Barack Obama’s presidency offers a unique chance for China and the United States to cooperate on environmental issues. Zhang Haibin explains why.

What impact will Barack Obama’s presidency have on climate-change cooperation between the United States and China? Will the level of cooperation move forward, continue as is, or go backwards?

I believe that greater cooperation is the most likely outcome, as Obama’s inauguration on January 20 will cause key factors hampering energy and climate agreements to weaken.

China-US cooperation in the energy and climate fields started in the late 1970s. In the past three decades, almost 40 bilateral agreements have been signed. Although there have been a few achievements, the majority of those agreements have not yielded impressive results. Cooperation between China and the United States appears limited when compared with that between China and the European Union and China and Japan. There is no lack of ability for China and the United States to work together – but the will to do so has been absent, in particular in the United States.

In the past eight years of George W Bush’s presidency, climate change has not been a priority. pt;"Times New Roman";} In 2001, Bush announced US withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol,  thereby holding back global efforts on climate change and earning worldwide condemnation. The United States also has not given climate change priority in bilateral relations with China. The European Union and Japan both proposed joint statements on climate change, demonstrating their intention to work together. The only major western country not to sign a similar agreement with China is the United States. Although 2008 saw the signing of the US-China 10-Year Energy and Environment Cooperation Framework as part of the Strategic Economic Dialogue process, the document lacked any concrete goals.

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During the presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly emphasised the importance of energy and the environment. He pledged to reverse the unilateral climate policies of the Bush administration and to rebuild the United States’ reputation.

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In a conversation with Chinese president Hu Jintao, Obama specifically expressed hope for more cooperation on climate issues. A number of US think tanks have produced detailed plans to achieve this aim for the Obama administration. All the signs indicate that the new US government will raise the importance of energy and environmental issues in the China-US relationship.

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Also worth noting is the increased political appetite in China for international cooperation on climate change, including making agreements with the United States. China’s cooperative attitude at the 2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia, met with widespread praise. Also in 2007, the Report to the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party listed protection of the global environment as a goal for Chinese diplomacy.

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In 2008, the Communist Party Political Bureau held its first discussions on climate change, with Hu Jintao stressing that climate change is of great importance both now and for future generations. These major changes in China’s climate change politics show that there is increasing political will for cooperation with the United States, which hopefully will match up with similar aims of the Obama government and provide new impetus for climate-change partnership between the two countries.

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China’s biggest disagreement with the Bush administration centred on a fundamentally different view of a basic principle of international climate change-cooperation: common but differentiated responsibilities. The United States held that both countries had a common responsibility, and should be treated equally when reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. China contended that responsibilities were differentiated and that as a developed nation, the United States had made a larger contribution to climate change and therefore should act as a role model and cut emissions first.

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Mutual finger-pointing held back further cooperation. The Clinton administration’s signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 indicated an acceptance of China’s stance on common but differentiated responsibilities. However, domestic political circumstances meant that the US Congress did not ratify the protocol.

A decade later there have been huge changes. The American public is much more aware and concerned about climate change, and US firms are eyeing the commercial opportunities presented by development of low-carbon technology. The new government urgently needs to promote international cooperation on climate change in order to improve the country’s image. Overall, the domestic voices calling for the United States to play a leading role in international climate change cooperation are getting louder. Obama himself is also enthusiastic.

Meanwhile, China is coming under greater international pressure because of increasing greenhouse-gas emissions. It is very likely that after Obama’s inauguration the United States and China will reach a compromise, with the United States committing to quantifiable reductions and China making a voluntary commitment to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. If differences over common but differentiated responsibilities can be reduced, then significant advances will be possible.

Of course, none of these changes can be accomplished easily – many unknown quantities and uncertainties remain. The ongoing financial crisis will undoubtedly have a negative impact. Obama has made it clear that his first priority will be the rescue of the US economy. Meanwhile China has passed a 4 trillion yuan (US$586 billion) economic stimulus plan, giving full priority to combating the financial crisis. With both countries focusing on economic issues, there will naturally be less attention paid to energy and the environment, so progress on climate cooperation will be slower.

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To a great degree, climate cooperation will depend on the ability of the two nations to recover from these economic problems. A lack of mutual trust also is an issue. In the United States, there are worries that cooperation will reduce the international competitiveness of American companies and therefore increase unemployment – potentially changing the US lifestyle. In China, many believe that the United States is using climate change as an excuse to hold back China’s peaceful development. Both sides worry that they will lose out by cooperating. 

China and the United States have a common interest in climate-change issues, and there is a huge potential for cooperation. If cooperation on energy and climate change is possible, it will become the bright spot of China-US relations and provide mutual understanding and trust -- an anchor for ensuring long-term stable relationships. But if progress is not made, it will become a source of mutual doubt and conflict.

The new US administration is soon to come into power, and a historic opportunity is presenting itself. Both the United States and China must seize this chance to sign a joint statement on climate change as soon as possible and produce a concrete plan for bilateral cooperation. As two of the world’s biggest energy consumers and greenhouse-gas producers, the United States and China – through mutual cooperation – can benefit not just their own citizens, but also all of humanity.

Zhang Haibin is an associate professor at Peking University’s School of International Studies. His major research areas are global environmental politics and international organisations.

Homepage photo by yunheisapunk

  

A refrigerated swimming pool and an artificially cooled beach – the Persian Gulf emirate’s latest development excesses -- are enough to make conservationists weep. Leo Hickman reports

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There will surely come a day when Dubai runs the world’s reserves of hyperbole dry. But in the meantime, we continue to draw a sharp intake of breath each time a new construction project is announced. We have had ski domes built in the desert, seen vast artificial islands rise from the sea and watched several structures vying for the title of “world’s tallest building”. Dubai represents the will, vision and ambition of our species. Yet many believe it shines an unflattering light on our tendency for folly and hubris, too.

It was recently reported that the Palazzo Versace hotel -- the emirate’s latest offering for those still in the market for exorbitant luxury -- will boast, when completed in 2010, a refrigerated 820-square-metre swimming pool and a beach with artificially cooled sand to protect its guests from the excesses of a climate that can see summer temperatures exceeding 50º Celsius. Wind machines will even be on hand to provide a gentle breeze.

“We will suck the heat out of the sand to keep it cool enough to lie on,” said Soheil Abedian, founder and president of Palazzo Versace, a group with plans for a further 15 luxury hotels around the world to add to the existing one on Australia’s Gold Coast. “This is the kind of luxury that top people want,” he added.

The energy required to run this project can only be guessed at. When questioned, Hyder Consulting, the British company hired by the hotel to build these facilities, said it has signed a confidentiality agreement with Palazzo Versace and therefore couldn’t comment. But the project is likely to leave the world’s environmentalists with their heads in their hands.

First there is the energy required to power giant wind machines all day long, not to mention the electricity needed to pump coolant around tubes laid under the sand. However, the most energy-intensive element of this plan is likely to be the power needed to refrigerate a whole swimming pool under Dubai’s baking sun.

Of course, in a place like Dubai, this kind of audacious project goes relatively unnoticed, among the many others currently under way. To pick just one other example, 30,000 mature trees are scheduled to be shipped to Dubai to help landscape a new Tiger Woods-designed golf course that will be bordered by “22 palaces and 75 mansions”. Even without the twin threats of climate change and a global economic recession, Dubai’s grandiose plans might seem short-sighted to some. Is it really wise to be building at all, let alone on this scale, in a place that the United Nations describes as one of the most “water-imperilled” environments on the planet, but where per-capita water use is three times the global average?

“It’s grotesque that while the world’s poorest people face the loss of their homes and livelihoods, as well as disease and starvation, because of climate change, the world’s richest people think it’s acceptable to waste precious energy so pointlessly on things such as artificially cooled beaches,” says Robin Oakley, head of climate and energy at Greenpeace UK. “While Abu Dhabi -- like [United States president-elect] Barack Obama -- is betting on green technology as the engine for growth this century and even building a zero-emissions city, Dubai is apparently still stuck in the 1980s.” Both states are part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Dubai’s ruling elite insists it now places “sustainability” at the heart of its plans for existing and future projects. In 2007, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the emir, spelled out the “Dubai Strategic Plan 2015” in a speech. He explained that oil now contributes only 3% to Dubai’s GDP and that his plan is to “sustain Dubai’s environment, ensuring that it is safe and clean”.

Each new construction project now boasts a paragraph in its brochure about how it will “follow environmental best practice”, but even if these new measures do materialise, Dubai is a place built on the ideology and convenience of cheap, free-flowing oil. Its business model, particularly its ever-expanding tourist sector, is based on the premise that people will always be willing and able to fly long distances to get there. (Some airlines now euphemistically describe Dubai as both a “long short-haul” destination and a “long-haul weekend break destination”.) A new six-runway mega-airport is being built to serve a predicted capacity of 120 million passengers a year.

These latest plans for an artificially cooled beach may be causing ripples around the world, but why isn’t there more vocal opposition by environmentalists within Dubai? The simple answer is there are no environmentalists in Dubai; not in the sense of a campaigning, placard-bearing activist that you might find elsewhere. NGOs are barely tolerated within the UAE. When I visited Dubai two years ago to investigate the environmental and social impacts of its tourism industry for a book I was writing, no one was willing to talk to me on the record, such was their fear of speaking out against the ruling class. The few environmental groups that do exist in Dubai rarely stray from a brief that seems largely limited to educating school-children about the importance of recycling.

The one place where dissent does seem to be allowed -- or is harder to police -- is the internet, where people can hide behind their anonymity. Discussion forums are a popular way to vent criticism about the direction Dubai is taking, as are blogs such as Secret Dubai Diary. One recent controversy is that over “Sammy the Shark”, a young whale shark that was caught in the gulf and then transferred to the aquarium at the Atlantis hotel, which opened in November with a multimillion-dollar party and fireworks display. More than 16,000 people joined a Facebook group calling for Sammy’s release, and one local newspaper started a campaign urging that the shark be returned to the sea. A local radio disc jockey has even been playing a “Free Sammy” interpretation of Michael Jackson’s song “Heal the World”.

But while Dubai’s citizens fight for Sammy to be freed, the state’s leaders refuse to be diverted from realising their vision. At the United Nations climate-change talks in Poznan, Poland, in early December, the UAE’s minister of environment and water, Rashid Ahmad bin Fahad, spoke of the need for his country to consider using nuclear power to desalinate water. Well, how else are they going to keep those swimming pools filled and chilled?

www.guardian.co.uk
Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

--

Are the sort of water- and energy-intensive development features that have become a hallmark of Dubai and other luxury resort areas defensible in these environmentally challenging times?

Should governments and planning commissions be reining in such excesses, or are there good reasons to let property developers proceed, given the amounts of money that wealthy visitors will spend?

Let us know on the forum what you think.

Homepage photo by Qba from Poland

A refrigerated swimming pool and an artificially cooled beach – the Persian Gulf emirate’s latest development excesses -- are enough to make conservationists weep. Leo Hickman reports.

There will surely come a day when Dubai runs the world’s reserves of hyperbole dry. But in the meantime, we continue to draw a sharp intake of breath each time a new construction project is announced. We have had ski domes built in the desert, seen vast artificial islands rise from the sea and watched several structures vying for the title of “world’s tallest building”. Dubai represents the will, vision and ambition of our species. Yet many believe it shines an unflattering light on our tendency for folly and hubris, too.

It was recently reported that the Palazzo Versace hotel -- the emirate’s latest offering for those still in the market for exorbitant luxury -- will boast, when completed in 2010, a refrigerated 820-square-metre swimming pool and a beach with artificially cooled sand to protect its guests from the excesses of a climate that can see summer temperatures exceeding 50º Celsius. Wind machines will even be on hand to provide a gentle breeze.

“We will suck the heat out of the sand to keep it cool enough to lie on,” said Soheil Abedian, founder and president of Palazzo Versace, a group with plans for a further 15 luxury hotels around the world to add to the existing one on Australia’s Gold Coast. “This is the kind of luxury that top people want,” he added.

The energy required to run this project can only be guessed at. When questioned, Hyder Consulting, the British company hired by the hotel to build these facilities, said it has signed a confidentiality agreement with Palazzo Versace and therefore couldn’t comment. But the project is likely to leave the world’s environmentalists with their heads in their hands.

First there is the energy required to power giant wind machines all day long, not to mention the electricity needed to pump coolant around tubes laid under the sand. However, the most energy-intensive element of this plan is likely to be the power needed to refrigerate a whole swimming pool under Dubai’s baking sun.

Of course, in a place like Dubai, this kind of audacious project goes relatively unnoticed, among the many others currently under way. To pick just one other example, 30,000 mature trees are scheduled to be shipped to Dubai to help landscape a new Tiger Woods-designed golf course that will be bordered by “22 palaces and 75 mansions”. Even without the twin threats of climate change and a global economic recession, Dubai’s grandiose plans might seem short-sighted to some. Is it really wise to be building at all, let alone on this scale, in a place that the United Nations describes as one of the most “water-imperilled” environments on the planet, but where per-capita water use is three times the global average?

“It’s grotesque that while the world’s poorest people face the loss of their homes and livelihoods, as well as disease and starvation, because of climate change, the world’s richest people think it’s acceptable to waste precious energy so pointlessly on things such as artificially cooled beaches,” says Robin Oakley, head of climate and energy at Greenpeace UK. “While Abu Dhabi -- like [United States president-elect] Barack Obama -- is betting on green technology as the engine for growth this century and even building a zero-emissions city, Dubai is apparently still stuck in the 1980s.” Both states are part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Dubai’s ruling elite insists it now places “sustainability” at the heart of its plans for existing and future projects. In 2007, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the emir, spelled out the “Dubai Strategic Plan 2015” in a speech. He explained that oil now contributes only 3% to Dubai’s GDP and that his plan is to “sustain Dubai’s environment, ensuring that it is safe and clean”.

Each new construction project now boasts a paragraph in its brochure about how it will “follow environmental best practice”, but even if these new measures do materialise, Dubai is a place built on the ideology and convenience of cheap, free-flowing oil. Its business model, particularly its ever-expanding tourist sector, is based on the premise that people will always be willing and able to fly long distances to get there. (Some airlines now euphemistically describe Dubai as both a “long short-haul” destination and a “long-haul weekend break destination”.) A new six-runway mega-airport is being built to serve a predicted capacity of 120 million passengers a year.

These latest plans for an artificially cooled beach may be causing ripples around the world, but why isn’t there more vocal opposition by environmentalists within Dubai? The simple answer is there are no environmentalists in Dubai; not in the sense of a campaigning, placard-bearing activist that you might find elsewhere. NGOs are barely tolerated within the UAE. When I visited Dubai two years ago to investigate the environmental and social impacts of its tourism industry for a book I was writing, no one was willing to talk to me on the record, such was their fear of speaking out against the ruling class. The few environmental groups that do exist in Dubai rarely stray from a brief that seems largely limited to educating school-children about the importance of recycling.

The one place where dissent does seem to be allowed -- or is harder to police -- is the internet, where people can hide behind their anonymity. Discussion forums are a popular way to vent criticism about the direction Dubai is taking, as are blogs such as Secret Dubai Diary. One recent controversy is that over “Sammy the Shark”, a young whale shark that was caught in the gulf and then transferred to the aquarium at the Atlantis hotel, which opened in November with a multimillion-dollar party and fireworks display. More than 16,000 people joined a Facebook group calling for Sammy’s release, and one local newspaper started a campaign urging that the shark be returned to the sea. A local radio disc jockey has even been playing a “Free Sammy” interpretation of Michael Jackson’s song “Heal the World”.

But while Dubai’s citizens fight for Sammy to be freed, the state’s leaders refuse to be diverted from realising their vision. At the United Nations climate-change talks in Poznan, Poland, in early December, the UAE’s minister of environment and water, Rashid Ahmad bin Fahad, spoke of the need for his country to consider using nuclear power to desalinate water. Well, how else are they going to keep those swimming pools filled and chilled?

www.guardian.co.uk
Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Are the sort of water- and energy-intensive development features that have become a hallmark of Dubai and other luxury resort areas defensible in these environmentally challenging times?

Should governments and planning commissions be reining in such excesses, or are there good reasons to let property developers proceed, given the amounts of money that wealthy visitors will spend?

Let us know on the forum what you think.

Homepage photo by Qba from Poland

After 2008 started with panic over food prices, the world seemed to be waking up to global warming. Then the recession hit. John Vidal reviews a volatile year.

No one could have predicted quite how dramatically 2008 would have ended. Even as president George W Bush was slashing his way through United States environmental protection laws, president-elect Barack Obama appointed Nobel prize-winning physicist Steve Chu as the next US energy secretary. Chu is seen as the repudiation of everything that Bush stood for, and predicts that temperatures will rise by a staggering 6.1 Celsius by the end of the century if nothing is done. Although it does not mean the oil age is over, if you want a sign that 2008 was a tipping point, it could not have been clearer.

But go back to the start of the year. Empty shelves in Caracas, riots in India and Mexico, and rice shortages in Dhaka, Manila and Kathmandu. Traders in at least 12 sub-Saharan African countries were hoarding food, and soaring maize and rice prices were leading to political instability. Governments were being forced, one after the other, to step in to protect supplies and control the cost of bread and dairy products.

The problem, said the analysts, was a mix of climate change and extreme weather leading to poor harvests in major grain-growing countries, such as Australia. But the blame also was laid on the many millions of acres of maize, wheat and other crops planted in the United States and elsewhere in 2007 to provide biofuels for cars rather than food for people. Catastrophe loomed, said the United Nations.

It happened slowly and out of sight of the cameras, in the burgeoning cities that are becoming the new frontline of deep poverty. Proof came this month, when the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported that 2008 had seen the biggest increase in malnourished people in decades. According to its preliminary data, more than 960 million people -- one in every six people in the world -- now go to bed hungry, and 40 million suffered malnourishment in 2008 because of higher food prices.

This year will go down as the year of interlinked food shortages, climate change and the recession. But it also was the year when it may have dawned on governments that hell-for-leather, western fossil-fuel-based, car-centred growth only ends in social and ecological disaster.

There was soaring air pollution, from a record 622 million passenger vehicles, and near record loss of Amazon and other tropical forests. But climate change dominated the international agenda.

A flood of scientific papers showed Arctic ice melting faster than ever and the melting of the Greenland ice sheet close to becoming irreversible. Methane, one of the most damaging climate-change gases, was found bubbling up from the tundra and the Arctic Ocean. There were record temperatures and near-record hurricane seasons, and scientists and environment groups who believed only a year or two ago that it would be possible to just about hold global temperature to a 2º Celsius rise accepted privately that this could now be impossible.

But it also became clear in 2008 that climate change was disproportionately impacting on the poor. Subsistence farmers around the world reported a pattern of increasingly unpredictable seasons and social problems linked directly to water and higher temperatures.

In north-east Brazil, which has always been drought-prone but which has seen temperatures rise at least 1º Celsius in only 30 years, more than 1.5 million people now cannot access enough water, and must leave home to find work in the biofuel fields in the south of the country each year. In Bangladesh, Uganda, Niger, Malawi, Nepal and elsewhere, people also said that temperatures were becoming hotter and rains less and less predictable.

Another trend became apparent. Rich countries, worried about fast rising global populations and dwindling food and fuel supplies, began buying up farmland in poor countries.

In the United Kingdom, environment secretary Hilary Benn said that Britain’s food supplies, which come increasingly from abroad, were overdependent on oil -- a situation, he said, that “must change”.

But the most extreme admission of oncoming climate and food problems came from Mohamed Nasheed, the new president of the low-lying Maldives, who said he was looking for a new homeland, possibly in India, for the time when his country was swamped by rising seas.

The big, still unanswered question of 2008 was how far the financial, food and ecological crises were linked. The best evidence may come from a 1972 study. A group of economists and ecologists were commissioned to predict the consequences of a rapidly growing world population, rapid industrialisation in developing countries and growing pollution. Their book, Limits to Growth, predicted widespread and growing hunger, oil shortages, and ecological and economic collapse by the mid-21st century if countries did not rethink economic growth.

Actually, for much of this year, it looked as if the rich world had begun to address sustainable development. Europe committed itself to generating 20% of all its energy from renewables by 2020, and banned incandescent light bulbs; Britain became the first country in the world to set itself a legal target of 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050; and more than 70 countries now have national goals for accelerating the use of renewable energy. Businesses, UN agencies, British politicians and many individuals all genuinely tried to reduce emissions.

Led by Britain, pressure mounted for a global trading scheme, and prime minister Gordon Brown’s forest adviser, financier Johan Eliasch, recommended that a multibillion-pound fund be set up to pay the owners of the world’s rainforests not to cut them down. The irony was that a separate study by the Woodland Trust charity found that ancient woodland in Britain was being felled at a rate even faster than the Amazon rainforest.

Clean energy took off in 2008, and climate-change mitigation became an industry, backed by the world's biggest companies. According to HSBC, companies in the climate mitigation business now generate US$300 billion in revenues each year. In November, the International Energy Agency predicted that renewable energy would overtake natural gas to become the second-largest source of power generation worldwide within two years, and that global wind and solar generating capacity would increase by more than 30%.

The energy revolution that had been predicted to start after 2015 appeared to be well under way. Architect Norman Foster designed Masdar, a car-free, solar-powered ecotopia for 40,000 people in the Arabian desert. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s ruler, was so impressed he ordered two, at US$15 billion each.

In mid-summer, with oil at over US$130 a barrel and government-level talk of oil supplies "peaking", there was concern that the price could top US$200 a barrel. As people rushed to buy smaller cars, fit better boilers and get into wind and solar power, it seemed possible that the constant rise of emissions might genuinely be reversed. Yet by December, the global economy was crashing its gears, and oil had dropped to under US$40 a barrel.

Whether the world weans itself off oil and fossil fuels probably will determine global sustainability over the next 20 years. Low oil prices traditionally push energy efficiency off the policy agenda. Economic recessions have punctured green economic bubbles in the past. When times are tight, the wisdom goes, no one invests in new or risky technologies, and countries stick to cheap and dirty energy.

That was happening in part by the end of 2008. Plummeting demand for recycled materials, especially in China, has drastically lowered prices for old paper, plastic and metals. US and European cities were forced to scale back recycling programmes. Meanwhile, South Africa decided in December that it could not afford “clean” nuclear power stations and plans to increase massively its cheaper but dirtier coal-burning stations. Britain, too, went ahead with plans for more opencast mines.

A more optimistic group of people say the recession may not only check unsustainable growth but also provide breathing space for the world to move to more sensible policies. Governments, said leading greens, have a historic opportunity to "climate proof" their economies in response to economic troubles. Obama and Brown both have said that millions of jobs could be created in green building, wind power, solar thermal and other green technologies.

They were backed by energy gurus such as Amory Lovins, co-director of the Rocky Mountain Institute, and environmental analyst Lester R Brown, who argued that the needs to deal with both climate change and energy security have set renewable energy on a path that cannot be reversed.

The consensus is that 2008 was volatile and dangerously unpredictable. But if governments don’t change, it may come to be seen as a calm before the storm.

www.guardian.co.uk

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Homepage photo by dsearls

Forty years ago, US astronauts captured an astonishing image, revealing the fragility and isolation of the earth. Robin McKie explains how one influential photo transformed our view of ourselves.

It has proved to be the most enduring image we have of our fragile world. Over a colourless lunar surface, the earth hangs like a gaudy Christmas bauble against a deep black background. The planet’s blue disc -- half in shadow -- is streaked with faint traces of white, yellow and brown while its edge is sharply defined. There is no blurring that might be expected from the blanket of oxygen and nitrogen that envelops our planet. Our atmosphere is too thin to be seen clearly from the moon: a striking reminder -- if we ever needed one -- of the frailty of the biosphere that sustains life on Earth.

This is “Earthrise”, photographed by American astronaut Bill Anders as he and his fellow Apollo 8 crewmen, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, orbited the moon on December 24 -- Christmas Eve – 1968. His shot, taken 40 years ago this month, has become the most influential environmental image, and one of the most reproduced photographs, in history. Arguably, his picture is also the most important legacy of the Apollo space programme. Thanks to this image, humans could see, for the first time, their planet, not as continents or oceans, but as a world that was “whole and round and beautiful and small”, as the poet Archibald MacLeish put it.

Certainly, Earthrise is a striking reminder of Earth’s vulnerability. We may have forgotten the men who risked their lives getting to the moon and who explored its dead landscape -- a “beat-up” world as they put it -- but the view they brought back of that glittering blue hemisphere continues to mesmerise.

“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark,” the American astronomer Carl Sagan noted. “… There is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.” The opinion is shared by the British naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough. “I clearly remember my first sight [of the Earthrise photograph]. I suddenly realised how isolated and lonely we are on Earth.”

Indeed, says the British space historian Robert Poole, the first popular expressions of ecological concern can be traced to the publication of that picture: dazzling blue ocean, the jacket of cloud and the relative invisibility of the land and human settlement. “It is a rebuke to the vanity of humankind,” says Poole. “Earthrise was an epiphany in space.”

In fact, Nasa – the US space agency -- had not intended to fly to the moon in 1968. Its lunar hardware was still unproven and Apollo 8 was slated merely to test equipment in low Earth orbit. However, that autumn, the agency was told, incorrectly, by the CIA that the Soviet Union was preparing its own manned lunar mission. So the Apollo programme -- established to fulfil president John F Kennedy’s call for a US manned lunar landing by the end of the decade -- was accelerated and Apollo 8 designated for a journey to the moon, though there would no landing craft to take men to the lunar surface. That would come on later missions.

The decision was controversial. Nasa’s giant Saturn V rocket, the only launcher capable of taking men to the moon, had been bedevilled by flaws and instrument failures on its two test flights. Worse, there had been the fire in 1967 in which three astronauts -- Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee -- were burned to death during a ground test of an Apollo capsule. Sending Lovell, Anders and Borman in an almost identical spacecraft to the moon, on an unsafe launcher, was a gamble, to say the least.

As a result, most press conferences in the run-up to the launch were dominated by questions about the risks the astronauts faced and, although the mission turned out to be a success, and surpassed all subsequent Apollo missions for the precision of its flight path and lack of glitches, it was dogged at the start by control-room nerves and tension.

Finally, at 6.31am on Saturday, December 21, the Saturn V -- at 360 feet [about 110 metres] the tallest, most powerful rocket ever built and for the first time carrying a human crew -- blasted Borman, Anders and Lovell into space. The launch was shattering. “The Earth shakes, cars rattle and vibrations beat in the chest,” as Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the writer and wife of the aviator Charles Lindbergh, put it.

In the event, the rocket performed perfectly and put Apollo 8 safely into orbit. Using a “state-of-the-art” computer -- which had less power than a modern hand calculator -- Lovell keyed in the commands that fired the launcher’s third stage and sent their craft hurtling on its three-day journey to the moon. The spaceship had become the first manned vehicle to slip the surly bonds of Earth and head to another world.

The outward trip was not without its mishaps. As the astronauts settled down for their first night in space, cramped into a craft the size of a mini-van, they found it difficult to sleep. So Borman tried a sleeping pill. This was a mistake. A couple of hours later, he was struck by a fit of vomiting and diarrhoea, a tricky affliction in zero gravity, as author Robert Zimmerman recalls in Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8. […] Certainly, it was an inelegant way to travel to another world.

Early on Christmas Eve, Apollo 8 reached its destination. The astronauts fired the craft’s Service Propulsion System (SPS) rocket to slow as it swept past the moon and the little ship slipped into lunar orbit. For its first three revolutions, the astronauts kept its windows pointing down towards the moon and frantically filmed the craters and mountains below. Reconnaissance for subsequent Apollo landings was a key task for the mission.

It was not until Apollo 8 was on its fourth orbit that Borman decided to roll the craft away from the moon and to point its windows towards the horizon in order to get a navigational fix. (The capsule’s astronauts still used sextants to guide their craft.) A few minutes later, he spotted a blue-and-white fuzzy blob edging over the horizon.

Transcripts of the Apollo 8 mission reveal the astronaut in a rare moment of losing his cool as he realised what he was watching: Earth, then a quarter of million miles away, rising from behind the moon. “Oh my God! Look at the picture over there. Here’s the earth coming up,” Borman shouts.

This is followed by a flurry of startled responses from Anders and Lovell and a battle -- won by Anders -- to find a camera to photograph the unfolding scene. His first image is in black-and-white and shows Earth only just peeping over the horizon. A few minutes later, having stuffed a roll of 70mm colour film into his Hasselblad camera, he takes the “Earthrise” photograph that became an icon of 20th-century technological endeavour and ecological awareness.

In this way, humans first recorded their home planet from another world. “It was,” Borman later recalled, “the most beautiful, heart-catching sight of my life, one that sent a torrent of nostalgia, of sheer homesickness, surging through me. It was the only thing in space that had any colour to it. Everything else was either black or white. But not the earth.” Or as Lovell put it, our home world is simply “a grand oasis”.

I recently spoke to Lovell, now a vigorously healthy 80-year-old and owner of the Lovells of Lake Forest restaurant near Chicago, where his son, Jay, is chef. An experienced astronaut even before he flew on Apollo 8, he achieved his greatest fame as commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission -- which only narrowly survived a fuel-tank explosion en route to the moon in 1970. (Lovell was played by Tom Hanks in Ron Howard’s film, Apollo 13, in 1995.) “Apollo 8 was a high point for me, without a doubt. Apollo 13 was certainly less pleasant. It was touch and go, after all.”

He does not fail to appreciate the importance of that photograph. “The predominant colours were white, blue and brown,” he recalled. “The green of the earth’s grassland and forests is filtered out by the atmosphere and appears as a bluish haze from space.” The effect is to give Earth an added, especially intense blue veneer.

“Bill [Anders] had the camera with colour film and a telephoto lens,” he said. “That is what makes the picture. Earth is about the size of a thumbnail when seen with the naked eye from the moon. The telephoto lens makes it seem bigger and gives the picture that special quality.” (Seven months later, Neil Armstrong -- standing on the lunar surface -- also noted he could blot out the earth with his thumb. Did that make him feel really big, he was asked years later? “No,” the great astronaut replied, “it made me feel really, really small.”)

By Christmas Day, December 25, the whole world had become engrossed in Apollo 8’s epic journey: 1968 had been a particularly traumatic year and the planet was desperate for a diversion. In the United States, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been assassinated, the Vietnam War had worsened dramatically, and civil and student conflict was spreading through US cities. In Europe, the “Prague spring” had been crushed by Soviet tanks. People needed cheer and the realisation that humans had reached the moon provided that uplift perfectly.

There was a further twist to the mission’s timing. Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke’s visionary film epic 2001: A Space Odyssey was then showing in cinemas round the globe. (The Apollo 8 crew had attended its Houston premiere three months earlier.) The film ends with the embryonic Star Child hanging in space above the earth: a tiny, glittering blue disc very like the one that had just been pictured by Anders. The links between Apollo 8 and 2001 went further than that, however. The film depicts space travel as commonplace and, to prove the accuracy of its vision, there were men orbiting the moon. It seemed to many people -- including myself, then a university student and a space-programme devotee -- that all those dreams of science-fiction writers and film-makers might soon be realised. It was a wondrous Christmas.

Indeed, it can be fairly claimed that Apollo 8 was the real “Man on the Moon” story. By the time, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin reached the moon on Apollo 11, the world had already got used to the idea of manned lunar flight. By contrast, Apollo 8 took many people unawares. Certainly, you could easily argue that it, and not Apollo 11, deserves the title of the greatest event of the 20th century. Lovell believes that. “I sat beside Charles Lindbergh at the launch of Apollo 11. ‘It’s a great event,’ he said, ‘but you know you were the ones who really spearheaded the moon programme’.”

Anders, Borman and Lovell orbited the moon 10 times. Then, as they prepared to head back to Earth, the astronauts held a last televised press conference. They then took turns to read out the first 10 verses of the biblical book of Genesis as they skimmed, at a height of 70 miles [112 kilometres] over the lunar surface. The Old Testament struck many people as an odd choice for a final lunar reading. But all three (at the time, at least) were deeply religious: Borman and Lovell were Protestants, Anders a Catholic. None of them saw any ambiguity in reading out a version of creation that was at complete odds with the version supported by the scientists who had got them there. In any case, the reading went down well in America.

A few hours later, Lovell fired the SPS engine again and Apollo 8 began its homeward journey, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on December 27. As the astronauts waited to be picked up by the US navy, 10-foot [three-metre] waves pounded their craft. Borman, once again, was sick. Apart from that, their homecoming was a triumph.

After that, Anders’ colour film was processed and passed to the news media. Time magazine ran the photograph with single word “Dawn”, while Life magazine published a lengthy display of images from the moon mission, including a poster-sized spread of the “Earthrise” photograph.

Seven months later, Apollo 11 reached the lunar surface. It was the beginning of the end for the space programme. Three years later, Apollo 17 lifted off from the moon, the last human visit to this dead world. The American public, who had funded the programme, tired of the moon and turned to concerns closer to home. “Looking back, it is possible to see that Earthrise marked the tipping point, the moment when the sense of the space age flipped from what it means for space to what it meant for the Earth,” Robert Poole writes in his recent book Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth.

Humans had spent billions in an attempt to explore another world and in the end rediscovered their own. It was a point stressed by Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, one of the last men on the moon. “Like our childhood home, we really see the earth only as we prepare to leave it,” he wrote.

However, of all the efforts to sum up the story of “Earthrise”, the best is made by the poet T S Eliot in the last of his Four Quartets:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

   
(Additional research by Hermione Hoby)   www.guardian.co.uk

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Homepage photo by NASA

 

Low-quality plastic shopping sacks have been banned in China. But Li Siqi asks what teeming urban areas can do about bigger, one-time-use rubbish ones.

With the enforcement since June of a ban on low-quality plastic shopping bags in China, it is no longer common to see them being blown around by the wind. In urban areas, though, large bin bags have become perhaps just as common as the small shopping bags used to be. Made of very similar material, they have become another source of plastic pollution. The trash collection points serving Beijing’s communities, for example, are full of rubbish enclosed in bin bags. There are worries about where these bags will end up -- and with what environmental impact.

Since 1997, Beijing has encouraged the use of bags to hold rubbish, and bin bags quickly became popular – bringing with them significant environmental issues. Beijing produced 6.19 million tonnes of domestic rubbish in 2007, filling five billion bin bags. In the past, residents formerly reused shopping bags as bin bags in order to save money. While the ban on plastic shopping bags has greatly reduced their use, according to news media reports, supermarket sales of bin bags have increased.

Unlike with shopping bags – or “white pollution” -- there are no government-enforced standards for bin bags. Hence, most small producers forced by the ban to stop producing plastic shopping bags have switched to making the ones for bins. Consequently, large quantities of low-quality bags are flooding the market.

These bags are produced mostly from discarded plastic, with the main ingredient being the same as the old shopping bags – polythene (or polyethylene), which takes centuries to biodegrade. They are usually 0.005 millimetres to 0.010 millimetres in thickness – much less than the 0.025 millimetres mandated for shopping bags -- but the same standards do not apply. Without standards and oversight, the situation will continue.

Again due to a lack of standards, the percentage of biodegradable bin bags on sale is extremely small. According to a recent survey by a journalist from Beijing’s Legal Mirror, only one or two of 10 brands of bin bags on sale in Beijing’s major supermarkets, including the French chain Carrefour, were of extra thickness or were labelled as biodegradable and “environmentally friendly”. But these cost as much as 5.80 yuan for 30 bags – much more than the standard types of bag – and so few people buy them.

Even those that are marked as biodegradable are questionable. A spokesperson for one chemical company said that the so-called biodegradable bags actually contain only 10% to 15% biodegradable material; the remainder is entirely non-biodegradable. And the addition of the environmentally friendly material reduces the strength and waterproofing of the bags.

At least bin bags are not free, unlike the plastic shopping bags of the past. But for an increasingly wealthy urban population, the low cost involved does nothing to reduce the bags’ use, and to a certain extent they have become a daily necessity. There is no chance they will disappear of their own accord. Sanitation workers are even using them to line public litter bins. In comparison with small shopping bags – which can be supplanted by reusable sacks or baskets -- the use of household rubbish bags is relatively inflexible. And unlike shopping bags, bin bags are only ever used once.

So, although the ban has cut use of plastic shopping bags by two thirds, it will not be so easy to get rid of bin bags. Reducing their use to any significant extent and preventing their becoming a new source of urban plastic pollution will require more than a simple ban.

So how can we better deal with domestic waste? How can we prevent bin bags from becoming a new source of plastic pollution in China? Shopping bags can be swapped for reusable cloth substitutes – but what can replace plastic bin bags?

Tell us what you think on the forum.

 

Li Siqi is an associate editor of chinadialogue in Beijing.

Homepage photo by net_efekt

Recent climate-change negotiations in Poland ended on a bitter note. Why was so little agreed, and what can be done? Tan Copsey reports.                    

Expectations for the recent United Nations-led climate-change talks in Poznan, Poland, were relatively low, due to political inertia and economic woes. Even so, it was surprising quite how little was achieved. A number of key issues that were on the agenda at Poznan must now be cleared up prior to the conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009. Worse still, negotiations ended on a bitter note, with recriminations from developing countries about financing for climate-change adaptation.

The negotiations also exposed a discontinuity between the scientific understanding of global warming and countries’ willingness to act. There was much talk of a “green new deal” as a means of simultaneously addressing economic recession and climate change. However, there was little evidence that developed countries believed in their own policies to reduce emissions, with most arguing for much smaller targets than the 25% to 40% reduction below 1990 levels suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In a speech on the final day of the conference, former US vice president Al Gore said “many still seem not to feel the appropriate sense of urgency that should cause them to demand the emergency measures that the scientists have so clearly told us governments must take.” Gore endorsed a global stabilisation target for concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases at 350 parts per million, which is significantly lower than the 450 parts per million suggested as a target by the IPCC. Current projections suggest that concentrations of greenhouse gases are likely to rise well beyond this point, leading to potential temperature rises of 3°C to 5°C. This would lead to terrible consequences for humanity and throw the piecemeal efforts at Poznan into stark relief.

What actually happened?

The talks culminated with the announcement of a fund to help the poorest countries adapt to climate change. Money will be raised through a levy on the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the UN arrangement that allows rich countries with greenhouse-gas reduction commitments to invest in emissions reduction projects in developing countries. Current estimates put the value of the fund at US$80 million. This figure should rise significantly between now and 2012, but it will fall short of the billions of dollars that the UN says developing countries will need. Reactions from these countries were not positive. Senior Indian negotiator Prodipto Ghosh said: “This is one of the saddest moments I have witnessed. In the face of the unbearable human tragedy, that we in developing countries see unfolding every day, we see callousness, strategising and obfuscation.” Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), defended the decision not to provide more money to developing countries, stressing that the idea was not, “abhorrent to industrialised countries”, but that “politically this was just not the time to do it”.

Deforestation was another sticking point. The talks about Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) inched forward. But there was controversy, as a provisional agreement failed to mention indigenous rights, took no strong position on biodiversity and did not include peatlands, which are large carbon sinks. It is also still not clear whether “net” or “gross” emissions will be assessed: a “net” approach would make it possible for some countries to continue chopping down existing forests and replacing them by planting new trees. Such a process would lead to large-scale loss of habitat and biodiversity.

Reform of the CDM also stalled, with disagreements on a number of fronts, notably over whether or not to include credits derived from future projects that capture and store emissions of carbon dioxide.

Why was so little agreed?

The conference was affected by events almost 900 kilometres away in Brussels, where the European Union negotiated its own climate agreement up until the final day of the meeting. The package of targets and policies that emerged was weak and unambitious. The EU committed itself to a 20% cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 from 1990 levels, but allowed significant scope for reductions to include carbon credits purchased from outside of Europe. The agreement also took a soft line on polluting industries and the growth in emissions from eastern Europe.

The United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, all members of the loosely aligned “Umbrella Group” of nations, also played an obstructionist role in negotiations. The US was in no position to make firm commitments at a time of political transition, while Canada, Japan and Australia were wary of committing themselves at a time when their own emissions are rising dramatically. Canada was awarded the “Colossal Fossil” prize by the Climate Action Network – a grouping of over 430 non-governmental organisations – for consistently blocking progress toward an agreement on emissions reduction targets. The country also insisted that a reference to indigenous rights be removed from the agreement on deforestation and cancelled the appearance of a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Canadian climate scientist at the last minute.

In contrast, developing countries provided some of the few tangible outcomes from the conference. Brazil announced its own plan to significantly reduce deforestation in the Amazon rain forest, while Mexico, South Korea and South Africa all announced national plans to reduce emissions. However, the largest developing countries, China and India, are not yet willing to commit to targets to reduce emissions. Chinese representatives instead expressed disappointment at the unwillingness of developed nations to meet their own commitments or to take seriously developing country proposals on technology transfer, finance, adaptation and capacity building. The gap between the positions of developed and developing nations may have widened at Poznan.

What happens next?

In the climate-change community, all eyes are on the incoming administration of US president-elect Barack Obama. Obama has said that the US will re-engage in the negotiating process under his leadership. US senator John Kerry suggested at the conference that his country would commit to reducing emissions by 80% by 2050. In the short-term, the country is likely to focus on a more modest goal of returning American emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This would mean a cut of 15% from current levels, but it is unclear if that will be a strong enough signal for developing nations to begin to reduce their own emissions.

Many argue that the relationship between the US and China will determine the success of global efforts to reduce emissions. It may be that once he is president, Obama will need to commit to deeper cuts and directly engage with China on climate-change issues, including the all-important quartet: technology transfer, finance, adaptation and capacity building.

Countdown to Copenhagen

2009 will be a busy year for negotiations. Meetings will be held in Bonn, Germany, in late March and June, when a draft text of the Copenhagen agreement will be produced. The UNFCCC has agreed to postpone discussions about new emissions reduction targets to this point, allowing the US to devise a new policy. UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has also suggested an additional two meetings take place. The Copenhagen conference itself has been put back a week and there was discussion at Poznan of extending the process further to accommodate an additional meeting in 2009.

If an agreement is not reached in Copenhagen that includes deeper cuts in emissions across the developed world, serious questions will be raised about the UNFCCC process and its ability to deliver results. After disappointment in Poznan, negotiations in Copenhagen must not fail.

Tan Copsey is development manager at chinadialogue

Homepage photo by Oxfam International

 

 

Three decades after the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, the nation has much to celebrate, writes Leo Horn. But what lessons can developing countries really take from China?

[An earlier version of this article was published on July 28, 2008]

This week China reaches a historic milestone: the thirtieth anniversary of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms. And there is much to celebrate. Three decades ago China was isolated and struggling, with poverty rates on a par with Malawi. Today China has joined the “premier league”: China’s economy has grown nine-fold to become the fourth-largest economy in the world (a reasonable appreciation of the yuan would propel China in to second place, ahead of Japan). A staggering 200 million people have been lifted out of poverty in this time. China now holds US$1.75 trillion in its coffers, and has become the number one trading nation and destination of foreign direct investment.

Understandably, this achievement has been an inspiration to many around the world. Development experts and ideologues of all shades are touting the “China development model” as incontrovertible evidence in support of their disparate theories of development. And developing country leaders are turning to China in search of solutions to their own developmental quagmires.

From Venezuela to Vietnam, evidence of the appeal of the so-called “China model” abounds. Iran, Syria and other Middle Eastern countries invited China experts to lecture senior officials and academics. And former premier Zhu Rongji famously sent one of his chief aides to Cuba to lecture hundreds of Cuban leaders on social and economic reform, following a visit by Raúl Castro.

Obviously China has done something right. There is little doubt, for example, that the focus on export-oriented growth and gradual liberalisation of prices, combined with an outward-looking foreign investment regime were instrumental to high and sustained economic growth. A high savings rate, upfront investments in large-scale infrastructure development, rapid urbanisation and a good investment climate were also undoubtedly key elements of economic success.

But whether the sum of strategic policy decisions and non-decisions over the past three decades add up to a full-fledged model of development is questionable. The term “China model” implies at least three things: success, replicability and deliberate design. On all three counts there is room still for healthy debate. 

Qualified success

China’s achievements should be seen in perspective. Its economic performance over the past 30 years has actually been less impressive than that of its east Asian neighbours (such as Japan and South Korea) during comparable stages of growth. This is not surprising given the similarity of starting conditions and policies (for example, high initial levels of education, land reform, export-orientation, selective state support for key industrial sectors, high savings, disciplined and abundant workforces).

More importantly China’s ecological crisis, mounting social disparities and endemic corruption are critical counterpoints to its economic success. In all these areas the situation has worsened in tandem with economic reform, causing widespread discontent and threatening to jeopardise future growth. China remains very much a developing country. Per capita income is less than in Botswana or Angola, and two thirds of its population have no health insurance. China will face formidable challenges in the future: how it addresses these will be the real test of its success.

Uniqueness

It is questionable how much of China’s experience could or should be exported. “Economic freedom plus political repression” is an all-too-common short-hand description of the “China model”. The suggestion that this may constitute a blueprint for authoritarian regimes is misleading and dangerous. Relative cultural homogeneity and a value-system geared towards perpetuating order and upholding social harmony above promoting individual interests provided the underpinning for a social contract which gives primacy to economic over political freedoms.

Furthermore, China’s uniqueness in terms of size and history help explain its economic rise. China has enjoyed economic superpower status several times in the past. As recently as 1820 it accounted for 30% of global GDP. On a long enough time scale therefore, what we see is reversion to an earlier trend: China may merely be reclaiming its rightful place in the superpower league. China’s size also is a lure in itself: the massive latent pool of cheap labour and the promise of a market of one-billion-plus consumers make China an inherently attractive destination for international capital.

Learning by doing

Most importantly, the concept of a “China model” makes no room for what is arguably the most important ingredient in China’s economic success: serendipity. Rather than treading a pre-set path towards economic development, China was able to improvise along the way, learning from experimentation, and thereby responded flexibly and pragmatically to unintended outcomes and unforeseen events, in line with Deng’s encomium to “cross the river by feeling for stones.”

All major policy changes in China have been the result of a process of trial and error on a limited scale (usually a single sub-national jurisdiction). Successful experiments are then scaled up and rolled out across the country. Thus the establishment and success of four special economic zones in the 1980s was a crucial precursor to the raft of market-oriented reforms that followed. Likewise the bankruptcy law was first piloted in one province before being passed at the national level. The phased decontrol of prices through a dual pricing system – whereby some prices were set by the plan and others progressively set by the market – is another striking example of successful pragmatism.

Change was also instigated from the bottom-up. Almost all the developments in rural China have emerged as a result of local level innovation. When Fenyang county, in Anhui province, broke ranks with Party orthodoxy by dissolving the agricultural commune and allowing individual farmers to sell surplus produce on the market, a domino effect was to ensue that swept through the whole country. By 1983, 98% of peasant households were operating under this new “household responsibility system”, from zero just a few years earlier.

Likewise, the explosion in town and village enterprises (TVEs) in the 1980s took everyone by surprise, including Deng (by his own admission). By the 1990s the TVEs had become the backbone of the rural economy, providing employment (58% of all rural jobs in 1993), financing for local public goods, and also spurring the development of the rural credit system.

Certainly there are many worthwhile lessons to be drawn from China’s experience of economic reform over the past three decades. But China's approach may be more interesting than its actual policies.

Rather than adherence to an intellectually consistent and ideologically circumscribed model of economic development, reform in China was driven by pragmatism and a piecemeal approach to instigating and managing change. The wisdom of China’s reformers was to stand back and make room for experimentation and local initiative, to embrace and cleverly exploit the inescapable element of luck. If there is one lesson it is to be open and pragmatic about reform.

 

Leo Horn is national coordinator for the UK-China Sustainable Development Dialogue, and founding director of EnAct 21, a policy advisory consultancy dedicated to promoting sustainable development through diplomacy. He writes here in a personal capacity and his views do not necessarily reflect those of the UK government.

Homepage photo by Daniel Wayne Amstrong

 

In a country where floods make it difficult for many people to rise above the poverty line, the government must take swift measures to adapt to climate change. James Painter reports.

A new report by the international development organisation Oxfam highlights just how vulnerable Vietnam will be to huge setbacks in the country’s poverty alleviation programmes as a result of climate change.

Vietnam is regarded as one of the few developing countries in the world that is on track to meet most, if not all, of its Millennium Development Goals. Official statistics show that it has an enviable record in reducing poverty.

From 1993 to 2006, the poverty rate fell dramatically from 58% of the population to 18%, meaning that 34 million Vietnamese had risen above the poverty line.

But in its report, Vietnam: Climate Change, Adaptation and Poor People, Oxfam argues that rising sea levels, more intense typhoons, higher temperatures and increased flooding and drought threaten to drag millions back into poverty.

Oxfam is not the first international organisation to draw attention to Vietnam’s vulnerability to climate change. The November 2007 UN Human Development Report heavily featured Vietnam, stressing that flooding and increasingly intensive storms threaten to slow human development progress in major population areas.

A 2007 World Bank report on sea level rises (SLR), The impact of sea level rise on developing countries: a comparative analysis, concluded that a one-meter rise in global sea levels by the end of the century would affect the country’s GDP as well as over 10% of Vietnam’s population.

According to the report, the one-metre rise has the potential of having an impact on a higher percentage of Vietnam’s urban areas than any other east Asian country. In addition, a higher percentage of the country’s wetland areas and agricultural land will be affected.

Oxfam’s particular contribution was to collect a wide range of testimonies from poor farmers living in two provinces that are very vulnerable to climate change extremes: Ben Tre in the south’s low-lying Mekong Delta and the coastal Quang Tri further north, which is traditionally the area most vulnerable to flooding in the country.

People in Ben Tre and Quang Tri are used to living in extreme weather conditions, but all those questioned agreed that weather patterns had changed over the past 20 to 30 years – causing it to be harder to make a living and survive.

In the Mekong Delta, where enough rice is produced to make Vietnam the second-biggest rice exporter in the world, some rice farmers cannot grow their crops because the water is too salty, partly as a result of climate change.

Typhoons have become more intense and have tracked further south so that they have become commonplace in Ben Tre, which was once typhoon-free. Typhoon Durian in December 2006 claimed 18 lives in the province. An additional 700 were injured and a total of US$200 million-worth of damage was caused, which is equivalent to about two-thirds of the province’s total exports from 2001 to 2005.

Further north in Quang Tri, unpredictable weather means farmers have less time to grow crops, and seeds can be washed away by the heavier rainfall. Livestock has also been lost to increasingly severe flooding, while the hotter dry spells make it even more difficult for farmers to make a living.

For example, 46-year-old farmer Ho Si Thuan, who lives in Quang Tri, told the Oxfam researchers: “Twenty years ago, being a farmer seemed extremely easy as the weather was predictable. It wasn’t so hot in the dry season and there was less flooding. Last year, our first crop of rice was affected by early flooding. We could only harvest 200 kilograms, and it was poor quality so we had to feed it to the pigs. This year, it was very cold and the rice seedlings died.”

The Vietnamese government and the international community are investing considerable time, effort and expertise into a National Target Programme (NTP). According to the draft NTP, changes to Vietnam’s climate are already taking place:

*There has been an annual temperature rise of 0.1º Celsius per decade between 1931 and 2000, and of between 0.4º C and 0.8º C in the country’s three main cities from 1991 to 2000.

*Wide regional variations in rainfall have been recorded, but the annual volume has remained largely stable. However, the localised intensity and unpredictability of rainfall has increased, leading to severe flooding.

*There have been more droughts in the south in recent years, which have tended to last longer.

 *The sea level has risen between 2.5 to 3.0 centimeters per decade in the last 50 years.

 *Typhoons have reduced in number in the last four decades, but they have become more intense and are tracking further southwards.

 Over the last 18 months, Vietnam has suffered unusual weather events throughout the country including storms, floods and drought affecting tens of thousands of people.

In November 2008, more than 80 people lost their lives in the worst floods to hit Vietnam in 25 years. Heavy rain fell in the central and northern parts of the country for over a week, leading to severe flooding in the capital Hanoi and nearby provinces.

More than 500 millimeters of rain fell in Hanoi, turning streets into rivers. Floodwaters inundated more than 100,000 homes and destroyed nearly 2,400 square kilometers of rice and vegetable crops.

During the main flooding season in 2007 and 2008, there was heavier flooding than usual in the central provinces, the highest tides around Ho Chi Minh City for 48 years and the longest cold snap ever recorded in northern Vietnam. This cold snap lasted 38 days and caused US$30 million of damage to crops and livestock.

Climate scientists in Vietnam say that the recent extremes of weather are evidence of the El Niño/La Niña weather patterns becoming more intense, a pattern they say they have observed over the last 50 years. Many scientists argue that more intense El Niño/La Niña events could occur this century as a result of global warming.

Climate models suggest slightly different outcomes for Vietnam over the course of the century. However, there is broad consensus that if there is no major international effort to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, then:

*The average temperature is expected to increase by between 1º C to 2º C by 2050, and by 2º C to 3º C by 2100.

*Rainfall patterns will vary from region to region, but rainfall and droughts are likely to increase both in intensity and area of impact. Rainfall is likely to be less predictable. 

*Typhoons are expected to increase in intensity and be subject to more unpredictability. They may also continue to track further south, increasingly affecting southern Vietnam.

*By 2070 the flow of the country’s two main rivers, the Red River and Mekong River, is expected rise from 7% to 15% during the flood season, leading to more severe flooding.

Vietnam has a number of advantages in terms of adapting to climate change. The country has a long history of dealing with natural disasters, particularly flooding and typhoons. Vietnam has strong institutional experience at the national, provincial and commune levels. Also, national mitigation strategies have long existed to reduce the risk of disasters, such as the construction of dykes and flood corridors. Finally, the one-party political system makes long-term planning easier.

But awareness of the threat from climate change amongst provincial leaders is patchy. Current budgets for disaster and risk reduction are also inadequate. Building dykes, for example, is very expensive and may not be the best way of dealing with sea level rises.

The financing challenge involved in mitigating climate change is huge for a developing country like Vietnam. The government has set aside US$750 million for protection and the building of dykes between 2010 and 2020. But this figure does not take into account the impacts of climate change, which will require far more funding.

Oxfam’s plea

Oxfam believes that outside funding assistance is required in Vietnam, and argues that it is rich countries, which are most responsible for climate change, that should lead the way in committing to such adaptation funding.

Steve Price-Thomas, Oxfam’s director in Vietnam, says: “Clearly, climate change is already happening and turning people’s lives upside down in Vietnam. The futures of millions of poor people in Vietnam and around the world depend on the right decisions being taken in Poznan so that we can support people who are living – through no fault of their own – on the frontline of climate change.”

Oxfam is calling for rich countries to lead the way in the United Nations’ negotiations toward a post-Kyoto climate-change agreement. The organisation wants a cut of at least 80% in global emissions and a commitment to large-scale international funding so that poor communities like those in Vietnam can adapt to the changing climate.

James Painter is a freelance journalist and consultant specialising in climate change and the media. He contributed to the Oxfam report.

Homepage photo by aoketton

The environmental and health hazards associated with China’s production of fire-retardant chemicals outweigh any perceived economic or safety benefits. Arlene Blum reports.

A multitude of fire-retardant chemical producers and buyers thronged the Shanghai Expo Centre for the Third International New Flame-Retarding Technology and Flame-Retarding Material Industry Exhibition from September 15 to September 17, 2008. Although it is hard to believe that there were 3 million participants, as reported by the official exhibition website, the fire safety that was discussed is important and real. The sale of fire-retardant chemicals is highly profitable. In addition, the three western companies that produce these chemicals are the primary motivators behind these increasing sales in China.

Looking a little more closely at this exhibition, the scenario for an imminent environmental and human health disaster in both China and the whole world begins to unfold. However, it is a disaster that can be averted with education and prompt action.

Adding chemical fire retardants to couches, computers and children's toys may sound like a good idea. However, in lab animals, these chemicals can cause neurological and reproductive impairments; cancer; attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; infertility; reduced sperm count and endocrine disruption; cryptorchidism (undescended testicles); and hypospadias (a penile deformity), among other health disorders. And studies are underway to determine if fire-retardant chemicals are contributing to current increases in autism, hyperactivity, birth defects, infertility, diabetes and obesity in children.

The benefit of adding these chemicals to consumer products has not been proven to the satisfaction of those concerned about these health implications. Fire retardants can slow, but usually do not stop, fires. As materials treated with these chemicals smoulder for seconds or minutes, they instead create smoke, which is a leading cause of fire deaths. A decrease in smoking, more smoke detectors, sprinkler systems and better enforcement of fire safety standards are among the many – and more effective – ways to reduce fires and fire-related deaths. These do not pose the same potential danger to human health.

Consequently, many scientists, environmentalists, and even the International Association of Fire Fighters oppose the use of chemical flame-retardant additives, unless there is a proven need for their use, or if alternative methods of fire prevention are not adequate.

The most toxic fire retardants are halogenated chemicals, which contain chlorine or bromine bonded to carbon. They are often persistent and bioaccumulative. “Persistent” means that they do not break down into safer chemicals over time. For example, fire retardants, such as polychlorinated biphenyls  (PCB) and polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) – banned more than three decades ago – are still present and problematic in sediments and wildlife. "Bioaccumulative" means that they accumulate in plants and animals, becoming more concentrated as they move up the food chain. Such chemicals are being detected at higher and higher levels in animals across the planet, from killer whales and polar bears to Tasmanian devils and housecats.

The use of halogenated chemicals is primarily promoted by the three major producers: Albermarle, Chemtura and Israeli Chemicals Ltd. As the European Union and the United States are using less of these chemicals, these three companies are turning to China for both manufacturing and sales. The Flame Retardant Expo is one of the tools these manufacturers use to increase their markets in China, and they appear to be succeeding.

The production capacity of flame retardants in China has gone from 50 kilotonnes in 1993 to 350 kilotonnes in 2006, and continues to grow rapidly. The market share for the more toxic halogenated fire-retardant chemicals is estimated to be 20% and declining in the European Union and the United States, while it is 55% and growing in China. In 1999, China produced 2.5 kilotonnes of the brominated fire retardants – the most toxic and persistent. However, by 2006, it produced 80 kilotonnes. This growth is expected to accelerate as Albermarle and Israeli Chemicals Ltd begin to manufacture halogenated fire retardants in China this year.

To increase the local market for their products, the companies are encouraging the government to set flammability requirements. A regulation for public places was promulgated in July 2008 by the Ministry of Public Security, just in time for the Olympics.

So far, the three companies producing bromine are the major voices for fire-retardant information in China. The Sichuan Fire Research Institute, which manages national fire protection standards, was forced to close following the Sichuan earthquake in May this year. For now, the institute is temporarily housed at Albemarle's Nanjing Technical Centre.

China needs to be informed about both the lack of proven benefit and the history of negative impacts of halogenated fire retardants on health and environment if they want to avoid the past mistakes of the United States.

These unfortunate mistakes began with the 1973 “Poisoning of Michigan”, a disaster that perhaps foreshadowed the recent tragedy of melamine (another fire retardant, which was added to milk and livestock feed). In 1973, one tonne of PBB fire retardant was inadvertently mixed with animal feed. The toxic flame retardants moved from farm animals to milk, eggs and meat, finally ending up in humans. Ultimately, millions of farm animals that had consumed the toxic mixture had to be culled, and humans with high levels of exposure had a 20 to 30-fold increased risk of some cancers.

The addition of the fire retardant pentabromodiphenyl ether (pentaBDE) to the polyurethane foam found in furniture and baby products in the United States is another vivid example of a case where the potential harm far exceeds the fire safety benefit. After pentaBDE was found to be highly toxic and persistent, it was banned in 2003 and the US manufacturer voluntarily ceased production in 2004. High levels of the chemical, primarily used to meet a California fire standard, are now found in creatures from all habitats, such as the polar peregrine falcons in the air, to sea otters on the ocean’s surface, to squid and octopuses one mile down.

Nursing babies are at the very top of the toxins food chain. Breast milk from Californian women contains fire retardants at levels approaching those that cause animal reproductive and neurological deficits in lab studies. Dust in Californian homes contains four to 10 times the pentaBDEs found in dust from other states and 200 times the amount in houses in Europe, according to a new study from the Silent Spring Institute. Worse, Californians have twice the level of this fire retardant in their blood as do people in other states. No other known toxins are found in homes at levels as high as these chemical fire retardants.

Were Californian families safer from fires because of the toxic chemicals in their couches? This is probably not the case, since furniture fabric in California is not required to be fire resistant. In a fire, the upholstery fabric burns long enough to even ignite foam treated with fire-retardant chemicals. According to the National Fire Protection Association, fire data is not good enough to show whether the 28 years of putting toxic fire retardants into furniture and baby products in California has made any difference to fire safety.

The good news is that the death rate from fires has gone down considerably in California since 1980. But it has dropped either a similar amount or more in states that do not require retardants in their furniture. Although we cannot measure the increase in fire safety from fire retardants in furniture, we can identify the very fire retardants used to treat furniture in newly-born babies in the United States. After birth, they get an additional dose from their mothers' breast milk. The levels of flame retardants in toddlers’ blood is three times that of their mothers’. Similarly, the same health disorders found in lab animals exposed to fire retardants are increasing in American children.

Another major problem is how to dispose of furniture, electronics and other consumer products containing halogenated fire retardants. If put in landfills, the chemicals can leach out and be recycled back into our food or water. If burned, they convert to highly toxic dioxins, which can remain in the human body for decades and in the atmosphere forever. And often, the electronics treated with fire-retardant chemicals return to China to be burned, completing a toxic cycle.

A better way to reduce fire deaths is by requiring fire-safe or self-extinguishing cigarettes. In these cigarettes, the paper has “speed bumps” of thicker paper. If left unattended or if the smoker falls asleep, the cigarette will extinguish itself when it burns to one of the thicker places with less oxygen, rather than smouldering for half an hour and starting a fire. Many US states require fire-safe cigarettes and the European Union has passed legislation requiring them as well. To reduce fire hazards and save lives, China could consider requiring cigarettes to be fire-safe.

Before we add large amounts of toxic or potentially toxic fire-retardant chemicals to consumer products, the important questions are: do we need them? Is there a better way to reduce fire hazards without creating other health risks?

As the flame-retardant industry lobbies to expand its scope in China, the government should be aware of the human-health and environmental problems that can be caused by fire-retardant chemicals. These facts, coupled with the lack of proven benefit in some instances, indicates that the government should consider implementing safer alternative methods, instead of these chemicals, to reduce fire hazards.

 

Arlene Blum, PhD, is a visiting scholar in chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley and has taught chemistry at Stanford, Wellesley, and U.C. Berkeley. She has written about toxics in Science, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.

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Rainfall is steadily declining in earth’s arid regions. In the second of two articles, Juliette Jowit explores the options when the “source of life” runs low.

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Ultimately, lack of water is seen as a threat to peace. From genocide in Darfur to disputes between states in India and the United States, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon is one of several global leaders who have warned of further legal and armed disputes over water. Intuitively, it is obvious people will fight over their most precious resource, but so far few conflicts have broken out.

The idea of “water wars” seized the public imagination in 2001 when Marq de Villiers's book of that name was published in the United Kingdom, but the author disagreed with the publisher's choice of title. De Villiers agrees that water is often an underlying cause of tension, but has only identified one water “war”, between Egypt and Sudan. “You cannot do without water, so when shortages pinch, states do co-operate and compromise,” he says.

But if half the world's population lives in water-stressed countries, how do so many -- from the breadbaskets of Asia to the sprawling cities in the arid American west -- keep watering fields and running taps?

One reason is that water flows uphill to money, as the saying goes. Thus people in oil-rich Kuwait enjoy expensive desalination, while Palestinians suffer daily hardship; tourists in Amman can turn on the tap at any time, while those in the poorest areas of the city have access to water for a few hours each week. As King's College London’s Tony Allan says: “Water shortages don’t pose serious problems to gardeners in Hampshire [an English county] or California homeowners with pools to fill.”

Another answer to the conundrum was identified by Allan, who in the 1960s became curious about why Middle Eastern countries without abundant water supplies were not suffering from a more obvious water crisis. The answer, he realised, was trade: by buying food, water-poor societies were “buying” what he dubbed “virtual water”. They were helped by farmers dumping grain into the world market once subsidies created massive over-supply. “This potential tragedy was motoring on and hit the calm waters of the Americans and Europeans providing food [for the world market] at half cost, and the water contained in that food [was water] they didn't have to find.”

The other answer is that communities around the world have been forced to tap rivers and lakes and aquifers, sometimes millions of years old, far beyond the limit at which they can replenish themselves. Above ground, lakes are shrinking and rivers are being reduced to pathetic flows, or drying up altogether. Below ground, a largely invisible crisis is unfolding as millions of wells have been sunk into aquifers – four million in Bangladesh alone. Many aquifers are replenishable, but not all, and many that can be recharged don't get enough rain to match demand. Sometimes the empty cavities simply collapse, putting them beyond use forever.

In his recent book, Plan B 3.0, Lester Brown catalogues the results. In the breadbaskets of China, India, the United States, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Israel and Mexico, water tables are falling, sometimes by many metres a year. Pumps are being drilled a kilometre or more to find water, thousands more wells have dried up altogether and agricultural yields are shrinking. These countries contain more than half the world's people and produce most of its grain, warns Brown. Meanwhile, almost forgotten amid the human suffering, are the terrible consequences for the natural world: freshwater fish populations fell by half between 1970 and 2000, says the United Nations.

All these dams and irrigation channels and pumps and pipes allow billions of people to run up a gigantic global water overdraft. What worries experts is that there is no sign of humans withdrawing less water.

Two years ago, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) published a report by 700 experts warning that one in three people were “enduring one form or another of water scarcity”. “Scarcity for me is when women work hard to get water, [or] you want to allocate more but can't,” says David Molden, deputy director of the Sri Lanka-based organisation.

Molden warns that the situation is becoming “a little bit more critical”, because of continuing rising demand for food, the recent boom in biofuels and climate change. To that also can be added another, poignant “demand”: the long-overdue realisation that nature also needs water, which in European and other countries has led to laws to ensure “minimum environmental flows” remain in place.

For food alone, the World Bank estimates that demand for water will rise 50% by 2030, and the IWMI fears it could nearly double by 2050. Whether these crops require rain or irrigation depends on where they are grown, and how much rain there is.

Like a great river fed by many tributaries, water is a conduit for the various effects of global warming: more variable rainfall, more floods, more droughts, the melting of glaciers on which one billion people depend for summer river flows, and rising sea levels that threaten to inundate not just coastal communities but also their freshwater aquifers, river deltas and wetlands.

From the headline figures, climate change should be good news. Crudely, scientists estimate for every 1º Celsius rise in the average global temperature, precipitation will increase 1%, as warmer air absorbs more moisture. The world's total volume would not change, but it would be recycled more quickly, affecting the majority of the world's agriculture, which depends on the volume and timing of rainfall.

Balancing all these impacts, Nigel Arnell, director of Reading University's Walker Institute for Climate Change, calculates that the number of people living in water basins exposed to water stress will rise from 1.4 billion to as much as 2.9 billion to 3.3 billion by 2025, and to perhaps 3.4 billion to 5.6 billion by 2055. In fact, the greatest impact in Arnell's modelling is from rising populations, particularly in China and India, and, globally, climate change actually is reducing exposure to shortages. This may be good news for some, but it masks huge disruption, as some regions fear too much water, while hundreds of millions of people start to run out of water.

It is impossible to attribute one farm's difficulties or one year's rainfall to climate change. But if climate is the statistics of weather, then the rain gauge this year on the farm of Sameeh al-Nuimat, north-west of Amman, is typical of what the experts forecast. Al-Nuimat had noticed a gradual decline in rainfall for years, but this year it dropped off steeply and there was no rain at all in March, a critical time for summer crops. “My father told me he'd never seen such a year,” he says.

Such dramatic events have injected urgency into discussions about Jordan's precarious water supplies, says al-Nuimat, who is also an irrigation engineer at the ministry of agriculture. “Before, when water was available, no one worried about it,” he says. “But now there's interest -- every night people speaking, every night debating, at every level, from the farmer to the planner to the politician. As a farmer, I'd like to see drought-resistant crops; from a civil-engineering point of view we should look for mega-projects; and, if you're thinking about global planning, there should be acceptance of people moving from water-scarce regions to where water is available.”

Around the world, the same debates are under way. Rich countries can make significant gains from domestic efficiency, but most of the world's population does not have power showers and swimming pools, or waste great quantities of food. Instead the main focus is on reducing water in agriculture, through more efficient irrigation, by engineering seeds to grow in more arid and salty conditions, and even shifting crops. “If the world were my farm, I'd grow things in different places,” says IWMI’s Molden.

But even benign-sounding conservation is often unpopular. There is widespread resistance to raising prices for water (or energy for pumping) to increase efficiency, suspicion of genetic modification, and reluctance among farmers to abandon water-hungry but lucrative crops when they are struggling to feed their family. “It's a socioeconomic dilemma,” says al-Nuimat. “You can't stop now: it's the source of their life.”

Faced with public apathy and even resistance, responses have tended to focus on increasing supply. For decades the scale of ambition has been like a game of global engineering one-upmanship: rivers have been diverted across countries, pumps sunk kilometres into fossil aquifers, and bigger plants commissioned to recycle or desalinate water. And there is no sign of a let-up. As shortages become more desperate and costs and energy use fall, Global Water Intelligence forecasts that desalination capacity will more than double by 2015, and the potential to increase wastewater recycling is enormous, being only 2% of volume.

But huge costs, environmental concerns and public distaste for drinking their “waste” has forced many communities to reconsider simpler, traditional methods, too. Some of the ideas the earliest farmers would have recognised: tree replanting, ripping out thirsty non-native plants, stone walls to hold back erosion, and rain harvesting with simple ponds and tanks. Some have even urged a return to more vegetarian diets, which at their extreme demand only half the water of a typical American meat-eater's. This is, according to Lord Haskins, the former chairman of Britain's Northern Foods group and a government adviser, “the most virtuous and responsible step of all”.

And when all options are exhausted at home, countries have another option: to import water in food and even industrial goods. Political meddling with subsidies makes trade a controversial “solution”, but by favouring regions with a “competitive advantage” in water it can work. Globally the IWMI estimates irrigation demand would be 11% higher without trade, and quotes a projection that imports can cut future irrigation by another 19 to 38% by 2025. Saudi Arabia has gone further than most, announcing in February that it would stop all wheat production in a few years, though other countries might now be deterred by higher food prices.

Ultimately governments are being forced down several paths at once: to raise prices to reflect the true value of water to humans and the environment, invest in technology to improve efficiency and supplies, engage in more trade, and make peace with neighbours that can hold up incoming water or food. These will only be possible, though, if people can be lifted out of poverty, to afford higher prices, capital spending and imports. “When you diversify your economy you solve your problems,” says Allan.

Looking back at the history of mankind's struggle for enough water, experience suggests the initiative which enabled humans to settle, farm and dominate the planet will provide many solutions. But sometimes we might have to accept defeat.

“On the one hand, you can see this amazing technological ingenuity of humans, which throughout prehistory and history continually invented new ways to manage water supply,” says archaeologist Steven Mithen of the University of Reading. “On the other, the story of the past tells us that sometimes, however brilliant your technological inventions, they are just not good enough, and you get periods of abandonment of landscapes. We have got to be prepared to invest in technology, but also to recognise in some parts of the world there are going to be areas where we're going to have to say ‘enough's enough’.”

First part: Is water the new oil?

www.guardian.co.uk

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited, 2008

Homepage photo by suburbanbloke

It’s the world's most precious commodity, yet many of us take it for granted. But that is all about to change. Juliette Jowit reports.                                                                                        

It's hard to imagine why humans would have chosen the achingly arid stone desert of Wadi Faynan -- in present-day Jordan -- for a settlement. But water would have been one important reason, says archaeologist Steven Mithen. When Neolithic men and women arrived 11,500 years ago, things were very different: the climate was cooler and wetter; the landscape was covered in vegetation, including wild figs, legumes and cereals; and there would have been wild goats and ibex for meat.

Initially WF16, as it's now called, would have been a seasonal camp. But Mithen, professor of early prehistory at England's University of Reading, and his fellow archae