Oct 16, 2015

What is your ecological footprint?

Ecological Footprint

SOURCE: WWF

http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/teacher_resources/webfieldtrips/ecological_balance/eco_footprint/

The simplest way to define ecological footprint would be to call it the impact of human activities measured in terms of the area of biologically productive land and water required to produce the goods consumed and to assimilate the wastes generated. More simply, it is the amount of the environment necessary to produce the goods and services necessary to support a particular lifestyle.

What is Ecological Footprint?

Earthday.net, with its theme of 'Protecting our home', offers a number of resources to understand and study the concept of ecological footprint. Together with Redefining Progress, it measures how much is needed to produce the resources we consume and dispose of our waste.

A measure of sustainability

An interesting way to look at ecological footprint is how much nations consume versus how much they actually have. Another detailed look at the concept and a ranking of countries can be found here.

What is your Ecological Footprint?

Everyone of us has an ecological footprint. To find out how far you have put your foot in it, try this site, irrespective of your geographical location.

Ecological Footprint of 52 countries

Another way to measure ecological footprint is a country-wise ranking. Fifty-two nations are ranked here depending on how they fare in this department.

More resources

The Global Footprint Network coordinates research and develops methodological standards for decision makers to have resource accounts to ensure that we live within the Earth's 'budget'. Here is where you can find more about this.
The Redefining Progress website also offers a number of interesting resources explaining how selfish and unthinking we can sometimes be towards the environment.

Oct 4, 2015

New UN goals call for end to extreme poverty by 2030

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/may/30/un-end-extreme-poverty-2030-goals

The world should set itself the ambitious goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, a UN panel co-chaired by David Cameron and the presidents of Indonesia and Liberia said on Thursday in a report proposing new development goals.
Noting that the promise to wipe out extreme poverty had been made before, the panellists said it "can actually be done". The report said the world had to go beyond the millennium development goals (MDGs) as they did not focus enough on reaching the very poorest and most excluded people.
"This report sets out a clear road map for eradicating extreme poverty by 2030. We need a new global partnership to finish the job on the current MDGs, tackle the underlying causes of poverty and champion sustainable development," said Cameron, who chaired the panel with Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian president, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Liberian president.
Seeking to move beyond the MDGs, which aim to halve extreme poverty (defined as people earning less than $1.25 a day) by 2015, the panel called for extreme poverty to be ended for good. It also proposes eliminating preventable infant deaths and reducing maternal mortality.
But the proposals do not include a standalone goal on inequality, reflecting Cameron's priorities: growth rather than reducing inequality.
Development experts say widening gaps in wealth and opportunity have acted as a brake on poverty reduction, as well as hindering progress in child survival, nutrition and education. The 1.2 billion poorest people account for only 1% of world consumption while the billion richest consume 72%.
"Nice goals, but the elephant in the post-2015 room is inequality," said Andy Sumner, a development economist at King's College London. "We find in our number-crunching that poverty can only be ended if inequality falls so one should ask: where's the inequality goal? Something resembling that elephant in the room – on data disaggregation – is in annex 1 of the report, but will anyone remember an annex note in 2030?"
Justine Greening, international development secretary, said the report tackled inequality "categorically" in that no one could be left behind.
The report states that one trend – climate change – will determine whether policymakers can deliver on the next set of development goals.
"People living in poverty will suffer worst from climate change. The cost of taking action now will be much less than the cost of dealing with the consequences later," said the report, which outlined five areas for transformation: leave no one behind by ensuring that no person is denied universal human rights and basic opportunities; put sustainable development at the core; a rapid shift to sustainable patterns of consumption and production; build peace and effective, open and accountable institutions for all; and a global partnership that goes beyond an aid agenda, including a swift reduction in corruption, illicit financial flows, money-laundering, tax evasion and hidden ownership of assets.
The high-level panel proposed 12 measurable goals and 54 targets. Goals include ending extreme poverty for good, making sure everyone has access to food and water, promoting good governance, and boosting jobs and growth. Targets include promoting free speech and the rule of law, ending child marriage, protecting property rights, encouraging entrepreneurship, and educating all children to at least primary school level.
"Today's report offers a blueprint for eliminating extreme poverty within a generation," said Justin Forsyth, chief executive of Save the Children. "The report envisages a world in which no child is born to die, no child goes to bed hungry, every child learns in school and every child grows up to a sustainable and more prosperous future. This may sound too good to be true, but by building on recent progress and with the right political commitment it's entirely achievable."
The report was the culmination of a consultation process as the UN talked to civil society groups in London, Monrovia and Bali. UN and government officials consistently heard from NGOs that the next set of development goals should cover the world's most marginalised people, including indigenous groups and people with disabilities.
The report recommended that a limited number of goals and targets be adopted in the post-2015 development agenda and that each should be specific, measurable, attainable and timebound. A major concern among policymakers is the risk of duplication and wasted effort if the work of the UN panel and that of the open working group on the sustainable development goals that grew out of the Rio+20 summit run along parallel tracks without meeting.
The panel's report will be discussed at this year's UN general assembly in September. Next year, the Rio+20 group will report to the UN with its recommendations on sustainable goals.
"International agreement on a single, universal agenda to succeed the MDGs is vital, but not assured," said the panel. "One challenge is to agree on clear, compelling and ambitious goals, through a transparent and inclusive process in the UN. And to do so within a timescale that enables a smooth transition from the MDGs to a new development agenda from January 2016."

The 12 goals

1. End poverty
2. Empower girls and women and achieve gender equality
3. Provide quality education and lifelong learning
4. Ensure healthy lives
5. Ensure food security and good nutrition
6. Achieve universal access to water and sanitation
7. Secure sustainable energy
8. Create jobs, sustainable livelihoods, and equitable growth
9. Manage natural resource assets sustainably
10. Ensure good governance and effective institutions
11. Ensure stable and peaceful societies
12. Create a global enabling environment and catalyse long term finance

Aug 27, 2015

Fracking triggered 2014 earthquake in northeastern B.C.

Quake one of world's largest ever triggered by hydraulic fracturing

By Betsy Trumpener, CBC News

Posted: Aug 26, 2015 6:21 AM PTLast Updated: Aug 27, 2015 8:45 AM PT

Fracking triggered a 4.4-magnitude earthquake in northeastern B.C. last year, CBC News has learned, making it one of world's largest earthquakes ever triggered by the controversial process.
B.C.'s Oil and Gas Commission confirmed the cause of the earthquake in an email statement to CBC this week, saying it was "triggered by fluid injection during hydraulic fracturing."
The 4.4-magnitude quake was felt in Fort St. John and Fort Nelson in August 2014. It was preceded by a 3.8-magnitude earthquake in late July, also caused by fracking.
B.C.'s Oil and Gas Commission told CBC that several companies were doing hydraulic fracturing in the area at the time, and several more were disposing of fracking waste.
But the commission says it was Progress Energy's operations that were "associated with triggering this event."
Hydraulic fracturing, often called fracking, is the process of injecting water, sand and chemicals at high pressure deep underground to break rock and free gas.

Fracking fluid reduced

Since the 2014 earthquake, Progress Energy has been ordered to reduce the volume of fracking fluid being used, and the company has complied, according to the commission.
As well, new seismic equipment has been set up in the area. No new earthquakes have been detected in the immediate area.
Last week, Progress Energy temporarily shut down another fracking site after a 4.6-magnitude earthquake hit just three kilometres away.
Responding to The Canadian Press late Wednesday, Progress Energy said the cause of the recent quake has not yet been established.
"The northeast B.C. foothills is a seismically active area with more than 6,000 seismic events each year, 99 per cent of which measure a magnitude so low that they are not felt on the surface," said a statement from spokesperson Dave Sterna.
The company has voluntarily installed 17 seismic monitoring stations in its operating area, Sterna added.

Officials say it will take several more weeks to determine if the 4.6-magnitude quake was triggered by fracking.

Sign of things to come?

Progress Energy is owned by Petronas of Malaysia, which also owns Pacific NorthWest LNG, the firm planning to build a giant liquefied natural gas export facility near Prince Rupert, B.C. supplied by gas fracked in northeastern B.C.
Matt Horne, with clean energy advocate the Pembina Institute, calls the significant earthquake "another warning sign for what could be down the road.
"If B.C. goes down the LNG road in a big way, it's really important when we're debating LNG proposals, we're eyes wide open.... to both the benefits and impacts. Increased earthquakes is one of those impacts," said Horne.
B.C.'s Oil and Gas Commission declined a taped interview, providing only background information by email.

Minister says events are 'rare'

In a statement, B.C. Minister of Natural Gas Development Rich Coleman said "felt seismic events related to hydraulic fracturing are rare."
"The province has a leading role in North America in the detection and mitigation of induced seismicity associated with unconventional gas development and works closely with the Oil and Gas Commission and industry," the statement said.
The statement went on to emphasize that drilling must stop immediately if "seismicity reaching a magnitude of 4.0 is detected."
"Operations can only resume once a mitigation plan – such as reduced pumping pressures – are agreed on by the Commission," it said.
Peace MLAs Mike Bernier and Pat Pimm didn't respond to requests for comment.
In January, Alberta's energy regulator reported fracking likely caused a 4.4-magnitude earthquake in the northern town of Fox Creek. Scientists told CBC at the time the quake was the largest in the world ever caused by fracking.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/fracking-triggered-2014-earthquake-in-northeastern-b-c-1.3203944

May 2, 2015

Cities and Sustainable Development

SOURCE: http://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/cercle/cercle-85168-cities-and-sustainable-development-1002546.php

Jeffrey D. Sachs / Professeur à l'université de Columbia |Le 25/11/2013 à 15:41

by Jeffrey D. Sachs - Tacloban in the Philippines has joined the growing list of cities – including New Orleans, Bangkok, Moscow, New York, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, and Port-au-Prince, to name just a few – pummeled in recent years by climate catastrophes. So the global development agenda should empower cities to help lead the way to sustainability.

NEW YORK – Tacloban in the Philippines has now joined the growing list of cities – including New Orleans, Bangkok, Moscow, New York, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, and Port-au-Prince, to name just a few – pummeled in recent years by climate catastrophes. Many of the world’s largest cities, built on seacoasts and rivers, face the threat of rising sea levels and intensifying storms. So the new global development agenda now taking shape should empower cities to help lead the way to sustainable development in the twenty-first century.

The importance of cities in today’s world economy is unprecedented. Until the Industrial Revolution, human history was overwhelmingly rural. Only around 10% of people lived in cities. Today, the share of urbanites is around 53% and is likely to rise to around 67% by 2050.

Because per capita incomes are higher in cities than in rural areas, the world’s cities today are estimated to account for more than 80% of global income, with the largest 600 accounting for around half. Most of the new jobs over the next few decades will be created in cities, offering livelihoods to hundreds of millions of young people and, as China and Brazil have demonstrated, helping to slash extreme poverty.

Cities are also the innovation hubs for public policy. Every day, mayors are called on to get the job done for residents. They are the ones responsible for providing safe water, garbage collection, safe housing, infrastructure, upgraded slums, protection from disasters, and emergency services when catastrophes hit. So it is not surprising that while national governments often are paralyzed by partisan politics, city governments foster action and innovation.

In the United States, for example, Martin O’Malley, Baltimore’s former mayor and now Maryland’s popular governor, pioneered the use of advanced information systems for urban management. New York City’s outgoing mayor, Michael Bloomberg, worked relentlessly to implement a new sustainability plan (called PlaNYC). And the city’s incoming mayor, Bill de Blasio, is championing a bold program of educational innovations to narrow the vast gaps in income, wealth, and opportunity that divide the city.

Sustainable development offers a new concept for the world economy in the twenty-first century. Rather than focusing solely on income, sustainable development encourages cities, countries, and the world to focus simultaneously on three goals: economic prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability.

Economic prosperity speaks for itself. Social inclusion means that all members of society – rich and poor, men and women, majority and minority groups – should have equal rights and equal opportunities to benefit from rising prosperity. And environmental sustainability means that we must reorient our economies and technologies to provide basic services like safe water and sanitation, combat human-induced climate change, and protect biodiversity. Achieving these three goals will require good governance, public finance, and effective institutions.

Cities will be in the front lines of the battle for sustainable development. Not only do they face direct threats; they also have the best opportunities to identify and deliver solutions. As high-density, high-productivity settlements, cities can provide greater access to services of all kinds – including energy, water, health, education, finance, media, transport, recycling, and research – than can most rural areas. The great challenge for cities is to provide this access inclusively and sustainably.

A significant part of the solution will come through advanced technologies, including information systems and materials science. The information and communications revolution has spawned the idea of the “smart city,” which places the relevant technologies at the heart of systems that collect and respond to information: smart power grids, smart transport networks (potentially including self-driving vehicles), and smart buildings and zoning.

The advances in materials science open the possibility of much more energy-efficient residences and commercial buildings. Cities also give rise to the opportunity to combine public utilities, as when urban power plants use the steam released in electricity generation to provide hot water and heating to residents.

Yet technology will be only part of the story. Cities need to upgrade their governance, to allow for a greater role for poorer and more marginalized communities, and to enable much more effective coordination across city lines when a metropolitan area is home to many individual cities. Metropolitan governance is therefore crucial, as smart cities require networks that operate at the metropolitan scale.

When the metropolitan scale is recognized, the importance of leading urban areas is even more remarkable. New York City has around 8.4 million people, but the NYC metropolitan area has roughly 25 million people, with an economy estimated at about $1.4 trillion per year. If this metropolitan area were a country, it would rank about 14th in the world in GDP terms.

A wise political doctrine known as subsidiarity holds that public-policy challenges should be assigned to the lowest level of government able to address them, thereby ensuring maximum democratic participation in problem solving and the greatest opportunity to tailor solutions to genuine local needs. While some issues – for example, a national highway or rail system – require national-level problem solving, many key challenges of sustainable development are best confronted at the urban level.

The world’s governments are now negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals, which will guide the world’s development agenda from 2015 to 2030. In an important meeting on September 25, the United Nations General Assembly agreed that the SDGs would be adopted at a global summit in September 2015, with the next two years used to select the priorities.

An urban SDG, promoting inclusive, productive, and resilient cities, would greatly empower tens of thousands of cities worldwide to take up the cause of sustainable development for their own citizens, their countries, and the world.

Mar 23, 2015

Britain has the right energy policies in place, it just needs to keep the costs down

Energy and environment policy has rarely been as high-profile as it is now. Decisions taken today will have implications for years to come

'Energy and environment policy has rarely been as high-profile as it is now.' Photo: ALAMY

By Vincent de Rivaz

8:00PM GMT 16 Mar 2014

The recent floods and severe weather across Britain have brought the debate around climate change back into sharp focus. While it is not right to attribute individual weather events to changes in the global climate, the storms were consistent with the increasingly volatile and extreme weather patterns predicted by climate scientists.

Later this month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is due to confirm again that global warming is real and that the costs of containing it will be greater if governments delay taking action.

Meanwhile, unrest in Ukraine also reminds us we should not ignore issues of security of supply.

Successive British Governments have adopted a correct and timely approach to these issues by balancing the need to cut emissions with the desire to ensure we all have affordable and secure energy.

In the next few years, Britain needs more than £100bn of investment in new electricity generation as a quarter of our power stations are phased out or reach the end of their operating lives. The question is whether we replace them with carbon-intensive fossil fuel generation that relies increasingly on imports or with a diverse and secure low carbon energy mix.

Years of informed debate and policy-making in Britain means we have a response that is well thought through and internationally respected. Crucially, the political consensus and stability of these policies have given investors the confidence to put their money into Britain.
The issue of providing secure, affordable, clean energy is common to most European countries. Britain’s policy is in sharp contrast to the German experience: German consumers face some of the highest residential electricity costs in Europe and rising emissions from an increased use of coal and lignite. Investors there are also among the losers.
One of the major planks of Government policy here is called the Carbon Floor Price. This is designed to wean the country off an over-reliance on coal and give a strong incentive to us all to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The mechanism is simple – by setting a rising price for each tonne of carbon dioxide emitted, it penalises polluters and encourages investment in cleaner forms of power.
When it was launched just three years ago, the Government rightly said this was the most cost-effective way to meet our environmental goals as part of a package of policy measures to drive low-carbon investment.
Two things tell us that the policy is working.
First, it is tipping the balance away from coal to lower carbon gas at a time when many relatively modern gas powered stations have been closed or mothballed.
Second, it is encouraging spending on new low-carbon power generation such as wind, biomass and nuclear to give us a more resilient and balanced energy system.
Industry requires competitive energy costs. Some businesses, especially those in energy-intensive industries, have highlighted the cost of carbon pricing on their international competiveness. It is right that this issue is addressed by targeted and specific measures.
Householders are under pressure, too.
Politicians and energy companies have to work together to bear down on costs of energy efficiency schemes without abandoning important environmental goals or damaging investor confidence.
Action taken last December to review the costs of energy company obligation charges were a step in the right direction and more can be done but, of all the environmental measures, the Carbon Floor Price, among a wider set of policies, is the most cost-effective way to cut emissions.
EDF Energy supports the Government’s decarbonisation targets and, together with many business leaders and the CBI, we back the European Union’s target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40pc by 2030.
We are playing our part in meeting the challenge by investing more than £1bn a year in the UK. That means bringing new gas and wind power on stream. It also means we will ensure our coal stations are available to keep the lights on during this period of transition to a lower carbon energy future.
Last year, EDF Energy and the Government concluded a deal for power from the first new nuclear power station in a generation at Hinkley Point in Somerset. It will be ready just as the first of our existing low-carbon nuclear stations is coming to the end of its life. It will provide a massive boost to the economy and rebuild the British nuclear industry.
As the agreement is part of this far-reaching reform of the UK energy market, it is right that the European Commission should examine the deal.
We are encouraged by the pace of the Commission inquiry. The consultation period will show that the contract for Hinkley Point C is fair and balanced for investors and consumers.
In the meantime, our investments to extend the lives of our 15 existing nuclear reactors by around two years will delay the crunch point when electricity demand and supply converge. This has bought the country some much-needed breathing space but it has not changed the fundamentals.
That’s why the Government must send a strong signal that it remains committed to its long-term energy policies, even if it makes short-term and temporary adjustments to them. Although there may be a short postponement of the energy gap, there is no such respite available on climate change.
Energy and environment policy has rarely been as high-profile as it is now. Decisions taken today will have implications for years to come. We have the right policies in place. Now we must deliver them in the most cost-effective way possible.

Vincent de Rivaz is the chief executive of EDF Energy

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/10701663/Britain-has-the-right-energy-policies-in-place-it-just-needs-to-keep-the-costs-down.html

Geographically!

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