Posted on behalf of Katherine Rowland.

More than one-fifth of the world’s water supplies go towards crops and commodities produced for export, a new study reports. As developed nations import water-intensive goods from overseas, they place pressure on finite resources in areas where water governance and conservation policies are often lacking.

Researchers from the Netherlands have quantified and mapped the global water footprint, highlighting how patterns in international commerce create disparities in water use. The new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, presents a spatial analysis of water consumption and pollution based on worldwide trade indicators, demographic data and water-usage statistics.

Arjen Hoekstra, a water management analyst at the University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands, and lead author of the study, says that water supplies follow the flow of goods around the world. Water consumption and pollution, he says, “are directly tied to the global economy”. Continue reading →

Posted on behalf of Hannah Hoag.

Canada’s marine biodiversity is under threat and there’s no strategy for fixing it, states a report released today by the Royal Society of Canada. According to the independent panel behind the assessment, the heart of the problem lies in the conflicting responsibilities of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), a federal department with the joint role of promoting industrial and economic activity and conserving marine life and ocean health.

The international ten-person panel found that climate change, aquaculture and over-fishing were having negative effects on Canada’s marine ecosystems and species. The oceans are becoming warmer and less salty, food webs are being disrupted and disease is being transferred from farmed to wild species. The panel also gauged whether Canada was fulfilling its obligations to sustain marine biodiversity. The answer: no.

“We’ve made many commitments, but we have not met those commitments and we don’t have a plan,” says Jeff Hutchings, an expert on marine biodiversity and conservation at Dalhousie University in Halifax and the panel’s chairman.

Several national and international agreements, such as the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, commit Canada to protecting its marine biodiversity. Even so, “Canada has fallen well short of the progress made by most developed nations,” the authors write. Canada should have set targets for exploited fish stocks, including target population size and limits that aren’t to be exceeded.

“The United States, Australia, New Zealand, and increasingly parts of Europe have these plans, but we don’t have them for Canadian Atlantic cod, or for most of marine species,” says Hutchings.

Canada is also committed to establishing a national system of marine protected areas, and during a 2010 Conference of the Parties of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, it agreed to set aside 10% of coastal and marine areas by 2020. To date, only 0.8% is protected.

The panel made seven recommendations to establish Canada as a leader in ocean stewardship and marine conservation. Among them, it urged the federal government to resolve the conflicts of interest surrounding DFO and to limit the discretionary power of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.

Other countries have managed to overcome such conflicts. In the United States, the Magnuson-Stevens Act requires recovery plans for over-fished stocks and provides impact assessments for fisheries. It also mandates the following of scientific advice, says Dave VanderZwaag, the Canada Research Chair in Ocean Law & Governance at Dalhousie University, and one of the panel members.

Hutchings is among those who would like to see the DFO’s fishing industry activities transferred to Industry Canada.

“If they were separated, and they probably should be, the outcome would depend on the weight the political leaders give to science and conservation. At present, the government gives little emphasis to science and even less to conservation,” says Daniel Pauly, a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who was not part of the panel.

A spokesperson for DFO would not comment on the report until it has been reviewed by the department.

Posted on behalf of Nicola Nosengo.

A wiretap has brought a new twist to the trial in L’Aquila, Italy, of six Italian scientists and one government official accused of manslaughter for having reassured the population before the deadly earthquake of 6 April, 2009 (see ‘Scientists face trial over earthquake deaths’ and ‘Scientists on trial: At fault?’).

All those indicted took part in a meeting held in L’Aquila on 30 March, 2009, during which they were asked to assess the risk of a major earthquake in view of many shocks that had hit the city in the previous months. Most of the trial revolves around a statement made to the press by the deputy head of the Italian Civil Protection Bernardo De Bernardinis, who is among the indicted: “The scientific community tells me there is no danger because there is an ongoing discharge of energy.”

According to the Public Prosecutor of L’Aquila, that statement made some citizens who were about to flee their homes decide to stay instead, and thus indirectly caused their death. But those words have been judged scientifically incorrect by most seismology experts, including some of the accused scientists, who deny having said anything like that at the meeting. So a key question in the investigation was where those words came from.

On 20 January the Italian newspaper La Repubblica revealed a taped telephone conversation between Guido Bertolaso, then head of the Civil Protection, and Daniela Stati, an officer of the L’Aquila Provincial Administration, recorded the day before the meeting. Bertolaso can be heard saying, of the seismologists now on trial: “I will send them there mostly as a media move. They are the best experts in Italy, and they will say that it is better to have a hundred shocks at 4 Richter than silence, because a hundred shocks release energy, so that there will never be the big one.”

Continue reading →

Posted on behalf of Virginia Gewin.

The Panama Canal is growing. By 2014 — 100 years after the canal was first completed — ships with a beam of up to 49 metres will be able to travel through the 82-kilometre channel (pictured), up from the current 32.2-metre limit.

Upping the beam constraint, known among seafarers as ‘Panamax’, will have ripple effects throughout the shipping industry. Larger ships will enable the transport of more goods in fewer trips, and larger beams will facilitate the design of more efficient hulls, according to a study in the International Journal of Maritime Engineering.

Overall, the potential savings — in both fuel and reduced emissions — may be as great as 16% per tonne-mile. The potential for such reduced environmental impact stemming from the canal expansion is, largely, an unexpected windfall for the shipping industry as a whole, says study author Paul Stott, a marine engineering lecturer at Newcastle University, UK.

A 16% improvement in efficiency is significant given that the International Maritime Organisation estimates that, without major steps to reduce emissions, shipping will be responsible for 12–18% of global emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050.

Continue reading →