EcoRadio

Category: Sustainable Settlement and Agriculture

The Generator is founded on the simple premise that we should leave the world in better condition than we found it. The news items in this category outline the attempts people have made to do this. They are mainly concerned with our food supply and settlement patterns. The impact that the human race has on the planet.

  • Australia commits $2m to ‘Amazon of the Seas’

     

    Environment Minister Peter Garrett says the Australian aid money will mainly support programs in coastal communities in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

    “This region is the Amazon of the Seas and we recognise how important it is that concerted regional action is taken to secure the health of the ocean environments,” he said.

    “It’s about food security. It’s about the livelihood of hundreds of millions of people in this region. It’s also about recognising how critical the health of the ocean environment is.

    “We want to see some support go in the first instance to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

    “We want to provide the opportunity for additional information learnings, for communities that will be doing this work, and we want to see strategies in place which will really start to deliver the on-ground actions which are necessary to protect the coral triangle itself.”

    Conservationists have backed the plan, with WWF director general Jim Leape saying the regional agreement is a landmark event.

    “What comes out of this commitment is a plan of action which allows, mandates, the ministers, ministries in each of these countries to work together to begin to conserve the tuna stocks that are so important here,” he said.

    “Also to begin to save the endangered sea turtles that live here, to begin to better manage the coastal ecosystems on which so many of their people depend.”

    Tags: conservation, marine-parks, australia, indonesia, papua-new-guinea

  • Beach bought for hard headed birds

    Related story from the UK Guardian

    Maleos – chicken-sized birds with black helmet-like foreheads – number from 5,000 to 10,000 in the wild and can only be found on Sulawesi island. They rely on sun-baked sands or volcanically-heated soil to incubate their eggs.

     

    The US-based Wildlife Conservation Society said it has teamed up with a local environmental group to purchase and protect a 14-hectare (36-acre) stretch of beach in northern Sulawesi that contains about 40 nests.

     

    The environmental groups paid $12,500 for the beach-front property on remote Sulawesi, one of Indonesia’s 17,000 islands, to help preserve the threatened species.

     

    “The protected area is already helping raise awareness about this bird,” said John Tasirin, WCS programme coordinator on the island, adding that is especially significant because humans are the greatest threat to the maleo’s survival. Villagers often dig up the eggs and harvest them for food, he added.

     

    The maleo, which has a blackish back, a pink stomach, yellow facial skin, a red-orange beak, lays gigantic eggs that are then buried in the sand or soil. The chicks hatch and climb from the ground able to fly and fend for themselves.

    “The population of maleos are decreasing quite steadily,” Martin Fowlie of the UK-based BirdLife International said of their new white-sand beach. “So any protection is going to be a good thing.”

     

  • Middlebury College’s Biomass Heating and Cooling Plant

     

    As the biggest of its emissions-reduction efforts, the college invested in a biomass-fueled, district heating and cooling system. After a feasibility study by the Biomass Energy Resource Center (BERC) showed the idea to be practical, Middlebury broke ground in 2007 on an $11 million biomass gasification plant. The new system is expected to be the primary heating and cooling source for the school’s district energy system — and steam from it will also help fuel the college’s cogeneration system, which meets about one-fifth of the campus’s electricity needs.

    When the college began looking at biomass in 2004, the price of number-six fuel oil — of which it was using about 2 million gallons per year — was $0.89 per gallon, notes Tom Corbin, director of business services. By summer 2008, it was more than $3.00 per gallon. Middlebury expects the biomass facility to cut its fuel-oil usage by half, replacing that million tons of oil with 20,000-21,000 tons of chips per year. At fuel-oil price levels in summer 2008, that predicts an annual cost savings of about $2 million.

    At the same time, the college has planted ten acres of fast-growing willow shrubs, on fallow farmland that it owns, as a test project to determine if it can raise enough biomass to meet up to half its system’s needs.

    With or without the willow project, Middlebury also expects its biomass plant to:

    • cut by almost 12,500 tons per year, or about 40 percent, the volume of greenhouse gases that it emits;
    • replace a distant fuel source with a local one, as the college requires that all of its biomass must come from less than 75 miles away;
    • generate 2 million to 2.5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, with a renewable fuel;
    • benefit the economy of its home region, especially its forest-products industry — along with area farmers, if the willow project catches on; and
    • serve as a learning and demonstration lab for biomass gasification technology in action.

    “Our hope is that the college’s entry into biomass will greatly stimulate the growth of the local, sustainable wood chip market and bioenergy economy in Addison County and Vermont,” says Nan Jenks-Jay, Middlebury’s dean of environmental affairs.

    Added college President Ronald Liebowitz: “The biomass plant exemplifies the college’s longstanding commitment to the environment—not only as an academic subject, but also as an integral part of the institution’s operations.”

    “Maximum Participation and ‘Onboardness’”

    Middlebury students have played key roles in evolving the college’s commitment to going carbon-neutral. Formed in 2002, a Carbon Reduction Initiative Working Group included student, staff, faculty, and administration representatives—and students successfully urged the trustees to adopt its two successive carbon-reduction goals.

    “Middlebury’s approach to reducing its carbon footprint was, and continues to be, maximum participation and ‘onboardness,’” write Jenks-Jay and Byrne in a chapter they co-authored for a recently published book, The Green Planet: Meeting the Challenge of Environmental Sustainability (APPA, 2008).

    The carbon-reduction working group noted that three-quarters of the college’s emissions came from burning number-six fuel oil for heating and cooling — and a woodchip system could displace half of that. A BERC study affirmed the potential for a biomass system that would use locally harvested fuel and could generate economic and learning benefits.

    In 2004, trustees committed Middlebury to reducing greenhouse gas emissions 8 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. In late 2006, trustees approved the biomass-system plan — and in 2007, they voted that the college would go entirely carbon-neutral by 2016. To meet that goal, the college is also moving on a brace of additional strategies, from mixing 20 percent vegetable oil into the fuel used in furnaces for 100 buildings not on the biomass district system, to replacing college vehicles with hybrid cars and electric carts.

    Test-Growing a Fuel Supply

    “Really looking at the supply question, for us, was the critical piece,” said Jack Byrne, the college’s sustainability coordinator, in summing up lessons learned in the process of moving to biomass district energy. Initially hoping to find a single, nearby supplier for all its woodchips, the college found that wasn’t possible and contracted instead with a New Hampshire wood-products broker. Middlebury has required that its chip supply be obtained from within 75 miles of the campus, and that a stockpile of it be stored no more than 25 miles away.

    “That guarantees us a six-week supply,” said Byrne, who expects the biomass system to meet all of the college’s heating and cooling needs “for probably eight months of the year.”

    “The other question it’s important to ask, that we asked for our willow project, is: Okay, right now there’s sufficient [fuel] capacity. But what happens five years from now, if many more people switch to wood as a fuel source, which is quite likely to happen?”

    In hopes of ensuring its own, reliable, sustainably produced supply, the college looked into farming trees for fuel. It found that the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse had been growing, testing, and studying willow crops for several decades.

    “They said, ‘You should do a test planting, and see how it goes,’” says Corbin, the college’s business-services director. So the college planted about 10 acres in 2007.

    The willows — in this case, more fast-growing shrubs than trees — are first harvested after four years, then on a three-year rotation. The college hopes to harvest 25-30 tons per acre, the yield achieved by SUNY ESF. If it does, then planting and/or contract for the planting of 1,200 acres would meet half of the college’s biomass needs.

    “That’s a lot of willows — and that’s a lot of work!” says Corbin. “The logistics are not going to be easy, but we look at it as investing in the willow crop.” Several people in the area area have already inquired about raising willows, he said. The college has advised them to wait and see how the test plot fares.

    “Ten years from now, I may look real smart,” Corbin quips. “Who knows? We’re going to have to try some of this stuff. We’ve got a lot of options.” One key aim, he summed up, is to “control your supply of fuel — to know where it’s coming from, and how ‘green’ it is.

    “On balance, our fuel source now is greener. That’s where we’re going.”

    To watch a video of the biomass gassification plant in action at Middlebury college, click here.

    The Biomass Energy Resource Center (BERC) is an independent, national nonprofit organization located in Montpelier, Vermont with a Midwest office in Madison, Wisconsin.  BERC assists communities, colleges and universities, state and local governments, businesses, utilities, schools, and others in making the most of their local energy resources.

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  • UTS research to help grow sustainable timber building

    Professor of Structural Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, Keith Crews, is heading up the project, which he said would advance sustainable timber construction as a viable alternative in large-scale projects.
    “Timber buildings have a variety of environmental benefits, including lower CO2 emissions and excellent carbon sequestration, as well as lower life-time heating and cooling costs,” he said.
    “As a building material it is also light and easy to transport, ensuring timber is also a commercially viable construction option.”
    Professor Crews said sustainability principles would underpin all aspects of the research and construction. “Crucially all the timber used in the construction is sustainable as it is all replanted, making this a sound environmental choice as well,” he said.
    “This is a significant investment that will fund six research projects over the next four years, as well as securing seven postgraduate scholarships.”
    Clive Tilby, Chairman of the STIC Board, welcomed the agreement, saying, “We are very excited to be working with UTS, an Australian research organisation that has leading structural timber capabilities.
    “This collaboration across the Tasman greatly expands the research potential and strength of the consortium.”

    Ends…

    Further Information:
    Michelle Callen, UTS, Ph 02 9514 1271 or 0404 608 131
    or Dr Jane Shearer, STIC, Ph +64 21 358 231

    Issued by: Terry Clinton, UTS Media Office,
    Ph (02) 9514 1623 or 0419 293 261

    UTS: Top rated for teaching and learning in Australia

  • International seabed claims flood into UN

    In the past two weeks Ghana, Pakistan, Norway, South Africa, Iceland, Denmark, France, Vietnam, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Kenya and others have delivered boxes of documents to the commission’s premises in New York.

    The hefty files of detailed paperwork – one Australian submission ran to 80 volumes – are the culmination of years of underwater exploration by each state, plotting submarine contours that mark the outer edges of the continental shelf.

    The complex rules of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea permit states to extend their control and exploitation of the seabed beyond the traditional 200 nautical mile limit and up to 350 nautical miles offshore.

    The precise extent of each claim frequently involves establishing the foot of an underwater continental slope, thousands of feet down in the chilly, dark oceans – and then measuring 60 miles outward.

    Some claims, usually the legacies of unresolved international conflicts, are mutually exclusive, generating fresh diplomatic unease along the fissure lines of ancient boundary disputes. Before Wednesday, the UK will present its claim for the seabed surrounding the Falklands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic.

    The submission is bound to overlap with the Argentinian claim sent in last month which insisted that the waters and extended continental shelf around all those islands belonged to the government in Buenos Aires. The French have raised hackles by claiming the seabed near their Pacific island territories.

    The 13 May deadline applies only to those states that were signatories of the original treaty ten years ago. Other states, which signed at a later date, have more time left to submit their claims.

    The United States has still not ratified the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, but the prospect of neighbouring countries such as Canada and Russia carving up the seabed for exploration is rapidly shifting opinion in Washington.

    Greenpeace and other marine environmental groups have derided the process as a series of colonial land grabs. Britain will have submitted several major claims, all in the Atlantic, by the end of this week: around Ascension Island, the Falkland Islands and in the Hatton-Rockall Basin to the west of Scotland.

    The UK has signalled its interest in the continental shelf that slopes away from the British Antarctic Territory. All territorial claims at the South Pole are, however, formally frozen by the Antarctic Treaty to which the UK is a signatory.

    Britain, France, Spain and Ireland have also lodged a shared submission for a 31,000 square mile tract of the ocean floor on the edge of the Bay of Biscay.

  • Parrot ‘ putting hundreds of job’s at risk

    “The Commonwealth has surprised everyone with this initiative in calling the matter in which effectively would end logging down in the Riverina for some time and the jobs would be lost,” he said.
    The NSW Government’s position is that we want to defend these jobs. The Riverina has been devastated by drought and it cannot afford to lost another 800 jobs.”
    Deniliquin Mayor Lindsay Renwick says the logging ban would devastate the community.
    “It would be the nail in the coffin that would concern us here in Deniliquin,” he said.
    “Peter Garrett should think of the people that he is putting out of jobs in ruining the inland of Australia … he and his government at the moment are working on a witchhunt to try and cruel the central parts of NSW.”
    Mr Garrett says he would be happy to discuss the matter with the State Government.
    “It’s really important that we make sure that we resolve this issue as quickly as possible and I certainly have asked my department to ensure that intensive discussions continue over the coming period,” he said.
    And Georgina Woods from the National Parks Association says she is glad the Federal Government has stepped in.
    “The logging undertaken by Forests NSW in the RAMSAR-listed wetlands of the central Murray is illegal under the Environment Protection Bio-diversity Conservation Act,” she said.
    “What’s really needed is a structural readjustment for the industry so that we can have exit packages and we can have redundancy packages for workers, because the forests down there are running out of timber and continuing to log them at the rate that New South Wales is doing is not going to be able to be sustained in the long term.”