2 August, The Guardian, The truth about the people and numbers in loud and furious migration debate. David Cameron referred to a ‘swarm’ from Calais. But migration is happening across the globe, and the motives are more complex than stereotypes suggest. ‘You have got a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain because Britain has got jobs,” David Cameron said last week. Leaving the language aside, there is some truth in this. But it also misses out a lot. This is not a British problem. It is a European problem and a North African one and a Middle Eastern one. It is not going to be solved by a few miles of barbed-wire fencing or, as the prime minister emerged from Friday’s “emergency meeting” to say, “more dogs”. Why do all the people coming across the Mediterranean want to come to Britain? Read More here
Category Archives: Carrying Capacity
20 July 2015, WRI, An opportunity not to be wasted: The waste sector permeates almost every aspect of our society, and its mismanagement can lead to serious problems. Worldwide, we generated 1.3 billion tons of waste in 2012, which accounted forabout 5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. This volume is project to rise to 2.2 billion tons by 2025, with most of the increase expected in cities in the so-called emerging economies like Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa. The waste management utility sector is in the eye of the storm, and its evolution will be crucial to humanity’s response to various environmental challenges. As discussed in my previous blog in this series, the utility ecosystem is unable to respond to our social and environmental challenges because of entrenched interests, archaic infrastructure, systemic rigidities, and corporate inertia—all of which are painfully evident in the solid waste sector. Read More here
29 June 2015, Climate News Network, Stress on water resources threatens lives and livelihoods. Satellite data raises red-flag warning about the draining of underground aquifers to meet the demands of expanding populations. The planet’s great subterranean stores of water are running out – and nobody can be sure how much remains to supply billions of people in the future. Satellite instruments used to measure the flow from 37 underground aquifers between 2003 and 2013 have revealed that at least one-third of them were seriously stressed – with little or almost no natural replenishment. The research was conducted by scientists from California and the US space agency NASA, who report in the journal Water Resources Research that they used data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites to calculate what is happening to aquifers. Read More here
22 June 2015, The Conversation, Climate: the elephant in the room for developing northern Australia: The recently released white paper on developing northern Australia ignores an elephant in the room: climate change. While the paper sees a bright future for the north (roads, rail, dams and food), without considering climate change we can’t be sure the north will even be liveable. The white paper also fails to take into account other environmental constraints such as water and soils….. The white paper has not referenced high-quality expert advice prepared by the Northern Australian Land and Water Task Force…. The white paper ignores reference to sophisticated climate change projections for northern Australia developed by our own CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology. Climate projections for the north this century paint a dire future and bring into question the feasibility and affordability of many of the development policies, plans and projects outlined in the white paper. Read More here