Legal skirmishes in Ohio and Michigan are reviving debates over whether those who own Great Lakes shoreline properties exclusively control their waterfront land or whether the public can access and travel along the coast. The same legal doctrine at issue in these battles is a central focus in current debates about n a time of potential c ommercialization of Great Lakes water.
The Governor’s Global Climate Summit ended with Oxfam America’s inaugural Sisters on the Planet Climate Leader Awards. Thanks to Karen Solomon at Opportunity Green, I was able to attend. The event showcased the work that women all over the world are doing to adapt to climate change. Sisters on the Planet is committed to exposing how livelihoods of the majority of the planet’s women are the most severely impacted by climate change. To quote the brochure:
“But if you remember one thing about Sisters on the Planet, make it this: Climate change is already having a disproportionate impact on poor people in the US and abroad, and it’s hitting women hardest.”
Oxfam is working with women all over the world to develop low-cost adaptation techniques relevant to the regions they’re in. Adapting to global warming requires a range of tactics, from helping families in flood-prone regions elevate their homes, build floating vegetable gardens, and store seeds and other necessities safely to helping farmers in drought-prone areas plant trees, drill wells and improve their irrigation techniques. Oxfam’s publication, Adaptation 101, shows the overall cost of some of these projects, and at what level they need to be carried out- in the community or nationally.
On the one hand, we will have more water around us with sea level rising. On the other hand, though, drought caused by climate change will leave possibly billions of people without clean water.
This will cause great health and global security issues. Most of these problems will be caused by water imbalances.
Sean Daily, Green Living Ideas‘ Editor-In-Chief, discusses the use of intelligent irrigation technologies to save water and green your landscaping with Chris Spain, CEO of Hydropoint.
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In its search for more fuel efficient ways to provide drinking water for long sea voyages and remote bases, the U.S. Navy has developed a second-generation desalination unit that use 65% less energy than conventional technology. It’s only in the prototype stage but the Navy is already looking beyond seagoing use, and has deployed an earlier version of the technology to provide emergency water supply to disaster areas.
Called the EUWP (Expeditionary Unit Water Purification Program) Gen 2, the new unit also offers a significant secondary benefit that applies to land operations. By providing an on-site source for potable water, it eliminates the need to run convoys of tanker trucks. The generators that power the EUWP units still use conventional fuel, but that could change. If they could be adapted to run cost-effectively on solar power and other sustainable energy, the door is open to desalination on a mass scale.
Lyngbya wollei, south shore Maumee Bay in Ohio, September 23, 2009.
Lake Erie, declared dead by the news media in the 1960s because of widespread, repulsive algae blooms, is once again marred, this time by both old and new causes. Some scientists and lake advocates worry that the unsightly algae is a warning of a lake once again in decline.
Tom Bridgeman, a lake scientist with the University of Toledo’s Lake Erie Center, said, “I’ve never seen the water as green as it was this year — and it’s not showing any signs of dying off yet. This is a growing problem.” Increased phosphorus runoff from farms and city streets, coupled with the feeding and excretion habits of non-native mussels introduced through ballast water, is believed to be associated with the resurgent blooms.
The western end of the lake has suffered from a surge in microsystis algae this summer. Bridgeman hypothesizes that in addition to phosphorus, underwater sediment shifts are culpable.
Qatar’s Ministry of the Environment is working with Damascus-based Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands (ACSAD) to convert Qatar’s desert regions into pastoral and agricultural lands. Greening the Qatari desert is a priority for the government, attempting to undo the effects of modern rangeland management techniques.
Blue-green algae blooms on Minnesota lakes are linked to a dog death and illnesses, and apparently caused by runoff pollution.
The death of a dog after it frolicked in a Minnesota lake plagued with blue-green algae was a sad coda for a late summer in the state. Although no necropsy was done, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said “the circumstances and manner of death were consistent with exposure to algal toxins.” He added that the MPCA had received reports of several other sick dogs likely exposed to the algae.
Compounding the sadness, the dog that died after exposure in Fox Lake, a black Lab named Sady, was a wedding gift to the dog’s owners from a friend and soldier killed in Iraq.
Traditionally, if you are in a water-poor region that has access to desalination technology and seawater, you were in luck. Israeli cleantechnology company ROTEC has developed a reverse osmosis system designed to remove salts from brackish groundwater. In other words, nowhere near the sea.
NATO’s Science for Peace program and the Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC) have awarded a team of three universities, one Jordanian, one Israeli and one American a grant to set up two parallel water desalination plants at one site each in Jordan and Israel. This grant is meant to promote collaboration across borders and between the two neighbouring countries, in a region not known for its congenial ties between neighbours.
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