A tale of two farmers as industry faces crossroads


Kevin Keane - BBC Scotland's environment correspondent
Thu, June 22, 2023 

Nikki Yoxall has a small livestock herd at Glass in Aberdeenshire

Nikki Yoxall isn't your conventional farmer.

She describes herself as an agro-ecological grazier. She doesn't own a tractor, has no barns or sheds, and she grows no crops.

Instead, her herd of beef cattle is kept continually on the move across a range of pastures at Glass in Aberdeenshire.

And she receives no direct government subsidies for food production.

Nikki wants to see the system changed so that the focus is on helping the environment.

But that puts her in opposition with the views of many other farmers. They have been urging the Scottish government to retain the principle of direct financial support, topped up with funding for environmental measures.

The livestock are grazing in much longer grass than you would expect

Nikki makes a profit because her farming method is low input, which means that the cost of keeping the livestock is significantly lower than on conventional farms.


The animals are outside all year round and are moved daily, either to another field or to a different section of the same field.

This allows time for the ground to recover and become a haven for wildlife before the animals return to that patch, often months later.

Ground nesting birds like skylarks and meadow pipits have been spotted nesting in the same fields because there's enough time for them to raise their broods.

Although her herd contains only 30 animals at present, Nikki insists the grazing system she practices is replicable at scale with some already doing it with up to 180 animals.

The average herd size in Scotland is around 200 animals and some would regard Nikki's approach as "hobby farming", although she would take exception to that description.

Scottish agriculture is at an important crossroads as a result of Brexit.

The EU Common Agricultural Policy is being replaced with a subsidy system which will be designed and administered in Scotland.

Abundant wildflowers in the ungrazed area contrast with the recently grazed patch

Some environmentalists are concerned that retaining too much of the status quo will not provide the type of transformational change that is needed.

Nikki wants to tip the balance in favour of environmental improvements, with three quarters of payments going towards measures which improve nature and tackle climate change.

The rest would be direct payments to farmers for food production.

She said: "I'm not sure that we're heading in a transformative direction and there are various challenges around the mechanics of policy which make that really difficult.

"What we need to do is put very strict conditions on that funding to make sure that nature and climate are prioritised."

But many farmers recoil at the idea of attaching more conditions to farming.

Gary Christie operates a more traditional farm which relies on subsidies

The last few years have been a rollercoaster for them, with the war in Ukraine pushing up fertiliser and energy prices.

And they warn that if there is too much burden placed on them, their businesses will collapse.

Gary Christie farms just five miles away from Nikki.

He doesn't think his business could have survived without subsidies.

Gary operates a more traditional farm with a much larger herd and heftier Simmental cows from the continent.

They are only pasture-fed from around May to October, by which time there is little grass left. They then have to be housed indoors.

It's a more expensive way to produce the beef, but it means he can put more meat into the market.

Simmental are a continental breed which produce much more meat

Along with the farming union NFU Scotland, Gary is urging ministers to be careful about attaching too many expensive environmental conditions to subsidies.

They say this would make some businesses unprofitable. Instead, they want 80% of the funding to go directly to farmers for supporting food production.

Gary said: "If a beef farm is profitable it'll deliver on food, it'll deliver on climate and it'll deliver in nature.

"If we're in the red, we can't go green."

Gary acknowledges that there is probably more that farmers can do to protect and enhance nature - but says ministers need to be clear on what they expect.

He says the support from government is "vital to keep us afloat" and producing affordable food to feed the nation.

One thing all farmers agree on is the urgent need for clarity over future farming policy, which has been in the making for many years.

Agriculture requires investing in stock which might not deliver a return for three years. Not knowing what support will be available at the point of sale is troubling to many.

Farming leaders hope ministers will use the annual Royal Highland Show at Ingliston to offer some clarity about the way forward.

Newsom takes heat from California environmentalists over prolonged use of gas-powered plants


CRAIG KOHLRUSS/ckohlruss@fresnobee.com


Maggie Angst
Wed, June 21, 2023 

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to prolong the life of controversial power plants to help keep the lights on in California is once again being questioned by environmentalists.

A new report released Wednesday, commissioned by the California Environmental Justice Alliance and Sierra Club, said that during last year’s unprecedented heat wave, California’s natural gas-fired plants failed to generate the expected levels of power while significantly increasing pollution in nearby communities.

“This report really underscores that in planning for the reliable grid of the future, investing in more fossil fuels is a bad investment and a misguided plan not just for environmental justice communities, but also for California ratepayers as a whole and for our climate,” said Teresa Cheng, a senior campaign representative for Sierra Club.

From last August 31 to September 9, triple-digit temperatures baked much of the state, including Sacramento, in one of the most prolonged heat waves in recent California history. It placed unprecedented strain on power supplies, driving energy demand to a record height of 52,000 megawatts.


Although rolling blackouts were narrowly kept at bay as Newsom pleaded with Californians to reduce their energy use, the report says the state’s gas plants worsened the air quality in some communities.

Alex Stack, a spokesperson for Newsom, said Wednesday afternoon that he could not comment on the report because the governor’s office had not yet had time to analyze it. In a statement, Stack touted the governor’s leadership on climate initiatives and said the state’s recent investments in aging fossil fuel infrastructure created “an essential backup resource” for extreme weather events.
Gavin Newsom takes heat for prolonged life of gas plants

The fate of the state’s nearly 200 nearly grid-connected natural gas power plants has been a contentious issue for Newsom and environmentalists as California pushes toward a clean energy future. State law mandates that the electricity grid be 100% renewable by 2045.

Tensions rose in August 2020 when, weeks after Californians endured rolling blackouts for the first time since 2001, the State Water Resources Control Board voted to allow nine high-polluting generating units to operate for up to three more years.

Then last year, Newsom authorized a plan giving the state broad authority to approve new proposals and purchase electricity from a group of plants scheduled to be retired in the next few years. These included the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant and a group of high-polluting natural gas-fired plants on the Southern California coast.

Newsom and his administration argue the prolonged life of the plants is critical to maintaining the electricity grid reliability.

“Action is needed now to maintain reliable energy service as the state accelerates the transition to clean energy,” Newsom said of his energy plan last year.

Critics argue that the administration’s policies represent a “flawed plan” for energy reliability and take away state resources that should be dedicated to expanding its fleet of renewable energy.

“Regulators and agencies and the executive branch will extend these plants and sort of push back the timeline on how long fossil fuel infrastructure will be kept online and say that that will then allow us to procure enough clean energy to ultimately turn them off,” said Ari Eisenstadt, energy equity manager at California Environmental Justice Alliance. “But we’ve seen over and over again, is that that hasn’t actually happened.”

During the 2022 heat wave, Newsom signed executive orders allowing for the use of diesel backup generators and the idling of ships off of California ports. Both measures caused increased harm to disadvantaged communities, according to the report.

Emissions from California’s gas plants spiked by 60% during the 10-day heat wave compared to the pollution emitted in the 10 days prior, according to the report. The carbon dioxide emissions alone were equivalent to the pollution produced by 43,000 vehicles in a year, the report found.

California gas plants pose grid reliability challenges

Although the sun is typically the state’s largest energy source during hot summer days, California still relies heavily on natural gas during evening peak demand hours because of wind and solar power shortages.

As the report notes, some of the state’s fossil fuel plants — especially those that are aging and gas-fired — pose issues for the grid’s reliability. Amid the 10-day heat wave last year, plants experienced power outages and equipment failures and were unable to produce the levels of power expected of them.

“I think that’s to be expected because a lot of these plants that are running when the system is really in a crunch are the older, inefficient plants,” said Michael Goggin, vice president at Grid Strategies, the consulting company that produced the report.

Goggin estimated that the lost power over those 10 days cost the state $280 million.

With demand expected to continue climbing, state officials and utility companies like Pacific Gas & Electric and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District are working to scale up renewable energy sources, including wind, solar and battery power. State officials are hopeful that thousands of new megawatts of battery storage being added to the electricity grid this year will help to diminish the chances of blackouts.

Environmentalists commend those efforts but say a detailed for about how the state plans to retire its fleet of fossil fuel plants is needed.

UK
Dozens of dead river fish apocalyptic, says walker

Miriam Earp - BBC News, Cambridgeshire
Thu, June 22, 2023

"It was grim, apocalyptic even," said a local person after seeing dead fish in the Cam

A large number of fish have been found dead in the river in Cambridge this week.

Locals reported seeing many dead fish in the stretch of the Cam between Elizabeth Bridge and Ditton Meadows.

One resident said the sight was "grim - apocalyptic even".

The Environment Agency (EA) and Anglian Water suggested the cause may be low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water.

Many fish were found dead in the section of river near Ditton Meadows

Simone Chalkley, who lives in the city, saw "maybe 100" dead fish while walking along the bank.

"There were a lot - some single, large, others in batches of 10s and 20s - floating all the way along the edge," she said.


Ms Chalkley has lived in Cambridge for 31 years and said she had never seen so many dead fish at one time.

She added: "I walk by the river every week, sometimes more than once a week.

"The most I've ever seen is one or two dead fish at once, never anything on this scale.

"It was grim - apocalyptic even."

Ms Chalkley said she reported the issue to the EA immediately.

The Environment Agency suggested low levels of oxygen in the water caused the issue

A spokesperson for the EA thanks people for reporting the dead fish and urged people to continue to do so.

They said: "Specialist fisheries officers inspected the river, where it is suspected that low levels of dissolved oxygen after heavy rainfall were the cause of the fish deaths, not pollution."

A spokesperson from Anglian Water confirmed the company attended the inspection at Ditton Meadows with the EA.

They said: "Both ourselves and the EA can confirm that the issue resulting in the death of the fish is not related to Anglian Water in any way."

Archaeologists unearth 4,000-year-old Stonehenge-like sanctuary in the Netherlands

Reuters
Thu, June 22, 2023 

Archaeologists have discovered a 4,000-year-old sanctuary made up of ditches and burial mounds in the central Netherlands that they believe may have served a similar purpose to Stonehenge.

Like the famous stone circle in southern England, the sanctuary - which was as big as at least three soccer fields and built with soil and wood - was built to align with the sun on the solstices.

The archaeologists also discovered offerings, including animal skeletons, human skulls and valuable items such as a bronze spearhead, at the spots where the sun shone through the openings, according to a statement from the municipality of Tiel, a town around 70 kilometers (45 miles) east of Rotterdam where the site was excavated.

An illustration of what researchers think the sanctuary would have looked like. - Municipality of Tiel/Handout/Reuters


“The largest mound served as a sun calendar, similar to the famous stones of Stonehenge in England,” said the statement.

“This sanctuary must have been a highly significant place where people kept track of special days in the year, performed rituals and buried their dead. Rows of poles stood along pathways used for processions.”

While excavating the site in 2017, archaeologists also discovered several graves. One grave was of a woman buried with a glass bead from Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq.

A bronze miniature axe was one item found at the site. - ANP/Zuma Press

It’s the oldest bead ever found in the Netherlands and researchers said it proved people of this area were in contact with people almost 5,000 kilometers (about 3,100 miles) away.

The archaeologists took six years to research more than a million excavated objects dating from the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages.

After the excavation was finished, the site was covered again to allow construction work.

Some of the discoveries will be showcased in a local museum in Tiel and in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities.

US Supreme Court turns away veterans who seek disability benefits over 1966 hydrogen bomb accident

Associated Press
Tue, June 20, 2023 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal on behalf of some U.S. veterans who want disability benefits because they were exposed to radiation while responding to a Cold War-era hydrogen bomb accident in Spain.

The justices not did comment in turning away an appeal from Victor Skaar, an Air Force veteran in his mid-80s.

Skaar, of Nixa, Missouri, filed class-action claims seeking benefits for him and others who say they became ill from exposure to radiation during the recovery and cleanup of the undetonated bombs at the accident site in Palomares, a village in southern Spain, in 1966.

A federal appeals court rejected the class-action claims. The Supreme Court's action leaves that ruling in place.

The Justice Department, arguing against high-court review, noted that Congress last year enacted legislation that expands eligibility for benefits for many Palomares veterans. But the department also acknowledged that Skaar is not covered by the legislation.

Skaar's lawyers told the Supreme Court that he suffers from leukopenia, described as a condition that can be caused by exposure to radiation. Skaar also has had skin cancer, now in remission, the lawyers wrote in a court filing.

He was among 1,400 U.S. service members who were sent to Palomares to help clean up what has been called the worst radiation accident in U.S. history.

On Jan. 17, 1966, a U.S. B-52 bomber and a refueling plane crashed into each other during a refueling operation in the skies above Palomares, killing seven of 11 crew members but no one on the ground. At the time, the U.S. was keeping nuclear-armed warplanes in the air near the border with the Soviet Union.

The midair collision resulted in the release of four U.S. hydrogen bombs. None of the bombs exploded, but the plutonium-filled detonators on two went off, scattering 7 pounds (3 kilograms) of highly radioactive plutonium 239 across the landscape.

Colombia senate votes down recreational marijuana bill





People demonstrate in front of the Colombian Congress, in favor of the regulation of marijuana for adult use in Bogota

Reuters
Wed, June 21, 2023 

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's Senate voted down a measure to approve the sale of recreational cannabis to adults late on Tuesday, although supporters including the government of leftist President Gustavo Petro said they would continue to pursue legalization.

The South American country already allows some cannabis derived products, such as oils and creams, to be made and sold for medicinal uses, while legislation passed in the 1980s and 1990s allows consumption and the cultivation of up to 20 plants.

But sales of the drug for recreational purposes are illegal and opponents of legalization celebrated the bill's defeat as ensuring the protection of children and families.

Uruguay, Canada and some states in the U.S. allow the sale of recreational marijuana. Despite the legality of medicinal cannabis, investors have long complained about what they say is Colombia's tortuous export approval process.

The bill would have restricted the use and sale of cannabis and its derived products in schools and universities and placed limits on public consumption.

Backers including Interior Minister Luis Fernando Velasco said recreational marijuana's continued illegality only benefits criminals.

"From the government we will insist on this issue," Velasco said in quotes shared by the Senate on Twitter.

Liberal Party representative Juan Carlos Losada had said the proposed law would save lives, protecting consumers from interactions with criminals.

"We didn't know we'd get so far. We have majorities, we lacked seven votes," he tweeted after the vote on the bill, which needed 54 votes in favor and won 47, with 43 against.

Meanwhile, an ambitious health reform which caused the breakdown of Petro's once-broad congressional coalition will carry over to the new legislative session in July, on the back of a May approval by a committee in the lower house.

A pension reform proposal also won committee approval, while a labor reform will need to be proposed from scratch after its first debate in the lower house did not reach quorum.

(Reporting by Oliver Griffin and Carlos Vargas; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Colombian military searches for heroic dog who helped find children in the Amazon jungle






Colombia Army Dogs

A handler holds his Belgian Shepherd, named Sargen, at a Colombian Army training facility for military working dogs to serve alongside troops in various capacities in Bogota, Colombia, Wednesday, June 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

MANUEL RUEDA
Wed, June 21, 2023

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — With his powerful snout and his pointy ears, Wilson became a national hero in Colombia when he helped the military find four Indigenous children who survived a plane crash and were lost in the Amazon jungle for 40 days.

Pawprints from the military-trained search dog led trackers to the children earlier this month. But the Belgian Shepherd went missing during the search and is now himself the target of a sophisticated rescue operation that started soon after the four young survivors where flown on a helicopter to Bogota.

The Colombian military says it has left 70 soldiers in the dense swath of jungle around the crash site to look for its beloved search dog. And commanders have vowed not to leave the remote area until soldiers return home with the star pup.

It’s been a month since Wilson got lost in the rainforest, and its hard to know if the two-year-old dog is still alive. But the sniffer dog’s rescue would lift the spirits of many Colombians, and add a heartwarming exclamation point to a survival story that already has captivated the world.

“For us it was an honor that our canine helped to find those children” said Sgt. Luis Fernando Seña, the commander of the canine school where Wilson was trained for 14 months in Bogota.

“It would be great news for the country, and for our children if he can be found," Seña said.

Wilson graduated from the canine academy in February, and was taken to the Tolemaida air force base, where he joined Colombia’s special forces. Wilson and four more sniffer dogs, were taken to the rainforest in May, to find the single engine Cessna plane that had crashed into the rainforest, carrying the four children and three adults who later were found dead.

When the small plane was found, and the search party realized that the children could still be alive, Wilson’s handler gave him some clothes to sniff, to track down the kids.

The sniffer dog got separated form the search party on May 18, after he sped off into the forest following a scent. Ten days later, the military found footprints of the children next to his pawprints. Those clues helped them to get closer to the area where the children were found on June 9, said Gen. Pedro Sanchez, who led the rescue effort.

“The children spoke to us, and confirmed that the dog was with them for two or three days” Sanchez, told Colombia’s W radio.

The children are still recovering in hospital and have not spoken to the press. But recently, 13 year-old Lesly Mucutuy, who is the oldest child in the group, drew a picture of the rainforest that included a black and coffee colored dog, which looks like Wilson.

Last week, Colombia’s military said that it helipcoptered two female dogs in heat to the area around the crash site, in the hopes of luring Wilson towards the search party. Food has also been placed for the dog at several points around the crash site as well as clothes belonging to his handler, hoping that their scent can guide Wilson back to safety.

But some experts believe that Wilson may have already perished in the rainforest, where a dog might struggle to find food, and also risks attacks from poisonous snakes.

“It's a tough situation" said Mark Lee, a Colombian dog trainer, and radio host who has 13 pups at home, including a 10-year-old Belgian Shepherd. “I don't see a Belgian Malinois eating fruits and leaves in the forest, or trying to catch an animal to survive. And I wouldn't see that in a dog that is used to having his food in his bowl, at regular hours.”

Still, Colombia continues to root for the stranded pup: Wilson's name has become a popular hashtag on social media sites, with his fans posting messages that urge the military to continue the search. The dog's story has led national news shows. And a spiritual coach who claims she can speak with animals, recently posted a viral video on TikTok, where she urges her followers to thank Wilson for the job he did, and “send light” to the dog, so that he can find his way home —- if that is what his soul desires.

At the canine academy in Bogota, Wilson’s comrades said that the dog is highly trained, and accustomed to overcoming physical obstacles. But ultimately it will have to rely on its instincts to survive.

“He is very energetic, and always stood out because of his strength, his energy and his strong temperament” said Elvis Porras, a trainer who helped to raise Wilson, and worked with the dog until he graduated from the academy earlier this year.

“He is a distant relative of wolves, so I hope his instinct to hunt will help him to survive.”

Ambitious Saudi plans to ramp up Hajj could face challenges from climate change

Saudi soldiers hold umbrellas as they stand alert near Arafat camp in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, June 21, 2023. Muslim pilgrims are converging on Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca for the largest hajj since the coronavirus pandemic severely curtailed access to one of Islam's five pillars. 

(AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

RIAZAT BUTT
Thu, June 22, 2023 

MECCA, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabia has ambitious plans to welcome millions more pilgrims to Islam's holiest sites. But as climate change heats up an already scorching region, the annual Hajj pilgrimage — much of which takes place outdoors in the desert — could prove even more daunting.

The increased number of pilgrims, with the associated surge in international air travel and infrastructure expansion, also raises sustainability concerns, even as the oil giant pursues the goal of getting half its energy from renewable resources by 2030.

Next week, Saudi Arabia hosts the first Hajj pilgrimage without the restrictions imposed during the coronavirus pandemic. Some 2.5 million people took part in the pilgrimage in 2019, and around 2 million are expected this year.

Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's wide-ranging plan to overhaul the kingdom's economy, known as Vision 2030, 30 million pilgrims would take part in the Hajj and Umrah — a smaller, year-round pilgrimage. That would be an increase of more than 10 million from pre-pandemic levels.

It will require a vast expansion of hotels and other infrastructure in Mecca and Medina, ancient cities already largely obliterated by high-rises and shopping malls. The additional pilgrims will require more long-distance flights, more buses and cars, more water and electricity.

The Associated Press reached out to several Saudi officials with detailed questions but received no response. It's unclear what, if any, studies the government has done on the environmental impact of the pilgrimage or whether that figures into its plans. And well-intentioned measures, like a high-speed railway network, aren't enough to remove polluting traffic in and around the holy city.

The trains whip through the arid landscape at top speeds of 300 km/h (186 mph), carrying pilgrims in air-conditioned comfort from Jeddah to Mecca. But they stop several kilometers away from the Grand Mosque, meaning pilgrims must either walk at least an hour or take a bus or car to the holy site. The $19 one-way price from Jeddah's airport to Mecca may also be out of reach for pilgrims on lower incomes.

The Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam, and all Muslims who are able to are required to undertake it at least once in their lives. For pilgrims, retracing the footsteps of the Prophet Muhammad is a profound religious experience that wipes away sins, deepens one's faith and unifies Muslims the world over.

The Saudi royal family’s legitimacy is largely rooted in its custodianship of Islam's holiest sites and its ability to host one of the largest annual religious gatherings on the planet.

Experts have found that the Hajj both contributes to climate change and will be affected by it in the coming decades as one of the hottest places on Earth gets even warmer.

A study of the 2018 Hajj by experts from Victoria University in Melbourne estimated that the five-day pilgrimage produced over 1.8 million tons of greenhouse gases, roughly the amount New York City emits every two weeks. The biggest contributor was aviation, accounting for 87% of emissions.

Abdullah Abonomi, a Saudi researcher and one of the authors of the study, said Saudi authorities have embraced sustainability as part of Vision 2030, which calls for preserving natural resources in order to attract pilgrims, tourists and businesses.

“Everything has changed,” he said, pointing to the establishment of national centers to coordinate sustainable policies, the creation of an environmental police force to crack down on violations and the integration of sustainability into university courses on tourism.

“If you ask four years ago about sustainability ... no one understands what sustainability is,” he said. “But today, everything is going to be better. And I know we are late, but better late than never.”

In the past, he says, cars and buses packed with pilgrims filled the streets around Mecca, belching exhaust into the air, but expansion of the Grand Mosque has led to bigger courtyards and increased pedestrianisation in most of the routes leading to the holy site.

Still, human bottlenecks have replaced traffic, and garbage swirls in clouds of heat. For travel around Mina and Arafat, two crucial Hajj locations, cars and buses remain the two most widespread forms of transport. The journey by foot, in sweltering temperatures, is arduous but can prove faster than four wheels.

In its Hajj ambitions, Saudi Arabia faces managing huge numbers of pilgrims in a rapidly warming world.

During the rituals, pilgrims often walk for hours outside, scale a desert hill known as the Mountain of Mercy, where the prophet is said to have delivered his last sermon, and cast stones at pillars representing the devil in a desert plain. They pack into the Grand Mosque in Mecca to circumambulate the Kaaba. On top of the exertions, the Hajj population skews to the elderly, who are more vulnerable to heat.

On an evening this week around sunset in Mecca, temperatures hovered around 37 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit). The crowds made it feel hotter, stifling any airflow. In a bustling basement supermarket near the Grand Mosque, pilgrims bought handheld fans that spray water on the face and every kind of umbrella.

A 2019 study by experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that even if the world succeeds in mitigating the worst effects of climate change, the Hajj would be held in temperatures exceeding an “extreme danger threshold” from 2047 to 2052 and from 2079 to 2086.

Islam follows a lunar calendar, so the Hajj falls around 11 days earlier each year. In 2030, the Hajj will occur in April, and over the next several years it will fall in the winter, when temperatures are milder.

In recent years, Saudi authorities have installed large awnings and misters around holy sites to cool pilgrims. As temperatures climb, authorities will likely need to step up such measures or introduce new strategies like limiting pilgrim numbers in higher-heat years, the heat stress study concluded.

“People who want to do Hajj should get the opportunity to do it,” said Elfatih Eltahir, one of the study's authors. “Global warming is going to make it a little bit more difficult — for some years, for some individuals.”

Muslim activists have launched grassroots initiatives aimed at a “green Hajj,” encouraging pilgrims to only make the journey once, to avoid single-use plastics and to offset carbon emissions by planting trees.

The Hajj “can be green and sustainable if there are smart policies and technology to lower the ecological footprint,” said Odeh Jayyousi, a professor at the Arabian Gulf University in Bahrain who researches sustainability and innovation.

The use of biodegradable plastics, reusable tents, and renewable energy would cut down on greenhouse gases, he said. Artificial intelligence could be brought to bear on logistics, streamlining travel and ensuring that planes and busses are full and do not spend too much time idling.

“The young generation are mindful of the trade-offs and the need to change consumption patterns,” Jayyousi said. “Hajj can offer a platform for displaying the best green practices to global audiences.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Pope meets Cuban president as small protest held away from Vatican


Pope Francis leads the Angelus prayer from his window at the Vatican


Tue, June 20, 2023
By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis held talks on Tuesday with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who is making a rare trip to the West, as police kept a small demonstration demanding respect for human rights on the communist-run island away from the Vatican.

A Vatican statement did not give any details on what was discussed during 40 minutes of talks but said that in Diaz-Canel´s subsequent talks with Holy See diplomats the topic was the current situation in Cuba, with particular attention to the Cuban Church's charity activities.

This appeared to be a reference to the country's dire financial situation.

Cuba is suffering a near unprecedented economic crisis, with widespread shortages of food, fuel and medicine that have prompted a record-breaking outflow of migrants to the United States in the last year.

A Cuban embassy statement said Diaz-Canel expressed support for the pope's efforts to achieve peace, protect the environment, promote nuclear disarmament and defend the poor.

Diaz-Canel, who was also due to meet Italian President Sergio Mattarella and officials of U.N. food agencies in Rome, rarely travels to Western nations. Last November, he travelled to China and Russia to meet with presidents in each country.

Pope Francis visited Cuba in 2015 and met with ailing revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, who died in 2016.

As the pope and Diaz-Canel met, about a dozen demonstrators opposed to the Cuban government held a protest near the Tiber River about six blocks away. They had planned to hold it outside St. Peter's Square but police did not allow them.

The protesters held up Cuban and Italian flags and demanded the release of those they say are political prisoners. They held up a large banner reading "Respect Human Rights in Cuba".

Communist-run Cuba has faced sharp criticism from rights groups, the United States and the European Union following the imprisonment of hundreds of protesters after the July 11, 2021, riots, the largest since Castro's 1959 revolution.

Some of those who took to the streets, angered by blackouts and shortages amid the coronavirus pandemic, cried "freedom" and demanded a change in government.

Authorities in Cuba have said those jailed following the 2021 demonstrations are guilty of crimes including public disorder, resisting arrest, robbery and vandalism. They have wavered little from those arguments despite growing international pressure.

But during an unusual visit to Cuba early this year, Cardinal Benjamin Stella, an envoy of the pope, said he had discussed a potential prisoner release with Diaz-Canel.

(This story has been refiled to add the dropped hyphenated last name of Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel)

(Additional reporting by David Sherwood in Havana; Editing by Christina Fincher)

'Slow water' could transform the Southwest, one little rock wall at a time

Erica Gies

 PopSci
Tue, June 20, 2023 

The different between nature-inspired rock dams and hard infrastructure like concrete dams? They leak.

WHEN VALER CLARK and Josiah Austin moved to El Coronado cattle ranch in southern Arizona in the 1980s, the seasonal rain didn’t soak into the soil but roared through arroyos and washes, cutting them deeper into the earth. The erosion was threatening a road, so they placed a few rocks across the adjacent wash. The tiny structure worked as intended, slowing water, catching soil, and fostering the return of long-gone plants. Clark and Austin had instinctually re-created an Indigenous technique for managing water in drylands.

Ultimately, the duo added around 20,000 small rock barriers across tributaries of the often-dry Turkey Creek, which ran through their 1,800-acre property in the Chiricahua Mountains. Within a few monsoon seasons, water seeped from the structures year-round, and the creek corridor turned green with plants. Downstream landowners were suspicious, claiming that Clark and Austin were holding on to “their” water. But when Laura Norman, a physical scientist from the US Geological Survey, measured the flow in 2013, she found that the barriers weren’t just slowing flash floods and extending supply into the dry season: They’d actually raised the stream’s flow by 28 percent.

Today, the Southwest is staggering through a “megadrought”—possibly the worst in 1,200 years. The Colorado River, which quenches the demands of more than 40 million people in seven US states and Mexico, is seeing average flows that are 19 percent lower than in the last century. Climate change is making the region’s water woes more severe, scientists say. But drought is partly determined by the gap between supply and human demand, and right now, demand is greater than the region’s supply. What’s more, our development choices—urban sprawl, industrial forestry and agriculture, intensive cattle grazing, and the concrete infrastructure we use to try to control water—are sapping the river’s natural systems and resilience.


Modern development tends to erase places where water slows down: wetlands, flood plains, mountain meadows, and forests. These ecosystems absorb high flows, prevent floods, and move water underground, which raises the water table. A healthy groundwater system supplies streams, wetlands, and rivers during the dry season and hydrates soil and plants, making them less likely to burn in wildfires and allowing them to release water into the atmosphere, contributing to rain. But humans have dramatically altered the water cycle by draining or filling as much as 87 percent of global wetlands over the past three centuries, interrupting the flow of two-thirds of rivers, and doubling the land area of paved cities since 1992. All told, we have transformed 75 percent of the world’s total land area for housing, agriculture, and industry.

Eight years ago, a nonprofit installed wire-wrapped rock structures called gabions in Babacomari Ranch in Arizona to detain precipitation and build up sediment.

Clark and Austin’s approach to land management has shown one way to reverse these negative trends, and the strategy is now spreading across the Southwest and northern Mexico. Their streambed structures, coupled with Norman’s in-depth studies on the benefits, led to the USGS co-founding the Sky Island Restoration Collaborative, a group of government agencies, nonprofits, private landowners, scientists, and restorationists in the US and Mexico who are building thousands of slow-water structures.

Called natural infrastructure in dryland streams, or NIDS, these structures include beaver dams, human versions of beaver dams, one-rock dams, check dams, log dams, leaky weirs, earthen berms, and gabions. The appropriate intervention depends on the specific site’s width and slope, nearby natural materials, and other factors. Despite the fact that several have “dam” in the name, these features do not block downstream flows like concrete hydropower dams; they just slow it down. They’re intentionally leaky to detain water, not retain it. “They’re a totally different beast,” says Norman.

She and her colleagues have documented NIDS’ effectiveness in storing carbon dioxide and mitigating flooding, water scarcity, pollution, heat, erosion, dust, wildlife loss, and food insecurity. These interventions—combined with levee setbacks to reconnect rivers with flood plains, forest and grassland restoration, and support for beavers’ comeback after they were hunted nearly to extinction—are part of the global “slow water movement” that could help boost water availability throughout the Colorado River basin.

USGS researcher Laura Norman checks on a post-assisted log structure used to elevate the streambed and mitigate erosion at Babacomari Ranch.

At the rim of the Grand Canyon, the all-powerful nature of water is explicit: The reflective squiggle a mile below carved the natural cathedral out of rock over millions of years. Yet Euro-American culture has interpreted that force as a challenge and tried to control it. Viewed solely in terms of human need, water is either considered a threat or a commodity—the new billion-dollar Colorado River deal involving the US government and three Western states is just one example. But that’s not the only way people relate to water. Other cultures, including many Indigenous groups in North America, perceive it as a friend or relative. With that perspective, the right to water comes with the responsibility to care for it, along with the many elements and organisms—soils, rocks, microbes, insects, and more—that also have relationships with it.

Choosing to return land to water might seem wasteful to some. But by restoring drylands to wetlands, or ciénegas in Spanish, Clark and Austin have shown how healthy slow-water systems can repair delicate desert landscapes that humans have destroyed.
A sick land

In early March, the morning after a fierce windstorm made saguaros sway and dropped snow on the low desert, I drove south from Tucson with Norman through the tiny hamlets of Elgin and Sonoita. We left behind the saguaros and paloverde trees of the Sonoran Desert and entered the Chihuahuan Desert, studded with big tuffets of sacaton grass and grazing pronghorns. At the roughly 28,000-acre Babacomari Ranch, we walked a channel of the San Pedro watershed. Norman, clad in a black cowboy hat, hiking boots, and a thick Wrangler work jacket, was meeting up with a fellow researcher to take soil samples. The channel has several gabions and log structures, installed eight years ago by Borderlands Restoration, a nonprofit that belongs to the Sky Island Restoration Collaborative.

Gabions are chicken wire containers filled with rocks. More engineered than other NIDS interventions, but still low profile, they are typically used in valley bottoms and anchored deep into the sides of the stream banks. The pieces of wood in the log structures are spaced 6 to 12 inches apart, pushed vertically into the streambed. They are meant to help water move underground and create “messiness” in the stream that slows water, captures sediment, and creates habitat. Both features have acted as intended: Parts of them are barely visible because trapped sediment has raised the riverbed and allowed new plants, including sacaton grass, to take root.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr28tSsvM1A

Borderlands Restoration founder Ron Pulliam served in the Clinton administration’s Department of the Interior and taught ecology at the University of Georgia. He says major results from NIDS, such as streams flowing year-round, can take 10 to 20 years—but small improvements in erosion and vegetation can happen in just a year of two. Seeing those quick results three decades ago encouraged Clark and Austin to stick with their unconventional efforts at Turkey Creek and beyond.

While the couple divorced several years back and sold El Coronado, Clark owns several other properties on both sides of the border. In consultation with ranchers and conservationists, she founded a nonprofit called Cuenca Los Ojos that builds NIDS and teaches these practices to other landowners and community members. Cuenca is also part of the Sky Islands group, and Clark’s daughter, Valerie Gordon, sits on the board.

This hard, dirty work is a long way from Clark’s early life in New York City. Then, in her 40s, she and Austin moved to El Coronado. The landscape “was so novel and so beautiful, it became the focus of my life,” she says. Curiosity about fire, water, plants, and lichen consumed her. “I’d never looked at ants before. I thought, There’s so much life going on here that I know nothing about.”

The Aridland Water Harvesting Study covers more than two dozen ranches, cities, and federally owned properties near the US-Mexico border.

That attention has served her well. “Valer has amazing powers of observation,” says Pulliam, a longtime friend and slow water ally. “She has a genius for understanding the movement of water and wildlife. She can’t explain it technically. But she has this intuitive feeling for how things work.”

Now 83, Clark recalls her first summer at El Coronado in the 1980s. “The monsoon season hit and I was terrified, because I saw how much damage the flooding was doing in the hills. It was a lot of erosion. The vegetation was being flattened. I remember asking, ‘What do the cows eat? Rocks?’” She felt something was wrong and began studying the history of the area. She discovered that local trees were cut down in the 1800s to fuel copper production. Without them, grass boomed, so settlers brought in vast herds of cattle and sheep, who made short work of the vegetation. Mining and cotton production took a toll as well. Then when rain struck the denuded land, the water cut deep channels into the earth.
What water wants

By placing rocks across a stream channel to slow water, Clark and Austin had intuitively re-created a technique that Indigenous peoples in the Southwest and northern Mexico had deployed for centuries to slow water, buffer against drought, and reverse desertification.

Soon after the couple added those first structures, a group of men came to El Coronado from Mexico, looking for work. Clark showed them the little rock dam. “I said, ‘It’s wetter here, and grasses are coming in. What if we do that in the hills because they’re quite bare?’ And they said, ‘We do that at home.’” For generations, they had used a similar practice to grow corn.

The men returned seasonally for 20 years and created some 20,000 rock structures throughout Turkey Creek’s side channels in the hills. As the low barriers caught sediment and deep-rooted grasses returned, “the mountains became sponges,” Clark recalls. “The wash became a stream, and scientists came and put fish in the stream.”

Gordon says the tenacity required to see this vision through is part of Clark’s personality. “My mother is very comfortable taking an unconventional path. She is not afraid of a challenge. And I think she also likes to do what other people don’t want to do.”

Indigenous rock structures similar to those at El Coronado can be found throughout the Southwest. Over the last decade, Pulliam saw several on land purchased by Borderlands Restoration in Arizona, and was struck by how different the watersheds looked from others in the region that were severely washed out. “All of the little side draws in this area have almost no erosion,” he says. “If you look carefully, there are ancient rock structures at least 1,200 years old still working.”

Indigenous peoples are still creating and using slow-water structures for various purposes today. Michael Kotutwa Johnson is a member of the Hopi Tribe and has a Ph.D. in natural resources. But his most important credential, according to his University of Arizona profile, is that “he continues to practice Hopi dry farming, a practice of his people for millennia.”

The Hopi, like most Indigenous cultures, are “place-based societies,” says Johnson. Their place receives just 6 to 10 inches of precipitation a year, so they have developed methods designed to conserve soil moisture. Johnson explains some of them.

Hopi read the landscape and natural water flows, then build rock dams at the bases of mesas to divert runoff into fields. They also use rock detention structures to capture nutrient-bearing sediment to hold moisture, allowing farmers to plant different varieties of crops without fertilizers or irrigation. “Crops always need new soil with nutrients,” Johnson says. Contour farming—planting across the slope of the land at a certain angle—also slows water and wind. Another strategy includes leaving the stalks, cobs, and leaves on the ground after a corn harvest to catch snow, allowing it to melt and be absorbed into the soil.



What if slow water interventions were deployed widely across the West? Could they heal the land-water relationship and reverse desertification? “Yes,” Norman says, without hesitation.

But there’s more to the Hopis’ resilience than a series of slow-water techniques, Johnson says. “It’s about having a relationship with the environment in a place that you’ve been living for a long, long time” and about the associated cultural belief system.

Rather than trying to maximize production, Hopi growers read the landscape to see what is possible for nature to provide that year. The timing and quantity of springtime vegetation serve as “biological indicators,” Johnson says. He notes that Hopi women select plants for certain traits and keep many varieties of seed for different annual conditions. “We’ve had 200-year droughts in our history. Our place is a testament to our resilience.”

Because traditional ecological knowledge doesn’t conform to Western science’s norms, the latter has been slow to recognize it as legitimate. Johnson counters, “When you have 3,000 years of replication, that is a science.”
Making a convincing argument

Norman, whose expertise lies in forestry, watershed management, and remote sensing, agrees strongly with Johnson’s sentiment. But she realized that nature-inspired structures, whether built by Indigenous peoples or permaculture-minded land owners such as Clark and Austin, would not be recognized as a legitimate strategy by some unless their benefits were measured according to the Western scientific method. “My science is meant to address these misconceptions about the structures,” Norman says.

She has now dedicated a decade to leading the USGS Aridland Water Harvesting Study. Her work, with geomorphologists, biologists, botanists, and hydrologists, has proven that small stones and other natural materials placed across streams can restore and create permanent wetlands, regrow plants, store carbon dioxide, reconnect streams with flood plains, recharge groundwater, and increase stream flow.

Norman grew up in Rhode Island, then moved west to Oregon for college and on to Arizona for graduate school. She first encountered rock detention structures when researching her Ph.D. dissertation, which used satellite data and flood modeling to make sense of environmental justice impacts from poor land management in Nogales, Mexico, and its twin city in Arizona. Erosion was releasing fine particle dust into the air, resulting in human health problems; flooding was endangering people; and heavy sediment loads were causing sewers to overflow. While working with the International Boundary and Water Commission to identify locations where structures could help address these problems, she became fascinated by the way small changes to the terrain could alter water flow and ultimately the shape and character of the land.

A black bear enjoys a cool dip in a watering hole fed by a gabion in the Chiricahua Mountains. Camera traps have caught many species visiting these slow-water features.

Not long after, Norman heard rumors of an oasis in the Chiricahuas. Intrigued, she visited El Coronado Ranch after a rain. The rock structures detained huge pools of water, keeping the washes running. “Seeing that with my own eyes was mind-blowing,” she says.

To measure the effects, she compared a tributary of Turkey Creek with neighboring Rock Creek, which had no rock structures. Using modified stream gauges and precipitation measurements, she found that the subtle barriers reduced peak flows from summer monsoons by half and extended base flows into fall by three to four weeks. The check dams kept more water in the system, resulting in that incredible 28 percent increase of water flowing downstream. What’s more, they captured 200 tons of soil per year, cleaning the water of sediment and supporting verdant vegetation that attracted animals.

Norman explains why there was more water in the treated stream. In contrast to Turkey Creek’s series of wetland sponges, Rock Creek has bare bedrock. “When water runs over an impervious surface and is exposed to elements, it evaporates,” Norman says. Compacted and dry soils also repel water, or become hydrophobic—“scared of water.” But when barriers make the life-giving liquid linger, it can permeate the soil.

“A lot of practitioners and ranchers were of the opinion that they were able to create more water [with rock detention structures],” says Norman. “But to be able to document that was amazing. More water storage and more water availability for everything, to reverse that degradation cycle into a restoration cycle.”

Pulliam, who has collaborated with Norman on some of her papers, says her scientific rigor has led to wider acceptance of these practices. “Early on, even at USGS, people were skeptical. But as evidence accumulated, they began to see Laura as a really innovative scientist,” he says. “Like Valer, she persisted through a period where no one had much faith in [the structures’] efficacy.”

In 2021, the American Water Resources Association awarded Norman a medal of excellence, saying her “research is the foundation of a burgeoning community of practice and a shift in policy implementation in the arid Southwest.”
Desert oases

Studies from atmospheric scientists have found that, in the Colorado River basin, the warmer climate is creating a thirstier atmosphere, which could evaporate more water out of the soil and plants and sometimes turn snow directly to water vapor. They predict that Colorado River flows could be 20 to 30 percent lower by 2050, meaning state negotiators of the river’s sharing agreement should be planning for even less water than they have today.

But Norman and other experts studying water cycle restoration assert that it’s not just climate change making the West drier. People have also dried out the land over the last two centuries by killing beavers, cutting forests, overgrazing grasslands, and cutting off rivers from their flood plains and wetlands with levees, channels, and diversions. What if slow water interventions, including Natural Infrastructure in Dryland Streams, were deployed widely across the West? Could they heal the land-water relationship and reverse desertification?

“Yes,” Norman says, without hesitation.

In a paper published last fall, Norman and co-authors reviewed many studies that support the claim of region-wide restoration being able to counteract desertification. One reason is that NIDS create localized humidity and cooling. In a park in Phoenix, Norman found the air is up to 3 degrees Celsius cooler around structures for two days after a rainfall.

Another reason is that about 40 percent of rain over land, on average, is formed from evaporation from soil and transpiration from plants. With forests cut, grasslands overgrazed, soil compacted, and more wetlands and flood plains paved over, that moisture is missing from the Colorado River’s water cycle.

To undo part of the damage, slow-water projects need to be distributed throughout water basins, not centralized. The interventions are typically small, but their impact on flood protection, water storage, and localized cooling is cumulative, much as how solar panels on many roofs can generate a lot of electricity. “The whole Colorado River basin, plugged full of structures?” says Norman. “At that scale, you’d see a regional response that might impact the climate by sequestration of carbon and by cooling of temperatures from bringing moisture back into the atmosphere.”

These changes also support wildlife, providing critical refuges for animals native to the Sky Islands, one of the most biodiverse regions in North America. Supporting an array of animals—Gila monsters, black bears, mountain lions, ocelots, bobcats, coatis, javelinas, foxes, deer—is part of Cuenca Los Ojos’ mission and what drives Clark to heal land and water. “The horny toad [or horned lizard] squirts blood out of its eyes to scare you. There are just so many delightful creatures in the region.” The fact that she thinks blood-squirting eyes are delightful epitomizes her enthusiasm for everything she encounters on the land.

Scientists, including Pulliam, have been documenting the return of wildlife. They even recorded an endangered jaguar near the rock structures at Cienega Ranch, a site in the Aridland Water Harvesting Study. “Because there’s water, the animals come,’’ says Norman.

One critter they’re tracking is famous for building its own infrastructure in water. Beavers have returned to southern Arizona after trappers wiped them out 150 years ago. They’ve also been found on Clark’s ranches in northern Mexico. “Beavers won’t settle in desiccated areas,” Pulliam says, “but if you provide seed areas where they can get established, they can gradually improve adjacent areas.”
The upwelling of a movement

Nature-based solutions are gaining ground worldwide, including in the US—incentivized by the Biden administration’s Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction acts. But they are still often dismissed as insignificant in the challenge of buffering human communities from flood, drought, and climate change. That attitude reveals a misunderstanding of the scale of human disruption to the water cycle, and therefore, the scale needed for projects like NIDS to repair that damage.

Because the federal government influences the way so much land and water in the American West is managed, it could make a monumental difference by embracing slow-water practices, says Clark. But while some federal employees support them, so far, it’s not part of the official policy at the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, or Bureau of Land Management.

Still, the federal agencies are coming around, says Pulliam. One lightbulb moment came after wildfires roared through the Chiricahuas about a decade ago. “Watersheds with rock structures had much, much less damage, and the Forest Service started noticing,” Pulliam explains, adding that the department is now giving contracts to Cuenca Los Ojos and Borderlands Restoration to build structures on its land. Overall, however, he says the US government retains a bias for modern engineering in its funding. State agencies, on the other hand, are much more open to NIDS. “They all buy in. They see it. It’s in their backyard.”

Local Indigenous communities have shown what close attention to nature’s ways can yield. “Water is really life to us,” says Johnson, the Hopi farmer, contrasting that attitude with the dominant society’s view that water is a commodity. “People are so far removed from the relationship that we have with water that they just don’t understand the complexities, and they keep making the same mistakes over and over again.”

Maybe we can improve our relationship with water, as individuals like Johnson, Clark, and Austin demonstrate how to heal water systems, and scientists like Norman and Pulliam document the intricacies of how they work. In response to water scarcity in the Southwest, many people think the answer is to bring in more from elsewhere via dams, aqueducts, and desalination plants. But slow-water practitioners make the most of the water that’s already there. Norman recalls a local saying, half-jokingly, “Ah, that would be great if there were some magic water that just appeared!” When she started studying ecosystems benefiting from slow-water techniques, “I was like, I think we found some, you know?”