Nurdles in paradise

So, if you thought of nurdles at all, it may have been as a benign cricketing term ('nurdling into the gap' can be a good move for batsmen). Not so benign in this form. Take a good look at the small (approx 3mm across) pellets of plastic in this (8cm high) bottle. Look around you wherever you are and you are likely to see the same colours of plastic in household or garden goods.

These are 'nurdles' - mostly pre-production plastic pellets - collected in 20 minutes from a random metre square of remote beach on the eastern shoreline of Scotland. They are washed out of transport tankers and off docksides straight into the ocean and journey around the globe. Nurdles join micro-plastics from cosmetics and the many items of plastic garbage from our disposable society that are polluting our seas. They have been found choking small marine creatures that mistake them for food - and carry an additional payload of hydrophobic chemicals that attach to them in the ocean.

Suddenly "nurdling into the gap" takes on an altogether more sinister meaning for humans dependent on marine productivity. And if only plastic could be converted to Ashes as easily as the English cricket team's nurdles are in Melbourne this week.

There is no green without blue

Adding Oceans to Future Earth's labels and highlighting this great site from the Blue World Alliance on the horror of ocean plastics.

The pic (packet was not planted) was snapped on the shores of West Kalimantan a couple of years ago- ancient natural roots despoiled by flashy modern rubbish.

tck tck tck tck tck tck tck tck.....

Global wake up call on climate change. So little time and so much to lose if the countries at the climate talks in Copenhagen this December miss the opportunity to take decisive action. The ticking clock (we are at 'one minute to midnight') is waking up people around the world and especially leaders who will be making decisions on a post-Kyoto framework.

Today there are at least 2,400 events taking place on 5 continents to raise awareness. They range from the diminutive nun with a yellow tambourine at Cambridge's marketplace "flash mob" (unable to get through to Gordon Brown on the phone) to the masked man on an Australian beach giving Kevin Rudd a wake-up call. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock...
(Check twitter @tcktcktck for updates).

Condoms for footballers - yes, they can!

Football has become a common language as well as a tradeable currency. In Banda Aceh recently I was astonished to see a huge billboard with Stephen Gerrard's face writ large - a role model for high standard Premiership football, now sadly tarnished as brawling Gerrard's face sprawls across the tabloids instead. Then amidst acres of Miombo woodland in remote northern Mozambique we came across a villager peddling an ancient bicycle and a team shirt that provided common ground for a long conversation.

It also provided inspiration for a project* that resulted in 100 "Alive & Kicking" locally-made leather footballs being delivered to the enthusiastic Peles-in-the-making in villages around Niassa Reserve. These young guys were bundling up plastic bags and tying them with local twine into ball shapes. If they had had access to condoms, they could have improved on this model themselves. African ingenuity is using blown-up condoms as the basis for bounceable balls - covering them in plastic and old clothing for strength. I suppose by preventing their use for the purpose intended (and setting aside serious considerations of poverty, aids, climate etc for a moment), they are also ensuring a continuing supply of African football talent in years to come!













* A collaboration between Martin Aveling, Alive & Kicking, Sociedade de Gestão e Desenvolvimento da Reserva do Niassa (SRN), Keith and Colleen Begg, Fauna & Flora International & Fauna & Flora International Inc.

(Dis)united Nations

Such a good idea, the United Nations. But then so is America (as the American writer John Gunther said "Ours is the only country deliberately founded on a good idea") and look where that is going.

Didn't we see it coming, the economic nose-dive set off by a disconnection from reality in the minds of finance supremos? No - well, now you are in practice, watch out for the next one. In the minds of the securely tenured and over-compensated officers of the United Nations there is a similar disconnect from reality. Despite laudable and overdue attempts at reform the UN shows every sign of trying to maintain a global lifestyle rather than focusing on its constituents. An overstuffed bureaucracy unable to walk, let alone run - unravel the threads and start again Mr. ban Ki-moon.

Waste not, want not

Alternative to charcoal helping protect gorilla habitat. Good to see this appropriate technology in use and all credit to the teams currently promoting it.

During a prolonged lull in the security mayhem of this central African hotspot a few years ago, the International Gorilla Conservation Programme and partners were presciently addressing this problem - setting up a buffer of trees around the Park and monitoring fuelwood use. (Building on the local networks of a health education charity, a "social marketing" campaign distributed both condoms and tree seedlings - and was irreverantly dubbed "pricks and sticks" by the team!) This living buffer of young trees was obliterated by waves of refugees and rising population levels, but perhaps reduced the severity of destruction and left some knowledge in its wake.

Are you feeling lucky?

"Are you feeling lucky?" Clint Eastwood's character asks in the film 'Dirty Harry'. Here on an increasingly dirty earth another IUCN world gathering is about to descend on Barcelona, and "Transition to Sustainability: towards a Humane and Diverse World" has been put together to this deadline.

It will need more than luck. Adams and Jeanreneaud argue that the two essentials (of a low carbon economy and a world that values nature) require a third companion to have any chance of planetary sustainability - social equity. What was that at the back? "Fat chance" did you say? Well think again... in this philosophical narrative of conservation we are reminded of the self-fulfilling politics of fear. "I had a nightmare..." might not have had quite the resonance, or stimulated quite the change, that Martin Luther King's dream managed to do. All very well and yes, we need inspiration as much as information - but both science and history indicate that we'll change the world only when the selfish genes kick in. Too late? Another soundbite pulled from the ether by these authors.. "there are no sewers on a spaceship".

If you are expending carbon to help save the world at the IUCN congress, you can offset intellecually by engaging in the "sustainability dialogues" around these issues.

And by the way is it, or is it not, the "World Conservation Union" - compare the mixed branding still on the IUCN website against comment on this post.

Sense, sensibility and symbolism

Charity begins at home as a released baloon, and ends up overseas in the belly of a turtle. A welsh charity for the homeless has finally settled on the release of biodegradable chinese lanterns as part of a fundraising drive after a proposed baloon release was criticised by the Marine Conservation Society. A replacement release of pigeons and doves was then stopped after being criticised on ethical grounds. What do readers of "Future Earth" think of the lantern release? A deal of unecessary energy expenditure in an energy-constrained world (bah, humbug) or beautiful symbolism of global connectivity (peace and love)? Either way, we can expect more of it as the tiger economies roar across the globe - this is a big thing across Asia and, sadly for the turtles, the biodegradeable lanterns are being replaced by more durable materials.

(And anyone who wants to help save our seas from uneccesary plastic can support the Marine Conservation Society's Coastal challenge - via the two intrepid canoeists navigating Raasay to Rhona).

The "p" word....(puffins 2)

Concerned about declining puffins in UK (see Future Earth's Ppppppick up a puffin)? Don't let the "f" word's Gordon Ramsey near the Farne islands then.

(Credit to http://www.bjerrang.no for puffin pic)

"Waste not, want not"

Don't you just hate it when those old parental sayings come into sharp focus - especially when they come back to you through the mouths of your politicians? And when you know they are right. How can we possibly be throwing away so much food in some societies - even the most selfish of interests should buy into this one. And if you buy either the environmental or economic arguments, you get the other one free - with collected health points thrown in along the way.

But a glimmer of hope on the recycling front from the centre of environmentally damaging incineration - Japan. Total recycling, no waste collection in the village of Kamikatsu. 100% recycling.... good effort. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.... or rather, in your bin and don't burn it.

Fabulous fences

I've been watching this living fence for a year now, enjoying its responses to the changing seasons. It is layered Hawthorn, with a few Hawthorn trees left to grow on. Between the winter and summer pics above, a realisation that wooden fencing is increasingly in short supply globally has added a practical edge to my interest. Traditionally laid in winter, before the sap rises, the stems are severed with a billhook until they lean over on their own with just a small amount of tissue to keep the trees alive. Stumps and "pleachers" (the layered stems) send up new shoots which thicken and strengthen the hedge. Stakes at regular intervals and a woven layer of hazel sticks along the top ("heatherings") keep this living artwork in place - beautiful.

Perhaps not quite so obviously beautiful as living fences of rosa rugosa and some of the living fences in widespread use across central/southern America. The experience in Africa has been mixed (I have seen park managers spend years trying to reduce the invasive spread of "prickly pear" planted with all good fencing intention) but living fences are being reinvented in our carbon constrained world. There are downsides but generally living fences must be preferable to carbon-unfriendly metal & plastic n'est-ce-pas?

Back to watching the twigs grow....the screenplay for ."There will be Wood" is Future Earth's next offering to Daniel Day Lewis.

Sea clearly

Casting an eye today on things marine (with the help of Violet the octopus above) I am swimming against the current of my usual stream of invective about Plastic in Paradise.

Only four years ago, I listened to a marine scientist taling about the new application of the "ecosystem approach" to undersea landscapes, and was astonished by how blinkered marine planning must have been to only just be discovering that connectivity and starting to use that language. Well, as global awareness about the state of our environment has risen since then, marine conservationists have been able to ride the crest of the wave and raise a flag or two in the public eye. All credit to the Marine Conservation Society - especially for providing clear information about what we can do in response even as individuals.

Something to watch closely around the world is leglislation that can follow in the wake of public concern. The creation of marine protected areas is such an obvious response as we look to regain a healthy sea for a healthy planet - but beset still by waves of indifference in public sectors unable to look below the surface of the problem. In the UK though, the legistlative process around the marine bill is launched and is setting sail. All voters and all those concerned beyond the shores of this small island can help provide a fair wind for its smooth passage.

Dead or Alive

World Environment Day was not forgotten in Royal Circles either. Forests champion HRH Prince Charles launched a new web site for his Princes Rainforest Project. Saving trees one day, promoting cricket the next? These two interests converge nicely in the Australian Cricket Bat Willow Project.

By responsing to the increasing scarcity of Cricket Bat Willow - Salix alba var.caerulea - some canny Aussies set up one of those rare win-win-wins. A win for the environment (although I'm making a presumption on water); a win for business (with increasing global demand they must be literally quids in) and, sadly... (yet another) win for Australian cricket. And the Poms no longer have the opportunity of holding them to ransom by restricting supply. A level playing field indeed.

£40 billion? Going...... going.....

Stern has done it for climate change, can "TEEB" (The Economics of Ecosystems & Biodiversity") review, do it for biological diversity? Launched at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meetings in Bonn this week, TEEB demonstrates that the ongoing loss of ecosystems and biodiversity is costing the planet £40 billion a year - hitting the poorest hardest of all.

What do we need to do? Mostly the same things that will also reduce the speed of climate change (leaving aside the complexities of biofuels). Use less energy, consume (much) less per capita, waste less and conserve the natural resources we have. All of us. Will we?

One of the first crises to bite, and that might make us sit up and take notice, is the one that has been lurking unseen beneath the surface of the ocean - overfishing. The TEEB review demonstrates how all of the world's fisheries are likely to collapse within 50 years if current trends are not reversed. A billion people rely on fish protein. A few weeks ago I came across these two fishermen on the edge of the Java sea, picking miniscule remnants of the evening's meagre catch out of their precious nets. The sea from which they feed their families was letting them down - they were the "small guys" for whom the declining stocks meant immediate hunger and no prospects for their children. Thats a powerful fermentor of discontent spreading around the coastlines of the world.

Personal plastic

Personal carbon might be logged on a personal plastic card and swiped at the point of purchase. More plastic in use around the planet. Could it be made from recycled plastic waste from Arjay's household - here's a months supply, and thats despite an effort to cut down, thinking of addled albatross chicks. Not as easy to recycle as we might like to think, these pernicious, persistent polymers proliferating prettily around the planet.