U.N. planetary report paints bleak regional picture

LONDON (Reuters) - The world's scarce resources are being depleted at a wholly unsustainable rate despite urgent warnings sounded two decades ago, the United Nations' Environment Programme said on Thursday.
The following is a brief regional summary of UNEP's fourth Global Environmental Outlook report.

File photo of children walking along the polluted shoreline of Manila Bay October 9, 2007. (REUTERS/John Javella/Files)

AFRICA
Land degradation is the biggest threat to the region. It affects about five million square kilometres or one-sixth of the continent. Land is under pressure because of increased demand for resources from the growing population and natural disasters like drought and floods. Food production per head is now 12 percent lower than in 1981. This is exacerbated by unfair subsidies in developed nations. Climate change leading to forced migrations also makes the problems worse.

ASIA AND PACIFIC
This region, home to 60 per cent of the world's people, is making progress in reducing poverty. It is also improving its ability to protect the environment, energy efficiency is increasing in many places, and drinking water provision has advanced a lot in the last decade. But increases in consumption and associated waste have contributed to the huge growth in existing environmental problems including urban air quality, fresh water stress, agricultural land use and the illegal traffic in electronic and hazardous waste. More than one billion people are exposed to outdoor air pollution.

EUROPE
Europe has made great strides in the past 20 years in cutting many forms of pollution, but rising average incomes has led to higher emissions of greenhouse gases and are contributing to unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, higher energy use, poor urban air quality, and transport problems driven by demands for increased mobility. The EU is emerging as a global leader in environmental governance. But there is still much room for improvement in the use of energy and resources.

LATIN AMERICA AND CARIBBEAN
Crammed cities and wildlife loss are key problems for the region which must also act fast to reduce social inequalities. It has the world's worst income inequality, with 39 percent of the urban population living below the poverty line. Urban air pollution is also a problem. Only 14 per cent of the region's sewage is adequately treated. The region contains 23.4 per cent of the world's forest cover but is rapidly losing it. Trade, unplanned urbanisation and lack of land-use planning are driving their conversion to pasture and to monocultures for export and to provide biofuel. Deforestation affects water quantity and quality and is a big source of greenhouse gas emissions.

NORTH AMERICA
With only 5.1 per cent of the world's people, North America consumes just over 24 per cent of global primary energy. Energy consumption per head in both Canada and the United States has grown since 1987, with the total rising by 18 per cent. From 1987 to 2003, CO2 emissions from fossil fuels in North America increased 27.8 per cent. Other key issues include urban sprawl, and freshwater quality and quantity. But energy efficiency gains have been countered by the use of larger vehicles, low fuel economy standards, and increases in car numbers and distances travelled. It also continues to suffer increasing urban sprawl.

POLAR REGIONS
The Polar Regions are already feeling the impacts of climate change. Two key global impacts are ocean circulation, driven by differences in sea water density which is determined by temperature and salt content, and sea level rise. The Greenland ice sheet is losing mass faster than it is replacing it. If it melts completely sea levels will rise by seven metres. The giant West Antarctic ice sheet is also vulnerable. Some scientists think its complete collapse this century is conceivable.

WEST ASIA
The region has made progress in environmental governance in the past two decades. But continued population growth, military conflicts, and rapid development have resulted in significant increase in environmental challenges and pressures on natural resources. Key environmental issues are freshwater scarcity, degradation of land, coastal and marine ecosystems, urban management, and peace and security.
Copyright © 2007 Reuters

Twenty years on, world in dire straits

LONDON (Reuters) - Two decades after a landmark report sounded alarm bells about the state of the planet and called for urgent action to change direction, the world is still in dire straits, a U.N. agency said on Thursday.
While the U.N. Environment Programme's fourth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-4) says action has been successfully taken in some regions and on some problems, the overall picture is one of sloth and neglect.
"The global trends on climate, on ozone, on indeed ecosystem degradation, fisheries, in the oceans, water supplies ... are still pointing downwards," UNEP head Achim Steiner said in a short film accompanying the report's release.
The 540-page report calls for emissions of climate warming greenhouse gases to be cut by between 60 and 80 percent, and notes that 60 percent of the world's ecosystems have been degraded and are still being used unsustainably.
"We are facing an escalating situation. Partly because we have been very slow in reversing the degradation that we have documented and secondly because the demands on our planet have continued to grow during this period," Steiner said.
"That equation cannot hold for much longer. Indeed, in parts of the world it is no longer holding," he added.
The report is a litany of planet-wide death and degradation.
Two decades after former Norwegian premier Gro Harlem Brundtland warned that the survival of humankind was at stake, GEO-4 finds that three million people die needlessly each year from water-borne diseases in developing nations -- mostly children under five.

A man stands near a polluted river in Jakarta, September 21, 2007. Two decades after a landmark report sounded alarm bells about the state of the planet and called for urgent action to change direction, the world is still in dire straits, a U.N. agency said on Thursday. (REUTERS/Beawiharta/Files

EXTINCTIONS
Fishing capacity is nearly four times more than is sustainable, species are becoming extinct 100 times faster than fossil records show, and 12 percent of birds, 23 percent of mammals and over 30 percent of amphibians face extinction.
UNEP deputy head Marion Cheatle told a London news conference the world had suffered five mass extinctions in its history and was now undergoing a sixth.
The report, drawn together by 388 scientists and vetted by 1,000 others, praises international treaties on saving the ozone layer, desertification and biodiversity and actions in some cities on urban atmospheric pollution.
But it describes as "woefully inadequate" the global response to problems such as cutting emissions of carbon gases from power and transport that scientists say will boost average temperatures by up to four degrees Celsius this century.
"We do have solutions but we are just not applying them at the speed we need," said Cheatle. "Time and again we see not enough effort being put in."
Region by region the report highlights the good and the bad -- and in most cases the bad is winning.
In Africa it is land degradation exacerbated by climate change and conflicts, while in the Asia and Pacific air pollution is the major threat to life and in Europe it is profligate consumption and overuse of carbon-based energy.
In Latin America it is massive social inequality and deforestation, while in North America it is rising carbon emissions and urban sprawl and in the Middle East it is wars, poverty and growing water scarcity.
But all is not gloom and doom.
This year has been the one in which a combination of politics, natural events and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change established a momentum to fight global warming.
Steiner hopes that his report will have the same effect on the fight to save the planet's ecosystems.
"Our hope is that with this GEO-4 report UNEP can in a sense help to bring about a tipping point, just as we are seeing in 2007 with climate change," he said.
Copyright © 2007 Reuters

Green fuel solution lurks in pond scum

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A plant scientist from West Texas believes one of the oldest, simplest life forms can help ease some of today's toughest energy and environment problems.
Algae converts carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming, into a vegetable oil that Glen Kertz, a plant cell expert who used to work for oil companies, hopes can be economically turned into the renewable motor fuel biodiesel.
Algae doesn't need prime farmland, vast quantities of fertilizer, or large harvest vehicles to be grown and harvested, unlike corn which is the main U.S. feedstock for ethanol, the top alternative motor fuel.
The single-celled organisms, which are among the world's fastest growing plants, can prosper in small bags of water under the light of greenhouses.
"The more light I have, the more energy that I can capture and put back into the transportation system," Kertz, CEO of private company Valcent Products, said in an interview. He says he can quickly grow algae, sometimes known as pond scum, anywhere but a rainy place like Seattle.



Children are seen playing beside an algae-filled pond in southwest China's Sichuan province in this March 31, 2007 (REUTERS/Stringer)






FUNDS VENTURE IN
Venture capitalists are racing to invest in alternative energy sources as finding crude cheaply in places friendly to the United States becomes harder, oil prices hit record levels edging toward $100 a barrel, and worries about global warming escalate.
Industry watcher Cleantech Group said on Thursday venture capitalists sank $1 billion into alternative energy in North America in the third quarter of this year.
And Canadian venture capital fund Sweetwater Capital is helping fund Vertigro Energy, a joint venture between Kertz's Valcent and Global Green Solutions Inc that is building the pilot bioreactor and research laboratory in El Paso at a cost of $3 million. Kertz hopes Vertigro will be producing a small amount of vegetable oil that can be converted into biodiesel by the middle of next year.
Vertigro and other algae biodiesel companies like LiveFuels Inc. in California, and Greenfuel Technologies in Massachusetts, say algae greenhouses can produce far more vegetable oil per acre than soybeans, currently the top U.S. biodiesel feedstock.
Algae can produce 378,540 liters of oil an acre annually, compared with about 50 gallons per acre for soybeans, Vertigro says.
Certainly there are road bumps ahead in the journey that's barely begun for algae fuel, particularly a lack of infrastructure. The Colonial Pipeline, the main U.S. oil products pipeline from the Houston oil hub to New York, said it has no plans to pump biodiesel of any sort through its lines because it leaves residue in the system that could contaminate other fuels.
And the current energy system of ships, refineries, pipelines and pumps that has been built over a century, will not just evaporate, even if algae fuel becomes economical.
Defending algae, Kertz said removing glycerin from biodiesel can eliminate pipeline problems. But major oil companies have yet to shown interest in biodiesel, he said.
Still, the U.S. federal government has taken note of algae's potential. The main U.S. laboratory for alternative energy research, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which had an algae program until the 1990s, is preparing to reopen federal research on energy from pond scum within the next year, said spokesman Gary Schmitz.
And Kertz says algae companies, along with much bigger companies, will come together to lobby the government about the fuel's potential next year.
Copyright © 2007 Reuters

Egypt plan to green Sahara desert stirs controversy

CAIRO (Reuters) - It looks like a mirage but the lush fields of cauliflower, apricot trees and melon growing among a vast stretch of sand north of Cairo's pyramids is all too real -- proof of Egypt's determination to turn its deserts green.
While climate change and land over-use help many deserts across the world advance, Egypt is slowly greening the sand that covers almost all of its territory as it seeks to create more space for its growing population.
Tarek el-Kowmey, 45, points proudly to the banana trees he grows on what was once Sahara sands near the Desert Development Centre, north of Cairo, where scientists experiment with high-tech techniques to make Egypt's desert bloom.
"All of this used to be just sand," he said. "Now we can grow anything."
With only five percent of the country habitable, almost all of Egypt's 74 million people live along the Nile River and the Mediterranean Sea. Already crowded living conditions -- Cairo is one of the most densely populated cities on earth -- will likely get worse as Egypt's population is expected to double by 2050.
So the government is keen to encourage people to move to the desert by pressing ahead with an estimated $70 billion plan to reclaim 3.4 million acres of desert over the next 10 years. Among the incentives are cheap desert land to college graduates.
But to make these areas habitable and capable of cultivation, the government will need to tap into scarce water resources of the Nile River as rainfall is almost non-existent in Egypt.
The plan has raised controversy among some conservationists who say turning the desert green is neither practical nor sustainable and might ultimately backfire.
Anders Jagerskog, director of the Stockholm International Water Institute in Sweden, questions the wisdom of using precious water resources to grow in desert areas unsuited to cultivation and where water will evaporate quickly under the scorching sun.
"A desert is not the best place to grow food," he said. "From a political perspective, it makes sense in terms of giving more people jobs even though it is not very rational from a water perspective," he added.

Workers till a field at the Desert Development Center in the Nile Delta, September 20, 2007. (REUTERS/Tara Todras-Whitehill)

REGIONAL TENSION?
The scope of the reclamations could also add to regional tension over Nile water sharing arrangements as in order to green its desert Egypt might need to take more than its share of Nile water determined by international treaties.
Egypt's project to reclaim deserts in the south, called "Toshka", would expand Egypt's farmland by about 40 percent by 2017, using about five billion cubic metres of water a year.
That worries neighbours to the south who are already unhappy about Nile water sharing arrangements. Under a 1959 treaty between Egypt and Sudan, Egypt won rights to 55.5 billion cubic metres per year, more than half of the Nile's total flow.
Ethiopia, where the Blue Nile begins, receives no formal allocation of Nile water, but it is heavily dependent on the water for its own agricultural development in this often famine ravaged country.
"The Toshka project will complicate the challenge of achieving a more equitable allocation of the Nile River with Ethiopia and the other Nile basin countries," said Sandra Postel, director of the U.S.-based Global Water Policy Project.
"Egypt may be setting the stage for a scenario that's ultimately detrimental to itself."
But other experts suggest that in the delicate arena of water politics, it may be more of an imperative for Egypt's government to mollify its own population rather than heed its neighbours concerns.
Overcrowding is straining infrastructure in the cities and the government is worried that opposition groups such as the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, which has a fifth of the seats in Parliament, might capitalise on discontent.
"The government feels it needs to reduce the number of people in high density areas, which puts a lot of pressure on resources like fertile land," said Mostafa Saleh, professor of ecology at Al Azhar University in Cairo.
"They are trying to spread the population to other parts of the country."

DESERT TOURISM
Some critics say that Egypt should look at desert tourism rather than agriculture, which might not be sustainable or particularly profitable and could destroy fragile wildlife habitats that might otherwise be a drawcard for tourists.
A desert reclamation project last decade, south of Cairo, destroyed much of the Wadi Raiyan oasis and its population of slender horned gazelles.
"The price tag on these assets is huge, both as natural heritage and as a resource for tourism," said ecologist Saleh.
Saleh is vice president of an Egyptian firm that built an electricity-free ecolodge, consisting of rock salt and mud houses, amid olive and palm groves in the desert oasis of Siwa.
The lodge, which costs $400 per night and has attracted guests such as Britain's Prince Charles and Belgium's Queen Paola, shows that the desert would be better used for ecotourism than farming, he says.
"In Egypt, water is the most critical resource and we should be careful to use it to maximise revenue," Saleh explained. "Agriculture is not the best option for Egypt. Nature-based tourism could bring in much more money."
At the Desert Development Center, irrigation water comes through a canal connected to the Nile, about 15 km away, where it is used to keep crops flourishing and grass green for hardy hybrid cows to graze.
Experts at the centre believe greening the Sahara might be Egypt's best hope of bringing prosperity to its people.
Workers graft fruit-bearing plants onto the stems of plants that survive well in the desert. Favourite fruits are citrus as they flourish in hot climates and can land on supermarket shelves in Europe hours after harvesting.
Proximity to markets in Europe and a lack of pests, which usually thrive in humid environments, make desert farming economically viable, said Richard Tutwiler, director of the Desert Development Center at the American University in Cairo.
Water supply, Tutwiler said, shouldn't be an issue at least for the next ten years. It makes sense, he says, to expand agriculture onto land that was once useless.
"There is no frost and there is sun all the time here," he said. "Plants just go nuts."

By Will Rasmussen
Copyright © 2007 Reuters

Hollywood slowly warming to conservation

LOS ANGELES (AP) - From "green carpets'' at awards shows to organic fruit served to actors on sets, Hollywood is going all out to promote itself as being environmentally hip.
But is it all just show?
No amount of public service announcements or celebrities driving hybrid cars can mask the fact that movie and TV production is a gritty industrial operation, consuming enormous amounts of power to feed bright lights, run sophisticated cameras, and feed a cast of thousands.
Studios' back lots host cavernous soundstages that must be air-conditioned to counter the heat produced by decades-old lighting technology.
Huge manufacturing facilities consume wood, steel, paint and plastic to build sets that are often torn down and tossed out after filming ends.
The energy guzzling continues on the exhibition side, too, with multiplexes drawing millions of kilowatts to power old-school popcorn makers and clunky film projectors that cash-strapped theater owners are reluctant to replace.
A two-year study released last year by the University of California at Los Angeles concluded that special effects explosions, idling vehicles and diesel generators make the entertainment industry a major Southern California polluter, second only to the oil industry.
Still, financial and public pressures have resulted in many studios expanding their environmental efforts, doing everything from using a biodiesel fuel mixture to run the generators on the set of the Fox show "24'' to converting Warner Bros.' enormous set-building facility to solar energy.
"Public consciousness on this issue has changed dramatically,'' said Kyle Tanger, a principal at Clear Carbon Consulting.
"The talent themselves are requesting it from some of the studios. And a lot of these things make economic sense.''
Economic benefit can come to studios directly, by switching to more efficient lighting or cooling systems or driving hybrid cars on location, which can save gas.
Other projects, such as installing solar power, can take decades to pay off.
But there are other benefits that are harder to quantify. Besides the public relations angle, many performers and other employees want to work with eco-friendly companies, so it also helps in recruiting and retaining employees, Tanger said.
Form and function merged at this year's Primetime Emmy Awards show.
To symbolize its commitment to energy conservation, Fox had wanted to replace the traditional red carpet with a green one.
The tradition-bound Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which gives the awards, politely said "no.''
But the carpet that ended up cushioning the heels of such stars as Sally Field and America Ferrera was made from recycled plastic bottles and later cut into pieces and donated to several local schools.
"No doubt some efforts have been window dressing. But I actually think Hollywood is doing far more than people are giving it credit for,'' said Terry Tamminen, who served as an adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger before starting his own environmental consulting company.
One convenient yet controversial method is the purchase of carbon credits by studios and producers to offset the greenhouse gases from their production activity.
The credits attempt to counter such pollution by investing in environmentally friendly projects such as planting trees or funding wind power.
Studios and a growing number of other industries calculate their emissions, then write a check to one of several brokers who funnel the money to projects around the world.
The goal is to become carbon neutral by funding activities that reduce an equal amount of emissions.
The 2004 Fox film "The Day After Tomorrow'' and last year's Al Gore documentary "An Inconvenient Truth'' offset all or some of their pollution.
This year's "Evan Almighty,'' from Universal, donated money to the Conservation Fund to plant 2,000 trees, enough to "zero out'' the greenhouse gases produced.
But the practice has come under fire by some who say it is an easy way to avoid the hard work of directly reducing pollution.
Others question whether carbon credit payments are actually going to projects that make that much of a difference.
"If you're going to drive around in a big ol' Hummer and then buy carbon offsets to mitigate that, that's like getting drunk on the ends and throwing some money through the window of an AA meeting and thinking you're doing something,'' said Ed Begley Jr., who was a poster child for energy conservation long before Al Gore made it trendy.
The Federal Trade Commission, meanwhile, has begun examining claims made by the nascent multimillion-dollar carbon credit industry.
Warner Bros., which bought carbon credits for the 2005 film "Syriana,'' has also become more aggressive at reducing emissions during all phases of production.
In addition to solar-powered set-building, the studio is recycling sets, using recycled plastic lumber in the construction of some buildings, and printing double-sided scripts where feasible.
Pieces built for the 2001 film "Ocean's 11'' now sit in the Santa Monica offices of the National Resources Defense Council. Sets from this year's sequel "Ocean's 13'' were donated to decorate the halls of local community colleges.
"You have to start by measuring your own footprint, then reducing it, whether through using alternative fuels, reducing electrical loads or combining trips,'' said Shelley Billick, vice president of environmental initiatives at Warner Bros.
Entertainment. "It's too easy to write a check, pay thousands of dollars and say, 'I'm climate neutral.'''
Last year, Fox parent News Corp. set a goal of being carbon neutral by 2010.
To further that goal, Fox Broadcasting chose its popular "24'' series as a case study and to serve as a model for other television productions.
Diesel generators that power the show's lighting were switched to a mixture that uses 5 percent biodiesel fuel.
That percentage will be increased in coming years. The show also has secured energy from solar and wind generation from a local utility for its soundstages.
But News Corp. has a more ambitious goal than simply reducing its own carbon emissions.
"We knew from the beginning that if our goal is to make as many carbon reductions in the world as possible, probably the best way we can do that is through our audiences,'' said Rachel Webber, director of energy initiatives for News Corp.
The company concluded that worldwide, it produced the equivalent of 641,150 tons of carbon dioxide.
But a rough estimate revealed that the people who read its newspapers, watch its TV shows and browse its Web sites use about 7 billion tons.
"That's the greatest potential to reduce carbon, but we have to get our own house in order first,'' Webber said.
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