UN report: The world’s farms stretched to ‘a breaking point’

February 6, 2022 / activist360 / Leave a comment

*Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh from Pexels*

The world’s climate-stressed and pollution-degraded farming and agricultural system must shift quickly to sustainable practices to feed an additional 2 billion mouths expected by 2050, a new United Nations report finds.

By Dana Nuccitelli, Yale Climate Connections (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5)

Almost 10% of the 8 billion people on earth are already undernourished with 3 billion lacking healthy diets, and the land and water resources farmers rely on stressed to “a breaking point.” And by 2050 there will be 2 billion more mouths to feed, warns a new report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

For now, farmers have been able to boost agricultural productivity by irrigating more land and applying heavier doses of fertilizer and pesticides. But the report says these practices are not sustainable: They have eroded and degraded soil while polluting and depleting water supplies and shrinking the world’s forests. The FAO report discusses some important climate change impacts, such as changing distribution of rainfall, the suitability of land for certain crops, the spread of insects and other pests, and shorter growing seasons in regions affected by more intense droughts. While not the sole source of obstacles facing global agriculture, the report makes clear that climate change is further stressing agricultural systems and amplifying global food production challenges.

The report also offers hope that the problems are solvable: Water degradation can be reversed by turning to smart planning and coordination of sustainable farming practices and by deploying new innovative technologies. More sustainable agriculture can also help fight climate change: For instance, the report notes that wiser use of soils can help sequester some of the greenhouse gasses currently emitted by agricultural activities.

Drastic changes in climate will require regions to adjust the crops they grow. For example, the report predicts that much cereal production will probably have to move north, to Canada and northern Eurasia. Brazil and northern Africa may have a harder time growing coffee, but it may get easier in eastern Africa. A changing climate “may bring opportunities for multiple rainfed cropping, particularly in the tropics and subtropics.” And for areas “where the climate becomes marginal for current staple and niche crops, there are alternative annual and perennial tree crops, livestock, and soil and water management options available.”

The report recommends seed and germoplasm exchanges globally and among regions, and investments to develop crops that can withstand changes in temperature, salinity, wind, and evaporation.

The changes will not be easy, the report says, but they may be necessary to avoid widespread hunger and other catastrophes.

Extensive land and water degradation

Over the past 20 years, the global population has risen by more than 25% from just over 6 billion to nearly 8 billion people. The amount of land used to grow crops has increased by just 4% over that time, as farmers have been able to meet the growing demand for food by dramatically increasing the productivity per acre of agricultural land. They’ve done so, for example, by increasing use of diesel-fueled machinery, fertilizer, and pesticides.

But these practices have come at a price. “Human-induced degradation affects 34 percent (1,660 million hectares) of agricultural land,” the FAO reports. “The treatment of soils with inorganic fertilizers to increase or sustain yields has had significant adverse effects on soil health, and has contributed to freshwater pollution induced by run-off and drainage.”

This degradation is especially extensive on irrigated farmland. Irrigation has been critical for meeting food demand because it produces two to three times as much food per acre as does rain-fed farmland. But irrigation also increases runoff of fertilizers and pesticides that can contaminate soil and groundwater.

The FAO reports also that globally, agriculture accounts for 72% of all surface and groundwater withdrawals, mainly for irrigation, which is depleting groundwater aquifers in many regions. Global groundwater withdrawals for irrigated agriculture increased by about 20% over the past decade alone.

Similarly, the quality of 13% of global soil, including 34% of agricultural land, has been degraded. This degradation has been caused by factors such as excessive fertilizer use, livestock overgrazing causing soil compaction and erosion, deforestation, and decreasing water availability.

Deforestation trends offer one relatively bright spot in the FAO report. The global forested area has declined by about 1% (47 million hectares) over the past decade, but that is a significant improvement from the nearly 2% decline (78 million hectares) in the 1990s. And in the November 2021 international climate negotiations in Glasgow, 141 countries, covering 91% of global forested area, agreed to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. It remains to be seen, of course, how many reach those commitments.

Climate change is worsening food system breakdowns

Climate change exacerbates farmers’ challenges by making weather more extreme and less reliable. Extreme heat can stress crops and farm workers while increasing evaporation of water from soil and transpiration from plants, thus amplifying agricultural water demands. Here too, it’s not all bad news: Agricultural productivity is expected to increase in regions that are currently relatively cold, but decrease in places that are hotter and drier, especially as climate change exacerbates droughts.

As with others, farmers will need to adapt to the changing climate, and making those adaptations can be expensive. For example, as the primary or sole producer of many of the country’s fruits, vegetables, and nuts, California effectively acts as America’s garden. But climate change is exacerbating droughts and water shortages in the state, and farmers are struggling to adapt. About 80% of all almonds in the world are grown in California, generating $6 billion in annual revenue, but almonds are a very water-intensive crop. As a result, some farmers have been forced to tear up their lucrative almond orchards. It’s a stark reminder that “adaptation” can sound easy on paper, but in practice can sometimes be painful and costly.

Farmers and planners will need to adapt

Adaptation will nevertheless be necessary in the face of an anticipated 50% increase in food demand by 2050 (including a doubling in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa), extensive land and water quality degradation, and a changing climate. The FAO report recommends four action areas to continue to meet rising global food demand.

First, adopting inclusive land and water governance through improved land-use planning to guide land and water allocation and promote sustainable resources management.
Second, implementing integrated solutions at scale, for example by helping farmers use available resources more efficiently while minimizing the associated adverse environmental impacts and also building resilience to climate change.
Third, embracing innovative technologies and management like remote sensing services; opening access to data and information on crops, natural resources and climatic conditions; and improving rainwater capture and increasing soil moisture retention.
Fourth, investing in long-term sustainable land, soil, and water management; in restoring degraded ecosystems; and in data and information management for farmers.

Fortunately, sustainable agricultural practices can also do double duty as climate solutions. The FAO reports that 31% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from agri-food systems. Sustainable farming practices like regenerative agriculture can require less diesel-fueled machinery and less reliance on soil- and water-polluting pesticides while increasing the carbon stored in farmed soils.

Solving these multiple problems will require planning and coordination, the FAO writes in the report, and “data collection needs to improve.” Again, a bright side: The technology to improve data collection already exists, and advances in agricultural research have also put other solutions within reach. What is needed now is for policymakers and planners to coordinate work with farmers to adopt more sustainable practices and adapt more quickly to the changing climate. So, while the food system is currently at a “breaking point,” these more sustainable solutions are all within reach.

Living near fracking sites linked to higher risk of early death: Study

January 30, 2022 / activist360 / Leave a comment

Fracking Site in Warren Center, PA, August 23 2013, Source: Fracking Lawyer, Ostroff Law — *Fracking Site in Warren Center, PA, August 23, 2013, Source: Fracking Lawyer, Ostroff Law, (CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons).*

Harvard researchers provide further evidence that, as one environmental advocate has said, “fracking is inherently hazardous to the health and safety of people and communities in proximity to it.”

By Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Elderly individuals who live near or downwind of fracking and other “unconventional” drilling operations are at higher risk of early death compared with seniors who don’t live in close proximity to such sites, according to a new study out Thursday from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Airborne contaminants from more than 2.5 million oil and gas wells across the U.S., researchers wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Energy, are contributing to increased mortality among people 65 and older residing in neighborhoods close to or downwind from what is called unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD)—extraction methods that include directional (non-vertical) drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

“Although UOGD is a major industrial activity in the U.S., very little is known about its public health impacts,” Petros Koutrakis, professor of environmental sciences and one of the paper’s co-authors, said in a statement. “Our study is the first to link mortality to UOGD-related air pollutant exposures.”

Co-author Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics, population, and data science, added that “there is an urgent need to understand the causal link between living near or downwind of UOGD and adverse health effects.”

Earlier research, the Harvard Chan School acknowledged in its press release, has “found connections between UOGD activities and increased human exposure to harmful substances in both air and water, as well as connections between UOGD exposure and adverse prenatal, respiratory, cardiovascular, and carcinogenic health outcomes. But little was known about whether exposure to UOGD was associated with mortality risk in the elderly, or about exactly how exposure to UOGD-related activities may be contributing to such risk.”

To find out more, a team of 10 scholars analyzed a cohort of nearly 15.2 million Medicare beneficiaries living in all of the nation’s major UOGD exploration regions from 2001 to 2015. They also examined data collected from more than 2.5 million oil and gas wells.

For each Medicare recipient’s ZIP code and year in the cohort, researchers calculated what pollutant exposures would be if one lived close to UOGD operations, downwind of them, or both, while adjusting for socioeconomic, environmental, and demographic factors.

The closer people lived to fracked gas and other unconventional wells, the greater their risk of premature mortality, researchers found.

According to the Harvard Chan School’s summary of the study:

Those who lived closest to wells had a statistically significant elevated mortality risk (2.5% higher) compared with those who didn’t live close to wells. The study also found that people who lived near UOGD wells as well as downwind of them were at higher risk of premature death than those living upwind, when both groups were compared with people who were unexposed.

“Our findings suggest the importance of considering the potential health dangers of situating UOGD near or upwind of people’s homes,” said Longxiang Li, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental Health and lead author of the study.

The new study adds to a growing body of literature linking fossil fuels to negative health outcomes. In a recent report, the World Health Organization warned that burning coal, oil, and gas is “causing millions of premature deaths every year through air pollutants, costing the global economy billions of dollars annually, and fueling the climate crisis.”

Another recent study estimated that eliminating greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 would save 74 million lives this century. Despite mounting evidence of the deadly toll of fossil fuels, President Joe Biden has yet to use his executive authority to cancel nearly two dozen fracked gas export projects that are set to unleash pollution equivalent to roughly 400 new coal-fired power plants.

So-called unconventional drilling practices have grown rapidly over the past decade, becoming the most common form of extraction in the U.S. As of 2015, the Harvard Chan School pointed out, “more than 100,000 UOGD land-based wells were drilled using directional drilling combined with fracking,” and “roughly 17.6 million U.S. residents currently live within one kilometer of at least one active well.”

Fracking threatens every person on the planet, directly or indirectly. It should be banned entirely.
—Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch

Oil rig, ~12219-12999 Macon Road, Saline Township, Michigan, June 22, 2012. Source: Dwight Burdette, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. — *Oil rig, ~12219-12999 Macon Road, Saline Township, Michigan, June 22, 2012. Source: Dwight Burdette, (CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons).*

In contrast to conventional oil and gas drilling, methods such as fracking require “larger volumes of water, proppants (sand or other materials used to keep hydraulic fractures open), and chemicals,” the Harvard Chan School noted.

Last summer, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) uncovered internal records revealing that since 2012, fossil fuel corporations have injected potentially carcinogenic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or chemicals that can degrade into PFAS, into the ground while fracking for oil and gas—after former President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency approved their use despite agency scientists’ concerns about toxicity.

At the time, Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, called the PSR report “alarming,” and said it “confirms what hundreds of scientific studies and thousands of pages of data have already shown over the last decade: fracking is inherently hazardous to the health and safety of people and communities in proximity to it.”

“This says nothing of the dreadful impact fossil fuel extraction and burning is having on our runaway climate crisis. Fracking threatens every person on the planet, directly or indirectly,” said Hauter. “It should be banned entirely.”

It is 100 seconds to midnight!

January 23, 2022 / activist360 / Leave a comment

Lack of actionable climate policies, continuing and dangerous threats posed by nuclear weapons, disruptive technologies, insufficient global COVID-19 response, and disinformation lead to a “mixed threat environment.”

On Thursday, January 20, 2022, the 75th anniversary of its Doomsday Clock (“Clock”), the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (“Bulletin”) announced that the Clock is set at 100 seconds to midnight, closer to midnight than ever in its history. This marks our second consecutive year with the Clock at 100 seconds to midnight.

The Doomsday Clock is a metaphor for how dangerous this moment is in human history. Since 1947, the Clock has symbolized how close humanity is to destroying itself with nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies. The Clock’s time is set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board with the support of the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors, which includes 11 Nobel Laureates. Designed by painter Martyl Langsdorf, the Clock has become an international symbol of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe. The Clock symbolizes danger, caution, hope, and our responsibility to one another.

[T]he Clock is not set by signs of good intentions but by evidence of action or, in this case, inaction. Signs of new arms races are clear.
—Scott D. Sagan, Ph.D., Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) at Stanford University, and member, Science and Security Board (SASB), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Stuck in a perilous moment

The Doomsday Clock statement explains that the Clock remains the closest it has ever been to the civilization-ending apocalypse because the world remains stuck in an extremely dangerous moment.”

One hundred seconds to midnight reflects the Board’s judgment that we are stuck in a perilous moment—one that brings neither stability nor security. Positive developments in 2021 failed to counteract negative, long-term trends.
—Sharon Squassoni, co-chair of the Science and Security Board (SASB), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and a research professor at the Institute for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University

We have an obligation and opportunity to fix these problems

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Eugene Rabinowitch, and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project. The scientists felt that they “could not remain aloof to the consequences of their work” and worked to inform the public and policymakers about manufactured threats to human existence. The Bulletin was founded on the belief that because humans created these problems, we have the obligation and opportunity to fix them.

The Doomsday Clock continues to hover dangerously, reminding us about how much work is needed to be done to ensure a safer and healthier planet. We must continue to push the hands of the Clock away from midnight.
—Rachel Bronson, PhD, president and CEO, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Key recommendations to reverse the hands of the Clock

The 2022 Doomsday Clock statement lists steps to address the current threats. Below are key recommendations to reverse the hands of the Clock:

Climate change

The United States and other countries should accelerate their decarbonization, matching policies to commitments. China should set an example by pursuing sustainable development pathways – not fossil fuel-intensive projects – in the One Belt One Road initiative.
Private and public investors need to redirect funds away from fossil fuel projects to climate-friendly investments.
The world’s wealthier countries need to provide more financial support and technology cooperation to developing countries to undertake strong climate action. COVID-recovery investments must favor climate mitigation and adaptation objectives across all economic sectors and address the full range of potential greenhouse gas emission reductions, including capital investments in urban development, agriculture, transport, heavy industry, buildings and appliances, and electric power.
At every reasonable opportunity, citizens of all countries must hold their local, regional, and national political officials and business and religious leaders accountable by asking “What are you doing to address climate change?”

Biological risks

US and other leaders should work through the WHO and other international institutions to reduce biological risks of all kinds through better monitoring of animal-human interactions, improvements in international disease surveillance and reporting, increased production and distribution of medical supplies, and expanded hospital capacity.
National leaders and international organizations must devise more effective regimes for monitoring biological research and development efforts.

Nuclear weapons

The Russian and US presidents should identify more ambitious and comprehensive limits on nuclear weapons and delivery systems by the end of 2022. They should both agree to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons by limiting their roles, missions, and platforms, and decrease budgets accordingly.
The United States should persuade allies and rivals that no-first-use of nuclear weapons is a step toward security and stability and then declare such a policy in concert with Russia (and China).
President Biden should eliminate the US presidents’ sole authority to launch nuclear weapons and work to persuade other countries with nuclear weapons to put in place similar barriers.
North Korea should codify its moratorium on nuclear tests and long-range missile tests and help other countries verify a moratorium on enriched uranium and plutonium production.

Disinformation

Governments, technology firms, academic experts, and media organizations need to cooperate to identify and implement practical and ethical ways to combat internet-enabled misinformation and disinformation.

Other global threats

Russia should rejoin the NATO-Russia Council and collaborate on risk-reduction and escalation-avoidance measures.
Iran and the United States must jointly return to full compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and initiate new, broader talks on Middle East security, and missile constraints.

No one changes the world alone. We’re not all going to agree, but we have to work together. And together, we will get it done.
—Hank Green, New York Times best-selling author and science communicator

#TurnBackTheClock

The Bulletin is asking people to take the #TurnBackTheClock Challenge. The challenge encourages people to share their ideas to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or TikTok using the hashtag #TurnBackTheClock. Share stories and ideas about:

Positive actions that inspire
People or groups who are making a difference
Ways to help make the world safer

The format for submissions can include art, writing, videos, or song.

“We can no longer afford to focus all of our efforts on other perils to the exclusion of the biological threat. If we do, diseases and the lives they take will push the second hand on the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight.”
—Asha M. George, DrPH, executive director, Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, and member, Science and Security Board (SASB), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Since its inception, the Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock has been set closer and farther away from midnight. In 2020, Bulletin set the Clock the closest it has ever been to midnight 100 seconds. The Clock has been set as far away as 17 minutes to midnight at the end of the Cold War.

In conjunction with the Doomsday Clock’s 75th anniversary, the Bulletin published a new book, The Doomsday Clock at 75, about the history of the Clock and its massive influence on science, politics, pop culture, entertainment, comics, and art.