Tapioca-based bakeware is compostable, biodegradable

 

 

Posted 16 Auguste 2011, by Anne Marie Mohan, Greener Package (Summit Media Group), greenerpackage.com

 

Biosphere Industries provides closed-loop single-use food packaging systems that are said to have minimal to no impact on the earth’s natural life cycles. In developing the technology, a major priority for the company was to use yearly grown raw materials that would have minimal impact on the environment. Other priorities related to defining the material. “We wanted to create a material that was primarily starch-based,” explains founder Elie Helou Jr. “Tapioca was chosen due to its allergen-free nature. We wanted it to be harvestable without killing the plant, so the supply would be annually renewable. We wanted it to be rigid, too, and have insulating properties so it could be a replacement for EPS or Styrofoam.

“Dual ovenability was also important. Finally, the material had to be certifiable as compostable, biodegradable, and salt water-biodegradable, by independent, recognized agencies.”

The resulting product, now marketed under the trade names Biosphere Bakeware and Blueware Serveware, uses a process that “bakes” the starch, rather than converting starch into plastic.

Ingredients in Biosphere’s “platform” technology include tapioca starch as the primary ingredient, and a lesser amount of grass fibers, and additives that are custom to each recipe, that add strength, flexibility, or color. The most critical aspect of the manufacturing process is ingredient batching, which must be highly accurate.

For its speed, repeatability, lead time for completion, and cost, Ingredient Masters Inc. was selected by Biosphere to supply a turnkey automated batching system that can produce one batch every 7 minutes.

After mixing, material is baked in molds. After baking, the Biosphere material is cool to the touch. Product can then be used in commercial food preparation at up to 420º F. The Biosphere material does not require a coating for low-moisture applications, although the firm’s R&D group has developed one—a cellulose-based formula for prepared meals and drinking cups. It is currently undergoing compostability testing. The only byproduct of the manufacturing process is steam.

Biosphere’s material has proved suitable for bakeware. Muffin trays and pie pans are excellent applications, as are bakeware products with unique features, or deep-draw requirements. The material will produce product with depths of 9 in. and greater.

The material is said to have exceptional insulative properties, and adequate short-term moisture-resistant properties as well, so it’s a natural for ice cream, says Helou. Biosphere has also invented the ability to manufacture threaded containers, and small cups with screw-on lids. By the end of 2011, there will also be an edible version of the product line for pets, the company says.

Related sponsored links*

• White paper: White paper: A New Flexible Pouch for Fresh-Cut Produce Delivers Shelf Impact, Optimal Freshness, Consumer Convenience, and Overall Cost Savings

* indicates an article that was submitted directly to this Web site by the supplier, and was not handled by the Greener Package editorial staff.

http://www.greenerpackage.com/renewable_resources/tapioca-based_bakeware_compostable_biodegradable

An accuracy assessment of a spatial bioclimatic model

Canadian Forest Service Publications

Posted 18 August 2011, by Staff, Natural Resources Canada, nofc.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca

View Record

An accuracy assessment of a spatial bioclimatic model. 1996. McKenney, D.W.; Mackey, B.G.; Hutchinson, M.F.; Sims, R.A. Pages 1 -11 (Vol. RM-GTR-277) in Proceedings: Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences: Second International Symposium. May 21-23, 1996, Fort Collins, Colorado. Natural Resources Canada, Great Lakes Forestry Centre, Fort Collins, Colorado, General Technical Report RM-GTR-277. 728 p.

Year: 1996

Issued By: Great Lakes Forestry Centre

Catalog ID: 29416

Language: English

Series: Information Report (GLFC – Sault Ste. Marie)

CFS Availability: Order paper copy (free)

Mark record

Abstract

Spatially explicit models of forest ecosystems require the integration of biophysical data at a range of scales. Preditions of biotic response should be based on spatially explicit models of the driving environmental processes, in particular those related to climate and topography. Ongoing research in the forests of Ontario have focused on the development of suitably scaled digital elevation models and mesoscaled models of climatic averages. These in turn hae been used to spatially extend varoius biological survey data. In this paper we present some accuracy assessments of the spatial climate models and subsquent differences in species’ predicted distributions.

http://nofc.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/publications/?id=29416

A double-sided CSG dilemma

 

 

Posted 18 August 2011, by Rob Burgess, Business Spectator, businessspectator.com

 

Four years ago, fund manager John Abernethy wrote a prescient article for Business Spectator explaining how we were degrading our ‘economic environment’ just as much as the physical and biological environment.

Abernethy, executive director and chief investment officer of Clime Investment Management, knows plenty about money and his article, published in the throes of the initial 2007 sub-prime crisis, is worth re-reading as a reminder that we have been through the financial and economic equivalents of a Chernobyl, an Exxon Valdez and the American dustbowl of the early 1930s (Economic warming, November 2007).

Today we limp forward wondering whether the ‘ecological system’ of global finance and economics will collapse altogether.

Increasingly ‘economics’, the study of scarcity, and ‘ecology’, the study of the biological systems that fill our world, are different sides of the same coin.

Thus the Greens believe they are speaking great economic truths, but based on a much longer timeframe than conventional economists. If you’ll bear with me for a moment, it’s fair to say that in theory they are right – the fairly radical suite of policies they promote would, in theory, hand a better world to our great grandchildren than the one we inhabit. In theory.

On the other side of the coin, free-market thinkers within both the Labor and Liberal parties – Craig Emerson and Malcolm Turnbull spring to mind as exemplars – promote sound economic management as a means to be able to afford to save the natural world. This kind of thought sees a shorter timeframe as fundamental to solving our problems. If we do not solve the immediate problems of political economy, hungry desperate populations around the world will uproot every tree and ravage every landscape in an attempt to survive. We can’t all be middle-class Greens voters.

And in Australia right now, the two mindsets are clashing like never before over the issue of coal seam gas.

As Robert Gottliebsen has written today and yesterday, big mistakes have been made by a number of companies – small and large – in the way they handle relationships with the farmers who own property rights to the topsoil of the land in question, and who have in many cases felt their rights violated by clumsy exploration and well drilling (Beware the CSG enfants terrible, August 17; Who’ll take the CSG blame? August 18).

However, the real environmental issue lies not with unsightly well-heads, but in what happens below. The CSG majors have refined their extraction techniques in recent years to avoid the most hazardous chemicals – one, on condition of anonymity, explained to me yesterday that what is pumped down into the ground to release CSG is around 97 per cent water and sand, with the remaining 3 per cent being “essentially the kind of household chemicals you’d find in a normal home”.

Sounds pretty benign, doesn’t it. But the other view of that harmless mixture is this: imagine filling hundreds of water tankers with a 3 per cent chemical solution, then pouring the lot into an old quarry to create a wetland environment. It might do alright, but then again it might not.

Jim Cox, professor of hydrology at the University of Adelaide, explained to me yesterday the unique characteristics of the Great Artesian Basin that extends over much of the areas of Queensland and some of NSW where CSG extraction is occurring. (This report has a neat little map of where the water is.)

In many parts of the world, underground aquifers are quite discrete, so any pollution of one is likely to be contained. This is not necessarily true of the GAB – Cox explains that areas of heavy rainfall in the north create a long, percolating flow of water that makes its way south, taking perhaps 100 years to reach the southern regions.

And that is where the two sides of the ecology/economics coin come together. The flow of pollutants created by the ‘fracking’ process of extraction is either an unacceptable burden for future generations who may rely on this water to irrigate crops in an increasingly hungry world; or it is a cost that, with the right discount rate applied, is almost negligible alongside the immense benefit of the energy we extract from CSG.

Bob Brown yesterday questioned the science used by fans of CSG, who claim that as an energy source it releases 50 to 70 per cent less CO2 than coal. That, in the industry’s eyes, makes CSG a ‘hero’ energy source.

Brown’s comments seem curiously opportunistic. While attacking Tony Abbott for questioning the science of climate change, Brown seems happy enough to employ the same tactic when politics so demands.

Labor is no better, mostly siding with farmers and landholders for political reasons when CSG is an integral part of its carbon reduction package – the transitional fuel that will help use through the difficult decades while our national finances, and voter sentiment, catches up with the scientists’ calls for a clean energy future.

In effect, all major parties are favouring the bucolic vision of an unspoiled countryside over their own stated policies to begin the serious work of carbon emissions reduction. All three forces in Australian politics – Labor, Coalition, Greens – are straining to keep economics and ecology separate for political reasons. That’s a fight we’re all sure to lose.

Related Articles

• A double-sided CSG dilemma Aug 18

• US candidate Perry says Fed should open its books Aug 18

• Look beyond the RBA rates debate Aug 17

• Abbott’s right-hand woman Aug 17

• Windsor urges caution on CSG Aug 17

 

(Ed Note: please visit the original site for more content associated with this article.)

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/coal-seam-gas-Greens-energy-Turnbull-farming-CSG-c-pd20110818-KTTSW?opendocument&src=rss#

 

Creation of Forest Agency and Forest Association planned in Azerbaijan

 

 

Posted 17 August 2011, by Staff, ABC-AZ (Fineko Informational & Analytic Agency), abc.az

 

Baku, Fineko/abc.az. Today Baku is hosting a seminar on FLEG program oriented on forest protection.

Consultant Azad Aliyev has reported that creation of independent wood agency or committee will enable to expand authorities of Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry’s relevant department.

In turn national expert of Justice Ministry of Azerbaijan Matanat Asgarova has told that by present within FLEG programs jointly realized by the World Bank, IVCN, WWF, ENPI, there have been developed proposals envisaging creation of Wood Association to attract local communities and block committees to forest management control process.

” Also it is planned to develop new blanket acts defining limits of organizations’ authorities and responsible for fulfillment of this code’s points on the  basis of over 50 regulations aimed at implementation of Forest Code. The draft proposals are also planned to be supplemented by introduction of rules regulating the process of forest planting and landscaping with the use of corresponding international experience “,- M. Asgarova noted.

Related news

 

• 1.5-2 cu m of firewood per person used in Azerbaijan in autumn-winter period
• Corruption in forest control system announced in Baku
• In July Environment & Natural Resources Ministry received 120 complaints
• BASF acceded to raising quality of occupational standards in Azerbaijan
• Illegal wood-felling worth over 77,000 manat registered in Azerbaijan from early 2011
• IMF called the USA for complex of domestic and international measures for support of development
• 62 million children around world involved in hazardous jobs
• Azerbaijan and Serbia signed an investment protection agreement
• 95% of forest fires in Azerbaijan occur because of holidaymaker negligence
• ‘Variable silkworm’ epidemic transfers to Azerbaijan from Russia

 

 

http://abc.az/eng/news/main/56867.html

 

Time for new strategy to save mammals, say biologists

 

The Handout photo released on August 16, 2011 by the Wildlife Conversation Society and taken as part of the first Global Camera Trap Mammal study done by The Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring Network (TEAM), shows Gorilla Beringei Beringei (Mountain Gorilla) in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda. AFP Photo/ TEAM network

 

Posted 17 August 2011, by Staff (Agence France-Presse), Dawn, dawn.com

 

 

PARIS: Time is running out to craft a plan to save Earth’s rich diversity of mammals, a quarter of whose species could be wiped out, biologists warned on Tuesday.

“A global mammal strategy is urgent,” they said in a journal published by the Royal Society, Britain’s academy of sciences.

Millions of people have rallied to the cause of large iconic mammals such as the tiger, the polar bear and the giant panda, they noted.

But the news for less visible species is grim, especially those with a commercial value for poachers or whose habitat is at risk from farming, development or impending climate change.

Of the 5,339 documented species of mammals that are alive today, a quarter are threatened with extinction in the wild, according to their estimates, appearing in the journal Philosophical Transactions.

“As of today, there is not yet a comprehensive, widely agreed, global conservation strategy to tackle the mammal decline,” said Carlo Rondinini and Luigi Boitani of the Global Mammal Assessment Programme at Rome’s Sapienza University, and Ana Rodrigues of the Centre of Evolutive and Functional Ecology in Montpellier, France.

They suggested the UN’s Biodiversity Convention weave a single vision, identifying which areas and species are at risk and how resources can be mustered to save them.
This work should then be coordinated by an authoritative institution with global reach, such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Accompanying papers in the journal predicted that the biggest losses of mammal habitat will be in Africa and the Americas, while many species will be lost on the Mediterranean rim if predictions of climate change prove correct.

Quantifying such perils is hard, given that many mammals are elusive species and may live in fragmented, out-of-the-way habitats, the experts admitted.

Indeed, Australian investigators reported last September that of 187 mammals that have been “missing” since 1500, 67 species have subsequently been found again.

In one of the new papers, scientists reported on the world’s biggest “camera trap” survey, aimed at getting an accurate idea of mammal populations, the size of animals and availability of food.

Creatures snapped automatically as they passed by a hidden lens ranged from a tiny mouse to the African elephant, gorillas, cougars and giant anteaters, as well as occasional poachers and tourists, according to the team from the US organisation Conservation International.

The probe set up 420 cameras at protected sites in Brazil, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Laos, Suriname, Tanzania and Uganda in a project that ran from 2008-2010 and yielded 52,000 images.

“We take away two key findings,” said Jorge Ahumada of the NGO’s Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring Network.

“First, protected areas matter: the bigger the forest they live in, the higher the number and diversity of species, body sizes and diet types. “Second, some mammals seem more vulnerable to habitat loss than others: insect-eating mammals — like anteaters, armadillos and some primates – are the first to disappear, while other groups, like herbivores, seem to be less sensitive.”

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Burning issue: Ignoring critical needs?

Global warming continues as greenhouse gas grows

 

http://www.dawn.com/2011/08/17/time-for-new-strategy-to-save-mammals-say-biologists.html

Cameratraps take global snapshot of declining tropical mammals

Central Suriname Nature Reserve, Suriname. A jaguar (Panthera Onca), a Near Threatened species. Of the sites researched, Suriname's site presented the highest number of species diversity. Photo courtesy of Conservation International Suriname, a member of the TEAM network.

Posted 17 August 2011, by Jeremy Hance, Mongabay, mongabay.com

A groundbreaking cameratrap study has mapped the abundance, or lack thereof, of tropical mammal populations across seven countries in some of the world’s most important rainforests. Undertaken by The Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring Network (TEAM), the study found that habitat loss was having a critical impact on mammals. The study, which documented 105 mammals (nearly 2 percent of the world’s known mammals) on three continents, also confirmed that mammals fared far better—both in diversity and abundance—in areas with continuous forest versus areas that had been degraded.

“The results of the study are important in that they confirm what we suspected: habitat destruction is slowly but surely killing our planet’s mammal diversity,” said lead author Jorge Ahumada with TEAM and Conservation International (CI) in a press release.

Snapping 52,000 photos in Uganda, Tanzania, Indonesia, Laos, Suriname, Brazil, and Costa Rica, the researchers not only discovered that habitat loss was impacting mammals, but that the size of protected areas mattered: not surprisingly larger protected areas meant richer mammal communities, while smaller protected areas saw mammal diversity drop. According to the paper, the one exception to this finding was National Protected Area. Despite being a large protected area, the mammal community at Nam Kading was the least diverse (13 recorded species) of any of the seven areas sampled. Researchers hypothesize that this is due to over-hunting and poaching in the region along with fragmented habitat. The richest mammals community, in contrast, was recorded in the Central Suriname Nature Reserve (28 mammals recorded). Suriname’s rainforest is largely intact.

Poacher caught on camera in Nam Kading in Laos. Of the sites researched, this one presented the lowest number of species diversity and the highest habitat fragmentation. Photo courtesy of Wildlife Conservation Society, a member of the TEAM network.

Researchers also found that habitat loss hit certain types of mammals harder than others.

“Some mammals seem more vulnerable to habitat loss than others: insect-eating mammals—like anteaters, armadillos and some primates, are the first to disappear—while other groups, like herbivores, seem to be less sensitive,” explains Ahumada. The study found that after insectivores, omnivores like bears were next most-affected group by habitat loss.

Tropical mammals provide a number of benefits to the ecosystems they inhabit. Big predators keep a check on herbivores, who otherwise may overgraze with detrimental impacts on plants, while frugivorous (fruit-eating) mammals play a huge role in seed dispersal, which may even impact a forest’s ability to store carbon.

“Some propose that removal of large-bodied tropical terrestrial mammals through intensive hunting can reduce the capacity of tropical forests to store carbon, either through a reduction in large seeded/high carbon density species mostly dispersed by frugivorous vertebrates,” the authors write.

Globally, 22 percent of world’s mammals are threatened with extinction according to the IUCN Red List. However, for many of the world’s tropical mammals there is simply not enough data to make a determination on their status. TEAM hopes to help change this.

To gather data that could be readily compared across sites, each site was set up with 60 cameratraps with one cameratrap for every two square kilometers.

“What makes this study scientifically groundbreaking is that we created for the first time consistent, comparable information for mammals on a global scale setting an effective baseline to monitor change. By using this single, standardized methodology in the years to come and comparing the data we receive, we will be able to see trends in mammal communities and take specific, targeted action to save them,” explains Ahumada, “Without a systematic, global approach to monitoring these animals and making sure the data gets to people making decisions, we are only recording their extinctions, not actually saving them.”

The TEAM work is expanding. Since 2010, cameratraps have installed in 10 additional sites: Panama, Ecuador, a second site in Brazil, two sites in Peru, Madagascar, Congo, Cameroon, Malaysia and India. By 2013, plans are to expand the sites to 40.

Areas studied:

Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (Uganda)
Udzungwa Mountains National Park (Tanzania)
Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park (Indonesia)
Nam Kading National Protected Area (Laos)
Central Suriname Nature Reserve (Suriname)
Manaus (Brazil)
Volcan Barva Transect (Costa Rica)

CITATION: Jorge A. Ahumada, Carlos E. F. Silva, Krisna Gajapersad, Chris Hallam, Johanna Hurtado, Emanuel Martin, Alex McWilliam, Badru Mugerwa, Tim O’Brien, Francesco Rovero, Douglas Sheil, Wilson R. Spironello, Nurul Winarni and Sandy J. Andelman. Community structure and diversity of tropical forest mammals: data from a global camera trap network. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 2011 366, 2703-2711. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2011.0115.

Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) an Endangered species from Bwindi impenetrable Forest, Uganda. Photo courtesy of Wildlife Conservation Society, a member of the TEAM network.

Related articles

Balancing agriculture and rainforest biodiversity in India’s Western Ghats

(08/08/2011) When one thinks of the world’s great rainforests the Amazon, Congo, and the tropical forests of Southeast Asia and Indonesia usually come to mind. Rarely does India—home to over a billion people—make an appearance. But along India’s west coast lies one of the world’s great tropical forests and biodiversity hotspots, the Western Ghats. However it’s not just the explosion of life one finds in the Western Ghats that make it notable, it’s also the forest’s long—and ongoing—relationship to humans, lots of humans. Unlike many of the world’s other great rainforests, the Western Ghats has long been a region of agriculture. This is one place in the world where elephants walk through tea fields and tigers migrate across betel nut plantations. While wildlife has survived alongside humans for centuries in the region, continuing development, population growth and intensification of agriculture are putting increased pressure on this always-precarious relationship. In a recent paper in Biological Conservation, four researchers examine how well agricultural landscapes support biodiversity conservation in one of India’s most species-rich landscapes.

Decline in top predators and megafauna ‘humankind’s most pervasive influence on nature’

(07/14/2011) Worldwide wolf populations have dropped around 99 percent from historic populations. Lion populations have fallen from 450,000 to 20,000 in 50 years. Three subspecies of tiger went extinct in the 20th Century. Overfishing and finning has cut some shark populations down by 90 percent in just a few decades. Though humpback whales have rebounded since whaling was banned, they are still far from historic numbers. While some humans have mourned such statistics as an aesthetic loss, scientists now say these declines have a far greater impact on humans than just the vanishing of iconic animals. The almost wholesale destruction of top predators—such as sharks, wolves, and big cats—has drastically altered the world’s ecosystems, according to a new review study in Science. Although researchers have long known that the decline of animals at the top of food chain, including big herbivores and omnivores, affects ecosystems through what is known as ‘trophic cascade’, studies over the past few decades are only beginning to reveal the extent to which these animals maintain healthy environments, preserve biodiversity, and improve nature’s productivity.

Camera traps reveal no tigers, but other carnivores in Khao Yai National Park

(06/27/2011) A four-year camera trap project has revealed that Khao Yai National Park in Thailand is still home to a wide-variety of carnivore species, but tigers may be on their way out or already gone finds a new study from mongabay.com’s open access journal Tropical Conservation Science. Photographing with 15 cameras the study snapped photos of 14 carnivore species in the park. However, the photographic evidence implies that predator populations have fallen in the park over the past decade due to human activities, including poaching.

(Ed Note: Please visit the original site for a more article photos, a photo gallery and associated content.)

Environment taking back seat to pocketbook issues: survey

 

 

Posted 17 August 2011, by May Jeong (The Globe and Mail), CTV News (Bell Media),  ctv.ca

 

Companies can now take a break from making noise about their environmental efforts to woo consumers, a study has found.

“The majority of Canadians think it is too expensive to make choices that will benefit the environment in the face of personal pocketbook pressures,” said Jack Bensimon, president of Bensimon Byrne, the Toronto-based advertising agency that put out the Consumerology Report..

Fewer Canadians are willing to pay a premium “for doing the right thing,” with the environment losing its status as one of the top five issues Canadians care for, according to the report.

The momentum environmental issues enjoyed three years ago has experienced a sharp decline, as the age of thrift is upon us. “Canadians are more cost sensitive now. Lower prices matter much more than they used to,” explained David Herl, principal partner with Gandalf Group, which conducted the study.

This is a stark change from three years ago, when a similar study was conducted. At the time, auto retailers were instructed to appeal to fuel economy and dish detergent manufacturers were encouraged to market environmentally friendly products. “The willingness to pay more for better environmental outcomes has badly diminished,” Mr. Bensimon said.

Concerns over the environment and climate change have slipped to the bottom of the chart, dropping 11 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively, since last year. “These are precipitous changes,” Mr. Herl said. Previously topping the charts, environmental issues have been replaced by worries over the state of health care and the price of gasoline. Pocketbook concerns such as economy, unemployment and adequate pensions made gains in their place.

“Are consumers willing to pay more? The answer is overwhelmingly no,” Mr. Herl said.

The study also found a gap in how Canadians feel about the state of our economy (stronger) with how they feel about their own personal prospects (worse). Similarly, there is a difference in how Canadians feel about the environment as citizens (concerned), compared to how they feel as consumers (cash strapped).

What does this mean for companies? “They are better off focusing on waste, garbage and packaging than crafting a message around renewable energy and climate change. It’s all about getting the best bang for your buck,” Mr. Herl explained.

Indeed, politicians have long striven to contextualize environmental issues as a health concern, with more than 65 per cent of Canadians saying they care about smog, compared to only 49 per cent who care about climate change, though the two are linked.

The survey also found that more than 70 per cent of Canadians consider corporate environmental efforts as green washing. This means that green campaigns may be doing companies more harm than good. Ninety-five per cent of Canadians would like to see government standards imposed on companies to weed out dubious claims. “There is much cynicism about green marketing. Consumers perceive it as companies taking advantage of good will,” Mr. Herl said.

“The real missed opportunity,” explained Mr. Bensimon, looking back to the first survey three years ago, is that no company has proffered environmental products that are priced the same as conventional products. “That’s the sweet spot the market missed,” he said. He believes that had companies seen the rise in green interest not as a get-rich-quick scheme, but a chance to cultivate sophisticated consumers, the committed buyer base could have easily mitigated the impact of the recent recession.

Further, what was previously perceived as a generation gap in the green debate – a vision of rallying youth pitted against complacent adults – turns out to be a gender one.

“An old woman is more likely to be green than a young man,” said Mr. Herl.

Women are twice as likely as men to pay more for an environmentally responsible product. Fifty-eight per cent of women are considered to be strong environmental consumers, whereas 58 per cent of men “won’t buy green even if it doesn’t cost more.”

It doesn’t mean companies should halt all their green campaigns, however. The silver lining is that four out of 10 Canadians remain steadfastly committed to the environment. “It’s the middle that’s fallen out,” Mr. Herl said. The 32 per cent of Canadians who identified themselves as caring “somewhat” for the environment three years ago fell to 23 per cent, all of them migrating to the “least concerned” category. This polarizes the field into strong environmental consumers, and the wholly unconvinced.

“The study underscores the fact that we still treat the environment as something separate from issues such as economy or gas prices when really, if you look at the top five issues that people care about, four are directly linked to the environment,” said Cherise Burda, Ontario policy director at Pembina Institute, an environmental think tank.

“If you address those issues in a comprehensive way, you are actually addressing environmental issues. People care about smog, people care about air quality. But environment is all of those things. They go hand in hand.”

 

http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article2131672.html

Can the armed forces embrace sustainability?

 

John Elkington explores the role of the military in a more sustainable future

 

Posted 17 August 2011, by John Elkington, The Guardian (Media Limited), guardian.co.uk

In the aftermath of the rioting and looting in London and other cities, a citizen’s army brandished their brooms and began the great clean-up. Hopefully, this extraordinary reflex action presages similar movements that will need to be mobilised as we start the giant clean-up to repair the damage after our environmental excesses over the past 150 years. But, just as some called for the armed forces to be mobilised to control Britain’s rioters, here again it is far from clear that citizens can do this environmental clean-up on their own. So what future role might there be for the military?

This is an area in which you have to be very careful what you ask for. Turkey, for example, is still struggling to put its military – which has often seemed to run a parallel state – back into the bottle. But the question of how we might mobilise the best elements of our intelligence and armed services has been in my mind for a while. And the thought-train was given a sharp nudge earlier in the year when I visited Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, in Washington DC. He has recently been musing on what it would take to repeat a mobilisation at least on the scale of that which brought America into WWII.

He quotes Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her book No Ordinary Time, in which she describes some of the unlikely transformations American companies went through in tooling up for war. “A spark-plug factory was among the first to switch to the production of machine guns. Soon a manufacturer of stoves was producing lifeboats. A merry-go-round factory was making gun mounts; a toy company was turning out compasses; a corset manufacturer was producing grenade belts; and a pinball machine plant began to make armour-piercing shells.”

Astonishing, that corset example! In any event, while everyone else seemed to be on holiday this past week, or being called back to deal with riots and financial meltdowns, I have been labouring away on my new book, The Zeronauts: Breaking the Sustainability Barrier. And at times it has seemed that the appetite of companies to embrace zero targets would far outpace my speeding fingers on the keyboard.

The “zeronauts” of the title are innovators, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, investors and public policy-makers who are pushing towards zero emissions, carbon, waste, toxics, poverty, pandemics or proliferation. And a growing number of companies are embracing zero-based targets, particularly—paradoxically, given its stance on climate change—in America.

But what about the military, meanwhile? I was prompted to think even harder about the future role of the armed forces when I was recently asked by Jørgen Randers, part of the original Limits to Growth team in 1972, to write an essay for a new book he plans for 2012. My title: ‘The Limits to Military Growth.’ At times, as we seem increasingly tempted to wield our military muscle around the world, it seems as if the British armed forces are likely to shrivel away as we watch under the onslaught of budget cuts.

Only a wild optimist – or fatalist – would argue that nation states should disarm, following the example of Costa Rica. Indeed, that small Central American state can be seen as the exception that proves the rule. In addition to the ubiquity of death and taxes, we are guaranteed to need armed forces for the foreseeable future, but increasingly with the new purpose to deal with the consequences of large-scale environmental change.

For the armed services – and the defence industries – to legitimately play this new role, however, they will need to go through the same sort of transparency and sustainability revolutions that have hit a broad range of other sectors in recent decades. Think, for example, about the endemic corruption in so much of the defence world – and of the extent to which the military control the economies in countries such as Iran and China.

We must learn in the coming decades how to reboot and repurpose military operating systems. By mid-century, if we succeed, the armed forces of many countries will have specialised in helping their economies and societies adapt to natural disasters – particularly those caused by advancing climate change. This will still mean fighting wars, managing border disputes and coping with refugees, but I think we will also look back on Mikhail Gorbachev’s “Green Cross” as an idea before its time.

Here’s how it might go. Environmental regeneration, augmentation (including various forms of geo-engineering) and conservation will become a key part of military training – and be opened up for a growing proportion of young people, partly as a means of educating, training and disciplining populations. Ground forces will be tasked with protecting key elements of the biosphere from human depredations. Naval forces will be redeployed to protect the remaining wild fisheries – and the growing number of fish farming and ocean ranching operations. Air forces will be used for a range of related surveillance tasks, including future generations of smart sensor networks and drones, the latter often evolved on the principles of biomimicry. Intelligence services – including the satellite remote sensing branches – will police eco-crime and intervene where there is evidence of the new crime of “ecocide”.

You can already see evidence of another trajectory in the military, with growing numbers of zero-impact goals being announced in relation to carbon, waste toxics and even fossil fuels. Consider the US Army’s Net Zero Initiative. Those driving this trend in the US are dubbed Green Hawks.

By mid-century, however, we will also have seen a deeply unwelcome explosion of interest in environmental weapons. These started with cloud-seeding attempts, soon expanding to attempts to make incisions in the ozone layer. As a result of bitter experience, new treaties will be drawn up to regulate the development and use of such weapons. The history of conflict shows that every form of technology can be press-ganged into uniform – and many will. But a key part of our challenge in the coming decade will be to press-gang the military into the sustainability business.

John Elkington is executive chairman of Volans, co-founder of SustainAbility, blogs at www.johnelkington.com, tweets at @volansjohn and is a member of the Guardian’s Sustainable Business Advisory Panel

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