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Posts Tagged Sustainable development

Eco-friendly vs appropriate technology Daniel Collins Jul 14

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The BBC has a nice photo essay on the up-take of a low-tech irrigation device – a treadle pump. The BBC, perhaps echoing IDEI, is calling it “eco-friendly”. But it’s not. There’s nothing environmentally friendly about pumping out more water from an aquifer than is recharged. Even pumping less than the recharge rate can be problematic for groundwater-dependent ecosystems.

This treadle pump is better described as appropriate technology. Low-cost tech, that can be made or serviced locally.

Remember the declining aquifer levels in India? It’s because of insatiable pumping. And why so much pumping? For irrigation to feed the massive population. If higher pumping isn’t accompanied by lower birthrates, these pumps are just delaying the problem.

‘Blue Gold’ – Water doco that tugs the anti-capitalism strings Daniel Collins Mar 30

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I attended a screening of the film ‘Blue Gold: World Water Wars’ last Thursday at a fund-raising event. I had prepped myself by reading WaterWired’s review that afternoon, and so had a critical hat on. While I was very sympathetic to the review, I was not as disparaging of the film when it finished as I thought I would have been. And my head did not explode.

The film made many important points by illustrating failures to get water to the world’s thirsty, and the tensions that can arise. To Michael Campana’s list, I’ll add:
• fostering greater public understanding of their catchment
• public-private partnerships
• narrative of the Mayan collapse
• subsidence of the Omani city, Ubar, following groundwater depletion

But along side the good, there were also bad sides to the film. Most notably was the lack of balance. The target of vilification was definitely evil, greedy companies. Unfortunately, companies that succeeded in providing water well were not mentioned, and governments that dismally failed were barely mentioned. The target of criticism was clearly capitalism: the thirst for profit conflicts with people’s thirst for water. Also dubious was the choice of subtitle: “World Water Wars” – chosen, no doubt, for controversial appeal given that no wars have erupted from the documented corporate projects.

As a peer-reviewing scientist, I noticed two egregious scientific errors:
• Slovak hydrologist Dr Michal Kravcik shared his theory that groundwater pumping causes tsunamis.
• The spokeswoman for Food and Water Watch, I missed her name, claimed that the export of food contributed significantly to the loss of water from a catchment because of the actual (not virtual) water content of said food.

The film also propagated the sustainable pumping myth: that pumping groundwater at a rate equal to its recharge is sustainable. Alas, this neglects adverse effects of reduced spring flow, and augmented natural recharge by lowering the water table. There is no free lunch.

As can be inferred from the film’s content, and is reinforced by the filmmaker’s comments to criticism, its vignettes were chosen not as stepping stones to some hitherto undiscovered conclusion, but as structural supports for a previously defined conclusion.

As an advocacy piece, I believe ‘Blue Gold’ makes a valuable contribution to the broader debate on water resources management. It is not balanced, and was not designed to be. It was designed to motivate people, and it succeeded. And its last message – that people should understand the catchment or watershed they inhabit – is a sentiment that Crikey Creek utterly supports. I reside in the Chsirtchurch’s spring-fed Avon River catchment. Where do you live?

Celebrating Ohl Day Daniel Collins Mar 27

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Move over Earth Hour. Get a life Edison Hour. Today is Ohl Day.

Sure, Earth Hour shed some light on the consequences of mindless resource use and the benefits of behavioural change in a finite world. But replacing light bulbs with candles is not entirely climate-friendly. It’s not the electricity that’s the problem, or the lumens, it’s how these resources are obtained and at what cost. And 1 hour out of 8760 is ridiculous.

Edison Hour, on the flip side, grew out of spite. Spite of Earth Hour, and the perceived insinuation that resource use and technology is bad. A convenient counter-saint was found in Thomas Edison, the great American inventor, to highlight the immense benefit that technological advancement has made to societies. The origin of Edison Hour is the Objectivist movement, whose moral code is rational self-interest.

Fig10OhlPatentEnter Russell Shoemake Ohl. American research engineer (1898-1987), Ohl patented the first practical solar cell in 1946. The key technological leap was the discovery of the silicon P-N junction, which raised photovoltaic energy conversion efficiency above 1%, and paved the way to solar electricity.

The point of Ohl Day is to recognise the importance of science and technological advancement in helping society live within a finite world, with renewable energy. Resource use and technology are not bad per se; indeed society wouldn’t be society without them. But certain types of resource use and technology do erode our quality of life, and that of subsequent generations. And since Earth and Edison Hours are at night, I figured a concurrent Ohl Hour was a bit pointless.

PS. Wittier though it would be, FaraDay wouldn’t have the necessary emphasis on renewable energy that Ohl Day does.

Hopeful World Water Day! Daniel Collins Mar 22

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World Water Day isn’t really an occasion for celebrating. Nor is it really a sombre occasion to remember past sacrifices. It’s an opportunity to highlight a problem and work towards a solution, lest we become complacent.

This year’s focus is on water quality.

From the UN:

“According to the World Health Organization (WHO) 4 billion cases of diarrhea each year in addition to millions of other cases of illness are associated with lack of access to water that is safe for human consumption. Per year 2,2 million people die as a result of diarrhea most of them are children under the age of five. Human health is severely impacted by water-related diseases (waterborne, water-washed, water-based, and water-related vector-borne infections) as well as by chemical pollution discharged to water.”

These statistics are essentially a problem of the developing world.

While the developed world has it share of water quality problems, stemming largely from industrial contaminants like heavy metals, hydrocarbons, nitrogen and phosphorus, it is more often the natural ecosystems that bear the brunt than the people. We have the flexibility to avoid drinking the water or swimming in the lake, even if we don’t like it.

Developing countries are not so lucky – they do not have the same freedoms. Access to safe water is so low that many people only have the freedom to choose between poor water and no water. This means that the health burden of poor water quality falls predominantly among the poor global south. If you ascribe to Amartya Sen’s story, as I do, it is development that brings us our necessary freedoms. Though with development also comes different types of water quality problems.

But what of the solutions?

Direct solutions are varied and many. Where sewer systems are absent, latrines are a must, and should be designed to encourage use and keep the wastes away from freshwater supplies. Where potable water is not supplied, some way to make water potable is also a must. This may be some filtration device or simply boiling, but then to facilitate boiling energy is needed, and that opens a whole new can of worms (i.e., house-hold air quality, deforestation, yadda yadda). For developed situations, the preferred solutions are typically along the lines of keeping the pollution out of the water supply, say by fencing agricultural streams and reducing fertiliser applications, or by using less-polluting chemicals in the manufacturing process. But we should also use water treatment facilities to mop up around the edges.

I say “direct” solutions above because they don’t come of their own accord. They need to be managed or bought by indirect actions. Some say regulation is the way to go. Others push economic incentives. Voluntary efforts can work, but also fail. Maybe it’s rooted in unsustainable population growth, or a shift in our collective values. I’m being very vague here, because these debates get very hairy very quickly and I’m not going there today.

In the end, though, take this opportunity to think about how the quality of water available to you determines what you can do with that water – swimming, fishing, growing crops, bathing, drinking, or just plain surviving. And then, if you’re so inclined, consider what you and others can do to have more water-related freedoms.

Tumultuous week on NZ’s water front Daniel Collins Mar 19

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When it rains, it pours.

A lot happened in the last two days on New Zealand’s water front. For those on a blogging diet, here’s a fat-free summary. More to follow later.

  • A report on voluntary efforts to improve on-farm water management shows these efforts continue to fail, and in some ways getting worse. Agriculture Minister David Carter:

    “The data from this year’s snapshot tells a totally unacceptable story of effluent management. Regardless of whether this is because farmers don’t have the right tools, don’t know how to comply, or simply don’t care, behaviour has to change.”

  • Proposals to house 18,000 dairy cows in cubicles in the MacKenzie Country have been dropped, due to rising costs, while the farm investors aim to educate politicians and publics. Southdown Holdings director Richard Peacocke:

    “The irony of our situation is that stable-style farming is the way of the future if New Zealand is committed to environmentally sustainable farming.”

  • Labour MP Brendan Burns asserted that former National MP and Prime Minister, Dame Jenny Shipley, has already been settled on to take over ECan’s water governance on Monday. Minister for the Environment, Dr Nick Smith, denies this claim.
  • ECan Chair, Alec Neill, has decried the non-compliance of territorial authorities in terms of their resource consents:

    “Territorial authorities have called for the scrapping of Environment Canterbury and have suggested this would somehow improve water management.”

    “The territorial authority major non-compliance figures show they have some way to go to get their own houses in order.  It is not acceptable for Canterbury’s local bodies with a legislative RMA role to have ongoing issues of major non-compliance.”

  • And ending on a high note, the Northland drought has actually benefited local grape growers, leading to more favourful albeit smaller grapes.

Is California the future of Canterbury? Daniel Collins Mar 11

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I’ve been mulling over this for a while. I’ve been looking for regions similar to New Zealand in terms of climate and geology, or to regions within New Zealand, but different in how the society manages its water. How do other people solve the same water resource problems, or fail to solve as the case may be? Call it comparative water resources management.

My training is a mix of ecological engineering, physical geography and ecology, with a dash of anthropology, environmental planning, and a side order of reality and current affairs. I see a landscape first as a geological-climatic template, around which the hydrological-ecological system is folded. Into this I add humanity. There are feedbacks up the hierarchical chain, but a first pass is a good start.

So to compare water resource management practices I need to isolate the non-human variables first – the environment. You can never do this perfectly, except perhaps in a lab. But we only have one lab – the Earth – and I’m not going to play dice.

If I look for a region similar to Canterbury – an environmental isomer or doppelganger – I start with the biophysical environment. The plains are one big depositional system, geologically. Layers of gravel and finer sediment have been laid down over millennia forming a big aquifer-sandwich. Most of the water comes from snow and rain that fall in the Alps, while the plains is itself on the sub-humid side. Both surface and subsurface waters are important, and ecosystems are certainly water-dependent, albeit really only moderately.

Turning to the human system, it is a developed liberal democracy with a GDP heavily dominated by agriculture – dryland grazing, dairying and broad-acre crops mainly. Outdoor recreational activities include tramping/hiking, kayaking, fishing, boating. Key fishes of interest are trout and salmon – even though they’re introduced. Population is mainly urban, and rural agriculture is far from subsistence.

Does this sound like California? It does to me.

If California is a suitable doppelganger for Canterbury then, will California’s current problems and solutions apply here in the future? And can Cantabrians learn from the successes and failures of our trans-Pacific neighbours?

Satellite imagery maps Haiti’s sociopolitical landscape Daniel Collins Jan 16

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A key factor in the magnitude of the disaster the followed the earthquake in Haiti last week, and will continue to follow for weeks or months, was the society’s high vulnerability and low resilience. A key factor is this is poor governance.

We are probably aware of the political turmoil that rolls through Haiti from time to time – the 2004 rebellion, for example. There is no standing army, a weak police force, and corruption is taken for granted.

But we can also get a sense of Haiti’s sociopolitical institutions from satellite imagery, and make comparisons with its neighbour the Dominican Republic.

Go to Google Earth and follow the Haiti-Dominican Republic border from coast to coast. You’ll see tangible differences in land management practices and in urban planning.

Haiti is less forested, and its remaining forest seems to be there just because it hasn’t yet been cleared. Coherent agricultural units are smaller. Urban units are smaller. Dominican Republic land users appear to preferentially avoid farming streams or rivers, probably reflecting the use of farm machinery or erosion control. Light splotches in the cleared Haitian portion of second image are possibly the remnants of fires used in the course of the clearance. In each of these images, Haiti is to the left of yellow line.

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