Croatia and Hungary signed an agreement yesterday to protect a major biodiversity area that crosses borders along three rivers. The agreement is being called a “Trans-Boundary UNESCO Biosphere Reserve” and has resulted in the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) awarding the two countries with a “Leaders for a Living Planet” award.

The reserve will preserve several endangered species, among other environmental jewels. There is also the possibility of the reserve expanding several times over into neighboring countries in the future.

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Subsistence farmers in Bolivia have been given help to change their technology – moving away from pipe and sprinkle irrigation systems to an aeons-old technique of hand-built raised clay platforms that are surrounded by canals.

The platforms, called camellones, can be up to eight feet above the level of the fields they support, have two purposes: they protect seeds and crops from being washed away by floods and the water stored in the canals can be used when the river system is low, to irrigate the crops.

The camellone construction system is pre-Columbian dating back to around 1000BC to AD1400, which shows that communities, then, as now, faced the problem of flooding succeeded by drought. And this may have been one of the causes of collapse for those ancient cultures, because when workers were diverted from building and maintaining agricultural systems to joining armies, there may have been famines. In modern day Bolivia, serious floods in the past three years have caused more than £119 million of damage to agricultural systems. It’s hoped that with climate change driving more river flooding and more drought, reverting to old technology could help communities cope with water levels rising even as rains reduce.

Around 400 families have been supported by local and international charities to create camellones in five areas to grow corn, cassava and rice.  The first results look good, as the Amazonian floods have now receded, and where the nutrients in the soil would normally be washed back into the river, the platforms have remained above the floods and conserved the rich vegetative topsoil that can grow better crops than the sandy subsoil.

The downside of ancient systems

If you’re thinking it all sounds too good to be true, you could very well be right. This kind of preliminary report on an agricultural or technological ‘throw-back’ is often followed by a bleak silence. The reasons for this are often more political than environmental and include:

1) The cost of investment in building and maintaining such systems, which is subsided by charities for three or five years and then the charity funding moves on and nobody is motivated to carry on the work
2) The transfer of local power from hierarchical systems (which are often based on government or international aid and support) to individuals who may be low ranking, illiterate and unable to drive forward change outside their own behaviour
3) The failure to recognise that while subsistence farmers claim to want to be self-sufficient, such projects tend to recruit the young, healthy and confident: all it takes is illness in the family, a child to win a scholarship or a vehicle or house to need substantial repairs and that family is likely to move away from growing crops to eat back into growing cash crops that generate income to meet their needs.
4) Calls on local labour – if a road or resort is built nearby, all the available labour may be pulled from agriculture to work on the cash-generating project.

What such projects need is a longer term investment, along with social support to ensure that the community recognises that the new systems can deliver everything that cash crops or illegal forestry did.

Bolivan market courtesy of PJFurlong06 at Flickr under a Creative Commons Licence

Endangered Greater One-Horned Rhinos become extra vulnerable when the waters of the Brahmaputra River flood Kaziranga National Park. The annual deluge forces the rhinos to move toward higher ground near highways, where they are easily located and killed by poachers.

This year, wildlife officials have already posted forest guards at vulnerable areas along Kaziranga’s border. Although the rainfall has been lighter than usual, nothing is being left to chance when it comes to protecting Greater One-Horned Rhinos and other inhabitants of the park.

It is also hoped that Kaziranga’s first “floating anti-poaching camp” will discourage poachers from using the Brahmaputra to move in and out of the park. The small floating vessel, made by Assam’s P. Das & Company, accommodates four rangers, and includes a lavatory and cooking facilities. Rangers will use the boat to patrol the Brahmaputra River.

Kaziranga National Park was unfortunately the location of a shockingly cruel rhino slaughter on January 19, 2009. Poachers shot a mother rhino, and killed her calf. As she lay breathing, but unable to escape, the killers hacked out her horn.

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Water science is a funny old business, but not in the amusing sense of funny. The World Water Forum has not been a barrel of laughs in recent years: whether you specialise in aquifer depredation, freshwater salination, chemical leaching, water based conflicts or polar cap melting, there’s been not a great deal of good news to share with the rest of the world.

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One 5′3″ crocodile was hit by a car earlier this week, and there are reports of more of the large reptiles washing into the area. From Yahoo! News:

The army has been called in to help with rescue and recovery efforts, while three reports of large crocodiles washed up from flooded rivers have come in from homes in the Gulf of Carpentaria region.

The floods are coming on the tail of a record-setting heatwave that killed 35 people, and more storms could be on the way in the coming week, since conditions are favorable for another tropical system to move through the region. Meteorologists warn that climate change is to blame for the recent weather disasters, and that things will only get worse in coming years.

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>>More coverage of Tennessee coal slurry disaster

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Tennessee Coal Slurry Retention Pond Disaster [video]

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Climate change must be factored into all new planning to safeguard coastal developments against sea level rise, flood and other disasters or effects on the environment, the State Government of Victoria in Australia has decided.

Earlier this year, significant coastal property was found to be exposed to risk. Now, housing sprawl along coastal strips must be curtailed and new residential developments along canals banned under the State Government’s new coastal planning strategy. In September The Sydney Moring Herald had noted that:

“One general insurer has estimated that the value of coastal property in Australia at risk to rising sea levels and erosion is between $50 billion and $150 billion.”

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What if your house could simply walk away from natural disasters? This house can. Designed by an art collective in Denmark, the 10 foot high house is solar and wind-powered and can walk across a variety of terrain. It is equipped with a living room, bed, toilet, kitchen, and wood stove, and is controlled by an internal mainframe computer.

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Now brings you:
*A solution to floods and fires

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