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Sustainable Development Update Issue 3, Volume 7, 2007 The Sustainable Development Update (SDU) focuses on the links between ecology, society and the economy. It is produced by Albaeco, an independent non-profit organisation. SDU is produced with support from Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Environment Policy Division. Dr. Fredrik Moberg, Editor Click the miniature below to download in pdf-format: 
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Biomimicry: Look deep into nature and you might understand everything better It is always a good thing to include a quote from Einstein. Makes you sound smart. Imagine what two quotes could do to my editorial… 1) “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” 2) “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” To make it even more intelligent looking I will combine the two. Started to think about these quotes while reading about a concept called biomimicry. It looks deep into nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a little insect called the Namibian Beetle and its ability to pull water from fog in order to construct new much more effective water-harvesting sheets, that can be used for capturing water in for example dry agricultural systems, is an example of this. Another example is pharmaceutical companies using compounds found in rainforests for ideas for new medicines. The rationale for biomimicry is that animals, plants, and microbes have already found what works after billions of years of research and development. “Failures are fossils”, as proponents of biomimicry put it. Many now see biomimicry as a rare hopeful note in the chorus of environmental warnings. It is about solving problems by using an alternative to the neoclassical economic model of progress – the kind of thinking we used when we created many of today’s environmental problems. Biomimicry can also be used to decrease the emissions of greenhouse gases and thus mitigate global warming. One example is the Eastgate building in Harare, Zimbabwe. It has a termite-inspired ventilation system instead of fossil fuel consuming air-conditioning. The building imitates the self-cooling mounds of local termites that keep the temperature inside their nests to within one degree of 31 °C in an environment where the outside temperature varies between 3 °C and 42 °C. Altogether this is reported to have saved 3.5 million in air conditioning costs in the first five years, while using only 10 percent of the energy of a conventional building of the same size. Biomimicry has, however, also been criticised. One critique is that natural selection settles for designs that are sufficient for survival (good enough) rather than the optimum design. Notwithstanding, after billions of years of experimentation, designs from nature’s own R&D division at least provides a lot of ideas we wouldn’t have come up with without this natural inspiration. It is, along this line, also important to remember that biomimicry is not about imitating everything we see in nature. You wouldn’t want human behaviour to be inspired by male lions entering a new pride that, after having fought off the incumbent male, tend to kill and even eat the pride’s defenceless cubs. Not to mention female spiders that like to dine on their partners after sex. Maybe the best thing about biomimicry is that it provides opportunity for the naked ape to step back and see ourselves as one biological species among others – part of and dependent on nature. Or to quote yet another smart person; Janine Benyus, probably the most important voice in the new wave of scientists, designers and engineers engaged in biomimicry: “It’s a whole new relationship for us as a species, to the rest of the natural world. There is still an enormous amount to learn, and these guys are blinking out as we speak, these geniuses. What’s really amazing about these organisms is what they do in total… managing to filter the air we breathe and to filter the water we’re drinking, and to build soil. And at some point that’s our real design challenge.” /Dr. Fredrik Moberg, Editor
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Urban farming: a potential key factor for food security, poverty alleviation, public health and sustainability In an increasingly urban world, urban farming is gaining importance. Urban agriculture by poor farmers for poor consumers is of special importance. It might keep prices down, provide livelihood and lower the costs for the transportation of foodstuffs. Urban agriculture means growing of plants and raising of animals for food and other uses within and close to urban areas. It is now receiving increasing attention from development organisations as well as national and local authorities in many developing countries. – There will be a huge increase in urban populations. Making sure they have the food they need will pose an unprecedented challenge, says Alexander Müller, Acting Head of FAO’s Agriculture and Consumer Department.  Abut 800 million people are estimated to be involved in urban farming worldwide and it produces about one third of the food consumed by the urban residents. Urban farming does not only provide jobs and food. It may also contribute to food security, crises prevention, sewage treatment, biodiversity conservation, and landslide prevention. The hanging gardens in Babylon are a good example of how urban agriculture has been a component of the urban culture for long; cities were often established on the best farmland since it was easy to build upon and to establish a good market with little transportation needs. Today urban farming is a common feature in Asian and African cities. In a city as Dakar, Senegal, for example more than 50 percent of the households are involved in urban agriculture. As a consequence, politics, business and planning now start to consider urban agriculture as a tool to meet social, ecological and nutritional challenges. Food production, processing and distribution contributes to food security and livelihood for many people living in urban settings, providing important sources of income and employment. Hence, this can be an important factor for urban poverty alleviation. Studies from several African cities show that families engaged in urban farming have a higher nutrient intake and generally are healthier. Poverty and food The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has recently launched a new initiative promoting urban farming in order to fight hunger and malnutrition in the world’s cities. The rationale for this is that the majority of the future population growth is projected to occur in urban regions, particularly in the developing world, alongside with growing slums. Under the ongoing interdisciplinary initiative “Food for the Cities” program, FAO is helping a number of cities to promote urban and peri-urban agriculture. It is reasoned that if poverty in cities is not explicitly addressed and if food security will not be included in urban planning, the UN Millennium Development Goals will not be achieved. Additionally, a comprehensive perspective linking cities to rural areas is emphasised. The initiative promotes small scale urban farming such as allotment gardens (small pieces of property with individual or family ownership and management located in an allotment cluster) in urban or semi-urban environments. Crisis management In many parts of the world allotment gardens and other forms of small scale urban agriculture have been an important element in helping city dwellers survive in times of crises, particularly in times of wars. For example, it has been estimated that in 1918 allotment gardens provided the British with 2,000,000 tons of vegetables. Along this line, FAO is now working with city authorities to help developing urban land in several cities like Kinshasa and Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo into allotment gardens. The aim is to produce fresh vegetables – and extra income – for 16 000 participating families, or roughly 80 000 people. Allotment gardens can also have several social functions, such as health benefits, education, improved attitudes towards neighbours, recreation and meeting places. Not to mention biodiversity conservation and improved ecological functioning. A recent example where a sudden drastic alteration of the economic situation lead to a crisis for the urban population was during the economic crisis in Argentina 2001. Poverty levels increased dramatically in city regions.  In order to meet the need, in particular within the groups of women and youth who had the biggest problems in finding formal employment, a program was established 2002 in the city of Rosario, The Urban Agricultural Programme (UAP). Here about 60 percent of the population was under the poverty line of $90 per month. The aims were to increase the level to a monthly income between $100-150 by giving access to vacant land for urban agriculture to the poor. The focus was on food production with quick results and included facilitation for the producers to sell directly to the public in public spaces and transforming uncultivated landscapes to cultivation gardens. The program has so far succeeded to establish 791 community gardens, create chemical free vegetable production for 40,000 people, weekly fairs and producers networks, institutionalize the urban farming in a local governmental policy. Vegetables in micro-gardens Another inspiring example is a pilot study in Bogota and Medellin, Colombia where local experts assisted by FAO have educated hundreds of families living in poor neighbourhoods with limited access to land. They have been stimulated to produce their own vegetables in micro-gardens right inside their homes, using containers like recycled water bottles, old tires and trays on windowsills, in courtyards and even on the stairs. By using so called substrate growing or simplified hydroponics (water substitutes for soil), and recipients positioned wherever there is enough space and light, each family harvests about 25 kg per month of vegetables. Any surpluses are sold off for cash to neighbours or through a cooperative set up under the project. Not without problems Even though urban farming holds a promising potential to achieve a more sustainable urban development, these practices are not free from problems. For instance, the concentration of livestock is sometimes very high in densely populated areas leading to the spreading of diseases (zoonoses) and water pollution due to leaching from animal waste. Many planners and officials still tend to see urban farming as wasteful and even unhealthy. Notwithstanding, an increased inclusion of urban farming in policy holds promises of a multifunctional land use that leads to a beneficial nutritional, social, economical and ecological development. The future of urban sustainability?  What, then, is the future of urban farming? It might well be so called vertical farms, multi-storey buildings in which a wide variety of crops is grown. One single building might produce enough to feed up to 50,000 people, according to researchers at Columbia University, New York City. They believe the first vertical urban farms will be realised within ten years and that they would be especially applicable in regions like Europe where the availability of productive land is limited and increasingly eroded and degraded. The benefits of vertical framing are believed to be numerous, e.g. returning farmland to nature and restoration of degraded ecosystem services. It might also contribute to the purification of gray water, dramatically reduce fossil fuel use (no need for tractors or long transportation) and create new employment opportunities. But we are not there yet. Multi-storey vertical farming requires more years of research and financing to become a really safe and economically viable alternative that can contribute to urban sustainability. Meanwhile, many poor city dwellers of the developing world will continue their low-tech form of agriculture growing vegetables for livelihood and food security.
/Jakob Lundberg
For further information: http://www.fao.org/FCIT/index_en.asp Colding J, Lundberg J, and Folke C. 2006. Incorporating green-area user groups in urban ecosystem management. AMBIO 35 (5): 237-244. State of the World 2007: Our Urban Future: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4752 | |||
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"The tortilla effect" There are only a few ingredients in a tortilla, mainly white corn floor and water. The price, on the other hand, is made up of a number of factors, for example, the demand for corn-based ethanol. And this demand is now increasing, both out of concern over global warming but also out of intense lobbying by powerful agro business organizations. In January tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Mexico City against the skyrocketing cost of tortillas. The surge for corn-based ethanol in the United States is draining the exported volume, leading to escalating prices. The US corn crop accounts for about 40 percent of the global corn harvest and around 25 percent of all grain export, soon USA will convert half of its corn harvest into ethanol. The International Food and Policy Research Institute assumes that increasing global biofuel production could mean 20 percent higher global corn prices in 2010 and 40 percent in 2020 while oilseeds, including soybeans, are projected to rise by 76 percent by 2020. Enough land? In the last two years biofuels have gained a lot of attention among politicians as a way to achieve lower carbon dioxide emissions without jeopardising the western lifestyle. There are, however, completely diverging opinions about how much land there are left worldwide to be used for biofuel crops and attached to this how much energy one actually can get from different sorts of crops. The use of corn for ethanol production requires almost the same amount of fossil fuel energy as what is returned. Hence, even if the whole of US corn production is converted into ethanol (with immense consequences for food prices) this would just replace around 13 percent (at the most 30 percent) of the fuel used for transport. Compared to this the energy return from Brazilian sugarcane is more than 5 times higher and there are many other tropical crops, as cassava and palm oil, which are better suited for ethanol or biodiesel production. But to replace 20 percent of the fuel used for transport in the OECD-countries until 2020, developing countries, harboring these plants, have to replicate the amount of what Brazil is producing today, 18 times. This push for land in the south has been called “the 21:st century gold rush” and are among many African NGO:s seen as a new era of colonization trying to get hold of “underutilized” land, which is often used as important commons without formal property rights. Others are of the opinion that the transition to a bioeconomy will benefit the developing countries as they have comparative advantages to grow energy crops. Some talk of a biopact between North and South that would, in exchange of energy, guarantee investments in modern technology and institutional collaboration in order to develop an industry in accordance with social and environmental standards. There are examples of local small scale biodiesel productions using Jatropha, a non edible plant, that have helped to lit villages and made small scale industry possible. All this is indeed promising, but many fear that the developed world’s anxiety about its own supply of fuel will lead to exploitation with severe consequences for social-ecological systems. Unfortunately, it isn’t the person driving the SUV that will be without tortillas. /Maria Mutt More at: www.biofuelwatch.org.uk www.sei.se/index.php?page=pubs&pubaction=showitem8item=718 www.planetark.com/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=42115 | |||
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Food crisis in southern Africa worsened by invasive species Swaziland is currently suffering from the worst harvest ever according to a UN agency report. More than one third of the population is in need of food aid programmes. Drought and invasive species are to blame. It is far from the first time that the country experiences drought or food shortage. In February 2005 the New York Times wrote: “Swaziland, in the third year of a crippling drought, has declared a state of national disaster…” At that time FAO reported about erratic rainfall, no fertiliser and little maize or other seeds to plant. This time the humanitarian news network IRIN writes about it as the worst harvest season ever. What worsens the situation this time is an invasive shrub sandanezwe, called triffid (Chromolaena odorata) that originates from South America. It has small vines that grow very rapidly and overtakes land, and no nutritional value for people or cattle. Such exotic species often become labelled “invasive” if they out-compete domestic species and thrive. In South Africa, that surrounds Swaziland, invasive species are seen as highly unwanted, as they add additional stress to the country’s already strained water reserves.  A man hacking back the invasive triffid weed in Swaziland, southern AfricaAnother well-known example of the destructive potential of exotic species was the introduction of the prickly pear cacti in Australia, in the beginning of the 1800s. It took the national government more than fifty years of intense combat before they came to terms with the problem in 1924. The solution was natural pest control. That is, introducing yet another exotic species to kill the first one, which was successful that time. Invasive species became keystone Paradoxically the same prickly pear, when introduced in southern Madagascar, became a keystone species to the local Tandroy – that enabled them to outlive the dry periods of the year, by eating its fruits and feeding the cacti flesh to the cattle. When the French colonialists subsequently introduced an insect pest during the late 1920s – to eradicate the prickly pear and promote cash crop farming while controlling the Tandroy – it caused a major starvation “the many bones” of 1929-31. This is still remembered as one of the worst acts of colonial rule of the Malagasy south. In Swaziland, the prime minister Themba Dlamini, has taken the threat of sandanezwe seriously, due to its high impact on the socio-economic development as well as biodiversity, and has committed 1.4 million USD this year to the eradication of invasives. An amount that conservationists say is not enough. /Jacob von Heland
More at:www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72563 www.northwestweeds.nsw.gov.au/ prickly_pear_history.htm "We can mitigate climate change! It would be both non-ethical and costly not to take action now" "At last the public opinion on climate change is changing! I am more optimistic today than I was a year ago when it comes to our chances to mitigate climate change. To not act would not only be non-ethical but also very costly to society. This was the message Sir Nicholas Stern sent when he recently visited Sweden. The report “Economics of Climate Change – the Stern Review” was last autumn written by Sir Nicholas Stern on commission by the British Ministry of Finance. The report hit the public debate like a bomb. Its conclusions were crystal clear: To undertake powerful measures that decrease global emissions of green house gases to an acceptable level will cost about one percent of the GDP while the costs for not doing anything to mitigate climate change may shrink the world economy by twenty percent.  Nicholas Stern and Christian Azar agree that climate change must be addressed from an ethical stand-point. Photo: Jakob LundbergEthical reasons for action “The negative effects of climate change hit poor people much more than rich. Our estimates have been corrected for this fact which leaves us with very high costs for not acting”, says Sir Nicholas Stern. The Stern report claims that the global emissions of green house gases must decrease by closer to ten percent per year from 2010 if we should stand a chance to mitigate climate change and its devastating effects. “According to our estimates the costs for action will not have severe impacts on growth. It will not be a big burden to society”, says Stern. Karl-Göran Mäler is Professor of Economics at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics and at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. He agrees with Stern: “Stern is absolutely right about the costs for climate action being relative low. And if the natural capital is considered in the calculations the costs will probably be even lower”. But regardless of the costs Stern believes that climate change must be addressed from an ethical stand-point. He gets strong support from Christian Azar, Professor at Chalmers University of Technology: “It was not economic reasons that made us end slavery and introduce women’s right to vote. We did it because it is morally and ethically right. The same way of thinking should be applied to climate change”. Stern believes climate change to be the largest market failure ever and highlights the importance of getting global and long-term political agreements. Long-term rules of the game are crucial to the business world, without them industry does not dare to invest Stern argues. And even though Stern is very positive towards emission trading he does not believe that a price on carbon dioxide is an incentive large enough to stimulate all inventions needed. Public funds must also contribute to new markets were new technologies can be tested and give valuable experience. “The recent decisions by California and France to decrease their emissions by 80 and 70 percent pave the way for others to follow. And the fact that climate actions are discussed in countries like China and India is very positive. It makes me optimistic about the future”, says Stern. /Ellika Hermansson Török
See the whole seminar here:mms://wmedia.it.su.se/www.it.su.se/Nicholas_Stern.wmv The world is complex - deal with it! An all too common belief in the academic world, as well as in policy, is to see every new idea as the ultimate cure - the panacea. We need to reject this “one-size fits all thinking” and deal with the inherent complexity and uncertainty of nature and societies, says political scientist Elinor Ostrom.  Elinor Ostrom, from Arizona State University and Indiana University, is one of the world’s most influential social scientists. She is perhaps most well-known for convincingly and systematically revisiting the theory of “the tragedy of the commons” – that common property systems always lead to over-exploitation. Her research about human collaboration shows innumerous examples of the opposite. During the inauguration of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Ostrom explained that she sometimes feels that her critique of the tragedy of the commons is used in a faulty way, when it becomes part of a paradigm that always opts for a collective ownership. The point of her critique was not to promote a polar opposite idea, but in her experience this is symptomatic for a lot of the research community. A constant search for “the grand theory”, a belief that there can still be a “one-size fits all” rule out there.
A diversity of rules needed Ostrom used the lobster fishery in Maine as an example of the need for a diversity of rules. Here fishing has been a key source of income for generations, but due to overfishing lobster is now the only remaining species that can cope with the large-scale fishing activity. A contributing reason for this is the unique system of rules that matches the lobster ecology as well as the fishing practices. The fishermen knew that the number of females restricts the overall lobster population and introduced a ban on catching females. During the egg-carrying season this rule is easy to follow, you just throw the females back into the ocean and fishermen trying to sell an egg-bearing female would be fined. But what about the remaining part of the year? A new practice was then introduced, to cut a v-notch in the tails of the egg-bearing females that you catch in order to tell males from females also during the rest of the year. This practice was then successfully communicated to the middle-men, as well as to the lobster companies and the state officials. But, as Ostrom points out, the cod population need, or needed, other kind of case-specific rules to avoid being overharvested. Successful frameworks for natural resource management should thus be case-specific. But to create such frameworks the transdisciplinary researchers must first analyse the many case-specific drivers and variables that influence the social and ecological dynamics. Ostrom mentioned the framework Linnaeus created to systematize nature as a role-model. It developed gradually, and there was room for changes and additions without destroying the whole. It even managed to survive Darwin’s theory of evolution. Together with her colleagues Ostrom has now started an enormous project to create a similar system for all the factors that might influence the relationship between a society and the natural resources it depends on – what she refers to as a “social-ecological system”. Currently they have 46 categories of relevant variables. But each one of them have sub-categories – some as many as 50. Talk about dealing with the complexity. /Jacob von Heland
See the lecture with Elinor Ostrom here: mms://wmedia.it.su.se/RC/ElinorOstrom.wmv Congo government includes traditional healers in a new national health strategy  The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo is currently implementing a new medical health strategy. The aim is to make better use of the medicinal tradition in the country. One important reason is that modern health services are often far away as well as expensive to make use of. There has been some critique against the proposal, as currently there are no evaluative criteria to guarantee that the same diseases get the same remedies. Also, local NGOs have lifted up the importance to deal with quacks who claim to be able to cure any disease. The government, as well as WHO, thus emphasize the need of dialogue and research to deepen the understanding about traditional medicine, as well as to establish a frame-work for quality check-ups. According to IRIN, the proposal is welcomed among local healers as something that would increase their credibility. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72605 "Global warming affects us all, yet it affects us all differently"  In an article in the International Herald Tribune in advance of the G8 meeting, the Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki Moon stressed rich nation’s responsibility towards developing countries which already are much harder hit by climate change. “Wealthy nations possess the resources and know-how to adapt. An African farmer losing crops and herds to drought and dust storms, or a Tuvalu islander worried his village might soon be under water, is infinitely more vulnerable”. Mr. Ban means this is “a basic issue of equity-a question of values, ranking among the great moral imperatives of our era”. In the article he cited a representative of Namibia whom at a debate in the Security Council made clear that climate change is a matter of life or death; deserts are expanding, destroying farmland and rendering whole regions uninhabitable.
With the intention to bring these issues to the centre of climate negotiations the Secretary-General has appointed three special envoys “whose brief is to speak out for the interests and concerns of nations most vulnerable to climate change, home to the vast majority of the world’s people.” http://www.un.org/sg/press_article2.shtml Environmental crises and social instability strongly linked Environmental degradation and state failure go hand-in-hand, concludes Foreign Policy in their Failed States Index 2007. This year’s Failed State Index – compiled by the US Foreign Policy magazine and the US-based Fund for Peace think-tank – found a strong correlation among countries’ social stability and environmental sustainability. The 177 examined countries are ranked according to their vulnerability according to 12 criteria, including internal conflict and society breakdown. States range from the most failed, Sudan, to the least, Norway. Eight of the 10 most vulnerable states are African nations. The top ten list of the most failed states include: 1. Sudan; 2. Iraq; 3. Somalia; 4. Zimbabwe; 5. Chad; 6. Ivory Coast; 7. D.R. Congo; 8. Afghanistan; 9. Guinea; 10. Central African Republic. Things are exacerbated as the world warms, concludes the report. States already at risk face severe threats to their groundwater, agriculture, and ecosystems. “In poorly performing states on the edge, including Bangladesh, Egypt, and Indonesia, the risks of flooding, drought, and deforestation have little chance of being properly managed... storms are brewing on the horizon for the world’s most vulnerable”, states the report. More at www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php? story_id=3865&page=4 Wildfires are increasing as a result of climate change, says FAO Forest fires are increasing due to climate changes such as higher mean temperatures and less rain, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, FAO. More widespread areas are being affected. Sub-Saharan Africa and Australasia accounted for 80 percent of the total area burned in the year 2000, with a global total of 350 million hectares of forests and woodlands being destroyed that year. Each year wildfires consume over 5000 million tonnes of biomass and release 3431 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (compared to a total of 27 500 million tonnes of man-made CO2-emissions), contributing to climate change. Now countries are being urged to invest more in fire anticipation and training by better international cooperation, information sharing, awareness and education. The biggest cause of fires is due to humans through carelessness or arson, which leads to loss of both human and animal lives and vast economic harm. At the recent 4th International Wildland Fire Conference in Spain, 1500 field experts discussed fire management. Things such as observation, early warning, awareness, anticipation, suppression and re-establishment were the top issues. The discussions lead to a worldwide strategy to improve international collaboration in fire management. http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2007/ 1000570/index.html
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