Happy Earth Day

Kudos to Google for their climatically apt Earth Day logo!

Despite the much needed once a year hubbub about the Earth's environment... I can't help but think that its about time the celebration and resulting duration (!) of an environmental conciousness should be year long, every year.

White Alert?

With their homes melting away beneath their feet, polar bears present a painful example of the cold, hard truth behind global warming. As warmer poles eat away at ice shelves, natives like the polar bears find themselves trapped on constantly shrinking ground.

Studies with heart-wrenching results reveal that not only have polar bear numbers shrunk by one quarter in the last 20 years.... but so have their bodies. With an average height of 10ft and weight capacity of 1700 lbs, polar bears use their body fat to survive in long, polar winters when temperatures can plummet to -45 degrees celsius. However, scientists have discovered that, in their struggle for survival, most bears are now much thinner.

Four bears, recently drowned off the coast of Alaska because they were simply not strong enough to cope with a storm. Females have started giving birth to weaker twins and triplets when normally they gave birth to single, healthy cubs. As shown recently on Planet Earth, in their desperation for food, polar bears are risking their lives and trying to attack large walruses, who live in packs and often returning with crippling injuries rather than food.

Its frightening to think that my grandchildren may live in a world where they know polar bears or blue whales or rhinos as being creatures of the past which they heard stories about from their grandmother.

Malaysia Unhappy With Overseas Doomsdaying Involving Orangutans

Accusing international activists of painting an unnecessarily bleak picture of Orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), the Malaysian government said it deplores such seeming propaganda that undermines the national oil palm industry. Notorious for converting miscellaneous natural vegetation into monoculture matrices, palm oil plantations in southeast asia have ballooned in both number and scale as a result of the recent surge in biofuels. Palm oil mixed with diesel or ethanol has been touted as the optimal biofuel alternative to convential fuel, hence providing a solution to an impending energy crisis. However, the many environmental no-no's of oil palm have spurred a heated debate among environmentalists and policy-makers alike. Oil palm plantations have replaced illegal logging and forest fires as the leading cause of depleting virgin rainforests in southeast Asia and as it turns out, its the probably the first environmental solution swiftly on its way towards becoming a major environmental problem!


Going back to Orang Utans, the Malay government stresses that the oil palm cultivation is taking place sustainably, using land that has already been cleared, traditionally for rubber. The UN report, "The Last Stand of the Orang Utan: A State of Emergency" begs to differ, claiming that with the present rates of land conversion in Indonesia and Malaysia, not even a trace of virgin forests will remain by 2022. In as soon as 5 years, Orang Utan sightings may be limited to glass cases of stuffed models in the Smithsonian...due to the natural populations having been driven to extinction.

Climate Soup

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its 4th assessment report on climate change yesterday. This report summarizes the present state of knowledge about the near future of the global climate. The forecast for some parts of the world projects challenging times ahead where a lot will depend on resilience and adaptability on the part of human and animal communities to ensure long-term sustenance. The title of this report is "Impacts. Adaptation and Vulnerabililty". BBC News has compiled a summary of this report with short features on the impact of climate change on different regions of the world, ecosystems and water. I'll showcase a few of their summaries and their full feature can be found here.


Water
The supply of water is very likely to increase at higher latitudes and in some wet tropics, including populous areas in east and southeast Asia. It is very likely to decrease over much of the mid-latitudes and dry tropics, which are presently water-stressed areas.

Drought-affected areas will likely increase. Instances of extreme rainfall are likely to increase in frequency and intensity, raising the risk of floods. Increases in the frequency and severity of floods and droughts will have implications on sustainable development.

Water volumes stored in glaciers and snow cover are very likely to decline, reducing summer and autumn flows in regions where more than one sixth of the world population currently live.

Asia

Glacier melting in the Himalayas is virtually certain to disrupt water supplies within the next 20 to 30 years. Floods and rock avalanches are virtually certain

to increase. Heavily-populated coastal regions, including the deltas of rivers such as the Ganges and Mekong, are likely to be at risk of increased flooding.

Economic development is likely to be impacted by the combination of climatic change, urbanisation, and rapid economic and population growth.

Forecast changes in temperature and rainfall are likely to reduce crop yields overall, increasing the risk of hunger.

The presence of lethal diarrhoeal diseases associated with floods and droughts is expected to rise in East, South and Southeast Asia and rises in coastal water temperature could exacerbate cholera in South Asia.

Small Islands

Sea level rise is likely to worsen floods, storm surges and coastal erosion, with impacts on the socio-economic wellbeing of island communities.

Beach erosion and coral bleaching are likely to reduce tourism.

There is strong evidence that water resources in small islands are likely to be seriously compromised.

Increased invasion by non-native species is likely.

Environmentalism at whose cost? - Thoughts from a year ago.

A year ago, I left my field site in Sumatra, Indonesia with a rather dreary conclusion. It was one that was feed for many presentations, seminars, group discussions with my students who, already dreary from their bi-weekly dose of international conservation, could only think about why the minute hand wouldn't move faster. All talk... every time... let to an unresolved-dilemma, a large question mark on the concluding slide of each presentation... What should one do? Will it be too late?

Sept. 14, 2005 -- Being a tree hugger has been, and I’m sure will continue to be, a very interesting experience. An experience spattered with realizations both big and small. This summer out in the jungles of Sumatra led me to do some thinking about the environmentalist agenda that is in such stark contrast *sometimes* with what is real and what is feasible. You know how the stereotypical environmentalist is all about saving nature from the ravages of humankind? Yeah.. that can be quite a naïve stance. Not all people are greedy uber-capitalists driven solely by profit, whose primary objectives are to extract and over-extract the earth’s resources. A huge portion of the Earth’s population is poor and rural. And a large portion of those communities interact closely and sustainably with a wide array of ecosystems including forests and wetlands. At least till now they have. The rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer is a phenomenon that is true in many nations of the developing world and my experience is one limited to Indonesia. Hence I will not claim to pass judgment on any other scenario.

Picture this: A farmer in a village. He has been cultivating rubber trees in his 2 hectare agroforest for the past several decades. Not just rubber trees, he grows a variety of fruit trees and his agroforest contains several natural species too. In this way he has created in his backyard, essentially a mini natural forest that is home to several wild animals and birds and also is a source of income and food for him and his family. However, it is not enough anymore. The price of rubber has fallen and he is not making enough money to meet his family’s needs. He would much rather, cut all other trees down in his agroforest and grow just rubber. Or cut everything down and only grow oil-palms, plantation style, which fetch a much higher price. But, then he will be doing away with the “eco-friendliness” of his plot. His plot will not be a mini forest anymore and will not be home to wild animals anymore. *Poof* appears the environmental and ecosystem minded extension agent, talking to the farmer about the importance of biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration and how monoculture plantations are bad and semi-natural agroforests like his are extra good for the planet.

What right do I have to tell him to keep his plot as it is now in the name of the environment? How can I ask him to forego a better livelihood for himself and his family, because it makes me and others like myself, who have comfortable enough lifestyles and thus the luxury of being environmentalists, feel good about what we do and what we work for? The environmentalist agenda, through its several avatars over the last 100 or so years, has largely established a barrier between nature and humans. The sweeping sentiment has been “Save nature from humans”.

All this while tree huggers and social-development people were following separate, detached, almost mutually exclusive schemas. But here is a prime example of a situation where the two cannot be teased apart. The lifeline of both the environment and the people living in it are intricately braided together. And now, environmentalists are finding themselves trying to learn ways of getting through to poor people, in order to understand their minds because it has struck them how these same people control the fate of the environment.

But by the time, a concrete, coherent and collaborative plan develops and work finally evolves further from discussions and visits.... it might be too late. There might not be anything left to save. And all that will remain are rows and rows of oil palm as far as the eyes can see.