Re-establishing the link

Can we develop a value-based economic structure, that is not concerned solely with our material well-being, but embraces the whole human being – body and spirit – as well as the rich biodiversity of the Earth? Can we give value to the non-extractive benefits of the environment in our economic policies?

An interesting article in The Guardian talks of the need to explore ways that businesses can serve humanity in its deepest sense, rather than creating a poverty of spirit as well as an ecological wasteland – develop an awareness that the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the energy we use are not just commodities to be consumed, but part of the living fabric of a sacred Earth. Then we are making a real relationship with our environment.
Green is more than a fad. Green is what benefits us as was discovered long ago. We know we are happy when on a mountain slope or by a riverside or a forest. Yet, experiments have been done to check this, our connection to nature and how we benefit. In 2005 and 2006, a Japanese team brought a group of middle-aged Tokyo businessmen into the woods. For three days, they hiked in the morning and again in the afternoon. By the end, blood tests showed that their NK cells had increased 40 percent. A month later, their NK count was still 15 percent higher than when they started. By contrast, during urban walking trips, NK levels didn’t change. However a walk in suburban park had a similar effect! Using Japan’s forest therapy that tracks data to prove the non-extractive benefits of forests, these scientists and hikers are helping prove what we should already know: That nature is worth preserving.

Researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh had used portable EEGs to monitor the brain activity of 12 healthy young adults. Different participants walked through different areas of Edinburgh -- one was an historic shopping district, one was a park-like setting, and one was a busy commercial district. The least stressed and frustrated were those in the park.

Can our policies these time-tested theories that go to show the inherent benefit nature provides us that go beyond the materialistic gains?

Ignore at our own risk

Environmental threats may seem imperceptible causing nations to often ignore them. But a recent UN report warns: “Environmental threats are among the gravest impediments to lifting human development, and their consequences for poverty are likely to be high. The longer action is delayed, the higher the cost will be.”
Recent human ‘progress’ may be reversed throughout much of the developing world as a result of climate change, according to the UN’s recently released 2013 Human Development Report. The report notes that while climate change will affect the whole world, the more equatorially located developing world will experience the worst of it, within the near future anyways.

The report predicts that recent improvements in the HDI (Human Development Index) of these regions will be halted or reversed. South Asia and Subsaharan Africa are singled out by the report as likely to see the most significant drops in living standards. Among the most notable of its predictions, the report says that the number of people living in extreme poverty in the world could increase by up to 3 billion by 2050. And the regular environmental disasters occurring by then would then effectively stop these people from working their way out of poverty.

Ignoring environmental concerns will only add to economic costs in the long run.

The good, bad and ugly

According to Bridge to India’s latest quarterly market analysis, The India Solar Compass, 2GW of solar power could be installed in conjunction with telecom towers in India by 2016. Bridge to India believes there is now traction in the market, leading to the emergence of a new model of operations, the Renewable Energy Service Company (RESCO) model. Up to telecom companies to make use of the opportunity. Meanwhile, we hear from Treehugger that Asia is heading for a huge jump in asbestos-related diseases in the coming decades, according to numerous scientific studies and two of the world’s most prominent experts on public health and asbestos exposure. Not surprisingly, the consequences are expected to be felt most severely in India and China, two emerging economies and most populous countries in the world. “What we can expect is very predictable – an absolute catastrophe of death and disease,” Dr. Arthur Frank, chairman of environmental and occupational health at Drexel University, said in a recent interview with this reporter. He added that the coming catastrophe is “all preventable.” In 2010, almost half of asbestos production was in Russia (49 percent). Other big producers were China (20 percent), Brazil (13 percent), Kazakhstan (10 percent), and Canada (5 percent). Most of it was used in China (29 percent), India (17 percent), Russia (14 percent), Kazakhstan (7 percent), Brazil (7 percent), Indonesia (5 percent), Uzbekistan (5 percent), Thailand (4 percent), Vietnam (4 percent), Ukraine (3 percent), Sri Lanka (2 percent), and Iran (1 percent). India is a country where health and environment norms are still lacking largely. Whether it be about lead content or colouring agents in food, there are no standards being enforced. Is that due to a low price on life? Or a lack of awareness?

Fissures in granite

Check out this post. Especially those of you who have granite visions!

The author looks at how a relatively unknown item like granite has become so fashionable and ubiquitous. Part of the globalisation of commodities.

Granite is found all over the world, and it is cheaper to dig it out in India and Brazil. The environmental standards are not quite as high either; in the Bangalore district, one study shows that 16% of the workers have dust and water related diseases like tuberculosis, and the air surrounding quarries is hazy with dust.

But the local real estate is flourishing, and labour cheap. So it finds its way to corners of the world!

Granite, he notes, is full of fissures and microscopic cracks that must be filled, and the counters must be maintained and sealed. Studies have shown that the crevices and fissures can become breeding areas for bacteria. A Brazilian/ portuguese study compared two plastic surfaces commonly used in cutting boards (polyethylene and polypropylene) to granite and found that "the two plastic materials were generally less prome to colonization [from salmonella] than was the granite."

Have your visions of a granite home crumbled? It makes sense to use locally available resources which are easy to mine and use, right?

Cut the waste

Here is some revealing info: 1 ream of paper = 6% of a tree! = 5.4 kg of Co2 in the atmosphere! And 3 sheets of A4 paper = 1 lit.of water!

So should you think twice before you take the print out which will never be read anyway?! Yes. Why do offices insist on a hard copy, even if it never will be read? Why do we encourage the plastic cup culture at our functions?

There are so many ways we can cut the waste. For instance, think of all the painting competitions held in the nation. One organisation alone is said to have used more than 1 Crore equivalent A1 size papers during painting competitions conducted by it last year!

Not to say we ban such competitions, but maybe we need to think if they are serving the purpose. Do children who paint on global issues go away any more enlightened, or is it merely yet another tool to propogate competition?

Can we think innovatively? Instead of painting on environment themes, why not make children build things from waste? To celebrate Earth day, why not get them to take up a campaign instead of spending paper, paint?

Agree?

How green was my home, once upon a time

Yet another Environment Day comes and goes. This time the theme was forests. There is no need to reiterate the role of forests in sustaining life on the planet. But let us see what is happening there.

While rate of forest loss is claimed to have reduced in this last decade, there is no place for complacency. Most surveys include plantations that can hardly compete with natural forests in the diversity they hold. In Indonesia, for instance, forests have been decimated for cultivation of palm oil crops, and an expected 70 percent increase in the demand for food worldwide by 2050 will add an enormous strain on the remaining tropical forests.

Estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA)show a record rise in carbon emissions from energy last year. If that pattern were to continue, the world would be on course for at least 3C to 4C of warming, according to scientific advice.

Extreme weather events triggered by climate change threaten to disrupt crop production and drive up global food prices over the next decade, a top UN climate official says. According to climate projections, extreme heat waves will become more common and more intense.

Lack of land use planning in cities is leading to increasing carbon footprints. For instance in Bangalore, according to a study by Energy and Wetland Research Centre and the Centre for Ecological Sciences attached to the Indian Institute of Science, increasing use of electricity by high-rise buildings in Bangalore that rely on wrong architecture, lack of a proper public transport system, depleting green cover and mismanagement of the City’s waste is leading the city to a rising carbon footprint.

While open dumping of waste has contributed to the release of green house gases like methane which is 21 times more than GHG potential of CO2, decrease in vegetation has also led to the increase in carbon emission as the city’s vegetation has declined to 12 per cent (in 2010) from 71 per cent (in 1973).

The human race now consumes nearly 60 billion metric tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and plant materials, such as crop plants and trees for timber or paper. We need to remember this is limited even as our population continues to skyrocket unlimited.

If only we can learn to consume a little less, waste even lesser, things would be manageable. But are we willing to?

Raising the heights of tension

Increasingly, the war between energy and environment is getting acute. This is especially so in the hydro sector as also in the thermal sector. Coal beds in India, and those situated in forests, are finding opposition from the environment ministry. Hydel projects are being seen as an opportunity unexploited by governments but largely opposed by environmentalists. When celebrities join the bandwagon, it spells trouble!

Recently, it has been James Cameron of Avataar fame who has joined the fray in Brazil’s war against the 11,000 MW producing Belo Monte dam. Brazil has a fragile energy grid that was hit last year by a blackout that darkened much of the nation. Belo Monte would supply six per cent of the country's electricity needs by 2014. A court ruling has stayed the construction pf the dam for now.

The director of "Avatar" and "Titanic" spent two days this week visiting Indian villages near the proposed dam site on the Xingu River, which feeds the Amazon, and talking with about 50 leaders of various groups.

Environmentalists and indigenous groups say Belo Monte would devastate wildlife and the livelihoods of 40,000 people who live in the area to be flooded. They also argue that the energy generated by the dam will largely go to big mining operations, instead of benefiting most Brazilians.

Avatar depicts the Na'vi race fighting to protect its homeland from big corporate plans to extract its resources. The movie has struck a chord with environmentalists the worldover and more so in places where millions have been displaced by major infrastructure projects.

It all comes back to the same impasse: without energy, how do we bring development? All talk about renewable energy is fine for the long run but for immediate needs, we can only rely on tried and tested technology.

Even India’s Narmada dam tussle shows no sign of being resolved. With accusations of money being eaten and compensation hardly compensating, the struggle is on in Madhya Pradesh where attempts are on to raise dam height.

Well, to win some you need to lose some. But who decides what we choose to win and loose? Who really benefit – the locals or some moneyed people far away?

Are small dams the solution? What is generally called as run of the river projects that do not dam or divert the natural flow of the water, but merely siphon a part which is sent back to the source?

The good, bad and ugly

The recent environment performance index compiled by researchers at Yale and Columbia universities places Iceland, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Sweden, and Norway in the top, US somewhere in the middle, India and China near the bottom, with African nations at the bottom.

The Index ranks countries based on 10 main categories such as environmental health, air quality, water management, biodiversity and habitat, forestry, and climate change. Iceland ranked at the top because of its excellent environmental public health and reliance on renewable sources of energy such as geothermal and hydropower. (Of course population counts!) Although national income was a key factor in the rankings, other factors such as good governance and natural resource management were important.

While the U.S. was placed high in categories such as safe drinking water and forest sustainability, it ranked 61st overall because of its massive greenhouse gas emissions and local air pollution problems. The low rankings of India and China are cited as being due to the severe environmental strain brought about by overpopulation and rapid economic growth.

Live bridges

There are plenty of examples of living in harmony with nature. And there are plenty of ways to destroy nature like we do in our cities. In the forests of Meghalaya, India, the War-Khasis people have discovered a patient way of crossing the many rivers of their wet region. By guiding the roots of an abundant species of rubber tree, they were able to create a living system of bridges that are in some cases over one hundred feet long and can support the weight of 50 people.

This graceful solution came from a people who saw a problem and solved it using their surrounding environment. The roots are woven and guided in hollowed out betel nut trunks until they reach and grab onto the opposite banks. Over time these root systems become strong enough to support the daily movement of people across the rivers.

Maybe it is time we think of how we can have our roads and save the trees. Any ideas anyone?