By Lova Rakotomalala

The Malagasy field researcher who contributed to the report on rosewood illegal logging in Madagascar entitled “Between Democracy and Conservation” explains the method they used in conducting their18-months-long secret investigation [fr]. He states that the investigation was conducted away from the government task force and that he is glad that the pillaging of the rain forest, often under the protection of national Special Forces (FIS), is finally entering the political debate [fr].

By Juhie Bhatia

This post was commissioned as part of a Pulitzer Center/Global Voices Online series on Food Insecurity that draw on multimedia reporting featured on the Pulitzer Gateway to Food Insecurity. Share your own story here.

A close-up of stem rust on wheat crop (USDA/public domain)

The risk posed by a fungus that is deadly to the world's second largest crop, wheat, continues to rise. The killer fungus, called Ug99, causes stem rust disease, which can destroy entire wheat fields.

Two new aggressive forms of the fungus were found in South Africa for the first time earlier this year, raising concerns that it could spread. More than a billion people in developing countries rely on wheat for their food and income.

As journalist Sharon Schmickle explored in a 2008 project for the Pulitzer Center, Ug99 poses a major threat because 80 percent of Asian and African wheat varieties are susceptible to the fungus. Since the fungus was discovered in Uganda in 1999 it has traveled to the fields of Kenya, Ethiopia, Yemen and Iran.

At the 8th International Wheat Conference in June, several scientific papers about risks and possible solutions to Ug99 were presented, and the discovery of the new forms of the fungus in South Africa, as well as in Kenya, were announced. In a blog post on Philanthropy Action Tim Ogden urges global poverty philanthropists to look towards agriculture and funding for science as he elaborates on the potential consequences of this discovery:

“The new rust has become even more virulent since it emerged. Now that it’s in South Africa, the rust can much more easily spread to the Middle East and South Asia as it can hitch a ride on prevailing wind currents. As the rust spreads—killing up to 80 percent of a wheat crop—farmers around the world will have to replace the varieties of wheat that they use.”

Stem rust itself is nothing new. Controlling it was a major part of the Green Revolution of the 1960s, when scientists introduced genes into wheat to make it resistant to the fungus. When Ug99 emerged in Uganda, it transformed stem rust from a disease largely under control to a major global threat.

A post by Allen Dodson on the Biosecurity Blog of the Federation of American Scientists insists it's vital to deal with this threat:

Though authorities are increasingly aware of the danger [of agricultural pathogens] – whether from naturally occurring outbreaks or intentional acts of terrorism and aggression – the rapid transport of food across agricultural regions and on to markets poses a major challenge for the detection and quarantine of crop pathogens. As global populations and food requirements continue to increase, addressing the threat to the food supply will only become even more important.”
Ug99's spores are transported by wind but can also be carried on clothes or in plant matter. As it migrates it can also mutate, sometimes into deadlier forms. In addition to the new forms of Ug99 found in South Africa, researchers at the June conference also announced two new forms in Kenya. These four mutations of Ug99 have acquired the ability to defeat two of the most important stem rust-resistant genes.

On environmental politics blog Red Green and Blue, Kay Sexton says the situation reveals how fragile our food supply is.

Monkey's Uncle blogger and biological anthropologist, James Holland Jones, says it highlights the importance of evolutionary biology.

Commenting on an article on Wired, a reader going by the name “mwilk” thinks the stem rust problem highlights the need for greater biodiversity:

Sounds like an updated version of the Irish Potato Famine. Another good reason why it is good practice to maintain genetic diversity in important agricultural crops and not to be too dependent on a single crop. Easier said than done in many poor countries, but in the US we certainly have the resources to maintain an agricultural base that can withstand the attack of this type of pathogen. If we have the wisdom is another matter.

Fungicides can be used to combat Ug99, but small-scale farmers without access to these chemicals remain vulnerable. So researchers are trying to stay one step ahead. In June, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations launched the Web site Rust SPORE to monitor the spread of Ug99 and other wheat rusts. Researchers are also working on breeding new varieties of wheat that are resistant to Ug99.

Nonetheless, Robert Winter, blogging on Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, says that both the April Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and stem rust have shown the limits of technology:

Perhaps illogically, this attitude to technology and human certainty is lodged in my mind with the recent and growing concern about the spread of the ug99 wheat fungus, a stem rust that we thought we'd dealt to with our science, but has evolved into a virulent new form in Africa and has become a very serious global threat, in part as an effect of our standardisation of wheat types. I'm not a Luddite, and am in general comfortable with many aspects of technological progress, but both these cases show the inadequacy of the risk assessments that we use when we tamper with fundamental forces. It is good to understand the margins of our knowledge.

Still, Steve Savage, blogging on Sustainablog, remains optimistic, listing four reasons why scientists will defeat stem rust:

I’ll wager that the worst potential from this disease will NOT actually occur. This is not a casual wager – the health or even survival of millions of poor people around the world is at stake. Some of my wheat breeder friends might not like me to say this (because they legitimately need more funding), but my bet is still that the breeders will prevail against all odds (and get little credit for it). I base that qualified optimism on having seen what a remarkable group of scientists called “plant breeders” have been able to achieve in the past… Will plant breeders still do their very best to protect the food supply? Yes, they will.

By Alexey Sidorenko

Habrahabr users discuss [RUS] the latest Akamai's “State of the Internet” report. According to the research, 12 percent of all the Internet-attacks in the first quarter of 2010 were carried out from the territory of Russia, while the U.S. hackers took the “second prize” for 10 percent of the world's aggressive Internet-traffic.

By Ndesanjo Macha

Should Africa care about space exploration?: “As Africans, we have always had an interest in the sky – the Dogon of Mali were found to have an advanced astronomical knowledge without the use of telescopes.”

By Juhie Bhatia

This post was commissioned as part of a Pulitzer Center/Global Voices Online series on Food Insecurity that draw on multimedia reporting featured on the Pulitzer Gateway to Food Insecurity. Share your own story here.

Sunset over farmland in South Africa by Irene2005 on Flickr

While there have been significant increases in agricultural productivity in Asia and Latin America over the last 30 years, productivity in Africa has stagnated and 1 in 3 people in sub-Saharan Africa still go chronically hungry. Many solutions have been proposed to help combat hunger in Africa, but one in particular remains controversial: biotechnology.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that 1.02 billion people do not have enough to eat in the world; more than a fourth of these people live in sub-Saharan Africa. The reasons for the region's food insecurity range from economic crisis to an expanding population. In a Penn State University blog on biotechnology, Dr. Terry Etherton in the United States elaborates on these challenges:

In sub-Saharan Africa, where more “ultrapoor” live, developing technologies to boost productivity is especially difficult because of greater threats from pests and diseases, poorer soil, and drought. In addition, Africa’s R&D [research and development] establishments are small compared to those of South Asia—half had fewer than 100 scientists in 2000. Compared to Latin America, Africa has less than half the rural roads per hectare, 1/40th the capital per farmer, and 1/50th the rural electricity supply per worker. Despite some success with maize [corn], cassava, and some horticultural crops, few African countries have experienced a Green Revolution.

On a global scale, Africa uses the least fertilizers, pesticides and hybrid or genetically modified (GM) seeds of any continent, although many experts suggest that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could help ensure food security by increasing crop yields, producing hardier crop varieties, enhancing a crop's nutritional value, and improving storability. Others claim there are numerous risks associated with adopting GMOs in Africa.

Bloggers following the debate alternately wonder whether Africa is being bullied into accepting biotechnology, or whether Africans are being needlessly scared off by anti-GMO activists.

Journalist Gregory Simpkins in Washington D.C outlines the debate in his personal blog Africa Rising 2010:

Those who don’t trust what they see as Big Science and capitalists, believe GM agricultural products are “Frankenfood.” Those alarmed by the rise in both malnutrition and food prices see a crisis that may be alleviated by using science to jump-start the Green Revolution in Africa. The problem is that there is not enough evidence that these products are either unjustifiably dangerous or completely safe. Africa’s brain drain doesn’t make this situation any easier since many of the scientists who could ensure that their homelands don’t use unsafe agricultural products or take advantage of existing technology to prevent starvation live and work in other countries.

Resistance to GMOs is high. Currently South Africa is the only country on the continent to have approved GM seeds for planting.

Reporter Philip Brasher traveled to South Africa and Kenya to chronicle the role of biotechnology in an article series for the DesMoines Register sponsored by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He says more than 70 percent of South Africa’s latest corn crop, the country’s largest in decades, is biotech. While some African countries have allowed imports of this GM corn as food aid, others, such as Zimbabwe have rejected these products despite the need.

The U.S. government and American biotech companies say Africans should drop their opposition to GM crops in order to help feed the continent. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also jumped on board, by helping to set up the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in 2006, and more recently by funding research to engineer more drought-resistant corn. Some agriculture experts in Africa are also calling on Africans to embrace agricultural technologies to boost food production. The blog GMO Africa also believes Africans should be able to take advantage of biotech:

“An open-door policy to new technologies, especially in the field of agriculture, is what Africa needs. When activists intimidate Africa, through fear, into not exploring potential benefits of GM foods, the continent suffers. They stymie a rational debate about whether GM foods have any relevance to Africa.”

However, many bloggers are weary of widely introducing GMOs in a continent comprised mostly of small farms. An article on the progressive pan-African website Pambazuka News by Nidhi Tandon outlines the concerns:

The risks to Africa of fully adopting industrial agriculture in general and GM seeds in particular include:

- transferring its food and farming decisions to global corporations

- losing ecological and agricultural diversity as genetically modified crop varieties spread, and driving small- and medium-scale family farmers off their land because they cannot afford the expensive inputs, including genetically modified seeds, that industrial agriculture demands.”

In South Africa itself, reactions to GMOs also remain mixed. On the blog of a South African family that cultivates “heirloom” and open pollinated seeds, called Livingseeds, Sean Freeman says there isn't enough evidence to support GMOs even though they were “forced onto the South African public”:

‘All the evidence’ shows that GMO is the best thing since sliced bread, however the problem we have is that all of the evidence is slanted and prepared by a) GMO houses b) Scientists that have their research grants supplied by GMO houses or c) Universities that are sponsored by GMO houses. All impartial evidence is wiped sorry forced sorry explained away and serious anecdotal evidence is discredited as not having any scientifically credible weight, as it’s not…… scientific. However here is some anecdotal evidence that is pretty indisputable.

Freeman links to a news story about widespread crop failures in South Africa in 2008/9 due to “a breeding error” in genetically engineered seeds sold by the global corporation Monsanto. An online petition initiated by the African Center for Biosafety says Monsanto compensated commercial farmers who lost their yield but banned them from speaking to the media, and made no mention of whether they compensated resource poor farmers who were given the seed and lost their yield as well.

Most agricultural experts do agree that GMOs alone won't solve Africa's hunger issues. Other solutions suggested by bloggers include organic farming, growing your own food, and promoting social change. Whatever the solutions, on Africa Rising 2010 Simpkins argues we need to openly consider all options, including biotechology:

The behind-the-scenes debate over GM foods needs to be brought into the open and examined carefully. Promoting products that may be dangerous is unacceptable. However, in the face of growing hunger in Africa, we owe it to the hungry to explore every possibility for meeting their needs while they still live.

By Portnoy Zheng

The second TEDxTaipei installment: TEDxTaipei 2010 will be on July 24th and 25th with 27 speakers from local and from abroad, from musicians to scientists. The whole event will be live-streaming here.

By Ndesanjo Macha

“In celebrating African creativity; Maker Faire Africa 2010 and African Digital Art network are partnering up to encourage designers throughout Africa to showcase their talent through a T-Shirt Design Competition,” writes Ghanaian blogger Mac-Jordan.

 

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It’s become a cliché that water is the new oil. Experts predict that clean, fresh water will, by the end of the century, be as precious and hard to find as black gold is now. Business magazines and websites are already instructing investors on how to profit from the coming market in water. (See http://seekingalpha.com/article/117760-water-the-new-oil.)

In many developing countries, drinkable water is already extremely scarce, and environmental justice demands that affluent nations like the U.S. attend to the needs of the arid poor.

The good news is, as unregulated fracking—extraction of natural gas through hydraulic fracturing—moves forward, many communities across the U.S. are finding their water supplies undrinkable. Pretty soon we may not have to worry about the Third World’s water problems—our own will be just as bad, and justice will be served.

Our use of water is much greater than that of people in the Third World. Can you imagine an American family of four hauling nine buckets of water a day from a well a quarter mile away and making it do for cooking, drinking, and washing? I once spent three days in a village in the desert of Rajasthan, India, where I watched a family do just that, but there were eight of us in the house, including me, using that precious water. I was not allowed to help fetch water—because of the danger of wild dogs, they said.

To personal use, add the water required by agriculture, industry, and energy production, and you have a system that gobbles up vast quantities of fresh water. Fracking itself uses millions of gallons of water at a shot, injected into the ground at high pressure, along with chemicals and sand, to break up gas-trapping shale deep below the surface. Once the water is polluted with chemicals, it is sequestered below the water table to keep it out of the groundwater. Some of it returns to the surface along with the natural gas and has to be trucked to disposal sites. Either way, millions of gallons are being withdrawn from our water systems, while some of it is escaping into community water supplies and making water undrinkable.

Residents of Dimock, Pennsylvania, are getting dizzy from taking showers. In the documentary film Gasland, people are shown lighting their water on fire as it comes out of the tap.

Josh Fox, director of Gasland, traveled to Arkansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Texas, and New Mexico, looking for towns where fracking was well-regulated, landowners were happily living off the leasing fees paid by drilling companies, and the water was still clean. He did not find any such community.

The New York State legislature is currently grappling with whether to allow fracking in the natural-gas-rich Marcellus Shale, which underlies much of the state, including the Catskills, source of New York City drinking water. The city is opposed to fracking in the state, but forces in favor of it include the politically powerful gas companies, landowners hoping to get rich from leasing fees, and the country’s need for energy supplies.

For more information and ways to take action, see http://www.gaslandthemovie.com.

 

 

 

Udhampur/Jammu, July 19 (Scoop News) -Climate change presents the most compelling challenge the mankind is facing today. It is threat of an order, where basic environmental conditions that make our planet habitable hang in the balance.

 

Indian Army is one of the pioneer institutions in the nation to adopt ecology conservation as a way of life and has rich traditions of protecting the natural habitats. Being located in different eco systems & bio diverse zones and its nature of duty binds it close to mother earth and nature. It has always endeavoured to protect the green belt and has undertaken multifarious activities to convert the existing barren land into green cover. Under patronage and guidance of Lt Gen BS Jaswal, PVSM, AVSM**, VSM, General Officer Commanding in Chief and Lt Gen Jasbir Singh, AVSM, VSM, Chief of Staff, Northern Command has taken various initiatives on afforestration, water harvesting, nature conservation, area cleanliness, tree plantation and spreading environmental awareness in Northern Command and Udhampur Station. This season, Udhampur military station has planned to plant 15,000 trees of various types with assistance from Social Forestry and horticulture Department of Jammu and Kashmir Government.

 

In an endeavour to further this noble cause of preserving and harnessing environment and to display fine conservationist spirit, a Van Mahotsav week involving multifarious activities, is being celebrated in Udhampur Station from 18 Jul to 25 Jul 2010. The celebrations commenced with a Van Mahostav Precession undertaken at Udhampur garrison on Monday.The procession was encouraged by Mrs Ritu Jaswal, President,  Family Welfare Organisation Northern Command. Participation of over 3000 school children, all ranks, families and even horses, gave a festive look and added colour to the celebrations. The enthusiasm, interest and spirit of participation, amongst all, amply demonstrated the success and purpose of the event.

www.scoopnews.in