What we know -- and don't know -- about the safety of eating GMOs

As a conservationist first and foremost, I'm all in favor of agricultural advances that help stem the devastating impacts of farming and ranching on biodiversity and ecosystem services. We badly need to deploy new farming methods and crop strains that enable humanity to produce more food on less land, using much lower inputs of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Importantly, some of the most intriguing approaches I've learned of, such as The Rodale Institute's 30-year farm system trial and The Land Institute's work toward perennial crop varieties, also boost the resilience of our agricultural system to climate change.

When it comes to genetically modified crops, however, my sense as a scientist is that we don't know enough about GMOs' long-term health or environmental impacts to know whether these things are really ready for prime time yet.

This piece by Grist's Tom Philpott sums up a bit of what worries me about GMO's:  

What we do know is that GMOs are not acutely toxic to eat. That is, we know that if you dine on a burger made from cows gorged on GM corn and soy, French fries cooked in oil from GM cottonseed, and soda laced with high-fructose syrup from GM corn, you're not likely to keel over in agony. Tens of millions of people do it every day. 

But what about more subtle, long-term effects -- problems that public-health professionals call "chronic"? Here we enter less certain territory. With our highly processed diets largely deficient in fruits and vegetables, Americans have high and rising rates of chronic diseases like obesity and heart disease. Meanwhile, food allergies, autism, and non-alcohol-related liver disease have rocketed. It's highly plausible that GMOs, which have existed in our diets for less than a generation, have emerged as another of many contributors to such long-term conditions. 

So GMOs could theoretically be unsafe to eat. What does science tell us about the matter? Unfortunately, not much. 

It seems that the body of research in this area lacks depth of credibility due to the intense secrecy of GMO makers. That is, the literature is dominated by findings of agricultural industry-funded scientists, and needs more contributions from independent scientists (who I'm sure would be glad to sign fairly worded non-disclosure agreements or "NDA's").

What is trickling out seems to indicate that there is "smoke" around this issue (and where there's smoke...):  

So where does all of this leave us? Obviously, in need of much more independent research. In April, a bit more trickled out from Quebec, Canada -- and again, the results are unsettling. The study, published in the journal Reproductive Toxicology, focused on corn engineered to possess a trait from the bacteria Bt, which is toxic to a range of insects. So-called Bt corn is extremely common in the United States; according to the USDA, upwards of 60 percent of corn planted here has it. Since its introduction in the '90s, its maker, Monsanto, has insisted that Bt corn must be safe, because the toxin embedded in it cannot survive the human digestive system.   

The Quebec study (here's the abstract) casts serious doubt on that bedrock assumption. Researchers checked blood samples of 39 pregnant women and 30 non-pregnant women for the presence of the toxin. None were exposed directly to Bt, but all had conventional diets. The results: The Bt toxin showed up in 93 percent of pregnant women and 80 percent of their fetuses. It was also present in 69 percent of non-pregnant women in the study.   

So, 15 years after the introduction of GMOs, we know that they pose no threat of immediate, spectacular harm. That is, they won't kill us suddenly. Whether they're killing us slowly -- contributing to long-term, chronic maladies -- remains anyone's guess.

Well that certainly doesn't sound like a crop technology that is ready to be approved for our food supply, does it?  My wife is pregnant with our second daughter, and these kinds of findings indicate to me that our Food Safety regulatory system is dropping the ball in a big way here. Or at the very least is jumping the gun on GMO safety, likely due to intensive political pressures influenced by the Monsanto's of the world.

I hope, for the safety of our children and ourselves, that we aren't looking at a very expensive agricultural, health and environmental catastrophe in the making.

What are your thoughts on GMO safety? What's the best way to grow more food on less land, using lower inputs of synthetic chemicals and fertilizers?

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New Research: Protecting Forests Will Deliver Economic Boom for Southeast Asia

Are forests more valuable to humanity left standing or for what's produced when they're cut?

More and more, we are learning just how much value healthy, intact and sustainably managed forests provide to society.

According to this post on Mongabay.com, for example, this lesson is being realized in Southeast Asia, where tropical rainforests face a range of threats, including conversion to palm oil and rubber plantations, illegal logging and poaching, and slash and burn agriculture.  It turns out that ecologically unsustainable practices are proving to be economically ruinous:

• The Rajawali Institute for Asia at the Harvard Kennedy School of government estimates that by eliminating its natural capital for negligible gains, deforestation caused losses of $150 billion to Indonesia between 1990 and 2007
• An investigation by a task force set up by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono found that clear-cutting and conversion of forests to palm oil is so widespread that it's drastically reduced the availability of wood to be cut, costing the Jambai province, alone, 76,000 jobs in the sector.
• "According to the Rand Corporation, particularly intense forest fires in Indonesia and Malaysia have increased deaths by 22 percent.  Bad air quality can also send people to the hospital and increase asthma attacks, lowering productivity.  One of Southeast Asia's challenges is attracting global companies to locate high-level executive headquarters in the region, in part because of the intense air pollution exacerbated by forest fires."

Clearly, the economic impacts of "unsustainability" reach far beyond agriculture and forestry sectors, influencing public health, safety and economic competitiveness.

Conversely, more sustainable practices are being found to confer wide-ranging socio-economic benefits:

• Studies have shown that coastal mangrove forests can reduce tsunami flow by as much as 90 percent. During the infamous 2004 tsunami, villages that had cut down their mangroves were often wiped out while those that maintained them fared much better.

So how do we incorporate the conservation value of intact forests, such as the mangroves described above, into our economic system?

In most cases, the only option for landowners to earn income and feed their families is still extractive: clearing, logging, farming, grazing, mining or otherwise converting their forest plots.  The Natural Capital Project, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) and The Partnership for Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem services (WAVES) are among those making progress developing systems for valuing ecosystem services and compensating landowners whose property provides them. 

But at a time of increasing financial hardship and budgetary constraints, will we be able to deploy these new payments for ecosystem services systems quickly enough to restore and protect the world's remaining hot spots of biodiversity?

If there were ever a time for the emerging field of sustainable business to help conservationists entrepreneurially innovate, this is it.

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The Forest (Ecosystem Service) Companies of the Future

As efforts grow to better align our economy with our ecology (due to very real biophysical limits of natural resource availability), businesses and landowners are exploring how to generate income via the valuable ecosystem services produced by their property.

The Guardian reports on how forest companies are making the transition from solely extractive-based revenues to diversified revenue streams that capitalize on conservation value:  

Climate change, population growth, and soaring demand for food, energy, water and other resources are changing the way the world sees and values forests. A vision is emerging of a new kind of company – the forest services company. 

Our vision is being propelled by new markets that are emerging for forest services such as carbon storage, wildlife preservation, recreational facilities and watershed protection. This trend is creating huge business opportunities for forest companies with the foresight to reinvent themselves and look beyond the traditional equation of forests equal timber. 

Forest companies of the future will expand their business model beyond delivering products to providing an array of crucial services to communities. Timber revenue will still be important, but successful companies will have supplemented their income from the fast-growing new markets that emerge from the increasing scarcity of ecosystem services.

Sounds rosy. But is this just more unrealized happy talk about the future potential of ecosystem services markets?  I was pleased to find some real-world examples of these types of changes actually happening now -- both at home and abroad:

Sveaskog, Sweden's largest forest company, is doing exactly that. Approximately 15% of annual net sales comes from biomass for energy and non-timber services such as windfarm leases and hunting and fishing licences. In addition, Sveaskog is managing one-fifth of its land for conservation and promotion of biodiversity. The company is also experimenting with ways to maximise carbon uptake through different forest management measures and plans to sell the additional uptake to carbon markets. In 20 years, Sveaskog expects its current sales share of 15% from biomass and different kinds of non-timber services to have doubled. 

Other major companies are similarly shifting focus to incorporate services. Plum Creek, the largest US private landowner, has about a third of the company's 7m acres of timber lands under revenue-generating conservation and wildlife protection agreements. Mondi, a leading international paper and packaging group, recently identified opportunities to tap into growing markets for biomass and ecotourism through a review of ecosystem services at three of its South African plantations. 

The shifting nature of forest companies is a win-win opportunity for governments as well, creating new jobs in struggling rural areas and improving the quality of life for urbanites.

One question I'd love to explore: are these ecosystem services-oriented revenue streams being designed in conjunction with neighboring landowners as part of regional-scale conservation planning efforts?

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Timberland Documentary About the Conservation Value of Urban Forests - Dig It

I'm proud to share a clip from my first documentary film appearance. The film is named "Dig It" -- about the valuable benefits that urban forests provide to people and biodiversity alike.

Huge props to Danny Clinch, Tim Donnelly and crew for an exceptional job on this, and special thanks to Timberland for their support.

Enjoy...

UN Report Warns of Economic Impact of Biodiversity Loss

The UN today issued a new report that warned of the economic impact of biodiversity loss:

The relationship between nature loss and economic harm is much more than just figurative, the UN believes.

An ongoing project known as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) is attempting to quantify the monetary value of various services that nature provides for us.

These services include purifying water and air, protecting coasts from storms and maintaining wildlife for ecotourism.

The rationale is that when such services disappear or are degraded, they have to be replaced out of society's coffers.

Loss of coral reefs will reduce humanity's supply of seafood

TEEB has already calculated the annual loss of forests at $2-5 trillion, dwarfing costs of the banking crisis.

"Many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other lifeforms and their role in healthy and functioning ecosystems," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (Unep).

"Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity, or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world.

"The truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050."

The more that ecosystems become degraded, the UN says, the greater the risk that they will be pushed "over the edge" into a new stable state of much less utility to humankind.

For example, freshwater systems polluted with excess agricultural fertiliser will suffocate with algae, killing off fish and making water unfit for human consumption.

The main question that I keep coming back to is how we go about enacting land use plans that simultaneously protect biodiversity and human well-being without ticking a lot of people off.

How can we make conservation both possible and profitable, and transform the public's perception of biodiversity conservation from a threat to their economic well being to a new revenue opportunity?  It comes down to creating smart land management and policy solutions that reward property owners for the conservation value that their lands provide to society -- perhaps via some form of payments for ecosystem services system.

The bottom line is that humanity is still working on management and policy solutions for making conservation an economically viable alternative to extractive uses.  We're getting there in some places, but in many others, we've got real work to do.

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Disease Threatens Douglas Firs of the Pacific Northwest

Scientists have seen this coming for years, and climate change seems to have accelerated the vulnerability of Pacific Northwest forests to disease caused by unwise forest management and tree planting practices.  As the Oregonian reports:

A fungal disease attacking Douglas-fir trees along the Pacific Northwest coast is intensifying and may be linked to a warmer climate and extensive planting of Douglas-fir on logged tracts, new Oregon State University research suggests.

The epidemic of Swiss needle cast stunts growth in both older and younger trees and appears to be unprecedented over at least the past 100 years, OSU researchers Bryan Black, David Shaw, and Jeffrey Stone concluded.

Swiss needle cast, which originated in Europe, has spread sharply since 1996. It affects hundreds of thousands of acres in Oregon and Washington, costing tens of millions a year in lost growth. It rarely kills trees but causes discoloration and loss of needles and stunts growth.

The disease has now been identified at varying levels of severity in western Oregon on more than 300,000 acres in each of the past four years, peaking at 376,000 acres in 2008, the researchers said in a paper published in the journal "Forest Ecology and Management."

Prior to this four-year period, it had affected as much as 300,000 acres only once in the 14-year history of aerial detection surveys, they said.

It could ultimately affect up to two million acres of forests near the Oregon coast, OSU said, and change the face of forestry in a huge region.

The new study concluded that warmer conditions, especially from March through August, are associated with significantly reduced growth in diseased trees, which may reflect earlier fruiting of the fungus. Wet, drizzly conditions in May through July are also important.

The warm, wet conditions within 20 miles or so of the Pacific Ocean make those areas a hotspot of disease in coastal Oregon and Washington.

Another key suspect, scientists say, is the planting for decades of a monoculture of Douglas-fir in replacement of coastal forests, which previously had trees of varying ages and different species.

When Douglas-fir was a small component of these forests, it appears the disease was relatively insignificant. Even-aged stands of Douglas-fir allow the fungus to build up, releasing spores that spread with the wind.

It's text book conservation biology that something like this would happen to the Pacific Northwest's forests -- scientists have been warning of the dangers of poor forest management and planting monocultures of Douglas Fir for years.  Now the timber industry's ignoring of scientific advice has the potential to become very very costly for the region's economy and the local communities that depend on sustainable forest management.  It's really too bad, because the problem could have been avoided.

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Read a different article on the subject -- from The Science Blog>>
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Energy Crops Impact Environmental Quality

A new review explores alternative approaches for providing the carbon-rich material used to create cellulosic ethanol.  While some have touted use of crop waste for conversion to fuels, this review touts important environmental benefits provided by crop residues, and suggests alternative crops for fuel production:

In the March-April 2010 issue of Agronomy Journal, published by the American Society of Agronomy, Dr. Humberto Blanco reviewed the impacts of crop residue removal, warm season grasses, and short-rotation woody crops on critical soil properties, carbon sequestration, and water quality as well as the performance of energy crops in marginal lands. The review found that crop residue removal from corn, wheat,and grain sorghumcan adversely impact soil and environmental quality. Removal of more than 50% of crop residue can have negative consequences for soil structure, reduce soil organic carbon sequestration, increase water erosion, and reduce nutrient cycling and crop production, particularly in erodible and sloping soils.

"Crop residue removal can make no-till soils a source rather than a sink of atmospheric carbon," says Blanco, even at rates lower than 50%. Residue removal at rates of less than 25% can cause loss of sediment in runoff relative to soils without residue removal. To avoid the negative impacts on soil, perhaps only a small fraction of residue might be available for removal. This small amount of crop residues is not economically feasible nor logistically possible. Blanco recomends developing other alternative biomass feedstock sources for cellulosic ethanol production.

An alternative to crop residue removal is growing warm season grasses and short-rotation woody crops as dedicated energy crops. These crops can provide a wide of range of ecosystems services over crop residue removal. Available data indicate that herbaceous and woody plants can improve soil characteristics, reduce soil water and wind erosion, filter pollutants in runoff, sequester soil organic carbon, reduce net emissions of greenhouse gases, and improve wildlife habitat and diversity.

Whereas crop residue removal reduces carbon concentration, dedicated energy crops can increase soil organic carbon concentration while providing biofuel feedstock. Because of their deep root systems, warm season grasses also promote long-term carbon sequestration in deeper soil profile unlike row crops.

I've been watching the development of biofuels for years now, and there always seems to end up being a problem with each candidate.  Hopefully we can find a solution sooner than later that is both effective and safe for helping wean us from our oil addiction.

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Deforestation's Impacts in Africa: "The rains stopped, and banana groves and corn stalks died"

I'm a big fan of pictures and stories of the benefits that healthy ecosystems provide to humanity.  As I drove up toward Redwood Regional Park for my weekly meditative hike on Saturday, I was glad to find Living On Earth airing on NPR.

This quote got me -- a story about a reforestation project in Uganda, where the locals talk about what happened after the government cut down their forests:

HOFFMAN: Jerome Byesigwa chairs the group and explains how it started. In 2003, he says, the weather in the area suddenly changed when the government cut down much of the nearby Central Forest Reserve for timber. The rains stopped, and banana groves and corn stalks died.

[BYESIGWA SPEAKING] VOICEOVER: As soon as it had been harvested we realized there was a change in the weather. Just even ordinary people would tell you that the problems we were experiencing were because our forests there had been harvested.

The fact that these folks are getting carbon credits for planting highly invasive, water-hungry non-native tree species is just wrong.  It's great to see the World Bank funding reforestation projects like this, but it would be nice if they would help the local people by selecting native species, adapted to local environmental conditions (especially water needs) that help to replace the ecosystem services that have been lost to deforestation.

Clearly, we've got a ways to go to better integrate the science of sustainability into the planning of Uganda and the World Bank.

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America's Costly Nitrogen Dilemma and What We Can Do About It

Did you know that overapplication of fertilizer is one of humanity's greatest environmental challenges?  Grist's Tom Philpott does a bang-up job explaining the problems it causes and exploring potential solutions.  He interviews experts including Stanford biogeochemistry guru, Peter Vitousek:

According to Peter Vitousek, a professor of biology at Stanford and a leading scholar on the nitrogen cycle, under optimum conditions and using best practices, plants take up only "50 or at best 60 percent" of the nitrogen laid on by farmers. So if so much of their fertilizer is going to waste, why do farmers apply so much? Vitousek explained that plants take up different amounts of nitrogen at different points in the growing cycle. To ensure that crops have sufficient N when they need it most, farmers essentially have to over-apply.

Globally, "about two-thirds of the nearly $100 billion of nitrogen fertilizer spread on fields each year is wasted," estimates The Economist. That's a lot of cash down the drain and a lot of nitrogen bleeding out of fields in various forms, wreaking all manner of havoc: Exhibit A, the 8,000-square-mile dead zone that blooms every year in the Gulf of Mexico, as Krysta Hozyash covered in this series.

Fortunately, this is yet another environmental problem where the solution will save money: greater efficiency of Nitrogen fertilizer use will cut farmers' costs while improving the health of our soils, waterways and even the air we breathe.

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Pacific Northwest Forests Act As Massive Carbon Storage Banks

A new report by The Wilderness Society identifies 10 Pacific Northwest National Forests as the most prolific for storing carbon in our national forest system.

These forests are my favorite in the U.S. -- unbelievably vibrant, and remaining old growth stands are magically cathedralesque...

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Biodiversity Loss Threatens Our Health and Safety and Communication is Crucial

Scientists and the media need to step up efforts to communicate the importance of solving the biodiversity crisis, says this article in SciDev.net:

Both (climate change and biodiversity loss) face formidable challenges in persuading political leaders and the public of the urgent need to take action. The reasons are complex. But at root is the conflict between the need to radically change our use of natural resources and the desire to maintain current forms of economic growth in both developed and developing countries.

The solutions are equally complicated. Part of the answer, in each case, lies in enhancing the media's ability to communicate messages emerging from the underlying science, so that these accurately reflect both the urgency of the situation, and how ordinary people's lives may be affected.
 
Getting these messages across is no easy task. And so far, in the case of biodiversity, efforts have largely failed.

As delegates to the London conference and other meetings held to launch the Year of Biodiversity have freely admitted, this failure to act partly results from shortcomings in communication. The scientific community has not been able to effectively communicate its concerns to decision-makers — at least not in a way that sufficiently prioritises biodiversity conservation within a political agenda predominantly concerned with employment and economic growth.

(N)ew (conservation) targets must not only be more realistic and concrete, but must also be accompanied by a more sophisticated communications strategy.

This is where I've always thought the ecosystem services paradigm has potential to make a difference in improving the public's understanding of the importance of biodiversity and health ecosystems.  Except we need to rename these critical benefits that ecosystems provide to society something other than "ecosystem services."

Any ideas?

Even the word "biodiversity" is ineffective for helping the public get the problem, says the article:

Even the term 'biodiversity' suffers from this weakness, lacking the concreteness of concepts such as sea level rise. Some media advisers even suggest avoiding the term wherever possible for that very reason — not very promising to those trying to create a global campaign around the same word.

Too much media coverage of biodiversity fails to connect with the issues directly affecting people's lives. Even concepts such as 'the web of life', used to emphasise the interrelatedness of living systems, does not immediately explain why we should be worried about the declining number of insects or plants in distant locations.

So how do we motivate the public and decisionmakers to support conservation of "biodiversity"?  What do you think is a good term that reflects its value to human well being and can be as catchy, concrete and emotive as "ancient forests"?

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Is There Enough Food Out There for 9 Billion People

The New Republic reports on a paper last week from the esteemed journal, Science, proposing how humanity can feed 9 billion people in 2050:

A new paper published this week in Science, written by Britain's chief scientific adviser John Beddington along with nine other experts, outlines a way this could actually be done. The catch? Doing so would require "radical" changes to the current global food system. The paper's a great synthesis of a wide range of different food issues, and I'll just pull out the main ideas:

Boosting crop yields: If the supply of farmland is ultimately finite, then boosting yields is the only way we'll get more food.

Stop tossing out so much food: The study estimates that 30 percent to 40 percent of the world's food is thrown out each year. 

Fewer hamburgers: Can't imagine this one will go over well, but the authors do suggest that people will probably have to reduce their meat consumption slightly to feed nine billion people. This doesn't mean going vegetarian.

A slew of green technical stuff: Of course, all those other measures will only go so far. There are also some serious threats to the long-term sustainability of agriculture lurking out there. Global warming's a big one. But then also water shortages due to over-extraction. Soil degradation due to poor farming techniques. Loss of biodiversity due poor management. The fact that fisheries are being ravaged (so something like a cap-and-trade system for fish could help here). A lot of the fixes here are dry and technical, and they tend to get discussed as wonky enviro ideas that might be nice to do but aren't essential. Except that, as the Science study makes clear, they really are crucial—at least if all those nine billion people want enough to eat.

Not Food Crops and Farmland to Fuel Vehicles: It's probably going to be hard to find enough food for nine billion people if we're still diverting vast swaths of farmland for crop-based ethanol. (Though maybe by then we'll have moved on to algae fuels or electric cars or some other fancy technology.)

It's a fascinating, crucial topic -- one with that tie directly into humanity's other top crises: climate, biodiversity, fresh water.  We sure live in interesting times...

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The Economist: Why It is Important to Put a Price on Nature

The Economist weighs in on the emerging paradigm of paying people and communities for the ecosystem services provided by their healthy natural habitats.  They report on a gathering of experts in the field who recently met to assess how things are going and plot next steps:

They looked at the progress and prospects of their attempts to argue for the preservation of nature by better capturing the value of the things – such as pollination, air quality and carbon storage – that it seemingly does for free.

Environmental valuations aim to solve a problem that troubles both economists and ecologists: the misallocation of resources. Take mangrove swamps. Over the past two decades around a third of the world’s mangrove swamps have been converted for human use, with many turned into valuable shrimp farms. In 2007 an economic study of such shrimp farms in Thailand showed that the commercial profits per hectare were $9,632. If that were the only factor, conversion would seem an excellent idea.

However, proper accounting shows that for each hectare government subsidies formed $8,412 of this figure and there were costs, too: $1,000 for pollution and $12,392 for losses to ecosystem services. These comprised damage to the supply of foods and medicines that people had taken from the forest, the loss of habitats for fish, and less buffering against storms. And because a given shrimp farm only stays productive for three or four years, there was the additional cost of restoring them afterwards: if you do so with mangroves themselves, add another $9,318 per hectare. The overall lesson is that what looks beneficial only does so because the profits are retained by the private sector, while the problems are spread out across society at large, appearing on no specific balance sheet.

To this end, the Natural Capital Project, a group based at Stanford University, California, has developed a suite of computer programs called InVEST, which will analyse and map ecosystem services. InVEST allows farmers, landowners and government officials to make better-informed decisions about the current and future costs of an activity.

I'm a big proponent of figuring out how to devise smart strategies to make conservation both possible and profitable.  I recognize that without new mechanisms to allow people to make a living off the land by means other than logging, grazing, mining or otherwise destroying natural habitats, the loss of critical ecosystem services and biodiversity will continue.

That said, I also recognize 'Slippery Slope' argument -- the potential that valuing nature will provide new justification for destroying it.  But I haven't heard enough from the Slippery Slopers about constructive suggestions for solutions.  The status quo isn't working.  If you're against payments for ecosystem services, what do you suggest are viable solutions with bright prospects for reversing habitat destruction and biodiversity loss and maximizing the resilience of ecosystems to climate disruption?

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Biodiversity to the Rescue: Voodoo Wasps Could Help Detoxify Agriculture -- and People

Uttering the words 'biological diversity' typically conjures up images of such natural wonders as Lemurs, Jaguars and Panda Bears.  However, Nature's Services provided by insects -- including pollination of our crops and predation of our crop pests -- are among the most valuable provided by any group of organisms.

This article in the London Independent details the critical services provided by a predator of crop pests, parasitic 'voodoo wasps'.  These wasps, the story goes, are being studied for their potential to replace the use of toxic pesticides in agricultural fields:

They are so small that most people have never even seen them, yet "voodoo wasps" are about to be recruited big time in the war on agricultural pests as part of the wider effort to boost food production in the 21st century.

The wasps are only 1 or 2 millimetres long fully-grown but they have an ability to paralyse and destroy other insects, including many of the most destructive crop pests, by delivering a zombie-inducing venom in their sting.

Now scientists believe they have made the breakthrough that will enable them to recruit vast armies of voodoo wasps to search and destroy farm pests on a scale that could boost crop yields without polluting the wider environment with insecticides.

I love the potential of this ecosystem services success story.  However, I sure hope that if scientists are genetically modifying these organisms to attack specific crop pests, they are being very very careful to make sure the genetically modified wasps don't end up becoming a new invasive species problem.

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2010 Is The Year of Biodiversity: Why It Matters to Our Well-Being

The year 2010 is dubbed the International Year of Biodiversity -- intended on focusing humanity on solutions for doing more responsible -- and respectful -- job of coexisting with the spellbinding array of beings that we share the planet with.

As this piece from The Guardian reminds us, protecting biodiversity is also protecting our well-being:

Biodiversity is integral to our daily lives. It is not about the loss of exotic species which have been the focus of conservation activities by the foundations and trusts of wealthy nations. It is about the vital resources which underpin the wealth and health of the world's poor and that provide the vital needs for the heath and wellbeing of us all.

The equivalent to the Stern report for biodiversity is called The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB). It warns that our neglect of the natural services provided by biodiversity is an economic catastrophe of an order of magnitude greater than the global economic crisis. Year on year, the irreversible loss of natural diverse genetic resources impoverishes the world and undermines our ability to develop new crops and medicines, resist pests and diseases, and maintain the host of natural products on which humans rely.

Equally significant, are the vital natural services that the world's ecosystems provide. These include providing vital oxygen, decomposing waste, removing pollutants, providing the natural buffers that help manage drought and flood, protect soil from erosion, ensure soil fertility, and provide breeding nurseries to maintain fish ocean stocks. The list goes on, and among these immeasurable vital functions of nature is of course its ability to absorb carbon dioxide. The ability of forests, bogs and salt marches, tundra, coral and ocean plankton to sequester carbon should be our greatest ally in managing the increased emissions of fossil fuel activity – a key theme of the climate negotiations in Copenhagen last month.

Rather than seeing biodiversity and ecological mechanisms being eroded, we need to see a massive effort towards finding a more effective sustainable relationship between human society and nature. This is not a scientific or environmental issue, it is a social question and an ethical one about what our generation leaves for those in the future.

We'll keep you posted on the emerging array of efforts to make conservation both possible and profitable.  You can track our reporting about the ecosystem services that nature provides to humanity right here...

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Ground Rules for a Constructive Debate About Food and Farming

The L.A. Times has a piece worth your while proposing some ways for us to have a more constructive debate about our (currently unsustainable) food production system.  Here are a couple of the highlighted points:

 * What's political is also personal. If you believe in something, you should be willing to make sacrifices to support it, even if it's expensive or inconvenient. Wailing about farmers who use pesticides and then balking at paying extra for organic produce is hypocritical because the yields in organic farming are almost always lower. On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with doing the best you can whenever you can -- as long as you're willing to accept compromises from the other guy too.

* Finally, and most important: Beware the law of unintended consequences. Developing tasteless fruits and vegetables was not the goal of the last Green Revolution; it was a side effect of a system designed to eliminate hunger by providing plentiful, inexpensive food, but that also ended up rewarding quantity over quality. We should always keep in mind that when we're dreaming of a system that focuses on the reverse, we run the risk of creating something far worse than strawberries that bounce.

OK, I'll admit that when I see a little container of organic and local strawberries for $6, I breeze right by it.  The good news is that these days, it really doesn't take too much searching to find affordable organics.  Or even affordable local organics.

That said, the more we can convey the benefits of a sustainable food production system in terms that are immediately relevant to everyday moms, the better.  We need simple, concrete pictures and stories about how sustainably produced food is better for our kids, our health, our safety -- and at the same time, for the land and water ecosystems that support food production.

As we've reported here on this blog, a revolution in the way we produce and distribute our food is one of the great areas of promise in the coming decades for solutions that benefit both our environment and ourselves.

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Growing Demand For Soybeans Threatens Amazon, Climate

A new piece from Lester Brown's Earth Policy Institute points to the global need to reduce demand for soybean production, which is a primary driver of Amazon deforestation (and thus a key driver of climate disruption).

Although the deforestation is occurring within Brazil, it is the worldwide growth in demand for meat, milk, and eggs that is driving it. Put simply, saving the Amazon rainforest now depends on curbing the growth in demand for soybeans by stabilizing population worldwide as soon as possible. And for the world’s affluent population, it means moving down the food chain, eating less meat and thus lessening the growth in demand for soybeans. With food, as with energy, achieving an acceptable balance between supply and demand now means curbing growth in demand rather than just expanding supply.

Of course, reducing food demand is healthier too...  Full disclosure: I am currently working to reduce my own personal food demand.  It's not only to keep healthy at age 37, but to keep my clothing fitting me.  The last thing I need in this economy is to have to go out and purchase new clothing for all the wrong reasons...

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Climate Disruption Blamed for Costing Logging Jobs in B.C.

The massive tree-killing bark beetle outbreaks in British Columbia -- attributed to warming temperatures allowing greater numbers of the insects to survive through winters -- is said to be costing logging jobs:

More than 800 B.C. forestry workers are slated to lose their jobs by the end of January, and some say the mountain pine beetle is to blame.

In the northern Cariboo community of Quesnel, about 180 Canfor employees will be laid off Jan. 15 when the company curtails production at its sawmill. Another 120 truckers and loggers who serve the mill will be out of work as a result.

In Kitimat, on the North Coast, about 500 mill workers will lose their jobs Jan. 31 when the Eurocan paper mill shuts its doors.

While both companies blame the recession and the rising Canadian dollar for the decline in forestry, some say the mountain pine beetle is also taking a toll.

Mary Anne Arcand, who speaks for the Central Interior Logging Association, said lumber towns surrounded by green trees are faring better than those surrounded by beetle-killed forest.

"It's devastating," she said. "A significant part of it is that [Quesnel is] in the mountain pine beetle [range] and, slowly but surely, that fibre is becoming less useful."

Could this impact of warming end up pitting the timber industry against the fossil fuel industry, and lead to another instance of unlikely bedfellows supporting bold climate disruption solutions?

We'll see...

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Down on the Farm: An Endless Cycle of Waste

The N.Y. Times has an interesting article about dairy and livestock operators' efforts to curtail pollution from animal waste, and turn it into useful fertilizer (thus stemming use of fossil fuel-produced nitrogen fertilizers).

Check out this mind-boggling number:

A typical lactating Holstein produces about 150 pounds of waste — by weight, about two-thirds wet feces, one-third urine — each day. Mr. Volleman has 3,000 lactating Holsteins and another 1,000 that are temporarily “dry.” Do the math: his Wildcat Dairy produces about 200 million pounds of manure every year.

Yuck!

The article goes on to explore various options for dealing with all this waste.  The described inefficiencies in agricultural systems just scream of opportunities to not only reduce pollution, but to cut costs, boost profits, and improve the public health.

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David Suzuki and Faisal Moola: Protecting Nature Has Economic Benefits

Last year, when the Canadian government was debating how to invest in economic stimulus, conservationists at the David Suzuki foundation offered its ideas on how to spend the money.

I've described many of these ideas on this blog before, but there are a few fresh factoids in here:

Protecting nature results in cost savings for governments, because natural areas provide many ecological benefits that sustain the health and well-being of our communities at little or no cost. These include services like clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat and flood control. All are costly to replace if they are degraded or lost due to mismanagement, assuming they can be replaced at all.

The fiscal rationale for protecting nature is not new. Many ambitious policy solutions have come about not because leaders were motivated to protect wildlife habitat, but rather because they were looking for ways to save a buck. In the early 1990s, New York City chose to protect its watershed through land purchase, pollution control and conservation easements, rather than build new infrastructure to filter its water. In doing so, the city has saved billions of dollars.
Providing clean water at an affordable cost is a challenge in many Canadian cities because few draw their drinking water from protected watersheds. They must rely on expensive treatment systems because the ecosystems from which the water is drawn are degraded or tainted by pollution.

In comparison, drinking water for the capital region comes from protected watersheds in the Sooke Hills. These mature forests filter, store and regulate the region's drinking water at no cost to the taxpayer, providing a beneficial natural service that complements engineered solutions like water filtration.

Studies suggest a strong fiscal incentive exists to grow the urban forest cover in B.C.'s cities. For example, a recent joint study by municipal, provincial and federal agencies in B.C. estimated Vancouver and surrounding communities could save about $1.1 million annually in stormwater infrastructure costs if they significantly increased urban forest cover by planting more trees and taking better care of the ones they have.

The economic benefits of nature conservation were also recently profiled in a United Nations report called the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity. It found that protecting natural ecosystems and biodiversity is worth trillions of dollars in annual economic benefits globally. The lead author, banker Pavan Sukhdev, told the media that investments to protect ecosystems can return 25 to 100 times more in benefits from the natural services they provide, such as pollination, climate regulation and water filtration.

This sort of research is important, because policy-makers often ignore the full economic costs of degrading land and the ecological services it provides when making development decisions.

Here's my biggest hope for 2010 and the new decade: that we actually see payments for ecosystem service schemes both become reality, and start to make a real difference in making conservation both possible and profitable -- making a real dent in our efforts to protect and restore both biodiversity and human well being.

Otherwise, we're going to be constantly learning new ways that a service that nature had been providing at low or even no cost -- such as carbon uptake -- is much more expensive to replace with a technological solution.

Just think how much it would cost to build and deploy machines that take up enough carbon dioxide to replace the carbon-absorbing services provided by the millions of acres of forests that are destroyed each year.  Really -- how much do you think it would cost, relative to the economic benefits provided by cutting down all those trees?  Of course, that's just getting into the carbon uptake service provided by forests.  You'd still need to replace the water provisioning services, water filtration services, pollination services, and more...

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