Global warming news | Time for change - For whom enough is too little - nothing is ever enough

UK citizens using 58 baths of water a day

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Stockholm, Sweden - While each person in the UK drinks, hoses, flushes and washes their way through around 150 litres of mains water a day, they consume about 30 times as much in “virtual” water embedded in food, clothes and other items – the equivalent of about 58 bathtubs full of water every day.

Launching the report, UK Water Footprint: the impact of the UK’s food and fibre consumption on global water resources, at World Water Week in Stockholm today, Stuart Orr, WWF-UK’s water footprint expert, said the UK was the sixth largest importer of water in the world.

“Only 38 per cent of the UK’s total water use comes from its own rivers, lakes and groundwater reserves,” he said. “The rest is taken from water bodies in many countries across the world to irrigate and process food and fibre crops that people in Britain subsequently consume

“What’s particularly worrying is that huge amounts of these products are grown in drier areas of the world where water resources are either already stressed or very likely to become so in the near future.”

Just one tomato from Morocco takes 13 litres of water to grow while the various ingredients in a cup of coffee collectively use 140 litres. A shirt made from cotton grown in Pakistan or Uzbekistan cotton – and possibly irrigated by water from the Indus river or the rivers that feed the Aral Sea in central Asia – soaks up 2,700 litres of water.

Cotton producing Pakistan has recently experienced its lowest water availability on record and the Indus river often runs dry before it reaches the sea. This affects the communities and critical habitats in the Indus delta as well as endangered species such as the Indus river dolphin. Over abstraction from the rivers that flow into the Aral Sea for the irrigation of cotton fields has led to the loss of 60% of its area and 80% of its volume in the last 40 years.

Closer to home, Spanish oranges and grapes come from a country where, earlier this year, drinking water has been shipped in from France due to acute shortages.

“Most people aren’t even aware that it takes massive amounts of water to grow the food and fibres we consume on top of what is used for drinking and washing and watering the lawn,” Mr Orr said.

”Therefore, it is essential that business and government identify the areas that could potentially suffer water crises and develop solutions so the environment is not overexploited to the point that people and wildlife lose out.”

WWF is encouraging some of the UK’s largest companies, such as Marks and Spencer, to evaluate their water footprints. A water footprint assesses the amount of water a business uses both directly from the tap and virtually through its supply chain. It includes water taken from both UK rivers and aquifers and those in other countries where crops are grown and processed.

WWF also asks companies to promote sustainable water use in areas where water is scarce.

“The private sector has a very important role to play. It can engage with governments and communities along its supply chain to support better water management,” Mr Orr said. “In order to reduce risk, businesses need to do their utmost to encourage more efficient and effective water use in water stressed areas where they operate.”

In India and Pakistan, WWF is working with farmers who grow thirsty crops such as cotton, rice and sugar cane to explore ways in which farmers can use less water to grow more crops. In one sugar cane trial, agricultural water use has dropped by 40 per cent while yields have risen by a third.

“This is not just an issue for food and clothing companies, producers and retailers. Insurers and investors have a vested interest in encouraging efficiency of water use and security of water supply in an ever thirstier world. Water is irreplaceable and climate change and population growth are only going to exacerbate the problem,” said Mr Orr.

He added: “There’s an important role for the public here. As a consumer you can ask businesses, including your local supermarkets, to tell you what they are doing to ensure good water management along their supply chains. As a citizen you can urge your government to make good water management a priority both in this country and overseas. But if we do nothing to alleviate the acute pressures on water resources at home and abroad then our inaction could have far reaching consequences for people and habitats.”

Notes:

A copy of the report is available from http://www.wwf.org.uk/freshwater
To find out more about your own water consumption visit: http://www.waterfootprint.org/

For further information, please contact:

Phil Dickie tel +41 797031952, email: pdickie@wwfint.org
Robin Clegg, tel: +44 7771 818 707, rclegg@wwf.org.uk

New US president will help climate change fight: Australian PM

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:00:00 +0200

The next US president will provide fresh impetus to the fight against global warming, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Tuesday.

Japan to label goods' carbon footprints: official

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:00:00 +0200

Japan is planning to label consumer goods to show their carbon footprints in a bid to raise public awareness about global warming, an official said Tuesday.

World needs global water agreement now

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

WWF Director-General James Leape today called on governments to support the entry into force of the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention—an international agreement which could play a key role in water security for about 40% of the world's population.

Launching the booklet Everything you need to know about the UN Watercourses Convention at World Water Week in Stockholm, Mr Leape said, "This essential treaty has languished in limbo for more than a decade, largely due to the failure of nations in not signing up to what they long ago agreed to.

More than 100 states voted for the Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses in 1997, with only China, Turkey and Burundi voting against. Since then only 16 nations out of a required 35 to bring it into force have joined the treaty despite a succession of calls for its implementation from key international bodies, UN agencies, and even governments.

Mr Leape praised the efforts of Ghana, The Netherlands, and the Economic Community of West Africa States in standing up for the convention and urging their neighbors to take action.

“Because most of the world’s transboundary river basins lack adequate legal protection, the world needs a global framework for sustainably managing and preventing disputes over those resources and this is the only such framework available in the timescale to help us deal with a growing water crisis,” Mr Leape said,

If brought into force and widely implemented by the nations sharing the water of river systems and associated lakes and aquifers the convention could greatly contribute to ending the chaos of water grabbing and to improving the health of 263 rivers and lakes in 145 countries. Rivers that cross or form borders, most suffering from non-existent or inadequate regulation, drain half the earth's surface, provide water to 40 percent of the human population and generate about 60 percent of global freshwater flow.

Flavia Loures, who heads the WWF initiative to have the convention brought into force, said "Now, when there are increasing water shortages and water quality issues world-wide, and climate change will only make things worse, is when we need to have an effective and widely accepted agreement of global scope covering shared freshwater resources”.

A key benefit of the UN Watercourses Convention will be its procedures for consultation and benefit-sharing on large infrastructure projects and for peacefully settling water disputes between countries.

"This is about national and global security as much as human and water security," Mr Leape said. "The experts are telling us that rivalries over water will be a significant source of future conflict as indeed, they already are.

"An essential element of the response to our current water crisis and the looming escalation of that crisis is on the shelf and ready to go. All we need is for the world's nations to match their actions on water to their rhetoric."

Canada's Oilsands Tarred with the "Greenwash" Brush

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:08:24 +0200

The UK Advertising Standards Authority ruled that a Shell ad that repeatedly referred to extraction from Canada's oilsands as "sustainable" was "misleading." The advertising regulator noted the "considerable social and environmental impacts" of oilsands development, adding that Shell has not explained how it will manage "carbon emissions from its oilsands projects in order to limit climate change." The World Wildlife Fund filed a complaint accusing Shell of "greenwashing," after the ad appeared in the Financial Times. Shell agreed not to run the ad again. Oilsands development "uses enormous amounts of fresh water and natural gas and produces about three times as much greenhouse gas emissions as conventional oil output." The Canadian province of Alberta, where the oilsands are located, "launched a three-year, $25-million campaign" earlier this year, "to market Alberta and correct what the government insists is misinformation about the oilsands." Calgary Herald business editor Charles Frank opined, "We have to reframe the debate ... if we are to have even the faintest hope of making sure this province's most valuable resource isn't sabotaged by people and organizations who do not have our best interests at heart."

Building Resilience to Climate Change in Niger

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:57:54 +0200

Climate change poses a major threat to the world’s 2 billion rural poor, but sustainable natural resource management can help developing countries like Niger adapt to the threat. (See World Resources Report 2008.)

Droughts and desertification associated with climate change will hit Africa hard. Already, more than 300 million (out of 930 million) Africans live in drought or drought-prone areas. And a 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report found that by 2020, climate change will expose an additional 75-250 million on the continent to water shortages.

In Niger, the Sahara desert has been moving further south into the country’s semi-arid Sahel region, overtaking farm plots and displacing Niger’s rapidly growing population. Rakia, a 35-year-old mother from the region, said of the worsening conditions: “In the past there was water in the watering hole for six or seven months, but now the watering hole is not enough.” (Watch a video of Rakia’s story here.)

Many of Niger’s citizens–60 percent of whom live on less on less than $1 a day—will face similar challenges as they struggle to grow crops in the Sahel’s sandy, nutrient poor soils, made less productive by the increasingly scarce and erratic rainfall predicted under changing climate.

Niger: An Unlikely Success Story

Trends in Vegetation Index in Niger: 1982-1999But in the face of overwhelming adversity, Niger has experienced an unprecedented, farmer-led “re-greening” movement that has reversed desertification and brought increased crop production, income, food security, and self-reliance to impoverished rural producers. (Read the full World Resources Report 2008 case study on Niger (PDF, 2.3 Mb).)

Along with other soil and water conservation programs, the key vehicle for this remarkable transformation was farmer-managed natural regeneration, or FMNR–the adoption of simple, low-cost techniques for managing the natural regeneration of trees and shrubs.

Over many decades, Nigerien farmers had cleared their fields of vegetation, leaving what turned out to be an “underground forest” of living stumps and roots. FMNR is based on the regeneration of native trees and shrubs from these mature root systems, which promote surprisingly fast re-growth and allow trees to be trimmed and pruned to maximize harvests. The farmers use the tree branches for firewood, while the fruits and bark go toward food and medicine. The trees’ roots minimize soil erosion while their leaves fertilize garden plots. A number of international donors and NGOs began testing the concept with Niger’s farmers in the 1980s—the soil productivity in the original plots visibly improved, and the farmers had a consistent source of firewood for cooking.

Following FMNR’s visible initial successes, farmers throughout Niger’s Sahel region began to experiment with tree regeneration. As thousands of households made impressive gains in crop yields and incomes in a short time period, the practice spread from farmer to farmer and from district to district, driven by self-interest. Because regenerating trees requires no financial outlays for materials or equipment by poor, risk-averse farmers, FMNR was well suited to such spontaneous self-scaling. (Read more about the importance of scaling.)

The simple and cost-effective practice of farmer-managed natural regeneration has provided an impressively wide range of benefits for Niger’s impoverished rural communities. By 2007, between a quarter and half of all the country’s farmers were involved, and estimates suggest that at least 4.5 million people were reaping the benefits. The results over the last 20 years speak for themselves:

About 200 million trees have been protected and managed by farmers.
At least 250,000 hectares of degraded land have been restored to crop production.
Vast expanses of savanna devoid of vegetation in the early 1980s are now densely studded by trees, shrubs, and crops.

With trees now carpeting land that was barren within the last ten to twenty years, Niger’s farmers have produced one of the most visibly successful examples of natural resource management in the world today.

A Cushion Against Climate Change

FMNR and other land management techniques have made many of Niger’s farmers far more resilient in the face of population growth, desertification, and climate change.

This progress can extend beyond Niger. For other Sahelian countries facing the same future, FMNR offers a cheap and effective model to improve farm productivity and reclaim land from the dunes.

Development experts and NGOs are hopeful that region-wide expansion of FMNR and other proven land management programs will help Sub-Saharan Africa adapt to the rainfall shifts anticipated under climate change.

Coal Scuttled