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Indian tribal threat from UK mining company

first published at www.conservationtoday.org, 22nd August 2009

The Dongria Kondh tribespeople have lived in the hills of Orissa, a state on the Eastern coast of India, for generations.  They are a self-sufficient community of around 8000, sharing the dense forests of the Niyamgiri Hills region with a numerous plant and animal species.  The Dongria were understandably concerned when in 1997 a mining company were given preliminary approval to open a bauxite mine and refinery on the sacred hillsides – demanding relocation of hundreds of families and destruction of an important wildlife habitat.  Struggling to hold onto their way of life with the help of environmental and human rights NGOs, the Dongria believe the miners are pushing ahead with development without full consent.

The mining company are Vedanta Alumina Ltd, a UK based company who wish to tap Orissa’s bauxite-rich hills to make aluminium.  Aluminium production in the developed world has dropped due to expensive production costs and environmental restrictions – but in India, the raw bauxite is plentiful, labour is cheap and development often takes precedence over environmental concerns.

Vedanta were granted clearance from the Indian Supreme Court to build a refinery in the Niyamgiri area at Llanjigarth, but have not yet been allowed to commence mining work, as there have been concerns about the project’s environmental impact. The mine complex will require 1,500 hectares of land wich currently holds forest, farmland and village areas.

Villagers in the Niyamgiri hills claim that on several occasions, Vedanta employees have tried to illegally mine bauxite from the local vicinity. One night in January this year, heavy vehicles from the refinery were seen moving into the forest – villagers were alerted and by 3.30am 800 people had formed a human wall to prevent the vehicles going any further.

The refinery insisted the vehicles had been sent for road repair work, and the plant gets their raw material from further afield so have no need to mine illegally.  Vedanta need environmental clearance before mining can commence, as there is doubt surrounding the effects mining will have on the natural habitat which need to be investigated.  Several studies are taking place into potential environmental damage.

Activists and villagers are not convinced the mining company are being honest, and have formed a front line defence to protect the hills – with camps set up in the forest to stop vehicles, and a round the clock vigil held on the forest road. The villagers are gaining support as news of their struggle spreads.

Fortunately the Indian Government are aware of possible foul play – India’s environment and forest minister, Jairam Ramesh, has warned the mining company they will be prosecuted if they open mines without full permission. Speaking in India’s Upper House on 5th August, the minister said, ‘they have not got full forest clearance. If mining is taking place in Nyamgiri, then it is illegal.’  In India now, applications for mining in forests need to have evidence the rules of the Tribal Rights Act have been followed. Ramesh remarked, ‘had the tribal rights been in place, the chances are that this project would not have been cleared in the first place.’

Initial plans for the mine and refinery were accepted by the Orissa government in 1997, and a notice was served to the people of Niyamgiri Hills.  The notice warned that  60 tribal families would be displaced, and 302 families would lose their farmland.  The community were quick to petition, but in July 2003, 12 villages had their land repossessed and 64 tribal families of Jaganathpur Village were evicted to clear space for the Llanjigarth Alumina Refinery.  Most received no compensation as they could not provide proof of ownership for farmland – land records are virtually non-existent for tribal Orissa, so their land officially belongs to the government.

Forest wildlife is also under threat from the proposed plans. A report by the Wildlife Institute of India warned that bauxite mining would destroy a ‘specialised wildlife habitat’. The forest has already been earmarked for a wildlife sanctuary and elephant reserve. The Environmental Protection Group, Orissa, say the forests shelter many species of animals including some from the Red list of endangered species, and over 300 varieties of plants and trees.

Orissa government’s principal chief conservator of forests is less damning – if 600 to 700 hectares of land is lost, he says, it is a small fraction of the 20,000 hectare forest, and animals will learn to adapt. Unfortunately, allowing one company to open what they hope will be the world’s largest aluminium production plant, might set the precedence for other companies to come in and strip away more of the landscape.

Golden Peacock Award

Despite the controversy surrounding Vedanta’s Nyamgiri Hills refinery and mining project, the company were set to receive a Golden Peacock Award from the World Environment Foundation (WEF), for best practices in environmental management.

Protestors took this opportunity to capture the stage at the awards ceremony, held at Palampur Agriculture University in June.  20 activists held up the event for half an hour, shouting at the audience and Foundation members, and resisting being removed from the stage.

This was a high profile event and embarrassing for the WEF, who decided to temporarily withdraw the award while accusations into Vedanta’s practices were looked into.

The WEF are not the only organisation who doubt the legitimacy of Vedanta’s actions.  The Norwegian Government Pension Fund have withdrawn investment in the mining company, on a recommendation from the Council of Ethics for the Fund.  The council believed the risk of severe environmental damage and human rights violations was too high to justify investment.

This struggle is long running, and highlights India’s tensions between conserving environments and traditional communities, and pushing for development and economic gain.  Though Vedanta are being warned by the Indian Government to follow all protocol, they are still only a few steps away from gaining full permission to carry out the full mine project.  It may well go ahead if Orissa’s government decide the economic benefits outweigh the cost to wildlife and indigenous communities. The future of the Niyamgiri hills and its inhabitants is, for now, uncertain.

See article at conservation today.

Survival International are working hard to prevent this, and have put together a video about the problem.
All the above images are their copyright

 

Biofuels have low green rating, but Imperial shows support

Wind and solar energy are the most environmentally friendly alternative fuel options, whilst biofuel crops and carbon capture may not be worth the effort, according to Dr Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University.  His research, published in this month’s Energy and Environmental Science journal, coincides with the announcement of a new multimillion pound biofuel development project funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), involving scientists from Imperial College.

Jacobson assessed each major alternative energy source, as if it were to power every vehicle in the US.  He looked at factors such as impact on global warming and human health, space requirements and sustainability.  The winner in all areas was wind power, which if used to run the entire US vehicle fleet, would reduce carbon and air pollution emissions by 99%.  The vehicles would all be electric, therefore removing exhaust pollution, saving over 15,000 lives a year from air pollution related deaths in the US alone.  The Stanford team estimated that an area of 3km squared would be enough land to contain all the wind turbines required.

However, the rating system, the first quantitative, scientific evaluation of alternative energy sources, found biofuels, nuclear power and coal with carbon capture to rank high on environmental impact.  Jacobson comments ‘some energy alternatives that have been proposed are just downright awful’, and with regards to biofuels he warns ‘Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels’.  He has calculated that the land required for enough biofuel to power the US vehicle fleet would be 30 times that for wind turbines.  Air pollution and carbon emissions would not be cut substantially.

Meanwhile, scientists from Imperial College’s Life Sciences Department are part of a new venture for biofuel development, the Sustainable Bioenergy Centre.  The BBSRC have just announced funding for the centre, which at £27m is the biggest ever public investment in bioenergy.  They believe bioenergy to be a significant source of ‘clean, low carbon and secure energy’ and the biofuel sector has the potential to provide thousands of new ‘green collar’ jobs.

Dr Thorsten Hamann is one of Imperial’s scientists involved in the Centre, and has a different take on the feasibility of biofuels.  He believes a mixture of energy supplies is required to replace our current fossil fuel reliance, and cars cannot be run exclusively on wind generated electricity.  ‘Wind farms look fantastic on paper, but I don’t see the potential to use wind to power the world.  We don’t have the technology yet to power cars on electricity.  Current electric cars have to be recharged every night and the life-span of the battery is unknown.  We already have the technology for biofuel run cars, and the infrastructure for a liquid fuel transport system.’

As for the space issue, he assures that the biofuel plants developed at the Sustainable Bioenergy Centre will be intended for land unsuitable for edible crop agriculture.  For the time being, our priority is to move away from fossil fuels, and crop based fuels are ‘significantly better’.  Dr Hamann believes in the distant future, electricity may be the solution to power transport, ‘but for the next 20 to 30 years, we are looking at liquid based fuel.’

Published in the Imperial College student newspaper, Felix, 13^th February 2009

 

The Ig Nobel Awards Roadshow – research that first makes you laugh, and then think

Sword swallowing expert Dan Mayer

High jumping fleas, hot-potato mouth and necrophiliac ducks were but a few of the ridiculous topics of research presented at the London leg of the Ig Nobel Awards Roadshow in March. For those unfamiliar with the Ig Nobel Awards, they are held each year to celebrate improbable scientific research which ‘first makes you laugh, then think’ – a parody on the venerated Nobel Prizes. Past Ig- winners include, for Economics, research on how ovulating strippers earn more tips; and in 2008 the Ig Nobel Peace prize went to the people of Switzerland, for adopting the principle that plants have dignity.

Scientists have the opportunity to discreetly refuse the prize before the ceremony, as the work is generally not intended as a joke. Luckily most scientists are fair game for a laugh. The roadshow, hosted by Imperial College, saw previous winners taking to the stage, giving short presentations on the research which earned them the prestigious accolade.

The show was hosted by Marc Abrahams, founder of the Ig Nobel prize, and editor of Annals of Improbable Research, the Ig Nobel magazine. Mirroring the original ceremony held annually at Harvard University, Abrahams gave each speaker exactly 5 minutes to summarise their research. If they committed the crime of overrunning, ‘Miss Sweetiepoo’, an 8 year old girl in a party dress, commanded them to ‘please STOP! I’m BORED!!’ over and over until they were forced to exit the stage. This made for a highly enjoyable evening, far removed from typical long-winded science lectures.

Highlights included Dr Mahmood Bhutta’s presentation, ‘Hot Potato Voice in Peritonsilitis: A Misnomer’. Patients with advanced tonsillitis can experience pus around the tonsils, which apparently makes their voice sound like they have a hot potato in their mouth.

By listening to healthy subjects speak with and without a hot potato in their mouth, and patients with peritonsilitis, Dr Bhutta discovered ill patients did indeed form sounds differently from the healthy subjects, as muscles around the soft palette (the dangly bit at the back of your throat) were weakened. However, the differences did not match up with the ‘hot potato’ subjects’, proving ‘hot-potato mouth’ to be a misnomer.

Local hero Piers Barnes from Imperial College, won the Ig Nobel Maths prize in 2006. He was on hand to explain his prize winning research on how many photos should be taken of a group of people to (almost) ensure taking one where nobody blinks. Barnes and his crew did some complicated calculations to do with shutter time, blink duration and ‘window for blink spoiling photo’. They worked out for a group of less than 20, in bad light, divide the group number by 2, in good light, divide by 3, and this will give you the optimum number of times to click.

Barnes kept us amused by conducting an audience experiment which paralleled the methods used for his research. Asking everyone to switch on their mobile phones, he showed calculations on how long it would take before a phone rang, considering there were 700 people in the room and on average a phone receives 3 calls an hour. Sure enough, phones started to ring, but we weren’t entirely sure if he proved his point!

The roadshow included a taste of the macabre, in Kees Moeliker’s presentation on the first recorded instance of Homosexual Necrophilia in the male Mallard duck. ‘Working in a glass building has its benefits’, Moeliker explained, ‘as birds tend to fly into the windows and kill themselves’. One day, a mallard duck lay dead outside Moeliker’s office window, and was visited by a fellow male who succeeded in mating with him. Moeliker’s segment was quite disturbing, especially when he presented said duck (the dead one) from a plastic bag he had brought on stage, and offered it to Miss Sweetiepoo. Clearly this man has a dark sense of humour- every year he and colleagues celebrate ‘dead duck day’, giving a short service for the violated duck, and visiting the local Chinese restaurant for something crispy and aromatic.

New Scientist’s Feedback editor, John Hoyland, was on hand to distract us from unsettling mental images. Or so we thought! The dead bird theme continued, as Hoyland highlighted the ‘lack of sympathy for geese who brought a plane down in the Hudson river’ in January this year. After some digging around he found there have been 1266 reports of aeroplanes hitting Canada geese between 1990 and 2008. On top of this there are recorded fatalities of 145 bald eagles, and, oddly enough, 80 turtles! Hoyland incredulously went on to list fatalities of 14 armadillos, 13 alligators and 1 pig. He sensibly came to the conclusion that these animals may not have been killed in flight.

Sword swallowing expert Dan Meyer provided the showstopping segment of the evening. He demonstrated his special talent after presenting his paper – ‘Metal to Medicine – Sword Swallowing and its Side Effects’, which picked up the 2007 Medicine Prize. Meyer has the world record for most swords swallowed at a time, and was not afraid to amaze and frighten us by allowing an audience member to pull a very sharp sword from his throat. Reminding us several times ‘this is very dangerous. I could severely harm myself’, Meyer then attached a sword to a whip, and a terrified and slightly confused looking volunteer waited for him to swallow the sword, bend over at the waist – ‘3 times more dangerous than normal sword swallowing’ – before whipping the sword out. I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t expecting success! But the consummate professional was, of course, uninjured.

Though I’m not sure if any of the research truly made me ‘think’ and wonder as to its implications, I was certainly reminded of how entertaining science can be, and what a bizarre and wonderful sense of humour certain scientists possess. Long may the Ig Nobel Awards show the world that scientists can poke fun at themselves.

 

Procrastinators anonymous

It seems like an inevitable consequence of having things to do- we’re going to have to spend time pondering, avoiding, being distracted from the task in hand. But researchers studying procrastination think it can have serious health and financial consequences, and are looking for ways to conquer time wasting, potentially rendering facebook useless.

Around 90% of university students are time-wasters, according to University of Calgary economist Piers Steel, who describes procrastination as ‘voluntarily delaying a course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay’. It comes from a human urge to avoid the unpleasant. Students are a high risk category due to their often hectic academic schedules and social lives.

Studies have shown that chronic procrastinators have raised stress levels, and are prone to further risks to their health by putting off trips to the doctor and the dentist. They are much more likely to have accidents in the home as they will avoid ‘dull’ tasks like changing a lightbulb. Procrastination at work has financial consequences as time spent staring out of the window could be time spent productively badgering away.

Steel believes certain character traits bring out the inner procrastinator, leaving some more prone. Time wasters are low in the conscientious trait, they are less ‘dutiful, organised and industrious’. They are also likely to be impulsive- mixing up their intentions so being easily distracted. Anxiety can be implicit- a fear of failure can lead someone to put off starting a task.

If this sounds like you, or you’ve noticed a stressed out friend with bad teeth and anecdotes of falling over in darkened rooms, help is at hand. One strategy which has been shown to work is to set yourself attainable, specific goals, instead of a vague goal which allows a get-out clause. So replace ‘I will get fit’ with ‘I’m going to the gym tomorrow at 7.30am.’ Psychologist Tim Pychyl gives some nice parent-style advice- “just get started”, the anticipation will be much worse than the actual task. To prove his credentials, he carried out a survey on his students, querying their moods and how much they were putting off tasks with deadlines. He found ‘when students actually do the task they are avoiding, their perceptions of the task change significantly. Many times, they actually enjoyed it.’

So do your homework, you might like it….

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=procrastinating-again

Published in Felix, Imperial College’s student newspaper, December 2008

 

Vertical Farming: the Sky’s the Limit

An architect's impression of a future Vertical Farm

The average European farm today does not really fit in our picture of a bright and green future. A modern farmer will have many items of machinery to work the land, consuming tonnes of fossil fuels and adding to the CO2 burden. In addition, the intensive farming practiced in the developed world depends on spreading the crops with pesticides and fertilisers. These take a great deal of energy to produce and are petroleum based. The run-off from these potions end up in our rivers, damaging fragile ecosystems. Much of our arable land has been laid to waste by irresponsible or over-intensive farming techniques. Food can travel thousands of miles to reach us, carrying with it a massive and messy carbon footprint.

So, what is the answer? One possibility being seriously considered is vertical farming. Still on paper rather than a reality, the indoor, multi storey, garden is intended for inner city food production. The food would be grown on your doorstep, largely eliminating emissions from transportation. As an intensive indoor growing space, traditional machinery would be obsolete, and the crops would require no chemical protection from the weather or disease. Vertical farming is the brainchild of Dr Dickson Despommier of Columbia University, who believes, along with a growing fan club, that vertical farms are an appealing alternative to traditional farming.

The farms could recycle waste water from cities; currently massive amounts of this are mixed with chlorine and dumped into our waterways. Instead it can be reprocessed and used to irrigate the crops. The farm could even produce drinking water. Electricity would come from the building’s integrated solar panels and wind turbines on the roof, making for a sustainable and eco-friendly farm.

Indoor farming is already a growing and successful business, with greenhouses constantly evolving their technology. Plants can be grown hydroponically in water, or in engineered soils. A method called aeroponics has been developed, where the plant grows dangling in a mist of water and nutrients.

Sceptics have noted that greenhouses often use a lot of electricity to create artificial light when the sun is not strong. They think that plants on lower levels of the vertical farm will require artificial lighting. However, with improving technology in solar panels, and solar tunnels which can channel light from the roof down, this problem may be surmountable.

Genetically modified plants would not be necessary; instead the indoor environment can be tailored to exactly produce the perfect growing environment for each crop.

The farms would help address another potential crisis. The global population is expected to boom by around 3 billion in the next 40 years. Using current farming practises, this would require a piece of land the size of Brazil devoted to more arable land. This much spare land simply does not exist.

According to research into humans living in extraterrestrial space, an estimated 300 sq feet of intensively farmed land will produce enough food to support one person. The vertical farmers have worked out that one of their projects, the size of a New York city block, at 30 stories high, would have enough space to produce food to support 10,000 people. Moving agriculture to these intensive sites would reduce the pressure on land being used for agriculture. This will allow for regeneration of land destroyed by farming, and provide breathing space for the development of sustainable practises to go along with the vertical farms. This might even go some way towards re-growth of the world’s rainforests.

The farms could be set up in countries already suffering from food shortages. Communities would not have to be at the mercy of the weather causing a bad harvest, and would be able to produce crops all year round. The plants would be at less risk of infectious disease as they would have little contact with life outside the farm. Supporters of the idea have even suggested setting up these farms in refugee camps, where food usually has to come from international aid, whose supplies may not be constant.

Clearly there are great reasons to go vertical when it comes to farming, but with any project there are obstacles along the way, and there are a few problems which might stop these farms from getting off the ground.

The development and building of the project is bound to be expensive, and the farms would have to be highly efficient to be an economically viable rival to conventional farming.

The buildings will be very complex affairs, housing irrigation systems for the plants, controlled indoor flow of air and nutrients, incinerators to contribute to energy supply, and water treatment apparatus. Taking the farm inside creates a host of complications. Maintenance would add to the expense, and the structure would be at risk from water damage, with the humid atmosphere and irrigation networks.

In promoting the idea, vertical farming supporters have suggested meat can be produced in these intensive environments; poultry and pigs could take up some of the levels of the building. More and more people are taking an ethical stance against intensive meat farming, so this could provoke some backlash.

Critics have suggested land in highly populated areas would be too expensive and hard to come by. Thankfully, Despommier has thought of a way around this obstacle. He remarks, ‘You can do this on the rooftops of hospitals and schools’, which would make use of the produce themselves, and he also suggests using outer suburbs of cities where land is cheaper.

The attractive features of vertical farming mean it has caught the interest of large developers, including multi-national firm Arup, who are looking to take the idea to the next level. City governments have contacted Despommier and his team, and there are talks to implement the farms into plans for entire eco-cities.

So maybe in the foreseeable future you will be buying superfresh produce from your local multi-storey farm.

Published in I, Science, Imperial College London’s student science journal, Autumn 2008