It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, September 06, 2022
McMaster researchers discover toxin that kills bacteria in unprecedented ways
Discovery could pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics
IMAGE: NATHAN BULLEN (LEFT) AND JOHN WHITNEY (RIGHT) EXAMINE CRYSTALS OF THE PURIFIED TOXIN, WHICH THEY USED TO SOLVE ITS 3-DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURE THROUGH X-RAY CRYSTALLOGRAPHY.view more
CREDIT: BLAKE DILLON, MCMASTER UNIVERSITY
Hamilton, ON (Sept. 6, 2022) - Researchers at McMaster University have discovered a previously unknown bacteria-killing toxin that could pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics.
The study, led by John Whitney at the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, shows that the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, known to cause hospital-acquired infections such as pneumonia, secretes a toxin that has evolved to kill other species of bacteria.
For Whitney, the key aspect of his discovery is not just thatthis toxin kills bacteria, but howit does so.
“This research is significant, because it shows that the toxin targets essential RNA molecules of other bacteria, effectively rendering them non-functional,” said Whitney, associate professor for the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences.
“Like humans, bacteria require properly functioning RNA in order to live.”
“It's a total assault on the cell because of how many essential pathways depend on functional RNAs” said first study author Nathan Bullen, a graduate student in McMaster’s Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences.
“This toxin enters its target, hijacks an essential molecule needed for life, and then uses that molecule to disrupt normal processes.”
Whitney and Bullen, together with colleagues at Imperial College London and the University of Manitoba, have studied this toxin for nearly three years to understand exactly how it functions at a molecular level.
The breakthrough, published in Molecular Cell, was achieved by Bullen following rigorous experimentation on common targets of toxins, such as protein and DNA molecules, before eventually testing the toxin against RNA.
This discovery breaks well-established precedents set by protein-targeting toxins secreted by other bacteria, such as those that cause cholera and diphtheria.
Researchers say that this development holds great potential for future research that could eventually lead to new innovations that combat infection-causing bacteria.
Whitney says the newly-discovered vulnerability can be exploited for future antibiotic development.
-30-
Editors:
A photo of Nathan Bullen and Jon Whitney is attached. Cutline: Nathan Bullen (left) and John Whitney (right) examine crystals of the purified toxin, which they used to solve its 3-dimensional structure through X-ray crystallography. Credit: Blake Dillon, McMaster University.
We’re all capable of slowing down the effects of a warming Earth, and it could be as simple as how we stock our pantries.
An international team of scientists has evaluated the environmental impacts of more than 57,000 food products – the stuff you typically find as you wander the aisles of your local grocery. If this type of information is made easily available to the public, they say, it could not only enable the transition to a more sustainable food system, but chances are it could also improve people’s health.
“The goal is to have a simpler, and more rigorous quantitative way to inform consumers about the tens of thousands of different items they might buy in a grocery store,” said ecologist David Tilman, a professor at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, and also at the University of Minnesota’s College of Biological Sciences. Tilman is a co-author of a study that appears in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.
According to the researchers’ assessment, beef and lamb take the greatest toll on the environment, with impacts far outpacing those of other proteins such as chicken, fish and seafood and nuts, which also are on the higher end of the environmental impact scale.
“Many people consider beef to taste good, and I understand why, but it is a very inefficient way to create food for humans,” Tilman said. Meanwhile, processed drinks such as soda and energy drinks were rated at the lowest impact level of food products evaluated, sharing space with plant-based grocery foods such as rice and flatbreads.
A Decade of Studying Food Products While much research has gone into the environmental impacts of food commodities such as fruits, wheat and beef, most food products contain many different ingredients, each of which have taken their own routes to become part of that product. This lifecycle data, which informs the total environmental impacts of producing, harvesting, transporting and processing of said ingredients, are largely invisible to the consumer, as are the proportions of ingredients. According to the study, this information gap exists because “the exact amount of each ingredient and their supply chain in each food product are often considered a trade secret.” The sheer number of food products and their variety makes the assessment a “daunting” task for food companies and for retailers aiming to reduce their carbon emissions.
To overcome these limitations, the researchers, led by first author Michael Clark of Oxford University, used prior knowledge from ingredient lists to infer the composition of each ingredient. They then paired this information with environmental databases to gauge impacts across four indicators: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water stress and eutrophication potential (the magnitude of excess nutrients from production that can pollute surrounding environment and waterways).
“This is the result of a decade since Mike and I started working on this,” said Tilman, who is Clark’s former advisor. “It started with doing some of the lifecycles ourselves, then using many of these lifecycles that were published. And then we started critically evaluating the quality of lifecycle data available for each of the major food commodities.” They consulted previously published papers, conducted further analyses and used their approach on 57,000 food products found in Tesco supermarkets, a major grocery chain in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
“You go to a grocery store in Europe and it doesn’t look very different from a grocery store in the United States,” Tilman said. While humans around the world don’t have the exact same taste preferences, he added, we tend to have to similar tastes, which results in more or less the same kind of food products in our stores.
These tastes tend to gravitate to foods that contain high levels of sugar. It’s a commodity that is both cheap and produced in abundance, with effects that have led to increased rates of obesity, diabetes and other conditions related to overconsumption of highly processed foods that often contain high fructose corn syrup.
“That’s what happened with the Green Revolution,” Tilman said of an unintended consequence of the world’s move in the 1950s and ‘60s toward high-yield, industrial farming processes that include pesticides, fertilizers and monocultures. “Sugar is cheap. Fats are cheap and salt is cheap. People love salty, fatty and sweet kinds of foods; that’s what our taste preferences are. They made total sense during our evolutionary past, and now that these foods are so cheap and readily available, we eat them in excess.”
Healthy Choices = Healthy Earth In a previous study, Tilman and Clark found that in general, diets that included healthy, less-processed foods were also heathier for the environment. “We know there’s a relationship there, and we wanted to apply this for individual foods,” Tilman said. As a result, the researchers’ current study also ranks grocery foods by nutritional impact, with plant-based, less processed foods on the healthier end of the scale for both humans and the environment, and highly processed grains and dairy products toward the less-healthy end.
“The healthiest diets that we know of are variants on the classical Mediterranean diet, which has many servings of fruits and vegetables a day, and whole grains,” Tilman said. “Whole grain has the advantage of having fiber, which helps slow the rate at which starch becomes sugars.” The main meat is fish, he added, with other meats used as flavoring and on special occasions. Other environmentally friendly and nutritious diets include vegetarian and pescatarian diets, provided hydrogenated fats and sugars are kept to a minimum. There isn’t enough scientific data yet to put the vegan diet in the same group, but Tilman suspects it belongs there as well.
Still, more work needs to be done to refine the researchers’ assessment. There’s a lot of variability in the proportion and type of ingredients in similar grocery store foods that can lead to differences in health and environmental impacts, and there are also alternative processes to consider, Tilman said. But the hope is that this information becomes widely available, empowering consumers to make better food choices for the health of both their bodies and the environment.
“I hope this information ends up on packages,” Tilman said. “And I hope because it’s on packages that companies that make different foods will willingly tell us the exact ingredients and amounts in their foods, so we can give the most rigorous, honest evaluation of their product.”
JOURNAL
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
ARTICLE TITLE
Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
8-Aug-2022
New research shows how COVID-19 altered Americans' intentions to move
Study reveals pandemic’s impact on individuals’ decisions to relocate
IMAGE: XIALU LIU, PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS (MIS), THE FOWLER COLLEGE OF BUSINESS, SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITYview more
CREDIT: SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY
Divorce. Changing jobs. Natural disasters. A change in financial resources. Going away to college. Wanting to be nearer to family members.
Those are just a handful of traditional reasons Americans choose to pack up and move.
One non-traditional reason for moving was the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a significant impact on every aspect of Americans’ lives starting in March 2020. With this fact in mind, Xialu Liu, professor of management information systems (MIS) at the Fowler College of Business at San Diego State University and Lei Lei, professor of sociology at Rutgers University, analyzed data gathered from Google Trends to assess how the pandemic may have altered American’s’ decisions to change residences.
Thoughts of Escaping Pandemic Lockdowns Were High To measure the intentions of those people considering a move, the researchers accessed Google Trends to identify internet searches using keywords or phrases associated with changes in residence (such as “real estate agent,” “house for rent” or “moving company”) or a temporary relocation (such as a trip to Florida or Hawaii) between January 2011 to February 2021.
They noted that Americans’ thoughts about temporarily relocating surged during the early months of the pandemic lockdown in March through April of 2020. But while the number of Americans thinking about a short-term move may have spiked over 40%, the number of people seeking real estate purchases and housing rentals dropped 20 - 30% during the same period.
Eventually, The Panic Dies Down “The lack of knowledge, feelings of uncertainty and fear of the disease may have caused some level of widespread panic, prompting those in high-density areas to escape what they perceived as increased exposure to COVID and societal restrictions,” said Liu. “But these feelings soon subsided as lockdowns and stay-at-home orders were implemented in most states. Additionally, the risk of infection inhibited the home search process in the early months of the pandemic, causing real estate sales and rentals to decline during that same period.”
While the frequency of temporary relocations searches had declined by 30 - 50% at the end of April 2020, it was the exact opposite for those seeking more permanent housing solutions. Starting in June 2020, people seeking both real estate purchases and rentals, saw their numbers increase substantially (22 - 24%) and remain high until the research concluded in February 2021. The only exception was individuals using the search term “apartments for rent” which returned to pre-pandemic levels, while searches for house rentals increased by 15.65%.
Temporary Escape Give Way to Thought of Permanent Relocation “In June 2020, the Google Trends data indicated that as Americans became more knowledgeable about the disease — and as businesses and amenities began to adjust and open up again — there was an initial marked increase in searches for housing purchases and rentals,” said Liu. “With the pandemic responses varying in different areas in the country, many people relocated to areas that fit their lifestyles. For example, some people moved to avoid strict lockdowns, while others may have moved to be nearer to necessary medical care.”
The researchers also noted that educational requirements and working conditions also may have driven Americans to consider a permanent relocation as well. “With many people working and learning from home, the constraints binding them to a physical office or school were removed,” said Liu. “This allowed them to consider a broader array of locations and housing options that met their evolving needs.”
Family Ties Run Deep The only search that never fluctuated after the start of the pandemic was the increase (around 50%) of individuals looking to move in with their parents or other family, which showed no significant change between March 2020 and February 2021. The researchers noted that this may be a result of college students moving home or adult children searching for ways to remove their parents from retirement facilities.
As their research wrapped up, the two professors concluded while only “move in with family” searches remained consistently higher since March 2020, the fluctuations in the searches for temporary or permanent relocations offers a glimpse into U.S. residents’ thought processes as their housing needs and the regulations surrounding COVID-19 protocols evolved.
Maybe…Or Maybe Not Lastly, they also concluded that while Google Trends indicated an intention to relocate, not everyone seeking to move followed through.
“Housing inventory, price, employment factors and other issues factor into relocations intentions vs. an actual move,” said Liu. “Theoretically, scholars view residential mobility as a multi-stage process, though the actual process could be nonlinear and much messier. In other words, desires or intentions to relocate may — or may not — eventually result in actually moving.”
IMAGE: LEE FRIEDMAN AND BRETT SHANNON OF THE UIC SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH.view more
CREDIT: JOSHUA CLARK/UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS CHICAGO.
National data has consistently shown that Indigenous people in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are two to three times more likely to die from injury than non-Indigenous people.
However, very little research has been done by the public or private sectors on the occupational hazards Indigenous people face, according to a new University of Illinois Chicago study published in theBritish Medical Journal of Occupational Health and Medicine.
Brett Shannon and Lee Friedman of the UIC School of Public Health examined research evaluating both Indigenous workers and adult workplace injuries in the four countries since 1970. After examining more than 1,500 peer-reviewed studies that met basic search criteria, they found only 51 studies featuring Indigenous occupational health data published in the last 50 years. Roughly half had been published after 2010.
Half of the studies reported higher rates of workplace injury or illness for Indigenous people compared with non-Indigenous people, with the greatest differences observed in farming injuries, workplace violence, work injuries requiring hospitalization and fatal injuries.
None of the studies explored how environmental hazards at work impacted Indigenous people with chronic conditions like diabetes or asthma.
Only 13 of the 51 studies focused on Indigenous people exclusively. The majority of papers identified Indigenous people as a subset of a larger sample of workers. In nearly half the publications, the number of Indigenous people studied was less than 100, and only seven of the scholarly articles had an Indigenous author.
“There’s so little information,” said Shannon, a UIC doctoral candidate and descendent of the Australian Ngugi people. “If someone has diabetes or chronic heart disease, they’re at risk of poorer outcomes without medical intervention following a work injury. And there’s psychosocial factors that require consideration as well.”
He noted that only one of the studies focused on occupational injuries that were psychological, revealing a failure to meet the holistic definition of health and well-being set by many Indigenous communities.
The UIC study made recommendations for increasing research on the occupational health of Indigenous people, so that strategies for preventing death and injury can be developed.
A major challenge to understanding Indigenous occupational health is that employers and workplace insurers do not share consistent ways of identifying Indigenous workers in their record-keeping. Notable exceptions Friedman and Shannon found included New Zealand and the Canadian province of British Columbia, where workers’ compensation data systematically identified Indigenous people and was easily accessible for occupational health research.
Another challenge is that Indigenous people themselves do not always have the resources and incentives to lead research and data collection. However, Shannon has been working with Indigenous leaders and occupational health professionals from all four countries to develop best practices for capturing data and for promoting occupational health research as a profession.
He is also helping Indigenous students at UIC, one of the most diverse universities in the U.S., to advocate for themselves. He and fellow doctoral student Zoë Harris, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, will hold the first meeting of the Indigenous Graduate Student Association on campus this month.
IMAGE: A SUBSTANTIAL SHERD OF EARLY NEOLITHIC POTTERY, AS FOUND ON THE LOCH BED AT LOCH BHOGASTAILview more
CREDIT: DAN PASCOE
A team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, has uncovered intriguing new insights into the diet of people living in Neolithic Britain and found evidence that cereals, including wheat, were cooked in pots.
Using chemical analysis of ancient, and incredibly well-preserved pottery found in the waters surrounding small artificial islands called crannogs in Scotland, the team were able to discern that cereals were cooked in pots and mixed with dairy products and occasionally meat, probably to create early forms of gruel and stew. They also discovered that the people visiting these crannogs used smaller pots to cook cereals with milk and larger pots for meat-based dishes.
The findings are reported today in the journal Nature Communications.
Cereal cultivation in Britain dates back to around 4000 BCE was probably introduced by migrant farmers from continental Europe. This is evidenced by some, often sparse and sporadic, recovery of preserved cereal grains and other debris found at Neolithic sites.
At this time pottery was also introduced into Britain and there is widespread evidence for domesticated products like milk products in molecular lipid fingerprints extracted from the fabric of these pots. However, with exception for millet, it has not yet been possible to detect molecular traces of accompanying cereals in these lipid signatures, although these went on to become a major staple that dominates the global subsistence economy today.
Previously published analysis of Roman pottery from Vindolanda [Hadrian’s Wall] demonstrated that specific lipid markers for cereals can survive absorbed in archaeological pottery preserved in waterlogged conditions and be detectable through a high-sensitivity approach but, importantly this was ‘only’ 2,000 years old and from contexts where cereals were well-known to have been present. The new findings reported now show that cereal biomarkers can be preserved for thousands of years longer under favourable conditions.
Another fascinating element of this research was the fact that many of the pots analysed were intact and decorated which could suggest they may have had some sort of ceremonial purpose. Since the actual function of the crannogs themselves is also not fully understood yet (with some being far too small for permanent occupation) the research provides new insights into possible ways these constructions were used.
During analysis, cereal biomarkers were widely detected (one third of pots), providing the earliest biomolecular evidence for cereals in absorbed pottery residues in this region.
The findings indicate that wheat was being cooked in pots, despite the fact that the limited evidence from charred plant parts in this region of Atlantic Scotland points mainly to barley. This could be because wheat is under-represented in charred plant remains as it can be prepared differently (e.g., boiled as part of stews), so not as regularly charred or because of more unusual cooking practices.
Cereal markers were strongly associated with lipid residues for dairy products in pots, suggesting they may have been cooked together as a milk-based gruel.
Dr Hammann said: “It’s very exciting to see that cereal biomarkers in pots can actually survive under favourable conditions in samples from the time when cereals (and pottery) were introduced in Britain. Our lipid-based molecular method can complement archaeobotanical methods to investigate the introduction and spread of cereal agriculture.”
Dr Cramp added: “This research gives us a window into the culinary traditions of early farmers living at the northwestern edge of Europe, whose lifeways are little understood. It gives us the first glimpse of the sorts of practices that were associated with these enigmatic islet locations.”
Crannog sites in the Outer Hebrides are currently the focus of the four-year Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded ‘Islands of Stone’ project, directed by two of the papers’ authors (Duncan Garrow from the University of Reading and Fraser Sturt from the University of Southampton) along with Angela Gannon, Historic Environment Scotland.
Professor Garrow said: “This research, undertaken by our colleagues at the University of Bristol, has hugely improved our knowledge of these sites in many exciting ways. We very much look forward to developing this collaborative research going forwards.”
The next stage of the research at the University of Bristol is an exploration of the relationship between these islets and other Neolithic occupation sites in the Hebridean region and beyond as well as more extensive comparative study of the use of different vessel forms through surviving lipid residues. These questions form part of an on-going Arts and Humanities Research Council/South-West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership-funded PhD studentship.
* Dr Hammann is now based at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Erlangen, Germany.
CAPTION
Photo reconstruction of one of the pots from Loch Langabhat
CREDIT
Mike Copper
One of the first pots to be discovered, an Unstan Bowl from Loch Arnish (photo: Chris Murray). Previously published in: Garrow, D., & Sturt, F. (2019). Neolithic crannogs: Rethinking settlement, monumentality and deposition in the Outer Hebrides and beyond. Antiquity, 93(369), 664-684. doi:10.15184/aqy.2019.41
CREDIT
Chris Murray
JOURNAL
Nature Communications
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Observational study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Neolithic culinary traditions revealed by cereal, milk and meat lipids in pottery from Scottish crannogs
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
6-Sep-2022
DNV: Significant Costs, Supply Challenges to Achieve Decarbonization
While it is clear that the shipping industry is taking its first tentative steps toward decarbonization, DNV in the latest edition of its Maritime Forecast highlights significant hurdles and costs that lay ahead. The classification society points to the race to develop both the solutions aboard ships as well as more critically the need to develop the shoreside infrastructure and production to make sufficient quantities of fuel available to meet the industry’s needs.
DNV cites the changes in the orderbook and steps taken by the shipping companies as evidence that the fuel transition has already started. They calculate that only 5.5 percent of the global fleet in service today can operate on alternative fuels. However, they point out that a third of the vessels on order (based on gross tonnage) will be able to use alternative fuel sources. Currently, they point out that liquified natural gas (LNG) is the runaway leader with over 900 ships in service and another third of current orders or more than 500 ships due in the near term.
However, they predict that fossil fuels including fossil-based LNG will be in rapid decline by mid-century or phased out completely. They highlight the efforts to develop many options ranging from ammonia to methanol and methane as well as fuels produced from sustainable biomass such as bio-LNG, bio-MGO, and bio-methanol. They also point to a strong growth in electronification saying it could easily double in the future while also believing that lower sulfur fuels with carbon capture and storage will remain a part of the industry for years to come.
“The search for the best alternative carbon-neutral fuel options and technologies is underway as the entire world seeks to decarbonize,” said DNV Maritime CEO Knut Ørbeck-Nilssen. “Two thousand ships are expected to be ordered annually to 2030 but there is still no silver-bullet fuel solution available."
While there remain large uncertainties about the future price and availability of alternative fuels and which ones will emerge as the primary sources for the industry, DNV highlights that significant investments are required to achieve the accelerated adoption that is required for the industry to meet its goals. DNV forecasts that the investments for onboard technology will range from $8 to $28 billion per year (depending on which fuel type has the largest uptake) between 2022 and 2050. However, that is dwarfed by required investments for production and onshore infrastructure which DNV projects at between $30 and $90 billion per year to 2050. The total investment could reach $2.5 trillion says DNV and, of course, it will impact contribute to higher shipping costs.
To meet the challenges that lay ahead, Orbeck-Nilssen called for greater cooperation in the industry and fewer rivalries, and attempts at establishing blame among the different scenarios for future fuels. In the forecast, they focus on the ultimate hurdle of availability discussing the challenges among all the contenders for production, distribution, and bunkering.
“No industry can decarbonize in isolation so global industries need to make the right choices together, and sustainable energy should be directed to where it has the biggest impact on reducing GHG emissions,” said Orbeck-Nilssen. “The key challenge is the availability of fuels. The shipping industry cannot resolve this issue alone.”
The next few years will be critical in the industry transition. While the greatest interest continues to be ammonia and hydrogen, DNV forecasts it could be up to eight years until the onboard technologies will be available for the shipping industry. They also point to significant infrastructure and bunkering technology investments required because of the unique challenges in handling these fuels.
While much is already happening, DNV expects that the start of the IMO’s carbon intensity regulations (CII and EEXI) in 2023 will further accelerate the changes. As these rules become operational, DNV expects a significant impact on ship design and operations.
Nearly All the Oil has Been Recovered from OS 35 off Gibraltar
Oil leaks have been reduced as most oil is now recovered from the wreck (Gibraltar government)
Salvage teams working around the clock on the wrecked bulker beached off Gibraltar passed a key milestone reporting that they have recovered nearly all of the oil aboard the vessel. The recovery efforts are continuing to focus on various parts of the ship while clean-up efforts also made progress in reducing the flow of oil onto Gibraltar’s beaches. As a result, the government is looking to step down starting on Tuesday, September 6 from the “major incident” to permit more activities in the port.
“With the exception of Tank 2, the salvors are confident that all concentrations of pumpable oil have been extracted, including those in the main engine room tanks. Some product remains in Tank 2, which the salvors plan to attempt to extract,” the Government said in its end-of-day update on Monday, September 5.
They, however, warned while less of a threat to the environment that there are still small tanks around the ship with small quantities that need to be emptied. There have also been some discrepancies between the amounts of fuel reported by the vessel’s crew and what was removed by the salvage teams. A final measure is still being taken on the amount of diesel and low sulfur fuel oil removed from the tanks plus efforts have also begun looking for the presence of any oil concentrations in void spaces and non-tank spaces.
Yet, while the teams are confident that most of the recoverable material has now been removed, government officials continue to warn that “continued discharge of pollutants is expected until the time that the salvage operations are complete.”
The containment and recovery efforts were complicated overnight by stronger winds. The teams reported that the second containment boom around the vessel had been displaced but with the aid of Salvamento Maritimo they were restoring the boom and adding weights to hold it in place. A boom near a beach also needed to be repositioned while five vessels also remain in the area with sorbent booms deployed. There are also two pairs of vessels towing a “J” formation boom to capture oil that leaks past the booms around the vessel.
Teams are also working along the shoreline to clean oil that has reached the beaches (Gibraltar government)
Overall, the situation at the OS 35 remains stable after concerns over the weekend when water began seeping into the engine room of the bulker. Salvage crews were forced to suspend the use of the vessel’s equipment which slowed the efforts but divers have reportedly been successful in slowing or stopping the water entry into the ship. The teams had warned that a “degree of deterioration in the structure around the engine room” could be expected due to the water.
In an effort to improve the buoyancy of the OS 35 and reduce pressure on the hull teams over the weekend also focused on pumping water from the number 5 cargo hold. The pumping from the hold was expected to improve the buoyancy of the aft section of the vessel which has remained afloat and possibly mitigate the impact of the leak on the structural integrity of the vessel.
The next phase of the efforts to remove contaminants aboard the vessel is also ongoing to remove other elements such as chemicals, food, loose items, and furniture that could also become pollutants in the case of bad weather at the site. They will also begin removing the cargo and the contents of the vessel.
Teams are rushing to complete as much of the clean-up this week with the forecast that the calm weather patterns that have prevailed are likely to shift by week’s end. So far, they have had favorable conditions with mostly light winds and calm seas aiding in the clean-up since OS 35 was beached on August 30.
ICYMI
UN High Seas Treaty Talks End Without Agreement Again
While many had hoped this would be the session to do it, after two weeks of talks at the UN headquarters in New York, member states have failed to conclude a legally binding agreement to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity on the high seas.
Now, governments will have to keep bridging their differences until a new meeting, for which a date has not yet been set.
Progress was achieved in several key aspects of the draft agreement, especially during the last two days of the negotiations. Governments largely said they ran out of time, while environmental organisations described the meeting as a missed opportunity.
Conference president Rena Lee said: “We are closer to the finish line than we have ever been before. But we need more time to continue working. I urge everyone to redouble our efforts.”
The high seas – the area more than 200 miles (320 kilometres) from any shore and therefore beyond national jurisdiction – represent about two-thirds of the global ocean. However, only 1% of these waters are currently protected. These areas contain diverse ecosystems and are teeming with life.
Last year, a group of more than 100 countries known as the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) committed to protecting 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. But without an international agreement, this pledge has no legal basis on the high seas. The treaty would place more parts of the world’s oceans into the network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).
“The negotiations were able to resolve a number of important issues. In some ways, we made more progress in those two weeks than in the last five years,” said Lisa Speer, head of the ocean program at the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC). “Delegates came prepared to truly negotiate, rather than reiterating their positions.”
Areas of progress
Expectations to finalise the agreement had been high after world leaders at the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon in July pledged to take action to save the world’s oceans. States have been trying to negotiate a treaty for more than a decade.
Negotiations in New York addressed all four components of the proposed agreement: area-based management tools like MPAs; marine genetic resources; environmental impact assessments; and capacity-building and transfer of technology from developed to developing nations.
Luisina Vueso, an ocean campaigner at Greenpeace, said there was a “lack of urgency” from governments, who spent most of the two weeks not actually negotiating. This changed close to the end when delegations showed more flexibility and willingness to reach compromises, Vueso explained.
Countries made progress on area-based management tools and on the institutional arrangements of a future treaty, something that will be critical to its effectiveness. This includes the mandate and rules for a Conference of the Parties (COP), like the one held annually on climate, and coordination with existing bodies regulating the high seas.
However, the sharing of possible profits from the extraction of resources in the high seas remained a very sensitive issue. Delegates still need to reach an agreement on how to do this equitably, on the types of benefits to be shared (monetary and non-monetary) and on whether policies will be voluntary or mandatory.
A revised draft text was published during the first weekend of the summit, with several brackets remaining in the areas where no agreement had been reached. New versions of the text were then circulated among delegates during the second week but not released to the public by the UN.
“There was a lot of good movement and a feeling that we can finalise the treaty; it was a matter of countries running out of time,” Elizabeth Karan, who leads Pew’s high seas program, said. “The sticking point is still around benefit sharing of marine genetic resources. We knew it was going to be the difficult issue, and it was.”
Next steps
Speaking at the closing plenary, representatives from most countries agreed significant progress had been made, highlighting the flexibility of all parties to reach compromises. The mindset of delegates was different this time, enabling more constructive discussions, they said.
Not everybody agreed. Representatives from small island states in the Pacific and the Caribbean were very disappointed. They asked for their special circumstances to be reflected in the text and asked for a balanced agreement that supports them.
“Pacific citizens came with good faith and willingness to negotiate. We live far and it’s not cheap to travel. The money spent to bring a delegation wasn’t spent on roads or medicine. We made hard compromises on issues of importance to us,” a delegate from Samoa said, holding back her tears, and followed by applause from the entire plenary session.
Jessica Battle, an ocean policy expert at WWF, said Norway and Iceland shifted their position furthest at the meeting, now being much more open to a treaty. On the other hand, Russia, and to a lesser extent China, still had doubts over some aspects, including comments on several articles of the text, she added.
Speaking at the plenary, a delegate from China said discussions were “deep and fruitful” and that while an agreement wasn’t reached in all areas, delegations now “have a better understanding of each other’s positions.” The agreement is a package deal and no aspect of it should be ignored, he added.
The UN General Assembly resolution which convened the negotiations mandated that they should be concluded by the end of 2022. This was the final scheduled session and the process is now suspended. It’s not yet clear when countries will come back together to continue negotiations.
There’s a packed calendar of UN meetings on other issues between now and January, including the climate COP27 in November, biodiversity COP15 in December and General Assembly in September. Observers said the next high seas meeting could be one week long instead of two thanks to the progress made at this session.
Fermín Koop is an Argentine journalist, specialising in the environment with experience across diverse publications such as the Buenos Aires Herald, Clarín, Ámbito Financiero, Buena Salud and Notio Noticias.
This article appears courtesy of China Dialogue Ocean and may be found in its original form here.
