The Economist: The environment

A new device may take the sitting around out of bird-watching

ORNITHOLOGY is one of the few branches of science to which amateurs still make an important contribution. One reason is that there are lots of bird-watchers around to collect the screeds of distribution and habitat data that the science of ecology relies on. And one reason that there are so many bird-watchers (as opposed to, say, mammal-watchers) is that birds tend to advertise their presence in a way that most animals do not. Many have showy plumage, and many (not always the same ones) have mellifluous songs—meaning that a lot of bird-watching is actually bird-listening.

Neither bird-watchers nor bird-listeners can be around all the time, however, so to make the process more systematic Daniel Wolff of the University of Bonn is trying to build a bird-song-recognition system that can sit in a piece of habitat and listen for the calls of particular species until its power runs out. And it seems to work. He recently conducted a trial of the system in an area of lakes to the north-east of Berlin, where it looked for Savi’s warbler, a small and rare bird that loves reed beds and sounds rather like a cricket, and also for a more common species, the chaffinch. ...

What constitutes sustainability?

IT’S official: extracting oil from Canada’s vast deposits of bitumenous sand is unsustainable. So, at any rate, Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) implicitly concluded when it ruled that Royal Dutch Shell was misleading the public by describing its tar-sands operation as “sustainable”.

WWF, the environmental NGO that lodged the complaint with the ASA, dislikes the tar sands (or oil sands, as Shell prefers to call them) because turning them into fuel consumes much more energy than refining crude oil does. If that energy is made by burning natural gas—as it is in all tar-sands projects at the moment—and so involves extra emissions of greenhouse gases, then the resulting fuel is two or three times as bad for the atmosphere as normal petrol or diesel. That is no good for the world’s climate, and so, in WWF’s view, unsustainable. ...

Everyone knows industry needs oil. Now people are worrying about water, too

“WATER is the oil of the 21st century,” declares Andrew Liveris, the chief executive of Dow, a chemical company. Like oil, water is a critical lubricant of the global economy. And as with oil, supplies of water—at least, the clean, easily accessible sort—are coming under enormous strain because of the growing global population and an emerging middle-class in Asia that hankers for the water-intensive life enjoyed by people in the West.

Oil prices have fallen from their recent peaks, but concerns about the availability of freshwater show no sign of abating. Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, estimates that global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, which it calls an “unsustainable” rate of growth. Water, unlike oil, has no substitute. Climate change is altering the patterns of freshwater availability in complex ways that can lead to more frequent and severe droughts. ...

Wastewater irrigation is better than you think

NORMALLY, news about the environment can be pigeonholed into one of two categories: a big one, labelled “Bad” and a smaller one, with a heading along the lines of “Encouraging” or at least “Not Quite as Bad as You Thought”. But your correspondent has no idea where to file a report on the use of wastewater in agriculture released this week by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a research centre.

The report looks at 53 cities in the developing world, to see to what extent local farmers water their crops with untreated sewage or industrial effluent, either directly or through contaminated local water sources. The results are striking. In more than two-thirds of the cities, over half the agricultural land is irrigated with wastewater—400,000 hectares (988,000 acres), all told. The study estimates that some 20m hectares around the world are watered in this way. ...

A young multinational mining giant gets a taste of multinational criticism

ONCE a princely game reserve, the Niyamgiri hills (pictured) in Orissa, one of India’s poorest states, are now known for a richer quarry: bauxite, from which aluminium is made. On August 8th, after a 22-month delay, India’s Supreme Court gave the Indian arm of Vedanta Resources, a metals and minerals giant, permission to mine the ore, which will feed the firm’s alumina refinery nearby. The decision was condemned by international campaigning groups which say the project will rob tribal people of their way of life. As Vedanta has found, these groups can mine a controversy with the same determination as the firm can mine a hilltop.

Vedanta has its roots in India, where its founder was born and raised and where most of its operations remain. But it has turned itself into a global company, listed on the London Stock Exchange, with a spot in the FTSE 100 index. Its new reach allows it to tap investors in one part of the world and mineral deposits in another. But it also exposes it to critics from Orissa to Oslo. ...

For all the political hype, London is still ambivalent about them

ONCE the preserve of ageing former presidents, overfed golf stars and milkmen, electric vehicles are much in vogue these days. A survey this month by esure, a car-insurance company, found that 71% of British motorists would consider driving one, and all the main political parties have burnished their green credentials by supporting financial incentives for owners of cars with low carbon-dioxide emissions. This, and the painfully high price of petrol, has seen the number of electric cars in London increase dramatically, from 90 in 2003 to 1,600 in 2008.

At first glance, this figure seems bound to rise further. Last month Boris Johnson, London’s new mayor, said that he was setting up a body to support electric-car drivers in the capital—the Electric Vehicle Partnership for London. Top of its list of things to do is installing more public points at which electric-car owners may top up their batteries. At the moment there are 40 spots dotted around the London streets where drivers who have paid GBP75 for a key can pull in and plug in free of charge, and some privately owned car parks have charging points too. Another 100 charging stations are now on the cards. ...

Is it safe to let bison return to the unsupervised wild?

TO THE earliest explorers they seemed almost infinite, a dark pulsing mass stretching to the horizon. But the vast throngs of bison or buffalo grazing on the Plains, by some estimates as many as 60m, were not endless. Relentless hunting and the approach of civilisation reduced them to a last herd of 300 in 1893. Now they are being slowly reintroduced into the wild.

As many as 200,000 bison are currently raised commercially, to satisfy a growing demand for a meat that is leaner and richer in protein than beef. But wild bison, which are held in federal and state preserves, number fewer than 20,000. ...

Electric bikes are all the rage in China

CHINA'S increasingly affluent citizens may not all be able to afford cars just yet. But they clearly yearn for some motive power beyond that provided by their two legs. The standard bicycle, synonymous with mass transport in China, is not enough for everyone. Over the past few years electric bikes, with small motors that give a little help to the rider, have become more popular, with more than 20m made last year according to a new report, “China's Clean Revolution”. The hope of environmentalists, of course, is that mass transport powered by electricity would pump less carbon into the air than transport powered by internal combustion engines.

...

Many primate species face extinction

NO ONE likes to hear that a close relation is having a hard time. But the most populous primate (humans) is doing no favours to the in-laws. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, an activist group, has produced a comprehensive review of the world's 634 species of monkeys, great apes and other primates. It found that 48% are in danger of extinction. Cambodia's primates are in the most peril—of ten species in the country, nine are in trouble. The IUCN blames habitat destruction, as tropical forests are cleared, the hunting of primates for food and the illegal trade in wildlife.

...

A new green agriculture label may take on organic

IS ORGANIC farming really as green as its reputation? Certainly, nobody can fault rotating crops and planting what grows best in a given area, but ordinary farmers also use such methods.

Organic farming fundamentally rests on two sets of practices. One is limiting the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. ...

When poverty and greenery collide

THE Camp for Climate Action—an annual gathering of anarchists and environmentalists—is fast becoming a summer fixture. Having protested outside Drax (a big coal-fired power plant) in 2006 and Heathrow airport in 2007, this year they are pitching tents in Kingsnorth, an industrial bit of Kent that is the proposed site of what would be the first new coal power station to be built in Britain for two decades.

The protesters point out that coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel and argue that, given official pledges to cut carbon emissions, building new plants using it would be “stupid”. Their ambition is to shut down the existing Kingsnorth station, which is also coal-fired, for a day. There have already been several arrests and clashes with the police (whom protesters accuse of harassment); more seem likely on August 9th, their officially designated “day of mass action”. ...

Donations welcome, even from foreigners

IT IS an unusual prospectus for a new fund. Left-wing government (formerly hostile to private enterprise) seeks investment from governments or individuals to be managed by the national development bank. Returns will beat the market in terms of virtue only, though investors may lay claim to a part in the salvation of the planet. Norway, the most considerate of global citizens, has already pledged $100m. Others may follow.

The Amazon Fund, launched on July 31st by Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, leans on an idea that has become accepted wisdom among conservationists: to stop the Amazon rainforest from shrinking, a way must be found to make preserving it more lucrative than slashing and burning it. It is not yet clear who will be eligible for grants from the fund, but early indications are that it will give money to projects proposed by NGOs, scientists or by the governments of the states that are home to the forest. They might include supporting traditional rubber tappers and gatherers of Brazil nuts, or carefully managed forestry. ...

The shameful destruction of a crop trial

ALMOST ten years ago, a jury acquitted Lord Melchett, a British aristocrat who headed Greenpeace, of the wilful destruction of a field of genetically modified (GM) crops in Norfolk. Though police caught Lord Melchett and 27 other activists in the field, the jury was unwilling to convict. Talk of “Frankenfood” and “genetic pollution” sowed popular fear of GM crops.

Ten years on and anti-GM activists are still at it: in June, unknown vandals destroyed a field of genetically modified potatoes near Tadcaster, North Yorkshire. If they are ever caught, they may find themselves in for rougher treatment than their forerunners: though many Britons remain mistrustful of GM crops, the knee-jerk opposition that freed the lord has quieted for a number of reasons. ...

Hopes rise on a divided and parched island

FIRST the good news. The Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot presidents will start serious talks on reunifying the divided island on September 3rd. Demetris Christofias and Mehmet Ali Talat, both old-fashioned left-wingers, have made clear they want a settlement.

Alexander Downer, the tough-talking Australian former foreign minister who is the United Nations envoy, says the meeting offers the best chance in years of resolving the intractable dispute that has bedevilled the workings of both the European Union and NATO. ...

Indian conservationists strive to convince politicians of a small bird’s existence

WHEN in 2006 conservationists petitioned Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh (AP), to designate the Jerdon’s courser as the official bird of the southern Indian state, they had a strong case. Unlike the Indian roller, the incumbent state bird, the Jerdon’s courser is endemic to AP. Moreover, the “rediscovery” of the bird in 1986—almost a century after it had last been spotted, and decades after it was assumed to have gone extinct—was a special achievement for India’s ornithologists. But Mr Reddy had a problem. He worried that the courser did not, in fact, exist.

This was somewhat understandable. A small, brown inhabitant of undergrowth, the nocturnal courser—also known as the double-banded courser—is exceptionally rare and elusive. Since 1986, when a specimen of the bird was trapped, it has been seen only ten times, in a single patch of scrub forest in southern AP. Its call has been heard about 30 times, most recently in June. According to an unpublished study by researchers at Britain’s University of Reading—based on the habits of similar species—the courser’s protected forest could hold up to (but probably not more than) 32 pairs of the bird. It is one of 13 Indian bird species classified as “critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a grouping of governments and NGOs. ...

The jaws of ragworms may yield a valuable new material

WHEN it comes to prospecting for advanced materials, the animal kingdom rarely comes to mind. Yet engineers sometimes find that the forge of evolution produces more impressive substances than those devised by the human brain. Spider-silk, for example, is stronger than steel, and is now finding its way into bullet-proof jackets. And the ridges and furrows of a gecko’s ceiling-grasping toes have inspired a glueless adhesive tape.

The newest candidate for translation from the animal to the human world, though, looks even more unlikely. Chris Broomell and Herbert Waite, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, have been studying the jaws of ragworms—which, as careless fishermen who have used them for bait can attest, can give a nasty nip. Dr Broomell and Dr Waite were curious about the composition of the only hard parts of an otherwise squishy animal. In finding out, they may have blundered across the starting point for a new material that is both strong and light. ...

The climate-change prime minister loses some green points

COALMINERS in New South Wales (NSW), Australia’s most populous state, boast that they export enough of the black stuff to supply New Zealand, Indonesia and Singapore with all their electricity. Along with Queensland and Victoria, the state also digs up enough to provide Australia as a whole with 83% of its power. This dirty energy has turned Australia into one of the world’s highest per person emitters of greenhouse gases. With more than 200 years’ supply of black coal left, Australians have never much questioned this. But that may be about to change.

The Labor government, under Kevin Rudd, outlined plans in a green paper on July 16th to cut carbon pollution with an emissions-trading scheme. Mr Rudd’s promise to tackle climate change played a large part in Labor’s election win last November. During its 11 years in power the former conservative coalition, under John Howard, largely ignored the issue. ...

Having rescued Cuba with cheap oil, Venezuela is to be paid back in zebras

SOON after Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba in 1959, goes an old Cuban joke, the signs at the Havana zoo that read “Please do not feed the animals” were changed to “Please do not take the animals’ food”. When the Soviet Union crumbled and withdrew its aid to Cuba, triggering the so-called “special period” that began in the early 1990s, times became even harder and the joke changed. The new signs, so the story went, begged visitors not to eat the animals.

For those who lived through it, the special period was anything but funny. Domestic cats disappeared from the streets and reappeared on the dinner table. The zoo population thinned out. “The peacocks, the buffalo and even the rhea [a South American bird that resembles an ostrich] disappeared,” says a Havana resident. “The hyaenas became vegetarians, the zoo was depopulated and even the tigers had only sweet potatoes and a bit of cassava to eat.” ...

The green towns of the future run into more opposition

FORD, a one-pub hamlet between the South Downs and the sea, is home to just 1,400 people. They are lucky: with its winding river and views of Arundel castle, the village is beautiful. Soon, many more might enjoy its charms. The settlement has been shortlisted as the site of an “eco-town”, comprising 5,000 homes, shops, schools, offices and a power-plant. Residents are aghast, and have banners in their gardens saying so.

In all, 13 quiet spots are being considered for eco-towns (see map). The government has promised five by 2016 and up to five more by 2020. Some will provide up to 15,000 homes. At least 30% of the dwellings will be “affordable”. Carbon neutrality, green space and reliance on bikes and buses are said to justify the “eco” tag. The chosen sites will be announced in early 2009. ...