I just finished reading an article in the BBC about a retired teacher who goes to great lengths to avoid producing waste. It was amazing to read about how she can find life in seemingly old, and useless items, time and time again. For instance a pair of pants that no longer fit, first became part of a bed for the dog and later became elbow patches on a jacket.

Producing such little waste was commons a couple of generations ago, and is probably still common in rural settings, but in the city this is basically unheard of. At my grandmother’s home in Colombia I remember that she was able to produce practically no waste. Paper and other materials that burned were used in the wood oven, vegetarian food scraps went to the cows, and meat scraps were used to feed the dogs. Glass was the only thing she had trouble reusing, but there was an old man who went by a couple of times a month collecting glass for recycling. Me, I have always lived in cities and as much as I try, I still produce much more garbage.

Still there is a push to be more aware of our wastefulness and certain communities in the UK are taking matters seriously. The UK local councils of Bath and North East Somerset promoted “Zero Waste Week“, where people were encouraged to produce as little waste as possible. Some participants were able to reduce their waste by as much as 75%!

If you are still having trouble producing less waste you can use Freecycle, a great website that allows you to connect with other people who may want old things that you are giving away. Freecycle also has local websites where you can connect with people in your community.

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In an effort to classify, and preserve the world’s wild plant diversity, the Millennium Seed Bank Project (MSBP), based in Britain, is serving as the globe’s depository. Motivated by global changes in climate patterns, the MSBP has set out to gather as much material as possible in the hopes that if any of these plants species were to die out, they might be able to reintroduce them to the wild at a later stage. In May the bank collected it’s 1 billionths seed, and counting. The MSBP works with over 100 partners world wide and so far has material for 18,000 plant species originating from 126 different countries. By 2010 they hope to have 10% of the planets flora covered.

Norway was started a parallel project, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, based in the Svaldbard archipelago, above the Arctic Circle; here they intend to gather seeds for the world’s food crops, in an effort to save them from natural disaster, wars, or other major catastrophes. A significant difference between these two projects is that the MSBP is collecting material to preserve species with no immediate, known, economic value.

The collecting of seeds, whether for profit or not, presents interesting dilemmas and discussion turns to how humans can “help” certain plants adapt to changing global weather patterns, thus directly manipulating natural selection.

When seeds are gathered scientist make note of the conditions the plant was living under. Next seeds are dried for several months, and once desiccated they are placed in silver envelopes and stores in temperatures of -20C. Under these conditions seeds are expected to last up to 500 years. The practice of banking seeds can be traced back all the way to Mesopotamians, who’s methods serve as the basis for todays seed banking approach.

Other seed bank projects include the Heritage Seed Library, which aims to make available vegetable varieties that are not common, and the Seed Savers Exchange, which focused on preserving heirloom seed.

You can read further on the subject by looking at an article in the Christian Science Monitor, and another article in News West.

Image info; boy with seeds, dandelion seeds, Svalbard Seed Bank.

26.02.08 – The Svalbard Seed Bank has received its first collections of seeds in a ceremony with Noble Prize winner Wangari Mathai. The vault is located in the remote region of the Svalbard Islands because they are geologically stable, remote, and the frigid temperatures will provide natural refrigeration. You can read more about this, and see a layout of the vault in an article from the BBC here, or from the NYT here.

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Yesterday was World Environment Day, and one more day to try to get our attention around the collective damage we are doing to the planet. World Environment Day was created by the United Nations’ General Assembly in 1972 in order to stimulate thinking and create awareness about environmental issues. This year’s theme was “Melting Ice – a Hot Topic?” In support of International Polar year major celebrations were hosted by Norway, with particular emphasis on the city of Tromsø.

In a spirit of environmental awareness, Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador has challenged wealthy country to actively engage in the preservation of our collective natural resources. Correa is asking for $350 million dollars, annually for 10 years, in exchange for not drilling in Ishpingo-Tipitini-Tambocacha fields which are part of the Yasuni National park and are located in the country’s northern jungle. This land has been declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO and it is said that is hold more plant and animal diversity than all of the USA and Canada combined.

Ecuador is a very poor country and they could definitely use the money, whether it comes from oil, or from protecting the jungle. Since president Correa is a known leftist, it would be a very interesting proposal to see him spend this money on education and social improvements, thus making the most of out the project. You can read an article in the International Herald Tribune about this.

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A recent file for copyright of Birkam yoga has attracted new attention to the Indian government’s efforts to safeguard their traditional knowledge. The Indian government has put a group together which is working on protecting material such as ancient texts written in Sanscrit, Urdu and Persian, yoga positions, and traditional healing practices. The Indian government has already set up a database for this knowledge called the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (you need a member to use it), which will eventually function in English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. This project started back in 2001 with collaboration from National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR), the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy, the and Department of Industrial Policy and Promotio. The project is expected to be completed in December 2008.

Such a massive project might initially seem unrealistic and daunting to tackle, specially since patents are usually given to “new” inventions, but given this increasingly growing practice by private companies to patent and restrict use to plants and practices that have been used for millennia, maybe this isn’t such a crazy idea after all.

India’s push to protect its traditional knowledge actually began a while back. In 2003 India proposed a law to fight “protect traditional knowledge and Western piracy [...] knowledge“. This proposal sought to encourage disclosure of traditional knowledge and reward those who help out. Once the information was gathered, it could be patented and thus protected from encroachment.

Earlier this month Suketu Mehta wrote an opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune where she points out the contradictions and complications with this process. She points out that knowledge in India has been protected through caste lines, not legal or economic ones, and that while piracy is common in India, often Indians get upset when Westerners make money of their traditional knowledge. In the end she comments that this new practice of wanting to claim ownership of everything is hurting those in the developing world. In 2005, under pressure from the WTO, the Indian Parliament passed a law making it illegal to make generic versions of patented medications. This in a national with over a billion people, many of which live in absolute poverty.

We’ll see where all this rush to put everything in private hands ends up…

You can see and read more on the subject from PBS; USA Today; BBC.

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30 Days of Sustainability is a project around Vancouver, Canada where citizens, corporations, government and the society at large are engaging in activities that affirm an environmentally sustainable lifestyle. They have great ideas planned for all of the 30 days. For instance tomorrow is “Turn it Off! British Columbia”, when communities throughout B.C. will be dimming or tuning off their lights and appliances. Here is a list of tips to participate in this activity, regardless of where you live.

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Later this year the project to create an Encyclopedia of Life will pick up speed for this ambitious project. The encyclopedia was first proposed by scientist E.O. Wilson who wished to see a type of “one stop shop” for information on the natural sciences; it’s aim is to be the next step up from an earlier project from the University of Arizona called the Tree of Life Web Project. With an initial founding of $12.5 million from the MacArthur Foundation, and the Sloan Foundation, yesterday the beginnings of this encyclopedia were formally revealed to the public. (The completed project is expected to cost $100 million, and take 10 years to complete.)

The idea is to collaborate with all the libraries and repositories in the world who gather information on the natural sciences and aggregate all this information in one location. Yet, as so many individuals have access to post their own material on the web, researchers are working on creating a new software program called “bots” that will trawl the web for further relevant information. The information found in this manner is to then be corroborated by scientist before linking or posting it to the encyclopedia.

A million books and 250,000 research papers from the Natural History Museum in Chicago will be available through the encyclopedia, with much more to come. And while the initial projection is just to gather existing information, the project’s leaders realize that todays technology allows for great collaboration. They realize that just anyone who gets a good picture while on a nature walk, or while bird watching will want to share their discoveries and the encyclopedia will allow for this as well. They also foresee a lot of comparative research to arise for the site.

As it stands, the Encyclopedia of Life has a few sample pages up which show the structure of what is to come. The idea is that every species will get it’s own page, including common and scientific name, type, an image, location, explanation, and even videos where applicable. Each page will also give credit to the creator and will provide sources and expert references. The project is starting off with the bigger species, and leaving amoebas and the like, that can’t always be so clearly defined into species for later on.

The encyclopedia also wishes to be free and in doing so is part of the Linking Open Data Project, which aims at making data available to everyone. There is more on this collaboration at AI3 (Adaptive Information, Adaptive Innovation, Adaptive Infrastructure).

The Guardian has an article about this project today. Boston.com had another article a few days ago.

26.02.08 – On Thursday the Encyclopedia of Life released the first 30,000 pages of information, with an expectation of close to 2 million more to come. Much of the initial information available here has been gathered through software designed to search the web for content. There is an emphasis on species that much is known about such as amphibians, fish and plants. You can read about this in a NYT article here, and from a BBC article here.

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Now when pollution and global warming seem to be an accepted concern, people around the world are trying to come up with new option for running their cars (instead of opting for NOT running their cars, but that’s another story).

Brazil has had great success with ethanol produced from sugar cane, and the USA has been working on producing ethanol from corn, although this isn’t such a great alternative since the agribusiness in the USA consumes so much fertilizer, pesticides, energy and water, that running cars on corn based ethanol won’t really be helping the environment. Yet around the world people are still working on this problem and coming up with interesting, possible, solutions.

In Jagdalpur, India, a few people have begun growing jatropha, which produced seeds that can be made into biofuel. This plant can grow in wetlands and apparently can produce four times as much biofuel per hectare than soybeans, and ten times more than corn! According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor, several Indian states have been encouraging this crop by starting farmers out with 500 free saplings.

Papua New Guinea has been experimenting with biofuel coming from coconut oil which is widely available on the island. An article in the BBC says that the people on the island of Bougainville have received inquiry request for this new development from as far as Europe and Iran. An interesting aspect of this project is that the oil is being produced in backyard refineries, thus creating more employment. There are also projects working to make biofuel from feedstock algae. Currently this sounds easier in theory than in practice, but they might just get it right in the future.

Here’s also a crash course on biofuels – according to the USA department of Energy.

Feeling a little adventuresome? Here are instructions on making your own biofuel.

05.15.07 – Japan is also experimenting with biofuels. The University of Tokyo is funding a project to make biofuel out of discarded rice hulls to be converted into ethanol. Japan is currently the second largest consumer of gasoline, after the USA. Read more about this project here.

06.11.07 – While in some cases biofuels seems to be a favorable approach to the burning of fossil fuels, in Colombia they seem to be causing poverty, displacement and violence. On June 5, 2007 the Guardian had an article about armed forces in Colombia, mainly paramilitaries, driving peasants off the land in order to promote palm oil for biofuel. The bizarre twist seems to be that the paramilitaries have realized that this is a cash crop that can be promoted without fear of eradication by the Colombian government, nor does it attract negative attention from the rest of the world, particularly from the USA and it’s never ending battle to fight drugs. The article also mentioned some of the peasants wanting to fight back, but finding out that deeds to their land had been falsified and thus had been “bought” by larger farmers. Colombia currently has about 3 million internally displaced people, making it one of the world’s worse cases, along with Darfur and Congo. And while the USA has spent over $5 billion for Plan Colombia, coca production rose by 8% last year.

06.21.07 – Today an article in the BBC highlighted yet another possible source for biofuels – fruit. This proposed fuel, called dimethylfuran, is said to hold 40% more energy than ethanol, does not evaporate so quickly, and is less volatile. Still the article mentioned the foreseeable problem of having fuel production compete for land with regular food crops.

06.25.07 – The Christian Science Monitor has yet another article of the world wide ripple effect biofuels are causing. Every year Mexico grows large amounts of agave to produce a national staple, tequila. But currently agave growers are starting to replace their traditional agave fields, some of which have been designated World Heritage sites by UNESCO, in order to grow corn for the growing USA demand for ethanol. This starting trend endangers not only a national, cultural, staple, but also puts the nation’s poorest at risk of hunger, since corn tortillas have been historically relied on to fend off starvation.

06.08.07 – Today the BBC has an article about his palm oil production for biofuels in Kalimantan has displaced numerous farmers off the land, some without any compensation. The EU’s promise to replace 10% of its transportation fuel, along with other demands for biofuels had pushed large companies to produce the crop however possible, in some cases leading to abuse of local farmers. Still negotiations are beginning to take place, some with the help of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which brings together retail, producers, and a variety of NGOs.

08.17.07 – An article in the BBC today says that a UK based team of scientist believe that reforestation and habitat protection would provide better results per square foot, than using the land to produce crops for biofuels. However, they do explain that so called second generation biofuels, meaning those that use feedstock, such as straw, grasses and wood, rather than grain and palm oils offered much better land conversion rates.

08.22.07 – Today the Guardian has an article about how the demand for biofuels, specially those made out of Maize have caused tortilla prices in Mexico to soar. Tortillas are a staple food in Mexicans diets, and the food item that has historically kept the poorest people from starving. The Mexican government negotiated a price freeze in February, but there is still fear that increase demand for Maize for fuel production will continue to jeopardize people’s ability to avoid hunger.

Image info here.

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Today, Michael Pollan (author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “The Botany of Desire”) had a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine about how the agribusiness is who determines what we eat, and how the farm bill, which passes Congress every 5 years, affect almost every aspect of our lives and in turn affects people all over the globe.

For a nation that is increasingly more and more concerned about obesity, it is incredible to realize that dollar for dollar you can get more calories/more food from highly processed foods than you can from more natural foods. A study by Adam Drewnowski from the University of Washington found that a dollar can get you 1,200 calories from cookies or potato chips, but only 250 worth of calories from carrots. This set up hardly makes sense, “junk food” is highly processed and should therefore cost much more, but this is where the farm bill comes into play.

The USA farm bill, among other things, determined which crops will be subsidized, and the five favored crops are corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and cotton, the first three being the main ingredients of “junk food.” These subsidies have created a saturation in the market place for these products at the expense of denying us a more balanced diet at an affordable price. It also means that these products can compete in the international market place at an unfair advantage, and thereby have the ability of being sold in foreign markets at lower prices than locally grown food. The hypocrisy of it hits when you realize that the USA lobbies as much as they can in the world market to prevent other countries from subsidizing their products, but yet that is exactly what happens here. This unfair marketing approach has created a situation in which USA grown corn can sell cheaper in Mexico, than locally grown corn. This also means that Mexicans are eating corn that has a lot more chemical than the local crop. Given the situation it is only obvious that Mexican farmers, and others around the world who have been put out of business by this set up try to make a living elsewhere, in many cases that means immigrating to the USA in search of a better life.

The light at the end of the tunnel here is that more and more groups are starting to realize just how this farm bill affects us. Public health groups are realizing that issues like obesity and diabetes cannot be fully addressed without talking about this bill. Environmentalists see that this bill means massive agribusiness initiatives, which in turn mean more polluted land, air, and water due to the high use of chemicals. Even the huge world organizations seem to be speaking out about this unfair bill. In 2004 the World Trade Organization ruled that USA cotton subsidies were illegal; hopefully they will continue speaking up.

On a related note, a great documentary on this and similar issues is Life and Debt, by Stephanie Black.

06.07.07 – A recent article on thruthout.com continues this discussion around the USA Farm bill. The article explains the dynamics of how big agribusiness benefit from this bill. Large poultry producers benefit from receiving highly subsidized chicken feed (corn). These discrepancies continue when the USA exports the chicken parts that aren’t liked as much here to developing countries, at rock bottom prices, and in doing so they help destroy local production. Ironically a number of peasants in other countries affected by these global economic dynamics end up immigrating to the USA to work at the very plants that helped destroy their initial livelihood.

Image information here.

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In the USA Earth day sprung out of the growing environmental awareness of the 1960, which among other things led to Congress passing the Wilderness Act, and Rachel Carson‘s Silent Spring. In 1970, Senator Gaylor Nelson (D-WI) called for an environmental teach-in which attracted over 20 million people to participate. The United Nations celebrates Earth Day on the vernal equinox which falls in March.

Today the organization Earth Network does a lot of work to promote environmental awareness and to promote legislation that will help curb our ecological footprint. Try this interesting test to see how big your ecological footprint is. Even though my footprint was about a third of what is to be expected where I live, it would still take 2.1 planet to fulfill the demand if everyone on the planet lived at my level. Scary to think that it would then take over 6 planets to meet the demand at our regular level of consumption!

Image by NASA.

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I just got back from the Charles Darwin (1809-1882) exhibit, and even though I already knew the basics of his life (My dad is a big admirer of his), I was still very impressed by it.

Darwin was born into a family of privilege in the UK and as a young man his father pushed him to pursue first a career in medicine and then as a clergy man. His father is quoted as having told him, “you care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.” Initially Darwin didn’t try to go against his father’s wishes, but instead found ways of working around them. If he were to become a clergy man in a small rural community he would then have all the time he wanted to explore the countryside and its wonders.

Luckily for us, Darwin did begin to associate with some of the scientists of the time and was eventually invited by one of them on a world tour aboard the Beagle. This voyage was to last two years, but instead lasted more than five, yet it is also the trip that squarely set Darwin on the path of finding an theory to explain the natural diversity that surrounded him. About this trip he wrote, “The Vogayes of the Beagle“.
By 1842 Darwin had a pretty clear theory to explain evolution though natural selection, but it took him almost two decades to make his findings public. Before making his work public, Darwin wanted more time to think about his theory, and to gather more evidence to convince those who he knew would criticize his work. He also wanted to have a more solid reputation in the field and for the general societal climate to change, since he realized his ideas would be attacked by the church. Eventually a letter outlining another man’s version of natural selection finally got him to publish.

On a curious note; According to the exhibit, Darwin didn’t believe in waste, and often gave his children discarded manuscript pages of the “Origin of Species” to draw on. Because of this there are only 28 pages of the original document known to exist.

Today, 150 years after he first published the “Origin of Species” Darwin regularly becomes a topic of controversy. Oddly (sadly) enough, his work continues to be challenged with the same arguments and objections that were used when his work first came out. The exhibit acknowledges this controversy, but did so with only one small display tucked away in a corner.

My only disappointment with the exhibit was that there were very few original documents on display; almost every single one was a facsimile of the original.

“There is a grandeur in this view of life… from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being evolved.” -Charles Darwin

04.29.07 – Darwin’s writings covered a vast array of subject. You can find practically everything he ever wrote at The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online. Each document has been scanned so you can see the original, but they have also been retyped to allow keyword scanning.

05.16.07 – Tomorrow the University of Cambridge will be releasing digitized versions of approximatley 5,000 letters Darwin wrote over the course of his life. You can find these letters at the Darwin Correspondence Project. The BBC has an article about this today.

1st image, Julia Margaret Cameron’s portrait of Darwin; 2nd image, Voyages of the Beagle, both available here.

Acabo de llegar de la exhibición sobre Charles Darwin (1809-1882), y aunque ya conocía todos los detalles básicos de su vida (my papá es gran admirados suyo), quede bastante impresionada.

Darwin nació en una familia privilegiada en el Reino Unido, y siendo aun un joven su padre lo empujo, primero hacia una carrera en medicina, y luego hacia el clero. Se a encontrado documentación de que su padre le dijo que a él [Darwin] no le importaba nada mas que dispararle a los perros, atrapar ratas, y que llegaría a ser una desgracia para si mismo y toda su familia. Inicialmente Darwin no trato de ir en contra de los deseos de su padre, mas bien encontró formas de navegar entre ellas. Si tendría que unirse al clero, por lo menos lo haría en una comunidad rural donde tendría bastante tiempo libre para explorar el campo y sus maravillas.

Afortunadamente para nosotros, Darwin eventualmente empezó a asociarse con algunos de los científicos de su era, y eventualmente fue invitado, por uno de ellos, a un viaje alrededor del mundo sobre el Beagle. Este viaje estaba planeado para durar dos años, pero termino durando más de cinco, y resulto siendo el viaje que cambiaria su vida, firmemente encausándolo hacia el desarrollo de la teoría que habría de explicar la diversidad que estaba viendo a su alrededor. Sobre este viaje habría de escribir el libro “The Vogayes of the Beagle.”

Hacia 1842 Darwin ya tenia una teoría bastante desarrollada sobre la evolución por medio de la selección natural, pero le tomaría casi dos décadas publicar sus ideas. Antes de publicar sus ideas, Darwin quería más tiempo para pensar sobre tu teoría, y para recoger más evidencia que convenciera a aquellos que sabía serian sus críticos. También quería tener una reputación más sólida en su campo, y que cambiara un poco el clima social, ya que sabia que sus ideas serian atacadas por la iglesia. Eventualmente lo que lo empujo a publicar fue una carta explicando otra versión de la selección natural, escrita por otra persona.

Como nota curiosa; según la exhibición, Darwin no creía en desperdiciar nada, y usualmente le daba a sus hijos paginas descartadas de sus manuscritos de El Origen de las Especies, para que ellos dibujaran. Es por esto que hoy en día solo se conocen 28 paginas del documento original.

Hoy 150 años después de que publicara el Origen de las Especies, Darwin aun es tema de controversia. Curiosamente (tristemente), su trabajo todavía se critica con los mismos argumentos y objeciones que cuando primero se publicaran. La exhibición admite esta controversia, pero lo hizo solamente en un rincón apartado del resto de la exhibición.

La única decepción que tuve con la exhibición fue la falta de documentos originales; la gran mayoría son facsímiles de los originales.

Hay una grandeza en esta visión de la vida… desde un comienzo tan sencillo, hay sin numero de formas hermosas y maravillosas que continúan evolucionando. – Charles Darwin.

04.29.07 – Los escritos de Darwin cubren un gran número de temas. Usted podrá encontrar casi todo lo que algún día escribió en el sitio The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online. Cada documento ha sido escaneado mostrándolos los originales, pero también han sido pasados a maquina para que podamos hacer búsquedas por palabras.

05.16.07 – Mañana la Universidad de Cambridge hará publicas aproximadamente 5.000 cartas que Darwin escribió a lo largo de su vida, en formato digital. Estas pueden ser vistas en el Darwin Correspondence Project. La BBC tiene un articulo sobre el tema.

La 1a imagen es un retrato de Darwin por Julia Margaret Cameron; la 2a imagen en un mapa de los viajes del Beagle, ambas pueden ser encontradas aquí.

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