Circle of Blue WaterNews » Aubrey Parker

Deadly La Niña Goes Global—Part I: For Western Hemisphere, Record Rains in Latin America

Aubrey Parker — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 01:38:48 +0000

Hundreds have died in Colombian floods, as cooler sea temperatures affect regions around the Pacific; climate change seen as a possible cause.

The weather phenomenon known as La Niña is having wide-ranging impacts around the Pacific basin, as Colombia copes with record rains and New Zealand swelters through a heat wave.

La Niña is characterized by colder-than-normal water currents along the Pacific coast of the Western Hemisphere, which led to a severe rainy season from May through November in Mexico, Central America, and the northern part of South America.

According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, although ENSO is naturally occurring, a warming climate may contribute to an increase in the frequency and intensity of El Niño cycles. La Niña cycles double the likelihood of intense weather, such as hurricanes and tropical storms, for much of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.

In November, rainfall in the Caribbean was five times the average of 2 inches and in the central highlands of Colombia, rainfall was more than double the average of 3.5 inches.

Colombia Floods Damage Homes, Roads, and Foods
In Colombia, this year’s rainy season—the worst in 42 years—has been exceedingly severe, with close to 300 deaths and more than 2 million people affected over the last two months, according to the BBC.

More than 20,000 homes have been damaged and nearly 2,000 completely destroyed, according to AccuWeather. Nearly a quarter of the nation’s paved roads have been damaged or destroyed and more than 41,000 cattle have been lost, reported the Associated Press.

With close to 2.5 million acres of farmland and over 600 schools under water, the damage in Colombia is estimated at $5 billion.

The constant moisture has also led to a fungus outbreak infecting more than half of the nation’s coffee crop. Additionally, nearly five percent of the rice crop and 10 percent of the sugar crop have been lost. Banana production has also been interrupted, with neighboring Ecuador “filling the gaps” in international supply, according to Fresh Fruit Portal.

With close to 2.5 million acres of farmland and over 600 schools under water, the damage in Colombia is estimated at $5 billion. The United States, the European Union, North Korea, and Switzerland have pledged more than $20 million in aid. After visiting neighbor Venezuela, which has also had particularly severe flooding this winter, the Ecuadorian president visited Colombia and vowed to help, thus restoring diplomatic relations, which have been strained since Colombia’s 2008 military raid on a clandestine Colombian guerrilla camp just inside Ecuadorian territory.

Earlier this month, the Colombian president declared a state of emergency, which allows the government to employ emergency loans and taxes to raise disaster relief funds.

The floods are troubling the Colombian economy, as well, and could lead to inflation and escalated food prices—already, the price of bananas has tripled from $5.40 per box to $16.40. The peso, which has performed the worst among 25 emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg, dropped 5.5 percent over the past three months.

Colombia typically has two rainy seasons, the first from April through June and the second from October through December, but officials fear that the La Niña boost will translate to the rains persisting through February.

Venezuelan President Houses Flood Refugees, Promises to Rebuild
Lack of infrastructure is the number one problem associated with flooding in Venezuela, a nation which hasn’t seen extreme floods since December of 1999.

In the last three weeks, flooding has claimed the lives of 25 Venezuelans and the homes of more than 100,000, according to the BBC. The total damage is estimated around $10 billion.

President Hugo Chavez has declared a state of emergency for the capital city of Caracas and three northern states—Miranda, Vargas, and Falcon. Schools have been canceled and hundreds of shelters have been opened. But the government is encountering difficulty with relocating citizens from their homes in at-risk, hillside shanty towns to relief shelters, which are already overcrowded.

Even President Chavez is housing 25 flood-refugee families in his palace.

Some hotels and government offices are housing flood victims, along with the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry. Even President Chavez is housing 25 families in his palace, according to Reuters. The National Assembly has said that the parliament building could also be used as a refuge.

For the long term, Chavez plans to have new houses built for the refugees on private lands that will be sequestered by the government. Venezuela has also made arrangements with Brazil for military bridge-building equipment, to replace bridges that have been destroyed by the floods. Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have also offered aid to Venezuela, in addition to a $100 million donation authorized by the Andean Development Corporation.

“We have brought cooking oil, lentils, rice, red beans, powdered milk,” said Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador, who brought Venezuela 11.2 tons of humanitarian aid, according to Fox News.

Venezuela’s economy depends on oil exports, and two of the nation’s largest refineries—which, combined, produce nearly a million barrels per day—were shut down temporarily due to a power failure, according to Reuters. Nearby, the flooding also caused a small spill.

United States—Dry South, Wet North
In the United States, La Niña is being credited—or blamed—for a similar range of weather.

La Niña tends to result in drier and warmer conditions across much of the southern tier of the United States and wetter weather across the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and the Northern Rockies, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The flip side of the weather pattern, El Niño, occurs when water temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are warmer than average and results in nearly the opposite effects.

Earlier this month, temperatures in Colorado Springs, Colorado hovered near a record high of 65 degrees and snowfall was well below normal, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. The weather pattern stood in stark contrast to last year’s El Niño event, which inspired blankets of snow and single-digit temperatures.

La Niña could exacerbate drought-like conditions that have been plaguing parts of Arizona and northern Mexico for the past decade, according to the Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) program, a division of the University of Arizona Institute for the Environment. Already this year, snowfall has been low in Arizona and New Mexico, while the Northern Rockies and the Uinta Mountains, which provide water to the Colorado River, have received early winter storms and snow.

Earlier this month, CLIMAS launched the La Niña Drought Tracker, an online monthly publication featuring information on current and future drought conditions.

Photo courtesy NOAA

2010 U.S. winter outlook, given La Niña weather conditions. Increased precipitation and cold weather in the Pacific Northwest, with warm and dry conditions in the Southwest.

The Southwest is expected to be dry through May, with the highest chance of dry conditions between February and April. And a dry winter corresponds with increased risk of wildfires in the spring, since river flows will be lower. Leftover brush from last year’s relatively quiet wildfire season could also prove problematic, especially since there is an overabundance of it thanks to last year’s wet El Niño winter, according to ABC News.

Meanwhile, the coast of Washington state has experienced high winds and 30- to 35-foot surf in late October, followed by extremely low temperatures in late November due to La Niña. NOAA has predicted that the trend will continue, with one major weather event every month through April 2011. This may include above-average precipitation and colder-than-average temperatures during the winter in the the Cascade and Olympic mountains, followed by spring flooding when rains boost snowmelt and raise river levels.

Aubrey Ann Parker and Steve Kellman contributed to this reporting. Reach them at aubrey@circleofblue.org.and steve@circleofblue.org..

Sources: ABC News, AccuWeather, Asscociated Press, BBC, Bloomberg, CLIMAS, Colorado Springs Gazette, FOX News, Fresh Fruit Portal, Reuters, UPI

USDA Foreign Agricultural Service GAIN Report – Colombian Agricultural Production Hit by Strong Rains
Financial Times — “Colombia’s Katrina” needs fiscal bail-out

Cholera in Haiti — The Climate Connection

Aubrey Parker — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 17:15:17 +0000

Tropical storm has exacerbated Haiti’s water and sanitation woes.

Photo © Michael Seager

Residents of this tent camp located 20 miles from St. Marc, a region of Haiti affected by the cholera outbreak, walk more than two miles to collect drinkable water. Click image to enlarge.

By Aubrey Ann Parker
Circle of Blue

After lying dormant in Haiti for half a century, a three-week-old cholera outbreak has killed more than 700 people and is advancing across the country. On Tuesday, the epidemic reached Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital and largest city, where more than a million people are still squatting in over-crowded tent camps and sharing scant latrines. Hurricane Tomás, meanwhile, struck Haiti’s shores on Friday, flooding vulnerable tent camps. Reported infections have climbed close to 10,000 cases — nearly doubling in the last week.

“I don’t think we are going to see the end of it any time soon,” Emmanuelle Schneider of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Circle of Blue. “It’s very contagious and it can spread fast.”

“…the medical community is not receptive to climactic causation or correlation.”

– Dr. Rita Colwell,
Cholera Researcher

Cholera, a water-borne disease, can spread rampantly when clean water and proper sanitation are not available, as had been the case in Haiti long before the January earthquake that killed 250,000 and displaced 1.6 million. But the damage from the earthquake, which hit hardest in Port-au-Prince, could be the compounding factor that allowed cholera to rise from the rubble.

Researchers, health officials and the media are all seeking answers to the same question: where did the cholera bacteria come from?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the strain of cholera that is spreading in Haiti originated in Southeastern Asia. That finding prompted news organizations to focus on humanitarian workers as the source of infection, an assertion that medical specialists quickly discounted. A handful of activists, in addition, blame the outbreak on Haiti’s substandard housing since the quake.

Cholera’s Path To Infection

Cholera bacteria produce a deadly toxin that interferes with sugar absorption, and activates a surge of salt and water that is pumped into the intestine. Cholera is dose dependent, meaning that the population of bacteria must reach a threshold, or the human host will not show symptoms, which include diarrhea, vomiting and leg craps. Though individuals may not show symptoms, they may discharge the bacteria in their feces for up to two weeks.

For those who become sick, the rapid loss of body fluids and electrolytes can kill quickly if rehydration treatment — which can be as simple as sugar water and possibly antibiotics — is not administered within the first few hours that symptoms begin. A patient may lose gallons of fluid within 24 hours, according to Dr. Marc Siegel of the New York University’s Langone Medical Center.

Graphic © Aubrey Parker/Circle of Blue

Estuarine zones are prime habitat for cholera bacteria. Click image to enlarge.

Although Garcia del Huerto, a Portuguese physician, first described the disease in 1563 in India, it wasn’t until after British imperialism, when ships unintentionally transported contaminated bilge water from an 1817 epidemic near the mouth of the Ganges River to their own port cities, that cholera became a global quandary. From there, cholera quickly spread throughout Europe and into Russia and by 1832, the disease had crossed the Atlantic in French ships.

It wasn’t discovered that water was the point source for cholera until 1849, and it wasn’t until 1883 that the Vibrio cholerae bacteria was isolated by German Dr. Robert Koch, whose research won him the Nobel Prize in Medicine. It was later discovered that the cholera bacteria’s natural habitat is the brackish estuarine zone, although freshwater can also house the bacteria.

But a number of researchers say Haiti’s cholera outbreak is related to climate patterns — the infection erupted and is spreading during an especially wet La Niña year.

“They have been fortunate in Haiti that for 50 years the conditions have been such that they haven’t had an intense increase in cholera bacterial populations,” said Rita Colwell, professor at the University of Maryland and former director of the National Science Foundation. “But they’ve had an earthquake, they’ve had destruction, they’ve had a hurricane. So the conditions would lead to a very high probability of an outbreak.”

She added: “I think it’s very unfortunate to look for a scapegoat. It is an environmental phenomenon that is involved. The reason we don’t know [the catalyst] is because the medical community is not receptive to climactic causation or correlation.”

The Climate Connection
Cholera is an intestinal bacterial infection spread by eating food or drinking water that has been contaminated.

Although rural areas experienced less damage from the earthquake, they were the first epicenter of the epidemic. The small communities along the Artibonite River, located 60 miles north of Port-au-Prince, have been using the river as a source of drinking and bathing water — until reports came that the river is the likely source of the outbreak.

“Cholera was originally in the Artibonite River,” Schneider said. “But people are very mobile, so they are moving from place to place, which is a trigger for the cholera epidemic.”

In the last few decades, great strides have been made in unlocking the riddles associated with cholera and seasonal climate patterns. Dr. Colwell was among the first to find that cholera epidemics flare up during the wet spring and fall seasons, when excess precipitation creates favorable environmental conditions such as increased salinity and warmer temperatures in areas already suffering from poor sanitation and lack of clean water access.

Colwell and her colleagues are studying 75 years of cycles in India and hope to have definitive parameters in the next few months. Additionally, using weather data from 1991-1992 and 1997-1998, they have shown that there is a correlation between cholera outbreaks in Latin America and El Niño climate patterns.

The intent of her research is to predict cholera outbreaks using the link between weather patterns, water surface temperatures and plankton blooms — all of which could be detected using remote sensing satellites. An early warning system for coastal dwellers would have been valuable for Haiti.

Afsar Ali, an associate professor of environmental and global health at the University of Florida, agrees with the environmental climate conclusion. He told the Tampa Bay News that the cholera outbreak is happening now, rather than immediately following the earthquake in January, because the water temperature is warmer. And since the first cases of cholera were reported in a coastal city, Ali believes that residents had longtime immunity, whereas the estimated 300,000 refugees who moved to the Artibonite region after the earthquake did not.

Photo © Michael Seager

Earthquake refugees move from tent camps to temporary shelters constructed at Camp Corail Cesselesse. Handwashing stations are set up outside of latrines, but residents complain that the buckets are rarely filled with water.Click image to enlarge.

Prevention vs. Response
Even before the earthquake, there were risk factors for water-borne disease. More than 40 percent of Haiti’s total population did not have a source of reliable drinking water, according to a study by the United Nations. And nearly half of rural Haitians were defecating in the open, according to a joint study by the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

To prevent cholera, proper latrines and safe water must be provided to Port-au-Prince and the outlying communities. Although a vaccine exists, its ability to provide sustained immunity has not proven satisfying. Colwell argues that vaccinations are not the way to go. She urges for preventative measures, rather than reactionary.

When Bacteria Wake Up

Where does the cholera go between extreme weather events?

Rita Colwell, a scientist at the University of Maryland, discovered that the cholera bacteria can transform into a dormant stage, which is capable of surviving for months or even years, in the sediment of bodies of water.

This dormant stage accounts for why cholera “disappears” between tropical storms, leading to the seasonal variance of epidemics, and possibly the latest insurgence of cholera in Haiti.

Continued below…

“Millions get spent on vaccines,” Colwell said. “But provide sanitation and safe water, and you prevent more of the diarrhaeal diseases, including cholera.”

“Everyone is so endued with a high-tech solution — they want fancy water treatment systems — when, really, what is needed is to provide appropriate technology for clean water and sanitation.”

La Niña: Warm, Wet and Wild
The Category 1 hurricane that hit Haiti’s coasts on Friday brought with it gale force winds of 85 miles per hour. The wind and excessive rainfall have caused flooding in many parts of the country, and many fear that cholera will spread even more easily now with increased sanitation problems that could put raw human waste in the streets.

“Cholera is a disease that is spread by water,” Schneider, of the U.N., told Circle of Blue. “With the hurricane, there will be consequences on the epidemic because there has been a lot of flooding and washouts.”

Colwell, though, is convinced the epidemic will eventually weaken. As the waters in the Caribbean cool during the transition from fall to winter, Colwell expects the cholera to subside. When asked if she is worried about cholera reappearing in Haiti during next spring’s wet months, Colwell said it is quite possible since the Vibrio cholerae bacterium is native to aquatic waters. And, she added, if the disease makes its way to the Port-au-Prince refugee camps, it will accelerate the natural annual cycle by adding person-to-person transmission. But, for now, she’s optimistic that when the extreme weather subsides, so will the epidemic–as long as the public health system can deliver prevention as well as treatment.

“Unless the public health situation really deteriorates, the epidemic should subside” she said. “This happens year after year in Bangladesh and parts of India. If it follows the seasonal patterns, it will subside.”

“Claims will be made by various people that they have stopped this,” Colwell added. “But the fact is that it will probably be Mother Nature that brings the epidemic to low-level endemic conditions.”

Aubrey Ann Parker is a reporter for Circle of Blue where she specializes in data visualization. Reach her at aubrey@circleofblue.org.

Outside of the new shelters, families do laundry. Although water bladders are delivered regularly by Oxfam, a sustainable system of household filtration is preferred.Click image to enlarge.

Continued from above:

When Bacteria Wake Up

The warmer temperatures and higher salinity associated with rainy seasons are beneficial for cholera bacteria. First, when estuarine zones are nutrient-loaded from river runoff and stirred-up river basin sediments, the increased salinity aids cholera bacterial growth. Secondly, these favorable conditions can also trigger algal blooms, which serve as a food source for filter-feeding crustaceans — such as crabs, clams and oysters — and other zooplankton species. The cholera bacteria coexist with the crustaceans by growing on their egg sacks or inside their intestinal tracts. Thus, an algal bloom leads to a larger population of zooplankton, which leads to a higher concentration of free cholera bacteria in a body of water.

Cholera bacteria can then be ingested by humans, either through drinking contaminated water or eating raw contaminated seafood. The disease spreads when contaminated human feces gets into drinking water, usually through poor sanitation. Since cholera is dose dependent, infected persons early in an outbreak typically do not show symptoms, which exacerbates the silent spread of the disease.

But it’s not just marine and brackish water. Recent examples of freshwater sources contaminated with cholera after algal blooms include Australia, Germany and Zimbabwe. In these freshwater instances, increased salinity comes from calcium rather than sodium, as is present in estuarine zones.

“When you have flooding and you have turbidity stirring up the sediment, you feed the water column and you create opportunity for [plankton] blooms to occur,” Colwell told Circle of Blue. “And for those of us who have done studies, we know that these blooms occur seasonally and also in freshwater as well.”

Colwell, who this year was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize, has studied the link between cholera and climate for the last 30 years. Her research has disproven the long-held belief that cholera could only enter the environment due to a release of sewage, and has proven that there is a link between changes in the natural environment and the spread of disease.

She says that there is a correlation between environmental interactions and human health that much of the general public is failing to see. Seasonal cholera epidemics flare up in the fall and spring but taper as warm, wet weather subsides. And although Haiti hasn’t had a reported cholera case for nearly two generations, this fall has been extremely warm and wet, thanks to La Niña.

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern is a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon consisting of El Niño and La Niña cycles. This year is being classified as a moderate-to-strong La Niña, following 2009’s especially intense El Niño year. La Niña events double the likelihood of hurricanes and tropical storms for much of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, although ENSO is naturally occurring, a warming climate may contribute to an increase in frequency and intensity of El Niño cycles — which could mean more frequent cholera outbreaks, even in unexpected places like Haiti.

Indigenous People from Ecuador to Louisiana Forge Alliances Against Global Oil Spills

Aubrey Parker — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:06:49 +0000

From the backwoods of rural Ecuadorean rainforests to the swamplands of the Louisiana Bayou, indigenous leaders gathered in the Gulf last week to unite in a crusade against global oil spills.

Photo courtesy ofRainforest Action Network

Emergildo Criollo, leader of the Cofan indigenous tribe, was part of the Ecuadorean delegation that visited the United Houma Nation in Louisiana. The delegation toured the destruction left by BP’s oil spill in the Gulf.Click image for slideshow.

By Aubrey Ann Parker
Circle of Blue

Traveling more than 3500 kilometers from their own oil devastation in the Ecuadorean Amazon, indigenous leaders whose traditional way of life has been devastated spent last week meeting with native tribes in the Gulf of Mexico who’ve been similarly affected by the BP oil spill. They hope to support one another and form an alliance against global oil spills.

Photo courtesy of Jonathan McIntosh /Rainforest Action Network

Thomas Dardar Jr., principal chief of the United Houma Nation of the Gulf Coast, said he looked forward to sharing ideas and solutions with his brothers and sisters from the Ecuadorean Amazon. Click image for slideshow.

Members of the United Houma Nation—a state-recognized Tribe of 17,000 in the marshland of southeastern Louisiana—are subsistence fishers and trappers, who, in wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, are facing an uncertain future. In an attempt to learn from others enduring similar battles, the Houma nation hosted a delegation from the Amazon where oil pollution has also severely impacted the waterways.

There are more than 30,000 Ecuadorians who have been waiting 17 years for a decision in the class-action lawsuit filed against Chevron and Texaco. Worth $US27 billion, the case will decide if Chevron is liable for having polluted nearly 5000 square kilometers of the Amazon Rainforest. The indigenous community asserts that 50 years of negligent drilling practices and the creation of nearly a thousand open-air, unlined pits have allowed 19 billion gallons of toxic oilfield waste and 17 million gallons of raw crude oil seep into the ground and streams. These waterways were traditionally used by communities for laundry, cooking, drinking, and bathing.

According to Facing South, the South American delegation included a grandmother whose home is surrounded by oil contamination and whose husband—a Texaco employee—died of cancer; the co-founder of Amazon Defense Front, which filed the class action lawsuit against Chevron; as well as the leader representatives of two of the region’s six indigenous groups.

The Ecuadorean leaders “hope to share their experiences in recovery and protecting health, livelihoods, and culture in the wake of an oil disaster of this magnitude,” according to a press release by Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch, two U.S.-based advocacy organizations.

“We hope what we have learned from our own torment at the hands of Chevron will strengthen the resolve of the communities affected by the BP spill,” said Emergildo Criollo, the leader of the Cofan tribe.

The week-long cultural exchange included a boat tour of the affected area and a public community meeting as these two groups bridged their cultural differences through one common denominator: petroleum pollution. In a public forum, that was held last Thursday, the Ecuadorians offered advice for developing long-term recovery plans and for holding polluters accountable.

Photo courtesy of Rainforest Action Network

Mariana Jiminez, a 71-year-old grandmother from the Ecuadorean Amazon, examines the water of the contaminated marshlands off Louisiana’s coast. Jiminez warns that the petroleum-laced water will kill people slowly. Jiminez’s husband, who worked for Texaco during the Amazon spill in 1993, died of cancer.
Click image for slideshow.

“We look forward to meeting our brothers and sisters of the Amazon,” Thomas Dardar Jr., Principal Chief of the United Houma Nation, said in a press release. “Sharing ideas and solutions regarding protecting the indigenous way of life when faced with such huge environmental impacts.”

Meanwhile, the Amazon suffered another blow last month when a leaking oil tanker spilled 12,000 gallons into the Maranon River in Peru’s Amazon Basin, according to the Peruvian Times. This latest leak adds to the 30 years of devastation suffered by the Peruvian Achuar indigenous people, including nearly 300 million gallons of toxic wastewater allegedly dumped by Occidental Petroleum, according to the BBC.

In the ongoing litigation, advocacy NGOs like EarthRights International and Amazon Watch have argued that the case should stay in Los Angeles, which is homebase for Occidental Petroleum. Currently in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the case could be moved to Peru, despite plaintiffs’ complaints that the system is biased against indigenous communities. One year ago, protests in Peru left dozens dead after confrontations with police, according to a recent story by NPR.

The case was originally filed three years ago and, in April 2008, a California judge ruled that the case should be heard in Peru. An appeal decision is expected by the end of this year.

Aubrey Ann Parker is a reporter for Circle of Blue where she specializes in data visualization. Reach her at aubrey@circleofblue.org.

Photo courtesy of Jonathan McIntosh /Rainforest Action Network

Photo courtesy of Jonathan McIntosh /Rainforest Action Network

Leaders from the United Houma Nation off Lousiana’s coast hosted a summit about the effects of oil contamination of Indigenous peoples and invited leaders from the Ecuadorean Amazon, the Grand Bayou Village, as well as First Nations’ representatives from British Columbia, Canada. Click image for slideshow.

“Crude” Director Joe Berlinger Fights Against Chevron’s Subpoena

Aubrey Parker — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 17:25:19 +0000

While promoting his 2009 documentary, Joe Berlinger has landed his own day in court against U.S.-based oil giant Chevron.

UPDATE FROM MAY 12, 2010: More than 300 filmmakers and industry groups, including An Inconvenient Truth’s Davis Guggenheim as well as the Tribeca Film Institute, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit last week to reverse a lower court’s ruling to allow Chevron Corp. access to Joe Berlinger’s 600 hours of raw footage from Crude: The Real Price of Oil, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Berlinger spent three years documenting the David and Goliath lawsuit between 30,000 people in the Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest and the U.S.-based oil giant.

The request builds on a friend-of-the-court brief made by major U.S. news and broadcast companies–including NBC, the Director’s Guild of America, HBO and the New York Times–in early June to protect Berlinger’s journalistic privileges and to prevent long-term damages to documentary filmmaking. Berlinger’s supporters argue that under the first amendment, journalists have the right to keep sources undisclosed, and that taking the director’s unpublished, confidential footage is the equivalent of obtaining a reporter’s notebook.

Berlinger has battled in court since early May to keep the unused, nonpublic film from Chevron, which claims “could be helpful as it seeks to have the lawsuit [in Ecuador] dismissed and pursues an international treaty arbitration related to the litigation,” because of corruption in the Ecuadorian court system, according to the New York Times.

Meanwhile Dole Food Company Inc. has come to Chevron’s defense, saying the footage can be turned over if subjects were interviewed voluntarily and signed release forms, according to WSJ.

The court is schedule to hear Berlinger’s official appeal regarding the material on July 14.
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Welcome to Circle of Blue Radio’s Series 5 in 15, where we’re asking global thought leaders five questions in 15 minutes, more or less. These are experts working in journalism, science, communication design, and water. I’m J. Carl Ganter. Today’s program is underwritten by Traverse Internet Law, tech savvy lawyers, representing internet and technology companies.

JOE BERLINGER:

Joe Berlinger is a filmmaker who spent three years in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador, documenting the international legal battle between Chevron and the indigenous peoples for his film, Crude.

More about Joe Berlinger…

Photo Copyright Ali Pflaum

Thirty-thousand rainforest dwellers have taken on one of the largest companies in the world, Chevron, for allegedly having polluted nearly 2000 square miles of the Ecuadorian Amazon. The locals say 50 years of drilling have caused high rates of cancer in their communities; Chevron insists that the inflated illness rates are due to poor sanitation. Chevron inherited the David and Goliath lawsuit–it’s worth $27 billion–when it bought Texaco in 2001. Circle of Blue reporter, Aubrey Parker, spoke with Joe Berlinger about his latest film, Crude. Three years in the making, Crude documents the rising international support for this environmental issue as the lead attorney, a man from the affected area in the Amazon, speaks at Live Earth, graces the cover of Vanity Fair and wins a Hero Award from CNN.

Joe, can you give us an introduction to the nature of your film and how the alleged contamination in the Amazon by Chevron/Texaco relates to water?

Joe Berlinger: Basically, it is alleged that a 1700 square mile area, the size of Rhode Island, has become a cancer death-zone due to negligent drilling practices, which included the creation of these probably over 1000 unlined pits where raw crude and toxic waste was dumped, and this material continues to leech into the water table. In addition, they directly released toxic waste directly into the rivers and streams at the time of production. When crude comes up from the ground, the crude and the water are separated, and the water has a lot of chemicals in it, and that was released into the environment. That’s what’s alleged in the lawsuit. Chevron claims that they did everything by the book and that this is just a lawsuit brought about by environmental con men who are looking to line their pockets. The film captures that dynamic.

So, access to clean water for drinking and bathing is definitely a central issue to your film?

Joe Berlinger:Yeah. I mean, this is the heart of the Amazon rainforest where people depend upon the river for everything: for transportation, for their food supply, for bathing, for drinking. These are water-based communities that have been completely devastated.

Play “Q&A: ‘Crude’ Director Joe Berlinger on Chevron in the Amazon”

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I know that in this region babies are getting a horrible skin rash; however, Chevron/Texaco says that these illnesses are the result of sanitation issues and not oil pollution. How did you deal with both sides of the equation, and how do you know that there’s a direct connection between the elevated cancer rates that are seen in the Amazon and this oil contamination?

Joe Berlinger: You know, the thing that made me want to make this film in the first place was on our first scouting mission, we went by canoe to a village of the Cofan people–one of the five indigenous tribes that are part of this lawsuit–I noticed some village elders sitting by a fire near the river’s edge preparing a meal, and they were preparing a meal using cans of tuna: the kind of tuna that you would maybe buy at Costco or Best Buy in a giant, industrial-sized can. The cheapest, most processed kind of tuna you could imagine and this just kind of broke my heart because we were deep in the heart of the rainforest on a river, and these were people who have lived off the water for millennia and could no longer sustain themselves because the fish in the river were all dead. Whether it’s legal or illegal, that’s for someone else to decide, but it certainly is immoral in my opinion that the oil industry has gone into these areas, completely disregarded the indigenous populations [and] released toxic chemicals into the water supply. These communities have been devastated–there’s high rates of alcoholism, almost universal unemployment, a loss of their traditional cultures. In many ways, it’s a cultural genocide.

Your film follows two attorneys: one is from New York City, and the other is from the affected region in the Amazon. How did this legal framework shape your film?

Joe Berlinger: You know, one of the problems with this case is that there are a lot of highly paid lawyers, especially on the Texaco side, and there are study after study of conflicting and competing claims. Your head would spin if you looked at all the paperwork and all the tests. . . Again I’m not a lawyer or scientist, so I’m not here to say who’s right or wrong. The film portrays the issues and portrays the lawsuit, but I think any reasonable person could walk away with the conclusion that if you have a region with significantly high rates of cancer and soil and water contamination, that somehow the two issues are linked. The damage is due to poor sanitation as opposed to anything related to oil, and yet you see oil in the water; you smell it.

Really, it’s for the viewer to judge as to who’s right, but people have been systematically poisoned. The larger issue of the film is not who should win the lawsuit, but the larger issue that industrialization and oil production, whether it’s legal or illegal, has had a tremendous impact on these people. Basically they have been poisoned, and the area needs to be cleaned up.

In the film itself, we watch as the story grows and gets more and more tension and starts to be picked up by the international media. What are some examples of when you saw the outlook of the story change? What have you seen in your three years of filmmaking that you can consider as positive, and what are some positives since the film has been released?

Joe Berlinger: One definite positive outcome of the attention that the case was getting is that Trudie Styler, Sting’s wife, came down for a visit and was horrified at what she saw with regard to the water supply. So she and her husband, Sting, have a foundation called the Rainforest Foundation, in collaboration with UNICEF, created a fresh drinking water/rainwater program in which they installed these large rainwater collection tanks with heavy filtration, because even the rainwater there is polluted because there’s a lot of black-rain phenomenon because one by-product of oil production is natural gas. And that natural gas is burned off into the air–all of which is legal, but it’s just another assault on the environment. It’s a band-aid solution because the groundwater is so heavily polluted. People are still living on top of toxic pits. The place is still a mess, but at least there’s a ray of hope in terms of the freshwater drinking project, which people can find out about and donate to if they go to our website, www.crudethemovie.com, there is a link to the rainwater program sponsored by UNICEF, and you can make a donation. Each of these tanks cost about $400. One of the things I’m proud of with this film is we’ve done a number of high-level screenings to do some fundraising. The film has raised several hundred thousand dollars for this freshwater drinking program.

How was the film received in Ecuador?

Joe Berlinger: I was stunned that so few people in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, where–I forget the actual population, but a good deal of the country lives in Quito–most of them had never even heard of the case, and it was quite surprising to me. In fact, it was an incredibly moving moment for the film and for the case when we premiered the film in Ecuador. There’s a film festival in Ecuador called EDOC, which is a documentary film festival of Ecuador. It’s a nice little documentary film festival. When they saw the film, they were so enthusiastic and decided to make it the opening night film. In fact, they were so worried that they didn’t have the right seating capacity–because the normal theater they use fits about 500 people, and they knew there would be more people who would want to see this film–and so they actually opened up a theater that was dormant at the university that hadn’t been used in a decade, and they fixed up the theater and got it ready for the screening. It’s a 1200-seat theater, and I was told there were 1400 people jammed into a 1200-seat theater with people kind of hanging off the rafters to see the Ecuadorian premiere of Crude. We had done a Spanish–you know the film is primarily in Spanish with English subtitles–we had to make a version that the Spanish was not subtitled but the English was then subtitled into Spanish. It was an incredibly moving night. I mean, there was a line around the block; there was 1400 people. People were just overwhelmed by the film. Pablo got a 15-minute, you know the lead lawyer in the case, got a 15-minute hero’s ovation after the screening. But the comment that most people said when they came up to me afterwards–thanking me for caring about their country, thanking me for making the film–and that they were completely unaware of this case in their own backyard, which was shocking to me.

And how has the film been received since its release in the United States last September?

Joe Berlinger: In some ways, this film has been treated as an environmental film, but really for me it’s a human rights film. It’s a human right struggle, and I believe everybody is entitled to fresh drinking water. In particular, they’re entitled to the sovereignty of their own water. For multinational companies to come in and damage the water supply where people have been living for millennia, to me, is just morally unacceptable. Whether they’ve protected themselves with enough legal arguments to not lose the lawsuit that’s for somebody else to decide, but from a moral standpoint, to violate indigenous peoples’ rights to fresh drinking water is, to me, just morally unacceptable.

Joe, how can people get more information about your film?

Joe Berlinger: If people go to crudethemove.com, there’s a whole website devoted to the theatrical release where you can learn what theaters and what the dates are and sign up for our mailing list. I really encourage people to get involved in the film [which is also available on Netflix].

Thank you, Aubrey. Circle of Blue’s Aubrey Parker has been speaking with Joe Berlinger, director of the movie, Crude. It’s a film about oil, conflict and water in the Amazon. To learn more about the challenges in the Amazon and to find more articles and broadcasts on water, design, policy and related issues, be sure to tune in to Circle of Blue online at circleofblue.org.

Our theme is composed by Nedev Kahn. Circle of Blue Radio is underwritten by Traverse Legal, PLC. Internet attorneys specializing in trademark infringement litigation, copyright infringement litigation, patent litigation and patent prosecution. Join us again for Circle of Blue Radio’s 5 in 15. I’m J. Carl Ganter.

Aubrey Ann Parker is a reporter for Circle of Blue where she specializes in data visualization. Reach her at aubrey@circleofblue.org.

Bottomless Precedent: BP Gulf Gusher Endemic to Global Oil Problem

Aubrey Parker — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 04:43:52 +0000

Big spills from the Ecuadorian Amazon to the Niger Delta, all the way to the bitter cold of Russia’s Siberian tundra.

Photo courtesy of Greenpeace

In the Komi Republic of northern Russia, eight months of oil spills during 1994 have transformed the tundra into a barren wasteland. Click image to enlarge photo gallery.

By Aubrey Ann Parker
Circle of Blue

Day 63. The unending torrent into the Gulf of Mexico–measuring 125 million gallons and growing–is the latest evidence that the planet’s devotion to oil is producing a new era of colossal environmental and economic damage. The deepwater blowout is fouling marshes and beaches in four states and laying waste to fisheries that employ thousands. The disaster also is confounding the U.S. government’s technical capacity to plug the leak, and setting new measures for calculating and collecting monetary damages.

Most importantly for the global environment, though, is that the BP PLC spill is just one of a growing number of environmental oil-related calamities that are scarring the earth, polluting the water, and threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Almost every continent is affected:

War on Water: Oil, Power and Poverty in the Niger Delta
After almost one year of a relative ceasefire, a clash between an aggressive guerrilla militia and the military has resumed this month in the Niger Delta over control of Nigeria’s oil revenues, thought to be hoarded by the wealthy and the southern region’s government.

Royal Shell Co., the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and Chevron all have stakes in the region’s lucrative resource, which as recently as 2008 produced 2.1 million barrels per day.

Photo © Ed Kashi

Members of the militant group MEND patrol the water of the Niger Delta. The river and streams serve as the primary fighting ground for control of Nigerian oil reserves, estimated at 36.22 billion barrels. Click image to enlarge photo gallery.

Rebels are blowing up pipelines, destroying equipment and ransoming oil workers as a way of protesting the corruption. The attacks have unleashed a new torrent of leaking oil, adding to the accumulation of oil-related environmental damage over the years. The series of canals and tributaries that cross the Niger Delta have been completely devastated by petroleum pollution since oil was discovered in 1956.

The Nigerian Federal Ministry of the Environment says that anywhere from 9 million to 13 million barrels (380-550 million gallons) have spilled each year during the history of oil production in the Niger Delta—the equivalent in size of the U.S. Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, but occurring annually for the last five decades. Meanwhile the United Nations estimates that nearly 7000 spills occurred between 1976 and 2001–half of which were due to corrosion of pipelines and storage tanks, while 28 percent were caused by sabotage.

Tens of thousands of residents were forced to evacuate the region last year, left to wade through the world’s third largest wetland in search of safer homes. Their lives are endangered not only by the fighting, but also by the toxins, industrial wastes and oil-slicks that are poisoning their drinking water as well as contaminating their fish.

Photo © Ed Kashi

Oil pipelines create a pathway for this young woman to walk through the village of Okrika Town, Nigeria. Click image to enlarge photo gallery.

“There are no heroes in this fight,” Ed Kashi, photographer of Curse of the Black Gold: 50 years of Oil in the Niger Delta, told Circle of Blue in May 2009. “It is the equivalent of gang warfare over turf and control, and instead of crack cocaine it’s oil, and instead of being on the main streets of a city, it’s out on rivers and creeks on small boats.”

Water Pollution in Ecuador’s Amazon Rainforest Drilling Zone
After 17 years of waiting for a court decision, more than 30,000 rainforest dwellers in Ecuador continue to hang in limbo. The community has taken on one of the largest companies in the world, Chevron, for allegedly having polluted nearly 2000 square miles of the Ecuadorian Amazon—an area the size of Rhode Island—turning the lush vegetation into a cancer death-zone.

Photo © Lou Dematteis

Chevron claims that these sites are not health hazards, but in the U.S. it wouldn’t even be a question,” Lou Dematteis, photographer of Crude Reflections: Oil, Ruin and Resistance in the Amazon Rainforest, told Circle of Blue. “There is standing oil, oil a foot under the ground—that would automatically become a Superfund site. The people living there wouldn’t have to go to court to prove that. You don’t have to do that in the States anymore, but you used to.”

Photo © Lou Dematteis/Redux

Modesta Briones, who used to bathe and wash clothes just downstream from an oil well, had her leg amputated to remove a cancerous tumor. Five years after her surgery, Briones died when the cancer spread through her body. Click image to enlarge photo gallery. Book link

The indigenous community asserts that 50 years of negligent drilling practices and the creation of hundreds of open-air, unlined pits have let toxic oilfield waste and crude oil seep into the ground and streams. The river water is used by the people for laundry, bathing, cooking and drinking and has caused higher rates of cancer than are found in the rest of the country, assert plaintiffs, who are seeking $US27 billion in damages. Records obtained by the plaintiffs indicate that 19 billion gallons of toxic wastewater and 17 million gallons of raw crude oil have been discharged into the rainforest, wrecking an indigenous way of life and an ecosystem.

Chevron insists that these inflated illness rates are caused by poor sanitation in the region. The oil giant, which inherited the lawsuit when it bought Texaco in 2001, says that Texaco cleaned up its share of the mess, and that the remainder is the responsibility of PetroEcuador, the local corporation.

“Back in 1993, there were mostly just digestive problems and skin rashes,” Dematteis said. “But a doctor with the Ecuadorian Ministry of Public Health told me there was so much pollution that there was going to be a plague of all different types of cancer. When I went back in 2003, that was exactly what had happened—in those ten years, there were so many people who had already died.”

Cutting Crude Corners in Northern Russia Causes Flood of Petroleum Pollution
A legacy of oil spills and dilapidated infrastructure linger in the far north Komi region of Russia, an oil development zone once known for its abundant fisheries and pristine waterways. After a series of major oil spills in 1994 totaling 730,000 barrels (30.6 million gallons), the fragile tundra is now a barren wasteland.

Photo courtesy of Greenpeace

International environmentalist group Greenpeace has been documenting the legacy of oil spills in the Komi region of Siberian Russia. Click image to enlarge photo gallery.

Rather than replacing 70 kilometers of antiquated infrastructure that had been leaking for months, Komineft, the local business opted to patch the holes. And while the company was fined $US600,000, it couldn’t pay for the majority of the cleanup because it was on the brink of bankruptcy.

Since there were not sufficient funds to cleanup the damage, more than 350 lakes in the Arctic region remain polluted with petroleum from leaking pipelines that have served the region since the first Soviet oil rig was built in 1974, according to a 2006 report by the International Science and Technology Center, an organization of former Soviet Union republics and Russia that facilitates external scientific exchanges.

The international community paid scant attention to the region’s ongoing spills until heavy rainfall in October of 1994 knocked out an earthen dam that had contained 20 percent of the region’s motherlode of contaminated water and crude. Oil raced through tributaries of the salmon-rich Pechora River, which drains into the Arctic Ocean. Komineft was accused of cutting corners and not making timely repairs.

Before the spill, communities downstream of the Komineft installation used the region’s rivers for domestic and commercial needs. One month after the October catastrophe, however, dangerous levels of contaminants were found in water samples, according to a World Bank report.

Photo courtesy of Greenpeace

According to one regional expert, the oil companies in the Komi region of Russia are willing to build new pipelines but not correct the dilapidated, existing systems. Click image to enlarge photo gallery.

Sixteen years after the Komineft petroleum spills devastated the Siberian landscape, archaic infrastructure remains a liability for Russia’s oil industry. In West Siberia, poorly constructed and maintained pipelines cause an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 accidents each year, with much of the spilled oil pouring into waterways, according to a report by IWACO BV Consultants for Water and Environment that was that was commissioned by Greenpeace.

“They are willing to spend money to build new pipelines but are reluctant to modernize the existing system,” said Robert Ebel, senior adviser of the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in an interview with Circle of Blue. “It can break anytime. I don’t know when, but it is inevitable.”

Scraping the Life From Alberta’s Tar Sands
Sometime later this year, according to Cambridge Energy Associates, a research group, the tar sands of Alberta, Canada will become the single largest source of imported oil to the United States. In order to reach the bitumen-saturated sands, huge strip mining equipment scrapes the boreal forest and the underlying soil and sediment away. Processing every barrel of oil demands four barrels of freshwater.

Toxic wastewater is stored in immense tailings ponds and lagoons so poisonous that waterfowl perish if they land on the surface, according to government reports. The lagoons, held back by earthen berms, are leaking into wetlands and the Athabasca River, which flows through northern Alberta, where the tar sands cover an area as large as North Carolina.

Tar sands development, which has produced a huge scar on the land that is easily visible from space, is the most environmentally damaging and polluting industrial enterprise of the 21st century, according to a number of studies by scientists and environmental advocates. Moreover, the feverish work to turn saturated sand into oil is just in its initial stages, with no end in sight.

Financial disclosure forms and other economic reports show that Exxon, Shell, BP and other oil companies are spending $US12 billion per year to accelerate the pace of production, which has quickly reached 1.3 million barrels per day and is climbing. The tar sands contain 1.7 trillion barrels of oil, according to the Canadian government, and a reserve of recoverable oil conservatively estimated at 173 billion barrels–second only to Saudi Arabia.

The governments of Canada and the U.S. are quietly negotiating agreements that will enable the oil industry to build pipelines from northern Alberta to America, where new refineries are proposed for Michigan, Maine and South Dakota.

View Catastrophic Oil Spills in a larger interactive map. Click on a number to read specific statistics about each of the Top 10 Global Oil Spills. Click on a blue circle to read specific statistics about each oil spill highlighted in this Circle of Blue special report.

Aubrey Ann Parker is a reporter for Circle of Blue where she specializes in data visualization. Reach her at aubrey@circleofblue.org.

Brett Walton, Molly Walton and Keith Schneider contributed reporting. Reach them at brett@circleofblue.org, mollyw@circleofblue.org, and keith@circleofblue.org.

Jordan Bates created the data visualization map. Reach him at jordan@circleofblue.org.

India and Pakistan Dispute Water Use for Hydropower, Agriculture

Aubrey Parker — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 23:53:35 +0000

Pakistan has said that India’s proposed hydroelectric project along the Kishanganga River violates the historic Indus Water Treaty.

Photo by Farooq

A proposed hydroelectric project on the Kishanganga River, a tributary of the Himalayan Indus River allocated to Pakistan under the 1960 Indus Water Treaty, would redirect water for 330 megwatts of Indian power production.

Pakistan has begun formal arbitration against an Indian hydroelectric project proposed along the Kishanganga River in Kashmir that would violate the 50-year-old Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Proposed in March, the $US800 million project would redirect water that is used for agricultural production in Pakistan to generate 330 megawatts of energy in India. The Kishanganga River is a tributary to the Indus River, which was one of three eastern Himalayan rivers awarded to Pakistan for unlimited use under the 1960 treaty. The treaty also designated the Jhelum and the Chenab Rivers to Pakistan with unlimited use, while the three eastern Himalaya rivers–the Sutlej, Beas, and Ravi–were awarded to India.

Both parties have nonconsumptive rights to the opposing country’s three rivers, with India having restricted hydropower and agricultural rights to the Pakistan rivers, minding that large amounts of water are not retained or redirected. There are currently more than 30 other Indian hydroprojects on the Indus at varying degrees of development, all of which have been challenged by Pakistan.

When a point of contention arises, such as the current arbitration panel requested by Pakistan, each country selects two members and the remaining three are selected by both countries–and if an agreement cannot be made, the World Bank will mediate. According to Asian News International, Pakistani members of this Permanent Indus Water Commission contested the Kishanganga project along with a 25-year-old barrage proposal to make the Indus more navigable during the summer, at a meeting in New Delhi last week.

Some experts argue that this water, which comes from Himalaya rivers, will only become more disputed as climate change affects glacial flow.

In the past 30 years, water access per capita in Pakistan has fallen from nearly 3000 to 1500 cubic meters per person, according to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. India blames Pakistan’s water scarcity on climate change and poor water management, while Pakistan claims India’s hydropower plans are exacerbating existing regional problems, like those in the agricultural industry.

The Pakistani region of Punjab, which is southeast of Kashmir, has been plagued with outstanding drought this year that has stalled the productivity of maze, rice, sugar cane and wheat, which are extensively grown there, Dr. Upmanu Lall , director of the Columbia University Water Center, told Circle of Blue’s J. Carl Ganter. Many farmers are now only growing rice for personal use because it’s so water-intensive. Further shortages have made farmers pump groundwater since irrigation canals, which were once full year-round, are now empty three months per year.

“The groundwater tables in this area have been dropping. . . Farmers who were used to getting water at a depth of 2 to 5 meters are now going from 20 to 50 meters below surface to get water,” said Lall. “For the farmers to make money on this, they argue that they need to have subsidies on a variety of things–primary among those is electricity for pumping. As the water levels drop, they require more subsidies.”

Under the treaty, both countries have state-appointed commissioners who work out water resource disagreements. If negotiations fail, a World Bank-appointed expert will mediate. The last time negotiations failed was in 2007, when India was instructed to make slight alterations to the design of the Bagilhar hydropower plant after Pakistan had protested it, according to the International Relations and Social Network (ISN).

Glacial Melt Could Cause Tidal Wave in Pakistan

Aubrey Parker — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:01:04 +0000

UPDATE FROM MAY 13, 2010: A tidal wave, reaching up to 60 meters high, is expected to race through the Hunza valley of the Himalayas—displacing an additional 25,000 people—unless the Pakistan army can divert significant volumes of water flow.

Photo courtesy ofNASA Earth Observatory

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this false-color image of the landslide lake on the Hunza River on May 25, 2010. Blue indicates water, red indicates vegetation, and shades of beige and gray indicate bare rock. The extent of the lake on March 16 and May 2, 2010, also appear as a white outline. This image has been rotated, so north is to the right.See May 13 image below.

Last month’s glacial melt led to the evacuation of more than 12,000 people living downstream of the landslide-formed Attabad Lake in northern Pakistan, according to the Guardian. An additional 1300 people have already lost a total of 120 houses to flooding as the waters have risen.

Pakistani officials said the danger will be greatest when seasonal rains hit this month, according to the BBC. If the natural dam is breached, as many as 25,000 people in 36 villages could be displaced downstream.

Photo courtesy of Focus Humanitarian Assistance via Prof. David Petley.

Animation of the Attabad Lake spillway, as seen on June 1 and June 3, 2010. The flow along the spillway has increased greatly in two days, and the lower part of the channel has widened and deepened, with flow controlled by a large boulder in the middle of the channel.

In January, rocks from a landslide formed a natural dam on the River Hunza to produce the 19-kilometer reservoir–a lake that is 100 meters deep and has been increasing at about one-half of a meter per day. Authorities fear that it is within meters of reaching its threshold. In an attempt to convert the impending tidal wave to a moderate-sized flood, the army has built a spillway for the overflow.

The floodwaters and landslide have also blocked the essential Karakoram highway, which links Pakistan with China, closing it indefinitely. Some goods have been loaded in boats and shipped across the lake to offset the nearly $US 60 million in trade that has been lost since January, according to the AFP.

According to the Associated Press of Pakistan, the lake levels are being monitored every minute, and “the situation is under control.”

“It is clear that the situation has developed considerably over the last few days,” David Petley, geography professor at Durham University, noted in his personal blog. “The flow along the spillway has increased greatly, and the lower part of the channel has widened and deepened. Flow appears to still be controlled by the large boulder in the middle of the channel, although the lowering of the channel downstream will be steadily undercutting this.”

Landslide dams are a recurrent hazard in the Himalaya mountains of southern and central Asia. Sharp hillsides, seasonally heavy precipitation, and high seismic potential contribute to the risk. The last natural dam seen in the Pakistani portion of the Himalayas was formed by a 2005 earthquake–it has still not broken or flooded over. A rock fall in northern India in 1993 completely stopped the flow of the Sutlej River, a main tributary of the Indus, for 30 minutes and partially submerged a dam upstream, halting hydropower electricity generation for months.

Sources: Associated Press of Pakistan, BBC, AFP and

Read Circle of Blue’s initial coverage of the January landslide in Pakistan, and for on-the-ground information, visit Durham University geography professor David Petley’s personal blog.

Photo courtesy ofNASA Earth Observatory

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this false-color image of the landslide lake on the Hunza River on May 2, 2010. Blue indicates water, red indicates vegetation, and shades of beige and gray indicate bare rock. The approximate extent of the lake on March 16, 2010, appears as a white outline. This image has been rotated, so north is to the right.

Heavy Rainfall Hampers Tea Markets in India and Sri Lanka

Aubrey Parker — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:27:09 +0000

Severe weather impacts could compromise tea farming for two of the world’s biggest players in the industry.

Photo by rajkumar1220 / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

A tea farm in the Assam region of India.

India and Sri Lanka‘s heavy rainfall is devastating both countries’ tea industries, according to reports from Reuters.

Nearly 5000 acres could be carried away if the Brahmaputra River and others shift their flows and flood onto their banks in India, which is the world’s second largest tea growing state.

India consumes about 80 percent of its own tea harvest, more than half of which is grown in the Assam region in the northeastern part of the country. The region’s 850 tea plantations employ nearly one million people and export tea to more than 80 countries. As heavy monsoons cause the Himalayan rivers to flood into tea-growing valleys, shortages in the international tea market could occur later this year.

In 2009 the Southeast Asian country exported nearly a billion kilograms of tea, generating about one-half of a billion dollars in revenue.

Meanwhile in neighboring Sri Lanka, which is the world’s fourth largest tea producer, prices have rebounded from heavy rainfall last month. Although this quarter the country has experienced a 27 percent increase in tea production over the same compared to last year, in April the market experienced a 7.5 percent drop, according to Reuters. Lanka Business Online also reported last week that tea prices may have “bottomed out” in May, as brokers worried heavy rains would reduce crops in the south, where the majority of the country’s tea is grown. But as rainfall receded, prices rose to around 40 cents per kilogram.

Last year’s revenue from tea fell to $US1.2 billion from $US1.4 billion in 2008, and is expected to come in around $US1.3 billion by the end of 2010. The industry makes up 15 percent of Sri Lanka’s GDP and occupies 4 percent of the country’s land.

Despite the rain, Agalawatte Plantations–a major tea cultivator, producer and processor–saw tea profits increase compared to this time last year, according to Lanka Business Online. Founded 18 years ago, Agalawatte is a subsidiary of Mackwoods Plantations, an 169-year-old distributor that houses 27,000 acres of tea. Profits for the subsidiary were posted at 1.9 million rupees ($US40,000) as compared with losses of 13 million ($US280,000) last year.

In 2009, Sri Lanka increased the amount of tea exported to India by 136 percent because of changes that lightened some governmental regulations in a 10-year-old free trade agreement, according to Lanka Business Online. If India’s weather conditions do not subside soon, it’s possible that this export trend from Sri Lanka to India could continue.

Sources: Reuters, Lanka Business Online,

Q&A: Upmanu Lall on India’s Nexus of Energy, Food and Water

Aubrey Parker — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:00:14 +0000

Upmanu Lall discusses the intersections of energy, food and water in three regions of India where cereals are grown, despite recent droughts.

Welcome to Circle of Blue Radio’s series 5 in 15, where we’re asking global thought leaders 5 questions in 15 minutes, more or less. These are experts working in journalism, science, communication design, and water. I’m J. Carl Ganter. Today’s program is underwritten by Traverse Internet Law: tech savvy lawyers, representing internet and technology companies.

UPMANU LALL

Photo © J. Carl Ganter

Upmanu Lall is director of the Columbia University Water Center. As a professor, he educates about the carefully interconnected nexus between energy, food, and water.

More about Upmanu Lall.

There’s a powerful nexus, some might even say a vortex, where water, energy, and food all combine. It takes energy to treat and move water; it takes water to grow food. Upmanu Lall knows these intersections well. He’s the Director of the Water Center at Columbia University and studies the wide reaching impacts of water and climate. We spoke with him recently at a meeting of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council. Thanks so much for joining us.

So, water’s a major issue; energy is a major issue; food is emerging as a major issue–yet they’re closely connected. Give us a picture of the nexus.

Upmanu Lall: Well, water and food are very easy to establish. Many people don’t seem to realize it, but worldwide, 70 percent of all freshwater used goes for growing food and so the connection there is very clear. One thing that’s not pointed out is that much of the pollution of aquifers and rivers also comes because of poor agricultural practices with regard to fertilizer used and pesticides, so there’s duel impact on water from agriculture and food on quantity and quality.

The next part is the water and energy linkage. In many places in the world, population densities are now high enough that locally grown food can’t be sustained via natural rain fall or natural stream flow. So people end up on being ground watered–this is a very large energy consumer. Similarly, if we are looking for drinking water at high quality–and this is a health issue obviously–then we require treatment of water: this is a major energy consumer. This is the direction in which energy influences water use. On the other side, if you look at thermal energy production–whether it is through coal fired, oil, gas or nuclear means, and now solar thermal as well–then you require a fair amount of water for cooling. That actually can be avoided if one takes air cooling methods, as are in practice now in Arizona and Southern California, but then you take an energy efficiency hit. Either way, you have to recognize that there’s an issue.

Play “Q&A: Upmanu Lall Talks About Nexus of Energy, Food, and Water”

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The thing that connects agriculture, or food, and water and energy together is that there’s substantial efforts in the recent times to try to do biofuel crops–corn for producing energy–so this is now a draw on both water and energy resources. And it’s probably more problematic, from a sustainability prospective, than many of the people who are supporting that kind of effort as carbon sequestration-oriented would have you believe.

So this is the nexus, these are the three things that connect, and this idea that I’ve talked about so far is fairly straightforward. Everybody appreciates it. What we don’t know is the scale of the impacts in different places and those do indeed depend on whether we are in developed countries or developing countries and what exactly are their activities–that’s where the differences would come in. And how does climate change fit into all of this? If you look forward–and what we are being told is that in the next century, in this current century, between 2050 and 2100, we may have serious impacts on society because of climate change–what is not being talked about is that, in most of the world, we will start seeing impacts of population growth and food production that will stress water sources out in a much more significant way. For example, the claim is that, in India, water sources, water supply may be as much as 40 percent below what is needed to produce the food for the country based on current population trends.

That’s really stunning; you’re saying that in India, water sources are 40 percent lower than what’s needed to grow the food for more than the one billion people who live there?

Upmanu Lall: There’s large uncertainty with regard to these numbers, but there is not much uncertainty in understanding that the water consumption today in highly densly populated countries approaches or exceeds the net renewable water supply available in those countries. So this is an issue that has much greater urgency, in some sense, than the climate change issue–I don’t want to draw comparisons of one is more important that the other, but this is overlooked, and hence, I’m stressing this a bit.

So when this kind of thing happens, when we have a shortage in one aspect of the nexus–for example in food, as you just mentioned–how does this affect the other two variables and how does it affect the people on the other side of the globe? We had a spike in food prices in the last two years, and what some people probably don’t realize is that, at least for cereals, several countries–India, Australia–decided to ban all exports. Even though they jointly account for less than 10 percent of global cereal consumption, the shock from these people not participating in international trade was such that the prices spiked. The reason for their doing that was that there were droughts in both countries. Here’s the linkage: water, food and energy. You have energy prices going up. You have a spike in food prices and an increase in global hunger. That’s the sort of concern that, broadly speaking, the nexus brings to the table. The biggest losers will be the poor people in rich countries and the poorer countries. And that brings social stability into question; that’s where we are with these.

Can you give us some other examples of these intersections between water, energy and food?

Upmanu Lall: I grew up in India and then moved to the United States. What I experienced as a child was that there were droughts, and accompanied with droughts were major famines. To get food–even as a middle class person–you had to stand in lines for days on end at government ration shops. That has changed dramatically.

In the 1960’s, the projection from many in the West was that India was hopeless–it was the way people talk about many parts of Africa today–that there was no chance for success. That has all changed because we think we brought the Green Revolution into India and food productivity increased dramatically. Today that situation is no longer nearly as optimistic. Again, the most productive parts of India have now plateaued out for last five or six years or may be decreasing. And productivity in other parts of the country–which probably have better water resources–it’s still marginally above 1960 values. So there’s hope, in the sense that food production could increase if those places were brought online in a proper way, but on the other hand, the current situation is not good.

Let’s start first with Punjab, because this is the heart of the Green Revolution. As I said, the productivity has stalled here. What has been happening is that the ground water tables in this area have been dropping at a rate of about 20 cm per year in the 1980’s to 1990’s, to almost a meter per year more recently. Farmers who were used to getting water at a depth of 2 to 5 meters are now going from 20 to 50 meters below surface to get water. For the farmer to make money on this, they argue that they need to have subsidies on a variety of things–primary among those is electricity for pumping. As the water levels drop, they require more subsidies. Essentially, what is happening here is they are given electricity which is not metered. Each pump has a fixed price, which is fairly nominal for the whole year, so the farmer pumps a fair amount. The key issue here is that energy consumption is substantial, and of all the electricity supplied in the state, around 30 percent is going for pumping ground water. Since ground water is falling, if this policy continues, the situation will progressively get worse. There’s no way around that. One of the reasons being speculated for the plateauing out of productivity in the agriculture industry in this region is climate change. The claim is that winter wheat is declining because of warmer temperatures at different stages during the winter season, so that’s the story there. But rice is now being multicropped, until this last year, and that’s a large water consumer, and that’s the story here. So that’s the water, energy and food nexus story for Punjab.

This sounded grim, perhaps, so let’s go to another place, which is Gujarat. In Gujarat, we don’t have rice and wheat being grown–we have vegetables being grown; we have cotton being grown; we have fodder being grown; there’s a very active dairy industry–this is a success story in that regard. So what’s happened here? The place I’ll take you to is called Mehsana. In the 1980’s, the water levels in that district ranged from 10 meters above mean sea level to 140 meters above mean sea level. However, they’ve been declining at 3 to 5 meters a year. Currently, the water levels are -80 meters to +10 meters, and the area that’s above mean sea level is 25 percent of the district, when it was all above before. So here we have a catastrophe in the making because, essentially, being next to the ocean, eventually this will all be salt. And indeed, that’s what’s been happening; they keep digging deeper because freshwater is still trapped there and salt water replaces the water at the top. This area, we can imagine, will vanish. The energy story here is that the amount of electricity used is dramatically higher than in Punjab–not as high as it would be if you grew rice, but still dramatically high. In this case, it accounts for 40 percent of all electricity consumption in that particular district. The electricity supplied for a farm of one hectare is worth 40,000 rupees, and it’s given free. Yet the income that the farmer generates, net, from that piece of land varies between 15,000 to 30,000 rupees–so you are actually spending more just on the electric subsidy. The agriculture is not exactly subsistence agriculture.

The third example is the state of Andhra. In the Andhra case, this is a hard rock aquifer and the water exists only in the fractures in the hard rock. Here what happens is rather interesting. The farmers pump water, and they decide how much area they’re going to plant based on what they see as the water level in their wells at the end of the monsoon. The crop is growing post-monsoon, and their goal is to suck out all the water in the aquifer every single year. Again, the energy expenditure is huge because pulling water from rock crevices is not exactly that easy and it’s also available only in pockets. If you get drought in a particular year now, in the past you would have been able to pump water from the hard rock aquifers for human supply and livestock supply. That opportunity is now gone because they have essentially moved to a system where the aquifers are completely exhausted every single year.

You mentioned that you’re working on solutions to these huge problems. Give us an idea–what’s going to fix them?

Upmanu Lall: The first thing is that we have to find a way by which we can make it politically acceptable for farmers to pay for metered use so that there’s an efficiency signal in the whole thing. What we are exploring there is recognizing that there’s an opportunity to say that, “Suppose we give you the value of the electricity and we meter you, would you then continue farming or not, and if you were farming, would you now go to drip irrigation or invest in some other thing so that you get more production out of the water?” That’s the question we want to explore there. This is project that’s in progress. We’ll be able to report on it soon.

Initial interviews with farmers suggest that they actually like this idea. They are not completely sure what they would do; it depends on market conditions. The second thing is that there have been a few that do contract farming, which has made many farmers rich, but they have also been plagued by problems where contracts are not honored, depending on the market price by either side. What we are trying to do is come up with ways to improve that structure so that that will be solved. At the same time, we are facilitating the implementation of methods of growing rice without flooding the fields and this cuts the water consumption of rice by 30 to 60 percent. That’s another innovation that will help solve these kind of problems.

In summary, the reason there is a water, energy, food nexus is because if you look at any one of these things, we see that there are potential problems in one place or another, but we don’t see the collective effect. What we are seeing here is that there’s a collective effect; there’s an impact on energy production; there’s an impact on energy utilization and on the economy from both food and water and vice versa all the way through. The idea is that if you want to promote sustainable development, we need some integrated approach to managing these things. There needs to be market processes, and there needs to be public policy processes that need to be brought together.

Thank you, Professor Lall. We’ve been speaking with Upmanu Lall, Professor at Columbia University and Director of the Water Center. To learn more about his work and other projects, be sure to tune in to Circle of Blue online at circleofblue.org.

Our theme is composed by Nedev Kahn, and Circle of Blue Radio is underwritten by Traverse Legal, PLC, internet attorneys specializing in trademark infringement litigation, copyright infringement litigation, patent litigation and patent prosecution. Join us again for Circle of Blue Radio’s 5 in 15. I’m J. Carl Ganter.

Infographic: Alaska to India Bulk Water Export Data

Aubrey Parker — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:52:57 +0000

Interest in bulk water has seen new life, most prominently from sources in Alaska.

Sitka, a small town along the southeastern coast of the state, is seemingly well on its way to sending millions of gallons of water to India that will then be mostly distributed in the Middle East. Click on the following infographic to see data on both India and Alaska–water resources per capita, access to tap water, population, income per capita, and water pricing.

Graphic by Aubrey Ann Parker

Sitka, Alaska to sell bulk water exports to India. Click on image to see the complete infographic.