members will stop fishing unless the government pays for the 1,300 decommissioned trawlers. On 3 August 2018, the Fisheries Department announced that it would buy-back 680 unlicensed fishing boats for three billion baht.Climate change poses a serious threat to the sustainability of the fisheries industry in the ASEAN region including Thailand. Illegal fishing On 21 April 2015 the European Commission threatened Thailand, the third-largest seafood exporter in the world, with a trade ban if it did not take action on illegal fishing. The EU, the world's largest importer of fish products, since 2010 has taken action against countries that do not follow international overfishing regulations, such as policing their waters for unlicensed fishing vessels and imposing penalties to deter illegal fishing. Thailand has failed to certify the origin and legality of its fish exports to the EU and now has six months, until October 2015, to implement a satisfactory action plan to address the shortcomings. EU fisheries commissioner Karmenu Vella declared that, "Analyzing what is actually happening in Thailand, we noticed that there are no controls whatsoever, there are no efforts whatsoever." The EU imported 145,907 tons of fish products worth €642 million from Thailand in 2014. In the view of the Bangkok Post, "The [Thai] fisheries bureaucracy's record is extremely shabby, resulting in a breakdown in state regulation of commercial trawlers. Fisheries officials are also known to have cozy relationships with trawler operators."In a press release dated 21 April 2016, the European Commission updated its assessment of Thailand's progress, saying, "The dialogue is proving difficult and there remain serious concerns about the steps taken by Thailand to fight IUU [illegal, unreported and unregulated] fishing activities. This means that further action by the Commission cannot be ruled out. A meeting with the Thai authorities in May [2016] will be a new opportunity for them to show their good will and commitment." In addition to Thailand's illegal fishing concerns, what is often overlooked are abusive labor practices. The labor abuses, often referred to as sea slavery, involve the trafficking of workers onto fishing boats quite frequently in the form of force, fraud, or coercion, including debt bondage. The problem of sea slavery is connected to environmental concerns in this and other fleets because overfishing of near-shore stocks have caused a collapse in the number of fish, resulting in fishing boats needing to go further out at sea to catch bare minimum quotas. The price of venturing further from shore has given rise to a dependence on forced debt bonded or captive labor as a cost-saving measure. Fishing practices The Thai Department of Marine and Coastal Resources reported that the deaths of "400 rare marine animals" in 2017 were due to destructive fishing practices and equipment. Of the death toll, 57% were sea turtles, 38% dolphins and whales, and five percent dugongs. Fishing gear was the major cause, followed by disease and pollution. The death toll has hovered around 400 for three consecutive years and represents less than 10% of the 5,000 rare species found in Thailand's territorial waters. The department estimates that there are around 2,000 dolphins and whales, 3,000 sea turtles, and 250 dugongs living in Thai waters. All are protected as rare species.Sharks were once common in Thai waters. Marine scientists now say that they may be close to collapse. Researchers examined bycatch on returning fishing boats at several Thai ports over a year. They discovered a sharp decline in the shark population. They also noted shifts in population composition compared to a previous study in 2004. They managed to count 2,123 sharks, and recorded only 17 species, compared with 64 species reported in 2004. In Thailand, sharks are often caught as bycatch when other species are being targeted. Bycatch in Thailand is largely unregulated, leaving, for example, only about 100 whale sharks in Thai waters, according to the Department of Coastal and Marine Resources. Thailand has been attempting to protect the species following an international commitment, the "International Plan of Action for Conservation and Management of Sharks", initiated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It has been developing the "National Plan of Action for Conservation and Management of Sharks", but it is not yet implemented as of 2018.The period from 2012 to 2016 saw Thailand export 22,467 tons of shark fins, the primary ingredient in shark fin soup—a Chinese dish signifying wealth and privilege—making it the world's leading exporter. As of 2017, 52 nations have implemented some form of ban on shark finning or fishing. Twelve countries have banned shark fishing altogether. But Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand still permit shark fishing. A study commissioned by WildAid, found that 57% of urban Thais have consumed shark fin at some point and 61% plan to consume shark fin in the future. More than 100 Bangkok restaurants serve shark fin soup Waste management When Thailand was a rural, agrarian society, garbage was of no concern as everything was made of natural products such as banana leaves. Waste could be discarded to decompose naturally. Today, according to one observer, "...it would not be an exaggeration to say that every locality in the country is...mired in its own garbage." Thailand's Pollution Control Department (PCD) estimates that each Thai produces a daily average of 1.15 kg of solid waste, amounting to over 73,000 tonnes daily nationwide. According to Interior Ministry statistics, refuse nationwide in 2016 amounted to 27 million tonnes, up about 0.7% from the previous year. Of this, 4.2 million tonnes was generated in Bangkok. Thailand had 2,490 dump sites in 2014, but only 466 of them were of sanitary landfill caliber. Twenty-eight million tonnes of waste were left unprocessed. Bangkok's canals are awash in sewage, but also serve as dump sites. After recent severe flooding, tonnes of refuse blocked water gates, preventing drainage. At one water gate, more than five tonnes of debris had accumulated, consisting of everything from everyday consumer product waste to large items such as mattresses and furniture. Organic waste The PCD estimates that in 2017 organic waste collected by municipalities across Thailand accounted for nearly two-thirds of the country's total waste output: a reported 7.6 million tonnes— 64%—of the refuse collected was organic waste. It is thought that a significant portion of this waste is not merely fruit and vegetable peelings, but edible surplus food. This in a nation where 400,000 to 600,000 children may be undernourished due to poverty, yet ten percent of all children are obese. Prevailing attitudes do not encompass composting or waste sorting: 64 percent of the Thai population do not sort their rubbish according to one study. Plastic waste As of 2015, Thailand generated two million tonnes of plastic waste. One quarter of that (500,000 tonnes) is reused. Thais throw away 45 billion single-use plastic bags per year, 12% of all household waste. Wet markets are the source of 18 billion plastic bags. Grocery and department stores each account for 13.5 billion bags.Thailand's Pollution Control Department (PCD) estimates that plastic waste in the country is increasing at an annual rate of 12%, or around two million tonnes per year. And yet, Thailand imported 480,000 tonnes of plastic garbage from abroad in 2018, and is set to import an additional 220,000 tonnes before existing contracts expire in September 2020.Increasingly, plastic is the scourge of Bangkok's network of storm water pumping stations, clogging pumps during seasonal downpours and regularly turning thoroughfares into muddy rivers. Thailand is considered to be one of the world's largest consumers of plastic bags. Government figures suggest that the average Thai uses eight plastic bags a day. In contrast, the average person in France uses around 80 a year. In a 2015 report, the conservation group Ocean Conservancy estimated that just five countries—China, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand—were responsible for over half of plastic waste dumped into the ocean. Mr Narong Ruengsri, head of Bangkok's drainage department, said removing plastic from the canals and drainage system is a constant battle. "Every day we go fish out around 2,000 tons of waste from the drainage channels," he told AFP. Official figures show the 11,500 tonnes of garbage Bangkok produces each day, at least one tonne of which is plastic, is growing by 10% a year. Officially, only 16% is recycled.The PCD estimates that Thailand consumes 4.4 billion plastic water bottles per year. Sixty percent of containers are capped with plastic wrap covering the cap, an unnecessary feature in the eyes of the PCD and due to be phased out by 2019. The cap seals alone contribute 520 tonnes of plastic per year to the environment. In February 2018 the PCD reached agreement with five leading water bottlers to cease using plastic cap seals by 1 April 2018, with all other bottlers to follow by 2019. The Environment Ministry claims that Thailand's 24 coastal provinces produce 10 million tonnes of waste per year. Ten percent of that finds its way into the sea.In February 2017, a 10 kilometer-long patch of plastic refuse was found floating off Chumphon Province. The Thai Marine and Coastal Resources Department has noted that at least 300 sea animals on average—60 per cent of which are whales and dolphins—die from eating plastic fishing gear and trash each year. Filter feeding invertebrates tested off the coast of Chonburi Province showed high levels of microplastics, leading the authors to warn that, "Health risks are possible when people consume these contaminated marine organisms, particularly shellfish."In May 2018 a juvenile pilot whale in southern Thailand beached and died. An autopsy revealed the creature had consumed 80 plastic bags weighing eight kilograms. A rescue attempt failed to save the whale. A marine biologist from Kasetsart University, said the bags made it impossible for the whale to eat any nutritious food. "If you have 80 plastic bags in your stomach, you die," he said. At least 300 marine animals including pilot whales, sea turtles and dolphins perish each year in Thai waters after ingesting plastic.In June 2018, all Thai governmental agencies committed to reducing use of plastic. The move followed Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha's 17 April order for the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to mount a campaign for reduced use of plastic. Its goal is to halve the amount of plastic ocean waste Thailand produces by 2027. In 2017, the Thai government said that it might tax plastic bags. An "endless debate" ensued in government, but no action. Petrochemical firms maintain that plastic is not an issue if it is reused and recycled. Thai exports of polyethylene pellets and plastic goods amounted to 430 billion baht or five percent of total Thai exports in 2017 according to the Thai Plastic Industries Association. Finally, a ban on single-use plastic bags at major retailers was enacted to take effect on 1 January 2020. The ban exempts, until 2021, the 40% of total volume of single-use bags used at wet markets and restaurants. Bag manufacturers have cried foul, arguing that the solution to plastic pollution is proper disposal of bags and recycling. To make matters worse for the manufacturers, eight TV channels signed an agreement with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment on 2 January 2020 to blur images and footage of single-use plastic bags on-screen, as is done in Thailand for firearms, cigarettes, and alcohol.In 2018, the Thai government awakened fully to the dangers of plastic pollution. The Thai Cabinet banned the use of plastic bags and Styrofoam food containers on the premises of state agencies. Concurrently, the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation launched a program to ban plastic bags, Styrofoam containers, plastic cutlery, and plastic straws in Thailand's 154 national parks. Park vendors may not use plastics and park visitors will be prohibited from bringing single-use plastic items into the parks.In April 2019 the Thai Cabinet approved the "Plastic Waste Management Road Map 2018-2030". The plan prohibits the use of microbeads, cap seals, and OXO-degradable plastics by the end of 2019. Four single-use plastics to be prohibited by 2022 are lightweight plastic bags less than 36 microns thick, Styrofoam takeaway food containers, plastic cups, and plastic straws. All plastic used in Thailand by 2027 is to be recycled plastic.On World Environment Day 2019, 5 June, the Pollution Control Department (PCD) said that the first year of the country's effort to reduce plastic waste has been a success. It claimed an 80% reduction in the plastic wrap used to keep dust off plastic water bottle caps. The Environment Ministry has created a National Roadmap to Tackle Plastic Waste, 2018-2030. PCD data shows that 0.5 million tonnes of plastic waste in Thailand was recycled in 2018 of the total two million tonnes of plastic waste generated.In April 2019, Marium, an abandoned and ailing baby dugong washed up on a beach in southern Thailand. She was found to be suffering from an infection exacerbated by ingesting plastic waste. Overnight, she became the nation's sweetheart. Authorities did everything in their power to save her. In August, she died. Within a day the environment minister announced a national dugong conservation master plan named "Marium Action". Marium's body would be preserved for educational and awareness-raising purposes and 17 August was proposed as National Dugong Day. New dudong conservation zones were proposed. The prime minister pledged to "leave no one behind, including animals". In the same appearance, the prime minister delayed a ban on single-use plastic bags until 2022.Finally, a ban on single-use plastic bags at major retailers was enacted. taking effect on 1 January 2020. The ban exempts, until 2021, the 40% of total volume of single-use bags used at wet markets and restaurants. Bag manufacturers have cried foul, arguing that the solution to plastic pollution is proper disposal of bags and recycling. To make matters worse for the manufacturers, eight TV channels signed an agreement with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment on 2 January 2020 to blur images and footage of single-use plastic bags on-screen, as is done in Thailand for firearms, cigarettes, and alcohol. Concomitantly, Thailand imported 480,000 tonnes of plastic garbage from abroad in 2018, and is set to import an additional 220,000 tonnes before existing contracts expire in September 2020. Between 2014 and 2018 Thailand imported 906,521 tonnes of plastic from 81 countries, according to the Commerce Ministry. Plastic imports nearly doubled between 2018 and 2019 due to increased Chinese imports. Electronic waste Thailand is a signatory to the Basel Convention, which prohibits the transnational movement of hazardous waste. The Thai government—sometimes acting through free-trade agreements—circumvents the convention, using legal techniques to skirt the prohibition and instead import hazardous waste, mostly electronic waste. Thai agencies tasked with preventing negative environmental impacts from e-waste have failed to perform their regulatory missions. They have allowed operators of waste management plants to reduce operational costs by disposing of hazardous waste improperly. That has contributed to serious environmental degradation and degraded the health of locals. Thailand legally imports about 53,000 tonnes of e-waste annually. As of 2018 Thailand permits 1,761 factories to manage electronic waste. Of these, 539 are electronic waste recycling plants. Another 1,222 plants dispose of e-waste in land-fills or by incineration. Most of these plants are in Rayong Province, Chonburi Province, and Chachoengsao Province.In June 2018 Thailand banned all imports of foreign e-waste. China banned the import of foreign e-waste in 2018 also. Since the e-waste ban, 28 new recycling factories, most dealing with e-waste, have opened in Chachoengsao Province. In 2019, 14 businesses in Chachoengsao were granted licenses to process electronic waste, six of them in the Ko Khanun Subdistrict of Phanom Sarakham District. An official of the Basel Action Network, which campaigns against dumping waste in poor countries, said, "E-waste has to go somewhere, and the Chinese are simply moving their entire operations to Southeast Asia. The only way to make money is to get huge volume with cheap, illegal labour and pollute the hell out of the environment," he added. Water pollution Thailand's Pollution Control Department reports divide the country into five main geographical regions: north, northeast, central, south, and east. In those regions, Thailand has a total of 25 river basins. Thailand's annual rainfall averages around 1,700 mm. Despite the annual southwest monsoon, Thailand is subject to drought, particularly the northeastern region. As of 2002, Thailand had less water available per person than any other country in Asia, and nearly one-third of its water was "unsuitable for human consumption." According to the Department of Water Resources, national water demand averages 152 billion m3 per year against a supply of 112 m3. The agricultural sector accounts for 75% of demand, the industrial sector three percent, households four percent, and preserving ecological systems 18%. Dams and reservoirs supply 66% of water, 15% from surface water sources, and 13% is mined from underground.Non-potable water is a result of untreated domestic sewage, industrial waste water, and solid hazardous wastes. This is a critical environmental problem for Thailand. According to the Pollution Control Department, the agricultural sector is the largest polluter as the nation's farms discharged up to 39 million m3 of wastewater per day in 2016. The industrial sector ranked second, discharging 17.8 million m3 per day. The residential sector ranked third with 9.6 million m3 per day. Wastewater treatment processes in the residential sector were only 18% effective, while only 52% of wastewater was treated. Surface waters In 2003, Thailand's Pollution Control Department (PCD) monitored the quality of 49 rivers and four lakes in Thailand. Findings revealed that 68% of water bodies surveyed were suitable for agriculture and general consumption. Only less than 40% of Thailand's surface waters were in poor or very poor quality. According to the survey of major rivers and lakes by PCD, no surface water was categorized as "very good" quality (clean water suitable for aquatic animals and human consumption after normal treatment).Surface water quality varies widely in the different regions in Thailand. Surface water monitored in the northern, central, and southern regions appear to have poor quality, while water in the eastern region was fair. Compared to other regions, the rivers and lakes monitored in the northeastern region had good quality surface water.In terms of dissolved oxygen (DO), surface water in the northern region ranks the best, approximately 6 mg/L, followed by the northeastern region with DO concentrations of around 4 mg/L. The central, eastern, and central regions rank the lowest, about 2 mg/L. The highest concentration of total coliform bacteria (TCB), among surface waters monitored, was found in the central region with concentrations of TCB higher than 4,000MPN (most probable number)/100mL. Coastal waters In 2003, PCD set up 240 monitoring stations in Thailand's 23 coastal provinces and on significant islands. In 2003, monitoring results showed that coastal water of 68 percent of the stations were in "very good" and "good" quality. Thirty percent of the stations were in "fair" condition and only three percent were in "poor" quality. Compared with past data, coastal water quality was shown to have deteriorated, specifically in the areas into which four main rivers flow. The chief indicators of pollution were DO and TCB.Water quality in the inner Gulf of Thailand, into which the Chao Phraya, Tha Chin, Pak Panang, and Rayong Rivers and several canals discharge, revealed high concentrations of domestic pollutants. Very low DO levels (0.3, 1.8, 3.5 mg/L) were found in the areas of Klong 12 Thanwa, Mae Klong, and Tha Chin. Additionally, TCB and heavy metal levels appeared to be higher than allowable standards in the same areas. In Bang Pakong District the level of total suspended solids (TSS) appeared to be high.The western seaboard generally appeared to have "good" water quality. However, TCB levels in some areas where domestic waste water discharged into the sea without treatment exceeded the standard. Water quality in most areas of the eastern seaboard was in "good" condition, except for high levels of total suspended solids and TCB in the areas of Laem Chabang and Map Ta Phut. Despite rapid growth, overall coastal water quality in the Andaman Sea were still in "very good" condition, except for the few areas that revealed concerns of DO and TCB levels.Water pollution has become obvious in many areas. In 1997, hundreds of thousands of fish and other aquatic life in the Nam Phong River died as a result of industrial pollution. Large amounts of arsenic were found in the groundwater in Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, a result of mining in the area. Pollution affects the marine environment. Red tides, caused by excessive algae growth and a result of pollution, oil spills, and invasive species are some of the factors that are affecting Thailand's marine biodiversity.Another major source of pollution are the heavy metals that have seeped into the rivers of Thailand. In the Chao Phraya estuary, mercury levels have far exceeded normal standards, and high concentrations of heavy metals on the river bed pose a serious threat to ecosystems.In March 2017 Associate Professor Thon Thamrongnawasawat, vice dean of the fisheries faculty of Kasetsart University, said, "... there is something terribly wrong with the Thai sea [Gulf of Thailand]." His observation followed on the deaths of two Bruda whales and two whale sharks in the Gulf of Thailand since the beginning of the year. The latest casualty is a 12-metre Bruda whale weighing about two tonnes. It washed ashore in Village Nine of Tambon Thongchai, Bang Saphan District, Prachuap Khiri Khan Province. Earlier, one six-month old Bruda whale was found dead on the beach of Ban Kung Tanod in Tambon Khao Daeng, Kui Buri District of Prachuap Khiri Khan. Two dead whale sharks that washed ashore in the past 70 days were entangled in ropes. As of 2017 there are only an estimated 100 whale sharks and about 50 Bruda whales remaining in the gulf.Thai coral reefs have been degraded by tourism, sediment from landfills in coastal areas, and polluted water released by beachfront hotels, resorts, and homes. Water contamination is the largest contributor to the degeneration of coral reefs in Thailand, as 70% of polluted water is returned to coastal waters untreated. The damage is exacerbated by plastic trash, which can infect coral and cause long-term harm. As of 2017, 77% of a total of 107,800 rai of coral reefs in Thai seas is "in a sorry state". In 2008, the percentage of degraded reefs was 30%. Groundwaters The Thai governmental agency charged with responsibility for groundwater is the Department of Groundwater Resources, part of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.Groundwater is mainly recharged by rainfall and seepage streams. Aquifers yield a large amount of water throughout Thailand, with the exception of the eastern region. The largest source of groundwater is found in the lower central region, particularly in the Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR) and surrounding provinces, and is being used to meet the growing water demand, growing at 10% annually. The depletion of the water table around Bangkok has led to land subsidence which has exacerbated flooding.Agricultural run-off, coastal aquaculture, industrial effluents, and domestic sewage are responsible for the pollution of groundwater in Thailand. Also, the lack of an appropriate pricing policy is leading to over-exploitation of groundwater beyond sustainable yield. There is limited information at the national level on groundwater extraction rates, or the extent of contamination.An on-going case of surface- and groundwater pollution has prompted one critic to charge that, "...Thai environmental protection mechanisms including environmental laws and law enforcement are not functioning." He is referring to a case in Ratchaburi Province: there, since at least 2001, villagers of tambon Nam Pu have complained about toxic wastewater from an industrial waste treatment plant they suspected of contaminating their water. Wax Garbage Recycle Centre, an industrial waste treatment plant, began its operation in the upstream area of Nam Pu Creek about the same time as contamination became evident. The pollution spread to tambon Rang Bua of Chom Bueng District. Responding to complaints, the Thai Pollution Control Department tested creek water and groundwater. It found that levels of heavy metals (lead, nickel, and barium) exceeded their standards. They also found high levels of volatile organic compounds (VOC) such as toluene, xylene, ethylbenzene, benzene, 1,1,2-trichloromethane and Cis-1,2-dichloroethylene. The Department of Industrial Works and Ratchaburi's Industry Office, since 2002, have sent 19 letters ordering the plant to improve its operation, and at least six orders for the plant to shut down parts of its facility. Despite efforts by the authorities, the plant is still in operation and toxic wastewater contamination continues unabated. A failing of Thai environmental governance is the lack of balance in regulatory power among authorities. The Pollution Control Department, for instance, has no power to revoke the plant's operating licences. That power resides with the Department of Industrial Works, but state agencies place greater importance on industrial economics than the environment. Health effects Water pollution results in typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis, trachoma, hookworm, and diarrhea. In 1999, hospitalization rates were: Typhoid: 4,000 hospitalizations Dysentery: 7,000 hospitalizations Diarrhea: 95,000 hospitalizationsExposure to toxins and heavy metals in water causes skin disease, liver cancer, and birth defects. Klity Creek in Kanchanaburi Province was found to carry dangerous levels of lead from a lead separation plant upstream. Lead levels are apparently the cause of many cases of Down syndrome in village children, unidentified illnesses in adults, and many cattle deaths. In 1998, the plant was closed and the creek dredged, although as of 2017 lead levels were still considered unsafe and clean-up efforts continued to be needed. Improvement efforts In 1992, the government passed several pieces of legislation to prevent water pollution. The laws primarily limit industrial water contamination: Enhancement and Conservation of National Environment Quality Act (NEQA) of 1992 Factories Act of 1992 Navigation in Thai Waterways Act (Volume 14 ) as amended in 1992 Public Health Act of 1992 Cleanliness and Tidiness of the Country Act of 1992The government continues to invest in wastewater treatment plants. In 2000, enough treated water was available to support 29% of the population, with more treatment plants under construction. Upon completion, treated water will support 65% of the population. The most common water treatments are inexpensive to build and maintain. They include oxidation ditches, aerated lagoons, and stabilization ponds. The government is also investigating more effective and modern techniques such as constructed wetlands. Wildlife Thailand's wildlife is threatened by poaching, habitat loss, and an industry that sells wild animals as pets.The elephant is Thailand's national symbol. Although there were 100,000 elephants in Thailand a century ago, the population of elephants in the wild has dropped to an estimated 2,000. Poachers have long hunted elephants for ivory, meat, and hides. Young elephants are often captured for use in tourist attractions or as work animals, although their use has declined since the government banned logging in 1989. There are now more elephants in captivity than in the wild, and environmental activists claim that elephants in captivity are often mistreated.Poaching of protected species remains a major problem. Hunters have decimated the populations of tigers, leopards, and other large cats for their valuable pelts. Many animals (including tigers, bears, crocodiles, and king cobras) are farmed or hunted for their meat, which is considered a delicacy, and for their supposed medicinal properties. Although such trade is illegal, the famous Bangkok market Chatuchak is still known for the sale of endangered species.The practice of keeping wild animals as pets threatens several species. Baby animals are typically captured and sold, which often requires killing the mother. Once in captivity and out of their natural habitat, many pets die or fail to reproduce. Affected populations include the Asiatic black bear, Malayan sun bear, white-handed lar, pileated gibbon and binturong.Large-scale deforestation and development have encroached on many former wildlife habitats, and pesticides in their food supply has reduced bird populations. Many species are listed as critically endangered because of habitat loss and over-exploitation. The World Bank estimates that, of 214 countries studied, Thailand ranks ninth (1=worst, 214=best) in the world in the number of mammal species (55 species) under threat.Despite Buddhism's professed reverence for life, even Thai clergy have been guilty of overt animal abuse. One such case, that of Kwan, a Malayan sun bear, egregiously mistreated at Wat Aungsuwan (aka Wat Nong Hoy) in Prachuap Khiri Khan Province has been thoroughly documented by the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand (WFFT). First alerted to abuse at the temple in January 2012, it was not until three years later that Thai wildlife officials acted on behalf of the mistreated animals.In 2016, the body of the last known dugong in the Gulf of Thailand, identified by marine biologists as DU-391, was found off the coast of Rayong. Number 391 refers to it being the 391st dead dugong to be found there. The decline of vulnerable species in the gulf continued unabated, as 355 protected animals died since January 2016, a 10% increase over 2015. The 355 dead marine animals included 11 dugongs, 180 sea turtles, and 164 dolphins and whales. Conservation in theory Conservation bills passed by the government include: 1960 Wild Animal Reservation and Protection Act 1961 National Park Act 1964 National Forest Reserve Act 1989 Logging ban in natural forests 1992 Forest Plantation Act 1992 Enhancement and Conservation of National Environmental Quality Act 1992 Wild Animals Reservation and Protection Act (WARPA), which forbids or restricts the hunting, breeding, possession, and trade of fifteen reserved animal species and two classes of protected species.Until the acts of 1989–1992, conservation policies were difficult to enforce, and often took a back seat to economic development. These acts represented a major shift in Thai policy, and are part of the government's cooperation with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an international wildlife protection agreement. The government now requires that at least 15% of its land area be protected as forest, and 22% is currently protected as wildlife sanctuaries or national parks. To enforce CITES, the government also maintains border checkpoints to prevent animal smuggling, and works to educate the public about wildlife preservation. Thailand's Buddhist culture, with its emphasis on respect for all life, has become a key component of the country's conservation efforts. Conservation in practice Current (2015) national law allows for ivory from domesticated Thai elephants to be sold legally. As an unintended consequence, large quantities of African ivory can be laundered through Thai shops. Only by closing the domestic trade in ivory can Thailand help eliminate the threat to African elephants. Thailand's ivory market is the largest in the world and trade is largely fuelled by ivory from poached African elephant's tusks that are smuggled into the country.In July 2014, at a CITES intercessional meeting, Thailand agreed to a strict timetable to address the illegal ivory trade or face the threat of trade sanctions. One week before the meeting, the TRAFFIC had released a survey of Bangkok that found significantly more retail shops and three times as much ivory on sale as in 2013. Thailand was given until 30 September 2014 to submit a revised national ivory action plan, to include a number of CITES specified measures. Thailand was to be next assessed by CITES on 31 March 2015. If found lacking, CITES will vote on whether trade sanctions should be imposed against the country. The impact of punitive sanctions on the national economy would be significant: all trade in CITES-listed species would be prohibited. The export of orchids by the country's horticultural sector, for example, would be stopped, resulting in a loss of more than US$80 million in annual sales based on the 2013 value of this trade.A study published in 2018 by USAID Wildlife Asia said about 500,000 Thais are believed to own ivory products, and 250,000 own artifacts made from tiger parts. At Kanchanaburi's infamous Tiger Temple, nine tiger fangs, more than 1,000 amulets containing tiger skin and dozens of jars filled with dead animals and animal parts were found in a pick-up truck driven out of the Tiger Temple by a monk and two disciples. The temple has profited handsomely from tourism while billing itself as a spiritual organization dedicated to wildlife conservation since it opened in 1994. Domestic animal welfare Thailand introduced its first animal welfare laws in 2014. The Prevention of Animal Cruelty and Provision of Animal Welfare Act came into being on 27 December 2014.The law protects animals "raised as pets, as animals for work, as beasts of burden, as friends, as livestock, as performing show animals, or for any other purpose, no matter with or without owners". Owners of animals are now required by law to "raise, nurture and keep the animals in appropriate conditions with good health and sanitation and with sufficient food and water". Within the act, the term "owner" is deemed to cover all family members and domestic help, as well as any friends assigned to take care of a pet.Menus featuring live vertebrates are now illegal in Thailand. Trading in and consuming dog and cat meat is now illegal in Thailand under the 2014 act. Feeding live prey to snakes, crocodiles or other animals is also prohibited. The act prohibits neglect, torture, or uncaring transport of live animals. Neglect includes improper housing and transportation of animals. An infraction is punishable by law, which may impose a two-year prison term and a fine of up to 40,000 baht (US$1,663), or both. Persons who dump unwanted pets at temples can now be charged with abandoning and endangering the animal. Governmental indifference The National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), the military junta that took power in Thailand in May 2014, has taken a cavalier attitude towards environmental concerns. In early-March 2016, the NCPO issued Order No. 9/2016, designed to cut short the process of conducting environmental impact assessments (EIA) on mega-projects. This makes it possible for state agencies to fast track public projects related to transportation, water management, public health, and prevention of public dangers. The order allows state projects to be proposed to the cabinet before a full EIA is completed.Junta order No.4/2016, signed on 20 March 2016 by Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha in his capacity as the chair of the Committee on National Energy Policy was published in the Royal Thai Gazette on 31 March 2016. It exempts 29 plants, 27 of them run by the state, from all laws related to city planning. The planned construction of coal-fired plants in Thepha District in Songkhla Province and in Nuea Khlong District of Krabi Province have both met with strong opposition from locals who are concerned about their environmental impact.On 22 October 2019, the 26-member National Hazardous Substances Committee (NHSC) changed the hazardous agricultural chemicals paraquat, glyphosate, and chlorpyrifos from Type 3 toxic substances to Type 4, effectively prohibiting their production, import, export, or possession. Their use will be prohibited as of 1 December 2019. On 27 November 2019, the NHSC amended that timetable, moving the date for the ban of paraquat and chlorpyrifos to 1 June 2020. They lifted the ban on glyphosate, albeit with restrictions on usage: glyphosate will be used only on six major crops: corn, cassava, sugarcane, rubber, oil palms, and fruit. It is not permitted in watershed areas and other sensitive environment zones, and farmers must submit proof of use including the type of crops and the size of their farms when purchasing glyphosate. Industry Minister Suriya Jungrungreangkit, who chairs the NHSC, said the committee reached its decision after reviewing information provided by the Department of Agriculture and the Ministry of Public Health. NCHS member Jirapon Limpananon, chair of the Pharmacy Council of Thailand, announced her resignation from the NCHS Wednesday night following the meeting. The government's u-turn on the ban of dangerous chemicals prompted a columnist at the Bangkok Post to fume that, "...no further proof is required to show how some unscrupulous Thai mandarins are being held hostage by the agro monsters. With a wishy-washy prime minister, who clearly has no political will to make the right decision on this matter, we are indeed in a helpless situation." Intimidation of environmental activists In November 2016, the UN's regional human rights office (OHCHR) condemned Thailand for a series of murders of land activists which have gone unpunished, drawing attention to the kingdom's poor record in solving such killings. The office said it was compelled to speak out after an appeals court in Thailand's south upheld the acquittal of the sole suspect in the murder of an activist in 2015. Thailand has long been a dangerous place in which to take on powerful interest groups. A 2014 report by Global Witness said Thailand was the eighth most dangerous country in the world to be a land rights activist, the second most dangerous in Asia after the Philippines. Rights groups say between 50 and 60 rights defenders have been murdered in the last 20 years. There are also at least 81 open cases of enforced disappearance dating back as far the mid-1990s, according to the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances. On 21 June 2004, Charoen Wat-aksorn was assassinated as he alighted from a bus returning to Prachuap Khiri Khan after he gave testimony about environmental destruction in Bo Nok and Ban Krut to the Senate in Bangkok. Charoen was a human rights defender and leader of the Love Bo Nok group who fought for over ten years until his death against coal-fired power, large-scale shrimp farming, and other environmental destruction in Prachuap Khiri Khan. Porlajee Rakchongcharoen, known as "Billy", a Karen environmental activist, was reportedly arrested on 17 April 2014, in Kaeng Krachan National Park in Phetchaburi Province by a park superintendent and four other park officers. He was detained because he was found with a protected wild bee honeycomb and six bottles of honey. He has not been seen since. It is feared that he was murdered because of his activism. Billy's disappearance came three years after he assisted Karen villagers of Pong Luk Bang Kloy to file a lawsuit against the superintendent for ordering the eviction and burning of the village in May 2011. On 30 January 2017, Thailand's Department of Special Investigation (DSI) said that it would not investigate his disappearance, leaving it in the hands of the regular police despite three years of no progress in the case. However, after continued pressure from the Karen community, and especially Billy's wife Pinnapa Prueksapan, the DSI took on the case in April 2019. Possibly their late willingness to investigate was influenced by UNESCO turning down Thailand's application for Kaeng Krachan to be declared a world heritage site due to ongoing conflicts with the indigenous Karen communities. In September 2019 the DSI announced they had found an oil drum containing burned human remains, in a dam near to the area where Billy was last seen. DNA evidence matched Billy's mother and the case was re-classsifed as a murder investigation. The NGO Global Witness reports that in 2014, four Thai environmental activists were murdered due to their work on local environmental issues.: 8  From 2002-2014, Global Witness estimates the total to be 21 deaths. South Thailand's "Southern Peasants Federation" (SPF) names four of its members who were murdered between 2010–2015. The New York Times reports that "Thailand is among the world's most dangerous countries in which to oppose powerful interests that profit from coal plants, toxic waste dumping, land grabs or illegal logging. Some 60 people who spoke out on these issues have been killed over the past 20 years,..." On 5 August 2019, a prominent human rights activist, Eakachai Itsaratha, was abducted by ten men as he was entering a mosque to attend a public hearing on a rock quarry project planned for Phatthalung Province. He was taken to a hotel and held against his will until the completion of the hearing. Upon being released he was threatened. He was told not to return to the quarry site in Tamot District again, saying that his activities had adversely affected the quarry project and the process of obtaining permission from the government. Eakachai is secretary-general of Thailand's Non-Governmental Organizations Coordinating Committee on Development for the southern region (NGO COD-South), as well as the former deputy leader of the grassroots-based Commoner Party. See also Agriculture in Thailand Deforestation in Thailand Office of the National Water Resources Waste management in Thailand References Further reading Hamilton, John; Pratap, Chatterjee, 1991. "Developing disaster: The World Bank and deforestation in Thailand", in: Food First Action Alert, Summer issue. Hunsaker, Bryan, 1996. "The political economy of Thai deforestation", in Loggers, Monks, Students, and Entrepreneurs, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, USA. SUPONGPAN KULDILOK, KULAPA (October 2009). AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF THE THAILAND TUNA FISH INDUSTRY (PDF). Newcastle University. Archived from the original (Dissertation) on 22 May 2020. Retrieved 19 December 2019. External links Air Quality Index, Thailand Pollution Control Department Archived 3 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine WWF summary Environmental Issues and Environmental Education in the Mekong Region Overview of Environmental Issues and Environmental Conservation Practices in Thailand Environmental Problems and Green Lifestyles in Thailand Archived 24 March 2018 at the Wayback Machine Environmental Policies in Thailand and their Effects This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Country Studies. Federal Research Division.