Water Footprint

Water Footprint

People use lots of water for drinking, cooking and washing, but even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, etc. The water footprint of an individual, business or nation is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual, business or nation.

The relation between consumption and water use

The water footprint of a nation shows the total volume of water that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of the nation. Since not all goods consumed in one particular country are produced in that country, the water footprint consists of two parts: use of domestic water resources and use of water outside the borders of the country. The water footprint includes both the water withdrawn from surface and groundwater and the use of soil water (in agricultural production).

Individual Water footprint calculator

Wet Clothes - Cotton as a water guzzler

Slum Ecology

Buenos Aires may have the worst feng shui in the world: it is built in a flood zone over a former lake, a toxic dump, and a cemetery. Then there's the barrio perched precariously on stilts over the excrement-clogged Pasig River in Manila, and the bustee in Vijayawada that floods so regularly that residents have door numbers written on pieces of furniture. In slums the world over, squatters trade safety and health for a few square meters of land and some security of tenure. They are pioneers of swamps, floodplains, volcano slopes, unstable hillsides, desert fringes, railroad sidings, rubbish mountains, and chemical dumps—unattractive and dangerous sites that have become poverty's niche in the ecology of the city.

Cities have absorbed nearly two-thirds of the global population explosion since 1950, and are currently adding a million babies and migrants each week. Dhaka, Kinshasa, and Lagos today are each approximately forty times larger than they were in 1950. According to the Financial Times, China in the 1980s alone added more city dwellers than did all of Europe (including Russia) during the entire nineteenth century.

In this process of rampant urbanization, the planet has become marked by the runaway growth of slums, characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure. UN researchers estimate that there were at least 921 million slum dwellers in 2001 and more than 1 billion in 2005, with slum populations growing by a staggering 25 million per year.

The Pollution Gap

Report reveals how the world's poorer countries are forced to pay for the CO2 emissions of the developed nations.

Over 70 million Africans and an even greater number of farmers in the Indian sub-continent will suffer catastrophic floods, disease and famine if the rich countries of the world fail to change their habits and radically cut their carbon emissions.

The stark warning, contained in a private Government document commissioned by Gordon Brown, comes days ahead of an announcement that will show Tony Blair backing away from his promise to "lead internationally" on climate change. The Government has decided to delay setting targets for industry to cut carbon emissions until other EU governments set theirs. Previously, Mr Blair has made a virtue out of leading the way in Europe.

The bleak facts on how climate change threatens the third world were laid out in a briefing paper drawn up this month by the Department for International Development. It pointed out that a quarter of Africa's population lives within 100km of the sea coast. As sea levels rises, when global warming melts the ice pack, the number of Africans at risk from coastal flooding will increase from one million in 1990 to 70 million in 2080.

In India, rising temperatures could drive down farm incomes by as much as a quarter, while the cost to Bangladesh of changes in the climate could be more than half the £58bn that country has received in foreign aid.

"It's the poorest people in the world who suffer from climate change, but they are the least responsible for it." John Magragh, of Oxfam, said yesterday.

The report emphasises that - despite the recent focus on New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina - 94 per cent of all natural disasters, and 97 per cent of deaths from natural disasters, occur in the developing countries.

TIME Magazine - The Tipping Point

The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame. Why the crisis hit so soon - and what we can do about it.

No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth. Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.

It certainly looked that way last week as the atmospheric bomb that was Cyclone Larry - a Category 5 storm with wind bursts that reached 180 m.p.h. - exploded through northeastern Australia. It certainly looked that way last year as curtains of fire and dust turned the skies of Indonesia orange, thanks to drought-fueled blazes sweeping the island nation. It certainly looks that way as sections of ice the size of small states calve from the disintegrating Arctic and Antarctic. And it certainly looks that way as the sodden wreckage of New Orleans continues to molder, while the waters of the Atlantic gather themselves for a new hurricane season just two months away. Disasters have always been with us and surely always will be. But when they hit this hard and come this fast - when the emergency becomes commonplace - something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming.

The Edge of the Roof

Those who dance are often thought mad
by those who do not hear the music

Sit, be still, and listen,
for you are drunk
and we are at the edge of the roof

Rumi - 13th century Persian Mystic and Philosopher

2005 Hottest Year on Record

Joseph Florence

The year 2005 was the hottest on record. The average global surface temperature of 14.77 degrees Celsius (58.6 degrees Fahrenheit) was the highest since recordkeeping began in 1880. January, April, September, and October of 2005 were the hottest of those months on record, while March, June, and November were the second warmest ever.

In fact, the six hottest years on record have all occurred in the last eight years. After 2005, 1998 was the second warmest, with an average global temperature of 14.71 degrees Celsius. But there was an important difference between 1998 and 2005: the strongest El Niño of the past 100 years lifted the average 1998 temperature 0.2 degrees Celsius, whereas the record warmth last year was not buoyed by such an effect.

These readings, which come from the series maintained by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, continue a trend of rising global temperatures. During the past century, temperatures rose 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.44 degrees Fahrenheit), 0.6 degrees of which occurred during the last three decades, a rate unprecedented in the last millennium. The average temperature of 14.02 degrees Celsius in the 1970s rose to 14.26 degrees in the 1980s. In the 1990s it reached 14.40 degrees Celsius. And during the first six years of this new decade, global temperature has averaged 14.62 degrees Celsius.

Rising temperatures are due primarily to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2) from the burning of fossil fuels. Once released into the atmosphere, CO2 traps heat that would otherwise escape back into space. Emissions of CO2 have been rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1760, causing temperatures to climb.

Stairway to Heaven

To people in the petrochemical and motor vehicle businesses, the solution to the climate change problem lies in ascending a metaphorical staircase of fuels, which, at each step, contains an ever diminishing amount of carbon.

Yesterday, the argument goes, it was coal, today it's oil, and tomorrow it will be natural gas, with Nirvana being reached when the global economy makes the transition to hydrogen—a fuel that contains no carbon at all.

Gas is the third step on the stairway to climate-change heaven; but even if all the coal-fired power stations on Earth were replaced with gas-fired ones, global carbon emissions would be cut by only 30 percent. So despite these savings, if we were to stall on this step of the energy staircase, we would still face massive climate change. In this scenario, a transition to hydrogen is thus imperative; but how likely is it?

The ideal way to transport it is in tanker-trucks carrying liquefied hydrogen, but, because liquefaction occurs at -423°F, refrigerating the gas sufficiently to achieve this is an economic nightmare. Using hydrogen energy to liquefy a gallon of hydrogen consumes 40 percent of the value of the fuel. Using the U.S. power grid to do so takes 12-15 kilowatt hours of electricity, and this would release almost twenty-two pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. Around a gallon of gasoline holds the equivalent energy of one kilogram of hydrogen. Burning it releases around the same amount of CO2 as using the grid to liquefy the hydrogen, so the climate change consequences of using liquefied hydrogen are as bad as driving a standard car.

The oil is going, the oil is going!

March 22, 2006 | SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Matt Savinar, 27, once aspired to own a Hummer. He studied poli sci at the University of California, Davis, before going on to get his law degree at U.C. Hastings in San Francisco. He was into bodybuilding. Today, Savinar doesn't own any car, much less a Hummer, and he doesn't practice law, although he's licensed to do so. Frankly, he doesn't think that driving or the legal profession, with the exception of maybe bankruptcy law, have much of a future. Instead of buying a car, Savinar walks, takes the bus and catches rides with friends, but not because he's trying to save the world, he assures me.

Savinar doesn't drive because he's saving the money he'd spend on a used car to buy land; he's not sure exactly where yet, but somewhere with a supply of fresh water, arable soil, low population density and that's far from military bases. He's starting to get back into bodybuilding again, too, all the better to be healthy and in shape to till the earth and grow food, when the time comes. "I happen to think that we're going straight to hell, and I'm trying to figure out how to be in the least hot place of hell," he told me recently on an incongruously balmy 72 degree February afternoon in sunny Santa Rosa, Calif., at a restaurant just a few blocks from the apartment where he lives.

For a young, quick-witted, able-bodied man with an advanced degree, living in the most prosperous country in the world, Savinar has a pretty dim view of his -- and all the rest of our -- prospects. He believes that many if not most of the trappings of modern American life are endangered species and he's trying to figure out how not to become one of them. So Savinar has become a full-time prophet of "peak oil," spreading the word about how the world's oil production will soon peak and global demand will outstrip supply.

Green or Grey?

With biofuels in the spotlight, not least because of high crude oil prices and rising demand, Alasdair Cameron takes a look at some of the issues surrounding energy crop production. On what scale can biofuels be produced? How great are the carbon benefits (if any)? And are there other environmental issues to take into account?

As many regions of the world gear up for large-scale biofuel,production as a way of cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reducing dependency on imported oil, one of the issues coming into the frame is the sustainability of biofuel production - how much will it actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs),what will be its impacts on wilderness and biodiversity, and how much land will be needed to produce significant quantities of fuel. In response to these questions, various bodies are attempting to draw up guidelines for sustainable biofuels production, while others are hoping that new technology will be able to increase yields and efficiencies. But how successful will these policies be, and are they simply dodging important issues of land availability and sustainability in modern farming?

Water, a shared responsibility

Last week, on the eve of the Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City, the United Nations issued its second World Water Development Report entitled "Water, a shared responsibility". A joint effort of 24 different U.N. bodies involved in water management, the report focuses on the importance of governance in managing the world's water resources and tackling poverty and points out that "mismanagement, limited resources and environmental changes mean that almost one-fifth of the planet's population still lacks access to safe drinking water and 40 per cent lack access to basic sanitation."

Many scientists and policymakers agree water issues will soon come to the forefront of national and international debate as growing populations and shifting climate patterns stretch our freshwater resources. To highlight this topic of growing concern, the Worldwatch Institute released the paper Liquid Assets: The Critical Need to Safeguard Freshwater Ecosystems in July of 2005. In it, researcher Sandra Postel discusses the various threats faced by watersheds worldwide and offers examples of effective water governance regimes from Boston to Bogotá. An abbreviated version of this paper appears as Chapter 3 in State of the World 2006: Special Focus China and India.

Tomorrow, March 22 is World Water Day.

WMO sees rise in greenhouse gases to record levels

AFP, 14 March 2006 - The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached record levels in 2004, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva said Tuesday.

The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), which accounts for 62 percent of greenhouse gases found in the earth's atmosphere, rose by 0.47 percent compared with 2003, the WMO said in its first annual update on greenhouse gases.

Levels of carbon dioxide were 35 percent higher than in 1750, before the Industrial Revolution, said the UN agency, which based its observations on a worldwide monitoring network.

"Levels of carbon dioxide continue to increase steadily and show no sign of levelling off," it said.

"Given that the lifetime of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 50 to 200 years, depending on how you calculate it, ... it doesn't take a nuclear scientist to state that we're going to have this problem for a long time," Len Barrie, head of the WMO's environment division, told the media.

"If we stop CO2 emissions to the atmosphere now, it would take 50 to 100 years before we start to see approaches to pre-industrial levels."

In contrast, the concentration of methane, which accounts for 20 percent of greenhouse gases, stabilised in 2004 after increasing by 155 percent over the previous 250 years.

The concentration of nitrous oxide, which represents six percent of greenhouse gases, went up 0.22 percent in 2004 and by 18 percent since 1750.

Emissions Scheme Improves Profits, Not Air

Inter Press Service, 16 March 2006 - The emissions trading scheme in Europe has brought enormous profits to many private firms since it was introduced Jan. 1 last year, while bringing only marginal reduction in gases damaging to the climate, some environmentalists say.

GRI

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is a multi-stakeholder process and independent institution whose mission is to develop and disseminate globally applicable Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.

The rise and rise of CSR

by Michael Hopkins

"An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today. " Evan Esar

What has happened to CSR since I started working on the subject over ten years ago?

My involvement with CSR was stimulated by the feeling that the public agencies with which we had worked – ILO, UNDP, World Bank etc. – had done many wonderful things in the area of development (and better publicised, some well known failures) but their efforts have not been more than a drop in the ocean. After leaving a meeting at UN HQ in New York, I felt that the UN was getting nowhere fast and that, as the new millennium was five years away, it was clear that the next millennium would be handed to the private sector. Not without challenge nor doubt, but the private sector had, and continues to, show a robustness and vibrancy that, unfortunately, our public sector agencies both nationally and internationally have failed to show.

Source

Post-Peak: The Change Starts with Us

We don’t seem to realize the cost of our massive energy consumption on the poorer people of the world, on our own health, and the health of the environment. Although interest in Peak Oil is growing, most do not yet fully understand that this means the “American Way of Life” will be over within a few decades…We can’t anticipate that leaders who ignore science or a press that continues to tout fantastic technological solutions will offer us any rational, considered approach for change to a problem both we and they deny. We can only look at ourselves.

Entering a New World

Our global economy is outgrowing the capacity of the earth to
support it, moving our early twenty-first century civilization
ever closer to decline and possible collapse. In our preoccupation
with quarterly earnings reports and year-to-year economic
growth, we have lost sight of how large the human enterprise
has become relative to the earth’s resources. A century ago,
annual growth in the world economy was measured in billions
of dollars. Today it is measured in trillions.

As a result, we are consuming renewable resources faster
than they can regenerate. Forests are shrinking, grasslands are
deteriorating, water tables are falling, fisheries are collapsing,
and soils are eroding. We are using up oil at a pace that leaves
little time to plan beyond peak oil. And we are discharging
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere faster than nature can
absorb them, setting the stage for a rise in the earth’s temperature
well above any since agriculture began.

India: 6 SEBs spend Rs 4,014 cr on free, subsidised power

Anil Sasi
New Delhi , March 15

Punjab, TN, AP agricultural consumers main beneficiaries.

Even as the financial condition of the power sector of States gets bad to worse, the profligacy of the State Electricity Boards (SEBs) continue at the expense of the taxpayer.

Six SEBs that are offering free or subsidised power to consumers, mainly to the agricultural sector users, spend a whopping Rs 4,014 crore annually to supply under-cost power supply schemes with minimal returns, according to data compiled by the Power Ministry.

The Long Wait

Fifteen years is too long to wait for the new nuclear power stations to come on stream. If we are to tackle climate change, we have to start now.

WHEN GREEN ISSUES get onto the political agenda it is often the case that vested business or political interests seek to occupy the space they create. The companies promoting genetically modified crops, for example, sought to gain public consent and political backing for their products by hijacking people's concerns over pesticides, disappearing wildlife and hunger. They said all of these challenges could be addressed with their products. The big issue now is climate change, and a different interest group has mobilised to make the most of the new opportunity: the nuclear industry.

Oil Depletion and the Fate of the World

The Titanic Lifeboat Academy

The Long Emergency - James Kunstler

Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

A five-week video exploration with author. lecturer, and de facto cultural historian James Howard Kunstler

Part I: How the Hell Did We Get Here? (6:18)
Before trying to figure out how we're going to get out of the oil mess we're in, it might help to know a bit about how it all happened. Kunstler offers a casual history of the industrial experience (fossil fuel use), from the 17th century up to the modern period.

Part Two: Hubbert's Curve, and Other Inconvenient Facts
On the rise of OPEC and the turbulent 1970s -- how it all happened, and what it means for us today.

Part Three: Reagan's Short-Lived "Morning in America"
On the 1980s, the 1990s, the "Jiminy Cricket" economy, and an awful lot of wishful thinking about alternative energy.

Part Four: The Twilight of Wal-Mart (and Everything Else That's Huge)
On the symptoms of systemic failure. As the federal government becomes more impotent and ineffectual, will everything that's big collapse?

Part Five: Keeping the Lights On
On facing the New Reality. Whether or not we militarily contest the world's remaining fossil fuel reserves (land war with China, anyone?), it's all going to be gone pretty soon anyway. How can we begin to envision a post-oil "American Way of Life?"

The power of community: How Cuba survived peak oil

Havana, Cuba -- At the Organipónico de Alamar, a neighborhood agriculture project, a workers' collective runs a large urban farm, a produce market and a restaurant. Hand tools and human labor replace oil-driven machinery. Worm cultivation and composting create productive soil. Drip irrigation conserves water, and the diverse, multi-hued produce provides the community with a rainbow of healthy foods.

In other Havana neighborhoods, lacking enough land for such large projects, residents have installed raised garden beds on parking lots and planted vegetable gardens on their patios and rooftops.

Since the early 1990s, an urban agriculture movement has swept through Cuba, putting this capital city of 2.2 million on a path toward sustainability.

A small group of Australians assisted in this grass-roots effort, coming to this Caribbean island nation in 1993 to teach permaculture, a system based on sustainable agriculture which uses far less energy.

This need to bring agriculture into the city began with the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of more than 50 percent of Cuba's oil imports, much of its food and 85 percent of its trade economy. Transportation halted, people went hungry and the average Cuban lost 30 pounds.

No more Chernobyls

Meet Annya. She is a fifteen year old girl from Belarus, but was unfortunate enough to be born in the fall out zone from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Annya was born in 1990 in a village highly contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. A cancerous brain tumour at the age of four marked the end of Annya's childhood and the beginning of a life of pain and illness. Annya has spent her life in and out of hospital, every 15 minutes of every night; she must be turned in order to prevent further pain and bedsores.

Twenty years after the disaster, Annya, and her parents battle everyday with the cruel and personal legacy of Chernobyl. For Annya and for the thousands of children like her, you need to speak out and say NO more nuclear, NO more Chernobyls. If you don't, who will?

Call on the UN to stop its promotion of a dirty, dangerous industry and focus its resources exclusively on its critical mission of disarmament and world peace.

The nuclear fallacy - Why nuclear power is part of the problem