Fall armyworms are on the march across Africa. Agriculture experts say the pests, the larvae of a type of moth, could cause more than $13 billion in crop losses this year. To stop them, scientists are researching pesticides, landscape management methods, and genetically modified crops. Faith Lapidus reports on an effort to find a sustainable approach that does not use pesticides.
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Asia’s growing appetite for meat and seafood over the next three decades will cause huge increases in greenhouse gas emissions and antibiotics used in foods, researchers said Tuesday.

Rising population, incomes and urbanization will drive a 78 percent increase in meat and seafood demand from 2017 to 2050, according to a report by Asia Research and Engagement Pte Ltd., a Singapore-based consultancy firm.

“We wanted to highlight that, because of the large population and how fast the population is growing, it is going to put a strain on the environment,” said co-author Serena Tan.

“By recognizing this and where it comes from, we can tackle the solutions,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

More carbon dioxide, antibiotics

With supply chains ramping up to meet demand, greenhouse gas emissions will jump from 2.9 billion tons of CO2 per year to 5.4 billion tons, the equivalent of the lifetime emissions of 95 million cars, the researchers said.

A land area the size of India will be needed for additional food production, according to the report, while water use will climb from 577 billion cubic meters per year to 1,054 billion cubic meters per year.

The use of antimicrobials, which kill or stop the growth of microorganisms, and include antibiotics, will increase 44 percent to 39,000 tons per year, said the report, which was commissioned by the Hong Kong-based ADM Capital Foundation.

Overuse and misuse of antibiotics in food is rife in Southeast Asia, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said this year, warning of serious risks for people and animals as bacterial infections become more resistant to treatment.

Income growth

Growing urban areas contribute to the rising demand for meat and seafood, because people there usually have better access to electricity and refrigeration, said David Dawe, a senior economist at the FAO in Bangkok.

“But income growth is the big driver,” he added.

Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Pakistan are among nations likely to contribute most to the rise in meat and seafood consumption, while countries with aging populations, like China, will likely limit growth, Tan said.

Food producers can increase efficiency by implementing rainwater harvesting, using sustainable animal feed and capturing biogas from cattle, Tan said.

Regulators, consumers and investors can also pressure restaurant chains and producers to limit the use of antibiotics in meat supplies, she added.

At meal times, consumers can also choose plant-based foods made to look like meats as an alternative, Tan said.

“You have a lot of people in Asia who don’t get that great a diet so animal-sourced food intake will increase,” said the FAO’s Dawe. “In many ways it’s a good thing for nutrition, but it does raise environmental issues.”
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The ruler of Dubai has announced the names of two astronauts from the United Arab Emirates who will be heading to the International Space Station, a first for the Gulf nation.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who also serves as the UAE’s vice president and prime minister, made the announcement Monday on Twitter.

Sheikh Mohammed named the astronauts as Hazza al-Mansouri and Sultan al-Nayadi. Their missions are scheduled for next year.

The UAE has a fledgling space program with big ambitions. It hopes to launch its first locally made satellite, KhalifaSat, in October from Japan. It also wants to launch a probe to Mars in 2020.

The UAE says it wants to colonize Mars by 2117, with a fully functioning city of 600,000.
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Scientists are using a new way to track animal species without having to capture them. Through a process called environmental DNA, scientists can now obtain the genetic trail animals leave behind, which could help to protect and save threatened species. VOA’s Deborah Block has more.
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Researchers have been searching for ways to reduce cattle emissions with food additives, such as garlic, oregano, cinnamon and even curry — with mixed results. Dairy farms and other livestock operations are a major source of methane, a heat-trapping gas, much more potent than carbon dioxide. Both gases contribute to global warming. Now, University of California researchers are feeding seaweed to dairy cows in an attempt to make cattle more climate friendly. VOA’s Deborah Block has the story.
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About one in eight essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries may be fake or contain dangerous mixes of ingredients that put patients’ lives at risk, a research review suggests.

Researchers examined data from more 350 previous studies that tested more 400,000 drug samples in low- and middle-income countries. Overall, roughly 14 percent of medicines were counterfeit, expired or otherwise low quality and unlikely to be as safe or effective as patients might expect.

“Low-quality medicines can have no or little active pharmaceutical ingredient [and] can prolong illness, lead to treatment failure and contribute to drug resistance,” said lead study author Sachiko Ozawa of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Or it may have too much active ingredient and cause a drug overdose,” Ozawa said by email. “If it is contaminated or has other active ingredients, then the medication could cause poisoning, adverse drug interactions or avertable deaths.”

Much of the research to date on counterfeit or otherwise unsafe medicines has focused on Africa, and about half of the studies in the current analysis were done there.

Almost one in five medications tested in Africa were fake or otherwise potentially unsafe, researchers report in JAMA Network Open.

Another third of the studies were done in Asia, where about 14 percent of medicines tested were found to be counterfeit or otherwise unsafe.

Antibiotics and antimalarials were the most tested drugs in the analysis. Overall, about 19 percent of antimalarials and 12 percent of antibiotics were falsified or otherwise unsafe.

While fake or improperly made medicines undoubtedly harm patients, the current analysis couldn’t tell how many people suffered serious side effects or died as a result of falsified drugs.

Researchers did try to assess the economic impact of counterfeit or improperly made medicines and found the annual cost might run anywhere from $10 billion to $200 billion.

While the study didn’t examine high-income countries, drug quality concerns are by no means limited to less affluent nations, Ozawa said.

“Even in high-income countries, purchasing cheaper medicines from illegitimate sources online could result in obtaining substandard or falsified medicines,” Ozawa said. “Verify the source before you buy medications, and make policymakers aware of the problem so they can work to improve the global supply chain of medicines.”

The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how counterfeit or poorly made medicines directly harm patients, however. And economic impact was difficult to assess from smaller studies that often didn’t include detailed methodology for calculating the financial toll.

The report “provides important validation of what is largely already known,” Tim Mackey of the Global Health Policy Institute in La Jolla, California, writes in an accompanying editorial.

“It is important to note that although the study is comprehensive, its narrow scope means it only provides a snapshot of the entire problem, as it is limited to studies conducted in low- and middle-income countries and to those

medicines classified as essential by the World Health Organization.”
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The number of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States is hitting record highs, according to latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Nearly 2.3 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were diagnosed in 2017, says the CDC. This is the fourth year of increases in STDs and the figures broke 2016’s record by more than 200,000 cases.  

Chlamydia remained the most common condition reported to the CDC. More than 1.7 million cases were diagnosed in 2017, with 45 percent among 15- to 24-year-old females. 

Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis often go undiagnosed and untreated, leading to conditions including infertility, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth in infants, and increased HIV risk. 

“We are sliding backward,” said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, in a news release. “It is evident the systems that identify, treat and ultimately prevent STDs are strained to [a] near-breaking point.

“Diagnosed cases of gonorrhea increased 67 percent from 333,004 to 555,608 cases, and nearly doubled among men, from 169,130 cases to 322,169 in preliminary data for 2017. Diagnosed cases among women increased for the third year in a row from 197,499 to 232,587.

Syphilis diagnoses increased 76 percent, from 17,375 to 30,644 cases. Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men made up almost 70 percent of primary and secondary syphilis cases where the gender of the sex partner is known in 2017. Primary and secondary syphilis are the most infectious stages of the disease.

Researchers say the increases in STDs can be attributed to socioeconomic factors like poverty, stigma, discrimination, and drug use.

While most of the diseases are curable with antibiotics, gonorrhea continues to be resistant to nearly every class of antibiotics used to treat it, with the exception of ceftriaxone. 

In 2015, the drug azithromycin was added to treatment for gonorrhea to help delay resistance to ceftriaxone. New CDC findings show that emerging resistance to azithromycin is on the rise in laboratory testing.

“We expect gonorrhea will eventually wear down our last highly effective antibiotic, and additional treatment options are urgently needed,” said Gail Bolan, M.D., director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention in a press release. “We can’t let our defenses down — we must continue reinforcing efforts to rapidly detect and prevent resistance as long as possible.”
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Algerian health authorities claim the situation is under control after a cholera epidemic in at least four provinces caused more than 60 confirmed cases of the disease, with several deaths reported.

Residents in a village of Tipaza province are drinking water from a spring government officials claim is infected with the cholera virus. But residents counter the spring is safe to drink from and that the government analysis is mistaken.

Cholera outbreaks have been confirmed in Tipaza, Blida, Algiers, and Bouira provinces.   More than 130 people have been hospitalized with suspected cases of cholera this month and more than 60 cases were confirmed.  At least three people have died, according to Algerian media.

Algeria’s health minister, Mokhtar Hazblawi, recently said health officials have been doing their best to keep on top of the situation.

He says since the disease surfaced, the health ministry has devised a strategy to control it and stop it from spreading.

Issam Eddin Bouyoucef of the El Hadi Flici Hospital Center, which treats infectious diseases in Algiers, told Al Hurra TV hundreds of people have come to the hospital fearing they were suffering from cholera.  

He said patients must be quarantined and the disease isolated. He stressed his hospital has set up a specialized isolated wing to treat patients while they recover, once the disease has been confirmed.

Bouyoucef said many people have been panicking, mistaking stomach ailments for cholera. Local media report consumers are buying up large quantities of mineral water.

An elderly resident of capital Algiers told Al Hurra TV he was afraid of the potentially deadly disease and thinks that a large number of people who live in his area have been sickened.

Physician Mohammed Gamary complained to a local TV station the media uncovered the cholera epidemic before the government did. He said doctors in Khazrouna, where the disease was first detected, should have sounded the alarm when they noticed the unusual number diarrhea cases.

Pharmacies in Algiers have been selling large quantities of salts to treat diarrhea, while many people have been avoiding fruit and vegetables, which they fear may be contaminated with the cholera virus.

 
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The World Health Organization says Africans are living longer and healthier lives.  But the WHO warns that that millions on the continent still face the challenge of chronic diseases.  

News of the uptick came in Dakar this week where WHO representatives met with officials from 47 African countries.

Healthy life expectancy on the continent rose from 44.4 years at the turn of the century to 53.8 years in 2015. Overall life expectancy climbed from 50.8 years to 61.2.

 

Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa, said that two factors were mostly responsible for the change.

 

“What produced this result is a huge increase in access to treatment [of] HIV-AIDS, and in the better prevention and management of malaria,” Moeti said.

But the WHO says the type of disease that most commonly affects Africans is also changing.  

While the number of deaths from diarrheal disease, respiratory infections, and HIV is falling, chronic conditions – such as cancer and heart disease – are claiming more lives.

Death rates from non-communicable diseases have remained steady since 2000 while the other top ten causes of mortality in Africa have fallen by 40 percent.

The WHO says health services in Africa have been slow to adapt to the new health challenges.

Humphrey Karamagi, sustainable development goal coordinator for the WHO, says the health needs of African youth are too often overlooked.

“The kind of health challenges that adolescents face are quite different from what we have been used to responding to – drug use, adolescent obesity and so on.”

Many African health officials and experts point to a lack of funding, but Stanley Okolo, head of the West African Health Organization, says that is overly simplistic.

“There is health, which is an issue in terms of investment and health funding. But there is also an issue in terms of health systems and how you can deliver better value for the money you have. And both have to be tackled simultaneously,” Okolo said.

African nations spend an average 40 percent of their health budgets on medical products, while barely a fifth goes to medical staff and infrastructure.

Health officials from Kenya, Nigeria and Cabo Verde say they are responding to the rise in non-communicable diseases by focusing on prevention and promoting healthy lifestyles.

 

 
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Chinese authorities should not arbitrarily shut down firms that meet emission standards during environmental cleanup campaigns, Vice Premier Han Zheng said on Wednesday.

Beijing has made reducing pollution one of its highest national priorities, but the drive has been criticized as poorly planned at the local level, with across-the-board closures of industrial plants in some regions ensnaring even compliant companies.

Xinhua news agency quoted Han as saying that measures in the battle against pollution should be realistic and sustainable, though environmental protection policies should be strictly enforced to deter companies that violate the rules.

He was speaking at a meeting on a plan to tackle pollution in and around the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region during the winter, when smog often blankets northern China.

The Ministry of Ecology and Environment said in May that China would end a “one size fits all” approach to fighting pollution as it tries to devise more nuanced policies that match local conditions and minimize economic disruption.

A plan to switch millions of households and thousands of businesses from coal to natural gas in north China last winter backfired as severe gas shortages hit the region. “Steadily promote clean winter heating in North China, and ensure people are safe and warm,” Han said.
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Iraqi health officials say that a health crisis stemming from water pollution and a shortage of clean drinking water has worsened in recent days, as hospitals in the southern port city of Basra treat more than 1,000 cases of intestinal infections on a daily basis. The problem was exacerbated several months ago when Turkey cut back on water distributed to the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

 

A crowd of young men took to the streets on in the southern port city of Basra Tuesday, demanding the central government and Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi increase the quantity of clean drinking water allotted to their province. Abadi vowed to increase spending on infrastructure for the province during a visit to Basra in July.

A young man, whose friend was killed during a rally several weeks ago, broke down and sobbed over the protesters’ inability to force Iraqi leaders to improve the condition of public services in Basra, especially the region’s worn-out water infrastructure and insufficient quantities of drinking water allotted by the central government.

Some health officials in Basra warn that a cholera outbreak is possible due to water pollution and water-borne parasites that have made thousands of people sick in recent days. The director general of the Basra Health department, Riad Abdul Amir, told Al Hurra TV the situation continues to worsen.

He says more than 17,500 cases of intestinal ailments, resulting from contaminated drinking water, have been treated by Basra hospitals during the past two weeks, alone.

Abdul Amir says the problem stems from insufficient fresh water supplies coming into the city via canals and water pipes from the north.

“Salty water [which has infiltrated the water network],” he asserts, “is known to reduce the efficacy of chlorine used to treat and kill bacteria in drinking water,” he said.

Safaa Kazem, a docotor who has been treating dozens of cases of intestinal problems and diarrhea in Basra’s Sadr Teaching Hospital each day, says water from the city’s supply is not safe to drink.

She says the degree of water sterilization is minimal and that Basra’s water is very salty and has an extremely high level of microbes in it, along with a high degree of chemical pollution.

Basra Governor Assad al Edani told Al Hurra TV that his province has been suffering from numerous infrastructure problems for a long time.

He says the water network in Basra hasn’t been updated in at least 30 years and the old pipes often break, mixing drinking water with sewage.

Edani says “not enough fresh water is arriving via the region’s only canal from Thi Qar province to the north.” He thinks a “strong current of fresh water will flush out salty water seeping into the water network from the sea.”

Edani adds that the population of Basra has “more than doubled since the water network was last updated in the early 1990s.”

Iraq’s individual provinces have been fighting for water, amid a general shortage, since Turkey in early June severely curtailed the number of cubic meters of water it funnels into both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

 
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Express fitness is gaining popularity in the United States, as people try to squeeze exercise into their hectic schedules. To accommodate them, gyms are offering more total body workouts in a compressed period of time. VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
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U.S. Senator John McCain’s death from glioblastoma on Saturday brought new attention to the most deadly type of brain cancer. 

The National Brain Tumor Society says 80 percent of brain tumors are benign, but a glioblastoma tumor grows rapidly, and it returns after treatment. It usually affects adults, especially men over age 50, but women and even children can develop this type of cancer. 

Glioblastoma begins in glial cells that surround and support nerve cells. Because glioblastoma spreads so quickly, the sooner the cancer is diagnosed, the more treatment options a patient has. 

Symptoms can include headaches, seizures, memory loss, changes in personality, changes in vision, and difficulty speaking or understanding conversations. The tumor can also affect coordination.

Glioblastoma is generally considered incurable because it is difficult to remove all of the cancer during surgery, which is why it can grow back. Surgery is usually the first treatment, followed by radiation and chemotherapy. McCain’s treatment included these three options.

Drugs used to treat patients with this type of cancer have lengthened patients’ lives over the past two decades. The National Cancer Institute reports that in the mid-1990s, the average survival rate was eight to 10 months. With new drugs patients now live between 15 and 18 months on average. McCain’s tumor was diagnosed in July 2017. He died little more than a year later.

The National Cancer Institute says survival has also improved slightly. In the mid-1990s, essentially no one with glioblastoma survived five years after diagnosis, now 15 percent of patients do, a very small proportion compared with survival rates for most other types of cancer.

Researchers are looking for new ways to treat glioblastoma. Those at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, are using a modified polio vaccine with promising results. In the first part of a clinical trial, 21 percent of the patients survived for three years after being treated.

At Texas A&M University in College Station, researchers are looking to see whether they can disrupt the body’s production of a protein associated with tumor growth. 

Other research involves seeing whether the body’s own immune system could fight off the cancer cells.

The National Brain Tumor Society issued a statement on McCain’s death. It said the society was “profoundly saddened” and called for a national effort to combat the disease. 
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When farmer Julimar Pansera purchased land in Brazil’s interior seven years ago, it was blanketed in tiers of fruit trees, twisted shrubs and the occasional palm standing tall in a thicket of undergrowth.

He mowed down most of that vegetation, set it ablaze and started planting soybeans. Over the past decade, he and others in the region have deforested an area larger than South Korea.

Permissive land-use policies and cheap farm acreage here have helped catapult Brazil into an agricultural superpower, the world’s largest exporter of soy, beef and chicken and a major producer of pork and corn. This area has also lured farmers and ranchers away from the Amazon jungle, whose decline has spurred a global outcry to protect it.

The tradeoff, environmentalists say, is that while Brazil has slowed destruction of the renowned rainforest from its worst levels, it has put another vital ecological zone at risk: a vast tropical savanna that is home to 5 percent of species on the planet.

Known as the Cerrado, this habitat lost more than 105,000 square kilometers (40,541 square miles) of native cover since 2008, according to government figures. That’s 50 percent more than the deforestation seen during the same period in the Amazon, a biome more than three times larger. Accounting for relative size, the Cerrado is disappearing nearly four times faster than the rainforest.

The largest savanna in South America, the Cerrado is a vital storehouse for carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas whose rising emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation are warming the world’s atmosphere. Brazilian officials have cited protection of native vegetation as critical to meeting its obligations under the Paris Agreement on climate change. But scientists warn the biome has reached a tipping point that could hamper Brazil’s efforts and worsen global warming.

By focusing on one problem, Brazil essentially created another, said Ane Alencar, science director of the non-profit Amazon Environmental Research Institute, known as IPAM.

“There’s a high risk for the climate associated with this expansion,” Alencar said. “Limiting and calling attention to deforestation in the Amazon, in a way it forced the agribusiness industry to expand in the Cerrado.”

The toll can already be seen in the region’s water resources. Streams and springs are filling with silt and drying up as vegetation around them vanishes. That in turn is weakening the headwaters of vital rivers flowing to the rest of the country, scientists say. The imperiled waterways include the Sao Francisco, Brazil’s longest river outside the Amazon, where water levels are hitting never-before-seen lows in the dry season.

“The removal of vegetation can lead a body of water to extinction,” said Liliana Pena Naval, an environmental engineering professor at the Federal University of Tocantins.

Wildlife, too, is under threat, including rare hyacinth macaws, maned wolves and jaguars that call the shrinking savanna home. So are thousands of plants, fish, insects and other creatures found nowhere else on earth, many of which are only beginning to be studied.

“I compare it to the burning of the ancient Library of Alexandria,” said Mercedes Bustamante, an ecologist at the University of Brasilia. “You lose the accumulated evolutionary record of thousands of years that never can be recovered.”

Farmers see the Cerrado’s development as critical to global food security and their nation’s prosperity. Brazil’s agriculture sector grew a sizzling 13 percent in 2017, while the overall economy barely budged. The nation’s ability to keep producing new farmland cheaply has given it an edge over rivals and cemented its status as a vital supplier to the world’s tables.

“Imagine, if not for Brazil’s production, how much more hunger would there be,” farmer Pansera said.

The Green Revolution

Roughly the size of Mexico, straddling Brazil’s mid-section from its far western borders with Paraguay and stretching northeast toward the Atlantic coast, the Cerrado has seen about half of its native forests and grasslands converted to farms, pastures and urban areas over the past 50 years.

Deforestation in the region has slowed from the early 2000s, when Brazil’s soy boom was gaining steam. Still, farmers continue to plow under vast stretches of the biome, propelled largely by Chinese demand for Brazilian meat and grain. The Asian nation is Brazil’s No. 1 buyer of soybeans to fatten its own hogs and chickens. China is also a major purchaser of Brazilian pork, beef and poultry to satisfy the tastes of its increasingly affluent consumers.

Rising trade tensions between China and the United States have only deepened that connection. Brazil’s soybean exports by value to China are up 18 percent through the first seven months of the year as Chinese buyers have canceled tens of millions of dollars’ worth of contracts with U.S. suppliers.

The trend bodes well for producers in the Cerrado’s frontier region known as Matopiba, shorthand for the northeastern Brazilian states of Maranhao, Tocantins, Piaui and Bahia. Land here is cheap. Virgin plots near Pansera in the state of Tocantins can be had for $248 an acre on average, according to agribusiness consultancy Informa Economics IEG FNP. That compares to an average of $3,080 per acre for already cleared farmland in the United States. Soy planting in Matopiba has more than doubled over the past decade.

Pansera, 50, is part of a wave of industrious transplants from southern Brazil who are remaking the region. His formal education stopped at middle school, but he found land enough in the Cerrado to match his big ambitions. He now presides over nearly 19 square miles (49 square kilometers) of manicured soy fields and has about 20 full-time workers on his payroll.

Pansera’s soybeans will bring in an estimated profit of nearly 5 million reais ($1.23 million) this year, most of which he plans to invest back into the farm.

Government policies have intentionally driven industrial-scale farming here. Short on farmland to feed its growing population, Brazil in the 1970s looked to its vast savanna, a region early explorers had dubbed “cerrado,” or “closed,” because of its tangled woodlands.

State agriculture scientists developed fertilizers and additives to fix the acidic, nutrient-poor earth and created soybean strains that could thrive in the tropics. Arable land exploded. Within a decade, Brazil transformed itself from a food importer to a net exporter. By the 1990s it was moving global commodities markets.

“Agriculture in the Cerrado is what took Brazil to the next level,” Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi told Reuters. Known as Brazil’s “Soy King,” Maggi is a billionaire whose family runs one of the largest private soybean operations in the world, much of it in the Cerrado.

Maggi said growers are respectful of legally allowed limits on deforestation. Their “rational” occupation of the Cerrado has helped Brazil’s economy, he said.

Farmers have emerged as a powerful political force bent on keeping Brazil’s countryside open for business. Lawmakers in the country’s largely rural, pro-agriculture voting bloc, who comprise more than 40 percent of the nation’s congress, have led a rollback of environmental laws in recent years.

Those efforts include a 2012 loosening of Brazil’s landmark Forest Code that sets requirements for preserving native vegetation. The change reduced potential penalties for farmers, ranchers and loggers charged with past illegal deforestation, and made it easier for landowners to clear more of their holdings. Annual deforestation in the Amazon last year was up 52 percent from a record low in 2012.

Still, environmental protections there remain the most robust in Brazil. Rainforest farmers are required by law to preserve 80 percent of native vegetation on their plots.

And global grain traders in 2006 voluntarily agreed to stop purchasing any soy harvested from newly deforested Amazon jungle areas. As part of its obligations under the Paris Agreement, the government pledged to eliminate illegal Amazon deforestation by 2030.

Brazil has made no similar push to preserve the Cerrado, which has long been viewed as a resource to be developed.

Cerrado farmers are required to preserve as little as 20 percent of the natural cover, and up to 35 percent in areas neighboring the Amazon. Those who don’t maximize use of their tracts risk having their land declared idle and subject to redistribution under a 1980 federal land-reform initiative aimed at assisting rural, low-income people, said Elvison Nunes Ramos, sustainability coordinator with the Ministry of Agriculture.

“The message being sent to the farmer is that he should not preserve, he should deforest,” Nunes Ramos said of the policy.

A spokesman for Incra, the government agency that verifies the use of the rural land, said its job is to ensure “the fulfillment of the social function of the property.”

Water, wildlife under threat

Environmentalists say the Cerrado’s wooded grasslands have failed to capture the public’s attention the way the Amazon’s lush jungles have.

People view the Cerrado “just as bushes, twisted vegetation and shrubs,” lamented Alencar, the science director at IPAM.

What many don’t see, she said, is the connection between the soybean-fed meat on their plates and the steady decline of one of the world’s great carbon sinks, a bulwark against global warming.

Plants here send roots deep into the earth to survive seasonal drought and fires, creating a vast underground network that some have likened to an upside-down forest. Destruction of surface vegetation, and the resulting die-off of the life below, released 248 million tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere in 2016, according to estimates by the Climate Observatory, a Brazilian conservation group. That’s roughly two-and-a-half times the annual tailpipe emissions from all cars in Brazil.

Watersheds are hurting, too.

In Palmeirante, a rural municipality in the state of Tocantins, subsistence farmer Ronivon Matias de Andrade blames expanding mega-farms for damaging a community water source.

Dressed in faded shorts and flip flops, he showed a visitor the remains of what until recently had been a shady woodland: uprooted trees and freshly exposed earth pocked with heavy-equipment tracks.

Stripped of its vegetation, sandy topsoil is now filling a nearby creek and an adjoining freshwater pool where he and other rural families draw drinking water. He scooped up a murky handful in disgust.

“How many are being finished off in this manner in this state?” 43-year-old Andrade said.

Environmentalists say vanishing creeks like those in Palmeirante are threatening the nation’s water supply. Seemingly insignificant sources — tiny brooks, nameless rivulets — are vital building blocks supplying water to tributary streams that in turn feed some of Brazil’s largest rivers.

Of a dozen major water systems in Brazil, eight are born in the Cerrado. They include the Sao Francisco, the country’s fourth-largest river, which was once famed for its paddle-wheeled riverboats known as gaiolas. Environmentalists say man-made diversions, including agriculture and hydroelectric dams, have helped alter water levels to a degree that long stretches of the river are now unnavigable during the dry season.

Loss of native ground cover is also driving microclimate change in the region, they say. Reduced vegetation leads to higher ground temperatures and lower humidity, a recipe for less rainfall. A study conducted at the University of Brasilia links deforestation to an 8.4 percent drop in precipitation from 1977 to 2010 in the Cerrado.

Cerrado wildlife is under pressure as habitat shrinks. More than 300 species that dwell here are considered threatened with extinction, according to the government. Among them are 44 rare types of “annual fish” unique to the Cerrado whose short lives begin with spring rains and end with the summer heat. Scientists suspect that increasing dry spells could be interrupting their delicate reproduction cycles.

Other creatures, including rheas — giant ostrich-like birds — will soon join the endangered species list if nothing is done to reverse the slide, says Ricardo Machado, a zoology professor at the University of Brasilia. He said the birds’ numbers have plummeted due to loss of native ground cover critical to breeding and nesting.

Machado worries that unique Cerrado plants, insects and other creatures may vanish before scientists have an opportunity to identify them, much less study them.

“There is a universe to be discovered,” Machado said. “All attention is focused on the Amazon, no one speaks for the Cerrado.”

Reining in the soy boom

That’s beginning to change.

Dozens of groups, including Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Foundation and the Brazilian research group IPAM, last year began pushing for large multinationals to protect the biome. In a document known as the Cerrado Manifesto, they called for immediate action to stop deforestation in the region.

More than 60 companies, including McDonalds, Unilever and Walmart, have signed on so far. The firms have agreed to support measures that would eliminate native vegetation loss in the Cerrado from their supply chains. But in contrast to the 2006 Amazon soy moratorium, the Cerrado Manifesto did not commit signatories to halt purchases of farm products from newly deforested areas.

Walmart and Unilever said they are committed to achieving zero net deforestation in their supply chains by 2020, meaning any destruction in one region would be offset by recuperation of similar forest elsewhere. Walmart said all its beef suppliers in the Cerrado are monitored to ensure they don’t contribute to deforestation there. McDonalds didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Separately, Netherlands-based Louis Dreyfus Company in June became the first major commodity trader to pledge to stop buying soy from newly deforested land specifically in the Cerrado. The company gave no timetable, but said it would work to establish a “realistic target date” to end deforestation in its Cerrado supply chain.

Brazil’s former Minister of Environment Jose Sarney Filho, who recently left office to run for Senate, has proposed an international effort to compensate landowners who preserve natural habitat. He raised the issue at last November’s global climate summit in Germany, but the effort has yet to attract major backers.

Farmer Pansera, meanwhile, sees big things ahead for his patch of the Cerrado. Supervising the harvest on his land earlier this year, he watched a pair of combines chew through rows of soybean plants. The giant machines stripped away the beans and spit them into empty grain trucks rolling just behind to catch the bounty.

He said there is no future without growth, and the frontier region of Matopiba is just getting started. He plans to plant an additional 180 hectares of soy next year on newly cleared land.

“There is still a large area to be opened,” Pansera said. “It will be one of the great centers of Brazilian agriculture.”
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India said on Tuesday it expected to spend less than 100 billion rupees ($1.43 billion) on its first manned space mission to be launched by 2022, suggesting it is likely to be cheaper than similar projects by the United States and China.

India is cultivating a reputation as a low-cost space power, after the 2014 launch of an unmanned Mars mission at a cost of $74 million, or less than the budget of the Hollywood space blockbuster Gravity and a fraction of the $671 million the U.S. space agency NASA spent on its MAVEN Mars mission.

The Indian manned mission, announced this month by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and to be led by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), will aim to send a three-member crew to space for five to seven days in a craft that will be placed in a low Earth orbit of 300-400 km, the Department of Space said in a statement.

“ISRO has developed some critical technologies like re-entry mission capability, crew escape system, crew module configuration, thermal protection system, deceleration and floatation system, sub-systems of life support system etc required for this program,” the statement said.

ISRO Chairman K. Sivan said the agency had “perfected the engineering aspects of the mission,” although it was new to the field of bioscience — dealing with living beings.

Private agencies will also participate in the mission, and ISRO might consider collaborations with space agencies from “friendly countries with advanced space programs,” the statement added.

India’s neighbor and old rival China first sent humans to space in 2003, becoming only the third country to have such capability after Russia and the United States.

China’s Shenzhou program is secretively run through military and government agencies and its budget is not public. In 2003, officials said it had cost 18 billion yuan ($2.62 billion).

India’s space program has a total budget of around $4 billion, and Modi’s government hopes recent satellite launches — many on behalf of foreign governments — would improve its prospects of winning a larger share of the more than $300 billion global space industry.

Earlier this month, NASA unveiled its analysis of data collected from lunar orbit by an Indian spacecraft. The findings marked the first time scientists confirmed by direct observation the presence of water on the moon’s surface — in hundreds of patches of ice deposited in the darkest and coldest reaches of its polar regions.
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Sizzling weather this summer will put pressure on almost 200 governments to reach a deal in Poland in December on the details of a global plan to limit climate change, the incoming president of the U.N. talks said.

Environment ministers will meet in Katowice, the heart of Poland’s coal-producing region, Silesia, to agree on rules for the 2015 Paris climate accord. That accord set a sweeping goal of ending the fossil fuel era this century, but the text was vague on details.

“Paris is empty without Katowice,” Michal Kurtyka, a former deputy energy minister of Poland who will preside at the December 3-14 talks, told Reuters.

Poland, which generates most of its electricity from coal, is hosting the annual U.N. climate talks for the third time.

“The Paris Agreement includes certain principles. However, the way they will be implemented will be described in the Katowice package. So the more detailed and concrete it is, the better,” Kurtyka said.

Hot weather this summer that set off wildfires from California to Greece has made officials more determined to reach a detailed deal in Katowice, he said.

“For sure this is something that affected millions of people all over the world. … Societies in particular countries will act on politicians. I think that this will increase political determination for the solutions to be as concrete and as

detailed as possible,” Kurtyka said.

Bangkok session

Many issues remain to be discussed at an extra session in Bangkok next month, he said, where “a vision of the whole should be built.”

Some of the sticking points include the way the countries report on their emission reductions, adapting to climate change and financing tools, he said.

Environmentalists have complained about foot-dragging by the countries involved. French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot resigned Tuesday in frustration over sluggish progress on climate goals.

Writing the “rule book” — formally known as “implementation guidelines” — is the biggest test of the international commitment to the Paris Agreement since President Donald Trump said in June last year that he would pull the United States out.

“If some countries, such as for example the U.S., conclude that they are not ready to follow the Paris Agreement direction, then I’d assume that all other countries will seek to keep their presence so that they are part of the agreement,” Kurtyka said.

“I will strive for all parties to become signatories, whereas the question I will ask at the end will be: ‘Do I hear a voice of objection?’ I hope not.”

The choice of Poland for the climate talks is itself a point of contention, because of its dependence on coal. In February, the European Union’s top court said the country had failed to uphold air-quality standards, one of several environmental conflicts between Poles and the EU.

“The opinions that Poland is not a reliable climate talks host, due to the significant share of coal in power production, are formulated from the EU perspective. The world is more diverse than that,” Kurtyka said.

Kurtyka was appointed the climate talks president in April. He replaced the former Environment Minister Jan Szyszo, who had been initially named to preside at the conference in Katowice.

Szyszko had approved the increased logging in the ancient Bialowieza Forest in 2016, another of Poland’s conflicts with the European Union.
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By slashing food waste and improving waste management and recycling, 23 global cities and regions representing 150 million people pledged Tuesday to significantly cut the pollution-causing garbage they generate by 2030.

Places like New York, Tokyo, London, Paris and Sydney vowed to “cut the amount of waste generated by each citizen 15 percent by 2030,” said a statement from C40 Cities, a global network dedicated to fighting climate change.

They will also “reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills and incineration by 50 percent and increase the diversion rate to 70 percent by 2030,” according to the declaration.

The goal of the “Advancing Towards Zero Waste Declaration” is to avoid the disposal of at least 87 million tons of waste by 2030.   

Waste is becoming one of the leading threats to the environment, increasing faster than any other pollutant.

Each year, 1.3 billion tons of wasted food is sent to landfills where rotting scraps send the potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere.

Improving waste and material management around the world could reduce global emissions by 20 percent, and are “essential” to delivering on the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accords and keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 Celsius, said the C40 Cities statement.

The announcement was released ahead of the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco in mid-September.

Signatories include Auckland, Copenhagen, Dubai, London, Milan, Montreal, New York City, Newburyport, Paris, Philadelphia, Portland, Rotterdam, San Jose, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington D.C., and the regions of Navarra and Catalonia.

Specific steps include reducing food waste and facilitating safe food donation.

Participating areas may encourage separate collection of food scraps that could be used for compost, and supporting local policies like sustainable procurement and boosting awareness and use of recycling for construction and demolition materials.

Areas may also support reductions or bans on single-use and non-recyclable plastics.

The signatories pledged to publicly report their progress every two years.

“Dramatically reducing waste will help curb carbon emissions while helping us build a fairer, cleaner and more livable city for all New Yorkers,” said New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“We’re proud to stand alongside other leading cities worldwide in taking ambitious steps to cut down on waste.”
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The World Health Organization (WHO) reports the next seven to 10 days are critical in controlling the spread of the Ebola virus in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Its latest update reported 111 cases of Ebola, with 83 confirmed and 28 probable, including 75 deaths.

The WHO reports it is continuing to rapidly scale-up its response to the Ebola outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, including in Oicha, a town difficult to reach because of security concerns.

More than 100 armed groups are operating in these areas, putting some places, known as Red Zones, off limits because of the dangers. But, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told VOA health workers have had access to all places they need to go with the help of MONUSCO, U.N. peacekeepers acting as escorts.

“Between Beni and Oicha there is a Red Zone,” he said. “Oicha, itself is not a Red Zone, but also getting to Oicha is possible with the help of MONUSCO, and we are very thankful for that.”

Oicha is believed to be surrounded by Ugandan Islamist militias, who are blamed for a series of killings and abductions.

Lindmeier said the next week is critical in efforts to prevent Ebola from spreading to areas that cannot be reached.

“The quicker we can respond and in which we can get to people, to talk to them about how to protect themselves, how to prevent infection, how to deal with infected family members and loved ones, the better it is for any future control,” he said. “So, the earlier we get to any place where this outbreak could possibly reach, the better.”

The World Health Organization said 4,130 people have been vaccinated against Ebola, including 726 health care or frontline workers and more than 900 children. It noted more than 7,000 additional doses of vaccine have been transported to Beni and more doses are in route to DRC from the United States.
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Julia Flores Colque still sings with joy in her indigenous Quechua tongue and strums the five strings of a tiny Andean guitar known as the charango, despite a recorded age of almost 118 years.

In her long life, she has witnessed two world wars, revolutions in her native Bolivia and the transformation of her rural town of Sacaba from 3,000 people to a bustling city of more than 175,000 in five decades.

Her national identity card says Flores Colque was born on Oct. 26, 1900, in a mining camp in the Bolivian mountains. At 117 and just over 10 months, she would be the oldest woman in the Andean nation and perhaps the oldest living person in the world.

But a spokeswoman for Guinness World Records says she’s not aware of receiving any application for her and Flores Colque doesn’t seem to care that her record hasn’t been confirmed. She hasn’t even heard of the reference book.

These days, she enjoys the company of her dogs, cats and rooster. She is lucid and full of life, and she loves a good cake and singing folkloric songs in Quechua to anyone who comes to visit the dirt-floor adobe home she shares with her 65-year-old grandniece.

“If you would have told me you were coming, I’d have remembered all the songs,” she said jokingly while playing the diminutive guitar. She then dipped a finger into a cake, and smiled while she licked the frosting.

“She’s always been active, easygoing and fun,” said the grandniece, Agustina Berna.

Growing up, the now-centenarian herded sheep and llamas in the Bolivian highlands until she moved in her teenage years to a valley, where she began selling fruits and vegetables. The produce became her main source of sustenance, and she still maintains a healthy diet though she does indulge in the occasional cake and glass of soda. She never married and has no children.

The previously world’s oldest person, a 117-year-old Japanese woman, died earlier this year. Nabi Tajima was born on Aug. 4, 1900. Her passing apparently leaves Flores Colque as the world’s oldest living person.

Birth certificates did not exist in Bolivia until 1940, and births previously were registered with baptism certificates provided by Roman Catholic priests. Flores Colque’s national identity card, however, has been certified by the Bolivian government.

Her longevity is striking in Bolivia, which still has one of South America’s highest levels of mortality, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.N.’s regional arm.

The Sacaba mayor’s office has named Flores Colque a living heritage. The office and a private foundation have improved her home, building a brick path where she walks, and a shower and toilet with a railing so the centenarian can safely make her way to the bathroom at night.

Sitting in the sun on a rustic bench, she seems eternal or like an ancient statue carved in stone. She is hard of hearing, but she remains sharp and scolds her smallest dog whenever Blanquita tries to venture out into the street.

Just a few years ago, she still walked briskly. But then she fell and hurt her back. The doctor said she would never walk again. She proved the doctor wrong.
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Indonesia produces an estimated 1.3 million tons of plastic every day, much of which ends up in the oceans, clogging the ecosystem and killing wildlife. Last year the country pledged to cut the amount it throws into the sea by 70 percent by 2025. As Jack Hewson reports, the sea itself could help to solve the problem.
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President Emmanuel Macron suffered a major political blow Tuesday as his popular environment minister resigned live on radio — without informing the French leader beforehand.

Nicolas Hulot, one of the most respected members of the Cabinet among the French public, took even his interviewers by surprise on the France Inter radio station when announcing his move.

“I am taking the decision to leave the government,” Hulot said, adding that he felt “all alone” on environmental issues within the government.

The 63-year-old TV celebrity, who made his name as an environmental campaigner, was lured into government last year by Macron, but has repeatedly clashed with his cabinet colleagues over policy.

“We’re taking little steps, and France is doing a lot more than other countries, but are little steps enough?… the answer is no,” he added.

Hulot, whose future in the government has been a subject of speculation for months, said he had not informed Macron or Prime Minister Edouard Philippe of his plans to resign.

“It’s an honest and responsible decision,” he added.

His departure adds to mounting problems for 40-year-old centrist Macron, who swept to power in May last year promising to solve decades of low growth and high unemployment in France and reform the European Union.

Due to slowing economic growth, his government is having difficulties drawing up the 2019 budget which saw Prime Minister Philippe announce at the weekend that he was dropping targets for reducing the deficit.

At the diplomatic level, Macron is struggling to convince his European partners of the need for a more integrated EU as nationalist governments make gains across the continent.

Over the summer, the former banker also suffered the first major political scandal of his 15-month term when a senior security aide was filmed manhandling protesters while wearing a police helmet.

Anger in government

Hulot’s announcement is likely to be received bitterly by Macron, who was starting a trip to Denmark to sell his EU agenda on Tuesday.

“The most basic of courtesies would have been to warn the president of the republic and the prime minister,” government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told the BFM news channel.

Hulot was formerly the star presenter of the hit Ushuaia environmental TV programme in France and had repeatedly turned down offers to enter government by previous French presidents.

He was widely reported to be close to quitting in February after media reports that the granddaughter of former French president Francois Mitterrand had accused him of rape in the 1990s.

Hulot furiously denied the claims and said they had been extremely hurtful for him and his family.

He had also faced criticism from fellow green campaigners, who accused him of failing to influence the Macron government sufficiently after he lost battles with his colleagues in the agriculture and economy ministries.

Hulot was left disappointed when the government backtracked on a target to reduce the share of nuclear power in the country’s energy mix to 50 percent by 2025, while EU negotiations on pesticides were another source of frustration.

On Monday, the cost of a hunting licence was cut in half to 200 euros — another bitter pill for the vegetarian.

“Do you do an environmental revolution in one year? The response is no,” government spokesman Griveaux added. “I prefer little steps to not moving.”

Macron’s record on the environment is mixed.

He has made the battle against global warming one of his foreign policy priorities, organizing a major conference in Paris last year in an effort to compensate for Trump’s scepticism about climate change.

He also led efforts at the EU level to reduce the use of the controversial weedkiller chemical glyphosate and he scrapped a proposed airport in western France, partly on environmental grounds.

Macron’s political opponents immediately seized on the resignation.

“I don’t necessarily share the same opinions as Nicolas Hulot, but I can understand that he feels betrayed today, like a lot of French people, by the strong promises that were made and the sense that in the end they have not been kept,” said Laurent Wauquiez, the head of the rightwing Republicans party.

 

 

 
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Ancient periods of cold and dry climate helped our species replace Neanderthals in Europe, a study suggests.

Researchers found that such cold periods coincided with an apparent disappearance of our evolutionary cousins in different parts of the continent, and the appearance of our species, Homo sapiens.

“Whether they moved or died out, we can’t tell,” said Michael Staubwasser of the University of Cologne in Germany.

Neanderthals once lived in Europe and Asia but died out about 40,000 years ago, just a few thousand years after our species, Homo sapiens, arrived in Europe. Scientists have long debated what happened, and some have blamed the change in climate. Other proposed explanations have included epidemics and the idea that the newcomers edged out the Neanderthals for resources.

Staubwasser and colleagues reported their findings Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They drew on existing climate, archaeological and ecological data and added new indicators of ancient climate from studies of two caves in Romania.

Their study highlighted two cold and dry periods. One began about 44,000 years ago and lasted about 1,000 years. The other began about 40,800 years ago and lasted six centuries. The timing of those events matches the periods when artifacts from Neanderthals disappear and signs of H. sapiens appear in sites within the Danube River valley and in France, they noted.

The climate shifts would have replaced forest with shrub-filled grassland, and H. sapiens may have been better adapted to that new environment than the Neanderthals were, so they could move in after Neanderthals disappeared, the researchers wrote.

Katerina Harvati, a Neanderthal expert at the University of Tuebingen in Germany who wasn’t involved in the study, said it’s helpful to have the new climate data from southeastern Europe, a region that H. sapiens is thought to have used to spread through the continent.

But she said it’s unclear whether Neanderthals disappeared and H. sapiens appeared at the times the authors indicate, because the studies they cite rely on limited evidence and are sometimes open to dispute.

Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London said he thought the paper made a good case for an impact of the climate shifts on Neanderthals, although he believes other factors were also at work in their disappearance.

Rick Potts of the Smithsonian Institution called the study “a refreshing new look” at the species replacement. 

“As has been said before, our species didn’t outsmart the Neanderthals,” Potts said in an email. “We simply outsurvived them. The new paper offers much to contemplate about how it occurred.”
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