by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 24, 2012 | Toxification
By University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Recent widespread news coverage heralded the success of a United Nations’ goal of greatly improving access to safe drinking water around the world.
But while major progress has been made, a new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill indicates that far greater challenges persist than headline statistics suggested.
Earlier this month (March 6), UNICEF and the World Health Organization issued a report stating that the world had met the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goal target of halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water, well in advance of a deadline.
That goal aimed to boost access to improved drinking water sources, such as piped supplies and protected wells, between 1990 and 2015.
However, the new UNC study estimates that 1.8 billion people – 28 percent of the world’s population – used unsafe water in 2010.
That figure is 1 billion more than the official report’s estimate that 783 million people (11 percent of the globe) use water from what are classified as unimproved sources by WHO and UNICEF’s Joint Monitoring Program.
The new study’s lead author, Jamie Bartram, Ph.D., professor of environmental sciences and engineering in the Gillings School of Global Public Health, said the WHO/UNICEF report highlighted the progress that could be achieved through concerted international action, but left outstanding the needs of millions of people who only have access to dangerous contaminated drinking water.
“If you look at the water people use and ask ‘Is this contaminated?’ instead of ‘Is this water from a protected source?’, the world would still be well short of meeting the Millennium Development Goal target,” said Bartram, also director of the Water Institute at UNC.
“In many parts of the world, water from ‘improved sources’ – like protected village wells and springs – is likely to be microbiologically or chemically contaminated, either at the source or by the time people drink it,” he said. “In developing countries, whether you live in small village or a big city, safe water can be hard to come by: pipes and taps break, clean springs and wells become contaminated or people have to carry or store water in potentially unsanitary ways.”
The study, “Global Access to Safe Water: Accounting for Water Quality and the Resulting Impact on MDG Progress,” was published March 14, 2012, in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
Bartram and colleagues analyzed water quality and sanitary risk information from an earlier study of five countries, and extrapolated the data to estimate global figures. Their study suggested that of the 5.8 billion people using piped or “other improved” water sources in 2010, 1 billion probably received faecally contaminated water. Adding that tally to the nearly 800 million people who collect water from unimproved sources would mean 1.8 billion people are drinking unsafe water.
Furthermore, Bartram and colleagues estimated that another 1.2 billion people got water from sources that lack basic sanitary protection against contamination.
“All told, we estimate 3 billion people don’t have access to safe water, if you use a more stringent definition that includes both actual water quality and sanitary risks,” Bartram said.
He highlighted that the recent WHO/UNICEF announcement confirmed how much had been achieved since the Millennium Development Goals were adopted in 2000, and that this progress should lead to a progressive shift towards ensuring that every home, workplace and school has reliable water supplies that are – and remain – safe.
However, he said the magnitude of the UNC study’s estimates and the health and development implications suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to better understanding and managing drinking water safety.
From PhysOrg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-billion-people-unsafe.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 22, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Christine Shearer / TruthOut
Although the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 3 issued a statement last week that its preliminary tests of water samples near drilling and fracking sites in the Pennsylvania town of Dimock showed no health concerns, the group Water Defense and “Gasland” director Josh Fox went to Dimock to look at the EPA summaries themselves, which they say do report high levels of explosive methane, heavy metals and hazardous chemicals. The issue is raising renewed controversy over the increasing growth of unconventional gas drilling and fracking and the uncertainty around health and safety regulations.
By the 2000s, it was starting to look like the reign of coal in providing over half of US electricity was ending. Community opposition and changing economic conditions turned the tide on most of the over 150 new coal plants proposed by the George W. Bush administration. And the EPA was being pressured to implement or update a suite of overdue coal regulations, including coal waste, mercury, water pollution and greenhouse gases, among others, making coal less commercially competitive compared to other energy alternatives.
While some looked hopefully to renewable energy to fill in the gap, industry developments in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing were ushering in what appeared to be a new era for “unconventional” natural gas. Suddenly, the race was on for shale gas and oil deep underground. Homeowners and cities across the US agreed to drilling leases on their land, spurred on by the promise of low impact and high royalties. Plus, gas releases fewer pollutants when burned than coal, including about half the carbon dioxide emissions, making it easy to portray as the ideal bridge to a clean energy future.
Although the deep drilling process was in many ways new – particularly the cocktail of chemicals, sand and water used to break up the shale and release the gas in what has become known as “fracking” – gas drillers received exemptions from seven federal regulations that apply to other industries, including the Clean Water Act; the Clean Air Act; the Superfund law; and, most notoriously, the Safe Drinking Water Act, due to the “Halliburton loophole” in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Regulation and oversight were largely left to individual states, many of which were already overburdened, underfunded and under staffed.
By 2009, there were more than 493,000 active natural gas wells across 32 states in the US, almost double the number in 1990. And around 90 percent have used fracking to get more gas flowing, according to the drilling industry.
Read more from TruthOut: http://truth-out.org/news/item/8021-about-that-dimock-fracking-study-results-did-show-methane-and-hazardous-chemicals
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 22, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Protests & Symbolic Acts, Toxification
By Indigenous Environmental Network
Native Americans gathering in Cushing, OK today to protest President Obama’s words of praise for the Keystone XL pipeline were forced by local authorities to hold their event in a cage erected in Memorial Park. The protestors were stunned that their community, so long mistreated, would be insulted in such an open manner instead of being given the same freedom of speech expected by all Americans simply for taking a stance consistent with their values.
“A lot of tribal councils and Indian businesses struggle to find a balance between economic resources and our inherited responsibilities for the earth,” said Indian actor and activist Richard Ray Whitman in a statement. “How will the decisions we make now effect coming generations?”
“President Obama is an adopted member of the Crow Tribe, so his fast-tracking a project that will desecrate known sacred sites and artifacts is a real betrayal and disappointment for his Native relatives everywhere,” said Marty Cobenais of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “Tar sands is devastating First Nations communities in Canada already and now they want to bring that environmental, health, and social devastation to US tribes.”
The President visited Cushing to stand with executives from TransCanada and throw his support behind a plan to build the southern half of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline to move tar sands bitumen and crude oil from Cushing to the Gulf Coast refineries in Texas.
A major concern for Native Americans in Oklahoma, according to spokespeople at the event, is that Keystone XL and the Canadian tar sands mines that would supply it ignore impacts to indigenous communities and their sacred spaces.
“Natives in Canada live downstream from toxic tar sands mines,” said Earl Hatley, “and they are experiencing spikes in colon, liver, blood and rare bile-duct cancers which the Canadian government and oil companies simply ignore. And now they want to pipe these tar sands through the heart of Indian country, bulldozing grave sites and ripping out our heritage.”
The group points to a survey done by the Oklahoma Archeological Survey which found 88 archaeological sites and 34 historic structures that were threatened by Keystone XL. TransCanada was asked to reroute around only a small portion of these, leaving 71 archaeological sites and 22 historic structures at risk. The group says they have asked for a list of these sites and to oversee operations that might threaten sacred burial grounds, but neither request has been honored.
Beyond the threat to their own cultural heritage, the group voiced opposition to the pipeline’s environmental impacts.
“The Ogallala Aquifer is not the only source of water in the plains,” said RoseMary Crawford, Project Manager of the Center for Energy Matters. “Tar sands pipelines have a terrible safety record and leaks are inevitable.”
“We can’t stop global warming with more fossil fuel pipelines,” added Crawford. “The people who voted for this President did so believing he would help us address the global environmental catastrophe that our pollution is creating. He said he would free us from ‘the tyranny of oil.’ Today that campaign promise is being trampled to boost the President’s poll numbers.”
From Indigenous Environmental Network:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 19, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest
By Agence France-Presse
Israeli settlers have taken over dozens of natural springs in the West Bank, limiting or preventing Palestinian access to much-needed water sources, a United Nations report said on Monday.
The report produced by the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said at least 30 springs across the West Bank had been completely taken over by settlers, with Palestinians unable to access them at all.
In most instances, the report said, “Palestinians have been deterred from accessing the springs by acts of intimidation, threats and violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers.”
The report said an OCHA survey carried out in 2011 identified a total of 56 springs that were under total or partial control of Israeli settlers, most in the part of the West Bank known as Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and military control.
“Springs have remained the single largest water source for irrigation and a significant source for watering livestock” for Palestinians, OCHA said, noting that some springs also provide water for domestic consumption.
“The loss of access to springs and adjacent land reduced the income of affected farmers, who either stop cultivating the land or face a reduction in the productivity of their crops.”
The report said in most cases where settlers were trying to limit Palestinian access to springs, they have undertaken to turn the area into a tourist attraction, constructing pools, picnic areas and signs carrying a Hebrew name for the spring.
“Such works were carried out without building permits,” the report said.
OCHA said the takeover of springs was an extension of settlement activity in the West Bank, which it pointed out is illegal under international law.
And it added that settler actions including “trespass, intimidation and physical assault, stealing of private property, and construction without a building permit,” are also violations of Israeli law.
“Yet, the Israel authorities have systematically failed to enforce the law on those responsible for these acts and to provide Palestinians with any effective remedy,” it said.
OCHA called on Israel to stop the expansion of settlements, “restore Palestinian access to the water springs taken over by settlers,” and to “conduct effective investigations into cases of settler violence and trespass.”
From Yahoo! News:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 13, 2012 | Agriculture, Climate Change
By Environment News Service
“If we fail today to make water an instrument of peace, it might become tomorrow a major source of conflict,” warns UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova in her foreword to the UN World Water Development Report released today at the opening of the World Water Forum in Marseilles. “Freshwater is a core issue for sustainable development – and it is slipping through the cracks.”
An “unprecedented” rise in the demand for food as the population grows, rapid urbanization and climate change are the drivers of increasing global water stress, finds the report, “Managing Water Under Uncertainty and Risk.”
Issued every three years since 2003 at the triennial World Water Forum, the UN World Water Development Report offers an overview of the state of the world’s freshwater resources and aims to provide decision makers with the tools to make sustainable use of water a reality.
“No water users, anywhere in the world, can be guaranteed they will have uninterrupted access to the water supplies they need or want or to the water-derived benefits from key developmental sectors such as agriculture, energy and health,” the report warns.
While UNICEF and the World Health Organization issued a separate report last week showing that the world has achieved the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water in advance of the 2015 deadline, water scarcity is still a big problem for millions of people.
The new World Water Development Report shows that despite projected increases in demand for water, there are still nearly one billion people without such access, and this number is growing in cities.
The world’s urban population is forecast to grow to 6.3 billion people in 2050, from 3.4 billion in 2009, increasing problems of adequate water supply, sanitation and drainage, especially in urban slums already faced with a backlog of unserved populations.
Sanitation infrastructure is not keeping pace with the world’s urban population, and more than 80 percent of the world’s wastewater is neither collected nor treated, according to the report.
“We have much to do before all people have the access to the water and sanitation they need to lead lives of dignity and well-being,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a video message to the World Water Forum.
Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of all water withdrawn by the agricultural, municipal, industrial and energy sectors, according to the report, which says, “Responsible agricultural water management will make a major contribution to future global water security.”
The report projects a 70 percent increase in demand for food by the year 2050 when the world population is forecast to be nine billion and warns that this level of demand will lead to a 19 percent surge in agricultural water use.
In response to growing demand, countries have tapped into underground water sources, with water extraction tripling over the past 50 years. In some underground basins, water cannot be replenished and is now at critically low levels.
Climate change will have a growing impact on water resources as it alters rainfall patterns and soil humidity, melts glaciers and causes water-related disasters such as floods and droughts, which impact food production.
Read more from Environment News Service:
