Political will to save global environment falters

Washington, DC, Jan. 15, (ENS) — Signs of “accelerated ecological decline” and a loss of political momentum on environmental issues are emerging simultaneously, according to State of the World 2001, issued by the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington- based research organization.

“Governments squandered a historic opportunity to reverse environmental decline during the prosperity of the 1990s,” said Christopher Flavin, president of the Institute and co-author of the report.

“If in the current climate of political and economic uncertainty, political leaders were to roll back environmental laws or fail to complete key international agreements, decades of progress could unravel,” Flavin warns.

New scientific evidence indicates that many global ecosystems are reaching dangerous thresholds that raise the stakes for policymakers, reports Worldwatch.

The Arctic ice cap has already thinned by 42 percent, and 27 percent of the world’s coral reefs have been lost, suggesting that some of the planet’s key ecological systems are in decline, say the Institute’s researchers.

Environmental degradation is leading to more severe natural disasters, which have cost the world $608 billion over the last decade -- as much as in the previous four decades combined.

With many life support systems at risk of long term damage, the choice before today’s political leaders is historic, even evolutionary, in nature, says Flavin.

The choice is whether to move forward rapidly to build a sustainable economy or to risk allowing the expansion in human numbers, the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, and the loss of natural systems to undermine the economy.

There are some encouraging signs, Worldwatch notes. In December, negotiators from 122 countries agreed to a historic legally binding treaty that will severely restrict 12 persistent organic pollutants.

Iceland launched a pioneering effort to harness its geothermal and hydropower to produce hydrogen, which will be used to fuel its automobiles and fishing boats -- an effort that is attracting investments from major oil and car companies.

Organic farming, which avoids the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticide, has surged to a worldwide annual market of $22 billion and may get a further boost from strict organic farming standards issued by the US government in December.

But, Worldwatch warns, unless fossil fuel use slows dramatically, the Earth’s temperature could rise to as high as six degrees above the 1990 level by 2100, according to the latest climate models. Such an increase could lead to acute water shortages, declining food production, and the proliferation of deadly diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.

One sign of ecological decline described in this year’s State of the World is the risk of extinction that hangs over dozens of species of frogs and other amphibians around the globe, due to pressures that range from deforestation to ozone depletion. Co-author Ashley Mattoon describes amphibians as “an important bioindicator -- a sort of barometer of Earth’s health -- more sensitive to environmental stress than other organisms.”

People, too, are suffering from ecological stress. Even after a decade of declining poverty in many nations, 1.2 billion people lack access to clean water and hundreds of millions breathe unhealthy air.

“Mobilizing the worldwide response needed to bring destructive environmental trends under control is a daunting task,” said coauthor Gary Gardner. “But people have surmounted great challenges before, from the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, to the enfranchisement of women in the early twentieth. Change can move quickly from impossible to inevitable.”

The full State of the World 2001 report is available online at:www.worldwatch.org .

US Navy poisoned Vieques Island

By Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero

San Juan, Puerto Rico, Jan. 12 (IPS)— The United States Navy has poisoned the Puerto Rican island-town of Vieques and has ruined its agriculture, says a just released scientific study.

Sponsored by the University of Puerto Rico’s Mayaguez campus (RUM) and Casa Pueblo, a grassroots organization, the study has found that vegetation on the island is unfit for human consumption as a result of US Navy activities.

The study’s authors, Elba Díaz and Arturo Massol-Deyá, took samples of vegetation, both wild and agricultural, from civilian lands, including pumpkins, bananas, mango, yucca, pineapples, and peppers, and analyzed them in the RUM’s laboratories.

They found that the plants were polluted with toxic elements like lead, cadmium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and copper. All of these are harmful to human life. Lead, for example, damages the renal, reproductive, and central nervous systems.

The people of Vieques, located off the south-east coast of Puerto Rico, suffer from unusual health problems and have abnormally high rates of lupus and asthma. The cancer rate is 26.9 percent above Puerto Rico’s average, according to the Puerto Rico Health Department.

“There is no way to exonerate the navy now,’’ commented Massol-Deyá after the study was released this week. The Casa Pueblo-RUM team and the navy’s opponents are convinced that the pollution in the civilian area of Vieques is caused by military training activities on the firing range.

In 1941 the US Navy took over 26,000 of the island’s 33,000 acres and have used them for, among other things, target practice. In the 60 years that have followed, Vieques has been bombed almost constantly from both sea and air, and has also been host to massive NATO naval maneuvers and amphibian landings.

Vieques currently has around 9,400 civilian residents and there is a campaign, both on the island and in Puerto Rico, to oust the navy. The campaign gained momentum after the April 1999 death of David Sanes, a Vieques civilian who was killed by a stray bomb while working at a navy observation post near the firing range.

From April 1999 until May 2000 when US law enforcement authorities removed them, hundreds of demonstrators camped out on the firing range preventing further bombings.

During the 1999-2000 civil disobedience campaign, Casa Pueblo and RUM volunteers were able to enter the firing range and carry out on-site scientific studies.

They found that the plants there are also polluted with lead, nickel, chromium, manganese, copper, and cobalt, and that the crabs had 1,000 times the level of copper, zinc, nickel, cobalt, and cadmium, that is considered safe for human consumption by the World Health Organization.

How do these pollutants travel from the firing range to civilian areas? Massol- Deyá explained that the explosions caused by military target practice lift dust clouds that can rise up to 3,000 feet above sea level, which are then carried downwind to the civilian part of Vieques.

Massol-Deyá and Díaz have recommended that military activities end in Vieques once and for all. They have also called for a moratorium on all agricultural activity on the island and a government subsidy for all commercial and subsistence farmers affected by the measure.

“Vieques is the best example of destruction and environmental injustice in the Americas. The US navy (has) destroyed coral reefs, thalasia beds, lagoons, mangroves, coconut groves, beaches, endangered species, fish, and other marine organisms,’’ said the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques in a recent communique.

According to geography professor José Seguinot-Barbosa, the eastern edge of Vieques has more craters per square mile than the surface of the moon. Seguinot-Barbosa, who heads the geography department of the University of Puerto Rico, stated that “the US navy’s destruction of Vieques violates the most basic norms of international law and human rights.’’

“We can describe the situation in Vieques as a human and ecological catastrophe,’’ said Casa Pueblo director Alexis Massol.

“Casa Pueblo has carried out its duty of informing the Puerto Rican people. Now it’s up to the Puerto Rico and United States governments to assume immediate responsibility regarding the consequences of 60 years of military practice in Vieques.’’