How empowering women can help the environment

The question everyone seems to be wondering about these days is where will the 7th billion baby be born? And even though childbirth is usually a happy occasion, for environmentalists this issue generates mixed feelings.

The Worldwatch Isntitute, an organisation that analyses global environmental concerns, has recently published its take on the impending arrival of the 7th billion baby: Women must be empowered and unnecessary food waste must be regulated.

While the second suggestion is more or less plausible, the suggestion to empower women to make their own decisions about childbearing is, unfortunately, nothing but wishful thinking, even in the 21st century . This is due to the fact that in the three main religions (Christianity, Jedaism and Islam) women are lacking even more fundamental rights (such as personal freedom) than the choice of when, how and IF to birth a child. Moreover, not having children is considered a sin. And this is happening STILL, not only in “third world” and undeveloped countries (where the problem is less to do with religious provisions but with lack of proper education and means), but in Western democracies such as the United States.  A good example is Mississippi’s new amendment to “Proposition 26″ which redefines the term “person” to also include a female’s fertilised egg, thus meaning that an abortion would be considered a real murder. If the amendment passes the vote on November 8th, women will no longer be able to choose to have an abortion without having to face a murder trial and those who assisted them would most probably be trialed as well (that is if they even agree to assist, since it’s reasonable to assume that abortion clinics and doctors would be outlawed). Such a narrow-minded approach has no consideration not only of the women’s basic right to choose what to do with her body, but also of extreme cases such as rape victims who will have to carry the rapist’s child or face a murder trial for not wanting to have a living reminder of the terrible experience.

There are many more examples to how far-fetched the suggestion to empower women to make their own decisions about anything, including childbearing, is. Only last month (September, 2011) Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, who is considered a reformist, has declared that Saudi women will now be allowed to vote (nearly a century after Western women) but not to drive. In Israel, religious women are still subjected to arranged marriages and must give birth at least once a year (until they reach menopause). The issue becomes even more complicated when discussing populations of undeveloped countries, where people are not aware neither of the existence of female’s rights nor of contraceptives.

In places where state and religion are not separated entities, birth rate control remains hypothetical. The Chinese “One Child Policy” for instance, is highly impossible in countries where religion does not recognise (and, therefore, doesn’t approve) contraceptives. Despite the fact that the use of condoms can be traced back to 1855, it was only in November 2010 that Catholic Christians have been granted the Church’s permission (by Pope Benedict XVI) to use them, and even that use is restricted ONLY to prevent AIDS and not pregnancies.

The Worldwatch institute claims that “the most direct and immediate way to lower birth rates is to make sure that as high a proportion as possible of pregnancies are intended, by assuring that women can make their own choices about whether and when to bear a child”. However, there’s one thing that needs to be done to allow this to happen and that is to “adjust” religions to modern times. All religions encourage procreation, which is entirely understandable. But if unrestricted procreation leads to extinction (and disproportion between the amount of mouths to feed and the food available from natural resources on which we depend may sooner rather than later lead to one), then it’s the religion’s obligation (for the sake of its continuation) to make the necessary adjustments. Accepting women as independent individuals instead of a mindless birthing machines should be the first…

Resurrecting an Asian giant

Once the fourth largest lake in the world; today an ecological and social disaster. Could third time be “lucky” for this former Asian giant?

 In 1960 the Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world, roughly the size of West Virginia and more than twice the size of Belgium. Today the fourth place on that list is occupied by Lake Huron in Canada, not because it suddenly grew in size, but because the Aral Sea is no longer a body of water, but a salty desert. 

It took less than 50 years to drain 90% of the lake’s  970 cubic kilometers of water. The process began in early 1960′s when the Soviet government decided to divert the waters of the two rivers that filled the lake (Amudarya and Syrdarya) to irrigation of cotton and crop fields planted in the area. Water-saving irrigation technologies already existed at the time, but installing them would have taken time. The cotton fields were yielding massive amounts of produce and the government didn’t wish to waste time on long-term investments. It wanted profits now and opted instead to waste water, implementing a quicker solution: digging (without proofing) water tunnels. The reckless planning of the irrigation systems caused large amounts of water to be absorbed unnecessarily in the sands.

By the late 1980′s the sea level had dropped so much that it had exposed a natural soil partition that split the great lake into two almost entirely separate lakes: the Northern smaller Aral and the Southern Larger Aral. But the disappearance of the water was just one part of a much bigger problem.

Over 20 kinds of fish (once the main source of income and food for the people in the area) were gone. Instead, a thick layer of salt formed on the bottom of the lake following the disruption of the water-salt balance and the evaporation of the little water that was left. The strong winds, typical to the desert area, carried the salt miles away from the disappearing lake. The salt absorbed any fluids from the ground on which it landed and created “bald spots”, suffocating any vegetation near by.

The climate in the area has been changing drastically over the past decade as the lake shrank in size and seised to regulate the temperature. The locals report shorter and hotter summers and unbearably long and cold winters.

As the lake shrank more and more in size, so did the tourism industry in the Aralsk area. The numerous resorts on the shores of the lake closed one after the other, cutting yet another source for income for the people of Aral. The social-economic situation was at its worst towards mid 90′s and it was then that the first plans to save the lake were drawn.

At first it was the idea of saving at least the Northern small Aral by building a dam to prevent the water of the small Aral from leaking purposeless into the Southern large Aral. The intention was good, but alas, the planning proved to be amateur and frivolous. The dam was built from sand and a mere 5 years later, when the water of the small Aral nearly leveled with the dam, it took a single spring storm to wash it away. But the dam wasn’t entirely useless after all. It made clear that it IS possible to “refill” and save at least one part of the dying Asian giant.

In 2002 a new plan for a dam was devised. This time planned to collect the water that might spill over or leak into the Southern Aral.

Fishing for healthier solutions

A Farmidable Idea

The concept of (conventional) fish farming has masses of potential but it also has many flaws.

One man saw the potential and leaped over the flaws. Saving your health, the oceans and the economy one ‘tweak’ at a time.

Here is a ‘palatable’ idea for those of you who enjoy the occasional sushi or rely on fish for the daily diet: the oceans are empty! 10 years into the new millennium and three quarters of the earth’s fishing grounds are exhausted, depleted or in danger of becoming ‘Dead Seas’. Fish farms were meant to stop this eco-disaster by producing artificially-bred fish for the fish markets and saving what is left of the diminishing resources. Paradoxically, they proved to do exactly the opposite, and then some. Not only can’t they be used in countries without direct access to oceans or seas, but they also produce masses of toxic waste and fish that are contaminated with high levels of PCBs and Dioxins (chemicals linked to cancer). One man saw the potential in fish farms and ‘tweaked’ it to tic the two problematic boxes. The result is zero-discharge aquaculture system. What a formidable idea.

Despite good intentions, conventional fish farms have several flaws that further contribute to the eco-disaster in global waters. The main issue with these farms is their dependency on location. The indoor pools pump water from the water source (sea or ocean) and the circulation system flushes the water with the toxic waste back into the source. The cage farms dispose of the waste straight into the ocean killing the delicate seabed organisms. This poses an enormous ecological threat to the delicate marine eco-systems. ‘Worldwide, significant areas of coastal habitats are being lost because of human activity’, says Prof Dan Laffoley, a well known British ocean conservationist and Marine Vice chair of World Commission on Protected Areas organization (a branch of the International Union for Conservation of Nature- IUCN), stressing that ‘extensive areas have been altered by land reclamation and fish farming, while coastal pollution and overfishing have further damaged habitats and reduced the variety of species.’

Conventional fish farms, located in many coastal countries, are considered a great source of income to the local economy. Naturally, the size and location of the farm as well as the type of fish farmed determine the total expenditure and income. Investment values range from £3-35m in Scottish Salmon farms, £0.5m in one of Singapore’s offshore farms to millions of dollars in farms across the US (to name but a few). With the increasing demand for fish and seafood, the investments tend to pay off in a matter of years. But the real issue of costs isn’t the money invested in the farms themselves; the costs of repairing the damage they cause once they begin to operate are the real problem. ‘Estimated annual costs of damages caused by agricultural nonpoint sources of water pollution range from $4-12bn to water use, water storage and treatment facilities, and commercial fishing’, says Dr. Stephen R. Overmann of Southeast Missouri State University.

Since fish are the staple diet of one in every five people on the planet, it’s no surprise that demand for fish has grown so much in the past 60 years. Fishing catches have increased 5-folds from 18m to 100m metric tones a year. The need to stop the complete depletion of global waters and respond to the increasing demand for seafood was behind the idea of fish farming back in the 1970s. Since then the market of fish farms has expanded to include Eastern countries such as China, Thailand and Bangladesh and also Western countries such as USA, Norway and UK. According to a report by the UN Fish and Agriculture Organization (2008) aquaculture (artificially grown seafood) provides over 47% of total world supply of seafood. In the USA on average over 16.5 pounds of fish are consumed every year (per capita) and the numbers are even higher in China and Japan. The market, therefore, exists and it’s constantly growing.

But the price nature and humans are paying for the growing aquaculture market is another major flaw of the idea. It’s impossible to estimate the long-term effects on our health of toxic chemicals applied on fish cages or the antibiotics that fish are fed to prevent them from getting and spreading diseases caused by over-crowded breeding conditions. But it’s already possible to see examples of financial damages caused by outbreaks of fish diseases in farmed fish like the case of fish anemia in the Scottish Salmon farms which led to destruction of millions of fish and $16m payouts and the spread of sea-lice from escaped farmed salmon to wild salmon in the US which costs the industry over $5bn annually, according to the Ocean Conservancy Organization. But humans suffer not only from consumption of ‘unclean’ fish. Pollution of the oceans that produce nearly 50% of the oxygen we breathe is no less ‘pricy’.

There’s more than enough evidence that the existing fish farms are far from an ideal solution to overfishing and market demand. But science is all about innovation and improvement and it was only a matter of time until someone realised the potential of the patent and ‘tweaked’ it to tic the two problematic boxes. That someone is Prof. Jaap Van Rijn from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his patent is the first step to truly sustainable and ecologically safe aquaculture solution. He developed a unique zero-discharge closed recirculation system that doesn’t depend on location and is not polluting.

Ecologically, Van Rijn’s patent is the most advanced in sustainable aquaculture yet. ‘The invention is based on culturing either freshwater fish or marine fish in a closed aquaculture system’, says Van Rijn. The uniqueness of this system is that the pools are filled only once and then water added only to cope with evaporation losses (less than 1% of the total water volume per day). Van Rijn explains that ‘operating the system without water exchange allows [for the first time] to grow marine fish away from the sea. These marine systems are filled initially with freshwater to which sea salt is added’.  At the end of the trial period, the system produced less than 10% of organic residue from total feed quantity. No toxic matter (ammonia and nitrite), antibiotics, mercury or led were found in the pools through the entire period.

The financial aspect of this innovative farming system is another major bonus. Construction cost for the Israeli ‘Herev Lah’et’ farm, operated by Grow Fish Anywhere group, was roughly $7-8 per Kg. of construction. A fully operating farm that produces 500-600 tones annually of Sea Bream or Sea Bass costs up to $5M. Dotan Bar-Noy, C.E.O of the GFA group, says that ‘in the future the prices will be reduced by 10-20% with higher efficiency of design’. But the long-term financial implications of running this kind of farm are even more far-reaching. One reason is that there’re no environmental damage costs or payouts due to contaminated or escaped fish. Another is that this system can benefit not only coastal countries, but those in the desert as well, increasing the ‘green job’ potential anywhere in the world.

The next stop on the map for the eco-friendly system is the US. Last year GFA partnered with an American Sanit Corporation based in New York’s Columbia County to create the ‘Local Ocean’ group, a first-of-its-kind re-circulating saltwater commercial aquaculture operation. Following the initial success of the farm, GFA say the American farm is expected to grow further. In addition to growing Mediterranean Sea bass, Local Ocean plans for the farm to be a research and development facility as well. When the patent is picked up by more countries, it is likely to replace at least some of the existing farms because for the first time ‘operating the system without water exchange allows us to grow marine fish away from the sea’, says Van Rijn. The company’s Chief Financial Officer Roy Ben Itzhak said investors from all over the world are waiting to bid on the company: ‘Everyone’s waiting to see what happens in the Hudson Valley’.

The potential of the new system is enormous, as can be seen both in Israel and the US, but there’s further room for improvement. The most noticeable ‘imperfection’ of the system is the fact that the carnivorous fish, such as Salmon and Mackerel, are still fed with fingerlings (small fish processed with other nutrition ingredients to produce fish feed). Although the filtration system deals with feed residues effectively, it still means small fish continue to be fished out of the oceans. ‘This is still a problem with aquaculture concept in general. You feed big fish with small ones’ says Bar-Noy. But Van Rijn’s system is still ahead of conventional farms according to Bar-Noy: ‘Intensive systems (such as ours) have a better FCR (Food conversion ratio) than other method. In order to raise 0.5 Kg of Sea bream we have to feed it ~0.65kg of food. Other methods (such as cages) have to feed the fish around 1kg’.

The innovative filtration system is only one example to a potential green business that benefits not only the economy and human health, but also the preservation of natural biodiversity.  IUCN has drafted an entire document in which it details an array of business opportunities for anyone who wishes to ‘jump on the eco-business wagon’ including ecosystem restoration and environmental asset finance or brokerage. IUCN’s annual Red List already contains over 3,000 fresh water fish on the verge of total extinction. If the necessary steps are not taken soon, the organization says that ‘there will be no viable fish or invertebrate species available to fisheries by 2050’. Both farms show promising results, especially when it comes to fish quality and cessation of water pollution but they are still very new and have place for improvement. The next few years, particularly at the Hudson farm, will determine whether the system’s organic disintegration filter will live up to its promise.