Have you noticed how all sorts of high end resorts and hotels have started converting their chlorine pools to salt water? And it’s not just the health and hospitality industry that wants to figure out a way to purify their water without resorting to chemicals. Other industries, including the food and beverage, dairy, aquaculture and municipal drinking water providers need to ensure that the water they use contain no micro-organisms or pathogens of any kind. A company based in Israel, Atlantium has developed what may be one of the first industrial-grade solutions to water micro-organism purification without chemicals.

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Nigerian forces have been fighting on the Niger delta since May, but international awareness of the problem seems slight. The military have been attacking resistance fighters hiding there, and around thirty thousand civilians are caught in impossible circumstances. They have little food and water, and very little opportunity to get information about their situation out to the wider world.

Are oil companies causing humanitarian crises?

Nigeria has a large population and is also a major oil producer, with over 90% of the oil it exports coming from the Niger delta region. Last week, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) claimed to have cut both the Shell and Agip pipelines in Beyelsa state, but the Nigerian military says this is not true. Shell stated that it was investigating the claim and Agip refused to comment.

An independent report, commissioned by the Nigerian Conservation Foundation in 2006, says that the Niger delta region is one of the five most polluted places on the planet, in large part due to oil spillages. An untestable assertion is that, in the past decade, more than a million tones of oil have been spilled in the delta, damaging the mangrove eco-system that is the fragile margin between saline and freshwater environments in this part of the world. It is also claimed, but unverifiable, that gas flaring from petroleum extraction has led to a level of airborne toxicity that causes acid rain, cancers and birth defects.

These claims cannot be tested because access to the delta is difficult to obtain. For many years the Nigerian government, whether elected or otherwise, has been fighting against a variety of groups who have found the delta an ideal hiding-ground as well as the place in which the government in Lagos is easiest to hurt – you could say that the delta is Nigeria’s wallet. There are further, somewhat more testable claims that oil companies have provided finance and weapons to successive Nigerian governments to help them quash opposition to their regimes. US Subcommittees have heard that US oil company sites in the delta were given police and military protection, often resulting in deaths of local people and razing of local housing to provide ‘safe operation zones’.

Mangroves polluted, fisheries failing?

Because it’s almost impossible to get into some parts of the delta, both environmental and human rights organisations struggle to assess the true extent of the human suffering and environmental degradation that is happening in one of the most oil-rich regions of Africa.  What is certain is that what was once a fertile region of rotational farming and small scale aquaculture is now no longer agriculturally productive – while around 50% of fish eaten across Nigeria is harvested in the delta, the higher value shrimp and other crustacean fisheries have well nigh collapsed.  The planet cannot afford to lose fisheries: as the developed world struggles with the collapsed cod stocks, and the imminent collapse of the blue-fin tuna fishery, it’s disturbing to discover that complex ecosystems in Africa, including fisheries, maybe disappearing without public recognition or much attempt to save them and the people who depend on them.

Niger delta courtesy of 300td.org at Flickr under a creative commons licence

Growing Fish in the Bronx

Warner’s laboratory is based in the former Public School 39 on Longwood Avenue in the Bronx.  In an article by writer Timothy Greenleaf, Warner explains how his system combines hydroponics with aquaculture.  The fish droppings fertilize the plants, which in turn purify the water for return to the fish tanks.  Aside from yielding up to twenty vegetable crops per year and hundreds of pounds of fish, the lab functions as a teaching center for visiting schoolchildren.

Fish in Hell’s Kitchen

This past summer, Warner introduced his hydroponic/aquaculture system into a high school campus in the heart of the Hell’s Kitchen district of Manhattan.  Spread over two floors, it is an ambitious undertaking that will eventually include a retail store and greenhouse.

Growing Vegetables in Prison

Life being what it is, Warner’s work is not accessible to high school students behind bars just a short distance away, at the Rikers Island prison complex.  So, Warner has brought his lab to the prison, at the urging of social worker Christine Schmidt.  Starting two years ago with just three classes, the program has grown to include eight labs dispersed among the complex’s two high schools, with 15 teachers trained to use them.

Warner’s program at Rikers Island is part of a rapidly growing wave of green rehab projects and work programs for America’s enormous incarcerated population, including reclaiming waste for use in organic compost, and building solar modules.  If we can credit the Department of Defense with inventing the internet, perhaps it’s not too far-fetched to look behind our prison walls for sustainability solutions.

Image: suneko at flickr.

[Creative Commons photo by Chad Hanna]

Marketers and large corporations have co-opted the word sustainability to sell products. It’s come to mean expensive bamboo counter tops and organic cotton bedding. We need to take back that word to its original meaning. Sustainability is living within your means. It’s closing the waste cycle and finding ways to turn trash into something that’s usable again. Last night, Kellogg talked about some ways that Rhizome is accomplishing these things. Ways that we can, too!

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After a six year battle, a decision from the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council on the proposal to develop offshore fisheries is expected soon. The Ocean Conservancy, which has been leading the fight against the project, encourages people to write to their local representatives to express their concern.

But why exactly is this project such a bad idea?

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According to this year’s report, Americans consumed a total of 4.908 billion pounds of seafood in 2007, slightly less than the 4.944 billion pounds in 2006. The average American ate 16.3 pounds of fish and shellfish in 2007, a one percent decline from the 2006 consumption figures of 16.5 pounds. But even though U.S. seafood consumption is flat, global consumption continues to grow; a major study in the journal Science predicts the global collapse of the world’s major fisheries by the middle of this century. Already, over the past 50 years, there has been a 90 percent reduction of the ocean’s large predatory fish, including sharks, swordfish and tuna.

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