Tag: Water

UN goal of ending hunger by 2030 risks failure as global food crisis worsens

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The ‘three sisters’ are staple foods for many Native American tribes. Marilyn Angel Wynn/Getty Images
The ‘three sisters’ are staple foods for many Native American tribes. Marilyn Angel Wynn/Getty Images

Pandemic and war in Ukraine have pushed 122 million more people into hunger since 2019, according to new report.

By David Henry, Forests News

The number of people facing hunger in the world has risen by more than 122 million since 2019 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the war in Ukraine and weather shocks, according to a new United Nations report.

It is estimated that 691 million to 783 million people lacked sufficient food in 2022, affecting 9.2% of the global population compared with 7.9% in 2019, the year before the pandemic began, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2023 report, which is produced by five UN agencies.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) provide an annual update on the world’s progress towards ending hunger, achieving food security and improving nutrition.

The 2023 report emphasized that the UN Sustainable Development Goal of creating a world free of hunger by 2030 risks failure if current trends continue. It is projected that almost 600 million people will be chronically undernourished at the end of the decade.

“The latest SOFI report highlights the urgent need to reverse the trends that undermine the world’s ability to achieve the goal of zero hunger by 2030,” says Éliane Ubalijoro, Chief Executive Officer of the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF). “Trees, forests and agroforestry landscapes have a vital role to play in this process by helping address the interrelated challenges of biodiversity loss, climate change, food security, livelihoods and inequity.”

To help transform food systems, CIFOR-ICRAF is promoting the wide-scale adoption of agroecological approaches, including farmer-led strategies to increase tree cover and diversity across agricultural landscapes. And by providing evidence on how forests and trees contribute to people’s diets, it is raising awareness and influencing national policies to include forests and trees as part of national and local food systems.

‘’The SOFI 2023 report shows that in a world where regular crises become the new norm, increasing the resilience of agrifood systems is a priority,” says David Laborde, Director of the FAO Agrifood Economics Division (ESA). “Forestry has a key role to play in this system. The range of actions and opportunities is vast: from helping the regulation of water flows and mitigating the severity of heatwaves, to providing income diversification options and more robust integrated production systems.’’

While global hunger stabilized in 2022 alone, it continued to increase in some vulnerable countries, in particular in Africa. Seizing the opportunity provided by forests, either by rebuilding them in the Sahel region, or preserving their services in Central and Eastern Africa is part of reversing the hunger trend in these countries, Laborde says.

As it addresses five global challenges, CIFOR-ICRAF is committed to transforming food systems that are based on sustainable land management, equitable outcomes for Indigenous Peoples and local communities, as well as supply chains that rely on sound environmental practices and social inclusion.

Trees can make a major contribution to boosting the productivity of farming systems and the lives of rural communities, who provide most of the world’s food. CIFOR-ICRAF facilitates this process by helping farmers choose the right tree for the right place for the right purpose on their farms and then to manage them effectively.

“Agroecology enables farmers to grow food while preserving soil health and improving the resilience of food systems,” says Fergus Sinclair, Chief Scientist at CIFOR-ICRAF. “The world produces enough food to feed nearly twice the current population, yet millions of people are still hungry. A greater emphasis on agroecology, including reducing food loss and waste, would help policymakers tackle this worsening global food crisis.”

The 2023 SOFI report highlighted that agroecology has a role to play in ending hunger by the end of the decade while offering other benefits. At plot, farm and landscape scales, it can help increase farmers’ incomes, improve food security and nutrition, use water more efficiently and enhance nutrient recycling, as well as conserve biodiversity and provide other ecosystem services.

Agrifood systems will also need to be viewed beyond the traditional rural-urban divide, according to the UN agencies. Due to population growth, small and intermediate cities and rural towns are increasingly bridging the space between rural areas and large metropolises, creating both challenges and opportunities to ensure everyone has access to affordable healthy diets.

Join the global movement: Combat plastic pollution this World Environment Day, June 5th

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Theme:Finding solutions to plastic pollution
Date:June 5th, 2023
Host:Côte d’Ivoire in collaboration with the Netherlands
Hashtags:#BeatPlasticPollution and #WorldEnvironmentDay

June 5th, 2023, will mark the 50th anniversary of World Environment Day, which was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1973. This year, the event is anticipated to attract tens of millions of participants both online and through in-person activities, embodying the spirit of environmental advocacy.

Addressing plastic pollution

This year’s theme is focused on finding solutions to plastic pollution. The occasion underscores the consequences of actions and inaction taken by individuals, businesses, and governments in response to plastic pollution. It also highlights the pressing need to amplify these efforts and transition towards a circular economy. To assist in these efforts, a Beat Plastic Pollution Practical Guide is available, outlining steps to halt and reverse the detrimental effects of plastic pollution.

An urgent need

Our planet is in crisis, besieged by the overwhelming weight of plastic waste. Despite its numerous applications, plastic has become detrimental due to our dependence on single-use plastic products, which cause significant environmental and health issues.

As per the UN, globally, one million plastic bottles are bought every minute, up to five trillion plastic bags are used each year, and 400 million tonnes of plastic waste are produced annually. Approximately 36% of all plastic is used for packaging, including single-use items for food and beverage containers. Sadly, around 85% of these items end up in landfills or as unregulated waste. Less than 10% of the seven billion tonnes of plastic waste generated worldwide has been recycled. The most prevalent types of plastic waste found in the environment include cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic bottles and caps, grocery bags, straws, and stirrers.

Environmental harm

Plastic waste can persist in the environment for centuries due to its durability and resistance to degradation. Nearly all single-use plastic products are manufactured from fossil fuels, contributing to the escalation of greenhouse gas emissions. Most plastic items merely break down into smaller microplastics, which can infiltrate the human body and accumulate in various organs. The impact of this phenomenon on human health remains largely unknown. Microplastics are now ubiquitous and are a part of the Earth’s fossil record. They have even led to the creation of a new marine microbial habitat, known as the “plastisphere.”

How you can help

Urge your local and national leaders to take decisive action by eliminating problematic plastic packaging, redesigning products for sustainability, and promoting transparency in sustainability information. Additionally, you can participate in beach or river clean-ups, shop sustainably, adopt a zero-waste lifestyle, advocate for change, choose sustainable fashion, and opt for plastic-free personal care products.

Spread awareness and inspire others via social media using the hashtags #BeatPlasticPollution and #WorldEnvironmentDay.

The Supreme Court just shriveled federal protection for wetlands, leaving many of these valuable ecosystems at risk

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Many ecologically important wetlands, like these in Kulm, N.D., lack surface connections to navigable waterways. USFWS Mountain-Prairie/Flickr, CC
Many ecologically important wetlands, like these in Kulm, N.D., lack surface connections to navigable waterways. USFWS Mountain-Prairie/Flickr, CC

By Albert C. Lin, The Conversation

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in Sackett v. EPA that federal protection of wetlands encompasses only those wetlands that directly adjoin rivers, lakes and other bodies of water. This is an extremely narrow interpretation of the Clean Water Act that could expose many wetlands across the U.S. to filling and development.

Under this keystone environmental law, federal agencies take the lead in regulating water pollution, while state and local governments regulate land use. Wetlands are areas where land is wet for all or part of the year, so they straddle this division of authority.

Swamps, bogs, marshes and other wetlands provide valuable ecological services, such as filtering pollutants and soaking up floodwaters. Landowners must obtain permits to discharge dredged or fill material, such as dirt, sand or rock, in a protected wetland.

This can be time-consuming and expensive, which is why the Supreme Court’s ruling on May 25, 2023, will be of keen interest to developers, farmers and ranchers, along with conservationists and the agencies that administer the Clean Water Act – namely, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

For the last 45 years – and under eight different presidential administrations – the EPA and the Corps have required discharge permits in wetlands “adjacent” to water bodies, even if a dune, levee or other barrier separated the two. The Sackett decision upends that approach, leaving tens of millions of acres of wetlands at risk.


The Sackett case

Idaho residents Chantell and Mike Sackett own a parcel of land located 300 feet from Priest Lake, one of the state’s largest lakes. The parcel once was part of a large wetland complex. Today, even after the Sacketts cleared the lot, it still has some wetland characteristics, such as saturation and ponding in areas where soil was removed. Indeed, it is still hydrologically connected to the lake and neighboring wetlands by water that flows at a shallow depth underground.

In preparation to build a house, the Sacketts had fill material placed on the site without obtaining a Clean Water Act permit. The EPA issued an order in 2007 stating that the land contained wetlands subject to the law and requiring the Sacketts to restore the site. The Sacketts sued, arguing that their property was not a wetland.

In 2012, the Supreme Court held that the Sacketts had the right to challenge EPA’s order and sent the case back to the lower courts. After losing below on the merits, they returned to the Supreme Court with a suit asserting that their property was not federally protected. This claim in turn raised a broader question: What is the scope of federal regulatory authority under the Clean Water Act?

What are ‘waters of the United States’?

The Clean Water Act regulates discharges of pollutants into “waters of the United States.” Lawful discharges may occur if a pollution source obtains a permit under either Section 404 of the act for dredged or fill material, or Section 402 for other pollutants.

The Supreme Court has previously recognized that the “waters of the United States” include not only navigable rivers and lakes, but also wetlands and waterways that are connected to navigable bodies of water. But many wetlands are not wet year-round, or are not connected at the surface to larger water systems. Still, they can have important ecological connections to larger water bodies.

In 2006, when the court last took up this issue, no majority was able to agree on how to define “waters of the United States.” Writing for a plurality of four justices in U.S. v. Rapanos, Justice Antonin Scalia defined the term narrowly to include only relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water such as streams, oceans, rivers and lakes. Waters of the U.S., he contended, should not include “ordinarily dry channels through which water occasionally or intermittently flows.”

Acknowledging that wetlands present a tricky line-drawing problem, Scalia proposed that the Clean Water Act should reach “only those wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are waters of the United States in their own right.”

In a concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy took a very different approach. “Waters of the U.S.,” he wrote, should be interpreted in light of the Clean Water Act’s objective of “restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.”

Accordingly, Kennedy argued, the Clean Water Act should cover wetlands that have a “significant nexus” with navigable waters – “if the wetlands, either alone or in combination with similarly situated lands in the region, significantly affect the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of other covered waters more readily understood as ‘navigable.’”

Neither Scalia’s nor Kennedy’s opinion attracted a majority, so lower courts were left to sort out which approach to follow. Most applied Kennedy’s significant nexus standard, while a few held that the Clean Water Act applies if either Kennedy’s standard or Scalia’s is satisfied.

Regulators have also struggled with this question. The Obama administration incorporated Kennedy’s “significant nexus” approach into a 2015 rule that followed an extensive rulemaking process and a comprehensive peer-reviewed scientific assessment. The Trump administration then replaced the 2015 rule with a rule of its own that largely adopted the Scalia approach.

The Biden administration responded with its own rule defining waters of the United States in terms of the presence of either a significant nexus or continuous surface connection. However, this rule was promptly embroiled in litigation and will require reconsideration in light of Sackett v. EPA.

The Sackett decision and its ramifications

The Sackett decision adopts Scalia’s approach from the 2006 Rapanos case. Writing for a five-justice majority, Justice Samuel Alito declared that “waters of the United States” includes only relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water, such as streams, oceans, rivers, lakes – and wetlands that have a continuous surface connection with and are indistinguishably part of such water bodies.

None of the nine justices adopted Kennedy’s 2006 “significant nexus” standard. However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the three liberal justices disagreed with the majority’s “continuous surface connection” test. That test, Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrence, is inconsistent with the text of the Clean Water Act, which extends coverage to “adjacent” wetlands – including those that are near or close to larger water bodies.

“Natural barriers such as berms and dunes do not block all water flow and are in fact evidence of a regular connection between a water and a wetland,” Kavanaugh explained. “By narrowing the Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands, the Court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.”

The majority’s ruling leaves little room for the EPA or the Army Corps of Engineers to issue new regulations that could protect wetlands more broadly.

The court’s requirement of a continuous surface connection means that federal protection may no longer apply to many areas that critically affect the water quality of U.S. rivers, lakes and oceans – including seasonal streams and wetlands that are near or intermittently connected to larger water bodies. It might also mean that construction of a road, levee or other barrier separating a wetland from other nearby waters could remove an area from federal protection.

Congress could amend the Clean Water Act to expressly provide that “waters of the United States” includes wetlands that the court has now stripped of federal protection. However, past efforts to legislate a definition have fizzled, and today’s closely divided Congress is unlikely to fare any better.

Whether states will fill the breach is questionable. Many states have not adopted regulatory protections for waters that are outside the scope of “waters of the United States.” In many instances, new legislation – and perhaps entirely new regulatory programs – will be needed.

Finally, a concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas hints at potential future targets for the court’s conservative supermajority. Joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, Thomas suggested that the Clean Water Act, as well as other federal environmental statutes, lies beyond Congress’ authority to regulate activities that affect interstate commerce, and could be vulnerable to constitutional challenges. In my view, Sackett v. EPA might be just one step toward the teardown of federal environmental law.

This is an update of an article originally published on Sept. 26, 2022.