خداحافظ (xodâhâfez): War, Afghanistan, and the Environment

The woman who watches my children during the day while I am away at work (spreading the word about SoGES and environmental sustainability) is from Afghanistan. I have felt very blessed to find someone who is open to sharing her deep roots to her culture with my children- my 3 year old can speak about 10 words in Persian, and instead of chicken nuggets and french fries for lunch, she regularly has basmati rice with raisins. When I have the chance, I always like to talk to her about her life before America (they came over when Russia invaded Afghanistan in the 1970s) and her culture. Recently she went back to visit her country- to attend the wedding of her son- and as she discussed her trip, you could see sadness behind her eyes. She did not speak much of the war, and the family she has lost, which I’m sure contributed to her heartache, but of how the landscape had so drastically changed from the beautiful green country she remembers from 40 years ago.

This story struck me again this week as the first case study for SoGES’s Educating for Sustainability, Peace and Reconciliation: Managing the Conflicts of Human Needs and Place with Finite Resources Research Working Group came across my desk. In the study, Connecting the Dots of Sustainability, Diversity, and Violence: The “Canaries” in the Afghanistan “Mineshaft,” an article written by Joshua Frank for Truthout, is quoted as describing the clear but neglected connections between the running wars in this region, their devastating impact on the environment, and how seriously the future has been already compromised. Frank writes: “Natural habitat in Afghanistan has endured decades of struggle, and the War on Terror has only escalated the destruction. The lands most afflicted by warfare are home to critters that most Westerners only have a chance to observe behind cages in our city zoos: gazelles, cheetahs, hyenas, Turanian tigers and snow leopards among others. . . As bombs fall, civilians are not the only ones put at risk, and the lasting environmental impacts of the war may not be known for years, perhaps decades, to come.”

For me, it is one thing to read articles that describe the never ending impacts of war on both the human and environmental condition, but it is another to have it described by someone who is truly connected to the devastation.

I feel that the work the Educating for Sustainability, Peace and Reconciliation: Managing the Conflicts of Human Needs and Place with Finite Resources Research Working Group is doing is critical to providing another level of understanding to the devastation war can take on a country, their culture, and their people. Our environment is such a part of who we are and when that is destroyed - as quickly and in such a destructive manner as war - what does that do to the psyche of an entire culture?

The Research Working Group raises other important questions:

Where are the environmental activists on these issues of war and violence? When will the diversity advocates connect their arguments to the larger issues of biodiversity that underlie all life? How can the advocates for peace and reconciliation broaden their base and build bridges to both the environmental and the multicultural movements?

When my daughter waves خداحافظ (xodâhâfez - goodbye) to the cheetah at the Denver Zoo, these thoughts will resonate with me...another way of viewing the destruction of war, and its impacts on future generations – when will something be done?


Read the full case study: Connecting the Dots of Sustainability, Diversity, and Violence: The “Canaries” in the Afghanistan “Mineshaft” in the January edition of the SoGES Scholars Newsletter to be published later this month. Join our mailing list to be notified when it is out.

Blog written by Kerri McDermid, School of Global Environmental Sustainability

New farm tactics urged to stem climate's impact on food supply

Although it has been posted for several weeks now, we recently ran across an article in The Globe and Mail, discussing climate change and global food supply. One of the things that was most interesting about this article is that they provided a sampling from the CGIAR (the food-security arm of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) wish list, that states what we can start doing now to slow down or prevent further obstacles to feeding world populations.

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Here is their wish list:

Water
In developing countries, 70 per cent to 90 per cent of total water use is devoted to agriculture. Technologies such as water harvesting, better storage, use of wastewater and drip irrigation must be more widely employed, particularly in the southern-hemisphere countries where temperature increases will have the most dramatic effects.

Crops
With less water, higher temperatures and more people, farmers will need to grow more with less. Stress-tolerant varieties of staple crops such as maize, potato and rice are already available, and more advanced varieties are on the way, including drought-tolerant beans and flood-tolerant rice. The key is getting more of the new, high-powered seeds into fields everywhere, including poor and hungry countries.

Soils
Teaching farmers in vulnerable countries how to increase the organic nutrient content in soil is also critical to the success of the new-age, hardier crops, and for realizing the potential for plants to hold carbon. Key options are advocating "conservation agriculture," in which soil is minimally disturbed, and "eco-farming," which promotes planting of several crop varieties to achieve ecological balance in the field.

Pests and diseases
Balmier year-round temperatures are expected to breed new pests and give familiar seasonal bugs lengthier lives. Computer models to predict the impact of temperature increases on pests will add a degree of predictability to where and when outbreaks are likely to happen, so strategies such as breeding disease-resistant crops can be implemented in advance.

Livestock
Raising livestock - from producing feed to end-stage processing - already accounts for about 18 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Demand for meat and milk protein is on an upswing in developing countries in spite of the ever-looming climate crunch. Breeding more efficient and less-methane-producing animals can lessen the public health toll.

Fish
As climate change puts pressure on other food sources, people are expected to eat more fish. But an over-reliance on aquaculture also poses dangers. Pilot projects are investigating ways to mitigate the risks of over-fishing, develop salt-tolerant fish varieties (to increase supply) and help farmers diversify by adding fish farms, which can help water and feed livestock.

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Their wish list really is comprised of things that we can start doing now. These are in no means an answer to all of our problems, but they are certainly a step in the right direction.

Original Globe and Mail article written by Jessica Leeder, and published on 12/10/2009.

The Other Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis in Global Land Use

The Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota tackles global food security through looking at global land use issues. In October, Jon Foley, director of the Institute wrote a very thought provoking piece for Yale's E360 magazine, which inspired this great video on the subject:

Please Help the World

With the world’s eyes on Copenhagen, members of CSU’s official delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are there listening, contributing, and reporting back on their experiences. With talks just getting underway yesterday, it will be interesting to see how their week progresses and what the world will soon decide (or not).

We wanted to share you the film from the opening ceremony of COP15, and as the blog Elephant Journal so eloquently put it...

“For that’s what this is all about…not us. We can joke about how darned cold this winter is. But the fact is, and it’s one no one can dispute, is that we (cars, buildings, factories, domesticated animals) are generating great amounts of pollution, which gets trapped in our atmosphere…and that even small temperature changes over time will radically alter our weather systems, the patterns of our swirling oceans…and many of the changes are already occurring, as evidenced by the deadly spread of the no longer frozen-and-killed pine-tree-eating beetle right here in my backyard, the Rocky Mountains. It’s COP15. The last first great chance for the world community to gather and move beyond politics as usual, and do something truly great—for the next seven generations.”





"Please Help the World", film from the opening ceremony of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 (COP15) in Copenhagen from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark. Shown on December 7, 2009 at COP15.

Director: Mikkel Blaabjerg Poulsen, producers: Stefan Fjeldmark and Marie Peuliche, cinematographer: Dan Laustsen, production designer: Peter de Neergaard, editor: Morten Giese, composer: Davide Rossi, sound design: Carl Plesner, production company: Zentropa RamBuk, advisory consultants: Mogens Holbøll, Bysted A/S and Christian Søndergaard, Attention Film ApS.

Soils and Food: SoGES develops new working group

As Americans prepares for their Thanksgiving dinners this week, it is interesting to walk through the grocery store and see so many people with carts filled to the brim containing potatoes, butter, squash, turkey, and bread. As we consume our big meal of excess, how many people’s dinner conversations will drift to food security in future years? As Americans, these are things we don’t think usually about- especially this time of the year- but this is not necessarily the case on other parts of the world.

We’ve spent our last few blog posts discussing climate refugees and climate change, and the impact it will eventually bring to our own supermarkets and dinner tables. This week again, we can’t stop thinking about how much climate change is currently effecting populations and food supplies- although for now, mainly in the developing world. When looking at soil degradation related to climate change, global hotspots of soil degradation with a high priority for soil restoration and carbon sequestration include Sub-Saharan Africa, central and south Asia, China, the Andean region, the Caribbean, and the acid savannas of South America. As stated in R. Lal’s viewpoint paper, ‘poor farmers have passed on their suffering to the land through extractive practices. They cultivate marginal soils with marginal inputs, produce marginal yields, and perpetuate marginal living and poverty.’

On this thought, we have worked to pool together Colorado State University’s extensive intellectual resources on this subject and created our first Soil Sustainability Working Group. Recognizing the issues regarding soils and food security, the Soil Sustainability Working Group aims to transform the information topology of soil science and enable scientists to more effectively test theories and advance knowledge. Understanding soil dynamics is fundamental to dealing with environmental issues such as climate change, food and energy production, clean drinking water, management of reactive nitrogen, and conservation of biodiversity. The working group is comprised of seven experts in the field of soil sciences and will leverage the diverse strengths of Colorado State University scientists by coordinating research activities and providing a platform that integrates soil data from disparate sources to facilitate more productive interaction between soil scientists and decision-makers.

Soil Sustainability Working Group Members

Diana Wall from the School of Global Environmental Sustainability
Rich Conant from the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory
Francesca Cotrufo from Department of Soil and Crop Sciences
Gene Kelly from the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences
Keith Paustian from Department of Soil and Crop Sciences
Lee Sommers from the Agricultural Experiment Station
Joe von Fischer from the Department of Biology

Climate Change & Food Security- getting more press

As we look ahead to Copenhagen, wondering about the decision that will be made, other meetings are taking place that focus on the challenges we will face as climate change begins to effect global cycles. On Monday, during a U.N. sponsored food security summit in Rome, a plan was presented to combat threats to global food security, with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, tying these threats to climate change. "Today's event is critical. So is the climate change conference in Copenhagen next month. There can be no food security without climate security," Ban said.

Thinking about food security relating to climate change is perhaps a way to get large sections of the world’s population to understand true implications of not acting. Many people who live in inland areas (Colorado for example) have yet to see or understand the potential devastation that may be in our future (New Orleans, Burma, Indonesia, anyone?).

Climate change relating to food supply is not a new concept. In 1993, a study out of the University of Oxford, Environmental Change Unit, stated that the prospective climate change of global warming (with associated changes in hydrological regimes and other climatic variables) induced by the increasing concentration of radiatively active greenhouse gases change could have far-reaching effects on patterns of trade among nations, development, and food security.

At least 16 years later, this serious issue is making more headway into mainstream media with more studies coming out about the potential future we face. In October, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), released a study estimating that by 2050, irrigated wheat yield will have fallen by 30 percent and irrigated rice by 15 percent, and prices skyrocketing: wheat by 170 to 194 percent, rice 113 to 121 percent, and maize 148 to 153 percent higher.

If we can develop some sort of understanding about climate's effect on food supply, maybe this will develop into dialog on the full deck of cards. How does decreasing crop yields and increasing demand due to population growth effect land use isses? How do we find balance between agriculture vs. biofuel production vs. preserving our natural forests vs. all other land needs while we are slowly losing usable land to rising sea levels? How will this debate develop and effect political boundaries, political wealth and world power? Will these political issues develop into the first climate wars (as discussed in Michael Nash's documentary Climate Refugees)?

Being able to put number estimates to something that can’t be escaped (no matter your geography)- food security- may be a good way to create a larger impact of understanding for diverse audiences. It is encouraging to see the light being cast on such serious elements of climate change. One can only hope it opens dialog and thinking on the full impact climate change will have on our future.

The Human Face of Climate Change

Upon learning that we would be hosting the exclusive university screening of Mike Nash’s important documentary- Climate Refugees, it got us thinking about how to better communicate the ramifications of climate change. The opportunity for CSU to share this film with our community is a good first step.
Michael Nash’s documentary brings the mass global migration of humans caused by climate change to the spotlight with harrowing images, and strong stories. The visual provides the slap in the face that many people need to wake up and realize that this is something that will affect their lives- not just people living in far away countries. Putting a human face on an issue makes it resonate stronger and involves emotion.

As researchers, we know that it is more than just weather and sea levels, but how do we communicate this to the world at large? How do we help create the motivation for change? We won’t be able to answer these questions in this blog, but it is something that is churning in many heads campus wide.

Yesterday at our first panel discussion, "The World Gathers in Copenhagen: What to Expect and Why it is so Critical to Us," some interesting dialog was formed around the need to educate. Student attendees posed questions on how we go about creating dialog in the public that the decisions they make, ranging from the everyday things like meat consumption to the higher level concepts of cap and trade, change the global dimensions of climate, and thus will have a domino effect on how we live our lives in the future. It was a good start to generating collective thought on such an important issue.

We look forward to the panel discussion that follows the Climate Refugee screening, to see again that spark of collective thinking to begin solving such serious problems.

This exclusive university screening is free and open to the public. Colorado State students, faculty, and staff will have the opportunity to get tickets before tickets become available to the general public.

Starting Wednesday, Nov. 4, CSU students, faculty, and staff can pick up their tickets from the CSU Campus Box Office with a valid campus ID. Up to four tickets per ID will be issued. Tickets are not available online. Tickets for the general public will be available starting Friday, Nov. 6. The Campus Box Office, located in the Lory Student Center, is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. – 6 p.m.

For more information on Climate Refugees, please visit http://www.climaterefugees.com/.