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In full sun nearly half a megawatt streams off this PV array installed in 2004 by Pacific Power Management. Located in Auburn, California, the system is among the largest in the USA

Editor’s Note: How photovoltaic cells proliferate could be compared to how a few plants proliferate and eventually become a forest. The primary variable cost incurred to manufacture photovoltaics is electricity, which is produced by, you guessed it, photovoltaics. Each photovoltaic cell will produce twenty times more energy in its lifetime than the amount of energy required in its manufacture, and this ratio continues to improve. From the perspective of energy payback as well as resource availability, photovoltaic cells are perhaps the most renewable energy source available today. They literally can create themselves. They are also absolutely pollution-free.

The problem with photovoltaics remains the costs. But two things mitigate this factor: First of all, photovoltaics are being bought as fast as they can be made. They may not be competitive with electricity derived from natural gas or other conventional sources, but this fact seems to have no impact on world demand for photovoltaics. The market worldwide is growing at 30% per year with no end in sight. Current world output of photovoltaics stands at about 1 gigawatt per year, and the installed base of photovoltaics in the world is probably just under 10 gigawatts. Not much considering the world consumes nearly 20,000 gigawatts of energy (all types – about 500 quadrillion BTUs put another way) per year. But the plants could become a forest.

A second factor which mitigates the cost of photovoltaics is the cost to operate and replace them is far more competitive than the cost to install them. In the table below, using California as an example, it can be seen that the cost to install photovoltaics to replace all of California’s electricity would be a prohibitive 1.5 trillion dollars. But the cost to replace photovoltaics on such an array as they wore out would be a more reasonable 30 billion dollars per year. This is only 50% greater than what Californians currently spend on conventional sources of electricity, which is about 20 billion dollars per year.

WHAT IF CALIFORNIA’S ELECTRICITY WAS 100% PHOTOVOLTAIC?

It would cost roughly $1.5 trillion to replace California’s electrical capacity with photovoltaic arrays at today’s prices without subsidies. But the replacement cost on such an array, once installed, would only be 50% greater than the $20 billion per year Californians currently spend on electricity.

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For the last thirty years the price of photovoltaics has been predicted to plummet within the next five years, and it never did. But in the meantime, the price of photovoltaics has come down, to as low as $2.50 per watt factory wholesale, and under $10 per watt installed. The reason world output isn’t rising faster isn’t because demand isn’t strong, demand exceeds supply by a wide margin. The reason is because investors are convinced the breakthrough in costs is just around the corner, and they’re reluctant to invest $100M in a photovoltaic manufacturing plant that could become obsolete a year later. In many applications, particularly where electricity rates are higher during the day, photovoltaics already cost less – on a replacement basis – than conventional electricity. For this reason, they will continue to represent a long-term investment by companies and by nations that makes compelling economic sense. – Ed “Redwood” Ring

Nearly 100 million miles away shines a star that has been a part of life on earth from the beginning: The Sun.

The sun’s power has inspired many religions in almost every culture. The ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun god, Ra, who was believed to control the day and night by traveling through the twelve domains of the underworld and the twelve domains of the day. The impressive circle of stones found in Great Britain, known as Stonehenge, was designed to track the sun’s orbit around earth 5000 years ago. Ancient temples dedicated to the Incan sun god, Inti, are still standing today.

Atlantis Energy’s “Sunslates” generate electricity while also replacing roof shingles

The sun has had a major influence on our beliefs and an even larger influence on our planet. The location of the sun relative to earth determines the season, we rely on it for light, and we rely on the sun’s rays for warmth. With new technology, the sun can provide us with energy as well.

PHOTOVOLTAIC PIONEER National Aeronautics & Space Administration

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) describes the immense power of the star: “At the core, the temperature is 16 million degrees kelvin (K), which is sufficient to sustain thermonuclear fusion reactions. The released energy prevents the collapse of the Sun and keeps it in gaseous form. The total energy radiated is 383 billion trillion kilowatts, which is equivalent to the energy generated by 100 billion tons of TNT exploding each second.”

Many advances have been made in the solar panel industry and we have the equipment to harness the energy provided by sunlight to run a large part of our lives.

“The first conventional photovoltaic cells were produced in the late 1950s, and throughout the 1960s were principally used to provide electrical power for earth-orbiting satellites.

“In the 1970s, improvements in manufacturing, performance and quality of PV modules helped to reduce costs…In the 1980s, photovoltaics became a popular power source for consumer electronic devices, including calculators, watches, radios, lanterns and other small battery charging applications.” Florida Solar Energy Center

PHOTOVOLTAIC RESEARCH National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Almost everyone has enjoyed the practical uses of photovoltaics. Just a little light needs to shine on a battery free calculator before the digits appear clearly on the screen. Yet these little photovoltaic systems are more complicated than they seem. Photovoltaics, or solar cells as they are often called, are panels that convert sunlight to energy. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL, http://www.nrel.gov) explains that solar cells “are made of semiconducting materials similar to those used in computer chips [PV cells are made of thin layers of phosphorus-doped silicon on top of thicker layers of boron-doped silicon]. When sunlight is absorbed by these materials, the solar energy knocks electrons loose from their atoms, allowing the electrons to flow through the material to produce electricity. The process of converting light (photons) to electricity (voltage) is called the photovoltaic (PV) effect.”

This completed photovoltaic array by Atlantis Energy completely replaces the building’s roof

Solar panels are now more versatile than ever and are gaining as much popularity ON the home as they are IN it. Joe Morissey at Atlantis Energy Systems, Inc. describes the potentials of their product with great enthusiasm: “We have two types of photovolatics and they are literally the building’s skin. You place the skin on the building and you immediately have power generation. The typical solar panel consists of a large aluminum frame that is rectangular. Since most roofs aren’t rectangular these PV frames look very ungainly on a home. Our product lends itself nicely architecturally. They are aesthetic and practical.” Consumers have many choices when it comes to PV producers. “Most of the large-scale PV manufacturers are now making a “roof-shingle” style product, including BP Solar, GE Energy, Sharp, and Kyocera Solar,” says Marianne Walpert, Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Pacific Power.

INNOVATIVE INSTALLATION Atlantis Energy

Neighbors are unlikely to complain about the system even if the house isn’t as pleasing to the eye. Since everyone in a neighborhood shares the same grid, they all get to use the solar electricity (although they don’t enjoy the cost savings). Morissey states that “the power generated by the panels will be sent back to the grid once the battery packs are full, and the power from your home will offset neighbors demand and the local utility company does not have to supply that extra power”
The intricate solar panels are not easy to produce. Morissey explains that “the highest output cell is called single crystal. They are grown like a 7th grade science experiment that involves a growing crystal. But what goes into the photovoltaic cells is highly cleaned quartz sand. It is first smelted, then grown in a form and finally thinly sliced and treated with certain chemicals. Metal contacts are then placed on it and it is prepared for power generation. Everything has to be wired together with one panel wired to the next and so on. The net effect is a steady supply of power. It is an expensive process and used to take a large amount of energy. In the past it was hard to justify the extreme amount of energy used to make it. Back then solar panels where only made for remote locations such as space. As the technology improved, the process of slicing and smelting the product became quite advanced.”

In this example the photovoltaics form awnings that would have to be constructed anyway

Unfortunately, PV cells are still pretty expensive. The Atlantis Energy website explains that “your roofing and electrical contractors will on average be charging $12,000 per 100 square feet (there is just over 1kW per 100 square feet) or $12.00 per watt.” Marianne Walpert of Pacific Power explains: “It is expensive because current PV panels take a lot of energy to make and they need purified silicon. It has to be 99.999% pure, and this is where the expense comes in. Purchasing the raw material, crystallizing it, cutting it into wafers and cells; these are all expensive processes. We all believe that cheaper solar panels will eventually exist, but in the past twenty-five years it has hardly changed at all. The manufacturing process has improved, but everything else is still the same.”

The market for photovoltaics has existed for quite some time, yet the popularity of this product is much lower in the United States than it is in other countries. Solar panels are visible on numerous rooftops throughout Europe and Japan whereas these panels are a rare sight on homes in the states. Photovoltaics are not cheap, but in the long run the investment is a good one: the power bill is less outrageous, the system is environmentally friendly and maintenance is practically non existent.

PHOTOVOLTAIC MANUFACTURER Sharp Solar

“Photovoltaics have caught the public’s imagination,” says Morissey, “it is clean, efficient and there is minimal maintenance. That is what we do, we install the system and then we’re done with it. The movement to solar power is a world wide phenomenon. Remember the time before cell phones? Everyone was hard wired. But there are areas where it is impossible to bring in hard wiring. What about houses in remote locations?” The potential for PV is immense and people seem to realize it. Even with less of a demand in the U.S than other countries PV businesses are doing extremely well. “Right now there is not enough of the product to get it around. Demand has outstripped supply,” says Morissey.

This photovoltaic array by Atlantis Energy completely replaces the original roof

With an incredible demand for photovoltaics worldwide, it is obvious that the systems are working. Walpert says “the industry has grown at 40% a year over the last couple of years so obviously people can afford it and demand is rising.” Demand for the photovoltaics is still much higher in Europe than in the United States though. Morissay explains that “demand in Europe is phenomenal because power is more expensive there. The return on investment is higher. The government in Germany is also paying locals up to 54 cents for each kW/hour. If you are generating 20000 kW/year times 54 cents you are talking real money. The system will pay for itself 20 times over. What the government wants to ensure is a redundancy and long lived power so new power plants are unnecessary. They are making a serious shift to wind and solar power generation while the U.S is lagging behind.”

A considerable amount of harmful gases are produced when generating electricity through burning fossil fuels. “Three hundred and twenty five thousand pounds of carbon dioxide, twenty-seven hundred pounds of sulfur dioxide and over one thousand pounds of nitrogen oxide can be mitigated annually by a 100 kW commercial photovoltaic system. That’s about 25 home systems,” says Walpert. Countries like Germany and France have already stopped millions of pounds of harmful pollutants from escaping into the environment by shifting to solar power.

INNOVATIVE INSTALLATION Pacific Power Management

It is surprising that a product that relies on sunlight to function is more popular in overcast Europe than it is in sunny California. The amazing thing about photovoltaics is that direct sunlight is unnecessary for it to function. Of course some light is required, but the cells are actually most efficient in colder conditions. This is why the solar panels are so successful in space. Photovolatics work wonderfully in countries like Germany and Norway where the weather is never too hot. “You think of the northeast [U.S] as being more cloudy,” says Walpert, “but you get about 80% as much energy in Boston as you would in Los Angeles. The sunnier it is, the better it works. Ideal conditions are cool and sunny but power is still produced if it is hazy or overcast.” Energy will be produced regardless of where the building in question is located.

PHOTOVOLTAIC MANUFACTURER Kyocera Solar

One concern about solar panels is the amount of energy it costs to produce them. Fortunately, it has been established that PV systems pay for themselves in a relatively short time and more than make up for the high cost of their production. The U.S Department of Energy answers the question in more detail: “How long does a PV system have to operate to recover the energy-and the associated generation of pollution and CO2 that went into making the system? Energy paybacks for rooftop systems range from 1-4 years, depending on the system. With assumed life expectancies of 30 years, and taking into account the fossil-fuel-based energy used in manufacture, 87% to 97% of the energy that PV systems generate won’t be plagued by pollution, greenhouse gases, and depletion of resources. Based on models and real data, the idea that PV cannot pay back its energy investment is simply a myth.”

PHOTOVOLTAIC MANUFACTURER BP Solar

The real question is whether solar energy will ever offset the need for electricity generated by the city’s nuclear power plant. Walpert likes the idea but doubts it will be possible in the near future: “It is highly unlikely be able to rely on pure solar energy until you get the right storage mechanisms. Fuel cells don’t produce energy; they make electricity from the energy stored in hydrogen. If you can imagine enough solar power to make enough hydrogen then it is possible. The obvious problem with solar power is nighttime. Batteries are not that efficient. If you could convert solar to hydrogen and then hydrogen to electricity it would technically be feasible to get all the energy you need from solar.” Systems that utilize both wind and solar panels in a type of hybrid system do exist and have a lot of potential as well.

The benefits of alternative clean energy are immense. Air quality is so horrible in many areas that the fumes block the blue sky for miles. With improved environmental awareness and ever advancing technologies, natural resources like the sun and wind may eventually generate all the power we need to live life without the guilt of over using the A/C.

Africa, vast and ancient, beckons the traveler Campi Ya Kanzi: Chyulu Hills, Kenya

How can you appreciate a landscape you’ve never been to?

Thundering waterfalls and towering mountains lose their luster when seen on television or in books. You have to go there yourself – and many of us do. Everyone looks forward to a vacation to beautiful places.

Sunny beaches, tropical rainforests, green woods or vast expanses of ever-changing desert are so much more pleasing to the eye. Unfortunately, many tourists don’t leave these natural wonders the way they find them. It is not uncommon to step on the bottle caps and cigarette butts left behind on public beaches. Lizards and snakes are often killed or run over unknowingly by the adventurous in deserts. Trudging through the dense vegetation in forests will leave a path of squashed plants and scared animals.

The truth is that most humans are still clumsy travelers who have a habit of leaving destruction in their wake. “Take Cancun, for example,” says Laura Ell of the International EcoTourism Society (www.ecotourism.org), “If you have a large resort that’s not owned by anyone in the local community, mass tourism will destroy a lot of the environment. When tourists arrive and use so much water and other local resources, it really has an influence on the area. In Cancun, the beach is completely changed and now artificial.” In an era where accessibility to exotic locales is as simple as purchasing a plane ticket or chartering a boat, more and more people are becoming globetrotters and more natural areas are influenced as a result.

Through the use of ecotourism, thousands of tourists not only avoid destroying the environment they are so anxious to see, but also help to protect it for future generations. There are many definitions for ecotourism. “This is one of the challenges in our industry,” says Ell, “but we have the most widely used definition where ecotourism means responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of the local people.”

When residents of exotic regions first noticed the onslaught of tourists many of them quickly did all they could to promote their natural resources as lures. Hunting, safaris, kayaking or scenic jungle tours were (and in some cases, still are) pushed on travelers by residents or even international companies. Even though locals may benefit when they successfully sell a tour, it is not considered ecotourism since the environment often suffers. Internationally owned bars, hotels and restaurants also pop up to entice tourists to stay and spend their money in the area but since the most successful hotels are owned internationally the money typically doesn’t stay in the region.

Bluewater Adventures

When it comes to environmental awareness, tourism has improved immensely in the last few years.

Bluewater Adventures (www.bluewateradventures.ca) offers exciting ecologically friendly excursions to coastal British Columbia and South East Alaska. Randy Burke, director and owner of Bluewater Adventures loves his work. “I took over this position in 1988,” Burke says, “but there was a fellow who got this company going during the 1970′s. He was a pioneer. Ecotourism wasn’t even a term back then, but the founder of Bluewater realized there were wonderful opportunities for wildlife viewing in the area and teamed up with the local community. We currently operate three 65-68 foot boats. While giving tours we educate the travelers about wildlife and the cultures of Coastal British Columbia and South East Alaska. We travel with a biologist on every trip and with small groups of 12-16 people it is a very hands-on type of experience. On these trips we see fabulous scenery with an abundance of wildlife. Over 100 whales can be seen on a 1 week trip. Depending on the area, tourists will have the opportunity to see humpback whales, orcas, sperm whales and in some cases the extremely rare fin whales-the second largest whale on the planet.

Several of our trips also focus on bears, with trips along the British Columbia main land coast. This area is referred to as the Great Bear Rainforest in which the White Spirit Bear can be found. In this area the black bears have a recessive gene in 10% of the animals that make them all white.”

Indigenous people benefit from Bluewater Adventures as well. “The indigenous people benefit in a couple of ways,” continues Burke, “First of all, we have signed a protocol agreement with three of the nations along the British Columbia coast. In the agreement, we are committed to paying the local cultures for the use of their traditional areas and we are also committed to hiring native guides on our tours. For example, guides hired from the Gitga’at nation will take us bear viewing at a viewing stand that they have built. Also, when we need fuel or food, we will buy it locally going to the native coop store in the village rather than shipping it in or buying it from a larger city.”

Tropical Travel is another company with some great trips to offer. “We have conservation lodges in three different countries: Ecuador, Brazil and Peru,” says Elizabeth Sanders, President of Nature Travel (www.tropicalnaturetravel.com), “The newest lodge-the Napo Wildlife Center-in Yasuni National Park is run by the local Anangu Community. There are about 120 people within this community. It is their land, and they came up with the idea for the ecolodge…Some of the locals are trained to be guides, cooks, boatmen, and some take care of the rooms and maintenance. They have a salary, which is an improvement in their lives. In the past, they might have hunted in the jungles and sold the meats for food staples in the market, but they did not have an income.”

Napo Wildlife Center – Amazonian Equador

Like all ecotours, the activities offered by Tropical Travel all involve educating tourists about the environment and the locals living in the area. “On excursions people have the chance to see all kinds of wildlife,” says Sanders, “in the Napo Wildlife Center, tourists travel on lakes and streams in dug out canoes made from trees that have fallen victim to rain or floods (they are never cut). From these boats you can see parrot licks up close. Parrot licks are exposed clay hills where the birds come for the minerals in the clay which break down ingested toxins [found naturally in many of the foods eaten by these birds]. In the wildlife center in Peru, you can go out at night and see big 400-500 pound tapirs and watch these animals feed.” Sanders remembers how exciting it was for her: “On one of the excursions I went on, we traveled along the river in the southern forest of Cuzco and we saw a capybara laying along the bank. Not thirty minutes later, coming along the bend, we saw the head of an animal swimming across the river. When it reached the bank, it pulled itself out of the water and turned out to be a giant anteater. It was an amazing sight.”

Even though, ecotourism is known to be better on the environment, the issue of money has a major influence on the decision making process. For example, “Many governments love the idea of tourism as an investment in their country and they don’t really make international companies follow strict environmental guidelines on their development – they worry about losing business,” explains Ell of Ecotourism International.

Search for Alaska’s elusive Spirit Bear Bluewater Adventures

Hotels also worry about how ecotourism will affect business. In a report written by the Center for Ecotourism and Sustainable Development (CESD) (www.ecotourismcesd.org) and The International Ecotourism Society, hotel managers in popular tourist destinations voice their opinion about eco tourism: “In Costa Rica, while they agreed that CST (Certification for Sustainable Tourism) could probably help to improve the environmental reputation of their hotels, it was too expensive to adopt CST standards. Most importantly, these managers were not convinced of the appeal of green reputations to business travelers, their main customer base.”

These concerns are unfounded however. In 2004, The World Tourism Organization (www.world-tourism.org) released findings that ecotourism and nature tourism are growing 3 times faster than mass tourism. TIA was also quoted saying that of US travelers, over 75% feel their visits should not damage the environment; 38% are willing to pay more for that. The United States Department of State explains that “the economic benefits of ecotourism in many local communities across the country has been significant.” The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (www.fws.gov) estimates that in 1995 nearly 25 million visits to over 100 national wildlife refuges generated an estimated $245 million from non-consumptive uses only (e.g. excluding hunting and fishing). Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on the Virginia coast alone generated $21 million from non-resident visitors, supporting 545 local jobs. Birdwatchers visiting Santa Ana Refuge, Laguna Atascosa Refuge, and Sabal Palm Audubon Sanctuary contributed over $59 million in direct expenditures to the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Obviously, ecotourism is growing in popularity and is a sizeable market. According to the World Tourism Organization, Ecotourism is considered the fastest growing market in the tourism industry with an annual growth rate of 5% worldwide and representing 6% of the world gross domestic product.

Alaska’s Stunning Central Coast Bluewater Adventures

Through education and employment in the tourism industry, local communities benefit from the travelers that pass through. Ell explains that “we want to make sure that the local people benefit financially. Travelers make donations which can be used for schools, libraries, hospitals and so on. In the case of Cancun, all the money spent doesn’t even stay in the community. We call this leakage, the money goes out of the country. Locals are not being hired to work there and they have to witness the area [their home] being damaged by foreigners. This should be avoided.”

There are many reasons that ecotourism is so enticing; tourists can witness the local customs and not depend on international tours with no real history or relation to the area as their guides. Mass tourism through stereotypical tours leaves the traveler with no real idea of local cultures. “From the travelers’ perspective, it’s not really a unique experience where they can understand the culture and their relation to the environment [when going through a mass tour group]. This is basically a resort where you learn nothing about locals. You don’t interact with them and you don’t see authentic local culture,” emphasizes Ell, “ecotourism, on the other hand, will encourage the local traditions to continue.”

There are even examples where the creation of ecotours within an existing culture has enhanced the lifestyles of locals dramatically. With an alternate source of income, locals abandon illegal activities that previously where the only way they could make a living. Ell mentions an example in Africa: “Hunting and poaching reached such an intense level that the wildlife parks came to an agreement with the poachers and offered them jobs as guides. The guides obviously knew the jungle very well and made much more money this way than they did poaching.”

Land of the Midnight Sun Bluewater Adventures

Ecotourism has become so popular that many companies advertise as having ecotours when in fact they do not. Burke from Bluewater Adventures describes the challenges: “Some companies run at a small scale, which is usually the case with legitimate ecotourism, but a cruise ship with one biologist and 2000 people on board advertising as an ecotour is not the real thing. The line is often blurred between real ecotours and fake ones. I think it is great that these tours have hired a biologist that can explain the natural environment, but it is still a limited program. The tour is on a set schedule. You can’t put ecotourism into the company’s description just because they’ve changed the bed sheets over to green.” Proper research on the traveler’s part is key.

Ecotourism seems like the perfect vacation. Unfortunately, even ecotourism has its flaws. When an area is popular, no matter how careful tourists are, they will still have an impact on the environment. “There is a danger that ecotourism could ruin our environment if we’re not careful,” says Burke honestly, “ecotourism needs to be careful if it gains popularity. We need to be careful not to love nature to death.” However, most environmentalists are confident that with proper planning and environmental awareness, well managed ecotourism will leave unique and sensitive environments intact.

There are some fascinating tourism opportunities out there. It is a misconception that ecotourism is more expensive than the alternative. Prices range between expensive luxury bungalows to relatively cheap excursions that include everything a person needs without all the extras that many tourists don’t desire. Ecotourism is for everyone. It all depends on personal preference. There are literally hundreds of ecotours and ecolodges to choose from. Many companies also offer a variety of packages where you have the choice between relaxing on pristine beaches with no other person in sight, or taking in all the sights on exciting jeep, boat or even balloon rides.

The following are some examples of what to expect while on an ecotour.

AFRICA

Campi Ya Kanzi: Chyulu Hills, Kenya

Tour the endless savanah of East Africa, see the magnificant wildlife and feel the ancient culture.

In Kenya tourists have the option of going on land-based safaris or viewing lions, elephants, rhinos, thousands of zebra and wildebeest from the heights of a balloon ride.

Micato Safaries (www.micato.com) offers these experiences. The Campi ya Kanzi camp (find them through Uncharted Outposts, Inc. www.unchartedoutposts.com) is another style of ecotourism. The camp is owned by the local Masai herdsmen and while here, tourists will have the chance to experience the incredible wildlife in the area and learn more about the cultures in the region.

Campi ya Kanzi is one of the most environmentally friendly camps in East Africa. The weather there is sometimes compared to that of California with subtropical, temperate temperatures.

With great weather conditions it is no wonder that this area of Kenya is such a popular tourist destination. Solar power is used to heat the water and instead of firewood, charcoal made of coffee husks is used in the kitchen.

Perhaps the most unique feature of the Campi ya Kanzi is the water that is recycled through lava filters, which supplies the camp’s vegetable garden and ponds where local wildlife, including lions, come to drink. Just imagine waking up before dawn and hearing lions eagerly lap up water right in front of your door at sunrise.

ASIA

Sunset on the rim of the endless Pacific Voyages Wilson Island

Asia offers the eco-traveler lands that span the range from vast dunes to boreal forests to the world’s mightiest mountains.

If you prefer to relax, you can do so at Sri Lanka’s famous ecolodge- Ranweli Holiday Village (www.ecoclub.com/ranweli).

North by North East Tours (http://www.ede.ch/nne/) offers boat tours along the Mekong where tourists can see pristine areas hardly touched by western civilization.

EUROPE

Ecotours are not restricted to the tropics. Neophron Ltd. (www.neophron.com) is a tour operator operated for the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds (BSBP). Cultural tours, historical heritage tours, bird watching, botanical tours and brown bear and wolf watching are just a few of the memorable experiences to enjoy through Neophron.

In Sweden, Saga Adventures (www.sagaadventures.com) offers exhilarating tours where visitors ride through the highlands on horseback during the day and appreciate local cooking and storytelling around the campfire at night. This is definitely a top tour for those who appreciate horses.

MIDDLE EAST – JORDAN

Jordan’s Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (www.rscn.org.jo) offers a variety of phenomenal adventure tours. RSCN provides tours from the highlands of Northern Jordan to the river canyons leading to the Dead Sea where tourists have come for centuries seeking out the healing properties of the saltiest sea in the world. You can enjoy hikes in the desert canyons, safaris through the endangered Oryx reserve, boating and archaeological site seeing.

LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

When people imagine a vacation, the image of palm trees and beaches appears more often than anything else. Here you can snorkel through coral reefs, doze off amongst sea grape and coconut trees or take part in guided fishing tours. Casuarina Beach Club (www.Casuarina.com), Tiamo Resorts (www.tiamoresorts.com), Adventure Life (www.adventure-life.com), and Nature Air (www.natureair.com) are just a few of the great companies offering ecotours to the public.

OCEANA

A turtle lumbers in the Pacific on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Voyages Wilson Island

Australia has an incredible array of tours for eco-travelers. There is so much to see in this unique country.

Along the verdant east coast of Queensland Kingfisher Bay Resort (www.kingfisherbay.com), and O’Reilly’s Oceanfront Guesthouse (www.oreillys.com.au) offer tours that allow tourists to experience the incredible wildlife via guided walks or atv rides.

One of the most recognized ecotourism destinations in the world is Turtle Island (www.turtlefiji.com). This beautiful island is covered with white powder beaches and gorgeous tropical forest. As a finalist in the World Legacy Awards and the filming location of “Blue Lagoon” starring Brooke Shield’s it is no wonder that this resort is considered the closest thing to heaven on earth.

UNITED STATES & CANADA

Bluewater Adventures (www.bluewateradventures.com) is just one of the great ecotourism companies operating in the region. In areas like the Alaskan coast, North American parks, and Canadian reserves you can enjoy everything from wildlife viewing, kayaking, hiking and boat tours.

The list is seemingly endless. There is an ecotour out there for anyone who is interested. Ecotourism is the ultimate package, where everyone benefits. You enjoy yourself and you know you are doing your part helping natural and cultural heritage sites. What could be better than that?

Additional Great Resources:

International Ecotourism Club

www.ecoclub.com/

The International Ecotourism Society

www.ecotourism.org

Conservation International’s Ecotravel Center

http://www.ecotour.org/

Sustainable Travel International

http://www.sustainabletravelinternational.org/

Are organics always less toxic than synthetics?

Paracelsus, a 16th century alchemist and physician, invented the science of toxicology.

Today, if you are a graduate student in toxicology at major university, you need answer only one question correctly during your final oral exam to get your PhD: The professor asks: what did Paracelsus have to say about potentially toxic chemicals? You answer, “umm, the dose makes the poison??” Huzzah! Here’s your PhD! “The dose makes the poison” means that of the thousands of various chemicals we ingest from breathing and eating, i.e. living, practically all of them are toxic if ingested at a high enough dose. For example, virtually all the various vitamins and minerals we need in order to survive can be toxic if taken in excess. But, excess may mean amounts far higher than one could possibly ingest on a daily basis during your lifetime, no matter how hard you tried.

American Council on Science & Health

This brings us to the topic of chemical carcinogens. In 1958, Congress inserted the now infamous Delaney Clause into the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. It prohibited the presence in foods of any synthetic chemical (pesticide, food additive, etc.) in any amount if that chemical had been found to cause cancer in laboratory animals (1). Notice the law said synthetic chemical (more about that later). This law is still in effect (loosely, because even EPA regulators understand that zero is impossible), even though today’s analytical techniques enable chemists to detect any chemical of interest in food or water at levels a billion to a trillion times lower than was possible in 1958. Back then, if you put a gram of DDT into your backyard wading pool and sampled the water, you could detect the DDT using analytical techniques available at that time. Today, that same amount of DDT could be detected in a water sample from Lake Michigan!!

It was in 1959 that we had our first national cancer panic in the U.S. Traces of a synthetic herbicide that was a carcinogen in rodents were detected in cranberries, so nobody ate cranberries that Thanksgiving and the industry suffered mightily. This was OK with me because I never liked cranberries anyway. It was pointed out at the time that one would need to eat 15,000 pounds of cranberries every day of one’s life to match the dose rodents were given, but no one seemed to care. There have been many more such media and special interest group (including scientists who love grant money) inspired scares since then: dioxin everywhere, nitrites in bacon and sausage, alar in apples, cell phones causing brain cancer, etc. etc. When I was a kid in the 50s, sitting too close to those newly available “television sets” was widely believed to be a cancer risk because of exposure to the T.V. tube “rays”. Hey, cancer is scary, and very little was known at that time about the biochemical mechanisms involved in cancer etiology, and even less about how our immune system defends us against it.

So by 1959, the major tenet of toxicology, “the dose makes the poison,” was tossed out the window from 100 stories up, crushed like roadkill on the Jersey Turnpike.

After that, the man who got the carcinogen ball really rolling was the noted U.C. Berkeley chemist Bruce Ames. He invented a quick, easy, and cheap test (strangely, now called the “Ames test”) to determine if any chemical of interest can cause mutations in the DNA of bacteria in vitro. If mutations were observed, then that particular chemical was considered likely to be a carcinogen in lab animals (usually it is, but not always). Dr. Ames became a campaigner for environmental groups wanting to ban various pesticides and herbicides. Today, he has totally changed his position, but that’s another story for next time.

By the mid 1960s, rodents bred to be cancer prone (GMO rats and mice) became commercially available for carcinogen testing (it is very difficult to induce cancer in normal rats and mice).

Here’s how testing a chemical is done, then and now:

1) Do the Ames test on some pesticide, food additive, preservative, or whatever and find it to be mutagenic. This means the bacteria’s DNA in a gene is altered in some way or other.

2) Determine what is called the “maximum tolerated dose” (mtd) of this mutagenic chemical in your rats or mice. The mtd is the amount of the chemical that almost kills the rodents in a single dose. It is also a dose that, depending on the particular chemical, can be thousands to millions of times higher than a human could ever eat in a lifetime. Next, feed the rodents just 10% less than that dose daily for their entire lifetime, usually between one and two years. If you really care if your research might be relevant to reality (and if you have enough grant money because these tests are very expensive), you can also include groups of animals fed only the mtd and rarely even the mtd. Oops, I forgot to mention, if the test chemical is so noxious that the rodents won’t eat their food, use gavage, i.e., inject the chemical into their gut every day. This technique obviously mimics human exposure to pesticides, right?

3) After a year or two, sacrifice the animals and count up all the various tumors they might have in various organs. Most of the rodents in the control group, fed a normal diet, will have various tumors anyway because they have been bred to be cancer prone. So, if the test group of rodents fed some noxious chemical at the highest dose has an average of, say, four tumors per animal in a particular organ, and the control group has an average of only 1 tumor per animal, then the chemical being tested increases cancer incidence by 400% !!. Call the media!

U.S. Food & Drug Administration

Next, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will classify this test chemical as a possible human carcinogen, as if rodents were nothing more than miniature humans, and establish acceptable levels of the chemical in foods using a HUGE margin of safety factor based on a very faulty mathematical model. Sometimes a test chemical will induce cancer in male rats but not in females, or visa versa. It doesn’t matter. Even if the test chemical caused cancer at the maximum tolerated dose (mtd), but did NOT result in ANY excess cancer at HALF the mtd (remember, the dose makes the poison?), the chemical will still be classified as a possible human carcinogen subject to government regulation. Remember, maximum tolerated dose is defined as an amount which will almost kill you with ONE exposure! Now, various “consumer safety groups” and professional fear mongers will launch scare attacks in all the “we love to report this kind of stuff” news media. The EPA will decide what levels are acceptable in the air, water, soil, etc., based on politics more than science, and the FDA will decide acceptable levels in foods based on politics and their faulty mathematical model.

Now let’s consider known human carcinogens. There are very few of these, but I will give you an example of how they came to be known, and it’s not because of rodent testing. About 60 years ago, a huge experiment was started in which millions of human volunteers, at their own expense, were exposed to really high daily doses of a suspected carcinogen over a period of at least 25 years. At the end of the test period, their cancer rates were compared to the rates found in a group of millions of people not exposed to that suspected carcinogen. It turns out that the exposure group had lung cancer incidence at least 10-15 times higher than the non-smoking group! Other types of cancers were also significantly increased. Oops, I forgot to say it was cigarette smoke that was the suspected carcinogen! Obviously, such controlled experiments using some chemical cannot be ethically conducted on humans in a laboratory setting. Because rodents go crazy if forced to breathe noxious stuff like cigarette smoke, it has never been shown that rats can get cancer from breathing it. So we have a situation where we know cigarette smoking causes cancer in humans, but we can’t be sure it does so in rats. Is there some irony here?

The “Junk Science” Website attacks environmentalist groupthink

There are only a few dozen known human carcinogens, and it takes long term exposure to them to increase cancer risks. Unarguable statistics (NOT rodent testing) have shown that the coal tar chimney sweeps are exposed to daily can cause cancer of the scrotum. If inhaled over a long period, asbestos fibers increase risk of lung cancer and lung disease. Ditto for uranium miners who inhaled lots of silica dust and radon down in the uranium mines in the 1950s and 60s. Mustard gas can cause cancer in doughboys (WW I) and Saddam victims, if the dose doesn’t kill them first. But the absolutely most dangerous, for sure, human carcinogen of all is something that each and every one of us is exposed to almost every day of our lives (unless you live in Seattle anytime or San Francisco in the summer). It’s called sunlight. You want some type of skin cancer? Hang out in the sun as much as possible all your life, don’t use sun block, and look really tanned and beautiful.

But let’s put this stuff in perspective. Asbestos fibers and silica dust need to be inhaled often over a period of many years to increase cancer risk. Asbestos sitting in your attic as a fire retardant insulation is no danger to anyone unless you insist on stirring it up and breathing it every day. Silica is sand, so are you afraid to go to the beach? You don’t inhale sand, but if you’re drilling down in a mine and stir up lots of silica dust and inhale it, you definitely increase lung cancer risk over the years. Even though long time smokers have a risk for lung cancer 10-15 times higher than non-smokers, 85 to 90% of those smokers never get lung cancer, although they may not be able to climb a flight of stairs without panting. And consider sunlight (the ultra violet portion of it). If the EPA could regulate our exposure to UV light using the same criteria it does for all the various pesticides and food preservatives that are carcinogens in rodents, we would all be mandated, like vampires, to stay indoors during daylight hours. We could not go out in daylight without using 200 power sun block, while wearing head to toe clothing and big floppy (government approved) hats! Hawaii would be off limits to humans! I’m not making this up, folks! So the next time you visit the tanning parlor or lie out on the beach, be absolutely sure to avoid eating any snacks containing those evil preservatives!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393308294/ecoworld0f-20

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Technological Risk by H.W. Lewis

You are still not convinced that the hundred-fifty or so chemicals found to be carcinogenic in rodents really shouldn’t be all that worrisome for us humans at levels of exposure that are related to real life?

Remember in paragraph two above how Congress mandated, with the Delaney clause (1958), that amounts of synthetic chemicals in foods must be zero if they caused cancer in rodents? It was not known then that virtually all the carcinogens in our environmental are natural, and that many (probably all) of the foods we eat contain thousands of different chemicals, some of which are rodent carcinogens. Apples, bananas, basil, cabbage, citrus fruits, mushrooms, turnips, and so many more foods we eat all contain chemicals that cause cancer at huge lifelong doses in laboratory rodents. Broccoli, for example, is known to be protective against cancer in humans when eaten at realistic levels over your lifetime, probably because it contains high levels of various natural antioxidants. It also contains at least four different possible human carcinogens based on the wonderful rodent testing I described above. If you ate 10 or 20 pounds of broccoli every day of your life, you just might increase your risk of some cancer or other. At an American Chemical Society meeting, where I chaired a Symposium (and gave a great talk myself, of course debunking the whole rat model), I had lunch with two FDA guys. As we ate our carcinogen loaded broccoli, I asked them “what if broccoli were a new food that no one had ever eaten before and you guys had to review it for approval as a food additive?” They admitted that it could not be approved under the present FDA rules for food use! I’m not making this up, as Dave Barry would say.

Plants have evolved defense mechanisms against attack by various bug, animal, and bacteria predators. They include, “natural” toxic chemicals and pesticides. For example, there are many mushrooms you do NOT want to eat. I know what some of you are thinking, because I’ve been through this with various friends and enemies who all refuse to listen to anything that goes against their green religion. You think that these “natural” chemicals in our foods are safe because us humans have developed an immunity, over hundreds of thousands of years, to these natural chemical toxins and carcinogens, but not to the relatively new synthetic food additives, herbicides and pesticides. That argument is unequivocally, without any doubt, completely wrong. “Artificial” food additives (preservatives) are chemically very similar to natural antioxidants and bioflavonoids found in vegetables, and everyone knows these chemicals are good for you. I know this because I am a brilliant biochemist who helped elucidate just how us humans metabolize chemicals that in the 1970s and 80′s we called “xenobiotics”, i.e., chemicals imbibed from eating, drinking, and breathing that are not native to our bodies.

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Junk Science Judo by Steven J. Milloy

In the 1960s, very little was known about how all those thousands of xenobiotic chemicals we absorb into our bodies after we eat were metabolized. Now we know exactly how it’s done. All the foods we eat are broken down in the digestive tract into constituent chemicals that are then absorbed from the small intestine and dumped into our wondrous liver (of all our organs, only the brain is more wondrous). If our liver thinks we can use these chemicals (e.g., amino acids from proteins, sugars from starches, vitamins, etc.) they go into the bloodstream and travel to whatever part of the body that needs them. The thousands of other chemicals that our liver doesn’t think we need, such as drugs, all the chemicals responsible for the flavor and odors of foods, are subject to enzymatic activity that makes those chemicals ready to be eliminated from the bloodstream through the kidneys into the urine. If you feed a rodent or a human any chemical, “natural” or “artificial”, those chemicals will be metabolized in the same way. You can detect the metabolites in the urine, and that’s that.

We will finish this essay with two examples of carcinogen BS. They will either leave you thinking that I am a right wing extremist moron because you yourself are a left wing extremist moron, or your possession of normal common sense will convince you that I am absolutely right and you were really misinformed all your life about these matters:

Benzo-a-pyrene: This chemical is a potent carcinogen in rats. It is created in meats during roasting and grilling in the very tasty browned exterior of the meat. If you like BBQ and roasted meats of all kinds, you will ingest lots of rat carcinogen BaP over your lifetime (often sitting in the carcinogenic sunlight at an outdoor BBQ without any sunblock lotion). Should you never eat roasted meats ever again? Here is how research I did in the late 1970s helped make me feel the way I do today about all these so called carcinogens in the whole food supply and environment.

If you conduct an experiment in which rats are daily fed a diet containing BaP at levels talked about above, then cancer rates in those rats will be higher than a comparable group of rats fed a normal rat diet. But here’s the rub, unknown to biochemists in the 1960′s, a family of remarkable enzymes in the liver of the rodent, and in this case rat livers and human livers are similar, will chemically alter the BaP so that it is easily excreted from the bloodstream into the urine and out it goes harmlessly. One big problem for the poor lab rats, however, is that there is WAY too much of this altered BaP to be excreted all at once. So it then circulates around in the blood and goes through their liver a second time. It is chemically changed again, some goes out harmlessly, but we still have overload. This means un-excreted stuff goes through the liver a third time, and is chemically changed again, and then a fourth (still harmless) time! None of this would happen in a lifetime of you eating your beloved BBQ at extremely lower levels. Once and out is the story for BaP in our livers in real life exposure! But finally, for the overdosed rat, the fifth time through it’s overtaxed liver, a VERY potent carcinogen is created that can react with DNA and initiate the cancer process by mutating a susceptible gene in some organ or other. It you want to know, it is a diol epoxide (us chemists have to use some jargon sometime to sound intelligent. So, does common sense say anything about “the dose makes the poison”?

Finally, consider dioxin, the poster chemical of environmental contamination. The EPA once called dioxin the most potent carcinogen ever! It gained fame after the Viet Nam war because it was a contaminant in the herbicide “agent orange” widely sprayed for defoliation. Since then, there have been zillions of claims from veterans of that war (which I didn’t like at all, and I even marched against it as a good Berkeley hippie!) that exposure to it caused veterans to have increased risk of various diseases, including cancer. Subsequent studies have found no correlation with dioxin exposure and any disease, but many special interest groups still believe it is total environmental evil. What we didn’t know then, but know now, is that dioxin is a natural, ubiquitous chemical in the environment. Every time wood is burned in your fireplace, every time there is a forest fire, dioxin is created and spreads all over the place. If I specifically look for dioxin in virtually any food we eat, using today’s analytical techniques, I will find some. And it will be there at higher levels than the EPA considers safe. This is a really big “so what”, because the levels the EPA thinks is safe for humans are about a gazillion times lower than the level that might actually be dangerous, except to male rats. Remember, those EPA “safe” levels are based on rodent studies, and include a huge margin of safety.

Here is real life example: In 1976, a catastrophic explosion occurred in a chemical plant in Seveso, Italy. Literally tons of noxious chemicals, including huge amounts of dioxin, were spewed into the air, only to settle into the soil and people’s bodies. Those workers who didn’t get killed by the explosion, but were heavily doused with dioxin, developed a severe form of acne that lasted for several weeks or months and then healed. That’s it! This is when various environmentalists were saying that a gram of dioxin could kill millions of people! Twenty-five years later, according to the most recent review of cancer mortality among Seveso residents, there have been no significant increases in overall cancers in the general population. In fact, it looks like dioxin protects against breast cancer in women. That is probably just a statistical fluke, but who knows when you are dealing with statistics? Ask Viktor Yushchenko, the new leader of Ukraine, how toxic dioxin is. Before the recent democratic elections in his country, his enemies tried to poison him by giving him a huge dose of dioxin. They believed the “conventional wisdom” of the world’s “green” groups that dioxin is really, really toxic. They could easily have killed him with traditional poisons such as arsenic, cyanide, ricin (a truly potent “natural” poison from castor beans) or whatever. Instead, they gave him a really bad case of acne from which he will recover, not need to worry about any future cancer, and be able to lead his nation on to greatness. There will be a part two of this carcinogen discussion in the future. Just keep visiting Ecoworld!

About the Author: Edward Wheeler, Ph.D, is a very old biochemist, who actually conducted pioneering cancer/nutrition research in the 1970′s and ’80′s for the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. He authored some really, really good research papers in journals such as “Cancer research” and others. So he really, really knows what he’s talking about!!! Wheeler’s earlier essays from the “Monsters in the Closet” series are

Bring Back DDT?, and
GMOs, Salvation or Monsters?

India’s youth inherit a nation with a rich heritage of democracy and diversity

India is very keen to secure overseas energy resources,

in order to meet its accelerating energy demands. As a result, Indian energy corporations have emerged as significant rivals to established Western multinational energy companies in the overseas oil and gas markets. However, inadequate diplomacy and weaknesses in the structure of the domestic energy industry have plagued their efforts.

While Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar is seeking to restructure the domestic energy sector in order to boost its overseas competitiveness, this is unlikely to lead to any major privatisations. Aiyar has imparted new momentum to India’s energy diplomacy, leading to breakthroughs with energy-rich regional neighbours, such as Iran and Burma. These projects promise to boost the prospects for peace with Pakistan and ease long-standing tensions with Bangladesh. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s visit to Delhi in early 2005 to sign a bilateral agreement on energy cooperation and the activities of Indian energy corporations in Kazakhstan show the growing reach of India’s energy diplomacy, which may soon involve greater cooperation with China, Russia and Iran.

Chavez’s visit follows Caracas’s offer in 2004 to India’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) of a share in the production and exploitation of five Venezuelan oil fields. It also underlines the growing overseas activities of Indian energy corporations as Delhi searches for ways to meet accelerating domestic energy demands.

Over the last 20 years, India’s domestic production of oil has stagnated while its consumption of petroleum products has almost trebled. India imports 70% of their oil, which has had a significant impact on the balance-of-payments position. Indeed, last year’s rise in international oil prices has taken the current account sharply into deficit after several years in surplus.

In the next ten years, even if the latest series of domestic oil exploration discoveries (for example, by UK-based Cairns Energy in Rajasthan) are fully exploited, India will still struggle to keep its imports down at current levels. Domestic demand for petroleum products is increasing relentlessly at 5% per year.

The Ganges delta from space India has abundant sun, adequate water, but scarce conventional energy resources

Meanwhile, demand for natural gas, which stood at 0.6 trillion cubic feet (tcf) in 1995 had reached 0.9 tcf by 2002 and is expected to touch 1.2 tcf by 2010 and 1.6 tcf by 2015. Domestic sources of supply met over 90% of demand as late as 2003. However, despite the increased reserves discovered by recent exploration, the country will need to import up to one-third of its projected consumption needs by 2015. Moreover, volatilities in the international gas market threaten not only India’s balance-of-payments position, but also the underlying growth rate of its industrial and agricultural sectors — where gas is a fast-rising substitute fuel and is used extensively to produce chemical fertilisers.

India: Energy Reserves:

OIL (billion barrels) 1983: 3.6, 1993: 5.9, 2003: 5.6

GAS (billion cubic metres) 1983: 460, 1993: 720, 2003: 850

In 1998, when the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led government conducted nuclear tests, it also inaugurated a new policy of securing the country’s future energy needs. The government broadened its engagement with multi-national companies, widening opportunities for them to participate in oil and gas exploration within India and proposed building up a buffer stock of oil to protect against market volatilities.

Nevertheless, the foremost aspect of this strategy involved encouraging leading public-sector energy companies — such as ONGC — to secure energy resources overseas by participating directly in the global energy market.

A legacy of changing the world peacefully: The Raj Ghat Memorial for Mahatma Gandhi Photo: Michel Dalle

In recent years, India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation has bought equity stakes in oil fields in Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Angola, Burma, Sakhalin in Russia, Vietnam, Iran and Syria.

Other Indian public-sector undertakings have become involved — not only in acquiring exploration and exploitation rights, but also in establishing sales outlets for Indian petroleum products and in offering a variety of technical services.

In the gas market, the Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) has started to invest heavily in equity stakes in liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants in Oman and Iran, and is building port facilities and pipelines at home to handle large imports. GAIL is also pursuing plans for direct pipelines from neighbouring Bangladesh, Burma, Iran and even Pakistan.

However, the success of the new energy strategy has thus far been limited by two main factors:

In more developed oil markets, it has brought India into direct conflict with leading multinational corporations and the policies of Western governments (especially those of the United States), which support them. Thus, while Saudi Arabia is by far India’s largest supplier of crude oil, Indian companies have made little progress in acquiring rights in the Saudi oil industry.

Saudi Prince Abdul Aziz Al Saud visits with India’s President Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Instead, Indian companies have had to pursue opportunities in regions on the margins of the global energy market. This has led ONGC to pursue rights in countries such as Burma, Sudan, Libya, Russia, Iran and (pre-US invasion) Iraq — where political instabilities and other pressures have often disrupted its activities. ONGC’s investments in Iraq are now of doubtful value while cost factors have risen sharply for its investments in Sakhalin — not least because it has had to make large loans to its failing Russian partners.

Indian companies have also had to compete with other ‘late-comer’ national oil companies also seeking to improve their country’s energy security. In particular, ONGC has faced stiff direct competition with the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which is much larger and more active. Until 2003, India’s international spending on oil rights was just 3.5 billion dollars, while that of CNPC was over 40.0 billion.

Recently, in both Angola and Sudan, ONGC has lost bids for oil-prospecting rights to CNPC and, in Sakhalin, it was obliged to offer Rosneft a 2 billion-dollar ‘loan’ simply to keep its place in a market where CNPC had already offered Yukos 4 billion. These competitive pressures have pushed Indian companies ever further towards the peripheries of the global oil market — in recent months, even towards Ecuador and the Ivory Coast. Domestic problems. Three main domestic factors have constrained the oil industry’s ability to secure investments abroad:

The large amount of bureaucratic red-tape surrounding Indian PSUs has proved a significant disadvantage. One of the reasons why ONGC lost out to CNPC in both Sudan and Angola was because it had to wait to have the financing for its bids cleared by Delhi.

Successive Indian governments have exploited PSU energy companies to fulfil their political mandates and to ease their own fiscal difficulties. Until recently, the government administered petroleum and gas prices to keep them at artificially low levels — and, although these mechanisms have now been removed, pressures continue to be exerted on PSUs to hold down their prices and thus their profits.

A legacy of love inspiring surpassing beauty: The Taj Mahal Photo: Michel Dalle

Even where PSUs make significant profits, they can rarely be kept for corporate investment strategies. In recent years ONGC and the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) have had to declare very high dividends which — because the Government of India holds more than 80% of their stock — have disappeared into the public treasury.

The public-energy sector is plagued by a lack of organisation and coordination. This has largely been because the government has encouraged energy companies to operate independently. Thus, they rarely cooperate and frequently compete against each other. For example, ONGC has recently been seeking to enter the domestic market for processed petroleum products, while IOC — most of whose business is based in that market — has started prospecting for oil rights overseas. This has led to duplication of functions and effort. Nevertheless, to a degree this may prove advantageous because success in the international market for oil rights can depend on offering diversified services. This may explain why IOC has been successful at acquiring exploration rights in countries where it also provides petroleum products and distribution services, while ONGC has been unable to do the same.

In response to this last problem, Aiyar has called for a restructuring of the industry through the creation of one or two petroleum ‘giants’ out of the dozen or so PSUs that currently occupy different segments of the market. However, his proposals contradict the government’s policies of pursuing economic liberalisation and increasing the influence of market forces over corporate performance.

India’s Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar

The implications of Aiyar’s position came out most clearly at recent meetings with the Iranian authorities during which he convinced the latter to grant exploration rights to ONGC in return for signing a large LNG import contract, which will be administered by GAIL. Aiyar has now become central in coordinating policy among the supposedly autonomous corporations that make up India’s oil and gas industry. In this respect, liberalisation and privatisation in the industry remain distant prospects.

In contrast, the gas sector has attracted significant private and foreign investment. This has largely been because its late development has meant that the state has struggled to retain its authority over the internal structure of the gas industry. Reliance Industries — India’s largest industrial conglomerate — has made major gas discoveries, especially in the Krishna-Godavari basin. Furthermore, Shell has become an important player in the LNG market and British Gas in the supply of intra-state pipelines. These private interests have started to challenge the control of PSUs in several areas.

For example: Reliance is threatening not to develop its holdings in the Krishna-Godavari basin unless GAIL concedes its current statutory monopoly on inter-state pipeline connections; while Tata Industries and GAIL are in open competition for access to neighbouring Bangladesh’s gas supplies.

However, as the competition between Tata and GAIL suggests, private-sector interests will have to find a means of compromise with the public sector. This is because the solution to India’s energy problems lies overseas and thus can only be tackled through diplomacy — a prerogative of the state. In this respect, India’s neighbouring countries possess the resources to meet its energy shortages. However, Delhi’s diplomatic relations with them have traditionally been difficult:

For more than a decade, Iran and India have agreed in principle to the construction of a pipeline bringing natural gas to India. However, the pipeline has never gone beyond the planning stages, largely because it has to pass through Pakistan, whose hostility to India has precluded construction. Dhaka doubts. Bangladesh has been prepared to frustrate the development of its own gas industry rather than agree to selling gas to India, which is essential to justifying investment costs. Instead, India has been obliged to pursue an import strategy based on LNG, whose costs per unit of gas are at least 60% higher.

Nevertheless, over the last year, there have been breakthroughs on several fronts:

Burma

With strong government support, GAIL has brokered agreement with Burma for a gas pipeline to India — which Bangladesh has finally agreed to join, largely for fear of being left out. A network of pipelines around the northern Bay of Bengal is now in prospect. Iran. More significantly, the new climate of negotiation between India and Pakistan has promoted the revival of the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline. While India remains cautious — and thus far has pledged no active investment — Aiyar has agreed (on behalf of GAIL) to take the gas on a cash-on-delivery basis, which will improve the prospects of financing the project.

Pakistan

In other moves, Pakistan — which faces its own energy problems — has opened its domestic petroleum product market to international investors, including, in principle, Indian investors. Both Reliance and Indian Oil are considering bids in Pakistan’s market.

Besides helping to solve India’s energy shortages, if these projects come to fruition, they could significantly diminish tensions between the countries of the region. For example:

Pakistan may hesitate to promote hostilities against India, which could see it lose potential revenues in excess of 1 billion dollars — earned from transit duties from the Iran to India pipeline — and, in turn, harm its own domestic petroleum market; while Bangladesh’s traditional suspicion towards India could evaporate if Dhaka were to gain from several billion dollars per year in gas revenues through its cooperation over the pipeline from Burma.

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India 2020 by A.P.J Abdul Kalam

Energy projects have the capacity to exert much wider influence. While China and India have been in open competition for energy resources, there are signs that they are beginning to appreciate how far they share common interests against the multinational corporations and Western governments, who currently dominate the field.

Russia, Iran & China

Furthermore, leading energy suppliers, such as Russia and Iran, are also encountering deepening difficulties with the same multinational corporations and governments. An energy axis between Iran, Russia and China is already starting to form — centred on the Caspian region. India’s energy diplomacy is beginning to draw it towards this new axis where its PSUs have also been active in seeking investments in the Kazakhstan oil and gas industries. To this extent, India’s quest to secure overseas energy resources could lead its future diplomatic trajectory even further afield.

India’s energy diplomacy is promoting a restructuring of its domestic oil and gas industry, though public-sector interests are likely to remain dominant. This is largely because of the growing importance attached by the government — especially under Aiyar’s guidance — to energy diplomacy as means to promote regional stability. Nevertheless, tough overseas competition has obliged Indian energy diplomacy to concentrate on the newer energy markets of the Caspian and Central Asian regions.

About the Author:
Gordon Feller is the CEO of Urban Age Institute (www.UrbanAge.org). During the past twenty years he has authored more than 500 magazine articles, journal articles or newspaper articles on the profound changes underway in politics, economics, and ecology – with a special emphasis on sustainable development. Gordon is the editor of Urban Age Magazine, a unique quarterly which serves as a global resource and which was founded in 1990. He can be reached at GordonFeller@UrbanAge.org and he is available for speaking to your organization about the issues raised in this and his other numerous articles published in EcoWorld.

EMAILS TO THE EDITOR

—–Original Message—–

From: Laxman Behera – Jawaharlal Nehru University

Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 4:05 AM

To: ed@ecoworld.com

Subject: India Energy Update – Lessons from PetroKazakhstan Deal

Editor:

The “unconditional” final order of October 26 by the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench, Canada, in favour of China’s China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has dealt a severe blow to the last Indian hope of getting PetroKazakhstan from the Chinese hands. The defeat in securing an important energy deal does not auger well for India’s energy security concerns considering its growing energy needs. The event reminds how vulnerable India is in competing and securing depleting international energy sources. At the same time it opens up for a greater debate on Indian energy minister’s fervent argument that Asia’s two emerging economic giants should co-operate rather than compete in securing international energy deals. The event also reinvigorates the debate on reevaluating India’s energy policies that are being pursued over a long period of time.

Kazakhstan’s importance to world energy markets is growing because of the changing geopolitical factors in the international scene. Apart from this, its oil and gas sector is in seventh place in the world in terms of explored hydrocarbon reserves. According to latest EIA (USA) estimates, Kazakhstan’s estimated proven and probable oil reserves stood at approximately 29 billion barrels and about 70 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of proven gas reserves. Oil and gas being the prime movers in Kazakhstan’s foreign revenue sources, it depends heavily on external finances to develop its resource bases. This provides much needed opportunities to countries like India and China, who are desperately trying to diversify their sources and enlarge their supply bases for their energy security, to step into this land-locked Central Asian country.

One of the largest foreign energy companies operating in Kazakhstan, PetroKazakhstan, a Canadian oil company with all its assets in the Central Asian State and with proved and probable oil equivalent reserves at approximately 550m barrels, accounts for about 12 percent of oil production in the country. PetroKazakhstan produces 150,000 barrels per day and importantly, owns the best (Shymkent refinery) of only three oil refineries in Kazakhstan. In June 2005 PetroKazakhstan announced it had been approached for a possible takeover or merger, sending stock prices up significantly. The most frequently mentioned possible suitor was India’s ONGC with its partner, steel mogul, Mr. L. N. Mittal who offered around $3.9 bilion against China National Petroleum Corporation’s (CNPC) $3.6 billion. However, on August 22, 2005 the company declared that it has reached an “agreement whereby a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNPC will offer US$55.00 per share in cash for all outstanding common shares of PetroKazakhstan. The aggregate value of this transaction is approximately US$4.18 billion.”

The fact of the matter remains is that India was not outbid by the CNPC in a ‘fair auction’ as “rules were changed mid-way through the bidding for the Canadian-based company, which helped China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) win control of the group.” More importantly, China won despite initial Kazakh inhibitions of a Chinese takeover. What clearly underlined the whole Kazakhstan event is that Indian diplomacy failed to its Chinese counterpart in clinching this important deal. The failure came at a time when India and its partner have significant presence in Kazakhstan. China went ahead with the deal after signing with Kazakhstan government an agreement whereby some equity of around 30-33 per cent would be transferred to the state-owned KazMunaiGas after the sale is completed by the end of October. The last Indian aspirations of reversing the company’s decision bit dust when the Canadian court approved CNPC’s acquisition agreement.

India’s failure at the hands of China has clearly marked a ‘low point’ for Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar who, for some time now, has been strongly advocating closer cooperation between India and China in securing energy supplies in international markets. Kazakhstan is not the first instance where India was defeated to China. It had also lost oil bids in Sudan, Angola, Indonesia and Ecuador to China. The minister should know that in international deals, especially the energy deals, which are now closely associated with national security, are purely guided by self interest. Besides, Mr. Aiyar is among few who believe that Chinese companies would share their real business plans with their rival Indian counterparts. It is worthwhile to mention that China’s desire to acquire foreign resources – a recent example being China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s (CNOOC) exorbitant bid for Unocal – is something that is beyond the issue of only energy security. Besides, even if India cooperates with China the former has always to play a second fiddle to the latter in securing outside energy sources. More importantly, despite Indian cooperation there are possibilities of competing against China in some cases. So, why can not India build partnerships with other countries for bidding foreign sources to ward off such possibilities? In this regard, India has an energy partnership with Japan which needs to be strengthened.

Of course, what clearly lacked in the Kazakhstan episode was that India’s energy policy was not fully backed by an adequate dose of foreign policy. When securing international energy sources has become a part of the national security the government needs to be proactively involved. Besides, India has to do a lot more in the domestic front. It has to scrupulously accept that there have been severe bottlenecks in the structure of the domestic energy sector and these needs to be sorted out. Similarly, India’s bidding capacity is very poor compared to that of China or other countries. Until 2003, its international spending on oil rights was mere $3.5 billion against over $40.0 billion by CNPC of China. To improve the bidding capacities several energy entities, both private and public, have to come together to form a large-equity based company to compete in international markets.

CNPC won PetroKazakhstan right from under the nose of Indian company despite its initially higher first round bid. The defeat is not about the cooperation/competition but about the problem in Indian policies. The concerned minister should understand this very clearly and while dealing with Chinese authorities next month in China, he should act wisely. If these problems are not sorted out first, then many PetroKazakhstans will follow. Unfortunately, oil reserves are finite and India and China being energy-hungry neighbours will have to compete against each other for dwindling resources.

Laxman Kumar Behera

Senior Research Scholar

Center for West Asian and African Studies

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

A Mangrove Seedling Sends it Roots Deep into Sand

The response of the world public to the tsunami disaster

on December 26th, 2004 is one of heartfelt empathy and an instinctive desire to help fellow human beings in trouble. Never before have so many people, from so many countries given so much to the victims of a disaster. World governments have promised and provided far greater sums of aid than they originally intended to offer because of the sheer magnitude of the public’s generosity. The US initially pledged $15 million but in the end promised $350 million while the UK government raised their pledge to $96 million.

MANGROVE FORESTS ABSORB TSUNAMI

How many people realise, however, that many of the deaths caused by the Tsunami could have been prevented? The areas affected have been hit by tsunamis in the past, with far fewer deaths resulting, because the coastlines of South East Asia were protected by a natural defence system, composed of coral reefs and mangrove forests.

Many of the previous tsunamis were tamed by the coral reefs before hitting the coast, where they were absorbed by a dense layer of red mangrove trees. These flexible trees, with long branches growing right down into the sand below the surface of the sea, absorb the shock of tsunamis. Behind the red mangrove trees there is a second layer of black mangrove trees, which are taller and slow down the waves.

Mangrove roots form powerful limbs in open water

Thousands of miles of coastline in South East Asia were densely covered in mangrove forests, protecting the coastline from erosion, absorbing carbon dioxide and providing a breeding ground for crustaceans and fish, on which the local population depended for their livelihood. This was a fragile environment, which ecologists have long recommended should enjoy special protection. In India a Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) was created to protect a 500 meter buffer zone along the coast.

While the belt of mangrove forest still existed, the people of the area lived inland, behind it. In 1960 a tsunami hit the coast of Bangladesh in an area where the mangroves were intact. No-one died. These mangroves were subsequently cut down by the shrimp (prawn) farming industry and in 1991 thousands of people were killed when a tsunami of the same magnitude hit the same region. On Dec 26th 2004, Pichavaram and Muthupet, in South India, who still have their mangrove forests, suffered fewer casualties than the surrounding mangrove-less areas of coast.

Mangroves also acted as a barrier, helping people to survive on Nias Island, Indonesia, close to the epicentre of the Dec 26 tsunami. Burma and the Maldives suffered less from the tsunami because the shrimp and tourism industries had not yet destroyed all their mangroves and coral reefs.

CONVENTIONAL SHRIMP FARMS DESTROY MANGROVE FORESTS

Since the 1960s, the mangrove forests of South East Asia have been systematically destroyed to make way for commercial shrimp (prawn) farming and a massive increase in the tourism industry. The aquaculture and tourism industries succeeded in diluting any protective regulations that were in place, until they were able to take over most of the buffer zone. Almost 70% of South East Asia’s mangrove forests have now disappeared.

Industrial Shrimp Action Network

Since three quarters of South East Asian commercial fish species spend part of their life cycle in the mangrove swamps the loss of these swamps has resulted in declining fish harvests. To compound this situation, the commercial feeds, pesticides, antibiotics and non-organic fertilizers used in intensive shrimp farms have generated huge amounts of pollution, destroying the remaining fish and harming the coral reefs.

As the fish have declined, desperate fishermen resorted to dropping dynamite into the reefs to drive them out. Scientists working for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) have recently compiled The World Atlas of Coral Reefs, an underwater survey. They found that one third of the world’s coral reefs are in South-east Asia and almost all are under threat. 70% of the world’s coral reefs have already been destroyed. 80% of Indonesia’s reefs are in danger. Dynamite fishing has contributed to the destruction of an ecosystem already under threat from sediment erosion caused by the loss of mangrove forests, shrimp farm pollution and untreated sewage from the tourism industry.

Global Aquaculture Alliance

Almost all farmed shrimp is eaten in the US, Western Europe and Japan, where consumption has increased by 300% in the last ten years. Today world shrimp production, in an industry worth $9 billion, is almost 800,000 metric tons and 72% of farmed shrimp comes from Asia. Hundreds of nongovernmental organizations have sprung up at local, national and international levels to oppose this destructive aquaculture industry. In 1997 the Industrial Shrimp Action Network (ISA Net) was formed, a global alliance opposed to unsustainable shrimp farming. Aquaculture corporations responded by forming the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) to counter the claims of the ISA Network. Commercial shrimp farming has displaced local communities, exacerbated conflicts, decreased the quality and quantity of drinking water and decimated the natural fish species on which the local population rely. The population of these areas ended up living right on the coast, without the benefit of their protective mangrove forests. Their coral reefs were by now eroded by pollution, dynamite fishing, tourists (who tread on the reefs) and the rising temperature of the sea.

WILLY BRANDT’S VISION FOR INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

The reason aquaculture and tourism corporations have been allowed to destroy the coastal environment of South East Asia is because the current neoliberal trade system tends to favor corporations over concerns for the environment and the people living in it. Trade liberalisation, through the World Trade Organisation, has enabled corporations to challenge the legislation of countries they want to operate in, legislation that was designed to protect the local environment.

Willy Brandt

In the 1980s Willy Brandt warned that the current global economic system, with its emphasis on profit as an overriding virtue, would lead to environmental degradation and worsening poverty in the third world. He said “Important harm to the environment and depletion of scarce resources is occurring in every region of the world, damaging soil, sea and air. The biosphere is our common heritage and must be preserved by cooperation – otherwise life itself could be threatened” How prophetic these words sound today.

Brandt set up the Independent Commission on International Development Issues to make an in-depth study of the global economy. His team of advisers included many experts in the field of international policy and economics. Their detailed report came to the conclusion that the developed nations dominated international trade and that this was unbalanced and biased in favour of large corporations based in the West. The Brandt Commission was the first major independent global panel to examine connections between the environment, international trade, international economics and the third world. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development took Brandt’s proposals regarding the environment seriously enough to hold international conferences in Rio in 1992 and in Kyoto in 1997. However America refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol and corporate power prevented any of the Brandt Report recommendations being put into practice.

The Brandt Reports called for a complete restructuring of the global economy, in order to protect the environment and meet the needs of the world population. Willy Brandt said “We see a world in which poverty and hunger still prevail in many huge regions; in which resources are squandered without consideration of their renewal; in which more armaments are made and sold than ever before; and where a destructive capacity has been accumulated to blow up our planet several times over.” He proposed a Summit of World Leaders, with the backing of a global citizens’ movement, to discuss how to meet the needs of the majority of the world’s people. This would, he recognised, mean huge changes to the international economy. He proposed a series of measures, including:

An emergency aid program to assist countries on the verge of disaster

Third world debt forgiveness

Fair trade

Stabilisation of world currencies

Reduction in the arms trade

Global responsibility for the environment

A major overhaul of the global economic system.

Brandt also recognised that poverty contributes to high birth rates and that overpopulation puts pressure on the environment. This has indeed happened all over the world, including South East Asia.

UN’s Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Only one organisation has the people and the close relationships with governments to make coordinated disaster aid work, the UN’s Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Yet immediately after the 2004 tsunami world leaders were in disagreement over coordination of the relief operation.

Willy Brandt recognised that the UN needed to be restructured to make it democratic and effective and all the UN agencies needed to be reformed to make them more efficient. He called for emergency programs for food, housing and healthcare to be coordinated. He recommended cutting the red tape to ensure that resources reached impoverished people directly, unfiltered through inefficient bureaucracy. He called for national projects, overseen by representatives from developed and developing nations.

Brandt recommended that instead of fighting wars, armies and navies from the developed world could be deployed to bring in the food, resources and technology needed to help poor nations reverse hunger and poverty. This has indeed been happening since the tsunami. Armies and navies have indeed been bringing food, resources and technology to the disaster areas.

Since the tsunami world opinion has shifted. People have been so moved by the plight of the people in the devastated areas that they have begun to talk about poverty and injustice in other parts of the world, such as Africa. Some of the poorest people in the world are concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past few decades official development assistance to third world countries has been declining and few donor countries now give the internationally-agreed 0.7% of their gross domestic product. In the end it will be popular opinion which pushes governments into rethinking their aid policies. Since the tsunami, people have been increasingly questioning the amount of their countries’ aid budgets and demanding that more aid is given to third world countries.

MANGROVE FORESTS OF THE WORLD

Most of the world’s tropical coastlines have a barrier ofMangrove forests, but only about 70% of these forests remain.

THE BRANDT REPORT – UPDATED FOR 2004

In a special report to Kofi Annan at the United Nations in 2004, Jeffrey Sachs presented the “Global Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals”. This report, developed by 300 economists and researchers, reiterates many of the aims of the Brandt Reports:

Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Achieve universal primary education

Promote gender equality and empower women

Reduce child mortality

Improve maternal health

Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

Ensure environmental sustainability

Develop a global partnership for development

THIRD WORLD DEBT STIFLES THEIR ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES

20,000 poor people die every day from preventable diseases in Africa, partly because their governments are paying $30 million dollars a day in interest to the World Bank, the IMF and the rich world creditor nations. Currently for every one dollar that is given to Africa in aid one and a half dollars goes out to pay the interest on debts.

Third world debt today is $2.6 trillion. Between 1982 and 2003 the developing world has paid $5.4 trillion in interest. This means that the developing world has already paid back the amount it now owes more than twice. Willy Brandt called for total third world debt forgiveness. However the World Bank, the IMF and rich creditor countries were not prepared to forgo the huge amounts of interest they were receiving every year from poor, heavily-indebted countries. But over the past twenty years a groundswell of public protest has gradually been growing, demanding an end to third world debt. After the tsunami the voice of the protesters were heard again, demanding the immediate cancellation of the debts of the countries affected. As a result governments have been pressured into giving third world debt relief some serious thought.

WEALTHY COUNTRIES CAN AFFORD TO SUBSIDIZE THEIR EXPORTS

Brandt recommended restructuring the World Trade Organisation to allow
proportional representation and decision-making by poor countries of the third world. He wanted to establish a new code of conduct for international corporations, to curb their power and prevent them from carrying out environmentally unsound practices and to improve conditions of the workers. He proposed trade liberalisation and the removal of trade barriers. Unfortunately GATT has done just that, but only in the third world. Trade barriers remain in the first world, where the rich counties spend $300 billion every year in subsidies, subsidies that prevent the poor countries having access to their markets. Brandt wanted to remove these subsidies, which give the rich world an unfair advantage.

POOR COUNTRIES SACRIFICE HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT FOR EXPORTS TO PAY DEBT

Since Brandt’s reports the World Trade Organisation and the Free Trade Agreements have carried out a policy of perpetual trade liberalisation at any price. The result has been disastrous for the third world, which comprises 85% of the world population. Their share of international trade is only 25% because prices for everything that they export, from raw materials to cash crops, have fallen and continue to fall. Legislation designed to promote health and protect the environment in third world countries has been challenged and overruled in the name of trade
liberalisation.

WEAK CURRENCIES FLUCTUATE, CAUSING FINANCIAL TUSNAMIS

The Brandt Reports noted that the abolition of the gold standard had had a disastrous effect on the currencies of third world countries. When the US set up the flexible exchange rate system in 1971 third world currencies began to fluctuate and in most cases to fall in value. This was and is because investors could now buy and sell currencies on the world market, thus causing their value to increase or decrease at a moments notice. Rich countries such as the US and the EU were better protected against these currency fluctuations simply because they had larger amounts of money. This has led to rich people in third world countries investing their money in the US in order to protect it from the monetary instability of their own countries. This money has bolstered the US dollar, which otherwise would not be able to withstand the enormous fiscal and trade deficits incurred during the Bush administration.

TAXING CURRENCY EXCHANGES WOULD DISCOURAGE SPECULATORS

Brandt wanted to stabilise world currencies and another Nobel Prize-winner, the economist James Tobin, proposed a solution. In 1971 he suggested that a tax of less than 0.5% on all foreign currency exchange transactions would deter currency speculation. Support is growing for the Tobin tax, which would reduce the volatility of exchange rates and raise much needed revenue to pay for sustainable human development.

MILITARY SPENDING SOAKS UP CAPITAL FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Brandt was concerned about the huge waste of resources involved in military spending. Arms sales to poor countries contribute to conflict, increase their burden of debt and further impoverish them. As of late 2004, 24 of the 40 poorest countries in the world, mostly in Africa, continue to suffer armed conflict. The Brandt Reports recommended the conversion of arms production into civilian production, reducing arms exports, making the whole arms export business transparent and taxing
the arms trade.

British tax payers subsidise the armament industry to the tune of approximately L200 million per annum. The reason governments subsidise corporations who export weapons is because the public allow them to. Tax payers’ money benefits arms exporters, who do inestimable harm to the third world countries who buy the arms. These countries are spending money they can ill afford on armaments, instead of investing in services. The Campaign against the Arms Trade recommends putting a stop to subsidies to arms manufacturers and exporters. According to estimates from the World Bank, world poverty could be relieved by spending approximately one tenth of the world’s annual military budget.

Not everything in the Brandt Reports is relevant today but significant portions of it are more relevant than ever: those parts that refer to the necessity to cancel third world debt, reduce arms trading and to put in place and enforce international legislation to protect the environment. The world was not ready for these proposals in the 1980s but perhaps it is ready now.

Nobel Prize winner Willy Brandt had high hopes when he and his team of experts compiled their detailed reports. They had spent years researching world poverty and the best way to alleviate it. Brandt’s far reaching vision predicted many of the human and ecological disasters that have occurred since the 1980s, as a result of neoliberal economic policies. His reports laid out an alternative system of global governance, based on the principle of sharing: sharing the world’s resources and sharing responsibility for the environment. He proposed that every member of the human race had a right to food, water, shelter, clothing, education and healthcare. Only when every human being’s basic needs have been fulfilled will the world’s population stabilise. Social sustainability is the prerequisite for environmental sustainability.

Sustainable models of aquaculture preserve Mangrove forests, leaving human communities safer from Tsunami, and protecting fish breeding grounds

Perhaps world leaders could be persuaded to re-examine both the original Brandt reports and their updated versions to come together to discuss how to implement some of the recommendations. World opinion is calling for a more equitable and just world in which everyone has the right to food, water, shelter, clothing, education and healthcare; where the power of corporations is curbed in favour of human rights and the environment; where governments are shamed into putting a stop to arms exports and where the money currently squandered in wars is spent on raising the standard of living of the world’s poor.

About the Author: Mohammed Mesbahi is the Chair and Founder of Share the World’s Resources (STWR), based in London, England. The website of Share the World’s Resources is www.stwr.net.

REFERENCES

United Nations Conference on Environment and Development

http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html

Mangrove Nursery Establishment & Management

http://www.oneocean.org/download/20000929/chapter_2.pdf

One Ocean

http://www.oneocean.org/

Mangrove Action Project

http://www.earthisland.org/map/index.htm