EL PAIS, May 9th 2011.

With an original iniciative, European Union Commissioner for Fishing, Maria Damanaki, proposes to get two objectives at once by paying fishermen for fishing plastic instead of fish. Given the fact that our oceans are dangerously overfished, and the Mediterranean Sea in particular (see the documentary The End of the Line”), and that fishermen are out of business during the recovery season, fishing plastic garbage would both mean an income for the fishermen and a benefit for society. Recently a French-Belgium study estimated in 250.000 million the number of small plastic objects floating in the Mediterranean and in about 500 tons the plastic dissolved in the waves already. The capture plastic objects are recyclable and, in turn, a source of business.
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EL PAIS, 2nd February 2011. The hidroelectric project Inambari promoted by Peru and Brazil, with an installed power of 2.200 megawatts -double than the biggest dam in Spain- will spand over 410 km2 in the middle of the Amazon forest covering several km of primary forest, some cocoa, pineapple and banana plantations and threatening the environmental and social equilibrium in the area. Locals are already distrustful of the project, the ecologists oppose to it and the indigenous tribus refuse it to the point of declaring: “Yes, we are leaving, of course, but dead”. The ecological remediation promises from the construction company -Egasur- are not convincing the inhabitants of the area, an area already harmed by uncontroled extractive economy.
Read more here.

“The end of the line” is a documentary, awarded in the last issue of the Sundance Festival, that deals with the devastating effects of overfishing at the moment.
The documentary is based in the book with the same name written by the well known environmental journalist Charles Clover. The documentary is an attention calling for the whole community and features top scientists, indigenous fishermen and fisheries enforcement officials. Alarming data is highlighted such us the imminent extinction of bluefin tuna and the consquent rise in jellyfish population, the main prey for tuna. Even more serious scenarios are considered like the scientific prediction that if we continue fishing as we are now, we will see the end of most seafood by 2048.

learn more here

Nature magazine on line. 4th October 2010. Interview to Colin Chartres, director of the International Institute for Water Management.

Following current trends, water usage is due to increase by 2030 to more than 40% the water available supply, leading the World to a water crisis. But researchers at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Battaramulla, Sri Lanka, have come up with plan for averting disaster. The spotlight is in agriculture water and the recipy for success includes new techniques for agriculture, including underwater irrigation, regulation of groundwater extraction, technology for spotting and monitoring water reservoirs and wastewater recycling.

Read more here

El Pais. 14 de Septiembre de 2010. The Spanish Ministry for Environment is planning to double the water volume of the Tajo river as it passes by Aranjuez and that of the Ebro river at its mouth, according to informants close to to the planning bodies. With this goal, included in the basin planification that will be published soon, the government is fulfilling the European guidelines that include as an objective a good ecological state of the rivers. Nevertheless, it is not easy to put together all the interests around the river waters: supply, irrigation, industrial demand and ecological water volume, and the governement will have to find a solution to this complicated puzzle that includes a series of particularly problematic points

Read more (in Spanish)

This is the 10th edition of the report, presented in 1002 for the first time, which analyzes the decade of destruction in the coast and the perspectives for the future.

Public presentation will be in:

Madrid:
Day: Tuesday, july 16th, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Place: Greenpeace, San Bernardo 107, 1º.

Barcelona:
Day:Tuesday, july 16th, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Place: Sala del Centre Internacional de Premsa de Barcelona. Rbla. de Catalunya 10, pral.

Since the presentation of the first report in 2001, we have witnesed year after year the massive development of the coast, on ly comparable to that in the sixties. Housing develoments, glof courses and sport marinas have occupied the last free spaces of the coast, in many cases, covered by corruption.
Not only touristic develpment i at the central stage. The increase in industrial area at the coast, poluting dumping and harbors expansions have serious impacts on coastal ecosystems and health.

To read more about the report (Spanish)

To rad more about Spanish coasts (Spanish)

Esteban Camaco Steffensen is a young Costa Rican – American muralist, artist and environmentalist, who creates murals of environmental themes with the double intention of being art and ecology projects. He has worked in Oregon (USA) and Costa Rica. His goal is to contribute to a place embelishment through the mural, while relating the environmental content with the local and turistic community.

His work can be seen at:

www.ecs.tumblr.com
www.flickr.com/photos/camachosteffensen

Nature 13th May 2010. Yunnan’s worst drought for many years has been exacerbated by destruction of forest cover and a history of poor water management. Since last September, the province has had 60% less rainfall than normal. Some say it is the worst drought in over a century. Scientists in China say that the crisis marks one of the strongest case studies so far of how climate change and poor environmental practice can combine to create a disaster. Climate change is not the only factor affecting the drought. Deforestation in mountainous Yunnan is also being blamed. The impact of deforestation on hydrological processes becomes particularly acute during prolonged droughts.

Read more here

Barcelona. The Institute for Catalan Studies organizes the second Workshop on Sustainability and Climate Change, commemorating the Day of The Earth and The International Year for Biodiversity.
Dates: 28th and 29th April de 2010, from 18.00h to 20.30h.
Place: Sala Prat de la Riba, at the Institute for Catalan Studies
CONFERENCES PROGRAM:
«El futur immediat: reptes i escales», RAMON FOLCH, genral director of ERF, Environmental Management and Communicaton S.L., Member of the Institute for Catalan Studies
«Mitos, leyendas, modas de la gestión de la biodiversidad», CARLOS MONTES, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
«Energia de l’hidrogen: perspectives a curt, mig i llarg termini» , JORDI LLORCA, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
«Where do we stand on Global Warming », RAYMOND S. BRADLEY, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

More information here

Nature Magazine. 15th April 2010.

Nature talks to Marion Guillou, the chief executive of France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research, Europe’s largest agricultural-research agency. The challenges to feed a growing population, estimated to reach 9.000 million by 2050 should are being addressed at the Golbal conference on Agricultural Research for Development last week at Montpellier.  The propoosed solutions include going back to strengthen family farms (as opposed to large farming approaches) and traditional practices, turning to a diet with way less animal content than our usual Western diet, avoid food waste and loss, and avoid food prices volatility due to speculation. For her, GMO crops are not the magical bullet but they can be useful, and should be studied in case-by-case basis.

Read more here

EL PAIS. 12th April 2010. The Mediterranean and the Black Sea are threatenedby a long list of environmental problems. The case is that, besides many times, cuases are known, the correct measures are not taken or are take too long. Touristic preassure and fishing in Egeo Sea, intensive urban development in Morocco, deficitent water quality in Lebanon, a refinery and gas pipeline in Georgia, erosion in the Nile Delta coasts… these 11 spaces that need urgen action for their protection and that will be studied thoroughly in the European project Pegaso, that took its initial steps in the first worshop in Venetian between12th and 14th April.

For the next four years,in this project, leaded by University Autonoma of Barcelona, sicnetist and politians form 15 countries will work together to try and protect Mediterranean ans Black Sea coasts, financed by the Frame Program from European Union.
Read more (Spanish)

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Magazine. February 2010. The remote and till recently wild and untouch  chilean Patagonia is under peril: intensive salmon farming,  dams for hydropower plants, ice gathering and, most of all, climate change are seriously threatening the glaciers, the coastal waters and the equilibrium of all the ecosystems around.

Read more here

SCIENCE MAGAZINE. 19 March 2010. As Egypt celebrates the 50th anniversary of the start of the construction of the Aswan High Dam, some scientists say that this wonder of engineering is contributing to an environmental catastrophe that could force millions of its citizens to abandon the lush, fertile delta. The worst of these is coastal erosion and subsidence, the compacting of the delta soil. For millennia, the untamed Nile compensated for these natural processes by delivering fresh sediments along with its fresh water. The dam, however, now blocks the sediments far upstream of Cairo. As a result, the delta is sinking. At the same time, the Mediterranean Sea is expected to rise as a result of global warming. Deciding on a course of action is easier said than done, however, because the rates at which the sea is rising and the delta is sinking are subjects of fierce debate. As a first, cautious step, Egypt and the United Nations are this year launching a 5-year study of the options for protecting the delta from the encroaching sea. But as Egyptian scientists rush to provide those data, the government is steaming ahead with a series of “megaprojects” to boost the country’s habitable area. In the most ambitious of these, the largest pump in the world is diverting 10% of the Nile into an uninhabited region of the desert to create a new delta.

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EL PAIS, 15th March, 2010

The Environment Ministry has blocked the broadcasting of a documentary for TVE comissioned by the former Envrinoment Miniter in 2006 about the destruction of the coast and that was financed with 1,3oo million euros form public money. The Government demands the withdrawl of two minutes of the film in wich appear images of the national news talking about town planning corruption as one of the evils in the coast.  The TV series manager, Miguel Angel Losada -University of Granada Professor at the Coasts Department- refuses to withdraw the fragment: “Unfortunately, corruption is part of our history. This is censorship (…)”. teh TV series is anything but neytral, specially at chapter 12, dedicated to legislation.

Read more here (Spanish)

BBC World Service. Every year Thailand exports a weight of shrimp equal to one thousand jumbo jets – making it the world’s leading exporter of prawns. Almost of all of this shrimp is farmed in ponds. In Thailand as elsewhere, such intensive production has caused a range of environmental problems. This BBC documentary looks at how the Thai authorities have tackled the issues and some of the challenges that remain.

Listen here to documentary

WWF. This NGO has made use of the Wetlands International Day to release a study about Doñana National Park, in the south of Spainm that denounces that ilegal activities are drying Doñana and they are the major threat concerning the area. The report proposes a series of measures to solve the lsot of biodiversity in this natural space. More than a thousand illegal wells have caused the alarming drop in the water levels of the aquifer and have reduced 90% of its water contribution to the Natural Park wetland.

<img title=”sos_donana_38840″ src=”http://tierrasostenible.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/sos_donana_38840.jpg?w=150″ alt=”" width=”150″ height=”100″ />
<a href=”http://www.wwf.es/noticias/sala_de_prensa/?13540/WWF-seala-el-uso-ilegal-del-agua-como-la-mayor-amenaza-para-Doana”>
Read more</a>

Environmentalist Professional Association of Catalunya and Territorial authorities for Altes Terres de Lleida, Pirineu and Aran have organized for next saturday 16th January a guided visit to the restored lake of Ivars i Vilasana, wich had been dissecated since 1951. This is the largest inner lake in Catalonia (Spain). The visit includes a workshop about aquatic birds.

More information here

El Pais. 6th January 2010. Canary Islands (Spain) Government is intending to eliminate ecological obstacles that paralyze urban development projects- The plan reduces fauna and flora conservation.
Besides protests form scientist and ecolgist groups, Canary Islands Government  (Canary Coalition and Popular Party) have tried to proceed by the emergency way the law proposition for the new local catalog of endangered species, accoding to whichthe number of  protected species will be reduced to 50%. The register eliminates 226 protected species, reduces coverage to other 131 and protects 94 of them in a way considered “irrational and wicked”, since it will only take care for a plant or animal within a protected space.

Read more here (Spanish)

Nature magazine, 24th Dec, 2009

An article in the last issue of Nature highlinght how the ability of species to keep up with climate change will depend in their ability to move to new grounds to maintain the same temperature and other climate features that will change location due to climate change.To put this pressure on species into context, a novel index designed to quantify climate change in the coming century has been developed.  The index provides a quantitative view of the role of topography in buffering climate change as it would affect plants and animals. The data suggest that, in some ecosystems, helping species to relocate more rapidly via habitat corridors or new reserves could be an important contribution to conservation.

Read more here