Closing doors

The time to take action to avoid an increase of 2 °C in global average temperature is running out. Due to thecumulative nature of GHG emissions it is critical to quickly curb these if the world is to maintain the overall concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere below 450 ppm by 2050. The picture that the IEA paints is not pretty, or encouraging. According to their analysis, four-fifths of the total energy-related CO₂ emissions allowed by 2035 are already “locked-in” by the existing world energy infrastructure. That is, the current world energy infrastructure already accounts for 80% of the allowed emissions necessary to meet the 450 target, leaving only 20% of emissions for all new energy infrastructure. Furthermore, the IEA warns that if aggressive action is not taken soon, the door for the 450 ppm scenario will be virtually closed, as the existing energy-related infrastructure in 2017 will account for all the allowed CO₂ emissions, leaving no space for any new infrastructure unless it 100% emissions free.

If that scenario upsets your stomach, wait until you hear the full story. The IEA projects that, if countries carry out and achieve a broad set of their most recent pledges and plans for tackling energy-related challenges and climate change (a rather optimistic situation referred to as the “New Policy Scenario”) average global temperatures will still rise more than 3.5 °C (6.3°F) above pre-industrial levels. And that’s the hopeful scenario. Alternatively, if the world proceeds on its current trajectory, with no policies beyond what is currently being implemented, (IEA calls this the “Current Policy Scenario”) we are headed towards an increase of 6 °C (10.8 °F) or more. The recent announcement that the world increased its overall emissions in 2010 by more than 5% reinforces the reality that we are headed full speed towards the proverbial brick wall. This stark contrast between where we’re headed and where we need to go highlights the failure of world governments at tackling the climate problem. The graph below (taken from the WEO 2011) shows the emissions resulting from the IEA’s different policy scenarios, and highlights the huge and growing gap between our current trajectory and where we need to be in order to hit the 450 target. A similar conclusion was reached by research done by the Columbia Climate Center in conjunction with Deutsche Bank, as well as many others.

IEA WEO 2011

World Energy Demand

Despite economic uncertainty in the short and medium term, the IEA projects that global primary energy demand will grow by 40% between 2009 and 2035. The voracious energy appetite of China, India, Brazil, and other emerging economies, largely drive this trend. It is expected that non-OECD countries will account for 90% of the population growth, 70% increase in economic output , and 90% of the energy demand growth over this period. China is established as the world’s largest energy consumer, and by 2035, it is expected to consume 70% more energy than the US.
Under the New Policy Scenario, demand for fossil fuels as a whole is expected to increase but the share of fossil fuels in primary energy consumption falls from 81% in 2010 to 75% in 2035. This downward trend reflects the fact that renewables are expected to contribute more than half of the new installed capacity through 2035:

IEA WEO 2011 Executive Summary – Key Graphs

Non hydro-renewables are expected to jump from 3% of the installed world capacity to ~ 15% by 2035. The expansion is lead by China and the EU, which together represent more than 50% of new non hydro-renewable installations. While news of the increasing role that renewables are playing, and will continue to play, in the new energy infrastructure is encouraging, the age of fossil fuels is far from over.

IEA WEO 2011 Executive Summary – Key Graphs

King Coal

Over the past decade, coal accounted for roughly half of the total increase in energy use. Given that coal is such a carbon intensive fuel, reducing its use is at the heart of any attempt at curbing CO₂ emissions. Because of this, the IEA’s view on the future of coal is particularly important. Under the New Policies Scenario coal use rises over the next ten years and gradually level off, finishing about 25% above 2009 levels. In the Current Policy Scenario coal consumption increases 65% to 2035, surpassing oil as the largest fuel in the energy mix. It is well known that in order to fulfill the 450 target, coal must peak before 2020 and then radically decrease in the following years. The projections about coal consumption are plagued with uncertainty, as the ranges between the best-case scenario (450 scenario) and the worst-case scenario (Current Policy) are almost as large as world annual consumption.

An important shift that the IEA highlights is the emergence of China as a net coal importer. Given that China’s coal consumption accounts for half of the world production, China has the ability to change prices and set the tone of international coal markets. In its latest Five-Year Plan, China set out to reduce thecarbon intensity of its economy by 17% and increase its energy efficiency. Because China is the largest emitter in the world, and is expected to increase its energy demand, whatever plans come out of Beijing is destined to mark the world’s energy and emissions future.

From Russia with Love

The WEO 2011 highlights Russia’s role as one of the most important energy players in the world. The size and diversity of Russian resources are staggering. In 2010, Russia was the largest producer of oil, the largest producer and exporter of natural gas, and the fourth largest energy consuming country in the world. Apart from their gargantuan fossil reserves, Russia is endowed with vast resources of uranium, metals and ores, as well as a major potential for hydropower and other renewables. Currently, 61% of Russia’s fossil fuel export revenues come from the EU, but the IEA forecasts that by 2035, China will account for almost 20% of Russia’s those revenues, with the EU’s share decreasing to 48%.

IEA WEO 2011 Executive Summary – Key Graphs

Russia suffers from tremendous energy inefficiency that costs millions of dollars to their economy. By increasing their efficiency to that of other OECD countries, Russia could see energy savings that amount to the total energy used in the UK in one year. As the oil and gas fields in Western Siberia start declining, Russia will be forced to increase efficiencies in order to stay competitive.

What is clear, as the IEA points out, is that Russia will play an increasingly central role in energy markets around the world. Because of this, energy policy decision made in the Kremlin will be critical for Russia’s economic development, and will be a major factor for the world’s environmental outlook.

The WEO should send an urgent message to governments around the world that strong, decisive policies that dramatically reduce the combustion of fossil fuels are necessary to mitigate the severity of climate change impacts.

Source: State of the Planet, Earth Institute Blog

Author: Diego Villarreal

Part of Global Pulse’s work is to catalyze and encourage new methods and approaches for analyzing and using information and data. In a world where we are saturated with data, the skillsets of information designers, infographic artists and visual thinkers will become increasingly valuable for presenting complex information in effective, memorable and easy to digest ways. In our ongoing quest to tap into and learn from these skills and innovations in data analysis, Global Pulse partnered with Visualizing.org – a community of data visualization studetns and professionals – to host a 24-hour visualization challenge around global sustainability data.

Twenty years ago, 178 nations came together in Rio at the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (otherwise known as the “Earth Summit”) to discuss the connection between economic growth, the environment, and social equity. Taken together, these are the three pillars of what is known as “sustainable development.” The Earth Summit resulted in three landmark international conventions – on climate change, desertification and biodiversity – that have helped shape global policy on these issues ever since. Next year, the world will reconvene at the “Rio+20” Summit to assess how far we have come – or not come – in the past twenty years in advancing sustainable development.

This month, the Global Pulse team, together with the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability, compiled a unique data set pulled from a variety of sources presenting development along the three pillars of sustainability: the economic, the social, and the environmental. Visualizing.org challenged 17 teams of students from 9 local universities, including RISD, Columbia, NYU, and Pratt, to develop a data visualization that will help policymakers and the public rethink the connection between the economy, the environment, and social equity using that data set.

The Results

The participants did an amazing job in the challenge, resulting in 16 visualizations that summarize the richness and complexity of issues related to global sustainability. The judges could only select one winning team and two runners-up but our feeling is that all the works deserve praise as they each tell a different part of the story! You can view and interact with all of the entires here on Visualizing.org’s website, and below is a summary of the perspectives and reflections that were visualized in each of the projects:

The jury panel awarded the first place winning prize to the visualization entitled “Urban Leaks,” is a very elegant visualization that makes clear how we have done with the clean water challenge over the last 20 years and which are today’s challenges. An honorable Mention winning visualization, “E-CUBE-LIBRIUM 3D Sustainable Growth Solver” shows an original representation of indicators from the social, environmental and economic pillar mapped to a Rubik’s cube analogy applied to 12 different countries. And a second honorable mention prize was awarded to “PAST PROGRESS, FUTURE FORECAST?” is a nice static visualization that summarizes the evolution of our planet from the social equity, environmental, and economic perspectives using global average indicators.

E-CUBE-LIBRIUM from Kimberly V.K.H. Nguyen on Vimeo.

Among the submissions, a few clustered themes emerged:

A number of the submissions provided a global look at global sustainability indicators. “Is Constant Growth Sustainable?” shows indications of global imbalance. It particularly highlights how economic, social and environmental resources are unequally distributed along the different countries. While “How Far Have We Come?: A Tool For Exploration” – compares indicators for the 25 most populated countries, and “A Room in a Country” allows the user to retrieve sustainability indicators in a country in a specific year.

Some of the teams focused on the issue of water explicitly. “20 Liters” illustrates in a very simple way why the pace of consumption of clean water in the developed world is not an option, and “GDP Versus Access to Clean Water” shows in an intuitive iconic video how GDP and clean water have been directly correlated in several countries.

Two of the entries focused on the theme of connectivity. For example, “Mobilizing Our Future” shows the adoption of mobile phones in the developing world and features several examples of how communities can be empowered using different mobile phone based applications. The compelling visualization “How Much is Too Much?” highlights countries with mobile phone usage higher than 100% thus highlighting the consumption related lifestyles of today.

Meanwhile, three of the visualizations tackled economic data. “4 Billion Shadow Economy” brings to light the important issue of billions of people working in the informal sector around the world. “Trade Flows Shape Our World” visualizes imports and exports to pinpoint the greatly changing relationships between areas of the world, and “What Does the World Need?” displays some of the changes that are happening today related to unemployment.

And finally, three of the teams zeroed in on important environmental indicators. “Climate Change” showcases the key concepts which drive the global climate change discourse through an interesting bubble representation. “The Forest Beyond The Trees” tells the story about how the relationship to the forest becomes more fragile. as the global population grows and nations develop. “Sustainability Does Grow on Trees” is a very stylish visualization that depicts the evolution of GDP, nutrition and deforestation. It demonstrates two possible futures: either with continuous deforestation or with replenished vegetation.

Our experience compiling the data, and supporting this Data Visualization Challenge demonstrated that sustainability is indeed a very complex issue, and the data can be approached from many different perspectives. Now that world leaders are reviewing what has happened over the last 20 years, we must set the frameworks and landscape for the next 20 and beyond. Today, we increasingly live in a context of volatility, with multiple fast-moving global social, economic and environmental changes happening all around us. Global Pulse is committed to finding ways to detect such shifts more quickly than is possible today by harnessing the latest innovations and skillsets that can help us parse through data in real-time and thus be able to course-correct when disconcerting trends emerge. After all, achieving global sustainability is a not just a sprint, but a marathon.

Miguel Luengo-Oroz is Global Pulse’s New Data Scientist

Source: UN Global Pulse

Most people might think of international NGOs as essentially conduits to pass money from rich people in the north to poor people in the south. After all, the marketing campaigns usually feature poor people looking cash-strapped, and the simple act of putting a coin in a collecting tin, or setting up a direct debit when inadvertently “chugged” (charity-mugged) on the street, implies that the important part of the equation is the money.

But when I ran an NGO country office, I lost count of the times when our partners in the country would say to me, “It’s not that we don’t appreciate the money; of course we do. But more important than that is your accompaniment, physical and political.”

Sure, this was in a country which is relatively well off (Colombia) compared with most of the developing world, and where it is conflict not poverty that is the major political issue. But that, I think, is the point. Assuming (and hoping) that the world’s poor countries continue to do relatively well economically, as they have done for the past decade, gradually the problems will become less associated with absolute lack of money. Because while we can expect traditional development indicators (such as access to basic healthcare and education) to continue to improve, the same cannot be said for conflict.

In his latest book, Steven Pinker argues that there are strong reasons to believe that we live in a more peaceful age than ever before. But, he warns, that clouds on the horizon to do with resource scarcity could undermine this apparent progress. I agree. The future challenge for international NGOs will be to discern the new threats to the interests of the poorest and most marginalised that emanate from an increasingly unequal, volatile and resource-scarce world.

There will be a need for a strong and principled global civil society if this is indeed what the future holds, and while some engage in the perennial tension between closeness to power and co-option by it, many others will be needed simply to stand alongside the poorest. Which is exactly what PBI do. While other NGOs have spent the past 30 years professionalising and expanding their funding base, PBI has stayed true to its volunteer roots. Which is not to say it is unprofessional; on the contrary, its risk analyses and impact assessments were much sought after when I worked closely with PBI volunteers in Colombia.

At this week’s conference, Jorge Molano, from Colombia, and Padre Uvi, from Mexico, recounted how they and their colleagues and friends had been constantly threatened and attacked for speaking out in favour of poor communities. PBI’s response is to live in the house next door, to walk with them to work, to publish stories about them around the world. The message is that the eyes of the world are watching, and this deters the gunmen.

Another reason I like PBI is the implicit challenge it makes to the “results” mentality most NGOs are caught up in. NGOs are under pressure to claim great results for huge numbers of people. But organisations that defend human rights defenders apply a different logic. Their beneficiary is often one person (for example, a human rights lawyer in Mexico) and their result is that nothing happened (ie: another day and s/he is still alive).

By aligning itself with human rights defenders for the long haul, PBI’s emphasis is squarely on relationships rather than log frames, harking back to an era in the history of NGOs when solidarity was more important than annual reports. Ironically, this approach guarantees far better results because trust is developed for real, rather than enforced through a culture of audits.

However, there is contradiction and complexity in any intervention and in this case it is the nexus between defending people under threat and asking why they are under threat in the first place. PBI’s conference sought to make the links between attacks on human rights defenders and certain development models that lead to displacement and environmental degradation.

In my experience, those countries that are most vociferous in their support of human rights defenders are the ones that go cold when questions are raised about their own corporate interests that lie at the heart of the problem. Canada and the UK are prime examples. They will go out on a limb to stand up for human rights, but suggest that it is their own mining companies that are causing the problem and you might as well be talking to a wall.

It is another version of the famous statement by Hélder Câmara, the Brazilian archbishop, who said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why are they poor, they call me a communist.”

Author: Jonathan Glennie

Source: The Guardian: Poverty Matters Blog

More on Peace Brigades International

Seeking simple explanations for the Arab spring uprisings that have swept through Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya, is clearly foolish amidst entangled issues of social injustice, poverty, unemployment and water stress. But asking “why precisely now?” is less daft, and a provocative new study proposes an answer: soaring food prices.

Furthermore, it suggests there is a specific food price level above which riots and unrest become far more likely. That figure is 210 on the UN FAO’s price index: the index is currently at 234, due to the most recent spike in prices which started in the middle of 2010.

Lastly, the researchers argue that current underlying food price trends – excluding the spikes – mean the index will be permanently over the 210 threshold within a year or two. The paper concludes: “The current [food price] problem transcends the specific national political crises to represent a global concern about vulnerable populations and social order.” Big trouble, in other words.

Now, those are some pretty big statements and I should state right now that this research, by a team at the New England Complex Systems Institute, has not yet been peer reviewed. It has been published because, Yaneer Bar-Yam, NECSI president, told me, the work is relevant now but peer review is slow.

The first part of the research is straightforward enough: plotting riots identified as over food against the food price index. The correlation is striking, but is it evidence of causation?

 The UN FAO food price index correlates with “food riots” around 2008 and the “Arab spring” conflicts. Death tolls are reported in parentheses. Graph: New England Complex Systems Institute

Bar-Yam says this conundrum can be tackled by asking the question in clear ways. Could the riots be causing high food prices, rather than the reverse? No, the former is local, the latter global. Could the correlation simply be a coincidence? Yes, there’s only a tiny chance of that, Bar-Yam’s team argues in the paper.

Lastly, could other factors be causing both the violence and the high food prices? “No-one has suggested any other factor that can do both,” says Bar-Yam. For example, oil and tin both show similar price patterns to that of food, but seem unlikely to prompt the violence. The similarity, says Bar-Yam, is because all the commodity price peaks are being driven by speculation in global markets.

So far, so convincing, as far as I can tell, though do tell me in the comments below if you think differently. The next part of the study identifies that the serious unrest in North Africa and the Middle East also correlates very closely with a food price spike. Bar-Yam also notes: “Several of the initial riots in North Africa were identified in news stories as food riots.” From there, the researchers make their prediction of permanently passing the 210 threshold in 12-24 months.

As with the story I wrote yesterday, about the statistical work demonstrating a clear link between civil wars since 1950 and the global changes in climate caused by El Niño cycles, this is a fascinating area of research.

As Bar-Yam’s paper puts it: “Our analysis of the link between global food prices and social unrest supports a growing conclusion that it is possible to build mathematical models of global economic and social crises. Identifying a signature of unrest for future events is surely useful.”

Surely indeed. Bar-Yam submitted a report to the US government identifying the risk of social unrest and political instability due to food prices on 13 December 2010. Four days later Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself ablaze in protest at being unable to make a living selling fruit and vegetables, the event seen as triggering the first Arab uprising.

There is a risk that the apparent precision of these statistical approaches distracts from the real human suffering underlying them. They must not. But if such tools can raise red flags to alert responsible authorities to looming problems, and help prompt action, that surely cannot be bad.

By: Damian Carrington

Source: The Guardian

By: AgriLife Today

COLLEGE STATION – Dr. Edwin C. Price has been named the first holder of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation Chair in Conflict and Development at Texas A&M University.

“We are committed to international agricultural issues and the need for increased food security around the world.  The new Buffett Chair and Dr. Price are a testament to our commitment to global engagement” said Dr. Mark A. Hussey, vice chancellor and dean of the Texas A&M University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, announcing the appointment.

The Buffett Chair in Conflict and Development is a component of a larger cooperation between the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture, Hussey said.   The Borlaug Institute is a joint effort between Texas AgriLife Research, the Texas AgriLife Extension Service and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences to promote global agricultural development and fight hunger.

The Buffett Chair holder will “provide innovative economic and social science analyses and solutions in the study of conflict and development around the world. The chair will lead conflict and development academic programs in the department of agricultural economics collaborating with other units across Texas A&M University, including the Bush School for Government and Public Service,” Hussey added.

Currently, Price is the associate vice chancellor for international agriculture, director of the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture and a professor in the department of agricultural economics. Price has spent many years as a scholar of conflict and agricultural development.

He began as a Peace Corps volunteer in the British colony of Sarawak (in modern Malaysia).  There he was exposed to conflicts between tribal groups, private interests and governments over access to natural resources.  Throughout his career in international agricultural development, he has witnessed how development efforts can cause conflict in societies as well as the power of agricultural development to transform societies out of conflict.

“Agriculture is a powerful tool for change,” Price said.  “Dr. Borlaug’s use of agriculture to lift people out of poverty and provide nutritious food is an example that we should keep in mind.  People without a future, youth without hope are ripe for violent conflict.  Agriculture and agricultural development can create a future for communities.  It can instill hope in the next generation.”

Price has spent many years active in conflict prone countries throughout Africa, Asia, and recently Iraq and Afghanistan.  He and Buffett share a similar outlook on global agricultural development efforts and the need to better understand how our agriculture systems impact fragile communities.

Howard W. Buffett, executive director of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and member of the Texas A&M Advisory Committee for the chair shares these views, stating that “the foundation is actively fighting hunger through support to innovative research programs and increased access to appropriate technologies by smallholder farmers.” Currently, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the Borlaug Institute collaborate on agricultural development programs in South Africa, western Africa and Afghanistan.

The Buffett Chair will provide scholarship to better understand lessons learned from these engagements.  Hussey expressed his appreciation for the gift, “we are very grateful to the Howard G. Buffett Foundation for this opportunity and for the relationship with the Borlaug Institute.”

“It is a great honor and an even greater responsibility for me and for Texas A&M.  We have many resources and many technologies that can be put to beneficial use in the neediest communities of the world.  We have a duty to do all we can to understand those communities and be their partners,” Price said.

In the face of the ‘Arab Spring,’ Lester Brown writing for the Guardian has taken a look beyond the short-term to what faces the Middle East over the medium to long term. In his article, he argues that population growth and water supply are on a collision course, and hunger is set to become the main issue after the political uprisings subside. His article is included below.

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Long after the political uprisings in the Middle East have subsided, many underlying challenges that are not now in the news will remain. Prominent among these are rapid population growth, spreading water shortages, and growing food insecurity.

In some countries grain production is now falling as aquifers – underground water-bearing rocks – are depleted. After the Arab oil-export embargo of the 1970s, the Saudis realised that since they were heavily dependent on imported grain, they were vulnerable to a grain counter-embargo. Using oil-drilling technology, they tapped into an aquifer far below the desert to produce irrigated wheat. In a matter of years, Saudi Arabia was self-sufficient in its principal food staple.

But after more than 20 years of wheat self-sufficiency, the Saudis announced in January 2008 that this aquifer was largely depleted and they would be phasing out wheat production. Between 2007 and 2010, the harvest of nearly 3m tonnes dropped by more than two-thirds. At this rate the Saudis could harvest their last wheat crop in 2012 and then be totally dependent on imported grain to feed their population of nearly 30 million.

The unusually rapid phaseout of wheat farming in Saudi Arabia is due to two factors. First, in this arid country there is little farming without irrigation. Second, irrigation depends almost entirely on a fossil aquifer – which, unlike most aquifers, does not recharge naturally from rainfall. And the desalted sea water the country uses to supply its cities is far too costly for irrigation use – even for the Saudis.

Saudi Arabia’s growing food insecurity has led it to buy or lease land in several other countries, including two of the world’s hungriest, Ethiopia and Sudan. In effect, the Saudis are planning to produce food for themselves with the land and water resources of other countries to augment their fast-growing imports.

In neighbouring Yemen, replenishable aquifers are being pumped well beyond the rate of recharge, and the deeper fossil aquifers are also being rapidly depleted. Water tables are falling throughout Yemen by about two metres per year. In the capital, Sana’a – home to 2 million people – tap water is available only once every four days. In Taiz, a smaller city to the south, it is once every 20 days.

Yemen, with one of the world’s fastest-growing populations, is becoming a hydrological basket case. With water tables falling, the grain harvest has shrunk by one-third over the last 40 years, while demand has continued its steady rise. As a result the Yemenis import more than 80% of their grain. With its meagre oil exports falling, with no industry to speak of, and with nearly 60% of its children physically stunted and chronically undernourished, this poorest of the Arab countries is facing a bleak and potentially turbulent future.

The likely result of the depletion of Yemen’s aquifers – which will lead to further shrinkage of its harvest and spreading hunger and thirst – is social collapse. Already a failing state, it may well devolve into a group of tribal fiefdoms, warring over whatever meagre water resources remain. Yemen’s internal conflicts could spill over its long, unguarded border with Saudi Arabia.

Syria and Iraq – the other two populous countries in the region – have water troubles, too. Some of these arise from the reduced flows of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, which they depend on for irrigation water. Turkey, which controls the headwaters of these rivers, is in the midst of a massive dam building programme that is reducing downstream flows. Although all three countries are party to water-sharing arrangements, Turkey’s plans to expand hydropower generation and its area of irrigation are being fulfilled partly at the expense of its two downstream neighbours.

Given the future uncertainty of river water supplies, farmers in Syria and Iraq are drilling more wells for irrigation. This is leading to overpumping in both countries. Syria’s grain harvest has fallen by one-fifth since peaking at roughly 7m tonnes in 2001. In Iraq, the grain harvest has fallen by a quarter since peaking at 4.5m tonnes in 2002.

Jordan, with 6 million people, is also on the ropes agriculturally. Forty or so years ago, it was producing more than 300,000 tonnes of grain per year. Today it produces only 60,000 tonnes and thus must import over 90% of its grain. In this region, only Lebanon has avoided a decline in grain production.

Thus in the Arab Middle East, where populations are growing fast, the world is seeing the first collision between population growth and water supply at the regional level. For the first time in history, grain production is dropping in a region with nothing in sight to arrest the decline. Because of the failure of governments to mesh population and water policies, each day now brings 10,000 more people to feed, and less irrigation water with which to feed them.

SOURCE: The Guardian
AUTHOR: Lester Brown

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 11, 2011 (Tierramérica) – The strongest La Niña weather system in 50 years has brought historic flooding to Australia and drought to Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, driving up food prices.

Scientists now believe climate change is likely enhancing the impacts of the famous El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a cyclical climate phenomenon that affects weather patterns around the world.

La Niña and El Niño are, respectively, the cold and warm phases of the ENSO cycle, and form part of the system that regulates heat in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.

Both accompany simultaneous changes in surface ocean temperature and air pressure.

In conditions defined by climatologists as “neutral,” high air pressure predominates in the eastern Pacific, while low pressure predominates in the west.

The difference in pressure generates the trade winds, which blow east to west over the surface of the tropical Pacific, pushing the warm waters westward. The deeper, cooler waters then surface in the east, replacing the warm waters.

During episodes of La Niña, the differences in pressure are more marked, the trade winds blow more strongly, and the cold-water currents in the eastern Pacific intensify.

On the other hand, during El Niño, high surface air pressure in the western Pacific and lower pressure on the coasts of the Americas cause the trade winds to weaken or change direction, resulting in warmer water temperatures in the eastern Pacific.

“There has been a very rapid transition from El Niño to La Niña in 2010,” Kevin Trenberth, a senior climate scientist with the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in the central U.S. state of Colorado, told Tierramérica.

A very strong yearlong El Niño ended last May and within two months switched over to La Niña by July, said Trenberth.

The current La Niña has not only ended Australia’s 10-year drought, but also flooded more than 850,000 square kilometres, an area equivalent in size to France and Germany combined. It also has resulted in flooding in northern South America and brought drought conditions to the middle and southern parts of the continent.

As a consequence, agricultural production has been impacted. Global food prices reached a record high in December, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported on Jan. 5.

“There have been changes in the El Niño-La Niña cycle since the 1970s. It’s a complex cycle but the associated droughts, flooding and other manifestations have been stronger over the last 30 to 40 years,” Trenberth told Tierramérica.

Since climate change has fundamentally altered the global climate system, trapping more heat and about four percent more water vapour in the atmosphere, it is reasonable to conclude it has affected the ENSO cycle.

“It would be surprising if there wasn’t an effect,” Trenberth said.

It was Peruvian fishers who named El Niño after the Christ child (“niño” means child or boy, in Spanish), since the effects of the warming of the surface waters of the eastern Pacific ocean — such as bringing rain to the dry Peruvian deserts — show up around Christmas.

Over months, and sometimes years, the heat in the surface layer of the Pacific dissipates and the deeper colder water gets to the surface, aided by changes in the trade winds. This results either in a return to neutral conditions or the appearance of La Niña (“girl”, in Spanish), the “gift- giver”, bringing cold, nutrient-rich water that is a boon to marine life, supporting a larger fish population and increasing the fish catch.

Fishers might expect a good year ahead, as a strong La Niña is now dominating the Pacific Ocean. “This is one of the strongest La Niña events in the past half century, and will likely persist into the Northern hemisphere summer,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA (U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

ENSO has a three- to seven-year cycle, with a four-year average to go from El Niño to La Niña, but this varies considerably both in terms of periodicity and strength, explained Trenberth.

Each cycle is different and unpredictable and currently beyond the capabilities of computer climate models to emulate, he said.

While flooding and droughts have become measurably worse, there is no clear evidence that climate change has affected the ENSO cycle itself, for example, by shortening it as in the current cycle, said Trenberth.

Emissions from fossil fuels act like an extra blanket in the atmosphere, trapping additional heat from the sun.

Nearly all of that extra heat has gone into the oceans. Since the 1970s, the world’s oceans are getting measurably warmer and that is also likely to affect ENSO, noted Julia Cole, a climate scientist at the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona.

Historically, ENSO has had a huge range of variability and the drivers of the cycle are not fully understood, making it very difficult to determine how climate change is affecting it or to predict future changes in the cycle, Cole told Tierramérica in an email interview.

However, the latest research seems to show “that we may even see new ‘flavours’ of ENSO emerge as we move into the future,” she said.

Australia’s La Niña flooding is unprecedented. At least 10 people have died, with damage and losses estimated in the billions of dollars.

Much of the flooding is in the northeastern state of Queensland, whose rivers flow into the Coral Sea, and is expected to have a major impact on the nearby Great Barrier Reef.

Enormous amounts of sediments and pollutants are being washed off the land and are likely to have “a huge impact” on the world’s largest coral reef system, said Charlie Veron, former chief scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

“The very strong La Niña is certainly causing the floods, but climate change would seem to be enhancing the effects,” Veron wrote in an email.

Queensland’s vast sugar cane fields are drowning, but crops in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay are parched by drought, pushing food prices to a record high by the end of December according to a FAO report released Jan. 5.

Continued drought in Argentina or winter kill from the severe cold in parts of Europe and North America could combine to drive food prices even higher, the FAO report warns.

Even though much of the southern Pacific has been cold under La Niña, 2010 tied 2005 as the hottest year on record, according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

AUTHOR: Stephen Leahy
SOURCE: IPS News

The SSI is based on the well-known Brundtland definition, to which they added a third sentence to make clear that both Human Wellbeing and Environmental Wellbeing are included. It runs as follows:

a sustainable society is a society is a society:

• that meets the needs of the present generation,
• that does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,
• in which each human being has the opportunity to develop itself in freedom, within a well-balanced society and in harmony with its surroundings.

The main findings of the 2010 SSI are as follows:

World

1. The world at large is – with a score of 5.9 on a scale of 0 to 10 – only just over halfway to a sustainable world.
2. Two indicators show alarmingly low figures: Consumption of Renewable Energy has a score of 3.2 and Organic Farming an even way lower score of 0.7.
3. Basic Needs scores highest of the 8 categories. The score of 8.2 – unweighted for a country’s population size – reflects that 18% of the world population, i.e. over 1.2 billion people, still lacks adequate basic needs. The more justified weighted figure is even more alarming: 21.9%, i.e. over 1.5 billion people.
4. Economic Wellbeing, which reflects not just GDP but economy in much broader sense as well as preparation for the future, i.e. transition towards a sustainable society, is lacking behind the other two wellbeing dimensions. Economic Wellbeing only scores 4.6. Environmental Wellbeing (6.1) and Human Wellbeing (6.7) are performing better, though are still way below full sustainability.

Regions

1. North & West Europe show the highest SSI score of all regions, 6.9, whereas – not surprisingly, Sub Saharan Africa has the lowest score of 5.3.
2. The same applies for Human and for Economic Wellbeing. However, for Environmental Wellbeing Sub Saharan Africa scores best of all regions.

Progress

1. Many indicators show progress over the past 4 years, above all those expressing Basic Needs and Personal Development, except for Gender Equality.
2. Air Quality (nature) improved steadily, Air Quality (humans) is quite volatile, as well as many of the further indicators, especially those for Economic Wellbeing.
3. Three categories show significant progress since 2006: Basic Needs, Healthy Environment and Economy, though the latter decreased over 2008-2010.
4. In spite of the widely felt urgency, the score of Climate & Energy was in decline over the period 2006-2010.
5. All changes resulted in a slight positive development of Human and Environmental Wellbeing. Economic Wellbeing made progress over 2006-2008, but has been in decline in the next period, and can be expected to be even more so over the period 2010-2012.
6. One needs a magnifying glass to notice the progress of the overall figure of the SSI, from 5.8 in 2006 to 5.9 in 2010, or to be more exact, from 5.76 to 5.94. However, the accuracy of the underlying data is way too inadequate to justify more than one decimal.

Source: Sustainable Society Foundation

In reality, there are shared roots between the origins of violent conflicts and environmental conflicts, which have not been sufficiently exploited by the two social movements. They have not even been identified. A society’s metabolism determines much of its geopolitics, and in particular, the violence it sends outwards as well as inwards. In other words, every society, depending on how it is organised internally, it is obliged to ensure a certain supply of materials (minerals, food, fabrics, consumable manufactured goods, etc.), energy (petrol, coal, gas, uranium and processed minerals that involve energy in their production) and to ensure that the commodities it exports reach their destination safely. They also shed various types of waste – including greenhouse gases – in a process in which they relocate their environmental liabilities to other states, as is the case in the European Union, in industries such as the production of cellulose, biofuels, mineral mining, etc.; or by means of the destruction of common assets such as the atmosphere in the oceans.

This year, the EU is importing over half the energy that it needs, and estimates suggest that this external dependency will increase to 70% in 2030¹. In Catalonia, where there are no significant reserves of uranium, gas or petrol, dependence on sources of primary energy is almost 100% (93% in 2006, according to the Catalan Institute of Energy). In other key areas such as food, industrial production of meat and milk in the EU depends on livestock farming that uses transgenic soya protein as food, from what Syngenta calls the United Republic of Soya (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and eastern Bolivia), and the USA.

The countries of the North and the international consumer class scattered across the planet do not only require a guaranteed supply of raw materials, but also the cheap labour force, the appropriate security measures to keep migrations and other undesired flows under control (drugs, weapons, organised crime, diseases, terrorism, etc) and to see their wealth grow in overall terms. They must be sure that neither the means of international trade nor their investments in other countries are threatened. In the face of strong competition between countries and central business networks, they justify their right to “extend” their control all over the world, beyond their own frontiers, before their neighbour does so. It is a type of capitalist centrifugal force which is the same as the one responsible for many of the armed and environmental conflicts.

However, these great geopolitical objectives vary widely according to circumstances, and sometimes force the government to resort to timely but systematic ‘military solutions.’ This is not only the case with those in pursuit of the “national interest” (which is often the interests of specific corporate groups) in the form of the objectives mentioned above, but also when a group holding power considers its position in relative terms to be under threat.

In conclusion, wars, the manufacture and trade in arms, and other purely geopolitical actions that have been focused on by the movement for a culture of peace (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Niger, Somalia, etc.), as well as apparently internal repression such as the Bagua revolts against the industrialisation of the Amazon in Peru, the pro-mining repression by the government in Ecuador, the petrol-based repression by the Nigerian government in the Niger delta, and repression in Algeria against a supposedly radical Islamism, are directly linked to the social metabolism of a particular state or organised group of people, which is a concept created by the economic and political ecology². The same is true of the creation of an environmental debt and environmental anti-cooperation condemned by the environmental justice movement and environmentalism in general. It is not only a question of distributive environmental conflicts which may be violent, or the possible convergence between the rejection of nuclear technologies due to both the danger of pollution and the ultimate war that they implied, a warning which was given by the German eco-pacifist movement of the 1970s and 1980s (Fdez-Buey,  2004)³. It is an essential systemic relationship that must be highlighted and confronted before it is too late. It also means that the precepts of the culture of peace must become part of environmentalism, and environmental precepts must become part of pacifism and antimilitarism. The issue goes far beyond what could be a tactical alliance between social movements for global justice.

The difficulty in recognising these highly important systemic relationships is often the result of not looking closely enough, and fragmenting reality. For this reason, it is necessary to work using a liberating, pacifist and environmental epistemology, helped by the example of the creation of new bridge concepts that help to raise the profile of our relations. We need “rearguard theories,” in the words of Boaventura da Sousa Santos, which cover the backs of the social movements that are highlighting and condemning unacceptable human processes. These have led to bridge concepts such as “environmental debt,” “contraction,” “military and environmental anti-cooperation,” …^₄“, “ecofeminism,” and the “culture of peace.” As for the close relationship between the reproduction of environmental conflicts and the reproduction of violence, we have a major task ahead of us in terms of creating deep or systemic ecopacifism, which seeks biophysical contraction as a means to peace.

Author: David Llistar i Bosch, Globalisation Debt Observatory. Lecturer in Political Ecology, UNESCO Sustainability Chair, Polytechnic University of Catalonia.

Source: ICIP E-Review