Environmental Developments (Summer 2011)

Environmental Developments - Spring/Summer 2011

Introduction:  Why do we care about "environmental developments" in AIS?

Adam Dunstan

Since I became the writer of "environmental developments" for Indigenous Policy Journal I have asked myself many times: how can I make this column more useful to our readers?  Put another way, what do "environmental developments" have to do with American Indian Studies? 

The answer to this question should be obvious of course: because the environment matters to the indigenous communities that we work in, it should matter to us.  If it is vital for them, it must be vital for us as well.  But there are other reasons that those in our field should keep updated on environmental news.  One of the most important reasons is that the state of the environment profoundly affects the communities we research.  Whether it is through the desecration of a sacred site, the loss of treaty hunting rights, climate change, or uranium pollution, decisions made about the environment, whether on tribal, national, or global levels, have dramatic and long-lasting implications for the Indian Tribes we strive to understand and work among. 

In this edition of "Environmental Developments" I have tried more so than ever to highlight the important connections between the global environment and local tribes. I have divided the column into Tribal, National, and Global environmental news, but truly, it is all "tribal news" because it all, in one way or another, affects the tribes, as well as all of us.  That is the nature of our interconnected environment. 

I hope these news snippets are useful in your research and, as always, he'hee (thank you),

Tribal Environmental Developments

Tribal Energy Summit

President Obama's recently announced clean energy goals confirm that renewable energy is set for a dramatic increase as part of our energy infrastructure, and this is an issue that could have dramatic effects on Indian Country, which possesses much potential for renewable power generation.  Consultation between the tribal and national governments on these issues will be critical.  In light of this, we are pleased to note that on May 4^th and 5^th, 350 people, including representatives from 54 Native American tribes, attended a Department of Energy Tribal Summit where Department and tribal leaders met to discuss energy and ecological issues facing Indian Country.  U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said, "We are fully committedÉto early and meaningful consultation with American Indian Tribal governments and Alaska Natives on a government-to-government basis".  Two new energy initiatives were announced at the summit.  One was the intention of the Department of Energy to form an "Indian clean energy and infrastructure working group" to explore obstacles tribes face in clean energy development, and possible solutions to these obstacles.  Another initiative announced is the development of guidance to encourage the Department of Energy to purchase renewable energy from tribal lands where possible. 

This general trend of increased renewable energy production on reservations will certainly have notable impacts on the communities with which we work.  Tracey Lebeau, director of the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Program, wrote "We believe we have succeeded in starting a department-wide relationship with tribes so we can work together to promote Indian Country's energy development, infrastructure, and education goals."  (Tracey Lebeau, "Department of Energy Tribal Summit: Winning our Energy Future", http://www.energy.gov/indianenergy/tribalsummit.htm)

USDA holds Sacred Sites policy development sessions

Better cooperation between national and tribal governments is also being attempted on the issue of sacred sites as the US Department of Agriculture holds listening sessions about sacred land policies for national forest land.  On February 14, 2011 the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) held a second listening session regarding sacred sites, as a way of helping the USDA develop policies to protect sacred sites on national forest land.  An earlier listening session was held on November 29, 2010.  These meetings were part of a consultative process with the tribes in developing these new policies.  For transcripts of the sessions please email TribalSacredSites@fs.fed.us.  The Forest Service (which is part of the USDA) is inviting consultation and comment.

As researchers in tribal communities, many of our readers would be uniquely qualified to give expertise on how the USDA can best collaborate with the tribes on sacred land issues.

To comment on these new policies, please e-mail www.indianz.com, "USDA to host second sacred sites listening session on February 14", February 2, 2011, http://64.38.12.138/News/2011/000346.asp; US Forest Service, "Sacred Sites", http://www.fs.fed.us/spf/tribalrelations/sacredsites.shtml)

Construction for snowmaking on the San Francisco Peaks begins amid protests -

The Forest Service sessions may be too late for at least one site, however.  Construction of pipelines for artificial snowmaking on the San Francisco Peaks began on May 25^th, 2011.  This comes after numerous challenges by Native American tribes and others who have fought against the plan to use artificial snow made from reclaimed water at a mountain that many tribes consider sacred.  The snowmaking would involve the construction of a 15 mile pipeline which would transport up to 1.5 million gallons of treated effluent to Snowbowl every ski season, to be used as artificial snow at the 205 acre ski resort. 

Those opposed to snowmaking have suffered a number of legal defeats in the last year.  After a failed earlier bid to stop the snowmaking on religious freedom grounds, the snowmaking was challenged on strictly environmental grounds, this time by the Save the Peaks Coalition.  The Coalition asserted that the Forest Service did not properly consider the risks of human ingestion of the snow when it calculated the environmental costs of snowmaking.  Judge Mary Murguia ruled against the case.  The Coalition appealed, but lost this case as well on February 19^th, and an emergency motion they filed to stop snowmaking failed.

Despite these setbacks, the fight to stop snowmaking continues.  In February, the Hopi Tribe announced its intention to sue the City of Flagstaff for $40 million over the decision to sell treated wastewater to the Arizona Snowbowl.  On May 28^th, a media conference was held by those opposed to snowmaking, at which President Ben Shelley of the Navajo Nation expressed the need to stop the snowmaking.  Attorney Howard Shanker said at this conference:  "For our federal government to be involved in the desecration of a sacred and holy site that is so important to so many people, for the economic benefit of so few, is a tragedy." 

Meanwhile, on June 16^th, six individuals chained themselves to construction equipment or lay in pipeline ditches to protest the snowmaking.  Other individuals joined part in the protest from across the street. General Snowbowl manager J. R. Murray said "They put themselves in danger and put a lot of people in danger".  The group said in a statement that the project was a violation of human rights for indigenous peoples and that "Today we take direct action to stop further desecration and destruction of the Holy San Francisco Peaks." 

To comment on the snowmaking, please write to Flagstaff City Council at http://verdenews.com/main.asp?SectionID= 1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=39504; Cyndy Cole, "Hopis to sue Flag" Arizona Daily Sun, February  26,  2011, http://www.azdailysun.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_8968fbac-86cc-5330-a350-6f3a709183d4.html; Tim Hull, "Tribes Lose Bid to Freeze Ski Lodge's Snowmaking", Courthouse News, March 01, 2011, http://www.courthousenews.com/ 2011/03/01/34551.htm;Carol Berry, "San Francisco Peaks on Schedule for Artificial Snow from Wastewater" Indian Country Today, March 28, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork. com/2011/03/san-francisco-peaks-on-schedule-for-artificial-snow-from-wastewater/; Arizona Daily Sun, "Protesters bind selves to construction equipment on Snowbowl Road",  Arizona Daily Sun, June 16, 2011,  http://www.azdailysun.com/news/article_e98ff1da-983f-11e0-ac87-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1RYay36Ac; Klee Benally, "Indigenous, Community & Spiritual Leaders Affirm Commitment to Protect Holy San Francisco Peaks", http://intercontinentalcry.org /2011/indigenous-community-spiritual-leaders-affirm-commitment-to-protect-holy-san-francisco-peaks/; Klee Benally, "Ski Area Pipeline Construction Threatens Holy San Francisco Peaks", May 24, 2011,  http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20110524135738160)

Sacred site threats around the country

The San Francisco Peaks is by no means an isolated case.  Indian sacred sites across the United States are often the subject of fierce debate between tribal and non-tribal interest.  As Carol Berry of the Indian Country Today Media Network notes, many Native leaders have recently seen their sacred sites damaged by private and government projects, graffiti, and simplistic definitions of sites as archaeological resources. 

For example, the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe near Needles, California is engaged in attempt to protect the Topock Maze and nearby areas from (they feel) groundwater pollution by a Pacific Gas & Electric compressor station.  The Topock Maze is considered a gateway to the afterlife.  Courtney Ann Coyle, attorney for the tribe,  noted, "You have the ability [under the constitution as well as state laws] to protect what you believethe federal government needs to accommodate that and look very hard at its projects to do them in such a way that is the least destructive."  Meanwhile, the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes in Nevada and Oregon are struggling with a pipeline constructed without tribal consent because it was not in tribal legal boundaries, but which may affect prayer sites, and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe of Nevada have found graffiti vandalism at sacred sites to be a problem. 

Suzan Shown Harjo, a Cheyenne/Hodulgee Muscogee woman and president of the Morning Star Institute, states "Once again we call on Congress to build a door to the courts for Native nations to protect our traditional churches.  Many sacred places are being damaged because Native nations do not have equal access under the First Amendment to defend them." 

(Carol Berry, "Sacred Sites Concerns Extend across Country", Indian Country Today Media Network, June 20, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/06/sacred-sites%E2%80%94concern-extends-across-country/)

New EPA Environmental/Tribal Policy

Also on the topic of national-tribal environmental consultation, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed a "Policy on Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribes".  The goal of the policy is coordination with tribal officials when the EPA is taking actions affecting tribes, and it sets clear standards on this consultation process.  The EPA sought comments on this policy from December 15^th, 2010, to February 16^th, 2011.  For more information and to see the policy, please visit http://www.epa.gov/indian/. (Talli Nauman, "EPA establishes new tribal committee on toxics", Native Sun News, http://64.38.12.138/News/2011/000049.asp)

New Tribal Toxics Committee being established by EPA

Furthermore, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is forming a National Tribal Toxics Committee which will attempt to offer Native American tribes greater opportunities to give input on hazardous chemicals and pollution prevention issues related to Native communities.  This new committee is part of EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson's priorities for building strong federal-tribal partnerships and working on environmental justice, priorities announced on December 21^st by the White House.  (Talli Nauman, "EPA establishes new tribal committee on toxics", Native Sun News, http://64.38.12.138/News/2011/000049.asp)

Havasupai Tribe granted state status under Clean Water Act

For some tribes, the relationship with the EPA appears to be going profitably.  For example, the Havasupai Tribe in Arizona has been granted authority by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop its own water quality standards for the reservation, gaining "state status" under the Clean Water Act.  Jared Blumenfield, an EPA Regional Administrator said "The waters on Havasupai land are integral to their life and culture, so it's fitting that the Tribe make the decisions protecting them".  (Associated Press, "Havasupai Tribe develops water quality standards", News from Indian Country, May, 2011, http://indiancountrynews.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11542&Itemid=33)

Gila River Indian Community air quality self-management Ð

 Meanwhile, the Gila River Indian Community has released a comprehensive air-quality program, which involves everything from issuing permits to monitoring pollution and standards enforcement, possibly the first such program by a tribe to be so all-encompassing in regards to air pollution.  The only task left up to the federal government under this plan is the approval of unusually large sources of emissions (such as major power plants).  This is a major step forward in self-management of air quality by an Indian group.  The US EPA approved this plan, saying it was "unrivalled nationally in both breadth and depth" and calling it a model for other tribes.  The plan comes after 12 years of development. (The Arizona Republic, "Gila River tribe is stepping up", The Arizona Republic, January 20, 2011, http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2011/01/20/20110120thur2-20.html)

EPA permit process blocks oil refinery construction by native nation

That said, not all tribes are speaking favorably about their relationship with the EPA.  The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation of North Dakota, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, claim that the EPA is holding up their plans to produce an oil refinery.  They have not been able to obtain a permit from the EPA for this refinery, the last hurdle to creating the refinery.  The refinery would be the first built in the U.S. since 1978.  It would create an estimated 600 to 1,000 jobs during construction, and employ 70 persons afterwards.  (Kevin Boughton, "Three Affiliated Tribes Refinery", KFYR-TV News Stories, January 18, 2011, http://www.kfyrtv.com/News_Stories.asp?news=45964)

Bison return to Native American lands

Cooperation between state authorities and tribes has resulted in the return of bison to a native reservation.  The Sioux and Assiniboine tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation will, in coming months, receive dozens of buffalo originating from the Yellowstone National Park free-roaming herds.  The western U.S. bison population, once at tens of millions, declined to 50 animals in Yellowstone by the early 20^th century, but has now grown to 3,700 animals.  $250,000 has been spent at Fort Peck preparing pasture and 26 miles of fencing for the bison.  Growing bison herds have presented a problem for wildlife managers in the Yellowstone area recently, so transferring some to the Fort Peck reservation is at least a partial solution.  Robert Magnan, head of Fort Peck's fish and game department, said "It's the beginning of a whole new chapter for the bison and for us.  It brings us right back to where we were".  He also stated, "Bison took care of Native Americans for centuries and provided everything we needed food, weapon, clothing, weapons, and tools.  Now they're in trouble, and it's our turn to take care of them."  (Laura Zuckerman, "Montana tribes ready for historic return of buffalo", Reuters, May 8, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/08/us-buffalo-tribes-montana-idUSTRE7471YE20110508)

Quileute express fear over tsunami risk, land trade to mitigate danger

Meanwhile, an agreement between the Washington state legislature, the Park Service and the Quileute has helped the tribe gain a victory for its security.  The National Park Service approved of a move to allow the Quileute tribe to relocate to a safer location from an environmentally dangerous area.  Senate Bill 636 in the Washington Legislature allowed for a land exchange where the Quileute tribe would get 785 acres of Olympic National Park, allowing the tribe's approximately 300 members to move uphill.  The tribe had expressed concerns, given the sea-level position of their village, of being endangered by tsunamis or flooding.  In exchange for the park land, 4,100 acres of wilderness were added to the National Park. (Seattle Times, "Moving the Quileutes to higher ground", Seattle Times, April 20, 2011, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorials/2014829328_edit21tribe.html)

Climate Change and Nunavut

In Canada, we also are seeing important environmental developments with the tribe.  One is in how Nunavut's government is responding to climate change.  "Climate change is already having a significant impact in Nunavut" said Daniel Shewchuk, environment minister for the (largely indigenous) Canadian territory of Nunavut.  "Nunavummiut will need to prepare to adapt to these very real and tangible impacts that are affecting our land and way of life".  In light of this, the Government of Nunavut has tabled a 30 page document entitled "Upagiaqavut Setting the Course, Impacts and Adaptation in Nunavut", which lays out the government's activities to help Nunavummiut, government agencies, and Inuit organizations to "become more resilient and adaptive to climate change". 

Shewchuk states "The document provides strategic direction to ensure that Nunavummiut are prepared with the tools, skills, and knowledge to adapt to a changing climate".  The document outlines actions the Government of Nunavut intends to take regarding climate change.  In the document, their strategy is compared to the qamutik sled of a hunter.  Actions will include ensuring climate change is part of school curricula, creation of a climate change website, setting up a climate change group tasked with working on community-based  ways of adaptation, identifying  economic opportunities of climate change, and incorporating climate change considerations into all government decision making.  The Government of Nunavut has already developed climate change adaptation action plans in five pilot communities, set up a Permafrost Monitoring Network in 11 communities, began a sea level rise assessment, and completed other attempts to adapt to and monitor climate change.  (Nunatsiaq News, "GN spells out plan to deal with climate change", Nunatsiaq news, June 13, 2011, http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/130688_gn_spells_out_its_plan_to_deal_with_climate_change/)

First Nation citizens and Native Americans oppose nuclear shipments

Also in Canada, Mohawks from Kahnawake (near Montreal), and Tyendenaga and Akwesasne in Ontario have joined forces with two environmental groups to oppose shipment of used nuclear reactor parts through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence river.  The parts would be going to Sweden for recycling, but along the way would pass within 30 meters of a Kahnawake village.  The communities have said they will do whatever necessary to stop these shipments through their traditional waterways.  (Max Paris, "Mohawks vow to stop nuclear shipments", CBCNews Canada, March 8, 2011, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/03/08/pol-nuclear-mohawks.html)

National Environmental Developments

President Obama announces clean energy goals in State of the Union address Ð

On the national level we are seeing important developments that could affect climate change as well as wildlife issues pertinent to the communities in which we work.  For example, in the 2011 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama set a goal for the majority of power being produced at U.S. power plants in 2035 to be from "clean electricity" sources.  Obama is pushing for 80% of U.S. energy to be from clean energy in less than 25 years.  "Clean electricity" sources identified by Obama include renewables but also clean coal, nuclear power, and natural gas. President Obama said "To meet this goal, we will need [all these sources] and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make this happen".  Much of this power could be coming from Indian Country, so the rise in renewable energy production will most likely be a pressing legal/environmental issue for the tribes in decades to come.  (Timothy Gardner, "Obama sets 2035 clean electricity target", Reuters, January 25, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/26/us-obama-speech-energy-idUSTRE70O50V20110126)

Wind power on the rise

On the topic of renewable energy, wind power is on the rise.  According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), 35% of the new power generating capacity built over the past 4 years has been from wind power sources.  This means that more wind power capacity was installed than nuclear power and coal combined over the last four years.  AWEA also reports that during the first quarter of 2011 there was 1,100 megawatts (MW) of wind power capacity installed in the United States over double that installed in the first quarter of 2010.  As of the end of 2010, there was 40,181 MW of wind power capacity installed across the United States total.  There was a clear growth trend in wind power installation from 2007 to 2009, though it seems to have lagged in 2010.  The growth of wind turbines could have important effects as placement concerns are discussed by the tribes.  (Andy Soos, "Wind in 2011", Environmental News Network, May 27, 2011, http://www.enn.com/business/article/42747)

First U.S. tidal power plant nearing approval

There is also hope for increased renewable energy in the form of tidal power.  The first U.S. tidal energy power plant may soon be built, as part of a project that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has now recommended for approval.  The project license was applied for by Verdant Power, and would involve the installation of 30 submerged turbines between Roosevelt Island and Queens in New York.  Tidal power is an overlooked but potentially significant source of renewable energy, though it has high start-up costs.  The FERC licensing process and other parts of the approval process necessitated an environmental impact review under the National Environmental Policy Act.  The Environmental Assessment predicted that the tidal plant would have no significant adverse effects to the environment, and only minimal impacts on aquatic resources (local fisheries).  There will now be an Environmental Impact Statement, a more thorough review of possible environmental impacts.  (Jonathan Kalmuss-Katx, "Tidal Power Plant in East River Nears Federal Approval", Sive Paget & Riesel P.C., June 6^th, 2011, http://blog.sprlaw.com/2011/06/tidal-power-plant-in-east-river-nears-federal-approval/)

The Death of Coal?

Meanwhile, in both 2009 and 2010, new coal plants lagged completely.  During these two years, no new coal-fired power plants were started in the United States.  The coal industry has been halted in its growth by a number of facts: the recession, lower natural gas prices (and the associated spike in natural gas power), and environmentalist opposition.  Natural gas is often being used in favor of coal, with America's largest electricity generator, American Electric Power, planning to turn to natural gas for any additional power generation capacity being installed.  Many power plants will be converting from coal to natural gas.  Kevin Parker, at Deutsche Bank, is quoted as saying "Coal is a dead man walkin'.  Banks won't finance them.  Insurance companies won't insure them.  The EPA is coming after themÉAnd the economics make it clean don't work".  Despite this, coal still accounts for over half of all electricity generation in the U.S. and is also a powerful political lobbying group in the debates over cap-and-trade regulations.  This will continue to be an issue of concern to the communities we work with, some of which hold coal deposits or house coal plants.  (Steven Mufson, "Coal's Burnout", Washington Post, December 31, 2010; David A Gabel, "No Coal-Fired Power Plants Builty in Past Year", Environmental News Network, January 4^th, 2011, http://www.enn.com/business/article/42191)

Coal Giant to drastically reduce US coal production due to EPA proposals 

Recent EPA proposals as well could be affecting coal dramatically.  One of the largest U.S. coal-burning utility groups, American Electrical Power (AEP), announced recently that it intends to close almost 25% of its coal fleet and do retrofit work, costing the company as much as $8 billion, to comply with proposed new pollution standards for water, air, and coal waste. The EPA has proposed new mercury emission limits under the Clean Air Act, more coal-ash disposal rules, rules on the use of cooling water towers, and updated limits on sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides under the Clean Air Transport Rule.  AEP would be retiring 6,000 megawatts of coal-fired power generation in states such as Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio by 2014.  It will also be converting some of its electricity generation to natural gas and investing heavily in this fuel as well as in emissions reduction equipment.

The company warned that the costs of the new environmental regulations to local companies as well as consumers have "been vastly underestimated", especially in the Midwest.  The chairman of AEP, Michael Morris, said that "because of unrealistic compliance timelines in the EPAÉproposals" they would have to prematurely shut off much of their coal generation and make these changes and that Midwest electrical reliability could be affected. Currently, coal generation accounts for about 65% of EP's power generation.  It would drop to 57% by the end of the decade.  Morris said that the company would work with the EPA in hopes that the EPA would develop a more realistic compliance schedule.  (Soma Das, Antonita Madonna Devotta, Eileen O'Grady, ed. Marguerita Choy, "AEP to retire 6,000 MW of U.S. coal generation", Reuters, June 9, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/09/us-utilities-operations-aep-idUSTRE75877620110609)

Move to open Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling Ð

 Meanwhile, oil may be receiving a victory as republican legislators introduce a bill that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development.  Senator Vitter said this "would unleash our vast domestic energy potential to create American jobs, help free us from our reliance on foreign oil and begin to reduce our $14 trillion national debt".  He claimed that this move would bring in $2 trillion in federal tax receipts over the next 30 years.  There have been efforts in the past, of course, to block drilling in this refuge on environmental grounds.  (Ayesha Rascoe, "Republicans in new push to drill in Alaska reserve", Reuters, March 31, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/31/us-usa-republicans-energy-idUSTRE72U58D20110331).

Deep-water drilling regulations relaxed, slightly - 

Oil is also experiencing a slight victory in regards to deep-water drilling.  Those of us working with coastal indigenous groups impacted by offshore drilling (whether by its environmental impact or its employment prospects) will be interested in recent development in deepwater project regulations.  On January 3^rd, the Obama administration eased newer environmental barriers to some oil and gas deepwater drilling projects.  Still, these companies will need to meet strict standards before they can resume drilling.  Some Republican lawmakers and oil companies had complained that the post-gulf oil spill regulations had brought drilling in the Gulf of Mexico to a standstill.  Essentially, 13 companies who already had projects underway when the moratorium on offshore drilling was announced will be able to forego additional environmental reviews, depending on certain factors (worst-case scenarios).  Still, this does not mean drilling will begin immediately, since these companies must still meet new offshore drilling regulations.  (Ayesha Rascoe, "U.S. to ease requirements on some deepwater projects", January 3, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/04/us-oil-drilling-permits-idUSTRE7023HY20110104)

New fuel efficiency labels

At the same time, the U.S Department of Transportation and the EPA have recently released dramatically different fuel efficiency labels for automobiles, which now detail comprehensive fuel efficiency information as well as information on estimated annual fuel costs, savings, and, most importantly, environmental impacts, which will allow consumers to make more environmentally wise decisions regarding automobile purchases  (Andy Soos, "Fuel Economy Labels by EPA", Environmental News Network, May 26, 2011, http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/42744)

Fuel cell vehicles makes progress

Also, fuel cell vehicles may begin to offer an alternative to oil-guzzlers.  Toyota has announced that it plans to start selling a fuel cell vehicle by 2015 or sooner, and it has started on the infrastructure necessary with the opening of the first pipeline-fed hydrogen refueling plant in the U.S., located in Torrance, California.  These moves will be worth watching as we ponder, both as researchers and citizens, how to make our economy more ecologically sound. (David A Gabel, "First Pipeline-Fed Hydrogen Refueling Station Opens in the United States", Environmental News Network, May 11, 2005, http://www.enn.com/business/article/42685)

Snowpack decline in the Rockies

For now, the continued production of greenhouse gases, along with other factors, is causing some noticeable environmental problems in the vicinity of the communities we study via climate warming.  For example, snowpack decline. Over 70 million people depend on water from the Columbia, Colorado, and Missouri rivers, which are runoff-fed.  Unfortunately, climate change could have serious consequences for these communities.  A study published in the journal Science on June 9^th reports that there has been an extremely rapid decline in snowpack in the northern Rocky Mountains during the last 30 years.  According to the researchers, the decline is "almost unprecedented" over the past 800 years (the scientists' use of tree ring data allowed them to reconstruct snowpack patterns over the last several centuries in the Rocky Mountains). 

The lead author, Greg Pederson of the U.S. Geological Survey's Northern Rocky Mountain Research Center, reports that the Northern Rockies have shown the greatest response to warming of the Rocky Mountain range, as temperature is "undercutting snowpack".  Since A.D. 1200, snow would sometimes be thick in the Northern Rockies and low in the southern portion, or vice-versa, but for the past 30 years or so, snowpack in both of these areas has shrunk.  The researchers blame the reduced snowpack on warmer springs due to a combination of rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere and natural climactic variation.  Pedersen also notes that whereas in the past (the 14^th and 15^th centuries) warmer temperatures and lower snowpack were followed by a cooling, "now, alas, we don't expect to return to a cooler period." 

Meanwhile, Tim Barnett, a Scripps Institution of Oceanography climatologist, commented that these new findings on snowpack seem to concur with his earlier climate models, showing how humanity's increasing of greenhouse gas emissions would contribute to declined levels of snowpack in the west. 

This year has been outside of the trend detailed in this study, with record snowpack reported in the northern western U.S., but this has been characterized by some as just a blip in an overall decline of snowpack that should cause us concern given how many of our communities depend on runoff-fed river water.  (Lauren Morello, "Rapid Decline in Mountain Snowpack Bad News for Western U.S. Rivers", Scientific American, June 10, 2011, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rapid-decline-mountain-snowpack-bad-new-western-us-rivers)

Climate change increases wildfire risks

Climate change is also likely to increase wildfire over the coming century, according to research published by NASA in October of last year.  According to this model, fire activity in the West could increase by 30-60% from present levels by 2100, as the western U.S. warms and dries.  The model was designed by NASA scientist Olga Pechony and Drew Shindell.  Interestingly, according to the model the eastern half of the U.S. will actually experience a decline in wildfires as humidity increases.

Model projections by Anthony Westerling of the University of California's Sierra Nevada Research Institute and his colleagues published in the Journal of Geophysical Research show that warmer temperatures would cause the average area burned each year in the west by wildfire to spike by 54% by the 2050's, which confirms Pechony and Shindell's estimates. 

The NASA model of Pechony and Shindell simulates worldwide wildfire and climate conditions back to A.D. 850 and projects them forward to A.D. 2100. The model is based on scenarios published by the International Panel on Climate Change regarding greenhouse gas emissions, population growth and other factors.  Under all three of these scenarios, rapid warming and regional drying would lead to an increase in fire activity world-wide after 2050.  Not every part of the planet would experience increased wildfires, but they would increase in the Western U.S., southern Europe, India, central Asia, Siberia, southern Africa and Australia.  In short, many regions we do research in and learn from could experience dramatically negative impacts from increased wildfires due to climate change. 

Pechony and Shindell attempted to factor in and consider different variables affecting wildfire in their study, including human fire suppression and precipitation levels. By 2050, the primary factor in wildfires will no longer be human activity and suppression, as, at some point, temperatures rise so rapidly and the environment becomes so flammable that fire suppression efforts are no longer able to curb the increasing rate of wildfires. 

Warmer and drier conditions in the West over the past 30 years have already caused fuel loads to become more flammable, and the predictions of this model would be a continuance of this trend, according to Peter Hildebrand, director of the earth sciences directorate at NASA's Godard Space Flight Center.  Hildebrand explained that as the earth warms, circulation systems change and the winter storm track is pushed further north, resulting in less precipitation, more evaporation, and higher temperatures in the Rocky Mountain West.  (Brendon Bosworth, "Rocky Mountain Wildfires Set to Intensify?", New West Development, June 12, 2011, http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/rocky_mountain_wildfires_past_and_present/C35/L35/; D. V. Spracklen, L. J. Mickley, J. A. Logan, R. C. Hudman, R. Yevich, M. D. Flannigan, and A. L. Westerling, "Impacts of climate change from 2000 to 2050 on wildfire activity and carbonaceous aerosol concentrations in the western United States", Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 114, 2009, http://ulmo.ucmerced.edu/pdffiles/09JGR_Spracklenetal.pdf)

Flooding of the Mississippi, Dead Zone, and the most extreme spring on record Ð

 Speaking of extreme weather, if this spring weather has seemed unusually extreme, it's not just you.  According to statistics released by the National Climatic Data Center, there has never been a spring so extreme in both wet and dry events as this spring in the recorded history of the U.S.  This spring brought one of the greatest floods in recorded history to the Lower Mississippi River, in addition to a terribly destructive tornado season and the worst fire season in recorded U.S. history.  If such extreme weather persists, we will need to look at how this impacts tribes and their resilience to it.

The flooding of the Mississippi will possibly cause the Gulf of Mexico's hypoxic zone (often called the "dead zone") to be larger than average this year, according to a forecast by scientists at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, Louisiana State University, and University of Michigan.  The dead zone area is predicted to be as large as 9,421 square miles this year.  As a point of illustration, the largest "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico recorded so far was in 2002, and it was only 8,400 square miles.  The average is 6,000 square miles, much lower than what is expected this year.

Hypoxia is due to excessive nutrient pollution, often from human sources.  It can deplete oxygen which kills off many types of marine life.  The flooding of the Mississippi has caused a significant increase in the amount of nitrogen pollution transported to the gulf, increasing the hypoxia problem. (Andy Soos, Environmental News Network, "Mississippi Flooding", June 15 2011, http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/42812)

Drought in Texas and Oklahoma

As part of this extreme spring, a severe drought plagued Texas, Oklahoma, as well as the key agricultural state of Kansas at the end of May.  50% of Kansas, as of May 19^th, was suffering from severe drought or worse, with much of that drought being located in key wheat growing areas.  Texas and Oklahoma, according to the USDA, were expected to have their wheat productions reduced by 50% because of the drought, causing the national winter wheat crop to be its smallest in five years.  France and China also experienced severe droughts at the same time.  (Carey Gilman, "Farm states suffer expanded drought, wheat suffers", Reuters, May 19, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/19/us-usa-drought-idUSTRE74I4JT20110519)

Massive flooding in Louisiana

And sadly, the Mississippi River experienced dramatic floods in April and May, almost as large as major floods in 1927 and 1993.  As of May 11^th, thankfully, expected flow was expected to be large but within the maximum capacity of the flood defenses.  The flood water was being diverted via floodgates away from Baton Rouge but towards the Atchafalaya basin, home of a wildlife refuge, small oil refinery, farms and homes.  The only other options would be New Orleans, an already disaster struck area with over a million people.  The diversion could flood up to 18,000 acres of cropland.  (Andy Soos, "The Great Louisiana Flood", Environmental News Network, May 16, 2011, http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/42704)

Idaho and Montana Wolves lose Endangered Species Act protection

There has also been some very important national legislation and research regarding wildlife that is worth looking into.  Firstly, in April, the U.S. Congress, for one of the first times ever, removed an endangered animal (partially) from the Endangered Species Act by legislative decree.  This is something that is typically done only by federal agencies. This animal was the Gray Wolf (Canis lupus), and the removal applies to Montana and Idaho, two states which have had management issues with the wolves. As David Gabel notes, Congress choosing to act in this way could have dramatic effects downstream for how the Endangered Species List is managed.  The legislation was part of the Continuing Budget Resolution agreed upon by Congress and the Obama administration. 

(David A Gabel, "Wolves Taken off the US Endangered Species List", Environmental News Network, April 14, 2011, http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/42584;  Defenders of Wildlife, "Congress and administration sell out wolves on budget bill", Press Release, April 09, 2011, http://www.defenders.org/newsroom/press_releases_folder/2011/04_09_2011_congress_and_administration_sell_out_wolves_on_budget_bill.php) 

Atlantic Bluefin tuna put on government watch list Ð

Also in wildlife news, the Atlantic Bluefin tuna has been labeled as a "species of concern" by the U.S. government, although it has not been listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act at this time.  The government will be monitoring for impacts from the BP oil spill on this fish, which spawns in the Gulf of Mexico near the Deepwater Horizon spill, though so far there is no evidence of this harming the species.  (Deborah Zabarenko, "Atlantic Bluefin tuna on U.S. environmental watchlist", Reuters, May 27, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/27/us-bluefin-tuna-idUSTRE74Q5ET20110527)

Bumblebees experience catastrophic declines

Bumblebees are another wildlife group of concern.  Over the past few decades, several bumble bee populations in the U.S. have declined dramatically, with some species down to 4% of their original population.  According to recent research, this is partially caused by low genetic diversity and pathogens, but the underlying cause is less certain.  A recent report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which tracked eight bumble bee species for three years, found that four of the eight species had declined by up to 96%, and that their ranges had declined by 23-87%.  These are obviously catastrophic declines, which is especially important since bumble bees are important pollinators for wild ecosystems as well as cultivated crops.  Pollinator decline is now a global issue, and has raised concerns over global food production. (Morgan Erickson-Davis, "U.S. bumblebees experiencing significant declines", mongabay.com, January 04, 2011, http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0104-morgan_bumblebee_decline.html)

Removal of Barred Owls to help Spotted Owls Ð

 Despite two decades of conservation efforts, spotted owls also continue to decline.  Wildlife officials in the U.S. will be releasing a new plan in June to help reclaim their populations that may be very controversial: the removal of the closely related Barred owl.  The Spotted Owl has not made a significant recovery since the federal government set aside many acres of forest for their protection in the controversial Pacific Northwest logging battles of the 1990's.  Biologists believe this is due to the invasion of their territory by the Barred Owl, originally from the eastern U.S. but in Washington for decades.  The Fish and Wildlife Service hopes to deal with this challenge via "permanent removal" such as shooting.  (Lauren Sommer, "Killing One Owl Species to Save Another", National Public Radio, June 12 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/06/12/137090033/killing-one-owl-species-to-save-another?ft=1&f=1025)

Bonneville Power Administration adjusts hydropower for salmon

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), power giant of the northwestern U.S., is curtailing coal, natural gas and wind power production in the Pacific Northwest so that it can focus on increasing its hydropower output due to an unusually large snowpack this year.  Allowing more water through the dams for hydropower at this time of high flow will allow for less water to spill over the dams.  Spill-over water can be a serious threat to endangered salmon.  Runoff has raised dissolved gas levels at eight federal dams to levels triggering action under state water quality standards (Eileen O'Grady, ed. Sofina Mirza-Reid, "Bonneville trims wind, fossil plants to protect fish", Reuters, May 20, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/20/us-utilities-bonneville-idUSTRE74J32C20110520)

EPA CO₂ rules delayed

We also look with interest at new attempts to regulate CO₂, one of the primary greenhouse gases.  Recently, the EPA announced that it had extended a deadline by two months for draft rules that, for the first time, would limit CO₂ emissions from power plants.  The date for proposing the draft rule will now be September 30^th, rather than July 26^th.  In relation to the delay, the EPA said that "stakeholders have presented the agency with important input which deserves to be fully considered".  It is anticipated that the EPA will provide companies and states with many avenues for compliance to the new rule, such as cap-and-trade programs and switching to different sources of power..  The final deadline for the rule is May 16^th 2012, and  is  part of President Obama's pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. to about 17% below 2005 levels by 2020.  (Timothy Gardner, "EPA delays rollout of CO2 on power plants", Reuters, June 13 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/13/us-usa-epa-emissions-idUSTRE75C53B20110613)

New Jersey withdraws from Climate Change Initiative

On a state/regional level, New Jersey Governor Chris Christia announced in May that New Jersey would be withdrawing from a cap-and-trade regional climate initiative of northeastern and Mid-Atlantic State known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.  He said in a news conference that this initiative was "not working as it was intended to work" and not being effective in regulating greenhouse gases.  The other 9 states that are part of this initiative issued a statement in response affirming their commitment to this regional cap-and-trade plan.  (Jessica Albin, Sive Paget & Riesel P.C., "New Jersey to Withdraw from Climate Change Initiative", June 1, 2011, http://blog.sprlaw.com/2011/06/new-jersey-to-withdraw-from-climate-change-initiative/)

Global Environmental Developments

Environmental Disaster in Japan the world mourns

On March 11th, 2011 an earthquake and related tsunami hit northern Japan, leading to what the New York Times has called "the worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl disaster".  It has been a tragic occurrence, and it reminds us of our continuing vulnerability to environmental disasters and the need to reach out to our fellow human beings in need.

Here is a very brief chronological review of what has happened thus far:  The three active reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, 170 miles north of Tokyo, overheated.  Their fuel rods melted down because the quake and tsunami took out the power and backup power for the plant.  A number of explosions and fires then led to the release of radioactive gases.  There was also a crack in at least one containment vessel.  On March 23^rd, the Japanese government announced that radioactive iodine had been found in Tokyo's water supply and warned that tap water should not be drunk by infants.  There were also fears of radioactive contamination of the environment and local food supply, fears partially substantiated by traces of radioactive elements found in farm products from near the plant and radioactive water flowing into the ocean. 

As of April 12th, Japan ranked the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster at a level 7 the worst rating on the international scale and the same level that was applied to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.  So far, thankfully, the amount of radioactive materials released have been only about 10% that of the Chernobyl disaster, but over time the Fukushima-related radiation release could exceed that of Chernobyl. 

On April 17th, the Tokyo electric Power Company laid out a plan to bring the reactors back to a stable state of cold shutdown within nine months and to reduce the radioactive materials being produced until then.  This plan involved new cooling systems. On April 18^th, robots found that radiation levels in the plant were too high for repair crews to go inside.  In late June, the plant was almost out of storage space for contaminated water, and readings indicated much greater radioactive material than once anticipated.  It is felt by many that inconsistent, nonexistent, or unenforced regulations helped play a role in the Fukushima disaster.  In May Prime Minister of Japan Naoto Kan said that Japan would abandon plans to build new nuclear plants.

(The New York Times, "Nuclear Energy Crisis in Japan, New York Times, updated: June 20, 2011, http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/atomic-energy/index.html?scp=2&sq=japan%20nuclear&st=cse)

One year after: Gulf of Mexico still recovering

One year after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Gulf of Mexico still is feeling the impacts, although it is not living up to some of the worst-case scenarios.  Edward Overton, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, said "It's a horrible mess but it's not the end of the world."  500,000 individuals have claimed compensation from a $20 billion compensation fund set up by BP at the insistence of President Obama, and individuals are also seeking recuperation via litigation.  Because of the disaster, thousands of birds and other wildlife died, according to the National Wildlife Federation.  BP has spent $16 billion on redress and restoration projects.  (Anna Driver and Matthew Bigg, "A year on, Gulf still grapples with BP oil spill", Reuters, April 19, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/19/us-oil-spill-anniversary-idUSTRE73E2OW20110419)

Bushmeat and Africa

At what point (if ever) should the environmental practices of an indigenous group concern us as conservation-minded outsiders?  This is an intriguing question for those in our discipline.  It is also a pressing issue for international conservation.  The bushmeat crisis continues to draw the attention of global media and conversation organizations.  Local populations in the Congo basin rely on birds, reptiles, and mammals for food (often called "bushmeat" in the media), but according to a statement released by a panel of environmental experts recently, overhunting of these animals has led to "empty forest syndrome".

Reuters recently quoted John Scanlon, secretary-general of the Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species (CITES), as saying "Tackling the impact of unsustainable and illegal trade in bush meat is critical for protecting the livelihoods of rural people and conserving wildlife in biodiversity-rich areas".  The overhunting is undermining food security and forest ecology, particularly since 75% of tropical tree species need animals to spread their seeds.  The panel proposes various measures, such as beekeeping, wildlife management, and farming rats to overcome the need for bushmeat.

However there are some important obstacles to switching away from bushmeat.  One is that bushmeat has gone from mere subsistence to commercial hunting and trade, according to Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity.  For example, that the Central African Republic's informal trade is estimated at $72 million annually.  It is therefore a large business.  Population growth is another challenge, as are the food needs of the population.  For example, if the Democratic Republic of Congo used cattle instead of bushmeat, it would have to put 80% of its land to pasture.  Clearly, there are significant obstacles to stopping the bushmeat crisis, economically speaking, but if the crisis continues, environmental experts seem to agree that it could be a major issue for these tropical forests. (Jonny Hogg, "Rats, bees to protect African wildlife: Experts", Reuters, June 10, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/10/us-africa-forest-idUSTRE75950B20110610)

Hottest summers will become average

At what point does climate change entirely alter our perception of what is 'normal' weather?  Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford, will be publishing a study in June in the journal Climate Change, along with Martin Scherer, detailing the effect of global warming on the summers we experience.  According to their projections, large portions of the planet will warm so quickly by the middle part of this century that even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers experienced in the past 50 years.  If greenhouse gases continue to increase, this level of warming will be reached in the tropics 20 years from now, and within Europe, China and the US 60 years from now.  The model seems to fit very well with historical data.  (Tim Wall, "Extreme Heat the New Norm", Discovery News, June 8, 2011, http://news.discovery.com/earth/extreme-heat-the-new-norm.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1)

Mega-dam construction approved

Indigenous groups in Brazil may soon be threatened with displacement by what is best called a "mega-dam".  Brazilian authorities have given their final approval to the Belo Monte dam, which has been a controversial project on environmental and indigenous rights grounds.  The dam will be on the Xingu River, one of the largest Amazon River tributaries.  It will cost $11 billion but generate more than 10% of Brazil's current energy capacity when completed in 2019.  It is backed by Brazil's National Development Bank as well as a number of private companies, such as the mining group Vale. The Brazilian government has said that this dam's construction would displace 16,000 individuals, but some environmentalists have actually put their estimates at 40,000 displaced individuals.  ("Amazon mega-dam gets final approval, mongabay.com, June 01, 2011, http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0601-belo_monte_approval.html)

Rate of deforestation declines for world's three largest forests

Many indigenous groups rely on tropical rainforests, which is often a concern given the large rate of deforestation.  It might hearten us to know that there has been some recent good news (albeit restrained) on this front.  The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently reported that the rate of destruction of the world's three largest forests (the Amazon Basin, Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia) has declined by 25% this decade compared with the previous one.  These forests make up 80% of the world's tropical forests.  The rate of deforestation for these woodlands has fallen from 7.1 million hectares annually in the 1990's to 5.4 million hectares from 2000 to 2010.  Congo Basin deforestation has remained stable but low, while Southeast Asia (specifically Borneo Mekong) deforestation has been cut in half.  Government policy and better conservation efforts have helped slow the deforestation rate.  This is inspiring news, although there was mixed news in the report as well.  The FAO reports author, Mette Wilkie, notes that a growing global demand for food, expected to rise 70% by 2050, will put increasing pressure on these forests. Also sadly, only 3.5% of the forests surveyed in the report are classified as under effective forest management.  In the Amazon basin, deforestation is mainly for large scale farming and crop, in the Congo forests are cleared for small scale conversion, and there is a mixture of reasons East Asia forests are felled.  (Jonny Hogg, "Destruction of world's biggest rainforests down 25 percent: FAO", Reuters, June 1, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/01/us-world-forests-idUSTRE7507VH20110601)

Cambodians rally to prevent rainforest destruction Р

A recent protest in Cambodia, where locals dressed as "avatars" from the film Avatar, should interest us all as indigenous scholars.  It is an interesting commentary on how groups, fighting for their land, represent themselves in a globalized world.  In May, 200 Cambodians rallied in the city of Phnom Penh to protest rampant destruction of one of Southeast Asia's last intact lowland rainforests, Prey Lang.  Prey Lang is thought to contain nearly a third of Cambodia's remaining primary forest.  Protestors donned make-up and dress similar to that of James Cameron's Avatar, a film about indigenous and environmental destruction on an alien planet, to gain media attention during their protest.  (For more information, see: Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com, "Photos; Cambodians rally as 'Avatars' to save one of the region's last great rainforests", May 31, 2011, http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0531_preylang_avatar.html)

Wildlife conservation in Namibia-

This should be of interest to those of us studying community-based conservation: David A Gabel of ENN (Environmental News Network) recently had interesting observations about community-based wildlife conservation in southern Africa.  The nation of Namibia has many wildlife conservancies that are community-run, he writes, with local communities calculating their own annual budgets, listing threatened species, and recording interactions of the human and wildlife populations.  There are 64 of these community-based conservancies, covering about 17% of Namibia, more land than is contained in the state-run parks.  Economically speaking, these conservancies generate $40 million for the Namibian economy due to trophy hunting and wildlife tours.  This article notes that local people take pride in watching over "their" animals.  Transferring ownership of wildlife conservation to the people may work so well in Namibia because of the low population density, but it is nonetheless a success story worth noting and applying in other areas.  (David A Gabel, "Namibia Wildlife Conservation", Environmental News Network, May 23, 2011, http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/42730)

Massive flooding in Australia Ð

 On January 2^nd, large portions of the coastal northeast of Australia became immersed in floodwaters in a disaster that Queensland State Treasurer Andrew Fraser called a "disaster of biblical proportions" which would ultimately cost about $1 billion.  An area the size of Germany and France was affected, including 22 different towns and 200,000 people.  Also, 75% of the coal mines in Queensland were forced to stop operating.  (Daniel Munoz, "Record floods swamp Australia's northeast", Reuters, January 2, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/02/us-australia-floods-idUSTRE6BU09620110102; Daniel Munoz, "Australia floods cause "catastrophic" damage", Reuters, January 5, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/05/us-australia-floods-idUSTRE6BU09620110105 )

Paper released on effects of resource extraction on minority regions - 

The Unrepresented Peoples and Nations Organization (UNPO), which reports regularly to the UN, recently released an issue paper detailing the often devastating effects of resource extraction on minority communities.  The report is entitled "Development of natural resources in minority regions" and is available at http://www.unpo.org/downloads/82.pdf.  The 20 page document is an excellent read and of particular interest to those in AIS and indigenous studies. 

On page 4, the paper says "Many minority populations occupy territories far from the centers of political and economic power, which are often the first places to be exploited for their resources given their lack of political power to oppose such actions", a situation that many of us have seen in our work and which is likely to increase as resources become increasingly scarce.

This issue paper details economic and human consequences of such resource extraction.  For example, unregulated logging on Mapuche-occupied land in Chile, as well as in many areas throughout the world, causes heavy losses of forest cover, which in turn leads to landslides, flooding, and loss of that most precious of commodities for any resource-dependent community, soil.  Such communities often lose access to forest-based medicine, grazing land, and wood.  At the same time as they lose these resources, they do not share significantly in the economic profits of logging, thus causing them a double disadvantage.  To add insult to injury, local groups are often blamed for deforestation in their areas although they have lived sustainably on the land for many years.

Oil and mineral extraction are also significant issues affecting marginalized communities.  For example, gold mining takes significant amounts of fresh water from local communities and can cause contamination by chemicals, including cyanide, and other effects on the mined land.  The effects of mining have been disastrous for indigenous communities in the Philippines, ruining 20,000 hectares of agricultural land in one province. Indigenous and minority communities are at times displaced due to massive hydroelectric projects and other forms of resource extraction. There are even reports of violent intimidation and corruption against minority groups in resource-rich areas by companies doing the extraction. 

The paper then details some of the barriers to minority groups effectively participating in management of their resources.  Some policy issues include: lack of minority representation in overarching governments, fear of reprisals for public organizing and lack of basic political freedoms, laws which promote disenfranchisement rather than protection of vulnerable groups, government corruption which ignores illegal resource extraction, access to judicial systems, and lack of land rights for groups living in an area.

A solution often advocated for these problems is what is known as "Free, Prior, and Informed Consent".  The term implies a non-coerced and informed agreement to extraction by a community.  However, as the report notes, and as may interest us as scholars, this term presumes a monolithic community with one opinion on resource use in their area, an ideal that simply may not be present for many minority and indigenous groups.  The concept is further complicated by the fact of groups editing what they say out of fear of reprisal. 

The paper notes in summary "overall, the large-scale development of natural resources without the consent or participation of affected communities has been shown in many cases to further the economic marginalization and vulnerability of these communities" (Page 14). 

For the full report, visit: http://www.unpo.org/downloads/82.pdf

(UNPO Office of the General Secretary, "Development of natural resources in minority regions", issue paper released December 2010, http://www.unpo.org/downloads/82.pdf)

Droughts in the Amazon and climate change

A recent study published in the prestigious journal Science (Lewis, et al.) reveals that a 2010 drought in the Amazon basin was even greater than the 2005 drought, which was previously thought to be a once in a century event.  It is thought that these droughts may be exacerbated by climate change caused by the anthropogenic release of greenhouse gases.  Simon L. Lewis, primary author of the study, stated in an interview with the magazine The Ecologist that if this is so, and if these droughts occur three or more times a decade, it could start a vicious cycle of recurring droughts.  This is how that would work: droughts cause massive tree die off, dead trees tot, and rotting trees release CO₂.  In some of the largest forests in the world this would lead to large increases in CO₂ in the atmosphere.  This would causes- more climate change and thus even worse droughts.  In effect, the Amazon, long counted as a sink, or storage, for CO₂, could soon become a contributor instead.  (Simon L. Lewis, Paulo M. Brando, Oliver L. Phillips, Geertje M. F. van der Heijden, and Daniel Nepstad, "The 2010 Amazon Drought", Science 331(6017):554, February 04, 2011; Tom Levitt, "Is the Amazon heading towards a `tipping point' as a carbon sink?", May 27^th, 2011, http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/906660/is_the_amazon_heading_towards_a_tipping_point_as_a_carbon_sink.html)

China, US lead in CO₂ emissions as global emissions spike

Global emissions of CO₂ rose in 2010 at their fastest rate in over four decades, rising 5.9 percent to 30.6 billion tons annually, according to estimates by the International Energy Agency.  These sharp increases in emissions are happening at the same time as U.N. climate talks seem unlikely to produce a new, legally binding climate agreement before the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.  China is the largest emitter of CO₂ according to BP data, making up 8.33 billion tons of the emission total, or about a quarter of global emissions.  Information released by BP shows China's CO₂ emissions have risen 10.4% in 2010 from 2009 levels, a sharp rate of increase.  Meanwhile, the U.S. is the second largest emitter with a 4.1% increase last year, producing 6.14 billion tons annually.  On the more positive side, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, as well as other researchers, note that China could reach its maximum CO₂ output within two decades as its demand for appliances, buildings, and much industry become "saturated".  (Nina Chestney, "China's CO2 emissions rose 10 percent in 2010: BP data", Reuters, June 8, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/08/us-energy-bp-emissions-idUSTRE75728120110608; Chris Buckley, "China carbon emissions could peak by 2025-2030: U.S. study", Reuters, April 29, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/us-china-climate-emissions-idUSTRE73S1VV20110429)

Increases in energy consumption worldwide - 

Global energy consumption and production continue to increase rapidly, with some of that growth from renewable sources and much of it from nonrenewable sources.  Global coal consumption increased by 7.6% in 2010, its fastest growth in production since 2003.  Coal accounts for about 29.6% of global energy consumption, which is actually an increase from 2010.  In 2010, coal accounted for 25.6% of global energy consumption, according to BP data.  China accounts for about 48.2% of the global coal use, and is also a rapidly increasing producer of coal power.  Coal production is also increasing rapidly in the U.S. and Asia, though falling in the European Union.  Meanwhile, hydroelectric power output is up 5.3%, nuclear power generation up 2%, biofuels production up 13.8%, and renewable power generation generally up 15.5%, in large part because of rapid growth in the wind power industry.  Renewable energy accounts for about 1.8% of global energy consumption, an increase from 0.6% in 2000. (Nina Chestney, "China's CO2 emissions rose 10 percent in 2010: BP data", Reuters, June 8, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/08/us-energy-bp-emissions-idUSTRE75728120110608)

Costs of lax air pollution regulations in China

A recently released study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change shows that the effect of lax air quality legislation the economy in China has been dramatic due to losses in worker productivity, sick days, etc.  It focused specifically on air quality laws for ozone and particulate matter.  The study modeled economic losses from 1975 to 2005, and estimated these losses at $122 billion to China's economy by 2005.  This damage equals about 6-9% of Chinese GDP.  Similarly, studies by the World Bank have found that air pollution has caused China damages of up to 4-5% of its GDP between 1995 and 2005.  This should be a case in point for us as we work upon and decide national air pollution standards. (Allison Crimmins, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, "The price of fresh air: How costly are the health damages from air pollution in China?" June 6, 2011, http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/the-price-of-fresh-air.html)

Arctic Nations council due to melting ice

Want proof of climate change?  In May, leaders from eight "arctic nations" the U.S., Canada, Russia, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, and Denmark (representing Greenland) met in Greenland to make plans regarding how they will deal with the warming of the arctic.  Temperatures in the arctic are rising much more rapidly than other parts of the world, and are at their highest level for the past 2,000 years.  This warming will likely cause dramatic new challenges as previously ice-trapped resources and pathways become available.  For example, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Arctic may hold up to 25% of the earth's undiscovered oil and natural gas reserves.  Shipping and seas governance as well could be greatly modified by newly open routes as ice melts.  U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in attendance.  (Andrew Quinn, "Arctic nations eye future of world's last frontier", Reuters, May 11, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/11/us-arctic-idUSTRE7490UD20110511)

Additional Environmental Developments

Steve Sachs

The Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Nuuk, Greenland, that began May 6, heard repots from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), a working group of the Arctic Council, which studies the impact of climate change on snow, water, ice and permafrost in the Arctic (SWIPA), bringing brought together more than 400 scientists and researchers from all around the world. The numerous reports resulting from a "multi-year study that included contributions from scientists and indigenous groups from all of the Arctic States and additional expertise from non-Arctic communities as well," were in agreement that global warming induced climate change was having a faster effect than previously projected, and that previous reports had underestimated the rates of change in sea ice, finding that the Arctic Ocean could be all but ice-free every summer in only 30 to 40 years, and that resulting changes in Arctic ecosystems could cause the loss of entire habitats, which "has consequences for people who depend on Arctic ecosystems to supplement their livelihoods," the U.S. State Department stated. Moreover, the State Department statement noted, with the melting of highly reflective ice and snow, the darker-colored, exposed ground will be absorbing more energy from the sun, increasing the rate of global warming to the point "It could also turn the Arctic into a net source of carbon dioxide and methane and change large-scale ocean currents," though, "the combined outcome of these effects is not yet known." It should be noted that the changes are not linear, but often increase significantly once certain thresholds are reached. Currently, in the arctic those changes are dramatic, and as the ice melts, it is raising sea levels world wide, and bringing global shifts in weather and ocean currants ("Ice Melt," Indian Country Today, May 15, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/05/ice-melt/). A similar report on Arctic melting being faster than previously projected was reported in, Alex S. Gardner, Geir Moholdt, Bert Wouters, Gabriel J. Wolken, David O. Burgess, Martin J. Sharp, J. Graham Cogley, Carsten Braun, and Claude Labin "Sharply increased mass loss from glaciers and ice caps in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago," Nature aop, (2011), doi:10.1038/nature10089, Nature.com, April 22, 2011, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10089.html, that also found the glaciers on the Canadian archipelago have already melted enough water to fill three-quarters of Lake Erie and raise the level of  all of the world's oceans by a millimeter. Between 2004 and 2006, the first three years of the study, the region lost an average of seven cubic miles of water per year. From 2006 through 2009 that jumped to 22 cubic miles of water per year.

New Research published in the journal Science shows that two hundred million years ago, at the end of the Triassic period, volcanic activity greatly increased carbon dioxide in the air, causing global warming, and as the oceans warmed they released at least 12,000 gigatons of methane from the seafloor into the atmosphere resulting in a mass extinction of life in the oceans, wiping out half of all marine life on Earth. Current global warming initiated by human burning of carbons, already leading to the release of additional greenhouse gasses, increasing warming, is threatening again to warm oceans sufficiently that they will release the vast amounts of methane that they contain (Sindyan N. Bhano, "Blame for Extinction Spreads to Methane Gas," The New York Times, July 25, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/science/26obearth.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper).

Chris Huhne, the British secretary of state for energy and climate change, is expected to release a statement on Tuesday that the British government will set in law a goal to cut its greenhouse gas emissions about 50% of their 1990 levels by 2025. The reduction would exceed the European Union's goal of cutting emissions 20% percent by 2020, and it would mean that Britain would make faster emissions cuts than other similar size countries, including Germany. The target might require households to spend on new energy-saving devices for the home, and could revive stalled government support for large projects, like those that capture power from tides and that bury carbon dioxide emissions (James Kanter, "Britain Set to Announce Ambitious Environmental Steps," The New York Times, May 16, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/business/global/17carbon.html?ref=business).

Climate Change, bringing colder temperatures to upper levels of the Arctic atmosphere for the second time has caused a temporary spring ozone hole over the Arctic. The colder temperatures in the upper air turn anthropogenic chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) into "aggressive, ozone-destroying substances," causing a temporary ozone hole over the Arctic at the end of winter. This previously occurred in 2006 ("Spring Ozone Hole in Arctic," Indian Country Today, March 25, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/03/spring-ozone-hole-in-arctic/).

A recent report has confirmed earlier scientific findings that global warming is increasing earthquake and volcanic activity as a result of the huge change in pressures in the Earth take place as glaciers melt and oceans rise. Scientists are warning that that the increased volcanic activity will further intensify climate change (Terry J. Allen, "The Global Volcanic Feedback Loop," In These Times, June, 2010).

 A long developed report, A Forest of Blue: Canada's Boreal Forest, the World's Waterkeeper from the Pew Charitable Trust sent to Shawn A-in-chut Atleo, Canadian national chief of the Assembly of First Nations; ClŽment Chartier, MŽtis National Council president, Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and Canadian as Prime Minister Stephen Harper, March 16, warns that Canada may hold the key to the world's survival, as it is steward of the world's largest intact forest, which contains more unfrozen water than any other ecosystem. The open letter to and the governments of Canada's provinces and territories, the International Boreal Conservation Science Panel called upon Canada to quickly take stricter conservation measures. The report, based on decades of research, found that the boreal forest stretching across much of northeastern Canada contains 25 percent of the planet's wetlands, millions of pristine lakes and thousands of free-flowing rivers for a total of 197 million acres of surface freshwater. As a buffer against climate change, it provides $700 billion in value annually; is one of the last refuges half the North American Atlantic salmon population, as well as other sea-migrating fish; and maintains freshwater flows that help create Arctic sea ice, cooling the atmosphere and supporting marine life from sea algae to polar bears. The forest also stores more than 400 trillion pounds of carbon in lakes and river delta sediment, peatlnads and wetlands. The study pointed out that this could change with the encroachment of industrialization, mining, lumbering and other development into these areas. Steve Kallick, director of the Pew Environment Group's International Boreal Conservation Campaign, commented, "At a time when clean water supplies are disappearing, the vast reserves in Canada's boreal are increasingly important to protect. Canadian provinces and First Nations have already made major strides defending the integrity of the vast lakes, rivers and wetlands in the forest, but they need to do more to guarantee that Canada's water stays pure and abundant, watershed by watershed." The letter said, "Protection of Canada's boreal forest, along with limiting greenhouse gas emissions, should be among the top global conservation priorities, and the work to protect it can only be led by Canada's federal, provincial and Aboriginal governments. Canada has the unrivaled opportunity to protect the world's largest intact freshwater ecosystem and the responsibility to enact sound conservation and sustainable development policy to safeguard the boreal forest. The longer we wait to act, the fewer the conservation options that will continue to be available. Without prompt action, Canada may miss the opportunity to protect this global treasure."

The first large-scale project to sequester carbon dioxide, placing it in the ground and out of the atmosphere, in North America, on the banks of the Ohio River in New Haven, W.Va., is close to complete its mission, finding that in at least one kind of rock, carbon dioxide seems to slip into the small open spaces more easily than projected, indicating that carbon capture may be easier to achieve than anticipated. Meanwhile, near Meredosia, Ill., a larger test project to attempt injecting carbon into sandstone, a more common kind of rock, is moving toward start-up. In almost all cases, the aim is to replace water, which is too saline to be of economic value, with carbon dioxide (Mathew L. Wald, "Tucking Carbon Into the Ground," The New York Times, March 30, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/business/energy-environment/31CARBON.html?ref=todayspaper). 

Experiments in improving the efficiency of the internal combustion engine, that would use less fuel and create less pollution, are underway at Pinnacle Engines, near San Francisco Bay, which is testing an opposed piston engine. In this design, two pistons face each other, the space between them forming a combustion chamber. Eliminating the traditional cylinder head results in a lighter, cheaper and more efficient engine. Pinnacle is one of several start-ups backed by prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalists attempting to reinvent the century-old internal combustion engine, greatly improving in fuel economy and reducing greenhouse gas and other polluting emissions at a lower cost (Todd Woody, "Start-Ups Work to Reinvent the Combustion Engine," The New York Times, March 30, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/business/energy-environment/31ENGINE.html?ref=todayspaper).

The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes are moving to become the first Oklahoma nation to have a wind farm on their land, with a number of other Oklahoma tribes developing plans to build wind energy facilities, including the Kaw Nation, the Iowa Tribe, the Cherokee Nation and the Comanche Nation. The Cheyenne and Arapaho expect to have 22 100-kilowatt turbines on tribal land located near Lucky Star Casino in Concho, Oklahoma, by the end of the first quarter of 2012, saving an estimated $9.2 million for the tribes over the next four decades, while will providing training and creating skilled labor jobs, partially funded by grants from the Tribal Employment Rights Office and Department of Education. Eventually, the nation hopes to build more turbines near Clinton to power the satellite Lucky Star Casino, a hospital and other tribal operations located there, to become completely fossil fuel free ("Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes Purchase Wind Turbines to Power Reservation," Indian Country Today, April 27, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/04/cheyenne-and-arapaho-tribes-purchase-wind-turbines-to-power-reservation/). The Delaware Nation of Oklahoma is installing solar cells for electricity on the roof of its complex in Anadarko, while increasing efficiency by switching to LED (light emitting diode) lights, which consume less energy and last longer, in its headquarters, while starting a solar business (see Economic developments, below). The Forest County Potawatomi Community in Wisconsin became the second Indian Nation in the U.S. to join the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Green Power Partnership by purchasing wind energy credits to power all of the tribe's electricity usage. The nation has also increased its energy efficiency by replacing existing lighting with LED lighting. The Potawatomi is the only tribe purchasing green power for 100 percent of its electricity use, and the tribe claims the No. 13 spot on the EPA's Top 20 Local Government list of green power purchasers. The Samish Indian Nation in Anacortes, Washington, became the first tribe to join the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Green Power Partnership in October 2004, with commitment to obtain at least 10% of its electricity from renewable energy sources ("Potawatomi Tribe Buys Green Energy Credits, Powers All Its Facilities," February 7, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/02/potawatomi-tribe-buys-green-energy-credits-powers-all-its-facilities/). Navajo Nation has several new green energy developments.  The Betty Ojaye Student Center at Navajo Preparatory School has become the first building in San Juan County, NM, to achieve a certification for green building ("Navajo Preparatory School Gets Gold for Going Green", Indian Country Today, February 26, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/02/navajo-preparatory-school-gets-gold-for-going-green/). The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority has put in state of the art solar panels and tracking to supply 30% of the power at its district headquarters in Chinle, AZ (Cindy Yurth, "LEEDing by example: NUTA goes green with new Chinle facility," Navajo Times, July 21, 2011). The Plateau Solar Project, a partnership among the Navajo NGO IINA Solutions, Mark Snyder Electric, and Global Solar Water systems, in January, finished installation of solar electricity and an indoor bathroom using a prototype system, at the first of the 20,000 homes on the Navajo reservation without these things that the partnership intends to supply (Cindy Yurth, "Lighting Up Leupp," Navajo Times, January 20, 2011). Meanwhile, the Crown Point Chapter House moved to being solar electric powered in May (Noel Lyn Smith, "Crownpoint Chapter Goes Solar," Navajo Times, June 2, 2011), and in April, Gallop High School had installed a 50 KW solar system by Native owned Sacred Power (Carolyn Calkvin, "Gallup High opens solar set up," Navajo Times, March 3, 2011). At the beginning of August, The Navajo Tribal Utility announced the Salt River Project, which will produce 85 megawatts from wind power at Big Boquillas Ranch, as its first wind generation facility, to be developed in collaboration with Edison Mission Energy (Alastai LeeBitsoi, "Wind Power Project Holds Promise for Tribe, Navajo Times, August 4, 2011). Currently, there is a growing movement among the Dine to have the Navajo Nation move away from dirty coal fired power plants toward using increasing amount of solar and wind energy (Mireya Navarro, "Navajos Hope to Shift From Coal to Wind and Sun," The New York Times, October 26, 2010).

There have been many objections including lawsuits, to building large scale green energy projects in environmentally sensitive areas in the U.S. There is a movement to have them in places that are not environmentally fragile, while some environmentalists believe they should be placed, so far as possible, in already environmentally compromised locations. For example, see Todd Woody, "Solar Energy Faces Tests On Greenness," The New York Times, February 24, 2011.

A number of Indian nations, including The Western Shoshone, the Summit Lake Paiutes, the Walker River Paiute tribe, the Goshutes near the Utah border, and the Ely Shoshone are concerned that they have not been consulted about the Pinyon-Juniper Partnership, a consortium backed by Senator Harry Reid (D-NV). The plan, begun last spring is to use chain saws, masticators and prescribed burns to thin pinion and juniper on 300,000 acres in Lincoln and White Pine Counties, using the cuttings for biomass fuel. The partnership, which includes by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM]) the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with support from such groups as Newmont Mining, the Nevada chapter of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Nature Conservancy, argues that replacing some pinion in eastern Nevada's HumboldtÐToiyabe National Forest with sagebrush and other vegetation will help prevent dangerous forest fires, allow for more wildlife viewing and hunting, and develop a biomass industry in Nevada that will convert wood chips to fuel and electricity. It already has at least one potential customer: A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Chinese firm that is planning to build a biomass-generated electrical plant in Lincoln County. The plans to reduce pinion could eventually result in 20 million to 60 million tons of pinion-juniper biomass. Six million tons of biomass can result from "a really light thinning" of a million acres, says Dusty Mohler, a forester and utilities manager for the partnership. While many tribal people agree that some thinning may be beneficial, the tribes are concerned that the "thinning" may be over done, and that that it may cut into their supply of pinion nuts for ceremonies and food, that they have to compete with wildlife to harvest. The tribes claim that direct consultation, which is required by law, is needed to insure that only a proper project is undertaken. The partnership sponsored at least one large outreach program: its Las Vegas Summit in December 2010, which brought together representatives from 175 organizations, but left out many of the tribes that have a direct interest process. Tansey Smith, the tribal state environmental liaison at the Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada was one of the few Native representatives who attended. "The summit was a place we had to travel to," she explains. "Not a lot of tribes have funding to make that trip. There are a lot of people who weren't able to make it" (Lisa Gale Garrigues, "BLM Plan to Convert Nevada's Pinyon Forests to Biomass Threatens Ancient Rituals," May 19, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/05/blm-plan-to-convert-nevada's-pinyon-forests-to-biomass-threatens-ancient-rituals).

Japan has decided to cancel plans to build additional nuclear reactors, and instead will expand use of renewable energy and conservation to meet future electric power needs  (Martin Fackler, "Japan to Cancel Plan to Build More Nuclear Plants," The New York Times, May 10, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/world/asia/11japan.html?ref=todayspaper). A new leak from a waste disposal building at Japan's Fukushima nuclear complex, has set back efforts to contain radiation from the crippled plant, and stabilize the site, which was already expected to take several months or longer. The disclosure by Tepco raises the stakes in a race to complete by next month a system to decontaminate a massive pool of radioactive water at the site that critics see as a growing risk to both the nearby Pacific and groundwater (Kiyoshi Takenaka and Yoko Nishikawa, "New Leak Feared at Stricken Japan Nuclear Plant," Common Dreams, May 26, 3022, http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/05/26-1). A growing number of Western European Nations, including Germany and Switzerland, have either canceled new and extending the life of old nuclear power plants, and/or begun making plans to begin phasing out existing nuclear energy plants, and Japan is doing the same (some of this is in "Environmental Developments," Nonviolent Change, Spring 2011, www.nonviolentchangejournal.org). The German government agreed, May 30, to phase out all of its nuclear power by 2022, following the recommendation of a special committee appointed by Chancellor Angela Merkel in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan. The older plants already taken off line will remain permanently shut down. Nuclear energy provides 22.6 percent of Germany's electricity supply, according to the Energy Ministry, with coal providing more than 42 percent; natural gas, 13.6 percent; and renewable sources like wind and solar, 16.5 percent; with the remainder coming from other sources. Germany will work to increase its use of renewable energy to make up the difference (Judy Dempsey and Jack Ewing, "Germany to Halt Nuclear Power Production by 2022," The New York Times, May 30, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/world/europe/31germany.html?_r=1&ref=world; Judy Dempsey, "Panel Recommends That Germany End Reliance on Nuclear Power Within 10 Years," The New York Times, May 11, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/business/energy-environment/12energy.html?ref=world). 

epa

EPA released new air pollution rules for power plants, in late February, that are less stringent than the tough standards proposed last spring, that brought major objections from businesses (John M. Broder, "After Business Outcry, E.P.A. Significantly Revises Emission Rules on Boilers," The New York Times, February 24, 2011).

The Navajo Nation extended its lease on the coal-fired Four Corners Power Plant on its tribal land in northwestern New Mexico from 2016 to 2041, when Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly authorized the agreement with the Arizona utility service on March 8, following the Navajo Tribal Council's February 15 approval The decision was made by the nation for economic reasons, as the plant generates about $65 million in taxes for the tribe and $100 million to the workforce, including 700 Navajos who work at the plant and the related coal mine. The lease extension secures the tribe $7 million a year with control for inflation, up from an average of $1.5 million annually, under the previous lease. The tribe's Minerals Department projected that rejecting the lease agreement would cause an estimated annual shortfall of $42 million to $50 million beginning in 2016 ("Navajo Nation Extends Power Plant Lease to 2041," Indian Country Today, March 10, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/03/navajo-nation-extends-power-plant-lease-to-2041/).

A recent study by the Canadian Water Network finds that, world wide, nearly a billion people do not have good access to safe fresh water, and that number could double in a generation as growing demands for water will exceed the available and sustainable supply by 40%. "Peak water" has already come and gone. Humanity now uses more water than can be sustained, drawing on non-renewable reserves of water accumulated over thousands of years in deep aquifers. In many countries and regions water scarcity is a fundamental challenge to development, as a lack of access to water can bring starvation, disease, political instability and even armed conflict. Margaret Catley-Carlson, Margaret Catley-Carlson, a former senior official with both the Canadian government and at the United Nations, a renowned global authority on water issues, and a director at the Canadian Water Network, commented, "Governments see their role as delivering water to the public and industry. This has to change to sustainably managing water resources for society and the natural environment." She noted that policy-makers have not treated water as a valuable resource and as a result water is wasted, with leaky water infrastructure losing 20% to 50% of the water it is supposed to deliver. Even water-poor countries in the global south do not make water a top priority because water availability is mainly an issue for women and the poor and they are not well represented in government. Instead limited public funds are spent on the military and other priorities. In late March, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged governments to make pro-poor investments in water and sanitation, particularly in urban areas where the need is acute and has grown by 20% in the last decade. With the world population and economy growing, the water challenge is becoming significantly greater. By 2030 the global water demand will be 40% higher than today's "accessible, reliable, environmentally sustainable supply" according to the U.S.-led study "Charting Our Water Future" by consultants McKinsey and Company. The report indicated that around one-third of the population, concentrated in developing countries, will live in basins where this water deficit is larger than 50%. 71% of the world's water use is in agriculture, where inefficient and inappropriate irrigation accounts for much of this water use. Thirsty crops, such as maize, are grown in dry places like Spain, requiring enormous amounts of irrigated water. Even a low-value crop such as sugar cane is grown under irrigation in some places, which Catley-Carlson calls "ludicrous". She says that poor policies, subsidies, such as those for biofuels, trade agreements and bad habits are collectively responsible for much of the world's water misuse in food production. Domestic water use is just 8% of overall water consumption. Industrial use is the other major user of water. All products have a water component, often called "virtual water", to describe the volume used to make something. The annual global trade in "virtual water" today is said to exceed 800 billion tones, the equivalent of 10 Nile Rivers. Nicholas Parker, chairman of the Cleantech Group, an international firm that works to accelerate the development and market adoption of clean technologies, states, "What people don't often realize is how much water there is in everything we make and buy, from t-shirts to wine." (Stephen Leahy, "Peak Water Has Already Come and Gone," Common Dreams, March 23, 2011, http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/03/23-2).

New gravity measuring technology from satellites in space has been used by Scientists have been identifying small variations in the Earth's gravity to identify places around the planet where people are making unsustainable demands on groundwater, one of the planet's main sources of fresh water. The problem areas include North Africa, northern India, northeastern China and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley in California, mainstay of the state's $30 billion agricultural industry. All the large changes in water, whether as liquid or ice and snow, are being tracked, redefining the field of hydrology, which itself has grown more critical as climate change and population growth draw down the world's fresh water supplies. The technology also tracks areas of political sensitivity over ground water where groundwater basins are often shared by unfriendly neighbors India and Pakistan, Tunisia and Libya or Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories that have a tendency of suspecting one another of excessive use of this shared resource (Felicity Barringer, "Groundwater Depletion Is Detected From Space," The New York Times, May 30, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/science/31water.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper).

A major problem with the rapid development of biofuels has been their replacing food crops and causing serious food price inflation. This has been the case in Thailand, where the cassava root has long been an important ingredient in everything from tapioca pudding and ice cream to paper and animal feed. In 2010, however, 98 percent of cassava chips exported from Thailand, the world's largest cassava exporter, went to China to make biofuel. Driven by new demand, Thai exports of cassava chips have increased nearly fourfold since 2008, and the price of cassava has roughly doubled. Recently, every year, an ever larger portion of the world's crops, particularly of cassava, corn, sugar, rapeseed, and palm oil, is being diverted for biofuels as developed countries pass laws mandating greater use of nonfossil fuels and as emerging economies, such as China's, seek new sources of energy to keep their transportation and industries running. With food prices rising sharply in recent months, many experts are calling on countries to reduce their rush into green fuel development, arguing that the combination of ambitious biofuel targets and mediocre harvests of some crucial crops is contributing to high prices, hunger and political instability. Earlier this year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported that its index of food prices was the highest in its more than 20 years of existence, with prices rising 15% from October 2010 to January 2011, "throwing an additional 44 million people in low- and middle-income countries into poverty," according to the World Bank. Rising food prices have triggered riots or contributed to political turmoil in numerous poor countries in recent months, including Algeria, Egypt and Bangladesh, where palm oil, a common biofuel ingredient, provides crucial nutrition to a desperately poor populace. During the second half of 2010, the price of corn rose steeply, 73% in the United States, an increase that the United Nations World Food Program attributed in part to the greater use of American corn for bioethanol. Higher prices also mean that groups like the World Food Program can buy less food to feed the world's hungry. Another example of the problem is that European biofuels developers are buying large tracts of what they call "marginal land" in Africa with the aim of cultivating biofuel crops, particularly the woody bush known as jatropha. Advocates say that promoting jatropha for biofuels production has little impact on food supplies. But some of that land is used by poor people for subsistence farming or for gathering food like wild nuts. Indeed, another problem with rapid biofuel development is that it is causing land grabs and deforestation (Elisbeth Rosenthal, "Rush to Use Crops as Fuel Raises Food Prices and Hunger Fears," The New York Times, April 6, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/science/earth/07cassava.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper).

Rising prices for cotton have caused many U.S. farmers in the South to grow cotton instead of food (William Neuman, "Amber Waves To Ivory Bolls," The New York Times, March 29, 2011).

Alfredo Acedo, "Monsanto Uses Latest Food Crisis to Push Transgenic Corn in Mexico," Americas Program, March 28, 2011, http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4244, reports, "Monsanto has turned the drop in international corn reserves and the havoc wreaked on Mexican corn production by an unexpected cold snap into an argument for speeding up commercial planting of its genetically modified (GM) corn in Mexico. The transnational is claiming that its modified seeds are the only solution to scarcity and rising grain prices."

Natural gas companies have been vastly overstating the amount of gas they are pumping out of the ground and the quantity of natural gas available to be extracted from the Earth in North America (Ian Urbina, "Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush," The New York Times, June 25, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26gas.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper).

Natural gas, seen as a crucial fuel in the effort to move the U.S away from dirtier fossil fuels and reduce global warming, now has been found to be causing more global warming than coal, because of current practices, according to two recent studies, that say in the rush to increase natural gas production, producers and transporters are allowing larger quantities of extremely planet-warming methane, the chief component of natural gas, to escape into the atmosphere. As much as 7.9% percent of natural gas is currently escaping from shale gas wells, intentionally vented or flared, or seeping from loose pipe fittings along gas distribution lines. This offsets natural gas's most important advantage as an energy source: it burns cleaner than other fossil fuels and releases lower carbon dioxide emissions (Tom Zeller Jr., "Studies Say Natural Gas Has Its Own Environmental Problems," The New York Times, April 11, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/business/energy-environment/12gas.html?hp). An earlier report in these pages indicated that this loss is extremely expensive, and that some gas companies have begun to be moved by the economic incentive to take comparatively inexpensive measures to greatly reduce leaks at well heads and in pipelines.

Ian Urbina, "Regulation Lax as Gas Wells' Tainted Water Hits Rivers," The New York Times, February 27, 2011, reports that with the large number of natural gas wells being developed using fracking, one of which can produce as much as a million gallons of waste water contaminated with highly toxic chemicals, rivers are being seriously polluted across the United States. Sometime the gas drilling waste water is taken to sewage plants that are not designed to treat it, and that discharge it into drinking water. The gas drilling waste water also contains much greater levels of radioactivity than is considered safe for people. Ian Urbina, "Gas Wells Recycle Water, but Toxic Risks Persist," The New York Times, M The New York Times, M The New York Times, March 2, 2011, reports that, particularly in Pennsylvania, gas companies are recycling water from fracking wells, that can leave behind salts or sludge that is highly radioactive and contains concentrated pollutants.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has increased testing of water in Pennsylvania Rivers because of contamination from natural gas drilling (Ian Urbina, "E.P.A. Steps Up Scrutiny of Pollution in Pennsylvania Rivers," The New York Times, March 8, 2011.

Two gas drilling companies, Chesapeake Energy, based in Oklahoma, and Clarita Operating of Little Rock, AR, agreed to suspend specific operations at high-pressure wells, which are used to dispose of waste water from natural gas drilling, near Greenbrier and Guy AR, after their work was linked to nearby earthquakes. Some 800 earthquakes have hit the area in the past six months and one, with a magnitude of 4.7, was the strongest in Arkansas in 35 years. Previous studies have shown that pumping water deep into the earth near faults, lubricates them, increasing earthquake activity (Drilling Companies Agree to Suspend Operations after Work at Wells in Arkansas Linked to Causing Earthquakes," Daily Mail/UK, March 8, 2011, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363814/Drilling-companies-linked-causing-earthquakes-suspend-work-Arkansas.html).

In Wyoming, natural gas wells in rural areas far from cities are creating serious smog, including ozone alerts, from dangerous smog levels ("Plenty of Sky and Pollution Too," The New York Times, March 10, 2011).

Ian Urbina, "Pressure Limits Efforts to Police Drilling for Gas," The New York Times, March 4, 2011), reports that as a result of political pressure from gas companies, findings from professional staff of dangerous pollution from natural gas drilling have often failed to be included in EPA reports, and EPA studies of drilling have been narrowed, for at least 25 years.

The destruction from the BP Deep Water Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is likely to be much higher than originally believed.  A report by an international team of marine mammal specialists finds that 50 times more whales and dolphins have died from the massive oil spill than would appear to be the case from simply counting the animal corpses washing ashore, which has been the standard method for estimating whale and dolphin losses (Margaret Munro, "BP Gulf Disaster Impact Could Be Much Worse Than Expected: Report: Whale and dolphin deaths may be 50 times higher than believed," by PostMedia News, March 30, 2011, http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/03/30-1). Much of the current and long term environmental damage from the Deepwater Horizon cataclysm remains uncertain, and is momentarily subtle. For example, on Cat Island, pelicans have returned to nest, but the mangrove bushes that protect the nests and reduce erosion are considerably thinned, and in some areas in precarious condition. Most areas of the gulf have been reopened for fishing, with only a small percentage of ocean sand samples collected having oil compounds at levels harmful to aquatic life. Since the start of the oil disaster some 300 dolphins, most of them dead, have washed ashore between Texas and Florida, and there has been a large increase in turtle deaths this spring. Yet on the surface of things, the Gulf area habitat seems largely in tact, though 80% of the spilled oil is believed still on the Gulf floor, and the location of millions of gallons of toxic oil dispersants dumped into the Gulf is unknown (Bettina Baxall, "Environmental Toll Remains Unknown," San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 2011).

The 7,000-member state recognized United Houma Nation of Louisiana that has been continuing its tradition of trolling Louisiana's bayous and rivers for seafood to both eat and sell for a major portion of tribal member income, has been badly impacted by the BP Gulf oil spill. As of the beginning of 2011, they were hesitant to eat their traditional diet of seafood, let alone harvest and sell it, if supply and demand even holds up. In addition, they were faced with snap decisions on whether to accept quick lump-sum settlements from BP of $5,000 for individuals or up to $25,000 for businesses, or pursue longer-term legal action, as they could not do both. Chief Thomas Dardar and his staff have been seeking grants for programs that assess the mental and physical well-being of Houma members who live in low-lying areas ("Houma Nation Mulls BP Damage," Indian Country Today, January 3, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/01/houma-nation-mulls-bp-damage/).

A panel at conference convened by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), at Oxford University, in June, issued a preliminary finding to a report to be released in 2012, stating that "the world's ocean is at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history." Alex Rogers, IPSO's scientific director and professor of conservation biology at Oxford University, stated, "and we've ended up with a picture showing that almost right across the board we're seeing changes that are happening faster than we'd thought, or in ways that we didn't expect to see for hundreds of years." Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a coral specialist from the University of Queensland in Australia, said that "the rate of change is vastly exceeding what we were expecting even a couple of years ago." The conclusions are in agreement with those drawn by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme presented in mid-May. The preliminary report identified six causes for the perilous marine decline: Climate Change Rising sea temperatures affect the distribution of marine species, and wreak havoc on coral reefs, which are safe havens for countless marine species. Absorption of carbon dioxide is also causing ocean acidification, which may already be reducing the size and growth rates of some marine animals. Over-fishing Due to unsustainable fishing practices, fisheries can only deliver a fraction of what they could in the past, which in turn affects everything from seabirds to coral. Habitat destruction In addition to the destruction of coral reefs through such practices as bottom trawling, we are also ruining habitats of sensitive sea animals by changing the water quality. Extraction: While headline-grabbing spills are an obvious way in which oil and gas extraction can harm the oceans, even disaster-free drilling releases toxic substances into the water, and acoustic methods of prospecting are harmful to aquatic life. Pollution: Release of sewage into the water promotes microbial activity, which drains the water of oxygen and can produce "dead zones" where there is little to no aquatic life. Heavy metals, plastics, oil and pesticides are also incredibly harmful to the ecosystem. Alien species introduction: Introduction of non-native species into a delicately balanced ecosystem, whether intentional or not, can cause major stress, even disaster ("Marine Life May be on Brink of 'Phase of Extinction'," Indian Country Today, June 22, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/06/marine-life-may-be-on-brink-of-phase-of-extinction/).

Arctic Cod that live only in lakes on Island in Canada, in January, were being considered by Canadian authorities as perhaps becoming sufficiently endangered that the would be listed "species of special concern," restricting their being fished ("Arctic Cod Possibly Endangered," Indian Country Today, January 3, 2011. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/01/arctic-cod-possibly-endangered/). 

An approximate 28,000-barrel oil spill from an oil sands oil pipeline rupture in northern Alberta, Canada, near the Peace River, in late April, has environmentalists and indigenous leaders calling for a cessation of all mining crude from the oil sands. According to the Globe and Mail, 300 workers are cleaning up the Alberta spill in the Rainbow pipeline system, near the Peace River. Fumes sickened members of a Cree community, forced the closing of a school and killed several animals. Part of the spill was being held in check by a beaver dam, the Globe and Mail said on May 6. The fumes caused officials in the Little Buffalo community in northern Alberta to suspend classes as nausea, burning eyes and headaches plagued the school's K-12 students. Plains Midstream says it recovered about 1,900 barrels, or 7%, of the spilled oil, the week after the spill. On May 4 the company said it had contained the spill, repaired the pipeline and was awaiting regulatory approval to start up again. But Little Buffalo officials said that "community members report that the oil is still leaking into the surrounding forest and bog." The Rainbow pipeline extends 480 miles from Zama to Edmonton, Alberta, with an additional 114 miles of gathering pipelines. The system pumped about 187,000 barrels per day during 2010 and has the capacity to pump 220,000 barrels daily. This is Alberta's biggest pipeline spill in 36 years, since the Bow Valley line leaked 40,000 barrels (Alberta's Biggest Oil Spill Since 1975 Casts More Doubt on Oil Sands," Indian Country Today, May 9, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/05/alberta's-biggest-oil-spill-since-1975-casts-more-doubt-on-oil-sands/).

The crash of a Columbia Fuels tanker truck that spilled 42,000 liters of gasoline and 650 liters of diesel fuel spill along the Goldstream River on Vancouver Island in mid-April may have killed much of the young salmon in several First Nations fisheries, and authorities are still investigating the long-term effects of what has been termed a full-fledged environmental disaster. The five affected First Nationsthe Tsartlip, Tsawout, Pauquachin, Tseycum and Malahatare angry that they were not consulted directly by truck owner Columbia Fuels, with, Tsawout First Nation fisheries manager Dan Claxton saying if the nations had been consulted immediately, fish and wildlife personnel could have been brought in and minimized environmental damage in conjunction with the Native experts while authorities dealt with the immediate danger and public safety issues. The First Nations depend on the river's bounty for their livelihood. The full range of damage won't be known until 2012 and '13, when whatever salmon escaped the slaughter are due to return to spawn. Experts from the First Nations and Canada's environment ministry have been meeting with company officials. The Nations want full restoration of the river and its environs ("Ecological Disaster: Fuel Spill Kills Thousands of Goldstream Salmon," Indian Country Today, May 1, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/05/ecological-disaster-fuel-spill-kills-thousands-of-goldstream-salmon/). 

A US embassy cable by then U.S. ambassador to Peru, James Struble, published by Wikileaks revealed the Peruvian government had knowledge of the illegal harvest and export of up to 90% of its mahogany timber. The secret cable also revealed that Peru's government is aware that the illegal timber is being 'laundered' using 'document falsification, timber extraction outside the concession boundaries and links to bribes'. Survival International reports that this news follows only weeks after international headlines reported that that loggers in Peru infiltrated protected areas inhabited by uncontacted tribes, forcing them to flee across the border into Brazil. Moreover, the Broad leaf mahogany that Peru exports is an endangered species under Appendix II of the International endangered species under Appendix II of the International Convention against Trafficking in Endangered Species Convention Against Trafficking in Endangered Species (CITES).  (Beth Buczynski, "Wikileaks: 70 Percent Of Peruvian Timber Felled Illegally," Care2, March 6, 2011, http://www.care2.com/causes/environment/blog/peru-wikileaks-reveal-illegal-mahogany-exports/).

The giant oil company, Chevron Corp. won a temporary injunction in a U.S. federal court, in New York, March 6, halting enforcement of an $18 billion judgment by a court in Ecuador for oil pollution of the Ecuadorian Amazon. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that the judgment won by Ecuadorean indigenous plaintiffs could not be enforced until Chevron's racketeering case against the Ecuadoreans and their lawyers is decided. On February 1, Chevron sued the Ecuadorian plaintiffs in U.S. District Court in New York, accusing them of fraud, interfering with contracts, trespass, unjust enrichment, and conspiracy. Chevron levied even more serious charges against their main U.S. lawyer Steven Donziger, expert witnesses and affiliated organizations, accusing them of racketeering ("Chevron Wins Halt to $18 Billion Judgment in Ecuador Pollution Case," Environment News Service, Mach 7, 2011, http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2011/2011-03-07-02.html).

A study published in Nature, in mid-February, shows that heavier precipitation in many parts of the world since about 1950 is connected to human acts. The research found that the chance of heavy precipitation on any given day in the Northern hemisphere rose by 7% from the previous norm (Justin Giles, "Study Says Rise in Precipitation Is Connected To Human Acts," The New York Times, February 17, 2011).

Extreme weather consistent with global warming induced climate change continues. Here in Albuquerque, NM, we experienced record high temperatures for the date, at the beginning of April. On April 17, 2011, a huge storm threw an unusually large number of tornadoes, 241, across 14 states including in places where they are very rare from Oklahoma to Virginia, killing at least 44 people, disrupting power and transportation, and causing widespread damage that left many homeless (in early reports). (Richard Fausset and Christi Parsons, "Dozens killed as tornadoes slam South," The San Francisco Chronicle, April 18, 2011; Brock Vergakis and Mitch Weiss,  "In hurricane country, twisters a deadly surprise," The San Francisco Chronicle, April 19, 2011). On April 27, an even worse storm the most damaging in 40 years killed at least 339 people in six southern states as 137 tornadoes were reported, with 104 of them from Alabama and Mississippi. Over all, there have been 297 confirmed tornadoes this month, breaking a 36-year-old record.  (Campbell Robertson and Kim Severson, "Obama Tours Wreckage of Deadly Storm," The New York Times, April 29, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/us/30storm.html?_r=1&hp; and "Storms' Toll Rises as Scale of Damage Becomes Clear" The New York Times, April 29, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/us/30storm.html?ref=us). Yet another very strong storm brought a rare until recently huge tornado to sweep a three-quarter mile wide, four mile long path of destruction destroying about 30% of Joplin, MO, with a population of 48,000. Killing at least 100 people, with 1500 missing (as of May 24, the death toll was expected to rise), destroying or damaging more than 2,000 buildings, including a nursing home, several schools, firehouses, large stores - including a Wal-Mart and a Home Depot, water treatment and sewage plants, while smashing cars and trucks and uprooting trees   (A.G. Sulzberger, "Death Toll Rises to Nearly 100 From Missouri Tornado," The New York Times, May 23, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24tornado.html?hp; and later New York Times reports). On May 24 a storm with additional tornados hit Oklahoma and Texas, with one level 5 twister slashing a half mile path of destruction through El Reno, OK (Anahad O'Connor, "Twisters Strike Oklahoma: At Least 5 Killed," The New York Times, May 24, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/us/25storm.html?ref=todayspaper). These very wide spread storms have also brought record flooding to places across the Midwest and South, which is expected to become even worse with a new large storm on the way on May 2 (Malvolm Gay, "Plan to Breach Levee in Missouri Advances," The New York Times, May 1, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/us/02levee.html?ref=todayspaper). The Choctaw Nation in southeastern Oklahoma joined other relief workers in assisting residents of Tushka, in late April, where two people died, at least 25 were injured and 149 homes were completely destroyed, in an April 14 tornado ("Choctaw Nation Helps Tornado Victims, Indian Country Today, April 21, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/04/choctaw-nation-helps-tornado-victims/).

In the U.S. Midwest and South a series of exceptionally large and strong storms have brought record flooding in a number of areas, much of which has brought record high waters on the Mississippi and considerable flooding. On May 14, the Mississippi, even with several flood gates open to flood rural areas and take pressure off the Mississippi, was at record levels in the 183 years since records were kept, and crested well above the previous record. The high water and flooding not only caused personal and economic problems to people whose homes, businesses and fields were underwater, but for a number of days barge traffic was stopped on portions of the Mississippi River (Campbell Robertson, "Record Water for a Mississippi River City," The New York Times, May 15, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/us/16flood.html?ref=todayspaper). There was also heavy flooding on the Missouri River, one of whose impacts was the temporary closing of the WinnaVega Casino and Resort in Sloan, IA, run by the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska ("WinnaVega Casino in Iowa forced to close for flooding," News From Indian Country, June 2011). Meanwhile, a blizzard-filled winter and an unusually cold and wet spring, has caused more than 90 measuring sites from Montana to New Mexico and California to Colorado have record snowpack totals on the ground for late May, bringing the possibility of catastrophic flooding if much warmer weather in June brings sudden thaws, releasing millions of gallons of water through river channels and narrow canyons, and overflowing already very high reservoirs and lakes. If the weather warms up slowly and remains mild, serious flooding may be avoided, and the overly dry west may enjoy much needed reserves of water ("Record Snowpacks Could Threaten Western States," The New York Times, May 22, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/us/22snow.html?ref=todayspaper). A number of Indian nations have suffered from heavy rains and flooding. The Crow Indian Reservation in Montana, in May, suffered an estimated $879,168, 10% the $8.6 million in damages reported statewide, with 22 homes on the reservation destroyed, and 200 damaged by record rains causing the Bighorn River to overflow its banks. The rains caused numerous roof cave-ins, while the rampaging waters swept away vehicles and outbuildings, and emptied many homes of their residents' belongings. Some 300 people were displaced, and returning to normal is a long process. Homes that are tribally-owned are eligible for the FEMA repair funds, but residents who own their homes are responsible for their own recovery and repairs, and many home owners on the reservation do not have flood insurance ("Crow Reservation in Montana on the Long Road to Recovery," Indian Country Today, June 29, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/06/crow-reservation-in-montana-on-the-long-road-to-recovery/). The Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota suffered flooding, in February, leaving many residents stranded, as Calico Creek, Grass Creek, White Horse Creek, Wounded Knee Creek, Potato Creek and White Clay Creek experienced bank-overflow due to snow melt, ice jams and clogged culverts and bridges ("Flood of Help to Stranded Pine Ridge Residents," Indian Country Today, February 20, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/02/flood-of-help-to-stranded-pine-ridge-residents/). West Texas, and parts of Oklahoma, have been experiencing its worst Drought in half a century, opening the way for wild fires that by April 19 had burned over 1 million acres, that have affected or threatened all but two of the state's 254 counties, and burned 105 homes in just the previous few days, as there seems no short term end to the fire season (Sarah Wheaton, "Relentless wild fires burn 1 million acres," San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 2011). Vermont was pilled up with one of the five largest snow storms to hit the state, in March, shutting the state down (Katie Zezima, "Vermont Shuts Down With Snow Over the Top," The New York Times, March 8, 2011). Unusually warm water helped Maine achieve a record lobster harvest last year of 93 million pounds, up form 81 million pounds in 2009 (Abby Goodnough, "After a Record Haul in Maine, Try the Lobster Mac and Cheese," The New York Times, February 24, 2011).

The extreme dryness in the U.S. Southwest had already sparked a record fire season, by mid-June. As of June 16, while the largest wildfire in Arizona history burning into New Mexico, whose numerous wildfires this spring include the largest in the state's history. Containment of the spreading fires has been extremely difficult in hot windy weather in drought suffering areas (Chip Ward, "How the West Was Lost: The American West in Flames," TomDispatch.com, June 16, 2011, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/16-3).

Record drought in Texas and across the Southwest have devastated agriculture in West Texas, and combinations of extraordinarily hot weather with many records broken- and flooding have reduced U.S. agricultural production of a number of crops (For example, "Sweltering Heat Grips Midwest, South, East, USA Today, July 12, 2011; from The New York Times: Highlight: Scorching, Record Heat on the Plains, June 30, 2011; Manny Fernandez, "Soldiering on When the Job is White Hot," July 22, 2011; Erick Eckholm, "HeatÉWave? Bubble? Dome? Seeking an Apt Name as the Hot Days Pile Up," July 23, 2011; "Heat Deaths Rise, but Cooler Air is in Forecast," July 24, 2011; and William Neuman, "Crop Yield Raises Risk To food Cost," The New York Times, August 12, 2011). The hot dry weather has also brought massive dust storms in Arizona (Marc Lacey, "'Haboobs; Stir Critics in Arizona," The New York Times, July 22, 2011). Hot weather in many parts of the country, but especially the Southwest, has been bringing terrible wild fires, where as of June 16 more than 700 square miles of Arizona and more than 4,300 square miles of Texas have been swept by huge wildfires Arizona (including the largest in the state's history-burning into New Mexico) and New Mexico, which suffered the two largest fires in its history. The largest, which threatened Los Alamos, burned through a major water shed and over sacred sites on the Santa Clara and Cochiti Pueblos. The rains that followed turned the Rio Grande black from the ash in the runoff, killing many fish, and it is unclear how harmful to agriculture on the pueblos and vicinity the ash blackened water flowing in irrigation ditches will be (P. Solomon Banda, "Tribes fearl loss of sacred sites, wate holes near NM fire," News From Indian Country, July 2011). Fire has also been a serious problem elsewhere, including for the Yakima Nation of Washington, which, February 12, 2011, suffered a major fire which is believed to have started in the chimney of one home and quickly spread by wind and 50-mph gusts that carried the fire from house to house, down a dry, wooded creek bed and then to more distant homes, displacing 100 people. The vibrant town of White Swan was devastated by the damage to a total of 24 homes, including some multi-family residences, and destruction of other property including cars, bicycles and all personal belongings, for many people ("Yakima Nation (environment/community)," Native News Network, February 17, 2011, http://andrekaruk.posterous.com/archive/2/2011). The Southeast, Northeast and Midwest have also been broiled in heat but not fire for long periods across the late spring well into summer.

The worst flooding in 150 years in western Canada has forced more than 1100 First Nation people from their homes, in April, in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, putting at least 50 aboriginal communities in danger across the prairie region. A mixture of snow melt and heavy rains were responsible for the record high waters in the three affected provinces. Although the floods impacted numerous towns and cities, First Nations reserves were less protected and suffering disproportionately. Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo told the Canadian Press that while towns prone to flooding in southern Manitoba have received flood-prevention assistance, such as dykes to hold the river back, many First Nations communities have little more than sandbags despite repeated requests to have their homes moved to higher ground ("'Unprecedented' Flooding Hits First Nations Hard," Indian Country Today, April 22, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/04/unprecedented-flooding-hits-first-nations-hard/).

Dryness and wildfires are a problem in some areas of Canada that are also impacting First Nations. "A fire of note" burning out of control in northwestern Ontario brought the Mishkeegogamang First Nations to be evacuated because of smoke from a lightning-caused forest fire, June 26. At that time, the fire had consumed 47,000 hectares. It was the most recent of several First Nations areas that were evacuated because of wildfires, including a few communities near Slave Lake, a town that was 30 percent destroyed ("Wildfires Force Mishkeegogamang First Nations Evacuations in Ontario," Indian Country Today, June 27, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/06/wildfires-force-mishkeegogamang-first-nations-evacuations-in-ontario/). Further evacuations because of wild fire in Ontario took place a month later, with evacuations completed in more than a dozen Ontario communities, as of July 22, and fire officials were hopeful that the fires would soon be under control. Most were airlifted to Thunder Bay, then routed to host communities across southern Ontario that included at least one First Nation. In all, 3,591 people were evacuated, fully from Cat Lake First Nation, Koocheching First Nation and Keewaywin First Nation. Partially evacuated were Eambametoong First Nation, Kasabonika Lake First Nation, Kingfisher Lake, Mishkeegogamang First Nation, North Spirit Lake First Nation and Sandy Lake First Nation. Host communities included Matachewan First Nation, which took in 108 people, and Greenstone, which took in the most, with 1,038 people. Meanwhile, smoke-induced evacuations have spread to Manitoba, where at least 300 residents of St. Theresa Point First Nation were evacuated, as of July 21 ("Ontario Evacuations Complete for Now; Firefighters Making Headway," Indian Country Today, July 25, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/07/ontario-evacuations-complete-for-now-firefighters-making-headway/ ).

Unusually cold temperatures, in January and February, across northern Mexico left a path of crumpled crops, pummeled harvests and dashed dreams in the countryside. Hardest hit was the northwestern state of Sinaloa, known as the "Bread Basket of Mexico," where about 750,000 acres of corn crops were reported destroyed ("Mexico's New Agricultural Crisis," Americas Updater, February 15, 2011, http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3999). Increased and unpredictable rains have sharply reduced the coffee harvest in Colombia and other Latin American nations (In Colombia, Coffee Source Suffers Setbacks," The New York Times, March 10, 2011). Heavy rains in La Paz, Bolivia caused mudslides that destroyed more than 400 homes in poor neighborhoods and left more than 100,000 people without running water (Bolivia: Severe Damage From Landslide," The New York Times, March 3, 2011).

A Heat wave in Iraq, with temperatures over 120 degrees F., caused the government to take the unprecedented step of taking a heat holiday, August 2 (Michael S. Schmidt, "eat Wave and Fasting Ass to Woes of Iraqis," The New York Times, August 3, 2011)

Return of rain and snow to China, at the end of February and the beginning of March eased the long drought, reducing fears of a wheat crisis (Keithe Bradsher, "Rain and Snowfall Ease Drought in China, and Fears of a Wheat Crisis Recede," The New York Times, March 8, 2011). However, Despite some rains, drought remains a major problem in China. As of mid-May, a severe, five month, drought along the Yangtze River region in central China had rendered nearly 1,400 reservoirs in Hubei Province temporarily unusable, devastated farm fields and made drinking water scarce, as water levels in the middle part of the Yangtze reached a near-record low. For the second time since the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project, began operating, officials have had to make emergency water discharges from it to help ease the drought, as 4 medium-size reservoirs and 1,388 small reservoirs in Hubei had dropped below the allowable discharge levels for irrigation. One-fourth of all small reservoirs had what officials called "dead water" remaining, which could be pumped for use only in an emergency. The drought adds to concerns over the effect that a gargantuan water-diversion project will have on the central provinces of China. The project, called the South-North Water Diversion, is supposed to move water from the Yangtze and its tributaries north to Beijing along a canal, and to Tianjin along an eastern route. Both routes are supposed to be fully operational within the next couple of years. Criticism of the project has become widespread, and many people along the Yangtze and in the south say precious water resources should not be sent north, where there has been a chronic water shortage. Du Yun, a geography scholar at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, said that the central government had not done enough studies to assess the impact of the diversion project, especially when compared with all the research that was done before the building of the Three Gorges Dam. As of mid-May, the drought had left 315,000 people and 97,300 head of livestock in Hubei short of drinking water, and more than two million acres of farmland had been affected. In neighboring Henan Province, the drought had affected at least 320,000 people (Edward Wong, "Central China Hit by Drought, as Reservoirs Become 'Dead Water'," The New York Times, May 16, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/world/asia/17drought.html?ref=world).

Thailand was hit by unseasonable storms, in late March, that inundated six southern provinces, killing at least 17 people as torrential rains, floods, mudslides and rough seas swamped seaside villages in the past week and trapped local and foreign tourists on islands. The Thai government sent its only aircraft carrier to rescue stranded residents and tourists (Seth Mydans, "Thailand Mounts Rescue Effort After Powerful Storms," The New York Times, March 31, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/world/asia/01thai.html?ref=todayspaper).

Olivier de Schutter, the UN special reporter on the right to food, reported, in March, that farmers in developing countries, in a drive to depress record food prices and avoid the costly oil-dependent model of industrial farming, have been moving to ecological agriculture, and away from chemical fertilizers and pesticides, with the result that they may double food production within a decade. Examples include Insect-trapping plants in Kenya and ducks eating weeds in Bangladesh's rice paddies, as the world seeks ways to shift from feeding the world's current 7 million people to about 9 billion by 2050. To date, eco-farming projects in 57 nations demonstrated average crop yield gains of 80% by tapping natural methods for enhancing soil and protecting against pests, it says. Recent projects in 20 African countries resulted in a doubling of crop yields within three to 10 years. The report concludes that those lessons could be widely applied elsewhere. De Schutter stated, "Sound ecological farming can significantly boost production and in the long term be more effective than conventional farming," with such steps as more use of natural compost or high-canopy trees to shade coffee groves. It is also believed "agroecology" could make farms more resilient to extreme weather conditions associated with climate change, including floods, droughts and a rise in sea levels that the report said was already making fresh water near some coasts too salty for use in irrigation. The approach would likely have the greatest benefits in "regions where too few efforts have been put in to agriculture, particularly sub-Saharan Africa," he said. "There are also a number of very promising experiences in parts of Latin America and parts of Asia." De Schutter noted that, The cost of food production has been very closely following the cost of oil." Upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia have been partly linked to discontent at soaring food prices. "If food prices are not kept under control and populations are unable to feed themselves ... we will increasingly have states being disrupted and failed states developing," De Schutter said. he study also called for better research, training and use of local knowledge. "Farmer field schools" by rice growers in Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh had led to cuts in insecticide use by between 35 and 92 percent, it said. Schutter also recommended a diversification in global farm output, from reliance on rice, wheat and maize. Developed nations, however, would be unable to make a quick shift to agroecology because of what he called an "addiction" to an industrial, oil-based model of farming but a global long-term effort to shift to agroecology was needed. The report cited Cuba as an example of how change was possible, as the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to supplies of cheap pesticides and fertilizers being cut off. Yields had risen after a downturn in the 1990s as farmers adopted more eco-friendly methods ("Eco-Farming Could Double Food Output of Poor Countries, Says UN: Report cites insect-trapping plants in Kenya and Bangladesh's use of ducks in paddy fields, and resulting rise in crop yields," common Dreams.org, March 9, 2011, from Reuters, March 8, 2011  http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/03/08-2).

Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet team has highlighted the need for innovations in indigenous vegetable production to improve food security and raise incomes in the long term, in the face of rising world food prices throwing an increasing number of people into poverty and threatening millions with malnutrition and even starvation. The Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet shows that diversifying food production to include local and indigenous vegetables can help communities boost their self-sufficiency and protect vulnerable populations from price shocks. Danielle Nierenberg, co-director of Worldwatch's Nourishing the Planet project (www.NourishingthePlanet.org) said, "The solutions to the price crisis won't necessarily come from producing more food, but from listening to farmers, investing in indigenous vegetables, and changing how foods are processed and marketed." Over a 15-month period, researchers with Nourishing the Planet traveled to 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa highlighting stories of hope and success in agriculture. The project's on-the-ground research unearthed hundreds of environmentally sustainable solutions for reducing hunger and poverty. "The project aims to create a roadmap for the funding and donor community to ensure that agricultural funding is directed to projects that really work," said Brian Halweil, Nourishing the Planet co-director. Mainstream agricultural approaches have tended to focus on a handful of staple crops, such as rice, wheat, and maize, and to promote the use of expensive, high-tech inputs, creating an unsustainable and vulnerable food system. Last year's drought in Russia that damaged a third of the country's wheat harvest, together with widespread flooding in Pakistan and Australia, caused price shocks around the world. Skyrocketing food prices are especially destabilizing in poor, import-dependent countries such as those in Africa, where households spend up to 80% of their income on food. In Egypt, the world's leading wheat importer, a 70% rise in wheat prices helped trigger the recent wave of protests that swept the country. Subsequent unrest across the region is raising fears about global instability. Investing in agricultural development, especially indigenous vegetable crops, could help feed communities in Africa and worldwide, boosting their resilience to price shocks while helping farmers protect biodiversity and mitigate the impacts of climate change. "There is no other single sector of the global economy that is so central to meeting the needs of the nearly 7 billion people on the planet, while also protecting the health of the environment," said Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin. Food security is not only about the quantity of food we eat, but also about the quality and diversity of food sources. In contrast to the staple grains that receive disproportionate attention from development aid, vegetables can offer a sustainable solution for a diverse and balanced diet. Growing vegetables can help address the "hidden hunger" of micronutrient deficiencies that affects some 1 billion people worldwide, and also brings multiple benefits for farmers. "Vegetables have shorter cycles, are faster-growing than cereal crops, and require little space," says Abdou Tenkouano, director of AVRDC-The World Vegetable Center's Regional Center for Africa and State of the World 2011 contributing author. The small-scale "revolution of greens" that is currently underway in Africa deserves greater attention from the global funding and donor communities. Researchers, nongovernmental organizations, and farmers across the continent are rediscovering traditional diets, improving the availability of nutritious indigenous vegetables (such as moringa and lablab), and reigniting interest in traditional vegetable dishes. Nourishing the Planet's on-the-ground research offers three major policy recommendations to boost worldwide interest in and availability of indigenous vegetable varieties: Listen to farmers. Organizations like AVRDC and the International Development Research Centre hold periodic workshops and field days, bringing together farmers, consumers, businesses, and communities to identify varieties of onion, tomato, eggplant, and okra that grow the best, taste the best, and perform best at local markets. This helps researchers develop more nutritious and locally adapted varieties that enhance and complement specific food preparations. Get seeds treducedo farmers. The seeds of preferred vegetable varieties are being made more widely available in Africa and elsewhere. Better seeds mean more vitamins in the food, better-tasting food, and ultimately less hunger and malnutrition. After scientists at AVRDC developed two higher-yielding tomato varieties with thicker skins-making them less vulnerable to pests and damage-farmers growing these varieties raised their incomes by 40 percent. Take advantage of what's local. As the impacts of climate change become more evident, indigenous vegetables that have been neglected for decades are regaining attention because of their tolerance to drought and resistance to pests. Researchers have developed improved varieties of amaranth, African eggplant, African nightshade, and cowpea that are now widely available in many parts of Africa. In Uganda, Project DISC (Developing Innovations in School Cultivation), supported by Slow Food International, is reigniting an interest in these foods by teaching students how to grow and cook indigenous vegetables. The project's findings are being disseminated to a wide range of agricultural stakeholders, including government ministries, agricultural policymakers, and farmer and community networks, as well as the increasingly influential nongovernmental environmental and development communities ("A 'Revolution of Greens' and Innovations in Local, Diversified Food Production Needed to Curb Food Price Crisis," Worldwatch Institute, March 23, 2011, www.NourishingthePlanet.org). For more information contact: Janeen Madan, jmadan@worldwatch.org, (+1) 202-452-1999 x514
For copies outside of USA, Canada & India: Gudrun Freese, gudrun.freese@earthscan.co.uk, (207) 841-1930. 

Annie Murphy Laird Townsend, "Farmers Without Borders," Cultural Survival Quarterly,34-4 (Winter 2010), http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/peru/farmers-without-borders, reports, "Climate change is now a fact of life, and one all humans must increasingly confront on a daily basis. Yet climate change is particularly hard for traditional small farmers who live in the most affected zones and lack high-tech tools to insulate themselves against the changing climate. But today, small food producers are calling on ancestral knowledge to find ways to adapt, as well as some transnational networking to share that information. One of those efforts, an exchange between Ethiopian and Peruvian small farmers, could become a model for the future." One of these projects involves replacing the staple use of enset, or false banana, in the highlands of southern Ethiopia which has been growing increasingly poorly as the climate changes.  The Ethiopians are learning from the experiments of Peruvian farmers, who have been adopting top climate change by relying less on more recent crops that are suffering increasingly from climate change, and relying more on traditional potatoes, that are growing increasingly well in the developing conditions. Peru Paru, Peru is one of six local communities in the country that have developed a strategy to adapt to climate change, "while protecting not just the potato, but the entire area, its people, and their way of life. The communities have declared all their landin a sense, their livesa park: the Potato Park. The land has been officially registered and granted park status by the Peruvian government, which means it's protected from mining, logging, and other private business interests." One aspect of the project in Peru is that it has available some 300 varieties of potatoes to try out in the developing conditions, increasing the likelihood of success as growing conditions change

The United Nations population division issued a report, May 3, finding that the world population, long projected to stabilize just above 9 billion around mid century, will instead continue to increase, possibly reaching 10.1 billion by 2100. Population growth in Africa, already struggling to provide food and water for its people, continues to be so high that its population could more than triple, expanding from the current 1 billion to 3.6 billion, before 2100. Much of the Arab world is experiencing rapid population growth also.  Yemen, for example, has had its population quintuple since 1950, to 25 million, and is projected to see the population quadruple again, to 100 million, by century's end. Yemen already depends on food imports and faces critical water shortages. A few wealthy nations are also experiencing a small population growth, including the United States, Britain and Denmark. The United States is growing faster than many rich countries, largely because of high immigration and higher fertility among Hispanic immigrants. The new report projects that the United States population will rise from today's 311 million to 478 million by 2100. Meanwhile, China, which has for decades enforced restrictive population policies, could soon enter the ranks of countries with declining populations, peaking at 1.4 billion in the next couple of decades, then falling to 941 million by 2100. One of the factors in the higher projections is that since the 1980s there has been a decrees in international family planning programs. Over the past decade, foreign aid to pay for contraceptives, $238 million in 2009, has remained at approximately the same level. The United States has long been the biggest donor, but the budget compromise in Congress last month cut international family planning programs by 5%. Well-designed programs can bring down growth rates even in the poorest countries. Provided with information and voluntary access to birth-control methods, women have chosen to have fewer children in societies as diverse as Bangladesh, Iran, Mexico, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Some studies suggest that providing easy, affordable access to contraceptives is not always sufficient. A trial by Harvard researchers in Lusaka, Zambia, found that only when women had greater autonomy to decide whether to use contraceptives did they have significantly fewer children. Other studies have found that general education for girls plays a critical role, in that literate young women are more likely to understand that family size is a choice. A demographic milestone is expected in late October, when the world population is expected to exceed 7 billion, only a dozen years after it surpassed 6 billion. Demographers called the new projections a reminder that a problem that helped define global politics in the 20th century, the population explosion, is far from solved in the 21st. The projections in the report are based on the assumption that other factors will not impact them. Major questions are whether there will be sufficient food and water available where it is needed for the billions yet unborn, and whether potential catastrophes, including climate change, wars or epidemics will not diminish population growth (Justin Gilelis and Celia W. Dugger, "U.N. Forecasts 10.1 Billion People by Century's End," The New York Times," May 3, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/world/04population.html).

Brazil's government, in early April, refused to suspend work on a huge Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Amazon, despite pleas that the project would likely displace tens of thousands of indigenous people and cause extensive environmental damage. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States, 'had asked Brazil  to halt construction of the dam, projected to become the world's third largest, until it complied with its legal obligations to consult with indigenous groups. The commission pronounced that the consultations needed to be "free, prior, informed, of good faith and culturally appropriate." Among its requests were measures to prevent the spread of diseases that could result from the population movement during construction. However, Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Affairs 'called the demands "premature and unjustified," saying the government had complied with its obligations under Brazilian law. The $17 billion dam would divert the flow of the Xingu River along a 62-mile stretch in Par‡ state, largely for purposes of generating electric power. Environmental groups point out it would flood more than 120,000 acres of rain forest and local settlements, displacing 20,000 to 40,000 people and releasing large quantities of methane. Brazil claims the number of displaced would be much lower. President Dilma Rousseff, who was chief of staff and energy minister under her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has expressed a continuing commitment to Belo Monte despite her stated desire to be more sensitive to human rights. Higher federal courts in Brazil have rejected legal challenges to the project. Groups allied against Belo Monte have continued the fight. The director James Cameron has traveled to the Xingu region three times to meet with indigenous leaders; last month he was accompanied by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. At a sustainability conference in Manaus, in March, former President Bill Clinton called on Brazil to show leadership in finding alternative energy solutions, saying he was "naturally sympathetic with indigenous peoples." "I want you to lead the rest of the world into the 21st century on this" (Alexi Barionuevo, "Brazil Rejects Panel's Request to Stop Dam," The New York Times, April 5, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/americas/06brazil.html).

Brazil's Congress, in mid-May, fiercely debated changing a cornerstone of the nation's environmental law, a move conservationists warned could roll back one of the most effective pieces of legislation protecting forests and biodiversity in Brazil and undermine the country's efforts to slow greenhouse gas emissions. On one side of the debate are powerful agribusiness interests and the government's own plans for infrastructure development projects, while on the other are scientists and environmentalists concerned that the Brazilian Amazon, one of the world's largest forests, could be reaching a tipping point in its deforestation (Alexei Barronuevo, "Brazil Debates Easing Curbs on Developing Amazon Forest," The New York Times,: May 11, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/world/americas/12brazil.html).

An uncontacted tribe in Peru's south-east Amazon issued a stark warning, in May, to outsiders  to stay out of their territory when they tore down one fisherman's camp and shot arrows at another passing close to their land. The local indigenous organization FENAMAD said the incident was a warning rather than an attack and has asked all fishermen to stay well away from the area until the threat has passed. The Madre de Dios reserve was created in 2002 to protect a number of uncontacted tribes including the Mashco Piro, who were photographed in 2007. 

Despite efforts to protect the Indians' land, illegal logging continues unabated within uncontacted tribes' reserves. in Peru's south-east Amazon. he Indians often leave warning signs and occasionally attack outsiders to protect themselves from disease and violence that contact can bring ("Uncontacted tribe fires warning arrows at fishermen," Survival International, May 10, 2011, http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/7266).

The Environmental Assessment Commission of Coyhaique, a regional government commission in southern Chile, in May, approved on the $3.2 billion HidroAysŽn project, which involves a series of five dams in the sparsely populated region of AysŽn, in the heart of Patagonia, that is dotted with nature reserves. Government officials say the HidroAysŽn project is needed to help stave off an energy squeeze in Chile, which imports about 70 percent of its energy. Environmentalists say it will flood thousands of acres of largely undeveloped territory and damage ranching and tourism. The decision set off protests by environmentalists in several cities, with the police arresting at least 60 people in Santiago at a downtown protest that attracted thousands, on the day of the decision. Opponents, including some members of Chile's Congress, said Tuesday that they would appeal in court, while opposition legislators said they would request a congressional investigation into irregularities in the project's approval. A month later, a Chilean appeals court suspended, at least temporarily, the plan to build five dams and hydroelectric plants in Patagonia region, in response to arguments by environmental groups and legislators arguing that the government commission that approved the had not taken into account a technical review Alexi Barrionuevo, "Chile: Power Project Approved," The New York Times, May 11, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/world/americas/11briefs-ART-Chilebrf.html; and Alexi Barrioneuvo, "Chilean Court Blocks Plan for Patagonia Dam Project, The New York Times, June 20, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/world/americas/21chile.html).

Laos announced, April 19, that it would delay a decision on building the first of a series of projected dams on the Mekong River to discuss the matter with neighboring nations, especially Vietnam, who along with environmentalists and many people living along the river, who object to the project.  Many fear that the $3.5 billion Xayaburi dam would open the way for as many as ten more, damaging the area's fragile eco system and the lives of millions who depend on the Mekong for their livelihood ("Laos delays dam, "San Francisco Chronicle," April 20, 2011).

Senior Chinese government officials from the Ministry of Environmental Protection said, at the beginning of June, that the country's three decades of rapid economic growth have left it with a "very grave" environmental situation even as it tries to move away from a development-at-all-costs strategy. In their official 2010 annual report, they pointed out a number of major improvements in water and air quality goals that the ministry had set for itself over a five-year period ending in December with targets met, with pollutants in surface water down 32%, and sulfur dioxide emissions in cities down 19%. But they warned that many other problems were serious and scarcely under control. The vice minister, Li Ganjie, stated, The overall environmental situation is still very grave and is facing many difficulties and challenges." Mr. Li said biodiversity was declining with "a continuous loss and drain of genetic resources." The countryside was becoming more polluted, he added, as dirty industries were moved out of cities and into rural areas. He emphasized that reversing the countryside's deterioration was a major focus for the coming five-year plan. He also pledged to control contamination by heavy metals, which resulted in nine cases of lead poisoning last year and seven more in the first five months of this year. Li stated that China needed a law to regulate heavy metals, and he was confident it would be written and passed soon. Founded as an agency 13 years ago, the environmental protection office was upgraded to a ministry in 2007, but has fought an uphill battle for money and power. The government has made growth a priority, worried that unemployment would lead to unrest. However, there are increasing indications that environmental neglect is causing instability. Protests in Inner Mongolia in May, were partly due to concerns that industries such as coal and mining largely dominated by ethnic Chinese are destroying the grasslands used for herding by the indigenous Mongolians. Similar conflicts have arisen in other sensitive ethnic areas such as Tibet and Xinjiang. Mr. Li pledged, "In some of these areas that are very fragile, we will strictly limit development," He said that more than a fifth of the land that has been set aside as nature reserves had been illegally developed by companies, often with local government collusion. But he said the ministry had deployed a satellite that could detect illegal development and would put pressure on local governments to stop the work. Failing this, Mr. Li said, the ministry has the power to influence officials' prospects for promotions because environmental compliance is now a part of their performance evaluation. Independent observers say this is part of a gradual change to give the ministry more power. Recently, the ministry canceled a high-speed train line that had not obtained its approval. Last year, Mr. Li said, the ministry turned down 59 projects worth $15 billion that had not obtained its approval. Well-connected ministries were once able to bypass the environmental ministry, but now, Mr. Li said, it had set up "an impassable firewall" to block harmful projects (Ian Johnson, "China Faces 'Very Grave' Environmental Situation, Officials Say," The New York Times, June 3, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/world/asia/04china.html).

A Chinese official, Wang Jingquan, stated that the planners of the Three Gorges Dam failed to properly gauge its effects on lakes and other bodies of water downstream. As a result, the dam has contributed to lower water levels in two of China's largest freshwater lakes, raising the threat to them during long droughts, the report said. Large areas of central and southern China is suffering from the worst drought in 50 years, and the levels have plummeted in the Yangtze River and other bodies of water, including in Chongqing. He said water levels in the two lakes Dongting in Hunan Province and Poyang in Jiangxi Province had fallen in part because of the storage of water in the reservoir behind the dam, which is on the Yangtze. In addition, the dam has had an impact on fish breeding and the growth of plants in the lower reaches of the Yangtze, according to Mr. Wang, who works in a flood control and drought relief office that is linked to the Yangtze River Water Resources Committee. He said proper discharge from the reservoir would help the lakes, noting. "We failed to think of all the impacts that the dam might bring about when designing the dam, but its advantages should outweigh the disadvantages." The dam provided 84 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2010 (Edward Wong, "Three Gorges Dam Is Said to Hurt Areas Downstream," The New York Times, June 2, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/world/asia/03china.html).

Edward Wong, "Plan for China's Water Crisis Spurs Concern," The New York Times, June 1, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/world/asia/02water.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper, reported, "North China is dying. A chronic drought is ravaging farmland. The Gobi Desert is inching south. The Yellow River, the so-called birthplace of Chinese civilization, is so polluted it can no longer supply drinking water. The rapid growth of megacities 22 million people in Beijing and 12 million in Tianjin alone has drained underground aquifers that took millenniums to fill. Not atypically, the Chinese government has a grand and expensive solution: Divert at least six trillion gallons of water each year hundreds of miles from the other great Chinese river, the Yangtze, to slake the thirst of the north China plain and its 440 million people. The engineering feat, called the South-North Water Diversion Project, is China's most ambitious attempt to subjugate nature. It would be like channeling water from the Mississippi River to meet the drinking needs of Boston, New York and Washington." The $62 billion price tag is twice that of the Three Gorges Dam,  the world's largest hydroelectric project. However, Chinese officials admitted, in May, that the project had "urgent problems," the water diversion scheme is increasingly mired in concerns about its cost, its environmental impact and the sacrifices poor people in the provinces are told to make for those in richer cities. Three artificial channels from the Yangtze would be constructed transport precious water from the south, which itself is increasingly afflicted by droughts, including the current one which is the worst one in 50 years. The project's human cost is enormous, as along the middle route, alone, stretching from a gigantic reservoir in Hubei Province, it winds 800 miles to Beijing, requiring about 350,000 villagers to be relocated to make way for the canal. Many are being resettled far from their homes and given low-grade farmland; in Hubei, thousands of people have been moved to the grounds of a former prison. As of this spring, 150,000 had been resettled. Some Chinese scientists say the diversion could destroy the ecology of the southern rivers, making them as useless as the Yellow River. They say government has neglected to do the necessary impact studies. There are precedents in the United States. Lakes in California were damaged and destroyed when the Owens River was diverted in the early 20th century to build Los Angeles. If the project damaged the Han River, the tributary of the Yangtze where the middle route begins, more than 14 million people in Hubei would be affected, according to Du Yun, a geographer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, the provincial capital. Overseers of the eastern route, which is being built alongside an ancient waterway for barges called the Grand Canal, have found that the drinking water to be brought to Tianjin from the Yangtze is so polluted that 426 sewage treatment plants have to be built, with water pollution control on the route taking 70% percent of the $5 billion investment, according to Xinhua, the official news agency. The source water from the Han River on the middle route is cleaner. But the main channel will cross 205 rivers and streams in the industrial heartland of China before reaching Beijing. Dai Qing, an environmental advocate who has written critically about the Three Gorges Dam, commented," When water comes to Beijing, there's the danger of the water not being safe to drink"

The federal government, June 20, extended a moratorium on new uranium mining claims in a million-acre buffer zone around the Grand Canyon for six months while it waits the conclusions of a study of potential environmental harm to the region (John M. Broder, "Uranium Mine Moratorium Extended at Grand Canyon," The New York Times, June 20, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/science/earth/21canyon.html).

A number of businesses were lobbying the Minnesota legislature, in April, to loosen Minnesota's water quality regulations to allow copper and nickel mining in the northeastern region of the state, so they can use high sulfide iron ore. The Fond du Lac Band of Chippewa are among those seeking to block the mining, fearing pollution could eradicate its sacred wild rice beds. ("Minnesota Wild Rice at Risk if Copper-Nickel Mining Industry Wins Out," Indian Country Today, April 19, 2011, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/04/minnesota-wild-rice-at-risk-if-copper-nickel-mining-industry-wins-out/).

A new study, published the week of April 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that levels of mercury in some Pacific sea birds has increased substantially over the last 120 years, indicating that industrial emissions of the metal that cussed fetal an brain damage are likely moving up the food chain, and increasing dangers to people who are consuming increasing amounts of tainted seafood (Kelly Zito, "Mercury in seabirds shows perils are growing," San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 2011).

With a shortage outside of china of rare earths, the world's largest rare earths refinery is being built in Kuantan, Malaysia. Internal company memos and outside critics indicate that the plant has serious environmental design flaws, and could spew massive toxic pollution (Keith Bradshaw, "Fear of a Toxic Rerun," The New York Times, June 30, 2011).

Cultural Survival reported, March 15, "The World Bank has stepped in to support the dumping of toxic waste from the Ramu nickel mine into the seas off Papua New Guinea after the European Union decided to pull its funding. A World Bank review in 2003 said categorically that marine dumping should not be used in areas such as coral reefs that have important ecological functions or cultural significance or in coastal waters used for subsistence purposes, but that does not appear to be troubling the World Bank today. For more information go to: http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=g7ptvccab&et=1104762663018&s=5868&e=001UwauFlNyY8fQNZixfPXP6JgJULXKPfJasF8VTMx22Dtgq-qMOwJE1LnfGsQhjKATh2cEBPP_3j0YQuvbN1I6mlEY-p_dGKFza93pbcQXL_OGUvj4Eybg8bIqHu0TdNQBcblh6Qxk27DIIv23r1S3IU0T9-7-lhfpiNUR2paySappZScXQWRPb5nr6.

Judge Nicol‡s Zambrano in Lago Agrio, a town founded as an oil camp in the 1960s in the Ecuadorean Amazon, ruled, in mid February, that the oil giant Chevron was responsible for polluting remote tracts of Ecuadorean jungle and ordered the company to pay more than $9 billion in damages, one of the largest environmental awards ever ordered by a court. The decision will be appealed, as a legal battle that has already gone on for 17 years continues. The 188-page ruling found Chevron responsible for damages of about $8.6 billion, and perhaps double that amount if Chevron fails to publicly apologize for its actions within 15 days. The judge also ordered Chevron to pay $860 million, or 10 percent of the damages, to the Amazon Defense Coalition, the group formed to represent the plaintiffs, who are mostly Indigenous people. Pablo Fajardo, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, while considering the ruling a "triumph of justice," said that it fell short of the $113 billion in damages suffered by people in the region, and that the plaintiffs also would appeal, seeking larger damages (Simon Romero and Clifford Kraus, "Ecuador Judge Orders Chevron to Pay $9 Billion," The New York Times,  February 14, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/world/americas/15ecuador.html?ref=todayspaper). Seeing little likelihood that Chevron will pay the $9 billion in damages, Ecuadorian villagers have announced that they were planning to wage a legal battle against the company in more than a dozen countries in which it operates (Simon Ramero and Clifford Kraus, "Ecuadorians Plan to Pursue Chevron in Other Countries," The New York Times, February 16, 2011).

In order to bring the return of salmon migration, and increase salmon breeding, two very large hydroelectric dams will be torn down on the Elwa River in Washington State (William Yardley, "Removing Barriers To Salmon Migration," The New York Times, July 20, 2011).