Block 'busted': India's Bollywood faces horror show at box office

AFP - Yesterday 

India's Bollywood film industry, long part of the cultural fabric of the movie-mad country of 1.4 billion people, is facing its biggest-ever crisis as streaming services and non-Hindi language rivals steal its sparkle.


© Punit PARANJPE

The South Asian giant churns out on average around 1,600 films each year, more than any other country, traditionally headlined by glitzy Bollywood, with fans worshipping movie stars like gods and crowds thronging premieres.

But now cinemas have fallen quiet, even in Bollywood's nerve centre of Mumbai, with box-office receipts plunging since Covid curbs were lifted.

"This is the worst crisis ever faced," veteran Mumbai theatre owner Manoj Desai told AFP. Some screenings were cancelled as the "public was not there".

The usually bankable megastar Akshay Kumar had three back-to-back films tank. Fellow A-lister Aamir Khan, the face of some of India's most successful films, failed to entice audiences with the "Forrest Gump" remake "Laal Singh Chaddha".



Cinemas have fallen quiet, even in Bollywood's nerve centre of Mumbai© Punit PARANJPE

Of the more than 50 Bollywood films released in the past year -- fewer than normal because of the pandemic -- just one-fifth have met or surpassed revenue targets, said media analyst Karan Taurani of Elara Capital. Pre-pandemic it was 50 percent.



Bollywood, like other movie industries, has been hurt by streaming's rise© Punit PARANJPE

In contrast, several Telugu-language aka Tollywood movies -- a south Indian competitor to Hindi-language Bollywood -- have soared to the top.

Embarrassingly, around half the box-office takings for Hindi-language films from January 2021 to August this year were dubbed southern offerings, said State Bank of India's chief economic adviser Soumya Kanti Ghosh in a recent report.

"Bollywood, after decades of storytelling... seems to be at an inflection point unlike any other disruption it has faced before," Ghosh wrote.

- 'Out-of-touch' -

Bollywood, like other movie industries, has been hurt by streaming's rise, which started before the pandemic but took off when millions of Indians were forced indoors.

Around half of India's population has access to the internet and streaming services, including international players such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ Hotstar have 96 million subscriptions, according to a government estimate.

Some films released during the Covid shutdown went straight to these platforms, while others hit small screens just weeks after debuting in theatres.

With streaming monthly subscriptions lower or comparable to the cost of one ticket -- 100-200 rupees ($1.20-$2.50) at single-screen cinemas and higher at multiplexes -- price-sensitive audiences were avoiding theatres, analysts said.

Times have been so hard that INOX and PVR, two of India's biggest multiplex operators, announced their merger in March to "create scale".

Subscribers were meanwhile exposed to local and global streaming content, including southern Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada-language films that already had legions of devoted local fans.

"Regional cinema was not travelling beyond its borders. But now suddenly everyone was watching Malayalam cinema or Maharashtrian cinema and then you realise that... there are filmmakers who are telling more interesting stories," film critic Raja Sen said.

"Then they see a Hindi blockbuster coming out with a star which is just like a rethread of a story they've heard a million times, then they're not so impressed anymore."

Critics also accused Bollywood of making niche or elitist films that do not resonate in a country where 70 percent of the population lives outside cities.

Aamir Khan admitted during media interviews for "Laal Singh Chaddha" that Hindi filmmakers' "choice of what is relevant to them is perhaps not so relevant to a larger audience".

At the same time, Tollywood mega-smash hits "Pushpa: The Rise" and "RRR" highlighted the heroics of common people while treating audiences to larger-than-life visual spectacles with catchy song-and-dance routines.

Such formulas have long been a Bollywood mainstay but film critics say the southern challengers were doing it bigger and better.

"To get people to cinemas we need to create an experience for storytelling that cannot be replicated at home," multi-theatre operator and trade analyst Akshaye Rathi said.

"What we need to do is respect their time, money and effort. And whenever we do that, for a particular movie, they come out in big numbers."

- Wake-up call -

Ensuring box-office success by having a star as your protagonist was now no longer guaranteed, said Taurani, who described Bollywood's recent struggles as "alarming".

"I think audiences obviously want the star, but the audience wants the star to feature in a film which has got compelling content," he added.

Kumar -- nicknamed a "one-man industry" for being so prolific -- said he was going back to the drawing board.

"If my films are not working, it is our fault, it is my fault. I have to make the changes, I have to understand what the audience wants," the Indian Express reported Kumar as saying in August.

- Boycott -

Adding to Bollywood's woes have been repeated social media campaigns against certain films by Hindu right-wingers, including the "Forrest Gump" remake.

Most recently, there were calls for new release "Brahmastra" to be boycotted over star Ranbir Kapoor's beef-eating comments some years ago. Cows are considered sacred by Hindus.

But while creating unwelcome noise, analysts say there appeared to be no material impact on box-office returns. "Brahmastra" has in fact done well.

The real issue, movie-goers told AFP outside one cinema in Mumbai, was that many Bollywood films were simply not good enough.

"The story should be good (and) the content should be good, so that people want to watch," said student Preeti Sawant, 22.

"So that's why people are not coming to watch movies."

grk/stu/qan

Hong Kong leader says he 'laughs off' US sanctions

Mon, October 10, 2022


Hong Kong's leader laughed off US sanctions against him Tuesday as he defended his government's decision not to act against a superyacht reportedly owned by a Kremlin ally.

The Nord -- a $500 million luxury vessel linked to Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov -- arrived in the Chinese territory's waters last week.

Mordashov is among the oligarchs close to Russian President Vladimir Putin who have been targeted by Western sanctions following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

On Saturday the United States warned Hong Kong could damage its business hub reputation after the city said it would not enforce sanctions on the superyacht.

Hong Kong chief executive John Lee himself is one of multiple Chinese officials sanctioned by the United States in 2020 for their roles in cracking down on political freedoms in the city.

Banks and other companies risk losing access to the US-dominated global markets if they do business with sanctioned officials, with Lee's predecessor revealing she had to take most of her salary in cash as a result.

When asked about the impact of US sanctions against him on Tuesday, Lee told reporters: "It is a very barbaric act and I am not going to comment on the effect of such barbaric act."

"We will just laugh off the so-called sanctions."

Some sanctioned oligarchs have had their luxury yachts seized in places such as Spain and Fiji, but Hong Kong said Friday that while it implements UN sanctions, it cannot enforce those imposed "unilaterally" by countries or blocs.

Lee repeated that argument on Tuesday, describing US and European sanctions as having "no legal basis".

"We will comply with any UN resolution on sanctions because Hong Kong has the legal basis to enforce it," he said.

But he added: "We cannot and will not do anything that has no legal basis".

New York fetes French Nobel literature winner Ernaux

AFP -

French author and feminist figure Annie Ernaux received a standing ovation at a New York bookstore on Monday as the recent Nobel literature prize winner attended a cultural event to speak about her career and writing.


Nobel laureaute Annie Ernaux is the pioneer of France's 'autofiction' genre, which gives narrative form to real-life experience© Andrea RENAULT

Ernaux, whose works have been translated and studied in the United States for the past 30 years, had been honored last week by the Nobel committee "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory."

At the Albertine bookstore in New York, the writer spoke for an hour about the literary process in conversation with American novelist Kate Zambreno.

At least 300 people, the majority of them women, gave her a standing ovation at the event in the Villa Albertine, which houses the cultural services of the French embassy in the United States.

"I have always been nurtured by literature since childhood. As far back as I look and as I can remember books are my life," Ernaux, 82, said in remarks translated by an interpreter.

Personal experiences of class and gender are the source for all Ernaux's work and she is the pioneer of France's "autofiction" genre, which gives narrative form to real-life experience.

Her more than 20 books, many of which have been school texts in France for decades, offer one of the most subtle, insightful windows into the social life of modern France, casting a critical eye on social structures and her own complicated emotions.

During an exchange with the audience, Ernaux was warmly thanked by a young woman for getting her into feminism, in particular due to reading "The Happening," her autobiographical novel about having an illegal abortion in the 1960s.

"I must say that what I just heard was something truly marvelous and gives me energy because I don't feel responsible for the effect that my books have on the young generation," the writer replied.

Ernaux, who is visiting New York this week, also presented with her son David Ernaux-Briot their family documentary "The Super 8 years" at the 60th New York Film Festival Monday evening.

On Wednesday, she will be received at Barnard College at Columbia University in New York, a liberal arts college for women.

nr/elm/mtp/mca

New Zealand outlines plans to tax livestock burps, farts

AFP - 

New Zealand on Tuesday unveiled plans to tax the greenhouse gas emissions from farm animals, in a controversial proposal designed to tackle climate change.


© Marty MELVILLE

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the levy would be the first of its kind in the world.

Gases naturally emitted by New Zealand's 6.2 million cows are among the country's biggest environmental problems.

The scheme would see farmers pay for gas emissions from their animals, such as methane gas in the farts and burps from cows, and nitrous oxide in the urine of livestock.

Ardern told farmers they should be able to recoup the cost by charging more for climate-friendly products.

She said the "pragmatic proposal" would reduce agricultural emissions while making produce more sustainable by enhancing New Zealand's "export brand".

The government hopes to sign off the proposal by next year and the tax could be introduced in just three years' time.

But with New Zealand going to the polls in the next 15 months, the proposal could cost Ardern rural votes as farmers quickly condemned the plan.

Andrew Hoggard, president of the Federated Farmers lobby group, said the scheme would "rip the guts out of small-town New Zealand".

He argued the tax could push farmers into growing trees on fields currently used to rear livestock.

Beef + Lamb New Zealand, representing the country's sheep and cattle farmers, said the plan failed to take into account rural measures already in place to counter greenhouse gases.

"New Zealand farmers have more than 1.4 million hectares of native forest on their land which is absorbing carbon," said chairman Andrew Morrison.

"It's only fair this is appropriately recognised in any framework from day one."

ryj/arb/axn

Haitians protest government’s call for foreign police forces


Issued on: 11/10/2022 - 

Police fire tear gas during a protest in Port-au-Prince, Haiti October 10, 2022. © Ralph Tedy Erol

Thousands of Haitians demonstrated Monday in Port-au-Prince to protest against the government and its call for foreign assistance to deal with endemic insecurity, a humanitarian crisis and a burgeoning cholera epidemic.

A day after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for immediate deployment of a special international armed force in Haiti to help the crisis-hit Caribbean state, the demonstration in the capital was marred by violence, with police using tear gas to disperse looters, an AFP correspondent said.

"We certainly need help to develop our country, but we don't need boots" on the ground, one protester told AFP, charging that the international community was "interfering in the internal affairs of Haiti" and that the government had "no legitimacy to ask for military assistance."

Several people were shot and one person was reported to have been killed during the rallies. Protesters blamed the police for the fatality.

"It is a crime perpetrated by the police. This young girl posed no threat. She was killed expressing her desire to live in dignity," said another protester, who declined to give his name.

Haiti has been the scene for several weeks of violent demonstrations and looting, after the announcement by the head of government of an increase in fuel prices.

Demonstrators calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who appealed for international support, also took to the streets in other cities across the country.

The Haitian government on Friday formalized its request for international assistance to staunch spiraling insecurity.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, is facing an acute political, economic, security and health crisis, with a cholera epidemic now looming – circumstances that have paralyzed the country and sparked a breakdown of law and order.

Since mid-September, the country's largest fuel import terminal, in Varreux, has been controlled by armed gangs.

And last week health experts warned of a resurgence of cholera, three years after an epidemic that killed 10,000 people.

The health ministry said Monday 32 confirmed cases of the disease and 16 deaths have already been recorded, with another 224 suspected cases during the period from October 1 to 9.

The ministry also said cases have been detected in the Port-au-Prince's prison, the largest in the country, where the conditions of detention are dire.

(AFP)

Climate change and deforestation may drive tree-dwelling primates to the ground, large-scale study shows

by San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

Propithecus Verreauxi. Credit: San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

A large-scale study of 47 species of monkeys and lemurs has found that climate change and deforestation are driving these tree-dwelling animals to the ground, where they are at higher risk due to lack of preferred food and shelter, and may experience more negative interaction with humans and domestic animals.

The study, slated to publish Oct. 10 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), was led by Timothy Eppley, Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA), and examined more than 150,000 hours of observation data on 15 lemur species and 32 monkey species at 68 sites in the Americas and Madagascar. This study was a remarkable worldwide collaboration, including 118 co-authors from 124 unique institutions.

"This study began with a discussion among colleagues about how we'd noticed certain populations of arboreal primates spending more time on the ground," said Dr. Eppley, "yet at sites with relatively less disturbance, members of the same species may never descend to the ground."

The authors estimated the influence of ecological drivers, including potential human-induced pressures and/or species-specific traits, on the level of terrestriality (time spent on the ground) in arboreal primates. The study found that primates that consume less fruit and live in large social groups were more likely to descend to the ground. The authors suggest that these traits act as a potential "pre-adaptation" to terrestriality. Furthermore, primates living in hotter environments, and with less canopy cover, were more likely to adapt to these changes by shifting toward more extensive ground use.

Many of these species are already burdened with living in warmer, fragmented and heavily disturbed environments that often have fewer available dietary resources. As climate change worsens and arboreal habitats diminish, the study suggests primates consuming a more generalized diet and living in larger groups may more easily adapt to a terrestrial lifestyle.

"It's possible that spending more time on the ground may cushion some primates from the effects of forest degradation and climate change; however, for the less-adaptable species, fast and effective conservation strategies will be necessary to ensure their survival," Eppley said.

The study also found that primate populations closer to human infrastructures are less likely to descend to the ground. Luca Santini, Ph.D., from Sapienza University of Rome, one of the two senior authors of the study, said, "This finding may suggest that human presence, which is often a threat to primates, may interfere with the natural adaptability of the species to global change."

The transition from an arboreal to terrestrial lifestyle has occurred previously in primate evolution, but today's rapid changes are a serious threat.

"Though similar ecological conditions and species traits may have influenced previous evolutionary shifts of arboreal primates, including hominins, to ground living, it is clear that the current pace of deforestation and climate change puts most primate species in peril," said Giuseppe Donati, Ph. D., of Oxford Brookes University, one of the senior authors of the study.

Nadine Lamberski, SDZWA Chief Conservation and Wildlife Health Officer, who was not involved in the study, remarked on the impressive scale of this collaborative scientific initiative.

"This is an extraordinary effort to convene 118 authors and review data of this magnitude. It is also a tremendous example of the insights that can be gleaned and strides that can be made when conservation is examined on a global scale," Lamberski said.Primates' ancestors may have left trees to survive asteroid

---

More information: Eppley, Timothy M., Factors influencing terrestriality in primates of the Americas and Madagascar, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2121105119. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2121105119

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Provided by San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

Voters agree on need for more protections from chemicals

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN FRANCISCO

American voters overwhelmingly say they want government and industry to ensure the products they buy are free of harmful chemicals, and they are willing to pay more for it, according to a national online survey commissioned by the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

“At a time when most issues are politically polarized, the issue of keeping people safe from harmful chemicals finds widespread agreement among Democrats, Republicans and Independent voters,” said Celinda Lake, President of Lake Research Partners, which conducted the poll. 

The survey of 1,200 registered voters found broad agreement that the government require products to be proven safe before they are put on the market. More than 90% of those surveyed support this requirement and two-thirds strongly agree with these ideas.

The poll also found:

• 92% of voters agree and 63% of voters strongly agree that the government should require products to be proven safe before companies are allowed to put them on the  market. 
• 93% of voters agree and 62% strongly agree that companies should do a better job of removing harmful chemicals from consumer products. 
• 88% agree that companies should do a better job of removing plastic and plastic packaging from consumer products.
• 76% are concerned about the impact that chemicals and plastics have on climate change.  
• 54% say chemical regulations are not strong enough, while 21% say they are about right and 10% say they are too strong. 
• 89% support (56% strongly support) the goal of the Toxic Substances Control Act to make it easier to limit or ban harmful chemicals and better protect vulnerable populations like pregnant women, children and people who live near polluting factories. 
• 93% agree (57% strongly) that it is important to remove harmful chemicals from where we live, work and go to school even if it increases the costs for some products, and similar numbers agree that it is important for companies to keep harmful chemicals out of everyday products, even if it increases costs for some products.

Voters are concerned about all of the chemicals they were asked about in the survey and expressed the most worry about chemicals ingested through water, food and food packaging. Still, they are unsure of how the chemical regulatory system works. About half (49%) say the chemicals in food and consumer products have been tested for safety, although this is not true.

“People assume that what they buy is safe and that almost always isn’t the case,” said Tracey J. Woodruff, PhD, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences, who directs PRHE and the EaRTH Center at UCSF. “The good news is this survey reveals overwhelming support for the government to do a better job of protecting people from harmful chemicals.”  

The poll was conducted May 25 to June 5, 2022. 

Survey methodology: Lake Research Partners designed and administered this online dial survey that was conducted May 25 to June 5, 2022. The survey reached a total of 1,200 registered voters nationwide including 800 base voters and oversamples of 100 Black registered voters, 100 Latinx registered voters, 100 Asian American Pacific Islander registered voters, and 100 Gen-Z registered voters. Oversamples were designed to ensure the results were representative of the U.S. voting population.

About UCSF: The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF's primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. UCSF School of Medicine also has a regional campus in Fresno. Learn more at https://ucsf.edu, or see our Fact Sheet.

###

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Fixed-duration strikes can revitalize labor

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, N.Y. – “Fixed-duration” strikes – such as the three-day walkout by 15,000 nurses in mid-September – protect worker interests and impose financial and reputational costs on employers, suggesting that confrontational tactics can help unions counteract increasing employer power, according to new Cornell University ILR School research.

“Retooling Militancy: Labour Revitalization and Fixed-Duration Strikes,” published Sept. 8 in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, authored by doctoral student Johnnie Kallas, tracks the rise of militant leadership at the California Nurses Association in the mid-1990s and its strategic adaptation of the strike.

Kallas examined 10 fixed-duration strikes by the California nurses between 2011 and 2015. Most of the strikes lasted one day. Three-dozen interviews and other research led Kallas, who was an organizer with the union from 2016 to 2017, to determine that militant leadership and staff resulted in the adoption of the fixed-duration strike.

The fixed-duration strikes by thousands of nurses built a more militant membership and organization as it developed a social justice vision while resisting nearly 100 concessions proposed at the bargaining table and laying the foundation for larger wage gains in subsequent contracts, he said.

The fixed-duration strike “is a crucial component of labour revitalization and the union’s strategy to resist both individual hospital employers and the broader private healthcare system in the United States,” he wrote.

U.S. unions and labor organizations representing teachers, fast food workers and others are retooling the strike to confront increasing employer power and to revitalize the labor movement, Kallas said. He is director of the ILR Labor Action Tracker, which recorded 545 labor actions in 803 U.S. locations between Jan. 1 and Sept. 29. Although there has been a dramatic uptick in work stoppages in the past four years, the number of U.S. strikes has fallen sharply since the 1980s.

Fixed-duration strikes, Kallas wrote, create economic and reputational costs for employers. For instance, the hospitals impacted by the nurses’ strikes couldn’t shut down; they were forced to hire temporary nurses with expensive fees. The unionized nurses did not abandon patients; they returned to work after the strike.

The disadvantages of fixed-duration strikes are that they might not force a settlement, Kallas said, but they can be highly effective tool to “protect the economic interests of nurses and advance their role as patient care advocates, while still imposing financial and reputational costs on employers.”

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

-30-

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JOURNAL

British Journal of Industrial Relations

DOI

10.1111/bjir.12709 

ARTICLE TITLE

Retooling militancy: Labour revitalization and fixed-duration strikes

U$A

Urban trees rooted in redlining and environmental injustice

Neighborhood street trees in Baltimore tell a tale of both historical racial discrimination and modern reparation, according to new UMD-led study.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

A University of Maryland-led team discovered that trees in Baltimore reflect the city’s history of institutionalized racism, but also more recent efforts to counter environmental injustice.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, this research is the latest contribution to the 25-year Baltimore Ecosystem study. The team’s findings were published on October 5, 2022 in the journal Ecology.

In the study, researchers analyzed street trees in 36 Baltimore neighborhoods that were once classified by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), a New Deal program intended to expand homeownership. Infamously, HOLC classified and color-coded neighborhoods by perceived mortgage risk—green was designated as “best,” while red was deemed “hazardous.”

Often, the criteria used to classify neighborhoods was explicitly discriminatory; neighborhoods with high populations of racial and religious minorities as well as immigrants were more likely to be “redlined.” As a result, residents in those areas often experienced lower property values, resource investment by cities and wealth accumulation decades into the future.

“We found that previously redlined neighborhoods had consistently lower street tree diversity and were much less likely to have larger, older trees on a site,” said Karin Burghardt, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of entomology at UMD. “This is important because the differences in tree size and diversity affect the natural ecological services provided by trees—ultimately impacting the quality of life for residents living nearby.”

The team discovered that green, low-risk neighborhoods were nine times more likely to have larger and older trees present than red, high-risk neighborhoods. Additionally, trees found in green neighborhoods were significantly more diverse containing more types of trees than in red neighborhoods. The researchers found that present-day street trees in Baltimore contained signatures of the 1937 HOLC loan risk classifications that had been based on racially discriminatory criteria.

“Older, larger trees have more canopy cover than smaller trees, which can impact variables like local heat islands, air quality, soil health and even stormwater management. Similarly, higher tree diversity allows for more resiliency against invasive pest or disease outbreaks,” Burghardt explained. “These differences in tree communities and size may help explain why red-lined spaces have become associated with poorer health outcomes and shorter life expectancies for people living in them.”

On the other hand, the researchers also noted a greater dominance of smaller, younger trees in formerly redlined neighborhoods—possible evidence of Baltimore’s recent efforts to address the disparity between neighborhoods. 

According to Burghardt, Baltimore’s new sustainability goals and efforts by city foresters and local tree-planting organizations have likely created an ongoing push to increase tree canopy cover and biodiversity in previously under-invested areas in the city. With this movement and others like it, she believes that more people from all communities in Baltimore will be able to enjoy the natural benefits that trees provide and do their part in the fight against climate change.

But the researchers did inject a note of caution; they discovered that these new communities of young trees planted in previously redlined neighborhoods were made up of fewer species than those in green areas and are heavily planted with a single species, red maple, across all previously redlined neighborhoods. While red maple is an adaptable, native tree species, the lessons of the massive loss of ash and elm trees from cities due to imported diseases and pests suggest that relying on one or a few species could decrease the resilience of these new urban forests in the future.

Ultimately, the research team hopes that its study will help Baltimore residents and policymakers gauge current efforts at promoting environmental justice and biodiversity. Data from HOLC color-coded maps and records of existing trees suggest that more can be done to overcome Baltimore’s socioecological challenges, including additional maintenance of young trees after planting and more focus on social investment in redlined communities.

“We can still see the negative effects of redlining in today’s street tree communities,” Burghardt said. “But our research indicates that the people of Baltimore are making real strides toward correcting environmental injustice.”

---

JOURNAL

Ecology

DOI

10.1002/ecy.3881 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Current street tree communities reflect race-based housing policy and modern attempts to remedy environmental injustice

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Oct-2022

Making the invisible water crisis visible

Sustainable Development Goal for wastewater treatment not enough

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT FACULTEIT GEOWETENSCHAPPEN

 

IMAGE: WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT, PICTURE BY IZZET CAKALLI view more 

CREDIT: IZZET CAKALLI

While achieving the United Nations (UN) ambitious Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for wastewater treatment would cause substantial improvements in global water quality, severe water quality issues would contain to persist in some world regions. So conclude researchers at Utrecht University. They developed a new water quality model to further elucidate the current and future pollution status of rivers and streams globally. The paper was published on 6th October in Nature Communications Earth & Environment.

Water quality issues are branded an “invisible crisis” by the World Bank, being under-monitored, difficult to detect and often imperceptible to the human eye. Nevertheless, the quality of global water resources is increasingly coming under pressure due to population growth, economic development and climate change. Yet, clean water is vital for our societal needs – such as public health, energy generation and crop production – and for protecting ecosystem health. To illustrate, an estimated 829,000 deaths worldwide are attributed each year to diarrhoea caused by the use of contaminated water for drinking or sanitation purposes.

In this study, the authors developed a new high-resolution global water quality model which can “help to fill-in-the-gaps in water quality knowledge, particularly in world regions where we lack observations”, says lead author Edward Jones. In addition to identifying hotspots of water quality issues, the model can help with attributing the source of pollution to particular sectors. “For instance, large-scale irrigation systems for agriculture drive salinity issues in Northern India, while industrial processes are more responsible in eastern China. Conversely, the domestic and livestock sectors drive organic and pathogen pollution worldwide”, Jones remarks.

The authors extended their focus beyond just past and current water quality. They applied their model to investigate how achieving the SDG target to halve the proportion of untreated wastewater entering the environment in 2030 would benefit global river water quality. “Our simulations show that, for a large part of the year, water quality in several regions would still exceed critical thresholds for human uses and ecosystem health. This is especially the case for developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia”, Jones explains. So, while the SDG target improves water quality, it is not always enough.

Difficult puzzle

Finding an optimum way to manage these problems is a difficult puzzle, however. “Even achieving the current SDG target will pose serious economic challenges, as expansion of wastewater treatment can be an expensive process”, Jones warns. “Yet the cost disadvantages of inadequate water quality for sectoral uses must also be considered. Ultimately, however, we also need to reduce our pollutant emissions and develop new approaches towards wastewater management”. Jones concludes “As such, with this paper we hope to underline the water quality problems we’re facing and firmly place these issues back on the political agenda."

Publication

Edward R. Jones, Marc F.P Bierkens, Niko Wanders, Edwin H. Sutanudjaja, Ludovicus P.H van Beek, Michelle T.H. van Vliet (2022), Current wastewater treatment targets are insufficient to protect surface water quality, Nature Communications Earth & Environment, https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00554-y (available on 6 October)

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s43247-022-00554-y 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Current wastewater treatment targets are insufficient to protect surface water quality

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Oct-2022