Major new scientific research finds that organic farming can feed the world

A major new scientific report reveals how organic agriculture can help feed the world whilst reducing the enviornmental impacts, PETER MELCHETT, of the Soil Association delves into the data.

New scientific research has identified the important role that organic agriculture can play in feeding a global population of 9 billion sustainably by 2050.

Published in the journal Nature Communications, by scientists from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL), the key question the research examines is: "whether producing a certain total amount of food, in terms of protein and calories, with organic agriculture would lead to higher, or lower, impacts than producing the same amount of food with conventional agriculture".

The scientists’ answer is that organic agriculture can feed the world with lower environmental impacts - if we cut food waste and stop using so much cropland to feed farm animals. The authors conclude: "A 100% conversion to organic agriculture needs more land than conventional agriculture but reduces N-surplus and pesticide use.”

https://goo.gl/iWAJfy

TEDxMasala - Dr Vandana Shiva - Solutions to the food and ecological crisis facing us today.

TEDxMasala - Dr Vandana Shiva - Solutions to the food and ecological crisis facing us today.

7th International Conference on Environmental Future

The Foundation for Environmental Conversation

“Humans and Island Environments’ 6 – 20 April 2018 | Honolulu, Hawai’i

Updates: Abstract submission is now open and a dedicated conference website is now online: http://manoa.hawaii.edu/7ICEF.

Organized by the Foundation for Environmental Conservation (FEC), East-West Center, and University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, the 7th International Conference on Environmental Future (7ICEF) seeks to advance the global and multi-disciplinary conversation around environmental futures with a specific focus in 2018 on ‘Humans and Island Environments’. The conference will be held from the 16 – 20 April 2018 in Honolulu, Hawai’i, at the East-West Center’s Imin International Conference Center.

The 7ICEF aims to provide a forum for discussion and debate on the current and future issues surrounding island environments, bringing together islanders, researchers, managers, and NGOs from a broad array of disciplines and fields. The underlying questions are: how have islands aided our understanding of human-environment interactions? What are the latest directions in island biological and cultural conservation? Where should island conservation efforts be focused? and, What conservation lessons do islands have for the rest of the world?

In advance of the conference, a review article for each of 18 conference themes will be published in the journal Environmental Conservation. As papers are published they will be listed here. These papers will be presented at the conference together with other related talks, and there will be dedicated time in each themed session for discussions, and question and answers. The final day of the conference will involve workshop sessions and a webcast panel discussion bringing together some of the unifying themes and messages.

Information on the themes and speakers is available here.

For general queries regarding the conference please email icef7@foundationforec.org

Registration for the 7th International Conference on Environmental Future: Humans and Island Environments is being handled by the East-West Center.

Registration fees include access to all Conference sessions, conference materials, site visits and receptions.

Registration is now open!

REGISTER HERE

Should a healthy environment be a human right? These Norwegians think so

Greenpeace and the environmental group Youth and Nature are suing the Norwegian Government for granting Arctic oil drilling licenses.

Their argument is based on an article in the Norwegian constitution protecting the right to an environment that’s healthy and that long-term consideration be given to digging up natural resources.

Greenpeace Norway head Truls Gulowsen told Hack it all comes down to climate change and oil licenses.

"We had challenged the Norwegian state for handing out new licenses for drilling in the arctic in spite of the fact that they have signed the Paris Agreement," he said on his way to court.

"They acknowledge climate change is a problem, and they know that the world has already found more carbon, fossil carbon, than we can ever afford to burn."

He said Norway's constitution gives future generations the right to a healthy environment.

"[That] puts duties on the state to guarantee and safeguard those rights."

Brendan Sydes, lawyer and CEO of Environmental Justice Australia, says the strategy used by Greenpeace goes to a country’s legal foundation, instead of working with a country's environmental regulations. https://goo.gl/j9Ys27

How Climate Change Will Mess With Water ‘Recharge’ in Western USA

This map shows the surface area of major aquifers in the continental U.S. and Hawaii. The biggest, Ogallala in the High Plains (green), covers nearly 175,000 square miles. Photo credit: Katie Peek

As the climate warms, the dry southern regions of the Western United States will have less groundwater recharge while the northern regions will have more, researchers report.

“Our study asked what will be the effect of climate change on groundwater recharge in the Western US in the near future, 2021-2050, and the far future, 2070-2100,” says first author Rewati Niraula, who worked on the research as part of his doctoral work in the University of Arizona hydrology and atmospheric sciences department.

The new study covers the entire US West, from the High Plains states to the Pacific coast, and provides the first detailed look at how groundwater recharge may change as the climate changes, says senior author Thomas Meixner, professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona.

“For the southern region of the Western US there will be a reduction in groundwater recharge, and in the northern region of the Western US we will have an increase,” says Niraula, now a senior research associate at the Texas Institute of Applied Environmental Research at Tarleton State University.

Groundwater is an important source of freshwater, particularly in the West, and is often used to make up for the lack of surface water during droughts, the authors note. In many areas of the West, groundwater pumping currently exceeds the amount of groundwater recharge. https://goo.gl/w6uhvv

Not if the Seas Rise, but When and How High

Once you’ve read an excellent book about climate change, which Jeff Goodell’s “The Water Will Come” most certainly is, you can never unremember the facts. Elected officials may be busy arguing about whether global warming is real. But most scientists are having other arguments entirely — about whether danger is imminent or a few decades off; about whether our prospects are dire or merely grim.
“Sea-level rise is one of the central facts of our time, as real as gravity,” Goodell writes. “It will reshape our world in ways most of us can only dimly imagine.”
Goodell has little trouble imagining it. He opens “The Water Will Come” with a fictional hurricane whipping through Miami in 2037. It sweeps the Art Deco buildings of South Beach off their foundations, disgorges millions of gallons of raw sewage into Biscayne Bay and eats the last of the city’s beaches. Thousands scramble for bottled water dropped by the National Guard. Zika and dengue fever start to bloom (so much moisture, so many mosquitoes). Out rush the retirees and glamour pusses; in rush the lawyers and slumlords. Within decades, the place is swallowed whole by the ocean. What was once a vibrant city is now a scuba-diving destination for intrepid historians and disaster tourists.
The whole scenario seems indecently feasible by the book’s end.
After this year’s calamitous flooding in Houston and the Caribbean, “The Water Will Come” is depressingly well-timed, though I’m guessing all good books about this subject will be from now on. Political time now lags behind geological time: If we don’t take dramatic steps to prepare for the rising seas, hundreds of millions could be displaced from their homes by the end of the century, and the infrastructure fringing the coast, valued in the trillions of dollars, could be lost.
Unfortunately, human beings are uniquely ill-suited to prepare for disasters they cannot sense or see. “We have evolved to defend ourselves from a guy with a knife or an animal with big teeth,” Goodell writes, “but we are not wired to make decisions about barely perceptible threats that gradually accelerate over time.”
So we stick our heads in the sand. Until the sand disappears, anyway.
https://goo.gl/8wuqjb

The world’s first “negative emissions” plant has opened in Iceland—turning carbon dioxide into stone

There’s a colorless, odorless, and largely benign gas that humanity just can’t get enough of. We produce 40 trillion kg of carbon dioxide each year, and we’re on track to cross a crucial emissions threshold that will cause global temperature rise to pass the dangerous 2°C limit set by the Paris climate agreement.
But, in hushed tones, climate scientists are already talking about a technology that could pull us back from the brink. It’s called direct-air capture, and it consists of machines that work like a tree does, sucking carbon dioxide (CO2) out from the air, but on steroids—capturing thousands of times more carbon in the same amount of time, and, hopefully, ensuring we don’t suffer climate catastrophe.
There are at least two reasons that, to date, conversations about direct air capture have been muted. First, climate scientists have hoped global carbon emissions would come under control, and we wouldn’t need direct air capture. But most experts believe that ship has sailed. That brings up the second issue: to date, all estimates suggest direct air capture would be exorbitantly expensive to deploy.
For the past decade, a group of entrepreneurs—partly funded by billionaires like Bill Gates of Microsoft, Edgar Bronfman Jr. of Warner Music, and the late Gary Comer of Land’s End—have been working to prove those estimates wrong. Three companies—Switzerland’s Climeworks, Canada’s Carbon Engineering, and the US’s Global Thermostat—are building machines that, at reasonable costs, can capture CO2 directly from the air. (A fourth company, Kilimanjaro Energy, closed shop due to a lack of funding.)
Over the past year, I’ve been tracking the broader field of carbon capture and storage, which aims to capture emissions from sources such as power plants and chemical factories. Experts in the field look at these direct-air-capture entrepreneurs as the rebellious kids in the class. Instead of going after the low-hanging fruit, one expert told me, these companies are taking moonshots—and setting themselves up for failure.

(https://qz.com/1100221/the-worlds-first-negative-emissions-plant-has-opened-in-iceland-turning-carbon-dioxide-into-stone/?utm_source=qzfb

Lake Catalina Is On The Verge Of Releasing Up To 9 Billion Gallons Of Water

Lake Catalina Is On The Verge Of Releasing Up To 9 Billion Gallons Of Water

Scientists recently revealed the catastrophic history of Lake Catalina, which appears primed once again to outburst billions of gallons of freshwater. Through satellite images, researchers at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark pieced together four massive outburst floods over the past 50 years.

The satellite photos show the outbursts of fresh water took place between 1966 and 2012 when ice that dammed Lake Catalina in Greenland failed. The outbursts of water are estimated to have been between 6.7 and 9 billion gallons of water released in one instance. Now, it appears the lake is primed for another catastrophic release of water in the next couple years.

The next outburst is certainly building and may happen as soon as 2018-19 - Aslak Grinsted, head of the research team.

The Lake Catalina is situated on Renland, a long and narrow island in Scoresbysund Fjord in East Greenland. What is equally as surprising as the amount of water released, is that the events were previously unknown by the scientific community and locals living in the area.

(https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/08/23/lake-catalina-verge-releasing-9-billion-gallons-water/

Ex-Minister Wayne Panton raises alarm on Environment

CNS): Wayne Panton said he was “disappointed” that Cayman now has an environment minister who appears to be “against the environment rather than for it”, as he raised the alarm about watering down the National Conservation Law. The former Cabinet member, who lost his seat in the May election by just a handful of votes, told CNS he had never seen such an “about-face in politics”. Just a few years ago the historic law had the unanimous backing of members, but now the example of truly “pro-Caymanian legislation” was facing an unwarranted backlash based on “fake facts”.

The former environment minister, one of the first politicians appointed to the post who was knowledgeable about conservation issues and became a true champion for the environment, said he was enormously disappointed with the recent turn of events. He said there has been a complete distortion by politicians of the legislation, which had been through significant consultation and enjoyed wide public support.

Panton said that the Legislative Assembly had voted unanimously for the law, which for the first time put the environment on a par with other considerations, such as social and economic, when it came to development but, he stressed, did not elevate it over them. He said it paved the way for conservation to be given equal weight to other factors and was designed to help balance competing interests and to ensure that the natural resources, which are fundamental to “what makes us Caymanian”, are not ignored in future planning decisions.

“But suddenly, people who voted in favour seem completely intent on repealing it or substantially watering it down,” he said, noting that the arguments to justify this rejection of the law were illogical and based on misinterpretation of the powers of the National Conservation Council and a misunderstanding of the law. https://goo.gl/SzjrVS

James Hansen - Scientific Reticence: A Threat to Humanity and Nature

Published on Nov 19, 2017James Hansen, Pam Peterson, and Philip Duffy join us to discuss how the hesitancy among scientists to express the gravity of our situation is a major block to our understanding and response to climate change, The reticence results from a combination of factors: political pressure, institutional conservatism, the desire to avoid controversy, aspiring to objectivity, etc.
But when the data and the conclusions it leads to are alarming, isn't it imperative that the alarm be transmitted publicly? Here is another facet of society's apparent inability to assess and respond appropriately to the present immense, existential threat of climate change.

How energy productivity and renewable power are saving Swiss Re millions

Good for business: how energy productivity and renewable power are saving Swiss Re millions of dollars every year | The Climate Group

As a founding member of RE100 and one year on from joining EP100, Swiss Re – a world leading reinsurer – is going above and beyond its ambitious climate action commitments. In this blog, Lasse Wallquist, Swiss Re’s Senior Environmental Management Specialist, addresses the business case for becoming more energy productive and for switching to 100% renewable power.

At Swiss Re, we’re in the business of calculating risk. We believe that by joining RE100 and EP100, we’ve made a decision to future-proof our operations against the costs of climate change down the road. In terms of emissions reduction, our strategy is to "do our best and compensate the rest". The first step of doing our best is increasing our energy productivity; a constant goal which sits at the heart of our Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Neutral Programme.

We know that transitioning to 100% renewable power is an essential outcome that we need to deliver on. But, for us, it wouldn’t be sensible to ‘go renewable’ without ensuring we optimize our energy system first.

COMMITTED TO ENERGY PRODUCTIVITY
Energy productivity has always been at the forefront of our emissions reduction transition, and so far, our annual energy costs have dropped by more than US$10 million. Our commitment has been to continuously improve our energy productivity by 2% per year, and at the end of 2016, our energy productivity was halved, compared to 2005. While we’ve reached our EP100 commitment earlier than expected, the campaign continues to support us in creating awareness around ways to increase energy productivity while decreasing our energy costs and our carbon footprint.

We’ve hit our EP100 target already by, for example, decommissioning existing office buildings and moving into more energy efficient workspaces. Our new "Swiss Re Next" headquarters in Zurich has an energy productivity rate per workplace that is 80% higher compared to the former building.

Top management of many companies—due to the nature of their business—are not aware of the cost of their electricity bills. By failing to consider this crucial area of their operations, companies not only miss out on the opportunity to significantly reduce their own energy costs, but they also miss the chance to make lasting changes for a greener tomorrow. As a financial services company, energy productivity might not seem like an obvious objective for our management, but EP100 has helped us in creating awareness of energy productivity and educating our teams about opportunities to do more.

(https://www.theclimategroup.org/news/good-business-how-energy-productivity-and-renewable-power-are-saving-swiss-re-millions-dollars

Video on “Good Peatland Governance to Strengthen Economic, Social and Ecosystem Resilience

Video on “Good Peatland Governance to Strengthen Economic, Social and Ecosystem Resilience”
The UN-REDD Program convened this event on 15 November 2017, in the Fiji/Bonn climate change COP23 in order to launch the rapid response assessment, ‘Smoke on Water: Countering Global Threats from Peatland Loss and Degradation,’ and hear case studies from Indonesia, Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Produced by Dorothy Wanja Nyingi, Ph.D., and filmed/edited by Hernán Aguilar.

IISD's video of the event is available at: http://enb.iisd.org/videos/climate/unfccc-cop23-side-events/good-peatland-governance-to-strengthen-economic-social-and-ecosystem-resilience/?autoplay

IISD's written and photographic coverage of the event is available at: http://enb.iisd.org/climate/cop23/un-redd/15nov.html
http://enb.iisd.org/2017/11/19/enb-video-on-good-peatland-governance-to-strengthen-economic-social-and-ecosystem-resilience/

Good Peatland Governance to Strengthen Economic, Social and Ecosystem Resilience from IISD Reporting Services / ENV on Vimeo.

Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals

Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals | Martin Lukacs | Environment | The Guardian

Would you advise someone to flap towels in a burning house? To bring a flyswatter to a gunfight? Yet the counsel we hear on climate change could scarcely be more out of sync with the nature of the crisis.

The email in my inbox last week offered thirty suggestions to green my office space: use reusable pens, redecorate with light colours, stop using the elevator.

Back at home, done huffing stairs, I could get on with other options: change my lightbulbs, buy local veggies, purchase eco-appliances, put a solar panel on my roof.

And a study released on Thursday claimed it had figured out the single best way to fight climate change: I could swear off ever having a child.

These pervasive exhortations to individual action — in corporate ads, school textbooks, and the campaigns of mainstream environmental groups, especially in the west — seem as natural as the air we breathe. But we could hardly be worse-served

(https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2017/jul/17/neoliberalism-has-conned-us-into-fighting-climate-change-as-individuals

Our Socio-Economic Paradigm Is Incompatible With Climate Change Objectives

Scientist Kevin Anderson: Our Socio-Economic Paradigm Is Incompatible With Climate Change Objectives

Call for polluters to pay ‘climate damages tax’

Global civil society organizations are calling for a tax on fossil fuel supplies to fund support to people hit by climate change impacts.

Polluters should pay for homes and livelihoods wrecked by rising seas and increasingly extreme weather, campaigners argued in a statement issued alongside UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany.

Expressing frustration with slow progress made on “loss and damage” in formal negotiations, more than 50 groups and individuals backed the “climate damages tax” idea.

“We need a solution to climate change damage for my island on the front line of sea level rise and for coastal cities and communities around the world,” said signatory and Seychelles ambassador Ronny Jumeau.

“A key part of the solution is loss and damage finance – we need new sources of finance to cope with the impacts. A climate damages tax could provide a new source of finance, at scale, and in a fair way. This concept deserves to be taken forward.
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/11/16/call-polluters-pay-climate-damages-tax/

Resilient Transport Vital to Curb Disaster Losses in Small Island Developing States

Resilient Transport Vital to Curb Disaster Losses in Small Island Developing States

Improved policies alone could reduce the impact of natural disasters on well-being by 13 to 25% in small island countries

BONN, November 15, 2017—Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Caribbean, Pacific, Africa and Indian Ocean are among the world’s most vulnerable countries to natural disasters, and climate change is expected to greatly increase their exposure to hurricanes, storm surges, extreme winds, and flooding. A report launched today by the World Bank says the transport sector can play a central role in reducing the vulnerability of SIDS.

The report, entitled Climate and Disaster-Resilient Transport in Small Island Developing States: A Call for Action, finds that damage to roads and bridges constitutes a major share of disaster losses in SIDS, resulting in huge fiscal strains for their small economies. Transport often represents a large share of public assets in small islands, for example in Dominica transport assets are valued at 82% of GDP. In Fiji, one third of the total government budget is spent on the transport sector.

“Transport is critical to the economy and for the provision of services to remote communities,” said the Hon. Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, Minister for Economy of Fiji. “Our transport infrastructure is already affected by climate change. There is an urgent need to develop tailored and climate smart solutions to improve the resilience of this sector. This report makes a valuable contribution by highlighting innovative solutions focused on small island developing states.””

https://reliefweb.int/report/world/climate-and-disaster-resilient-transport-small-island-developing-states-call-action

https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/120998.pdf

We need measures that provide practical access to finance for climate change adaptation

We need measures that provide practical access to finance for adaptation & enable us to build #ClimateChange resilience. #COP23 President @FijiPM encourages more initiatives like the insurance mechanisms launched at COP23 during Presidency Event on Loss & Damage