Global Pulse Blog

USAID has released its new Climate Change and Development Strategy for 2012-2016, a strategic framework for approaching the barriers and opportunities presented by global climate change. The strategy strives to “enable countries to accelerate their transition to climate resilient, low emissions development to promote sustainable economic growth.”

3 strategic objectives are incorporated in USAID’s strategy:

1. Enhance the transition to low emission development via investments in clean energy and sustainable landscapes for climate change mitigation;
2. Grow resilience of people, places, and livelihoods through investments in climate change adaptation; and
3. Strengthen development outcomes through the integration of climate change in USAID programming, learning, policy dialogues, and operations.

“…the threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing. Our generation’s response to this challenge will be judged by history, for if we fail to meet it—boldly, swiftly, and together—we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe.”

President Obama, United Nations Summit on Climate Change, September 22, 2009

This infographic from the USAID highlights the escalating need to feed the world’s growing population. It is estimated that the world will need 70% more food by 2050. USAID’s Feed the Future initiative attempts to support innovative farming practices, provide modern agricultural technology to farmers and encourage sustainable agriculture.

Supporting similar goals, the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins also encourages means to support a growing population’s needs while protecting the environment, biodiversity and the earth’s finite resources.

Check out TEDxManhattan’s “Changing the Way We Eat” held today to explore the current food system and the ongoing efforts to create a more sustainable way of farming and eating, including a talk from the Center for Livable Future’s director Dr. Robert Lawrence, MD.

If you missed the live stream of this event, check out last year’s recorded videos of the talks and look out for the recordings from this year’s event as well.

If the latest issue of Global Pulse has made you think more critically about the connections between the environment and human health, National Geographic’s special series entitled 7 Billion may provide some interesting food for thought. This year-long series explores some of the possibilities and implications of our planet’s population nearing seven billion humans in 2011. With the dawning of the Anthropecene, or the Age of Man, we must reflect on the long-lasting geologic impact our massive human population will make on the earth and the ways in which this will be reflected in human health.

80,000 – the number of manufactured chemicals in use in the US.

62,000 – chemicals that were “grandfathered” in by the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and therefore unstudied as to their health and environmental safety.

200 – chemicals tested for their safety under TSCA.

1,000,000+ tons – amount of Bisphenol A (BPA) consumed in the US in 2004, before widespread recognition of its multiple adverse health impacts.

The US public, and now the outsourced manufacturing hubs in China, India and other places worldwide, are essentially participating in a giant experimental trial with the chemicals in our foods, our clothes, our cleaners, plastics, and virtually everything we use.  H.R. 5820 the Toxic Chemical Safety Act, currently under consideration in Congress would begin the process of re-assessing the safety of these chemicals on the loose and replace the ineffective Toxic Substances Control Act.

The new legislation marks a shift in the regulatory philosophy towards new chemicals. Historically, the US favored self-regulation of the industry and allowed the industry to innovate without much concern for long-term effects. This new legislation follows the lead of the Precautionary Principle by beginning to assess the safety of products before they are released into the market.

Perhaps most troubling from a health perspective, aside from the fact that many of these molecules have not been tested for their long term chronic exposure safety, but that even with those that have been tested, few, if any, have had their safety assessed in the context of the myriad of other chemicals that we use on a daily basis. While it has shortcomings, HR 5820 is a step in the right direction.

For more info and perspectives see:

House Panel Tackles Chemical Legislation | EHS Today.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-fletcher-harper/choose-life-the-religious_b_662234.html

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h5820/show

http://blogs.edf.org/nanotechnology/2010/07/30/not-playing-nice-the-american-chemistry-council-solidifies-its-claim-to-being-the-industry-of-no/

http://mollyannaapproach.blogspot.com/2010/07/house-members-witnesses-clash-over.html

Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute announced in Science that they created an experimental one-cell organism, Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0, that has the ability to reproduce.

An article written in the Wall Street Journal discusses the process used to create the cell:

To begin, they wrote out the creature’s entire genetic code as a digital computer file, documenting more than one million base pairs of DNA in a biochemical alphabet of adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. They edited that file, adding new code, and then sent that electronic data to a DNA sequencing company called Blue Heron Bio in Bothell, Wash., where it was transformed into hundreds of small pieces of chemical DNA, they reported.

To assemble the strips of DNA, the researchers said they took advantage of the natural capacities of yeast and other bacteria to meld genes and chromosomes in order to stitch those short sequences into ever-longer fragments until they had assembled the complete genome, as the entire set of an organism’s genetic instructions is called.

They transplanted that master set of genes into an emptied cell, where it converted the cell into a different species”

It may be possible for this new field, called synthetic biology, to one day provide alternatives to standard practices in many different industries. For example, the industrial life forms can be used to produce renewable fuels as well as vaccines.

This development also raises questions about concerning the ethics, law and public safety of artificial life. So I ask you all, what are some specific issues do you see needing to be addressed concerning synthetic life?

Gaia by Alex Grey

Only 40 years ago, the image of our planet as a fragile blue ball in space inspired the first Earth Day.  Though people today are more aware than ever of the need to take care of the environment, challenges remain. Here at Global Pulse, we wanted to bring together stories of innovation and help increase awareness of the health aspects of environmentalism. On that note, Framing Science put together an excellent post on the inter-agency NIH report on the human health impacts of climate change, which range across a variety of health disciplines including:

• Asthma, respiratory allergies, and airway diseases
• Cancer
• Cardiovascular disease and stroke
• Foodborne diseases and nutrition
• Heat-related morbidity and mortality
• Human developmental effects
• Mental health and stress-related disorders
• Neurological diseases and disorders
• Waterborne diseases
• Weather-related morbidity and mortality
• Vectorborne and zoonotic diseases (like malaria, which can be transmitted from animals to humans)

One key aspect to addressing these challenges will be to re-invent farming to feed the future population, projected to hit 9 billion people by 2050, while at the same time preserving ecosystems. In the past decade, humanity past the point where over 50% of our population lives in urban areas, making cities vital to ensuring the future health of the planet and her people. The second great epidemiological revolution succeeded in part by controlling the health of our water,. Innovative architect Manit Rastogi plans to do the same for Delhi by transforming the polluted network of Nullahs (sewage laden stream) into a pedestrian and cycling network by using bio-remediation embankments. In San Francisco, newly launched Urban Forest Map is helping citizens take care of their city trees via the web.

As future medical professionals, many of us often cringe at the amount of waste generated by laboratories in the service of medicine and research. Oscillator gives a personal touch to this and shows a few simple ways to reduce waste in the lab while the EPA and DOE are busy designing the green lab of tomorrow.

Source: Wikipedia

This is the first in a series of posts for the American Public Health Association’s National Public Health Week.

Most of us associate biodiversity with images of tropical rain forests and coral reefs. While these ecological hot-spots are an important source of medications and global ecosystem services, biodiversity also plays a key role in neighborhoods across the US through regulating the spread of diseases such as Lyme disease. But how is that possible, you might ask, and what can you do about it?

Lyme disease  affects hundreds of thousands of people across the US, with a greater concentration in the northeast. Recent decades have seen an explosion of urban sprawl across the northeast leading to decreased species diversity along with people living in close proximity to fragmented habitats.  But how are these related?

The connection is explained succinctly in Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity:

“The Blacklegged Tick (Ixodes scapularis) is the vector of Lyme disease, as well as of several other pathogens in the eastern U.S., and the primary reservoir for Lyme disease in this region is a common rodent, the White-Footed Mouse (Peromyscus leucopus)…Mice live in many different habitats, from pristine old-growth forest to degraded woodlots, garden sheds, and even kitchens. Several studies have demonstrated that populations of White-Footed Mice become very concentrated in small forest fragments, probably due to the absence of other vertebrate species that prey upon, or compete with them (forest fragmentation…affects predators over prey disproportionately). As a consequence, tick populations in small forest fragments have many White-Footed Mice, but few other mammalian hosts on which to feed, resulting in a high proportion of the ticks being infected and able to infect people. In contrast, in more extensively forested areas, the combination of fewer White-Footed Mice and more abundant, alternative, reservoir-incompetent hosts (an incompetent reservoir for Lyme does not pass on the Lyme bacteria to ticks that bite them, or does so poorly) results in a lower proportion of the tick population being infected.”

This phenomenon is known as the Dilution Effect: As species richness declines there is a subsequent decrease in the “dilution” of host-species making Lyme disease easier to spread. As the authors note, the dilution effect is not unique to Lyme, the same mechanism also operates in Hantavirus and West Nile Virus and possibly many others. As sprawl-based development patterns spread to more areas of the planet, we can only expect to see an increase in the number of dilution effect diseases unleashed upon populations worldwide.

So how can you increase biodiversity in your community and thereby help protect the health of your family and neighbors?

Get involved with your local conservation commission and bring these dangers to their attention. Find ways to support local parks and nature preserves. Also, if you have a yard or garden, try to plant local species that help support wildlife.  Most importantly: Education! If you are in college or school, talk to your professors about integrating awareness of biodiversity into curriculum.  Thanks to the UN and various donors, Sustaining Life is available at a very affordable price and can serve as a great textbook without placing a great financial burden on students. In addition, local schools can serve as great sources of biodiversity through gardens and planting of local species on grounds. Often these locals are less expensive to maintain, requiring less water and fertilizer.

These are just some ideas…we’d love to hear from GP readers with their experiences and success stories.

Home to over 400 million people, the Ganges river winds through India’s history, culture and countryside. Unfortunately, rapid industrialization and urbanization has left an unholy mark on the Ganges as dangerous amounts of untreated industrial pollution and human excrement enter the river every day.  These conditions are all too common in rivers worldwide  and create an environment ripe for diseases ranging from schistosomiasis to Cryptosporidium.

But long time advocacy is finally paying off as the WSJ reports that World Bank and the Indian government are set to spend $4 billion to “to ensure that by 2020 no untreated municipal sewage or industrial runoff enters the 1,560-mile river.”.  The methods proposed also have the benefit of being less carbon and electricity intensive than traditional wastewater treatment plants – key aspects for a country with chronic brownouts in a warming world.  In order to reach their goal, the government and partners will need to engage the most neglected slums which, if done right,  has the potential to create environmental justice at the same time as cleaning the river.

Of course, governments have a tendency of announcing lofty environmental goals which are then forgotten in the next election cycle. The Ganges also had a previous cleanup effort that failed to reach its goals, partly because of lacking public participation. Hopefully things will be different this time, but GP would love to hear from anyone with on the ground insight.

On the 17th of April, the Obama administration proclaimed the new doctrine that carbon dioxide is bad for our health and circumstance.  Not much of a revelation for many in the fields of public health, but certainly a bold move politically.  With this announcement, and the Clean Air Act already in play, the EPA can step in and begin regulating emissions with the blessing of the Supreme Court and Executive branch.  The Financial Times writers, Andrew Ward and Sarah O’Connor, offer a brief synopsis of it in their article “US declares carbon dioxide a danger to human health”.

I find the maneuver encouraging, but we are still at least one large step from doing much of anything tangible to curb emissions…and a chasm away from doing it right.

Does the Obama administration really want the EPA to handle CO2 admissions?  I doubt it.  In fact, the real bite of this new axiom and emboldened EPA has already been noted by much of Congress: it’s twisting the screw to get them to pass some legislation.  It is always more pleasant for an elected official to vote for the obvious than vote for the confrontational.  Naturally, some of them are quite uncomfortable with the Obama camp turning up the heat on potential environmental legislation (perhaps that will make them more empathetic to the scientific community’s discomfort with the world’s rising temperature).  Notwithstanding some Congressional pleas that Obama isn’t playing fair, the legislative branch will now have to take a long, serious look at the current cap-and-trade proposal.  Before, it was just a matter of voting down something they (and some lobbyists) didn’t want any part of.  Now, it means forfeiting a market-based system of regulation for an executive agency book of mandates (you can almost hear the far-right teeth grinding…environmental protection, bigger government…they haven’t experienced such agony since the 70s).

But will cap-and-trade do it?  Maybe, but I’ve got my doubts.  I should moderate my demur with a caveat: it probably will do something, it just might not be much.  Briefly, this system aims to declare a national ceiling on emissions, slice the total up like a pie and distribute them to every corporation that pollutes.  Those that need more permits (slices of pie) will have to buy them from others, who have permits to spare.  Ideally, it keeps the total emissions at an agreed upon level and encourages innovation (i.e. do what you can to need as few permits as possible and sell the left-overs).  Not so bad thus far, but the tricky part comes next.  PRICING.

The conundrum of this particular proposal is putting the right price tag on the permits.  Aim to low, and they become so cheap that nobody changes behavior and we’ll merely have a bunch of permits laying around on the ground like unwanted grocery store coupons (EU demonstrated this one).  Price them too high, and you can significantly alter your export industries and engender a whirlwind of business backlash (that will be there regardless, so it’s the first point that matters).  I think this is an especially important consideration in the wake of our financial armageddon.  To curtail America’s prodigal ways, it needs to reconcile its trade deficit (i.e. export a little more and import a little less).  Some careful mathematics and a stroll down a fine line is in order if we hold to cap-and-trade.

To get away from the precarious efforts to price permits, I think we should just implement a carbon tax.  Get a few smart people in a room, initiate a circumspect approximation of the negative externalities intrinsic to each unit of CO2 emissions, and charge the polluter accordingly.  Take the new revenue and invest it in environmental protection interventions and subsidize new technology (help businesses pollute less, make solar and wind power implementable, etc.).  Don’t want to pay more taxes?  Then stop polluting…that changes behavior, right?  Additionally, the price is stable (just like a sales tax), so any business can calculate its upcoming fiscal year liabilities based on expected emissions multiplied by per unit tax.  No black magic or unexpected outcomes (like rock-bottom permit prices).  And last but not least, the carbon tax has a social appeal: it gives Rush Limbaugh and his delusional acquaintances an excuse to get together again over a cup of tea.

NO JOKE!! Today, the Senate passed the Kerry-Lugar amendment by unanimous consent! YES for all your calls, because our individual actions do make a difference! A loud sigh of relief, since we can rest assured $4 billion is secured for HIV treatment, malaria bed-nets and vaccinations for our fellow global citizens. Below is an excerpt from Senator John Kerry’s remarks regarding the Kerry-Lugar Amendment: 

…Returning diplomacy and development to their rightful place cannot be achieved through words alone:  It takes money to drive civilian foreign policy—and if it keeps us safer, as I believe it will, then that is money well spent.    

Full funding of the President’s international affairs budget is a vital step toward greater civilian capacity, and I urge my colleagues to support it. That’s why, along with Senators Lugar, Leahy, Voinovich, Durbin, Kaufman, Menendez, Dodd, Feinstein, Brown, Sanders, Lieberman, Casey, and Corker, I ask for approval of this amendment to restore $4 billion worth of funding to the President’s FY 2010 international affairs budget request for the Function 150 Account.  The offset here will come from the Function 920 Account…

Surveying the wide range of commitments and aspirations this budget addresses, it is clear that our challenge is immense. And yet, even as we confront a crisis here at home, we cannot afford to delay the task of restoring our leadership, returning to our best traditions of civilian outreach, and restoring our influence and authority.  We cannot afford to come up short on our promises to allies, to vulnerable populations, and to the world.    We cannot try to be a world leader on the cheap.  If we fail to do our part to solve the world’s problems, those problems will eventually find us here at home. 

From pandemics to climate change to failed states, this century’s security challenges demand that a new level of commitment to diplomacy and development.  With this relatively small investment, we are making significant strides toward restoring America’s leadership role in the world. It will make the world safer, and it will make us safer.  And so I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the President’s budget request. 

To read the full statement from Senator John Kerry on the Kerry-Lugar Amendment to Restore Full Funding to President Obama’s International Affairs Budget, click here.