Rose Bridger

Sakhalin oil workers swept away

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:43:00 +0000

Only a few weeks ago, on 18^th December last year, the Kolskaya oil rig capsized in a fierce storm, in temperatures of -17C , some 200 kilometres off Sakhalin island. The oil rig was being towed, by an icebreaker and a two boat, back to the island, which is to the east of Russia in the Sea of Okhotsk, after completing a drilling mission. Rescue efforts were hampered by the strong winds and waves up to 4 metres high, and the search was called off as night fell. Fourteen people were rescued alive, at least four people died, and there were fears for 63 other people in board, as the rig might have overturned before they were able to escape on to life rafts.

The Sakhalin accident happened as the rig was being towed from the eastern peninsula of Kamchatka to Sakhalin by an icebreaker and a tug. The transportation ministry stated that the platform started sinking after it was hit by a strong wave, which broke some equipment and portholes in the crew's dining room. The lifeboats were washed away by a 5 metre wave.

Map of Sakhalin

View Larger Map

When in first happened, the accident was reported by the BBC. Briefly, it was mentioned on the news bulletins every hour. But after the sinking of the oil rig, with lives in the balance, and an inevitably higher death toll with people missing in the harsh seas with little chance of rescue, there was no more news. Russia Today reported that the day after the accident, 19^th December, rescuers found the four lifeboats, but they were all empty. Built in 1985, the Kolskaya rig was one of the largest oil rigs used in Russia, 70 metres long and 80 metres wide. The storm, with winds of 70 kilometers per hour waves up to six metres high, had damaged two of the air tanks, which gave buoyancy to the platform, causing the rig to tip over. A news station in Murmansk reported that the crew's captain and safety officer had tried to persuade their superiors to postpone the operation to avoid the powerful storm, but to no avail.

There is a sharp contrast between the sparse media coverage of this accident at sea and the giant Costa Concordia cruise ship which hit rocks off the

Italy

, with 4,000 people on board. At the time of writing the number of people known to have died is 17 and there is no hope of finding the 15 people who remain unaccounted for alive. Not so many people were affected by the Sakhalin accident, but there was a prolonged, agonising search, and a higher death toll. But Sakhalin is in a remote location which the global media rarely report on. More scrutiny by the world’s mainstream media would help improve the safety of offshore drilling.

By 22nd December, six more bodies were recovered from the Sea of Okhotsk, the known death toll had risen to 17, and 36 people were still missing. The oil rig had sunk in just 20 minutes. Investigation of the accident was underway, and a breach of safety regulations was suspected. On that day, the active search was called off because of a cyclone in the area, and because all hope of finding further survivors had been lost. So the total death toll at Sakhalin was 53 people. There were more fatalities than the May 2010 explosion of the BP operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 workers.

The BBC did not give any background information about the immensity and strategic importance of the Sakhalin oil project. This might be partially due to the extraordinary remote geography. The island is to the north of Japan, seven time zones and a nine hour flight from Moscow. Temperatures can plummet as low as -40°C. On the other hand, the BBC, and many TV channels, are currently obsessed with everything ‘extreme’ - ice road truckers and pilots, celebrities and wannabee celebs surviving in the jungle with nothign but insects and a camera crew to sustain them, Arctic communities, wildlife in polar regions and deep under the oceans. We get programmes about the wonder of the environment, and the risks from the damaging of fossil fuel driven industrial activity in particular climate change. There was even an episode of the series Frozen Planet, presented by David Attenborough, about the climate change threat to the wildlife and indigenous communities in frozen polar regions, (though the series is to be aired in the US, by Discovery and other channels without this episode). But we see little of the infrastructure which causes the environmental damage.

So here’s some background on the Sakhalin oil project, one of the biggest and most technically challenging in the world. It’s part of this era of extreme oil, the endgame of the oil age as we struggle to extract more inaccessible deposits. More technology and more energy is used to over-ride the constraints of difficult terrain to extract the depleting supplies of oil which remain - ever deeper under the oceans, encroaching further into Arctic and Antarctic regions, and low grade supplies such as tar sands and shale gas.

The Sakhalin oilfields were discovered in the 1970s but not exploited until recently because offshore and covered in a sheet of ice up to 2 metres thick for six long winter months each year. The oil could not be accessed until the advent of more powerful drilling technologies in the 1990s.

Logistics firm Panalpina was involved in the early years of the Sakhalin project. In their magazine from 2003, Issue 1 when the project was launched. It is rare to find such detailed information from even a few years ago on the internet, in web years, 2003 is practically pre-historic. The magazine cover image shows the beauty of the strip of island, mountainous and heavily forested. But it’s a brutal environment for human habitation, one of the harshest outposts in the entire Russian empire. It used to be a prison camp. Playwright Anton Chekhov visited the island in 1890, when it accommodated 10,000 convicts and exiles, and described it as ‘hellish’ and ‘the most depressing place in our land I have been’.

Panalpina played a major role in delivering equipment, by sea and air, for the Sakhalin oil drilling consortium, which was formed in 1995, by Exxon-Mobil, Shell and a range of other companies from Japan, the US, the UK, Netherlands and India. Sakhalin lives up to Panalpina’s description as a ‘gargantuan logistics’ project’. In 2002, more than 135,000 tonnes of equipment was delivered, including what was, at the time, the world’s largest oil rig. It was from Texas, and the power of the sea delayed landing the rig on the beach for two weeks. Air charters flew in smaller items of equipment from Seoul, Vladivostok and Luxemburg.

Exxon-Mobil reported that Sakhalin-1 commenced production in 2005, following 36 million worker hours of construction, the largest foreign direct investment in Russia. The project established Russia as key oil and gas supplier to Asia.

That was just Sakhalin-1. By 2006 Sakahlin-2 was taking shape. Business Week describes the ‘immense new landmarks’ rising through the mists as Sakhain-2 was constructed - drilling platforms, pipelines, liquid natural gas, (LNG) facilities. Sakhalin-2 taps into oil and gas beneath three platforms off the northeast coast of the island, to be pumped 800 kilometres along pipelines to the southern tip of the island, onwards in tankers to Japan, South Korea, China, Mexico and the west coast of the US. All the equipment had to be imported, including oil platforms built in Korea and towed across the Sea of Japan. Platforms are heavily reinforced against ice floes and earthquakes, as the area is seismically active. Two pipelines, one for gas, one for oil, run through rugged mountain terrain, crossed 1,000 rivers and streams. The environmental risk to salmon fishing led to protests by indigenous people. Sakhalin Environment Watch has documented the environmental risks, legal issues - including a catalogue of violations, and financing which has relied on IFIs (International Finance Institutions) including the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development).

By the beginning of 2011, the Sakhalin-1 project had exported approximately 300 million barrels of oil to world markets. In January, Popular Science reported that the world’s biggest and deepest ‘extended reach oil well’ had been drilled. This entailed drilling 12.4 kilometres down into the ground onshore and 11.4 kilometres outwards beneath the ocean floor. In fact, since the beginning of the Sakhalin in 2003, the project has boasted seven out of ten of the largest oil wells on the planet. The seven-storey oil rig nicknamed Yastreb, which translates as ‘The Hawk’, is the most powerful in the world, equipped with six generators, and the drill torque (the rotating pressure) is 444,300 kilogrammes per square metre. The rig has two walls, built to withstand the cold and earthquakes. The crew anticipated that more records would be broken in the coming months, but the year ended with the tragic accident.

New aviation biofuels - a major breakthrough?

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 12:55:00 +0000

Back in October, there was a wave of publicity hailing a major breakthrough in development of alternative jet fuel. Virgin Atlantic announced that it was working in partnership with two biofuel firms, Lanzatech and Swedish Biofuels, pioneering a process to produce jet fuel from waste gas emissions from steel plants. Carbon monoxide (CO) from steel plants, usually flared off as carbon dioxide, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, are being compressed and converted into fuel. A pilot project is underway in New Zealand, a demonstration plant has been commissioned in Shanghai, commercial operations are scheduled to commence by 2014, with the fuel initially used for flights from Shanghai and Delhi to London. Sir Richard Branson, President of Virgin Atlantic, stated that the technology could be applied to 65 per cent of the world’s steel mills, and could also be applied to aluminum and cement plants.

This project promises to capture greenhouse gases from industry, and that would be a positive move, a step change in green technology. So far, there has been a lot of talk about this, but little action, and new power plants and factories, including metal plants, are being built without this technology. But another aspect of the project, the production of biofuel from waste gas seemed not just a truly miraculous breakthrough, but too good to be true. So I tried to find out about the firms involved and the actual process used to make the fuel. It appears that my hunch might be correct, that, although the biofuel might incorporate these waste gases, an input of biomass, living material, is also required.

Virgin Atlantic’s announcement on the People and Planet section of the firm’s website states that: ‘The process involves waste gases from industrial steel production being captured, fermented and chemically converted’. There is a video showing a schematic of the fuel production process.

Blink and you’ll miss it, but, at the beginning, along with the waste gases, a biomass or MSW (municipal solid waste) input is shown. This indicates that, in addition to the waste gases, biomass is required to make the fuel. Virgin’s repeated description of the new fuel as biofuel (my italics) certainly implies that living material is involved in its production. If a biofuel does not contain biomass, then it is not a biofuel.

If biomass is being used, the new biofuel does still demonstrate progress, in the form of non-food biofuels. Most current biofuel crops, most notably corn and palm, displace food crops, contribute to rising food prices and world hunger. But with any biomass input, I would be sceptical about the airline’s claims that: ‘This next generation technology overcomes the complex land use issues associated with some established biofuels.’ The new project sounds like a major step forward from Virgin’s first biofuel test flight in 2008, which was partially powered by oil from coconuts, and babassu which is used as cooking oil. But, the use of any type of biomass to make fuel, even a non-edible feedstock, still has a land use impact. Even if the biomass input is MSW instead of a crop, the description of these inputs as ‘waste’ can be a lazy catch-all for kinds of materials, such as wood, food and garden waste, which could be diverted from the waste stream and used for another purpose other than burning as fuel, recycled, re-used or composted.

Sir Richard Branson promoted the new fuel initiative with his usual ambition and optimism, saying ‘I think this is the most important announcement that I've made in my lifetime’. In the video, he says the airline and its project partners are turning CO into jet fuel, there is no mention of any other input to produce the fuel. He said that the project will mean the airline can not just meet, but exceed, its pledge of a 30 per cent carbon reduction per passenger kilometre by 2020. Achieving this will depend on dramatically scaling up the demonstration project, and with growing evidence that greenhouse gas emissions from some biofuels are worse than fossil fuels, for example a 2010 study by nine European environmental groups, it is vital that the entire production process for new biofuels is subject to scrutiny. Virgin says that the fuel promises a 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional kerosene, based on a lifecycle analysis, so I suggest making that research available. The announcement, and Branson’s blog, invite you to find out more on a website called Change is in the Air, but the links don’t work.

If the reporting of this new biofuel fuel project has been sloppy and inaccurate, if there is a biomass input to the new fuel, it is spreading scientific illiteracy. The distinction between a biofuel production process which involves waste gases, and a biofuel which is made from waste gases is an important one. Implementation of new technologies must be based on reality, not partial information which suggests that the quest for sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels is more advanced than it actually is. This leads to falsely reassuring notions that seemingly intractable problems have been resolved, so we can continue with industry as usual, including uncontrolled aviation expansion, and everything will be OK. I do see value in Virgin’s positive attitude. Nothing major is ever achieved without enthusiasm, a vision for a better future, the willingness to take risks, over-reaching yourself. But optimism needs to be balanced with hard-headed critical analysis. We have to face up to the barriers which remain, to put the problems out there for open debate, in as much detail as the achievements and the potential.

In the

, Lanzatech, one of Virgin’s partners in the project, has been granted $3 million from the FAA for another biofuel project, which was announced at the beginning of December. Green Car Congress outlines the fuel production process in some detail, and it is clear that there is a biomass input. It explains that, in addition to gases emitted by industry, ‘synthesis gas derived from lignin, a byproduct of cellulosic ethanol’ will be utilised to create the new fuel.

Lignin is part of the cell walls of plants. It is inedible and the supply is potentially abundant. It is easy to source lignin, but will it be possible to scale this project up, to source sufficient quantities of lignin which is a byproduct of cellulosic ethanol production? This depends on a dramatic breakthrough in cellulosic biofuels, and the indications are that this is not on the horizon. Maybe there are some wildly successful cellulosic projects I don’t know about, which could supply the lignin, but I doubt it. So far, scale production of cellulosic biofuel, from the non-food components of crops, such as husks, stalks, straw and corn stover, has proved disastrous in the

, as shown in this article in Wall Street Journal ‘The Cellulosic Ethanol Debacle’. Congress mandated the purchase of 250 million gallons in 2011, from sources such as woodchips, stalks and switchgrass. Only 6.6 million gallons were actually produced. The mandate was for more than 37 times the volume of cellulosic fuel which was actually produced.

The ‘half dozen or so companies’ which received subsidies to produce cellulosic fuel have failed. One firm, Cello, declared bankruptcy in 2010. Grants were given to Cello in spite of the fact that it had not built a plant, or even proved that it had the technology to produce cellulosic biofuel. In 2009, a civil fraud case ruled that Cello had lied about how much cellulosic fuel it could produce. Some of the fuel Cello showed to investors was derived not from plants, but from petroleum. WSJ summed it up as: ‘Congress subsidized a product that didn't exist, mandated its purchase though it still didn't exist… and is now doubling down on the subsidies in the hope that someday it might exist.’

Yet, the US government continues to bankroll cellulosic biofuel projects. Government funding for research and projects to develop and prove the technology would be the sensible way forward, but, again, the grants assume that the technology will work and firms are contracted to supply considerable amounts of fuel. In September the federal government loaned Abengoa Bioenergy $134 million to build a cellulosic plant in Kansas, forecasting is that this will produce about 23 million barrels a year. POET, which advertises itself as the ‘world's largest ethanol producer’, was awarded a $105 million loan guarantee for cellulosic fuel by the Department of Energy.

Only two days ago, Gevo, a firm which received millions of dollars from the US government to develop fuels made from cellulosic materials such as grass and wood chips, announced that producing fuel from these sources is too expensive. So, Gevo will be using corn instead, and will retrofit its plants to make butanol instead of ethanol. Along with supplying butanol for the chemicals industry, Gevo has been contracted to produce 11,000 gallons of jet fuel for the U.S. Air Force for test flights.

Yet Gevo is one of the beneficiaries of the recent FAA grants for aviation biofuel, Gevo is to supply the biofuel for a Honeywell OUP project, and stated that the biofuel ‘can be produced from a variety of starch and sugar feedstocks, including corn’. Funding has been awarded to a project which merely holds out the possibility of inedible feedstock, with UOP stating that: ‘In the future, inedible sources, such as corn stover, bagasse and wood residues, could also be used as feedstocks.’ But, in the meantime, more US taxpayers’ money is has been handed over for aviation biofuels which compete with food supplies. Funding should not be used to contract supply from unproven technology. Funds should be dedicated to research and demonstration projects to prove, and improve, the technology for new biofuels.

We’ve been Trumped

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:11:00 +0000

Multi-billionaire Donald Trump began flying around in an especially ostentatious new plane in 2010. The plane’s fuel tank has a capacity for over 36,280 kilogrammes of fuel. That’s a hefty carbon footprint for flying just one businessman, his wife and a few mates around. This video gives an inside tour, (preceded by a car advert, sorry about that).

It’s a refitted Boeing 757, which would normally seat 43 passengers. There is a boardroom, work desks, big flat screen television, a bedroom with ample closet space, a posh loo. There is gold plating everywhere, a shower with gold plated taps, and gold leaf on the seat belt buckles. The Trump name is emblazoned on the fuselage, the white seats, and all over the fittings inside. Trump’s vast wealth and private plane makes him one of the beneficiaries of US tax breaks to private jet owners. These tax breaks have continued under the Obama administration, and helped the private jet industry recover quickly from the economic downturn.

Trump has already made several flights to Scotland in his Boeing 757, where his $1 billion golf resort development on the coast of Aberdeenshire is underway. Along with the 18-hole golf course, with ambitions to be the ‘world’s greatest golf course’, the development includes a luxury hotel and 500 luxury homes, all requiring an access road. Vast swathes of natural vegetation are to be replaced with a monoculture of short grass, and residents of Menie have been subjected to compulsory purchase and are faced with threat of forced eviction. This is documented on the website Tripping Up Trump, which likens the development to another round of highland clearances. I can’t wait for local screenings of this documentary You’ve Been Trumped, which won an award at the 2011 Hamptons International Film Festival. This is the trailer. The intimidation of local people looks horrendous.

Aberdeen Airport is near the resort, and Trump has backed expansion, adding 124 metres to the northern runway. The runway extension opened in October, and the airport predicts this will help generate an additional 205,000 passengers by 2015. The airport and the golf resort are tightly intertwined in the area’s official tourism strategy. This is myopic and risky, putting too many eggs in one basket. Whilst, aviation remains a growth industry and traffic levels are predicted to increase further, traffic projections for individual airports are notoriously unreliable. Spending millions on vast swathes of concrete to accommodate flimsy growth predictions is a poor bet to boost tourism, jobs and other economic activity. Aberdeen Airport has a major role supporting the oil and gas industry, so will be casting around for new markets as the last dregs of the North Sea deposits are extracted. But banking on Trump’s gold resort is clutching at straws.

Aside from the negative social and environmental impacts, of the airport expansion and the Trump development, the economic viability of the resort is likely to be affected by the low light levels, cold, rain and wind in the long winters. Golf enthusiasts, particularly the wealthy people that this resort is targeting, will have the option to jet off to golf courses in warmer climates. Nevertheless, the Scottish Centre for Tourism said that the new air routes and the Trump development would combine to attract people to the Aberdeenshire area. In 2010, Aberdeen Airport was in talks with no less than 22 airlines, for long haul and short haul routes. China and

Russia

are expected to be key markets for to attract rourists to Trump’s golf resort.

Trump has been using his money and influence to block more positive developments anywhere in the vicinity of the golf resort. He opposed a wind farm next to the site, 11 turbines off the coast in Aberdeen Bay, complaining about spoiling beautiful coastal countryside. The development still might go ahead in spite of criticism from him and other opponents. Yes, wind turbines can endanger birds, and they do have a visual and noise impact on the environment, but it’s offshore so residents won’t be too badly affected. With North Sea oil running out, ambitious, admittedly imperfect, innovations in renewable energy are vital. Trump even objected to a proposal for a cats and dogs home in the area. Meanwhile, the golf resort is scheduled to open next year.

Whilst lobbying for runway expansion to inflict more aircraft noise on people living under the flightpaths of Aberdeen Airport, Trump took the opposite view when airport expansion threatened to affect his own quality of life. In 2010, he filed a suit against expansion of Palm Beach Airport, attempting to block plans for a new commercial runway. The public statement was that the suit aimed to protect Palm Beach County citizens against noise, but the lawsuit also reflected his personal interests as it attempted to prevent planes from flying over his Mar-a-Largo residence and club. Trump went on to complain about a proposal to disband noise monitoring equipment at several locations around Palm Beach Airport. The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) held back on approving runway expansion, as traffic levels were not increasing, and not projected to do so substantially, and Trump dropped his lawsuit against the airport’s expansion in September.

Private jets and the 0.1 per cent

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:27:00 +0000

Private jets, symbolic of the further concentration of wealth among the most privileged 1 per cent since the economic downturn, are getting a bit of shtick from the Occupy movement in the US. This criticism is well founded. Private jet sales and usage are actually are actually growing, defying the downturn.

An article in Executive Travel Magazine states that the number of private jet flights in the US did reduce by 20 per cent in 2009, but, in 2010, there was a fast turnaround to growth, of 11 per cent. John Rosanvallon, chair of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association welcomed tax breaks which helped to secure this recovery of the industry, saying:

Flying hours are steadily on the rise, and there are two critical U.S. tax provisions in place that will help our industry recover. One is the extension of a 50 percent bonus depreciation allowance through 2011; the other allows companies to deduct the full cost of new planes from revenues.

President Obama has repeatedly criticised tax break for private jets, six times in a single speech in June, which could potentially bring in an estimated $3 billion to the treasury in a decade. He is talking the talk, appearing to support the 99 per cent who are paying for higher fuel costs for less glamorous travel in cars and buses, but the thing is, the tax break on depreciation was part of his own administration’s stimulus package.

As of 2010, there were 11,000 private jets in the US. Only a minute percentage of people, at the pinnacle of wealth, could afford to own one. A Wall Street Journal article explains that the cheapest new entry level jet costs $5 million, plus $500,000 per year in operating costs. The majority of jet owners have a net 'worth' of $100 million plus, and ‘earn’ at least $10 million a year. Only 29,000 US citizens have net worth of over $100 million. That is just 0.1 per cent of the population, a far narrower segment of the population than the wealthiest 1 per cent.

Not all users of private jets own the planes outright. For those not quite rich enough to own a private jet, or with other spending priorities, chartering one requires deep pockets, costing around $3,000 per hour. For many senior executives, the corporate jet perk, which can come in the form of a certain number flying hours, is an important component of their remuneration package. There is compelling evidence that use of a corporate jet is even more of a perk than realised, that the planes are used extensively for leisure. A Wall Street Journal analysis of FAA flight records between 2007 and 2010 showed that the planes make frequent landings at resorts where executives happen to have holiday homes, an indication that personal use of corporate jets far exceeded the level which was disclosed to shareholders: ‘dozens of jets operated by publicly traded corporations made 30% or more of their trips to or from resort destinations, sometimes more than 50%’.

The companies only provide sketchy information to the FAA about the purpose of the flights, and who was on board, but I’ll bet that a lot of the time the high flying executives are sitting on the beach, by the pool, playing golf or whatever. And all it requires is a few supposedly vitally important messages on blackberries and other gadgets, for it to count as a business trip. An attorney representing executives in negotiating pay packages claimed that it is difficult to distinguish between CEO’s work and leisure time, something that the rest of us couldn’t swing past employers and clients. We only get paid if we turn up when we have to, fill in time sheets, and deliver what we are contractually obliged to do.

Calling these planes ‘corporate jets’ or ‘business jets’ is often a misnomer, and its not just about being creative in how the use of the planes is presented to regulators and company shareholders. It’s about flattering executives that they are staggeringly busy and important, rushing around between supposedly vital meetings, that their luxury travel is vital for galvanising the economy. It’s much like so called ‘sports utility vehicles’, SUV’s, gas guzzling heavy vehicles which are mainly used for activity which has nothing to do with exercise. Driving one of the urban tractors is the very opposite of sport, and they are used for the same sort of journeys as regular cars, trips into town, shopping, school run, gym etc.

Internationally, there is further evidence that the richest 0.1 per cent are splashing out on private jets. Globally, there was a fall in orders for private jets in 2009 and 2010, but this was confined to the smaller models, mostly used by executives of small businesses which had been hit by the recession. In contrast, deliveries of the largest private planes, used by wealthy executives of big companies, grew by 13 per cent. Growth rate is expected to increase in 2012. The growth rate is higher in Asia, but this if from a much lower starting point than in the US. As of 2010, there were only 600 private jets in the entire Asia-Pacific region. Unsurprisingly, China is a key target market, with huge growth expected from just 100 private jets in 2010. Apparently, the marketing strategy is different from the usual process of persuading owners to start with a small plane and upgrade as their wealth accumulates. A representative of private jet manufacturer Gulfstream said that in China, once a new customer decides to make a purchase they will start out with a top if the line jet. People in China with private jets will number fewer than 0.1 per cent of the population, by a few decimal points I reckon, but these individuals will be wielding the heftiest carbon footprints.

Perfect hummus - it’s all in the detail

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 09:02:00 +0000

Most of my cooking is slapdash. I can’t be bothered with reading recipes, weighing ingredients, measuring or timing. It’s just a matter of throwing together a basic curry, chilli, goulash, pasta dish, savoury pancakes, salad, or stew with a range of vegetables, with nuts or seeds. Also, I don't like shopping enough to hunt around for particular high quality brands, or speciality ingedients.

With hummus though, little differences in the ingredients, and how you cook it, really affect how it turns out. I make great hummus, though I’m not sure how much is down to how I do it, or the fact that it is fresher than what is available in most shops. The addition of the lemon zest, from the lemon peel, gives the flavour a real zip. Also, I leave out olive oil. The tahini has plenty of oil in it, and olive oil has a strong flavour which I think dominates and conflicts with the other ingredients. Nutrition wise, hummus is great, chickpeas are low on the GI (Glycemic Index), which means that the energy is released slowly into the bloodstream. So it helps keep your blood sugar, and energy levels stable, reducing the risk of weight gain and diabetes.

Ingredients

150 grams dried chick peas*

2 lemons - unwaxed (I like a strong lemon flavour, 1 lemon is fine if you want to reduce the amount)

100 grams tahini (about a third of a jar) – different brands of tahini vary in quality, the worst taste a bit like peanut butter, the best smell like freshly toasted sesame seeds

2 cloves garlic

This makes enough hummus for a serving for about 8-10 people as part of a Mediterranean type lunch with bread, salads, olives etc. Any left over will keep in the fridge for a couple of days.

Method

Soak the chickpeas in water for between 12 and 48 hours, use lots of water as they can expand to many times their size. I don't thin less than 24 hours is long enough for soaking, but over 48 hours and the chickpeas can start to sprout, changing the consistency so they won't go soft when you cook them. Drain, add plenty of fresh water, bring to the boil then simmer for between 1-2 hours, until soft. Chickpeas vary tremendously in how long they take to cook, buy them as fresh as possible. The less dried up and shrivelled they look, the better they will taste, and the quicker they will cook.

As you are cooking the chick peas, squeeze the lemons into a bowl and mix the juice with the lemon zest. Using the zest of the lemons gives hummus a fresher taste (that is why unwaxed lemons are best, and you will need a little grater for this). Finely chop the garlic and add that as well. It is best to make this mixture while you are cooking the chick peas, as the flavours from the lemon zest and garlic will permeate into the lemon juice, and the texture will be smoother as well. Do not add the tahini at this stage, as the mixture separates into a granular sludge.

When the chickpeas are soft, leave to cool. Do not add the other ingredients until the chickpeas are at room temperature, the lemon and garlic will lose thier fresh taste. When the chickpeas are cool, drain off most the water, but keep it as you might need to add some of this liquid to the hummus. Add the lemon juice mixture and tahini to the chickpeas. Blend thoroughly, adding some of the drained liquid gradually, if required, then fresh water if you run out, to get the right texture. A hand blender is brilliant for this.

Variations

Add freshly ground cumin seeds

Add freshly chopped coriander leaves

Leave out the garlic and add paprika powder to taste – the best makes have a hot, slightly smoky taste

Sweet hummus – replace the garlic with a small amount of honey, somewhere between a teaspoon and a dessert spoonful should do it. This sweet hummus is good served with fresh dates or figs as a pudding, or with dried fruit and chopped nuts as a very filling and satisfying breakfast.

* It’s OK to use tinned chickpeas, but I think cooked from fresh is much nicer. Soaking and cooking the chickpeas is a bit of a palaver, but the fresh version has a nutty taste which the canned version doesn’t.

Chickpeas can be grown in the UK, but I've not found any in the shops. The young plants look really pretty. Here are some from a few years ago, in Bradford.

Russia’s air safety record – awaiting the turnaround

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 18:09:00 +0000

Russia

’s air safety record has been dreadful in recent years, and a government programme to address the reasons for the high accident rate, announced earlier in 2011, has been slow to show positive results.

In 2006, Russia had the world's worst air accident rate, 13 times the international average. A total of 318 people died, a substantial proportion of the world total of 755 fatalities. Two Airbus crashes resulted in the accidents with the highest number of fatalities. On 3^rd May, 113 people were killed when an Airbus A320, attempted climb out after an aborted approach to Sochi, rain and low cloud with poor visibility. The plane broke up in the water, off the coast of the Black Sea, near the border with Georgia. There were another 125 fatalities at Irkutsk on 9^th July. An Airbus A310 took off from Moscow, Domodeovo with six equipment defects. The plane collided with a concrete perimeter fence and brick garages and burst into flames.

All 88 crew and passengers on board a Boeing 737 were killed in the worst accident of 2008. The jet crashed on approach to Perm, landing on the outskirts of the city, only a few hundred metres away from apartments and houses. The pilot lost control of the plane in ‘difficult’ weather conditions, and alcohol was detected in his body.

In 2009, Giovanni Bisignani, CEO of International Air Transport Association (IATA), said that Russia's safety record was still ' well below international standards '. CBC reports that IATA figures showed that the 2010 accident rate in Russia, and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, was 7.15 hull losses per million sectors. A 'hull loss' is when a plane is damaged beyond repair. This is almost three times the world rate. There were 15 air accident occurrences in 2010, four of them fatal, and a death toll of 122.

2010’s worst accident was on 10^th April. All 96 crew and passengers were killed when a Tupolev, operated by the Polish Air Force, crashed on approach to Smolenk Air Base, in poor visibility due to rain and heavy cloud. Passengers included Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Chief of General Staff Franciszek Gagor, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrzej Kremer, several Members of Parliament, and Slawomir Skrzypek, President of the National Bank of

Poland

. The flight failed to divert flight to an alternative airdrome, and the door to cockpit was open with two passengers on the flight deck. Accident investigators speculated that the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Air Forces exerted pressure on the crew to continue to descent to Smolensk in spite of the risky conditions. The plane broke into pieces after crash landing over a kilometre from the runway, colliding with a large tree. IATA figures showed that the 2010 accident rate in Russia, and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, was 7.15 hull losses per million sectors. This is almost three times the world rate.

The Aviation Safety Network (ASN) is the best website for air accidents. There are detailed incident reports, photographs and maps showing the location of crashes, and interlinked database enable compariosn between the satefy recrods of different aircraft models, airlines, countries and airports. So far, for 2011, ASN has documented 14 air safety ‘occurences’ so far in Russia. Eight of these incidents resulted in fatalities, with a total of 119 people killed, and the information about the accidents listed below is from the ASN website. The country’s largest carriers have a good safety record. Critics blame the high accident rate on a proliferation of small airlines, inexperienced, flying old Soviet era aircraft, and second-hand Western models, and it is the case that old, Russian made Antonov, Ilyushin-76, Yakovlev and Tupolev planes account for the majority of accidents.

Another factor is lax enforcement of safety regulations, and, indeed, the tally of accidents even includes at least one incidence of an unregistered plane, and instances of crew being intoxicated by alcohol. Poor weather, predominantly heavy rain and dense cloud reducing visibility, is a factor in many of the accidents. But the underlying reason is that planes’ navigation systems and air traffic control are unable to deal with these conditions. Poor plane maintenance is another reason behind the high accident rate, with incidences of fires breaking out on board, and faulty navigation equipment.

Russia’s lamentable air safety record for 2011 began with a serious accident on New Year’s Day. Three passengers on board a Tupolev passenger jet died when a fire ignited in the rear of the plane and spread to the cabin, after it was towed to the runway for engine start-up. Then, on 20^th June, there was another Tupolev accident, which reculsted in an accident with the most fatalities so far this year. The plane struck trees and crash landed on a highway on its approach to Petrozavodsk, killing 47 of the 52 occupants. Investigations revealed that the flight navigator had been drinking, with ‘a light level of alcoholic intoxication’, and the weather forecast was incorrect, impeding the ability to deal with severe fog.

In April, the Russian government committed to improving air safety standards, with an overhaul of air traffic control, new flight management technology to help air traffic controllers, a minimum of five new centres for analysis of air crashes, and new monitoring equipment on runways. But the following months have seen a catalogue of accidents. On 11^th July a Antonov An-12 passenger plane, en route between Bogashevo and Surgut, reported an engine fire, and six of the 37 passengers were killed when the plane crashed into the Ob River.

On 9^th August another Antonov An-12, the oldest plane in the Russian commercial fleet, a cargo plane, flying from Magadan to Keperveem reported a fuel leak and an engine fire and made an unsuccessful attempt to return to Magadan. The wreckage was found in Omsukchan the following day, all 11 were occupants killed.

On 22^nd August one person was killed, and three seriously injured, when an unregistered Antonov An-2, a single engine bi-plane, operated by a private woodcutting company, was damaged in an accident on an island near Lake Choigan-Hol. Just six days later, on 28^th August, an Antonov An-2 crash landed in the Krasnodar district when. The plane was on an illegal crop spraying flight, and one of two crew members was killed.

Forty-four people were killed in another serious accident on 7^th September. A Yakovlev crashed 2 kilometres from the runway, on the bank of the Volga River on the climb out from Yaroslavl-Tunoshna Airport. The fatalities included several members of the Yaroslavl ice-hockey team, and the flight was destined for Minsk for a match. After this disaster, President Medvedev stated he would expedite the overhaul of the aviation industry, and move swiftly to reduce the number of small airlines operating in the country.

Time will tell if the improvements will be implemented as thoroughly and quickly as Medvedev promised. Since his statement, there has already been an incident. On 9^th October, another Antonov An-2, carrying out agricultural work, crashed to the ground, again in Krasnodar. The pilot narrowly escaped. This was the third Antonov An-2 accident in the space of a few weeks.

No wonder children’s teeth are falling out

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 12:29:00 +0000

Ruining children's dental health

Every so often I pop into local shops to find out what awful products are being promoted to children, in the guise of ‘food’. This is some stuff from the past few months. In the middle of this photo, well, its like a baby’s dummy, inside the blob of clear plastic is a red sweet, it was shaped like the teat of a dummy but it melted back in May during some of the hottest days we have had this year. As you can see, it comes attached with some plastic teeth, maybe in a misguided effort to help children out when their teeth crumble into pieces after eating rubbish like this. There was also a Halloween version with purple gums and pointy teeth. I should have reported it to Trading Standards but if I go down that road, I could become dangerously obsessed. It’s all tied up with complicated definitions about whether labelling is correct. Can we not have some sweeping, over-riding regulations that stipulate that products which are sold as food, are actually, well, FOOD.

The bag of sweets, they look like coloured polystyrene foam, and the texture is what I imagine polystyrene is like as well, just heavily sweetened. They are in the shape of toothbrushes and sets of false teeth. Maybe the company is trying to be helpful by reminding children to brush their teeth, or it’s a rare example of honest marketing in children’s food, as they will need false teeth if they eat this crap. Yet, it has the audacity to have a health claim on the packet, that it contains 'NO articifial colours'. Yikes, it reminds me I haven’t been to the dentist in ages, and this gives me the motivation to make an appointment. Will take these products along and ask what for an opinion.

Food products, apparently

This next photo. Finally I am able to eat Toxic Waste. I read an article about this – yes it is a confectionery product - being launched in the UK about five years ago, in The Grocer magazine. This is a wonderful publication for keeping up with new food and household product launches, advertising campaigns, store openings, commodity prices, and retailers’ involvement with and reaction to government policy on issues like healthy eating. I saw the advert for Toxic Waste about five years ago, and stores were preparing a launch marketing campaign, but only found it on the shelves a few months ago, in Cornwall. In the interests of research I tasted it. The tin is full of little grey pellets, a colour like you might imagine something truly dreadful emerging from a waste pipe, probably illegally. It tastes truly disgusting, very sour, but underlying that it is very sweet, and the first ingredients on the list are sugars. That is the secret with all the gross out sweets, the main ingredients are sugars, sucrose, glucose, corn starch etc.

The pink tube thing on the left is a whistle, that does not even work, filled with nauseous neon pink coloured powder. And on the right, a spray on sweet. There is spray on cheese in America. It looks a bit like the yellow foam spray for filling up holes in household walls. Gross out food for kids is nothing new. Jelly Babies are a bit weird really, and I remember gobstoppers, which were huge and as hard as a ceramic ball, took ages to melt in your mouth, and left your tongue coloured a virulent green or purple colour. It is fun, I know as child I loved it. But maybe this needs looking at, with the problems with so many children’s unhealthy diets. They just seem to get addicted to junk food so easily, and awful, over-processed products help them on the road to developing an aversion to real, fresh food. There are some photos of hilariously bad examples on the Flickr group Unnecessary Consumer Prouducts and Questionable Foodstuffs. Sustain's Children's Food Campaign does excellent work on issues including marketing to children, learning cooking skills, and improving school meals.

Burlesque, again

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 23:13:00 +0000

When I make mistakes on the internet, I admit it, and try to correct it. I wrote a post about burlesque that was truly awful and have deleted it. I wrote inaccurate things in anger, which I regret. Incorrectly, I said that support for the performances includes taxpayers’ money. Worse still, I said people make idiots of themselves on social media, failing to see the irony that this was by a million miles my own worst ever case of doing so. Most importantly, a burlesque performer contacted me and told me she felt insulted. From what I wrote I can see why, and I apologise for offending her and anyone else.

I did not intend to give an impression that I equate burlesque with stripping. Burlesque encompasses a range of artistic skills, which can include removing clothing, and that should have been made clearer. I have not seen the shows in Kirklees, Yorkshire town halls, only the promotional material. From what I have seen of the council publicity, the performers are predominantly female. The promotion images and video by the company performing were all women, wearing little clothing, or removing clothing, which is often referred to as 'stripping' in everyday language, as a descriptive rather than a pejorative term.

I have no objection to nudity and sexual performance, but I felt insulted, shocked and offended by this publicity. That might seem odd, as far more explicit sexual images of women are so common on the internet. Our society is filled with images of women's bodies and women wearing little clothing, with adverts, TV, newspapers, etc. But these events are supported and promoted by the council. I expect the council to be sensitive to the imbalance that means women are over-represented, valued for our bodies and sexuality, in a way that is not applied to men, and help address this. To treat men and women in the same way. Promotion for events is part of that. A few hundred people see the performances, but every resident in the district, and everyone on the planet with an internet connection, can see the promotion for it, will assume that it reflects what happens in the performances, and is entitled to express an opinion.

The council is supposed to be about democracy and representing all of us in an equal way. We all vote and pay Council Tax, and whilst the actual performance budgets may be ring-fenced, the companies benefit financially, and receive considerable advertising equivalent value from promotion, including the 'Together' magazine which is distributed to all households in the district. In this year's Kirklees Town Halls Events programme, burlesque events with the same company are supported more than any other company, with an event nearly every month. I think this gives a message to female performers, that no matter what skills they have as musicians, singers, dancers, comedians etc, to get on the programme for the town hall, they would be well advised to add a sexual element, ideally involving take some of their clothes off. And that is discriminatory against women, and totally out of order. Personally, I think that the lower age limit of 16 is too young as well.

I do not envy government organisations the task of negotiating the wide range of individual views, and cultural sensitivities, regarding what is appropriate in sexual performance, but I think ensuring a balance of male and female performers would be a good starting point. So come on, get some sexy men up there. Burlesque might be even more popular, I'd book a table.

Flag carriers - too big to fail

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 12:05:00 +0000

Like many of the world's banks, flag carriers seem to be regarded as ‘too big to fail’. Since the recession began, airline liberalisation has gone into reverse, with many governments intervening with financial support packages for national airlines. The deals are dressed up as ‘restructuring’, ‘recapitalisation’, ‘refinancing’, and other fancy economic terms, but basically it is all bailouts, flag carriers being propped up by taxpayers’ money. Another fossil fuel intensive industry appears to be sacrosanct, like car manufacturing, which saw massive bailouts for the big three US firms, GM, Ford and Chrysler. The poor suffer the most from the recession, but the airline bailouts main benefit will be to the wealthy, who are the frequent flyers.

China stepped in early as soon as the economic downturn took hold. In December 2008, China Southern, China Eastern and Air China each received $438.66. In 2009, Oman Air received $650 million to help its expansion. Air

Canada

received $300 million in government loans. Half this sum came from Export Development Canada (EDC), whose raison d’etre was turned on its head in order to prop up the beleaguered airline. EDC’s remit to support exporters and investors in expanding their international business was reconfigured to include domestic business.

South African Airlines and Air Namibia are both beneficiaries of serial bailouts. South African Airways received a cash injection of over $220 million in 2009 to support its ‘turnaround strategy’. This followed $190 million for recapitalisation in 2006-07 and $230 million in 2007-08 for restructuring. A $10 million bailout for Air Namibia for 2009-10, brought total state support for the carrier to $246 million since 2000. Yet another Air Namibia ‘turnaround strategy’ was agreed in July 2011, to cost $222 million over the following three years.The Nigerian government extended a $3.3 billion to the country’s indebted domestic airlines in May 2010, enabling refinancing of loans for 10-15 years.

In Europe, Malev, Hungary’s national airline, received an emergency cash injection of $26 million to help pay for aircraft leases, and

Slovenia

’s Adria Airways received support from various government agencies, including $2.8 million from a state owned restructuring company.The Latvian government has intervened in airBaltic, in attempts to ‘stabilise its operations’, since 2009. Now there is to be a further increase in the airline’s share capital with taxpayers’ money, in spite of a gaping budget deficit. AirBaltic made losses of $67.2 million in 2010, and the capital increase is likely to be somewhere between $97 million - $136 million.

The biggest bailouts for flag carriers have been in Asia. Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) described 2010 as the ‘Year of the Asian Airline Bailout ’, with Japan Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, Air India, Garuda Indonesia, Thai Airways and Malaysia Airlines set to receive over $10 billion in bailouts in the first three months of the year. By this time China Eastern had received $2 billion in 2009 and another £1 billion appeared inevitable by the end of the year.Within days of this report, Japan Airlines was rescued from bankruptcy with $6.6 billion. The support package for Air

India

, approved in February 2010, was expected to amount to $432 million. In August, the Thai government approved $467 million for Thai Airways.

It is likely several other countries have also bailed out flag carriers, but I have not found a comprehensive international report with all the information. Some countries' national airlines are not as strategically important as governments make out, and it is more a question of keeping up appearances.

India’s crops laced with pesticides

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Mon, 30 May 2011 10:52:00 +0000

The Indian government has proved more effective at meeting food export targets than feeding their own people. Over 220 million people go hungry but food exports are booming. In 2009 the (Agricultural and Processed Foods Export Development Authority (APEDA) set a target to double India’s agricultural exports from $9 billion to $18 billion within five years. But India’s food export drive, and attempt to build a reputation for organic produce, could be compromised by repeated incidences of contamination with pesticide residues, which have exceeded MRL’s (Maximum Residue Level), or are banned, in importing countries.

Basmati rice fetches about twice the price of non-Basmati, and India’s exports are worth around $300 million per year. Yet future exports could face uncertainty, after thousands of tonnes of Indian Basmati rice were rejected by European countries in 2010. High pesticide residue levels were detected by the Eurofins laboratory in Hamburg. Levels of Cabenenzum and Isoprothiolane were three times more than the European Commission MRL of 0.01 mg per kg. Stores in Germany alone withdrew 30,000 tonnes of the rice, and there were concerns that exports to the Gulf, which accounts for 70 per cent of India’s Basmati rice exports, might be affected.

In December 2010 the EU rejected three shipments of okra grown in India, because levels of three pesticides, Moncrotophos, Acephate and Traizaphos exceeded the MRL. Triazaphos is known to be toxic to birds and the level detected, 0.11mg per kg, is over ten times the EU MRL of 0.01mg per kg.

The Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry’s has set a target to increase exports of grapes from 37,000 tonnes a year to 44,000 tonnes. About 70 per cent of India’s grape exports are to the EU. But, in 2010, the exports faced a setback when several consignments of grapes were rejected because of residues of Chlormequat, which is not permitted in the EU. Some of the grapes rotted in Rotterdam Port, but most ended up being eaten by citizens of countries with lower pesticide residue standards. Some of the consignments of grapes were diverted to other countries, and the UK and Sweden allowed import of the grapes by introducing their own MRL, even though the European Food Safety Association (EFSA) stated that children eating a large amount of the grapes in a short period might suffer ‘acute symptoms’, which could include ‘irritation mouth or throat, vomiting, nausea, abdominal pain and headache’.

Most of India’s organic food is grown for export. In 2009, India exported 135 types of organic products, and APEDA has set an organic food export target of $1 billion within five years. Asit Tripathy, chair of APEDA, stated a goal of making India the world’s number one organic hub over the next 10 years. Currently, India ranks 33rd in the world in terms of total land under organic cultivation and 88th regarding the proportion of agricultural land under organic crops compared to the total farmed land.

Cotton is India’s leading organic export, and carries a premium of 15 – 20 per cent more than conventionally grown cotton, and in 2008-2990 India accounted for as much as 65 per cent of the 175,113 tonnes of organic cotton produced worldwide. In February 2010 it was reported that garments labelled organic in popular clothing stores including H&M, C&A and Tchibo contained genetically modified (GM) cotton. Lothar Kruse, director of an independent testing laboratory Impetus, based in Bremerhaven, said that about 30 per cent of the samples were contaminated with GM cotton. It appeared that the Indian subsidiaries of the two European certifying bodies had failed to check the seeds being used by organic farmers, many of whom had used seeds of Bt (GM) cotton. With Bt cotton accounting for between 65-75 per cent production in India, contamination is a widespread concern. G. V. Ramanjaneyulu, executive director of Hyderabad-based Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, said ‘even at 100 metres there is possibility of contamination’. If just one plant in a one-acre plot, which can have 4,000 plants, becomes contaminated, there is a serious risk that the seed for the next season will be contaminated.

Pesticide residue levels on India’s food crops, including banned pesticides, are far higher on food for the domestic market. A report by Government of India’s Department of Agriculture and the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, shows the results of analysis of samples from 13 states across India in 2008 and 2009. Many tested above the MRL set by the 1954 Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, showing widespread lack of monitoring of pesticide application. Residues of four pesticides which are banned in India were detected. Aldrin, Chlordane, Chlorfenvinfos and Heptachlor are banned for use, manufacture, import and export:

• Aldrin - detected in brinjal, cauliflower, tomato, okra, banana, apple, wheat and milk
• Chlordane - detected in apple, banana and cabbage
• Chlorfenvinfos – detected in bitter gourd, cabbage, cauliflower, tomato, rice and wheat
• Heptachlor - detected in brinjal, okra, tomato, rice, milk and butter.

These four pesticides are among the POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants) identified by the Stockholm convention as the ‘dirty dozen’, pollutants which remain intact for long periods and accumulate in the fatty tissues of animals and people.

Now there is the issue of GM-related insecticide contamination. GM crops were promoted as ‘resistant’ to pesticides and insecticides, but are actually dependent on these inputs. On Devinder Sharma’s blog there is an article about a recent Canadian study which detected the widespread presence of Bt-related insecticide in the blood of 93 per cent pregnant women and 80 per cent of foetuses. There are indications that Bt-related insecticide disrupts foetal development. A few weeks ago the Stockholm Convention met in Geneva, and agreed to add endosulfan to the list of POPs to be removed from the global market by 2012. But the Stockholm Convention is unable to keep pace with a juggernaut of newer, more powerful, chemicals being pushed onto the marketplace.

An article by agriculture and trade policy analyst Bhaskar Goswami, Scars of the Green Revolution looks at the impacts of high dependence on pesticides in the Punjab. Pesticide consumption in the Punjab State stood at 923 grams per hectare in 2006, putting it in the ‘very-high-use’ bracket. Pesticide residues have been recorded in human beings, water, milk, vegetables and several other foods at far higher than permissible limits. Incidence of cancer and other ailments have reached alarming levels and large numbers of farmers and their families from the Malwa region regularly travel to Rajasthan for treatment for cancer. There are instances of children as young as 10 years old suffering from arthritis, and looking prematurely aged with greying hair. The pest population adapts to the pesticides and becomes resistant, putting farmers on a treadmill of higher pesticide application, with increased application of the agricultural inputs that have caused the problems.

Goswami’s article explains how agriculture in the Punjab faces other serious problems besides over use of pesticides. Farmer debt has increased with more expenditure on farm machinery. Debt as a proportion of farmer income increased from 68 per cent in 1997 to 84 per cent in 2008. Intensive monoculture of wheat and rice has displaced a wider range of crops including corn, groundnut, barley and rapeseed. Livestock diversity had dwindled, and is now dominated by just three breeds of cows, buffaloes and sheep and two breeds of goats and poultry. Water stress is increasing, with overexploitation of groundwater. In more than half of districts, water levels have reduced by 30 centimetres. The depleted water is contaminated with residues, and air is polluted by burning straw. Yet, the government Working Group on Agriculture Production recommends this ‘Punjab Model’ of framing is recommended for replication by all states across India.

The latest issue of the public health charity Friends of the Human Race e-zine is focussed on alternatives to chemical intensive agriculture in India. Town of Kulithalai in Tamil Nadu, waste segregation, transformed, biodegradable waste fed to cows and composted. An article by Jaison J Jerome looks at organic alternatives to using dangerous pesticides, focussing on long term soil fertility with cow dung, green manure and crop rotation. Pest infestations are far less frequent, and when they do occur alternatives to pesticides, such as sticky tape, light traps, herbal extracts and types of fungi have proved effective. Micro-organisms can be effective in removing a wide range of pathogens, and are non-toxic even if accidentally ingested, and have been used effectively in agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, aquaculture, composting and solid waste management. There is an article from a farmer who worked on a tea plantation in Kerala for nearly ten years, repeatedly exposed to pesticides, witnessed banned pesticides being used, and was poisoned with Monocrotophos. He was diagnosed with a type of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, in 2001, and fortunately has been well since receiving treatment. My article has more information about the alarming levels of banned pesticides on India’s food crops.

Airport Fuel Supply - the Real Fire Risks

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Wed, 04 May 2011 11:34:00 +0000

In August 2010 two men were convicted of plotting to blow up JFK Airport’s fuel farm and underground pipelines running under the Queens neighbourhood, aiming to killing thousands of people. Subsequently, one of the men was jailed for life, and the other for 15 years. JFK’s fuel farm’s steel cylindrical tanks hold 121 million litres of aviation fuel. The prospect of terrorist attacks on tanks holding millions of litres of highly flammable fuel, and pipelines running under densely populated areas, sounds alarming, but the plot was unfeasible, more talk than action. There is no oxygen inside the fuel farm or pipelines so ignition is impossible, and unauthorized use of the heavy machinery required for digging underground and puncturing fuel tanks and thick steel pipelines would be highly conspicuous. In the unlikely event of interference, it would immediately be detected with alarm systems.

Puncturing a fuel farm would require an air strike or a ground to air missile. This is what occurred when the Lam Luk Ka oil depot in Bangkok was targeted during anti government protests on 21 April 2010. A grenade fired from the motorway, just 200 metres away, hit one of the depot’s 19 tanks, T-401D, which supplies Suvarnabhumi Airport, and it took an hour to extinguish the fire. The tank was holding 9 million litres of fuel at the time. The grenade made a 4 centimetre hole in the tank but did not ignite the main body of fuel as it did not penetrate the protective double layering.

In New York, the mundane reality is a series of accidental leaks from the fuel pipeline to JFK and La Guardia airports, which runs under Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens neighbourhoods. Stephen Muther, Vice President of Buckeye Partners, the firm operating the pipeline, admitted that the firm’s operation of the, has been prone to ‘mishaps’. In 1985 a construction worker drove a digger into a valve in the Staten Island section, spilling over 130,000 litres of fuel into the street and dozens of homes were evacuated. In 2009, a maintenance worker accidentally drilled a hole in the pipeline running just 1.2 metres under Queens, and firefighters poured flame retardant foam on nearly 1,900 litres of fuel that escaped into the street. The fuel supply to JFK has also polluted water. In autumn 2008 a leak was discovered in a pipeline running only a metre deep under an environmentally sensitive marshland area near one of JFK’s runways. Six months later over 340,000 litres of fuel had been recovered and the full extent of the spill was still unknown. JFK’s fuel farm also had a mishap, an electrical fire, in May 2008, and flights were delayed for nearly an hour until the fire was extinguished.

The risk of jet fuel fires occurs when the fuel is accidentally exposed to air, and ground crew are the most at risk. Planes are refuelled with hoses or hydrant dispenser vehicles which tuck under the wing. On 5th September 2001 a 24 year old ground service worker died from injuries when refuelling a British Airways Boeing 777 at Denver Airport. A large ball of fire engulfed the hydrant truck and the aircraft’s left wing. Witnesses thought that fuel leaked when a hose either came loose or ruptured.

Fuel depots and refineries, far from the airport site, are more vulnerable to fire than fuel farms. Overall, considering the global scale of operations, airport fuel supply is well managed, but when accidents do occur the risks to people and the environment are serious. The FBI was called in to investigate whether a fire at a petrol and jet fuel depot in the city of Bayamon in Puerto Rico, which ignited on 23rd October 2009, was started intentionally. An explosion triggered fire which spread to 21 of the 40 tanks on the site, and sent 2.8 magnitude earthquake forces which were felt in several neighbourhoods. Firefighters battled with a blaze for two days, over 1,500 people were evacuated and thick smoke billowed over the area. Suspicions were raised by graffiti reading ‘Boom, fire, RIP, Gulf’ in three locations in the vicinity, but the investigation concluded that the cause of the explosion was a fuel leak which occurred while one of the tanks was being filled. This created an enormous cloud of gas vapour, which was then ignited by an unidentified source.

On 5th May 2010 a tanker truck exploded at a loading dock at the AGE Refinery in San Antonio, Texas. Two workers were injured, one critically, but a major disaster was averted. More than 100 firefighters worked for six hours to contain the fire and prevent it from igniting 12 nearby tanks of jet fuel. Fire Chief Charles Hood said that if this had happened the area ‘could have seen a major explosion big enough to kill people a half-mile away’.

Underground jet fuel pipelines are entangled with gas, petroleum, and water supplies, bringing the risk of an explosion if they are accidentally punctured during maintenance work. In 2004 a jet fuel pipeline supplying San Jose Airport, running under Walnut Creek in San Francisco, exploded during construction of a water supply pipeline. An excavator punctured a high pressure pipeline and five workers were killed and four suffered serious burns. Workers had accidentally cut into the fuel pipeline, resulting in a huge explosion and a fire ball several storeys high. In May 1989 a train derailed in Muscoy in San Bernadino County, California, killing four people and destroying seven homes. Two weeks later, after residents had returned to their homes, an underground jet fuel pipeline damaged by the accident ruptured and exploded, killing two people and burning down 11 homes.

Road tankers supplying fuel to airports are more vulnerable to spills and fires than pipelines, as traffic accidents can result in leakage of fuel and highly flammable vapour. Whilst the amounts of fuel carried in trucks are relatively small in comparison to the millions in refineries and depots, they can pose a risk when accidents occur in populated areas. A truck towing two trailers of aviation fuel along Highway 20 in a rural area near Colusa, California on 25th March 2008 caught fire when a piece of metal from the truck dragged along the highway and sparks ignited the fuel. Firefighters contained grass fires on both sides of the road and decided to let the blaze burn itself out, sending a pall of black smoke over the area. A few hours later nothing remained but the frame of the truck and melted metal all over the highway.

On 17th June 2010 a jet fuel truck overturned at the intersection of Highway 31 in Montgomery, Alabama. Nearly 19,000 litres of jet fuel were spilled, which took about 40 firefighters several hours to clean up. Just ten days later, on 27th June 2010, disaster was narrowly averted, when a tanker carrying jet fuel to TF Green Airport in Massachusetts flipped over on its side in the town of Foxboro. The accident occurred only 35 metres from people sleeping in their homes. All the fuel, over 45,000 litres, gushed out. Firefighters from 14 communities joined the TF Green Airport HazMat team and covered the spill in foam to prevent it catching fire. It was fortunate that the tanker skidded onto grass. If it had crashed into hard pavement, it would have been likely to produce sparks, which would have ignited the fuel into a dangerous fireball. Two days after the Foxboro incident, on 29th June, a plane being prepared for flight at Kickapoo Airport in Texas leaked over 3,000 litres of fuel onto the parking area. The airport hazmat team and ten units from the Wichita fire service sprayed foam on the spilled fuel, then trucks dumped sand to absorb it.

The litany of minor accidents in the jet fuel supply chain to US airports continued over the following few months. Fortunately, there were no casualties but the incidents added to the workload of America’s fire and HazMat teams.

• On 14th July 2010 over 7,500 litres of jet fuel leaked from a tanker loading a fuel station at Sea-Tac Airport (Seattle-Tacoma).
• On 22nd September 2010 a section of the road between Farmville and Chesterfield County in Virginia was closed down after a 30,000 litre tanker spilled jet fuel.
• On 24th September 2010 a truck overturned near terminal 3 at Chicago O'Hare Airport, spilling 'hundreds of gallons' of fuel and causing delays.
• 30th September 2010 - The northbound lanes of 805 highway San Diego were closed for four hours after a tanker carrying jet fuel jack knifed and collided with the guardrail. The truck fortunately only spilled a few litres of diesel on the road as it had just delivered over 29,500 litres of jet fuel to Brown Field Airport.
• 7th December 2010 – An accident in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, involved three vehicles. No jet fuel spilled on the road but the process of transferring the fuel into another tanker took several hours. The highway was closed for three hours.

Confusing supermarket offers

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 17:13:00 +0000

rip off beans

Sainsbury's store on Huddersfield ring road is, as usual, like most supermarkets, filled with special offers, such as BOGOFs (Buy One Get One Free). When I popped in a couple of weeks ago there was a major discount promotion on the Mexican food section, items like tortilla chips, tacos, fajitas and jalapeno peppers. These small tins of refried beans were on offer at 3 for £3. Yet a single tin was priced at 85p. I was confused, it seemed to mean that if you bought three tins you would pay 45p more.

I would have mentioned it to the customer service desk on my way out, but there was a slow moving queue and I haven’t got all day. When I got home it occurred to me that I could have put three tins of the refried beans in my trolley and seen what happened at the checkout, if the till receipt would show that the so-called 'special offer’ was actually a rip off and customers were actually being charged extra. Then I popped back to the store and had a closer look, and realised the 3 for £3 actually meant you could buy 3 items from a range of Mexican food products, the idea being that the price adds up to more than £3. I am not sure what would happen if you did misguidedly just buy 3 tins of the beans. I think its confusing, there are so many different kinds of offers, so much writing on the shelves and on packaging, not to mention the offers announced on the tannoy system.

All kinds of discount offers, even the more straighforward ones, are a problem as the price cuts don't benefit everyone. There is a problem for less well off shoppers, and for people living alone or in small households. If you do not have a car, so you can load shopping trolleys full of food into to the boot, you are faced with hauling multiple heavy shopping bags home on foot, or on the bus, so your purchasing of ‘buy more for less' deals is restricted. If you live alone you buy fresh produce in smaller quantities, otherwise it will go off before you can eat it. More and more of the fresh produce is pre-packed in plastic, so the only option is to buy it in a certain amount, and these packets are often quite large, such as big bags of most of the varieties of carrots and potatoes. We throw a lot of food away in the UK, so it could be encouraging us to buy what we don't need and more food will end up in the bin. And special offers to buy more for less can't be helping with rising obesity rates.

The buy more for less offers benefit richer people. Anyone living hand to mouth with a tight food budget of what they can afford each week cannot take advantage of the offers. This affects pensioners in particular, who are often living alone, not at their peak of physical strength so less able to haul loads of shopping up a hill (nearly everyone in Huddersfield is uphill from the main Sainburys store), among the worse off, and vulnerable to malnutrition.

Which? magazine has a lot of information about supermarket offers that are not what they seem, the latest being products for which deals are offered online, then when the order turns up on your doorstep you find out you have paid full price for it, because the order expired before it was delivered. Other instances include 'better value' multi packs which are not better value than buying single items. Also, there actually are 'offers' when buying mutliple items costs more than buying just one, the most ridiculous being a fruit drink, on offer at 2 for £4.

One category that is always on special offer is alchohol. Trading Standards have investigated Tesco, the UK's biggest retailer, the common supermarket practice of using heavily discounted alcoholic drinks to lure bargain hunters into their stores. Tesco was also investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority for promoting offers with banners at store entrances, in spite of not having the stock to sell.

Also, not to do with special offers, Trading Standards in Lincolnshire bought a landmark case against excess packaging. A joint of beef was encased in multiple layers of plastic - a vacuum packed layer, a tray, a lid and then covered in a cardboard sleeve. Lincolnshire County Council dropped the action at the eleventh hour before the case was due to be heard. But their action still made a difference as the council stated that the amount of packaging on the product had been considerably reduced.

A Royal wedding fit for a recession

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 12:16:00 +0000

Another day, another detail. Since the announcement of the upcoming Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in April 2011, the tabloid media have page after page and thumping great supplements full of photos. The ‘quality’ newspapers also cover the wedding preparations in exhaustive detail, supposedly in an ironic way by reporting the tabloid obsession. The bloggers who are not interested blog about not being interested and how stupid all the fuss is. So there is no escape. The latest trivia is whether David Beckham will get an invite, the hardly earthshattering revelation that Kate might have done her own make-up for the engagement photo shoot, and the media in a navel gazing loop, never happier than publicising itself, with the Telegraph reporting the non-story that BBC anchorman David Dimbleby will be replaced with Huw Edwards. Good luck to Will and Kate, but I’m a republican myself. The Republic website has good information about the true scale of the monarchy’s constitutional powers, and the cost to the British taxpayer.

Royal weddings are usually eye-poppingly lavish occasions, but there is speculation that, for Will and Kate’s do, the usual conspicuous consumption might be toned down in order to show sensitivity to UK citizens who are hard up in these times recession and could do without fitting the bill for a royal wedding. There is a big fuss that Kate Middleton is a commoner, although with millionaire parents she cannot be categorised as average middle class. In marrying a commoner, Prince William, is following in the footsteps of Sweden’s Princess Victoria, who married her personal trainer, earlier this year, on 19th June. Over half of the $2.5 million cost was met by Swedish taxpayers, but there was widespread opposition with membership of the Swedish Republican Association doubling to 6,000 people in the year between the announcement and the actual wedding.

cut flowers

The Swedish royal wedding was decorated with an abundance of cut flowers. All cargo airline Cargolux flew a Boeing 747 freighter from Colombia to Europe, full of 40,000 flowers from 24 flower farms, including roses, lilies, hydrangeas and carnations. The flowers met the Floraverde label for social and environmental production standards. This is a positive step, but there is a blindness to the post production impacts of the lengthy supply chain from Colombia to Europe. I am not sure of the exact greenhouse gas emission of the flight, but the maximum fuel capacity of the plane is over 216,000 litres. Like heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, Prince William’s dad, the Swedish royal family expresses concern for the environment while wielding a gargantuan carbon footprint with private jets, yachts etc. So, step one for a British royal wedding fit for a recession and with a lower environmental impact, ditch the flown in flowers. It will be spring time in England so they could easily fill up Westminster Abbey with seasonal flowers like tulips, bluebells and daffodils from nearby countryside.

Expenditure on the royal wedding is likely to be presented as a stimulus package for the UK tourism industry. It is argued that the monarchy is a cornerstone of tourism, but this revolves around the claim that the monarchy is at the heart of our culture and heritage. The most recent research that the tourism board, Visit Britain, could come up with to substantiate the claims is that tourists visiting Britain in 1981, nearly 30 years ago, cited Prince Charles and Diana’s wedding in as the main reason for their visit. The places tourists visit, the castles and estates are historical. Apart from the occasional wedding, all the current monarchy does for tourism is attract a small crowd for the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. I was in Paris in 1989 for the 200 year anniversary of the revolution which overthrew the monarchy. The city was buzzing with events and celebrations. I’m not advocating putting the royals under the guillotine to boost tourism, but historical evidence of social change is what proves interesting to future visitors, not preserving the status quo in aspic. The Republic website points out that the royal palaces - Buckingham Palace, Balmoral etc. do not rank highly in attracting tourists, partly because they are largely closed to the public. Windsor Castle attracts fewer visitors than the Legoland down the road.

The royal wedding is anticipated to give the UK economy a boost with related commemorative merchandise, but it will take more than tacky tea towels and mugs to get the UK out of its economic morass. Last month, Pricewaterhouse Coopers estimated that the total UK private and public debts will soar to more than £10 trillion by 2015, driven by property related borrowing and increased lending between financial institutions. Apparently, the royal wedding will lead to increased purchasing of other goods due to some mysterious ‘feel good factor’. Even if this turns out to be the case, it is a risky way to rebuild the economy. Yet again, we are exhorted to buy the world out of recession, our role limited to that of consumers. Then, if we do our duty and buy all this tat, we will be berated for imperilling the economy by going into debt.

When I got married I was organising events at the time, and my now husband put up with me moaning that the preparation was just another conference, minus the flip charts and PowerPoint presentations. I cut a page with a list of supposedly essential items to buy for your wedding out of a newspaper, and crossed about 90 per cent of it out. I figured if it did not mean something to us it was just mindless ritual, bringing unnecessary stress and expense. Yet more and more of these items become embedded in our culture as part of ‘what you do’. So a wedding is supposedly incomplete without themed napkin rings, colour co-ordinated everything, commemorative stationery, matchboxes to place on each table and the dreaded ‘wedding list’ (so inappropriate when most of us are fortunate enough to already have more household goods than we really need) which many of my friends have ditched and invited guests to give to charity instead.

Weddings flowers have proliferated to a myriad of arrangements specific for each attendee and visible surface of the venues. A popular church can host several weddings in a single day. For each wedding the church will fill up with flowers which are thrown away in time to refill the church for the next ceremony. One of the supposed must haves for wedding receptions is ‘centrepieces’ for tables – finicky little vases filled with flowers. In my experience these just get in the way of guests seeing and talking to each other across the table, and frequently get knocked over.

These centrepieces for tables became a point of contention for a New York couple in 2007, who sued a florist for allegedly supplying wedding flowers which were the wrong colour. Apparently, the centerpieces, at $465 a pop, were ‘predominantly pastel pink’ instead of the dark fuchsia, rust and green coloured flowers which the couple had ordered to coordinate with their wedding. The couple had such an over-inflated sense of consumerist entitlement that they sued, not just for the $30,000 cost of the wedding flowers, but for $400,000, claiming that the mismatched flowers had caused them ‘extreme disappointment, distress and embarrassment.’ If a couple are so traumatised by an unexpected flower colour, how will they cope with the serious commitment of marriage, the ‘better for worse’ etc?

Heathrow fuel leak, could contaminate rivers

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 12:26:00 +0000

Heathrow Airport's website has a section entitled 'Heathrow and the Local Environment'. It's not very informative, there are just a few paragraphs on the airport's goals and procedures on environmental impacts including air quality, waste and biodiversity. The water page states that 'Ensuring that the quality of water that runs off our airport complies with environmental standards is of great importance', goes on to assure that 'Water quality at Heathrow is managed by closely monitoring the levels and substances in water' then states a commitment to 'secure protection of the environment at all times through a responsible and proactive approach to water quality management, and to ensure 100% regulatory compliance in all aspects of water quality management now and in the future.'

The airport has failed to meet these legal obligations. On 24th September 2010 Heathrow Hydrant Operating Company Limited (HHOpCo), a fuel supplier to Heathrow, was fined for 'severely polluting groundwater' in the Taplow Gravels underneath the airport, from a leak in a pipeline which was discovered nearly three years ago. HHOpCo reported the leak to the Environment Agency on 29th November 2007. Two bolts on the side of a valve in the supply pipeline to aircraft stands at Heathrow's Terminal 1 had eroded. The valve had been leaking for some time, but it is not known how long. A £7 million leak detection system had been malfunctioning at the time of the leak, and the company failed to install a manual leak detection system in its place. The investigation revealed that the automated leak detection system had not been working for five months. HHOpCo failed to notify the Environment Agency immediately. The firm had discovered the leak nine days earlier, following an unrelated report from BAA of jet fuel odour in a nearby access tunnel. If it were not for this, the leak may have continued undetected.

View Larger Map

The total volume of fuel that was lost is not known. At the time the leak was discovered the pipeline was losing about 7 litres of jet fuel per minute. Boreholes were sunk to extract the fuel and by June 2010 at least 139,391 litres had been recovered. At the time the fine was imposed, between 70 and 100 litres of fuel per week were still being recovered. HHOpCo was fined £40,000 plus Environment Agency costs of approximately £14,000 for this catalogue of failures. The Environment Agency lead officer noted 'extensive pollution of groundwater' but stated that 'Fortunately, to date, we have not seen any major impact to local rivers but jet fuel in groundwater has the potential to seriously harm the environment and water quality'. But contamination from underground fuel leaks is long term, and can slowly permeate into the water table. Under UK safety regulations, jet fuel is categorised among the most toxic hazardous substances, which must be prevented from entering groundwater. The aquifer in the Taplow Gravels groundwater which has been polluted is a source of water to four rivers, the River Crane, the River Colne, Duke of Northumberland’s River and the Longford River. The direction of the flow of groundwater from the site of the incident has yet to be determines, so it is not known which of these rivers might be at risk of contamination.

BAA, operator of Heathrow, claimed that Heathrow, the biggest airport in the UK, was on its way back to 'its rightful status as the world's leading international airport' when the new Terminal 5 opened in March 2008. Terminal 5 may be swanky looking with a curved roof and packed with posh shops like Tiffany's, gourmet restaurants, whimsical art works and sculptures, and clean water gushing out of fountains on the concourse. But these are superficial distractions from the essential infrastructure which enables the flights. In 2005, Air BP was enthusing about how Terminal 5 Boeing 747s would be refuelled at 7,500 litres per minute, and Airbus A380s at 8,000 litres per minute.

Heathrow Airport's fuel storage and distribution facility, known as a 'fuel farm', is directly above the tunnel through which passenger baggage is transferred between terminals, with a capacity of 4 million litres. The entire fuel supply chain from oilfields through refineries, storage depots, pipelines and tankers to airport brings risks of pollution and fire. In December 2005 an explosion at the Buncefield fuel depot over 30 kilometres north of Heathrow Airport resulted in a fire which raged for five days. At the time of the accident, Buncefield supplied about half of the 21 million litres of fuel used by Heathrow per day. 2,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes and 43 people were injured. At the time of the explosion Buncefield held 35 million litres of fuel, mostly aviation fuel and petrol for vehicles. About a third of this fuel was lost during the incident, most of it consumed in the fire. The Buncefield fire was the biggest in peacetime Europe. 250,000 litres of petrol leaked from a tank and ignited, other tanks caught fire including Tank 12, the largest, which had storage capacity for 19 million litres of aviation fuel. The explosion was audible from over 200 kilometres way and the plumes were visible from space. If the accident had not occurred on a Sunday morning with few people on the site, it would have been highly likely to result in fatalities.

In June 2010 a lengthy and complex corporate criminal trial concluded with five firms found guilty of safety breaches in relation to the Buncefield accident. Total, Hertfordshire Oil Storage Ltd, British Pipeline Agency, Motherwell Control Systems and TAV Engineering were fined a total of £5.5 million. The fine is derisory as the cost of the accident was estimated at £1 billion. This encompasses costs of the emergency response and the investigation, costs to the aviation sector, and costs to local businesses were about £70 million with a few companies forced into liquidation. Hertfordshire Oil Storage Ltd (HSOL) in particular was singled out for criticism, for failing to prevent the accident and limit the effects. At the time of the accident Total owned a 60 per cent stake HOSL. The Health and Safety Executive and Environment Agency said in a statement: "The scale of the explosion and fire at Buncefield was immense and it was miraculous that nobody died. Unless the high hazard industries truly learn the lessons, we may not be that fortunate in future."

You'd assume that Heathrow would tighten up its systems to ensure an impeccable fire record after this serious incident. Yet in 2009 there were two fires at the airport. In April a small fire broke out in the control tower. Then, in July, a significant portion of a Servisair warehouse building caught fire. Servisair provides ground services, and the fire is believed to have started when a gas cylinder exploded. A 400 metre exclusion zone was imposed, and 200 people were evacuated. The operation to extinguish the fire required 100 firefighters and 20 fire engines. Plumes of smoke could be seen nearly 10 kilometres way.

Other parts of the UK have seen recent failures in the aviation fuel supply chain. On 27th January 2009 a freight train carrying fuel to Glasgow Prestwick Airport collided with a pylon while crossing a bridge less than a kilometre south of the Ayrshire town of Stewarton. Six wagons derailed and some fuel caught fire, plumes of back smoke over 15 metres high billowing over the town. In April 2007, nearly 164,000 litres of jet fuel leaked from a pipeline at Mildenhall air base in Suffolk, which was punctured during a drilling operation. A layer of chalk less than a metre below the airfield surface was contaminated, and fuel came to the surface and flowed onto a grass area. The Environment Agency feared jet fuel might pollute a drinking water borehole, but fortunately it did not spread that far. On 30th June 2010 safety at Total's UK aviation related operations failed again. A worker was killed in a fire at Total's Lindsey oil refinery in Humberside, by a fire which started when crude oil that was being processed into jet fuel ignited.

The British fly more per capita than any other country on earth, and in early days of the LibCon coalition government, Rt Hon Theresa Villiers, Minister of State for Transport, talked of 'better, not bigger' airports. Yet many UK airports continue their expansion plans. Airport Watch is keeping track of airport expansion around the country. Instead of concreting over green space with extending runways, the priority should be ensuring that the safety of essential infrastructure is in order.

Will downpours in Delhi wash away the new face of India?

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:42:00 +0000

The nailbiting countdown to the Delhi Commonwealth Games beginning on 3rd October continues. The event, the biggest sporting event India has ever hosted, was supposed to highlight a new India, modern, industrialised, technologically advanced, a major global player. But preparations have been plagued with problems, the construction programme fell behind schedule and concerns over substandard work came to a head when a footbridge collapsed and 23 labourers were injured. This was just one day after part of a false ceiling collapsed in the weight lifting arena. The accommodation facilities for athletes were described as 'filthy' and for a few days it seemed the event might be cancelled. But there has been a last minute rush to get ready to host the spectacle, with extra workers brought in. Here in the UK, the media is reporting everything that tarnishes the image of India that the event was supposed to project, including athletes deciding not to attend and sex trafficking fears.

View Larger Map

The Games Village for the athlete's accommodation, and other construction sites, have had to contend with a heavy monsoon, bringing leaking buildings and water in basements. This map shows the site of the Games Village on the eastern bank of the Yamuna River, an ecologically sensitive area in the path of the flood plains. Construction was suspended in August, after the river rose above the danger mark, which it has done repeatedly ever since, threatening the embankment built between the river and the Games Village. The high water mark follows the heaviest monsoon rains in 30 years, but is not really surprising, as the area floods every ten years or so. The area around the Games Village has been inundated with water and hundreds of people in low lying areas have been sent to relief camps. Mahima Kaul is making a documentary about the development of the Games Village site. People have put up with the the city being a 'complete construction zone, with rubble everywhere, and the capital programme has been disorganised with a host of different government bodies and contractors involved, with no body to oversee the operation, so all are 'passing the buck' for the problems. The fall out from the Games is likely to include corruption allegations, which are already surfacing. There are suspicions around how permission was granted to build the Games Village on the flood prone-site.

A wonderful article by Amita Baviskar, back in 2007, in the early days of preparations, raised doubts about the benefits of the Games for Delhi's people anticpating that the event would present merely a 'mirage of a world class city'. Delhi hosted the 1982 Asian Games with the same hopes of creating a world class city from the infrastructure, raised profile and tourism of the event. The stadiums and other buildings have become dilapidated white elephants. The legacy of the event was not vital infrastructure for Delhi's citizens but the conversion of public green space, including chunks of the Siri Forest, to private property. The article raised concerns about siting the Games Village on the banks of the Yamuna River. The flood plain is needed to accommodate monsoon swells and to replenish groundwater supplies, but the games organisers chose to displace slums rather than undertake the complex land acquisition process for more suitable sites including unused industrial sites or an abandoned airfield. The main beneficiaries of the preparations for the Commonwealth games appeared to be the construction companies. The destruction of green space for roadworks, flyovers and tunnels appeared to be gratuitous, and there were credible allegations of corruption emerging even then, with indications of a 'feeding frenzy' of inflated contracts and under the table payments to get projects sanctioned.

An article in InfoChange India, picks up on these issues in the build up to the Games in June. Who gains from the games? covers the release of a report by the Housing and Land Rights Network, The 2010 Commonwealth Games: Whose Wealth, Whose Commons? Laws relating to planning, environmental protection and labour rights were suspended for the 'hysterical development activity'. The whole process was shrouded in secrecy, with a lack of government accountability. Many people in India are questioning the $422 million budget for an event lasting just 12 days, with the final figure likely to escalate to five times this amount. The glitzy event is being staged whilst India languishes at 134 on the Human Development Index, as it has done for the last 15 years. The event has been criticised as another war against the poor who are cleared from the site. This typically accompanies global sporting events, including the most recent FIFA World Cup in South Africa and the Olympics in Beijing. Many have lost their livelihoods from the construction for the games in Delhi, such as street vendors and rickshaw carriers, and people have been arrested for begging.

Many athletes will not be attending the games because of fears over the accommodation conditions, but it is luxurious compared to the living conditions of the 100,000 families who have been evicted from slums on the site. The majority are now living in even worse conditions as they have been resettled in an area where there are few services such as schools and hospitals, and few jobs. Others do not even have a makeshift dwelling and are living under flyovers.

Even in its current state, some of it dilapidated before it is opened, the athletes' accommodation is far superior to the living conditions of many of the 400,000 migrant labourers who worked on the construction programme. A monitoring panel presented a report to Delhi High Court documented poor working conditions with many incidences of squalid workers' camps with no electricity and poor sanitation, wages paid at less than minimum rates, up to 12 hour days with no weekly day off, no childcare so children have been on the construction sites and exposed to all the risks. There was also a lack of safety equipment, many unreported accidents with 40 people killed, and many of the workers had no access medical care or compensation.

The plan is that the migrant workers will appear to vanish once the visitors arrive for the games. Bamboo screens have been planted to hide slums. This is part of a broader programme of beautification, a thin veneer of greenery to hide the reality of India's poverty and the aftermath of heavy construction. In June 2010, it was announced that about 200,000 trees would be planted this year in the areas where tourists will be visiting for the Games. Landfill sites are being made less visible, with waste dumped on one side of site and levelled. Soil excavated from construction has been dumped over landfill sites, then thousands of trees have been planted to obscure the view and reduce the foul smell. Even the flyovers where many displaced people now huddle for shelter have been encompassed by the manic planting for an event that is more about appearance than reality. In April a programme to beautify all of the city's flyovers with flowers and ornamental plants was announced. Some of the planting programmes have not been completed, holes were dug for millions of pot plants to adorn the sites for the event, but many were left empty and filled with stagnant water. This is likely to be a contributory factor to an outbreak of dengue fever, which is spread by mosquitoes.

The Games triggered another enormous instant gardens project, in the final stage of the construction programme for the swanky new Terminal 3 at Delhi airport, which opened on 3rd July 2010. Gardens both inside and outside the terminal hide the enormity of concrete. A Hong Kong landscaping firm was brought in for the planting programme which encompassed 922,000 trees, shrubs, cacti, other types of plants and lush green lawns. In all, 300 varieties of plants have been used. Some of the most prominent plants are imported, including palm trees from Mexico and orchids from Thailand. 800 planters were imported from Germany.

If you look at where the materials for the new terminal were sourced from, it is more symbolic of globalisation than a new India. In contrast with the delays of the Games construction, Terminal 3 is designed to handle 34 million passengers per year, doubling the airport's passenger capacity. It took just 37 months to build, even less than Beijing's new terminal for the 2008 Olympics. It was opened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who said 'A good airport would signal the arrival of a new India'. Terminal 3, along with the new runway, was described by Kiran Grandhi of Delhi Airport operator GMR as India's 'new gateway to the world'. The runway is over 2 metres thick and required 2.3 million cubic metres of earthworks and 2.5m million tonnes of aggregated filling 500 trucks per day. Some of the heavy construction equipment was imported equipment from Germany including 8 Vibratory Soil Compactors with 18 tonne capacity for building embankments and stabilizing the base soil of the runway, and 10 Electronic Sensor Pavers for laying the surface.

The new terminal is bigger than new terminals at Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bangalore airports combined, and used 600,000 cubic metres of concrete and 200,000 tonnes of reinforced steel. A lot of the materials were imported, including 110 square metres of granite from Bahrain for the floor and 100,000 square metres of curtains from China, wielding a heavy ecological footprint and not fulfilling the promise that infrastructure for the games would boost support India's economy. It would have been a bit tragic if what is believed to be the world's biggest single commercial carpet order, for such a symbolic building, was not sourced from within India, considering the country's history in carpet making stretching back at least to 500 BC. The gigantic carpet is of Indian proveneance, and was manufactured in Mulshi, in Maharashtra. It covers about 170,000 square metres, about the size of 24 football fields, and was made by UK based Brintons. 320 workers worked on the carpet for four months using 20 weaving machines. The carpet then had its own incredible journey to Delhi in 85 containers, each nearly 10 metres long. The design depicts Delhi's Connaught Place business district, as seen by GoogleEarth.

It would be a shame if the new terminal flooded, the wonderful carpet would be ruined. Part of Delhi Airport's domestic terminal flooded on 21st August 2009, and part of the roof collapsed, although, fortunately nobody was injured. This occurred during what the Met Department described as 'normal monsoon showers'.

Many of India's airports are unable to withstand normal flooding patterns, never mind the worsening floods likely with climate change. One of Mumbai Airport's runways is partially built over the Mithi River, and construction of the other runway involved diverting the river. In June 2010 the airport was forced to close for 5 hours as water logging caused flooding and disruptions in power supply. There were concerns that this occurred in moderate rain, so the airport might not be prepared for downpours in the monsoon season. Chennai Airport departure and arrival halls were inundated with water following heavy rains in 2005. Chennai's second runway is built over the Aydar River, and in an attempt to prevent future flooding it was built 2 metres over the 2005 flood level, with a wall to keep water out of airport grounds. But the water has to go somewhere, and, following a downpour in November 2008, villages sandwiched between the airport and the river were flooded.

It appears that Delhi will maange to pull of this event, and the new buildings might appear formidably strong, but are fragile in the face of nature's power. The impermeable surfaces of intensive urban development, particularly airports with vast asphalt runways and aprons and enormous concrete terminals, remove the absorption and natural buffer provided by green space and flood plains. So the flow of water is concentrated making flooding worse, although when and where it will occur becomes harder to predict.

Other oil spills

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:45:00 +0000

Image by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Oil slick in Gulf of Mexico, 24th May

Finally, five months after exploding, killing 11 workers and beginning to pour oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig has been sealed. Yet the effects of the spill will be long term, and Bruce Ritchie's Florida Environments blog is an excellent resource for information on the impacts on communities, the environment and wildlife, and the responses of BP, the owners of the oil well, government agencies and community organisations. This interesting post is about a book which was published in June 2010, a compilation of 38 essays by writers who warned of the risks of offshore drilling before the Deepwater Horizon incident, when the ban against offshore drilling was lifted.

Now, it is likely that the media will move on from coverage of oil spills, yet they are commonplace, all over the world. Below are just a few examples of oil spills which occurred within a few weeks of the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

On 25th May 2010 several thousand barrels of crude oil spilled into a containment area at the Delta Junction pump station, about 100 miles south of Fairbanks, on the Alaska pipeline, which, since it opened in 1977, has moved 15 billion barrels of crude oil from the North Slope oilfields a distance of 800 miles to the port of Valdez. Ironically, the incident occurred whilst valve leak testing was underway. An open valve overflowed into a tank when a battery failed to control it. Fortunately the oil did not escape outside the containment area, which has a capacity of about 104,500 barrels, and no injuries were reported.

On the next day, on 26th May, a tanker collided with a bulk carrier 13 kilometres to the southeast Changi in Singapore, the world's biggest container port. About 18,325 barrels of oil were spilled, which amounts to about three days of leakage from the Deepwater Horizon well, or enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. By the next day patches of oil were washed up affecting a ferry terminal, sailing club, golf course and naval base on the shoreline.

In China, a serious oil spill began on 15th July 2010, when a pipeline at Dalian port exploded, spilling oil into the Yellow Sea. Within five days the size of the spill had doubled covering 430 square kilometres, and fishing in the area was banned. The workers attempting to clean up the spill with straw mats only had rubber gloves for protection, and the thick, sticky oil was getting into their skin. One worker, a firefighter, drowned and his body was found covered in crude oil. Two months later officials estimated that about 1,360 tonnes of oil had poured into the sea, but Greenpeace warned that the figure could be 60 times higher, making it one of the 30 worst oil spills in history.

With the world's media focussing on the Gulf of Mexico, it is important to shine a spotlight on other big oil companies. The True Cost of Chevron published an Alternative Annual Report for 2009 which documents the firm's lamentable record of leaks from operations around the world, including Alaska, California, Canada, the Philippines, Angola and Barrow Island off the coast of Australia.

Shell operates in 100 countries, and about 40 per cent of its oil spills have been in Nigeria. Oil and environmental experts estimate that between 9 and 13 million barrels of oil have been spilled in the Niger delta over the past 50 years, which is equivalent to a Valdez every year. Previous to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Valdez was the worst oil spill in the US, after the Exxon-Valdez oil tanker collided with rocks off Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1989. The effects of the contamination from the oil spill on wildlife and fishing are still evident today.

In recent weeks there have been two small oil spills from ships off the coast of India. While the scale of these is relatively small compared to the volumes of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, there is considerable environmental damage and peoples livelihoods can be destroyed. Traffic and fishing were suspended after ship two Panama cargo ships, collided nearly 10 kilometres offshore from Mumbai harbour on 7th August 2010. One of the ships, the MSC Chittra, tilted 80 degrees and 300 containers carrying oil tumbled into the sea. Three days after the accident the oil spill was estimated to amount to nearly 50 tonnes and a thick oil slick was spotted 2-3 kilometres from the vessel.

Local people began bringing birds covered in oil into the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals hospital at Parel for treatment. In September there were signs of a long term effect on marine life with reports of dead wildlife including a masked booby, a migratory bird, and a dolphin lying in sand contaminated with oil. On 14th August India's Environment Jairam Ramesh stated that it was the biggest oil spill ever to occur in India.

Further south on India's west coast, there are concerns that an oil spill off the coast of Goa might put people off visiting the beaches, which attract 2.5 million tourists per year. On 1st September 'tar balls' began flowing onto beaches including Colva, Candolim and Calangute. Ships routinely clean fuel tanks and dump the waste at sea, but this ship dumped tonnes of waste oil, much of which has drifted onshore. The oil spill formed 'tar balls', which are half solid lumps of oil, and are deposited up to 15 centimetres deep on beaches. On 17th September tar balls were still flowing onto the beaches.

All around the world there frequent narrow escapes as potential major oil spills are averted. On 4th September a ship carrying about 40,000 litres of diesel sunk during a fierce storm off Phuket. Fortunately no oil spill resulted from the incident. On 7th September four workers slipped off the Sinopec oil rig in the Shengli oilfield of China's northern coast. The rig was tilting at an angle of 45 degrees after a typhoon. 34 men were evacuated from the rig but two of workers who had fallen into the ocean were still missing. On the following day, 8th September, fire broke out in the living quarters of an oil rig 15 kilometres off Cape Virgenes, Patagonia, Chile. The fire was put out but reignited later. The workers were evacuated and the oil wells were successfully shut down and there were no reports of an oil spill.

All these incidents highlight the vulnerability to petrochemical pollution, especially from offshore oil and gas exploration and production, which continues worldwide, from the Arctic to the Antarctic.

More monoculture plantations in Indonesia

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:47:00 +0000

The deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions of Indonesia’s palm plantations are well known. Indonesia has the world’s most palm plantations at 7 million hectares, and the government plans to nearly triple palm plantations to over 20 million in the next decade. In February 2009 a freeze on palm plantation on peat land was lifted, making about 2 million hectares of peat land eligible for palm plantation. Clearing the peat releases millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Greenpeace estimates Indonesia’s peat land locks in 37.8 billion tonnes of CO2, mainly in the provinces of Riau, West Sumatra and Jambi. A report sponsored by the World Bank and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) found that up to 84 per cent of Indonesia’s CO2 emissions are from deforestation, forest fires and peat land degradation.

I was surprised to read that nearly half the current 7 million hectares of palm oil plantation is owned by smallholders, as little as two hectares can provide financial security for a family. This is not the picture we imagine when we hear about palm plantations, it is an important social dimension showing a broader importance of palm to the Indonesian economy, but the situation is complex and many small farmers still face losing their land for palm plantations. The World Rainforest Movement documents many recent instances of land grabbing for palm plantations. For example, PR Kresna Duta Agroindo (KDA), a subsidiary of Indonesia’s biggest holdings of palm plantations PT Sinar Mas, has been aggressively expanding, grabbing forest and rubber plantations in the village of Karang Mendapo in Jambi. Six hundred hectares of forest and rubber plantation were illegally cut down for incorporation into a larger palm plantation and ever since the villagers have suffered intimidation by people thought to be acting on behalf of KDA.

The International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank, continues to provide loans for palm plantations to Wilmar palm oil trading group, another firm with a record of ignoring social and environmental standards. No less than 19 Indonesian civil society and indigenous peoples’ organisations, have made reports with serious complaints of land grabbing, complicity in serious human rights abuses of communities opposing the firm’s activities, illegal clearing of forest and peat, illegal fires to clear land, failing to conduct environmental impact assessments and failing to honour assurances of areas for smallholders. Wilmar is rapidly growing its land bank towards a target of 1 million hectares of palm plantations in Indonesia and Sarawak. The company’s palm oil plantations are vertically integrated, aligned with ports, shipping facilities and refineries for incorporation into food products, detergents and cosmetics.

French fries
Now the palm plantations could become more closely integrated with the fast food industry. The Indonesian Agriculture Ministry has designated vast areas in two provinces to grow potatoes for French fries. The programme will start with 3,500 hectares in the Kerinci and Marangin districts of Jambi and South Minahasa district of North Sulawesi, then another 6,000 hectares in Jambi. In the meantime, around 11,000 hectares have been provided in South Manahasa district for the development of the particular potato variety. These areas have been identified as having the potential to be ‘potato production centres’ i.e. French fries monocultures. As is so often the case with monoculture plantations, the crop is an introduced rather than native variety and the seeds will come from foreign investors in Australia and Canada.

One enormous new plantation won’t be feeding anyone. 11,000 hectares of what is claimed by the administration to be neglected land in Pasuruan will be turned into a jatropha plantation to feed a biofuels plant in East Java. The plant will require about 550,000 tonnes of dried jatropha seeds to produce 1 million litres of fuel per year. The Pasuruan administration’s programme for farmers growing jatropha recognises that previous jatropha growing programmes had failed and farmers had lost money on the crop. The East Java jatropha plant could be just the beginning of a massive programme of new biofuel plantations, as it is claimed that Indonesia has 77 million hectares of neglected land, 50 million of which are suitable for growing jatropha.

Jatropha was hailed as the wonder biofuels crop with its black berries yielding up to 40 per cent oil, but crops have been failing around the world. Claims that the inedible plant does not compete with food supplies are crumbling, as instead of growing well on marginal, infertile land the crop is only proving successful on fertile land and requires water and fertilizers. The Action Aid report Meals per gallon: the impact of industrial biofuels on people and global hunger interviewed farmers in many countries including India, Kenya, Senegal and Ghana who have been displaced from their land for jatropha plantations or lost money on the failed jatropha crops which the authorities had encouraged them to grow. The potential rewards of successful large scale plantation of a new ‘black gold’ energy crop, both the revenues from the fuel and the technology for processing it, are sufficient to motivate large scale experiments in growing jatropha. But poor farmers are being exposed to the risks as crop yields and markets are highly uncertain.

The price of rice

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:21:00 +0000

Dhs

As grain prices rose at the beginning of 2008, triggering the food crisis, India, like many countries, banned rice exports. The ban, which began in April 2008, did not apply to basmati rice, which is long grain, aromatic and fetches about twice the price of non-basmati on export markets. More than 70 per cent is exported to Gulf countries and about 12 per cent to the EU. India raised the minimum export price of basmati rice from $1,1000 to $1,200 per tonne.

Simultaneously, representatives from the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry met with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Minister of Economy HE Eng Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansouri. The goal of the meeting was to strengthen bilateral trade between the two countries, including increased UAE investment in India’s infrastructure including food processing, and an assured supply of basmati rice from India to the UAE, which imports about 300,000 tonnes of basmati rice per year from India, Thailand and Pakistan.

Ever since, UAE has piled on the pressure to cut basmati rice prices. India lowered the minimum export price of basmati to $900 per tonne in September 2009 to compete with lower cost basmati from Pakistan. In the UAE the price of rice plunged by 35 per cent January 2009, then by 15 per cent in the three months to April 2009. Many traders were offering an extra kilogramme of rice for every two purchased, which makes a minimum export price ineffectual.

Yet UAE demand for non-basmati rice is falling. The main consumers of this cheaper rice are the migrant workers from India and other South Asian countries in camps providing cheap labour for the construction boom. These camps have reduced their provision of free food in order to cut costs. There have been many reports of rates of pay too low to send money home, strikes, deaths from heat and exhaustion, suicides and malnutrition in camps, such as this from The Times in 2007. This photo gallery in the Guardian newspaper gives a glimpse of conditions for migrant labourers in Dubai. Since then, migrant workers have been at the sharp end of the recession. In March 2009 it was reported that some construction firms have cut labourers’ meals from three to one per day. The UAE Ministry of Labour itself reports overcrowding with up to 40 per cent more workers crammed into camps to cut costs, violations of labour law including late payment, reduction in wages, unpaid leave and termination of service without required end of service benefits.

India’s rice yields for 2009 are down, largely because of a weak and late monsoon, the worst monsoon since 1972. India’s ‘year of drought’ may reduce rice yields by about 18 per cent. Bad weather has also affected rice yields in the Philippines and Latin America, which may trigger a surge in prices to record levels. India might import 3 million tonnes of rice in 2010.

Yet India’s basmati rice exports for 2009-2010 are set to surpass the 2,100,000 tonne export target set by the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), an increase of about a third over the previous year. Basmati rice has coped better with the drought as the crop requires less rain than non-basmati varieties and copes better with late rain. But the crop also benefits from government support in assuring water for irrigation. APEDA Chair Asit Tripathy stated his confidence that exports will unaffected by drought as basmati rice areas benefit from access to underground water sources, and paying for a consultant to conduct an annual satellite survey of basmati rice growing areas.

Yet again, the Indian government’s food export drive takes priority over feeding hungry people, and the countries importing the Indian produce appear to have the upper hand in leveraging lower prices. My previous post about India’s food export drive as 200 million go hungry requires updating, as the estimates are rising. Vandana Shiva, calls India the ‘hunger capital of the world ’ noting that 214 million people, one in four, go hungry in India. And outside India's borders, many of the migrant workers in UAE, about 1.5 million were from India in 2008, are also at risk of hunger.

Storms hit Madeira, and what fate for the levadas?

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:05:00 +0000

In Madeira the worst storm for 17 years has brought floods and mudslides which have killed more than 30 people and injured many more. The island popular with tourists, is accustomed to a lot of rain. Were it not for the canals, or levadas, which cover most of the small volcanic island, the rain would plummet straight into the ocean. The levadas slow water run off and regulate water flow, irrigating terraced plots growing all kinds of food from avocadoes, squash, tomatoes and aubergines, fruit trees, all kinds of green leafy vegetables and herbs. The levadas also serve as wonderful paths for walking around the island, although some stretches are narrow with a long sheer drop, so you just have to hope no-one is coming the other way.

Levada in Madeira

Just maintaining the levadas in stable weather conditions is a never ending task undertaken by all the farmers on the small plots. Storms outside the parameters of the normal frequent heavy rainfall are likely to be more frequent and more severe with climate change, and will damage food production and necessitate major repairs. This will be especially difficult as a growing number of smallholders in Madeira have day jobs to supplement their incomes.

Terraced agriculture is a way of working sensitively with nature to make land more fertile and increase food production. Terraces and small canals minimise soil erosion and are also used to make dry land fertile. In Peru stone wall terraces enabled farmers to irrigate steep slopes with canals with minimal rainfall. The Cinque Terra in Italy has protected national park status. Five towns nestle into the steep cliffs and are surrounded by intricate terraces. You can walk along many paths and see the ingredients of many traditional local dishes growing, like olives, basil and fennel, and look out over the Mediterranean.

My own back garden in Yorkshire slopes steeply towards the North West. Were it not for a previous owner putting in three levels, little sunlight would reach the soil. With the terracing, the amount of sunlight between the spring and autumn equinoxes is remarkable and there are microhabitats for many kinds of plants.

BT brinjal blocked – for now

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:25:00 +0000

solanaceae

The aubergine, also known as egg plant, is believed to have originated in India where the vegetable is called brinjal and is a staple ingredient of many dishes including curries. India hosts over 4,000 varieties, some are still found growing wild. There has been an epic campaign all over India against a genetically modified (GM) variety developed by seed firm Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Co (Mahyco). A bacterial gene has been inserted, which prevents certain pests from feeding on the crop. The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) approved BT brinjal for commercial production in October 2009, but Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has announced a moratorium on growing the crop, saying that further studies into safety are required. The ruling follows a national consultation tour which was met with lively anti-GM protests often involving people dressing up as aubergines, a National Day of Action, street plays, vehicle stickers and a film. Members of the campaign group Safe Food Alliance thanked the minister in person for his decision. Devinder Sharma’s blog has many articles on the saga, the latest installment welcomed as a ‘triumph of good sense over bad science’.

As with other GM varieties, Mahyco insisted and GEAC approved, that the GM brinjal is ‘substantially equivalent’ to its non-GM counterpart in terms of factors including protein and carbohydrates and its chemical constituents. The biotech firms then try and have it both ways by insisting on intellectual property rights on the basis of the GM variety’s unique properties. GM crops may be resistant to certain pests, but they still require pesticide. Mahyco recommend one or two sprayings of one of its pesticides for the GM brinjal.

There has been intensive genetic research on the solanaceae family of vegetables, which includes aubergines, tomatoes, peppers, chillies and potatoes. Suman Sahai outlines the the lack of safeguards against risks that could ‘awaken a sleeping poison’. Farmers have worked for thousands of years to domestic wild solanaceae plants breeding out toxins. After all, the edible solanaceae plants are related to deadly nightshade. Genetic manipulation could trigger not just new toxins, but the old toxins which were removed by the selective breeding. There is ‘no mechanism to detect unexpected or unintended consequences like new toxic compounds in the cell’. Furthermore, there is no system in place for segregation or labelling so that customers could distinguish between GM and non-GM produce, although Indian government is in favour of mandatory labelling of GM food, and the ministry of health has drafted rules. There is no programme for monitoring the long term impacts, and there is no liability law should there be health damage to consumers or contamination of non-GM crops.

GM crops do escape and contaminate non GM crops. GM cotton has been detected in cotton labelled as organic in Europe and Japan. Just this month, there are widespread reports that around 30 per cent of India's organic cotton exports to Europe are contaminated with GM cotton, which could damage this fast growing export sector. In Thailand, commercial planting of GM crops is banned and only tightly controlled field trials are permitted. Yet farmers’ group Biothai found GM contamination of 17 crop samples including maize, papaya and cotton, and the first ever discoveries of GM chillies which were growing in Chiang Mai and soya in Mae Hong Son.

The tomato, another member of the solanaceae family, has been the focus of GM research including the purple tomato. Now, a team led by Dr Asis Datta at the National Institute of Plant Genome research in New Delhi India has created a GM tomato with a longer shelf life, taking 45 days instead of 15 to become soft and shrivelled. The scientists ‘silenced’ two genes which drive ripening in fruit and vegetables. Advocates argue that this genetic engineering process is different from genetic modification, as instead of introducing a new gene to the plant, the target gene is deactivated.

Dr Datta says the genetic engineering could be applied to other key fruit crops, but, leaving aside any unforeseen environmental and health effects, who would benefit from the extended shelf-life if these crops were introduced to the food supply? It is unlikely to be the consumer. With fresh produce, there is a trade off between extending shelf life and the quality. Already, the harder tomato varieties preferred by supermarkets as they can withstand lengthy transportation and storage have far less flavour than the softer varieties. Many types of produce including apples are stored in a controlled atmosphere for several months. Yet the produce only has a few days shelf life once it is available in stores. Extending shelf life enables retailers to store fresh produce for longer, to source from somewhere cheaper further away.

Here in England, an application has been made for a GM trial of potatoes resistant to the cyst nematode pest. A 2008 crop trial was destroyed by protestors, the same fate as most of the GM trials in England. EU law requires GM trial locations to be disclosed, so between EU firms conducted 75 per cent of field trials outside Europe between 2006 and 2008. But the results of a 2009 GM potato trial in Leeds, Yorkshire, with security fencing, CCTV and full time guards led the researchers at University of Leeds to apply for permission for another trial which they intend to start later this year. The John Innes Centre in Norfolk has spent £20,000 on security fence and cameras.

Canada airports to ban books?

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:19:00 +0000

New airport security measures in Canada for passengers travelling to the US listed just 13 permitted items which passengers can take into the cabin. There was no surprise that this includes medical devices, canes and laptop computers. But books and magazines are not on the list, leaving Canadian publishers ‘dumbfounded’ as it appears that passengers will only be able to take books bought airside after the security check onto the plane. There is not much to do at airport except read, so if this apparent book ban is implemented, airport book sales will be boosted, and the choice of reading will be narrowed.

Airport retail benefits from a comparatively wealthy customer base along with lengthy airport dwell times which have increased since 9/11. If there is an airport book ban, I wonder which of these books about aviation would make it to the airport book stores? The History of Air Cargo and Airmail by Camille Allaz, from the first tentative flights of farm animals in a hot air balloon, is informative and fun and positive about the aviation industry, but is only available in hardback so a bit heavy to take on a trip. I doubt that these next three books made it into the airport bookstores when they came out:
• Climate Change and Aviation edited by Stephan Gossling and Paul Upham is an authoritative and measured assessment of aviation’s climate change impacts and possible solutions
• Ghost Plane by Stephen Grey, this investigation into US and UK complicity in ‘torture flights’ is still bringing information about extraordinary rendition into the public arena
• The Sustainability of Air Transportation by Milan Jani get down to the detail of the environmental impacts of airports, airlines and air traffic control.

Airport book shops typically include an aviation enthusiast section, and, not for the nervous passenger, books about air disasters, averted and otherwise. Books by and about airline executives are often given generous shelf space, like Michael O’Leary of Ryanair expounding on their supposed entrepreneurial spirit. All this conveniently ignores subsidies like tax free aviation fuel and omits to mention that expanding airport retail complexes are a revenue stream that helps keep the cost of flights down. It is extraordinarily effective. Many high streets and malls have gaps where shops have closed down since the recession. Yet, globally, airport retail has continued to grow through the recession with airports including Sydney, Heathrow, Brussels, Seoul and Dubai boosting retail revenues. While the US media was full of headlines shouting that (minor) airlines were going bust, US airport retail spending increased by 20 per cent to $639 million in 2008. Expansion continues, for example Frankfurt Airport is building two new walk through stores.

Where are all the flowers from?

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:23:00 +0000

This wonderful animation brings to life the social and ecological impacts of flower farms in East Africa. The workforce is predominantly female, and Women Working Worldwide campaigns to improve poor working conditions, which include forced overtime and sexual harassment. Protection from toxic pesticides is inadequate, and health effects of overexposure can include harm to female reproductive system, which is ironic with sales of flowers about to skyrocket for giving to women to show love on Valentine’s and Mother’s Day.

Pesticide residues pollute water systems which are depleted by the flower farms. A flower is about 90 per cent water, so UK shoppers in indoor malls sheltered from the rain in one of the wettest countries in the world are buying flowers, an inedible and purely ornamental product, from one of the driest. Drought and high food prices led to a World Food Programme appeal for emergency food aid for 3.8 million Kenyan people, where dependency on grain imports is rising. Recent rainfall in the region only promises a late and partial respite from the long standing drought. Thirty enormous flower farms around Lake Naivasha have diverted water from desperately needed food crops and livestock, and drained the lake to half its previous size. Water is even used to clear dust on the loose surface roads along which the flowers are transported to airports for export.

About 80 per cent of Kenya’s flower exports are to Europe, with almost half of this sold in the UK. Kenya is the world’s biggest flower exporter, earnings from horticultural exports more have overtaken earnings from tourism or remittances from working abroad. But the industry is precarious. Kenya’s flower exports are declining, and are expected to be down from a record high of 93,000 tonnes in 2008, to 80,000 tonnes in 2009. While this is a minor decrease compared to the contraction of other industries, flowers can only be so cheap in supermarkets with low pay for farm workers, and lowering social and environmental standards. The effect of price pressure on producers due to supermarket buyer power is evident, as Kenya’s 2008 record volume of flower sales actually brought lower export earnings for Kenya, which fell about 7 per cent to $504.4 million. In the UK and many other European countries, flowers are established as a cheap and cheerful everyday purchase, relatively resilient to recession where people cut back on big-ticket items like expensive electronic products, furniture and holidays.

The entrances of UK supermarkets are, as usual filled with brightly coloured roses. Some of the bouquets are of roses of different colours, some are mixed with other types of flowers, others are bunches of identical roses. Many of the bouquets are labelled as produce of Kenya, but I notice that an increasing proportion are labelled ‘More than one country’, so the customer has no idea where the flowers are from. I can understand this with mixed bouquets where different types of flowers are assembled into bouquets at the main hubs for the world flower trade like Schiphol in the Netherlands, although it makes a mockery of supermarkets’ attempts to place the onus for sustainability on consumer choice enabled by labelling, which in many cases obscures rather than reveals the country of origin and other important aspects of the supply chain. But this is a photo of a bouquet of identical bright pink roses with the ‘More than one country’ label.

roses from more than one country

Customers in the UK are urged by some development organisations and the DFID (Department for International Development) to buy Kenyan flowers to support the livelihoods of flower farm workers, pretty impossible if there is no country of origin on the label? But the real pressure on Kenyan producers is not fickle consumer preferences. If a retailer stops stocking Kenyan flowers this is more likely to be because they are sourcing similar flowers from a country with lower production costs. Flower farms in Kenya face cut throat competition from other countries, and the 'race to the bottom' for lower production costs is evnident, two major flower farms have recently relocated to Ethiopia due to lower costs there. Ethiopian flowers are sold in the UK, but I have yet to see ‘Produce of Ethiopia’ on flower bouquet labels, so it seems this is not something that retailers wish to highlight.

Going back to the social impact of flower farms, the label states that the roses are guaranteed for 5 days. For other bunches of flowers the guaranteed vase life is longer - 7, 10 or even 14 days. This is longer than the time frame for an assured livelihood for many of the women working on African flower farms, who work on a casual basis with no contract of employment. I’ll get my mother some fair trade chocolate for Mothers’ Day, at least it’s edible rather than useless, and offers some guarantee of fairness to workers in producing countries.

Olives in sunflower oil

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:32:00 +0000

When I bought these Kalamata olives I assumed I was buying olives marinated in olive oil, as it said extra virgin olive oil in big print on the label. When I got home I read the label properly. It actually says -

“Olives Kalamata

Marinated in (2%) extra virgin olive oil and oregano”

On the back of the label the ingredients list the second ingredient after the olives is sunflower oil. The 2 per cent extra virgin olive oil is listed after the salt. I imagine the label meets legal requirements, but it is still misleading. Buying in a hurry we make assumptions based on what is customary, the extra virgin olive oil is used to sell the product in big letters on the front of the jar, when it only contains a minimal amount.

You will find sunflower oil lurking high in the ingredients list of many Mediterranean style foods. It is never announced on the front of the packaging, but a look at the ingredients lists shows that it is, entirely or to a large extent, replacing the traditional olive oil in pesto, marinated vegetables like artichokes, sundried tomatoes and jars of olives and capers.

Apart from the misleading labelling there is the problem of lack of information about food processing. Pale, bland tasting sunflower oil is not just the result of pressing sunflower seeds. In his book Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, which was actually published in 1993, Udo Erasmus, exposes the many stages of processing such as bleaching, de-gumming and deodorising, involving high temperatures and chemical treatments which systematically remove nutrients like vitamin E and lecithin, and alters the molecular structure of oils in order to create a bland oil with long shelf life. Some doubt Erasmus's credibility as he does have a product line of eye-wateringly expensive vegetable oils which have been cold pressed and are sold in small batches with a limited shelf-life (I just eat the seeds containing the beneficial oils). But whatever your view on these products, he has actually done the work to research and expose the hidden processing of vegetable oils and the harmful health effects.

The harmful health effects of trans fats is in the news again today, but the hydrogenation, process which hardens liquid oils for products like margarine which produces these trans fats, is just the tip of the iceberg of vegetable oil processing. It is very difficult to find vegetable oils which have not been processed in this way. If sunflower, or any other, vegetable oil is cold pressed rather than subjected to the usual processing it will be sold as such, prominent on the front of the label and at a premium, like the extra virgin olive oil which is a minor ingredient in this jar of Kalamata olives.

Afghanistan’s escalating fruit exports

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:03:00 +0000

In the midst of escalating conflict and worsening hunger in Afghanistan, USAID (United States Agency for International Development) agricultural programmes are increasing fruit exports. Programmes to rehabilitate fruit orchards destroyed by the war, to replace opium crops, are linked with export supply chains complete with transportation, storage, processing, packaging and marketing. Pomegranates are a key crop, and Afghan varieties, with dark red juice and acid taste as well as sweetness, are widely regarded as the best in the world. Pomegranates are hailed as a ‘superfood’ full of antioxidants and fetch a high price in the US, Europe and Middle East and Asia. Afghanistan’s pomegranate exports increased 10 per cent in 2008 compared to 2007, totalling 45,000 tonnes, about half of a total pomegranate crop of 96,000 tonnes.

more pomegranate seeds

Pomegranate exports are set to rise further, with the USAID funded Omaid Bahar fruit processing factory in the outskirts of Kabul. The centralised fruit juice factory, a converted textiles factory from the Soviet era, a convergence of military intervention and development aid with a ‘high wall topped with razor wire’, and ‘heavily guarded iron gates’ is hailed in the Independent newspaper as a ‘beacon of hope’ for the future of Afghanistan farming. The key flagship product is pomegranate juice and the factory aims to buy fruit including pomegranates, apples and apricots from 50,000 Afghan farmers. About 5,000 tonnes of fruit were expected to be processed by the end of 2009, with plans for 25,000 tonnes in 2010. The factory has contracts to supply India and several countries in the Middle East, and is negotiating to supply Europe and the US.

The USAID supported Badam Bagh Demonstration Farm in the north of Kabul trains Afghan farmers in ‘modern’ farming methods, such as how to use gas powered insecticide spraying machines and protective equipment when working with poisonous pesticides. The farm does showcase some small scale techniques like different methods of drying fruit, but the emphasis is not on rehabilitating the varied traditional skills of Afghan farmers, but transplanting modern agribusiness into Afghanistan, with all its problems such as fossil fuel dependency, input intensity and large scale infrastructure, such as irrigation with a single 10 cm pipe from Kargha Lake 10 kilometres to the west of Kabul all the way to the farm.

The farm has an export centre with fruit including pomegranates, grapes and apricots flowing in from nearly every province of Afghanistan. An agreement has been made with India to supply 3,000 tonnes of apples from the Wardek and Paktika provinces, with the first shipment delivered in November 2009. The emphasis is on exports, not supplying fresh produce to malnourished Afghans. An article on the USAID website highlights a delivery of produce including watermelons, broccoli and sweetcorn from Badam Bagh farm to refugees in Camp Hilmand in Kabul to 110 families, but this fresh produce was a one-off exception to their usual diet based on bags of flour.

At the time of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 the US declared that the country would regain its self sufficiency in food by 2007. Yet Afghans are suffering worsening food insecurity due to a complex of factors including the war, drought conditions and high food prices. By 2009 7.4 million people, a third of the Afghan population, are unable to meet their basic food needs, 54 per cent of children suffer stunted growth and the World Food Programme was aiming to feed 8.8 million people. A BBC article highlights people living in Parwan, a relatively peaceful province with fertile land, as particularly badly affected by malnutrition and hunger. Food aid supplies are inadequate, and not reaching the people who need it. Even farm workers in Parwan are suffering from hunger. Yet in a two-week period in July 2009 $110,000 worth of cherries, apricots and melons were exported from the Kandahar, Wardak and Parwan provinces via Badam Bagh farm to India and the UAE.

Air freight: the Impacts

noreply@blogger.com (Rose Bridger) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:55:00 +0000

Last week I took the train to Southend where Airport Watch launched the report I wrote, Air Freight: the Impacts. UK freight volumes, along with passenger numbers, have declined since the recession, but capacity expansion is still planned and underway all over the UK. This will either undermine greenhouse gas emission (GHG) reduction targets if the capacity becomes operational, or leave us with a load of white elephants with empty warehouse space, or add yet more generic business premises to the UK’s logistics landscape of windowless grey sheds proliferating around major road junctions.

The negative environmental impacts of air freight are well known, in particular the GHG emissions are many multitudes of transporting freight by other modes, by road, rail and ship. The report also questions the supposed economic benefits, highlighting a £20 billion air freight trade deficit with more goods flown into the UK than are exported. Air freight expansion also has a poor track record of job creation, and any economic benefits need to be weighed against considerable funding and policy support from many government agencies. The longer term trend has been the UK’s air freight volumes flatlining for the past decade, concurrent with economic growth until last autumn, so the evidence for the argument that air freight expansion is vital for economic growth appears to be weaker than the case for expansion for more passenger flights.

Airport Watch launched the report at London Southend Airport. SAEN is running an amazingly comprehensive campaign against the expansion of the airport and a planning objection has been submitted. This highlights the noise nightmare with the runway expansion meaning the flightpath would go right over several schools and a church would become a noisy place for worship, an erroneous assessment of the noise impacts of more, larger, noisier planes flying lower over the area, exaggerated job creation claims, a pro-airport bias by councils and unrealistic passenger number projections. Freight magnate Stobart, operators of the airport, have been inconsistent in their statements on freight growth plans at the airport. We had a look at the exhibition about the expansion plans in the foyer, which managed the typical spin of how it will ‘enhance’ features like a bit of woodland that will not be covered in asphalt with the extended runway.

SAEN anticipates that if the expansion goes ahead and passenger numbers increase, most of them will head into London, for example for the 2012 Olympics, and we saw the main site taking shape from the train on the way to Southend. Southend Airport also goes by the Name of London Southend Airport. It one of several airports which is are not actually in London, it is out on England’s south east coast, like Manston in Kent which is referred to as London Manston Airport, and Oxford Airport where there was objection to renaming it London Oxford Airport as London is 60 miles away. The naming of these regional airports shows how the expansion is about enabling development that is of questionable benefits to local residents and will funnel passengers into the tourist attractions and business centres in the big cities.